Arts & Ideas

Lawrence's dad was a butty - a contractor who put together a team to mine coal for an agreed price. His 1913 novel Sons and Lovers drew on this heritage. Frances Wilson's new biography focuses on the decade following, when The Rainbow had been subject to an obscenity trial, he travelled to Cornwall and Mexico and then the discovery that he had tuberculosis. In a non-Covid year, this weekend would have seen the Durham Miners' Gala take place. Poet Jake Morris-Campbell writes a postcard about the traditions of this annual gathering of banners and brass bands. Prabhakar Pachpute's family worked in the coal mines of central India for three generations. For his contribution as one of the artists taking part in Artes Mundi 9, he's drawn on this shared cultural heritage with the Welsh mining community to create an installation of paintings, banners and objects that comment on protest and collective action. Matthew Sweet presents.Burning Man: The Ascent of DH Lawrence by Frances Wilson is out now. Artes Mundi is on show at the National Museum Cardiff, Chapter and g39 Dr Jake Morris-Campbell teaches at the University of Newcastle and is a visiting Lecturer at the University of Chester. He is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year to turn their research into radio. You can find a collection of programmes from the past ten years of the scheme on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08zhs35Producer: Luke Mulhall

Lawrence's dad was a butty - a contractor who put together a team to mine coal for an agreed price. His 1913 novel Sons and Lovers drew on this heritage. Frances Wilson's new biography focuses on the decade following, when The Rainbow had been subject to an obscenity trial, he travelled to Cornwall and Mexico and then the discovery that he had tuberculosis. In a non-Covid year, this weekend would have seen the Durham Miners' Gala take place. Poet Jake Morris-Campbell writes a postcard about the traditions of this annual gathering of banners and brass bands. Prabhakar Pachpute's family worked in the coal mines of central India for three generations. For his contribution as one of the artists taking part in Artes Mundi 9, he's drawn on this shared cultural heritage with the Welsh mining community to create an installation of paintings, banners and objects that comment on protest and collective action. Matthew Sweet presents.Burning Man: The Ascent of DH Lawrence by Frances Wilson is out now. Artes Mundi is on show at the National Museum Cardiff, Chapter and g39 Dr Jake Morris-Campbell teaches at the University of Newcastle and is a visiting Lecturer at the University of Chester. He is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year to turn their research into radio. You can find a collection of programmes from the past ten years of the scheme on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08zhs35Producer: Luke Mulhall

A horoscope from 1411, a portrait of a woman blowing bubble gum and a gold griffin-headed armlet: art collector Ina Sarikhani Sandmann, historian Ali Ansari and New Generation Thinker Julia Hartley join Rana Mitter to look at Epic Iran, an exhibition exploring 5,000 years of art, design and culture at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Author Annalee Newitz discusses the rise and fall of four 'lost' cities and we have a postcard exploring the author Marcel Proust's fascination with Iran ahead of the 150th anniversary of his birth on July 10th 1871.Epic Iran exploring 5,000 years of art, design and culture runs at the Victoria and Albert Museum until September 12th 2021. Four Lost Cities by Annalee Newitz is out now. It explores the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, the Roman vacation town of Pompeii on Italy’s southern coast, the medieval megacity of Angkor in Cambodia, and the indigenous metropolis Cahokia, which stood beside the Mississippi River where East St. Louis is today. Annalee is also founder of the popular io9 science and science fiction blog.Dr Julia Hartley is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Warwick, where her project is called ‘West-Eastern Encounters: Iran in French Literature (1829-1908)’. She is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year to turn their research into radio. You can find more discussions in a playlist on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08zhs35Marcel Proust (10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was the author of novels including À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time). A Free Thinking discussion about Proust brought together Jane Smiley, Jane Haynes and Christopher Prendergast and insights from French author Marie Darrieussecq https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04lpxj2Producer: Torquil MacLeod

It’s sixty years since the house party at Cliveden where Christine Keeler encountered Minister of War, John Profumo and the Soviet Naval attaché, Yevgeny Ivanov. The events of that weekend, a heady mix of sex, politics and espionage have filled newspapers, books, films and TV dramas. But that weekend was just one in a long line of intrigue and scandal at Cliveden. In fiction and reality, a weekend in the country has often involved far more than a simple retreat - from the appeasement talks imagined in Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day to a formal invitation from the Prime Minister to Chequers. Anne McElvoy explores the social history of the grand country house gathering and its hold on the English imagination.Julie Gottlieb is Professor of Modern History at the University of Sheffield and the author of ‘Guilty Women’, Foreign Policy, and Appeasement in Inter-War Britain and Feminine Fascism: Women in Britain's Fascist Movement, 1923-1945Natalie Livingstone is a journalist and historian and the author of The Mistresses of Cliveden: Three Centuries of Scandal, Power and Intrigue.Kate Williams is a broadcaster, historian and Professor of Public Engagement with History at the University of Reading. She is the author of Rival Queens and her trilogy of novels about the De Witt family.Producer: Ruth Watts

