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Past Forward: A Century of Sound

Greg Jenner takes a deep dive into the 麻豆社 archive to explore what it can tell us about who we are now.

Marking the Centenary, Past Forward uses a random date generator to alight somewhere in the 麻豆社's vast archive over the past 100 years. Historian Greg Jenner hears an archive clip for the first time at the top of the programme, and uses it as a starting point in a journey towards the present day. The archive captures a century of British life in a unique way - a history of ordinary people's lives, as well as news of the great events. Greg uncovers connections through people, places and ideas that link the archive fragment to Britain in 2022, pulling in help from experts and those who remember the time - and sometimes the speakers themselves, decades later - along the way. What he discovers are stories, big and small, that reveal how the people we were have shaped the people we have become.