Late Night Live - Separate Stories Podcast

Strangers do it, friends do it, politicians do it and so do bonobos and chimpanzees. But what is the biological purpose of the handshake and why has it outlasted other forms of greeting?

When Nadia Wassef, her sister Hind and friend Nihal started their bookshop, Diwan, back in 2002, they had no idea that ten years later they would be running ten bookshops across Egypt meeting a growing demand for books both in Arabic and English, French and German. There were many bumps in the road, and there was certainly a toll taken on their personal lives, but now looking back she can see what she learnt about her country and herself along the way.

In the midst of the 2012 siege of Daraya, a band of young Syrian revolutionaries embarked on an extraordinary project, rescuing all the books they could find in the bombed-out ruins. They collected 15,000 and set up a secret underground library where books became their ‘weapons of mass instruction’ and reading their daily act of resistance. 

Charles Masson was a red-haired Englishman with a Cockney accent, a self-taught archaeologist who, in the 19th century, became the first westerner to explore Afghanistan’s ancient past. 

At the end of the First World War, the German doctor Hans Prinzhorn began collecting the paintings, drawings and sculpture of psychiatric patients. Their work inspired a generation of modernists including Max Ernst, Paul Klee and Salvador Dali, but when Hitler came to power the Prinzhorn artists were caught up in the Führer's war against 'degenerate' humans.

In the depths of the Holocaust, twenty-five young inmates of the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp were selected to make high-end fashion for the Nazi elite. The Upper Tailoring Studio, housed in an SS admin block, became a vital hub of resistance as the dressmakers of Auschwitz used their sewing skills to survive.   

In 1939, Billie Holiday stood up on stage in a Manhattan hotel and performed Strange Fruit, a haunting protest song about the lynching of Black Americans.  That night, the young jazz singer received a warning from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics never to sing the song again. Holiday’s lifelong defiance of that warning led to her being relentlessly pursued by Harry Anslinger, the racist director of the FBN.  Author Johann Hari talks to Phillip about the new Billie Holiday biopic based on his book Chasing The Scream.  

There has been a global boom in high-rise construction and people living vertically. But can we live in them happily and build them sustainably? 

Over the centuries, people of all cultures have made and used clocks, from the city sundials of Ancient Rome through hourglasses and medieval water clocks to atomic time-keeping devices. But clocks are not just a way of measuring time. Throughout history they have also been deployed as instruments of faith, money and power, imposing social order and regulating behaviour.

Do nothing, say nothing only makes it worse. Philosopher Lee McIntyre explains why it's vital to push back against science denial and disinformation.