Seriousness

Matthew Sweet and guests explore our post-serious age. Is the internet, celebrity culture or postmodernism to blame for seriousness seeming like a thing of the past? And can you make serious points in unserious ways - through satire, jokes and parody?

With:

Will Self, author whose new novel is entitled The Quantity Theory of Morality

Tobias Ellwood, former soldier and Conservative politician and author of Ten Steps to Prevent World War Three

Rebecca Anne Barr, Fellow in English at Jesus College, Cambridge, whose new book is Killjoy Comedy: Wilful Women and Humour in 1750s Fiction

Laurence Scott, author of the Four-Dimensional Human and Picnic Comma Lightning

Producer: Eliane Glaser