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No-Stalgia

From advertising to politics, Will Self explores our relationship with nostalgia - and coins a new term, 'no-stalgia', along the way.

'It's time to acknowledge', writes Will Self, 'that we don't really feel nostalgia at all - only something far more worrying and debilitating: a condition I've named no-stalgia'.

Will argues that the West is particularly in thrall to rose-tinted nostalgia and looks to Japan - and its concept of 'mono no aware' - as an alternative and healthier way of thinking about the past.

Producer: Adele Armstrong
Sound: Peter Bosher
Production Coordinator: Iona Hammond
Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

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9 minutes

Last on

Sun 19 Jun 202208:48
BBC Radio 4

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  • Fri 17 Jun 202220:50
    BBC Radio 4
  • Sun 19 Jun 202208:48
    BBC Radio 4

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