1x1 - Fathers Roses: Wole Soyinka

January 2, 2000

The African Nobel Prize winner for literature 1986 reflects on beauty and consolation during the civil war and his imprisonment during the military coup in Nigeria (1966) in which he was politically active. Soyinka tells the story of the singing by the prisoners on an execution day.

1x2 - Homecoming: Roger Scruton

January 9, 2000

Reactionary, contrary, controversial: all labels that have been stuck on the British philosopher Roger Scruton over the years. Once a modernist philosopher, Scruton is now averse to modern philosophical movements such as poststructuralism and postmodernism. An important theme in his work is the alienation of contemporary man from the true values ​​of life.

1x4 - The Code of Pasternak: George Steiner

January 23, 2000

Interview with George Steiner, British literary critic and writer (in his home in Cambridge, Great Britain). Steiner talks about beauty, solace, fear, wonder, memory, his photographic memory and the extinction of collective memory: the fact that readers no longer recognize references in literature. In this context, Steiner reads a fragment from Ernest Hemingway's 'Fiesta: The sun also rises'. He also talks about Chinese wisdom following the excavation and reburial of terracotta statues from graves in Szetsjwan in China, Pasternak's code, the work of Sören Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger, the innumerability/beauty of detail, the painting 'The Reading Philosopher' by Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin, falling in love, love and friendship, his passion for art, literature, music, philosophy, love for animals, humanity, self-knowledge, Franz Schubert, the dark side of life and atrocities such as those committed during the Second World War.

1x5 - The End of the Thirteenth: Vladimir Ashkenazy

January 30, 2000

Interview with Vladimir Ashkenazy, Russian pianist and conductor (in the large rehearsal hall of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester in the building of the Sender Freies Berlin on Masurenallee in Berlin). Ashkenzay sits at a piano and talks about beauty, consolation, love and hope. He has chosen a number of pieces of music as examples of beauty and consolation, parts of which he plays at the piano.

1x6 - Episode 6

1x7 - Episode 7

1x8 - Episode 8

1x9 - Episode 9

1x10 - Episode 10

1x11 - Episode 11

1x12 - Episode 12

1x13 - Episode 13

1x14 - Episode 14

1x15 - Episode 15

1x16 - Episode 16

1x17 - Episode 17

1x18 - Episode 18

1x19 - Episode 19

1x20 - Episode 20

1x21 - Episode 21

1x22 - Episode 22

1x23 - Episode 23

1x24 - Episode 24

1x25 - Episode 25

1x26 - Episode 26

1x27 - Episode 27

July 9, 2000