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Podcast: Arts & Ideas
Episode: Immortality
Description: Karel Čapek's 1922 play The Makropulos Affair about a famous singer who has lived for over 300 years was adapted into an opera by the composer Leoš Janáček and premiered in 1926. George Bernard Shaw's play Back to Methuselah, which premiered in 1922, also looks at human destiny and ideas about long life. As Welsh National Opera's new touring production of The Makropulos Affair opens in Cardiff, Matthew Sweet and guests New Generation Thinker Sarah Dillon, classicist Charlotte Higgins and philosopher Rebecca Roache explore the quest for endless youth in literature, film and myth and discussions of the idea by philosophers including Bern...