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Hello, I'm joined today by John Carrey and Anthony Grayling to look at utopias real and fictional in the past present and future

Utopia by definition does not exist the literal meaning of the Greek is nowhere and yet coming up to the third millennium

We're still enthralled by its allure. Why do some of us still believe in it after the devastation wreaked this century by the utopian

Ideas the gay marriage to fascism and communism and what utopia is in fiction tell us about the present and even the future

John Carrey is the editor of a new fascinating unhauled journal the subject the fable book of utopias

He's a distinguished critic and journalist and merchant professor of English at Oxford University

Dr. Anthony Grayling is a lecturer in philosophy at Birkbeck College London and a fellow of sedans college Oxford

He works for human rights as a member of the writers in prison committee of P.E.N

And the China and Tibet human rights group June the 4th John Carrey utopia means no place

Why is it so often being taken to mean a good place?

Well, I think the idea came before the word the idea as you said it's been there really

I think since human thought began the idea of some golden age or some time in the past or some

Possibility in the future heaven a paradise something that would be better than now and when

More called his utopia utopia no place. I think it was a sort of joke

That is to say that actually the title page of utopia does to call it the best place

But calling it no place

Really beg the question well could you ever have it? Is it possible and of course is in almost disagreement still about whether more thought

It was or whether we thought it was good or bad people say oh no if he was a Catholic he couldn't have believed in divorce and so on

Others say well look at the conditions in in in in the England of his time in the England the

Poverty and so on this would seem bliss to peasants of that time

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