Showing results by author "Chris Addison" in All Categories

Based on his Perrier-nominated Edinburgh hit show of 2004, Chris Addison's Civilization is a comedy lecture series for Radio 4. It neatly follows on from Chris' first Radio 4 series, The Ape that Got Lucky. Western civilisation, like many very old things, is pretty much on its last legs. And if western civilisation as we know it is dying sooner rather than later, we're going to have to build ourselves a new one. And how are we going to do that, then?

Chris Addison – the thinking idiot's pretend anthropologist – takes us on a comic journey through the vast and rich subject of human history in these eight hilarious comedy lectures. Aided by Professor Austin Herring (aka Geoffrey McGivern), Dan Tetsell and Jo Enright, who put their considerable talents to use in sketches illustrating the lectures, he examines how Homo sapiens became Top Species, charts the rise and fall of the Western world and looks at what’s next for the future of mankind.

This BBC Radio 4 series explores the fascinating subject of human evolution, firstly by looking at the primary advantage mankind has over those poor saps, "The Animals": language. We explore the number of languages now in use (5,000 or so) and why the people of Lewisham don't seem to have chosen one as yet. Among other things, Professor Herring demonstrates his value-based translation machine, and we meet a man who thinks his bees are telling him about unsolved crimes.