Sudhir Venkatesh
Wednesday 13 February 2008 21:45-22:30 (Radio 3)
Philip Dodd meets Sudhir Venkatesh, a sociologist who became a gang leader, architect Jan Kaplicky talks about a new plan for Prague and two experts discuss 18th century fashion.
Jan Kaplicky's Library in Prague.
The architect Jan Kaplicky's imagining for the Library in Prague.
Playlist
Sudhir Venkatesh
Philip Dodd meets the American sociology professor who lived with a Chicago street gang for seven years. Sudhir Venkatesh shocked the academic establishment by becoming a gang member himself and entering the drugs and crime-infested world of Chicago's notorious housing projects. He talks about the complicated and dangerous relationship between himself and his subjects.
Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets is out now in hardback and published by Penguin.
The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other
Susannah Clapp reviews the British premiere of the wordless play by the avant-garde Austrian Peter Handke.
The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other is at the National Theatre until the middle of April.
18th Century Fashion
As London Fashion week gets underway Philip discusses 18th Century dress with fashion historians John Styles and Caroline Cox. The age when men wore ever more flamboyant wigs and women had a taste for shiny buckles. What influence has 18th Century fashion on street style today?
John Style's The Dress of the People is published by Yale.
Caroline Cox's Bags: An Illustrated History is published by Aurum books.
Jan Kaplicky
The architect from the design practice Future Systems - responsible for the Media Centre at Lords Crickets Ground and the Selfridges in Birmingham - discusses his controversial plan to build a huge multicoloured blob-like Library in Prague. The mayor doesn't want it. Architect Jan Kaplicky defends his building and talks about his original approach to design.
Click here to see more images of the future National Library in Prague.
