Programme Details
On Night Waves, Paul Allen considers the biggest subject the programme's ever dealt with. Infinity is an idea that humans have been struggling to comprehend for millennia. Now the mathematician John Barrow has written a study of infinity, which examines how thinkers, writers and artists have dealt with the unimaginably huge. Paul talks to John Barrow, who explains why medieval mathematicians were burnt at the stake for suggesting that infinity existed, and why some infinities are bigger than others.
The film comedy Sideways, nominated earlier this week for five Oscars, tells the story of two middle-aged men spending a last bachelor week together playing golf and wine-tasting in California. It's directed by Alexander Payne, whose previous film About Schmidt also received critical acclaim and Academy nominations. Nigel Floyd joins Paul Allen to review Sideways.
In a week when the current affairs agenda was swamped by numbers about immigration, crime and debt, Night Waves looks at the history and culture of statistics. From the first examples of public officials collecting information on bubonic plague, to surveys of how many hymns children know, how has our obsession with figures evolved?
And we discuss the painter William Orpen. He was one of the most successful British artists of the early 20th century - and at the time our most celebrated war artist - yet today he's hardly known. As an exhibition seeks to revive his reputation, Laura Cumming reassesses Orpen's work.
Night Waves, live at 9.30pm, here on BBC Radio 3
Presenter: Paul Allen
Producer: Thomas Morris
Additional Information:
1) The Infinite Book by John Barrow is published in hardback by Jonathan Cape.
2) Sideways is on general release from 28 January, certificate 15.
3) WilliamOrpen: Politics, Sex and Death is at the Imperial War Museum in London until 2 May. www.iwm.org.uk
