Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: Arts & Ideas
Episode: Order & Chaos
Description: Archiving or hoarding - the mother in Ruth Ozeki's new novel The Book of Form and Emptiness is overwhelmed by the newspaper cuttings she is supposed to categorise for her job. In his new history of indexes, Dennis Duncan tells us about why people were criticised as "index rakers" in the Restoration, and the links between Cicero, the idea of alphabetical ordering and a former Bishop of Lincoln. Saxophone player Alam Nathoo is helping Ruth Ozeki launch her novel at the Southbank Centre in London and he joins us to explore the ideas of structure and improvising in jazz...