Adam Phillips, Nudity, Barbara Kingsolver, The Pyramids

Today, 21:15 on BBC Radio 3 ‘Nightwaves’

Philip Dodd talks to the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips about his new book, On Balance. Need and appetite, greed and excess. How do we know when enough is enough? Is balance always a good thing?

And an excess of flesh can provoke strong reactions. Indecent exposure or the body beautiful? Night Waves discusses why art, religion and society still have very different reactions to the naked body. With Philip Carr Gomm, author of A Brief History of Nakedness; the columnist and writer Joan Smith; and art critic William Feaver.

Philip talks to the writer Barbara Kingsolver, recently awarded the Orange Prize for Fiction for her novel, The Lacuna, the story of a man caught up in the great moments of the twentieth century, working for Diego Rivera, witnessing Trotsky’s death and finding himself involved in the McCarthyism of post World War II America.

And there’s another in our series of letters from the scientist and geographer Jared Diamond, who talks about why the pyramids are so remarkable and the sense of wonder they still inspire.