“A História do Mundo em 100 Objectos” é o resultado de uma colaboração entre a BBC Radio 4 e o British Museum narrada pelo próprio director do museu: o brilhante Neil MacGregor.
Excerto da introdução:
In these programmes, I’m travelling back in time, and across the globe, to see how we humans over 2 million years have shaped our world and been shaped by it, and I’m going to tell this story exclusively through the things that humans have made: all sorts of things, carefully designed, and then either admired and preserved, or used, broken and thrown away. I’ve chosen just a hundred objects from different points on our journey, from a cooking pot to a golden galleon, from a Stone Age tool to a credit card.
(…)
Telling history through things, whether it’s an Egyptian mummy or a credit card, is what museums are for, and because the British Museum has collected things from all over the globe, it’s not a bad place to try to tell a world history. Of course, it can only be “a” history of the world, not “the” history. When people come to the museum they choose their own objects and make their own journey round the world and through time, but I think what they will find is that their own histories quickly intersect with everybody elses, and when that happens, you no longer have a history of a particular people or nation, but a story of endless connections.
Tenho acompanhado este podcast religiosamente e admito que já ouvi alguns episódios mais do que uma dúzia de vezes, sendo que em cada audição descubro novos tesouros enterrados na narrativa por este iluminista.
Este programa é sem dúvida uma revelação ao nível do Cosmos de Carl Sagan, aliás, embora aparentemente sejam personalidades diametralmente opostas–um era modernista e agnóstico o outro classicista e profundamente católico–penso que partilham o mesmo espírito científico e uma excelente capacidade de comunicar.
Sem dúvida, um programa O B R I G A T Ó R I O !