The Oscar winning Midnight Cowboy was followed up by this drama about an artist who has relationships with a female job consultant and a male doctor. Director John Schlesinger, writer Penelope Gilliatt, actors Glenda Jackson and Peter Finch were all nominated for Academy Awards but it performed poorly at the box office. Was the film - released on July 1st 1971, ahead of its times? Matthew Sweet re-watches it with guests including Glenda Jackson, playwright Mark Ravenhill, film historian Melanie Williams and BFI archivist Simon McCallum. They discuss the different elements of the film, including the score, which features the trio Soave sia il vento from Mozart's opera Così fan tutte, the very precise decor and evocation of late '60s London and filming inside a Jewish synagogue.Producer: Fiona McLeanSunday Bloody Sunday is available on Blu-rayYou can find Matthew Sweet discussing other classics of British Cinema in the Free Thinking archives including British New Wave Films of the 60s - Joely Richardson and Melanie Williams evaluate the impact and legacy of Woodfall Films, the company behind Look Back in Anger, A Taste of Honey and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09ysnl2 An extended interview with Mike Leigh, recorded as he released his historical drama Peterloo, but also looks back at his film from 1984 Four Days in July https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0000tqw Early Cinema looks back at a pioneer of British film Robert Paul and at the work of Alice Guy https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000dy2b Philip Dodd explores the novel and film of David Storey's This Sporting Life with social historian Juliet Gardiner, journalist Rod Liddle, writer Anthony Clavane and the author's daughter Kate Storey https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09j0rt6 Samira Ahmed convenes a discussion about British Social Realism in Film https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01pz16k

HIV's origins and colonial history have inspired the collection of poems by Kayo Chingonyi, which has been nominated for the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2021. Paisley Rekdal is currently the Poet Laureate of Utah. Her latest collection of poems was inspired by Ovid. She's been thinking about where stories come from and what we mean by appropriation. Dr Nasser Hussain is interested in ‘lost’ fragments of language and in what we notice and what we ignore. New Generation Thinker Florence Hazrat studies punctuation. They join host Sandeep Parmar for a conversation about experimentation ahead of the Ledbury Poetry Festival.Sandeep Parmar is a poet and Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool and a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker. She has been running the Ledbury Poetry Critics scheme alongside Sarah Howe. This project encourages diversity in poetry reviewing culture, aimed at new critical voices. Ledbury Poetry Festival runs from 2 - 11 July 2021.Kayo Chingonyi's book is called A Blood Condition. You can find the full list of poets shortlisted for the Forward Prize at https://www.forwardartsfoundation.org/Paisley Rekdal's collection of poems, Nightingale, re-writes many of the myths in Ovid's The Metamorphoses. She has published an Essay Appropriate: A Provocation https://www.paisleyrekdal.com/Dr Nasser Hussain teaches poetry at Leeds Beckett University. He published ‘SKY WRI TEI NGS’, a book of conceptual writing that composes poetry from IATA airport codes, and is working on an autobiographical poetic project Playing with Playing with Fire and The Life of Form.Dr Florence Hazrat is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Sheffield studying rhetoric, punctuation and Shakespeare's use of music. She is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select academics to turn their research into radio.This episode was made in partnership with the AHRC, part of UKRI. You can find a playlist exploring New Research on the Free Thinking website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90You can find more discussions in playlists on the Free Thinking programme website, featuring Prose and Poetry, and Ten Years of the New Generation Thinker Scheme.Producer: Emma Wallace

Cities produce more than half the world’s carbon emissions and are home to more than half the world’s population. So what role might cities play in tackling the climate emergency and how can their inhabitants be inspired to help design their own solutions? Des Fitzgerald asks Nicole Metje and Andy Gouldson how engineering, finance and local projects might combine to make city living greener and more sustainable. Professor Nicole Metje is Head of Enterprise, Engagement and Impact and Head of the Power and Infrastructure Research Group in the School of Engineering at the University of Birmingham. She is also Deputy Director for Sensors of the UKCRIC National Buried Infrastructure Facility at Birmingham.Professor Andy Gouldson is one of the directors of the Centre for Climate Change, Economics and Policy at the University of Leeds and founder of the Place-based Climate Action Network. Professor Des Fitzgerald is a New Generation Thinker based at the University of Exeter.You can find a new podcast series Green Thinking: 26 episodes 26 minutes long in the run up to COP26 made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI, exploring the latest research and ideas around understanding and tackling the climate and nature emergency. New Generation Thinkers Des Fitzgerald and Eleanor Barraclough will be in conversation with researchers on a wide-range of subjects from cryptocurrencies and finance to eco poetry and fast fashion.The podcasts are all available from the Arts & Ideas podcast feed - and collected on the Free Thinking website under Green Thinking where you can also find programmes on mushrooms, forests, rivers, eco-criticism and soil. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07zg0r2 For more information about the research the AHRC’s supports around climate change and the natural world you can visit: https://www.ukri.org/our-work/responding-to-climate-change/ or follow @ahrcpress on twitter. To join the discussion about the research covered in this podcast and the series please use the hashtag #GreenThinkingPodcast.Producer: Marcus Smith

Bait depicted Cornish second-home owners in a tense relationship with local fishermen. The 2019 film's director Mark Jenkin is one of Laurence Scott's guests along with author Wyl Menmuir, and Joan Passey, from the University of Bristol, where she is researching ideas about the sea as a monstrous space. Their conversation ranges from The Jewel of the Seven Stars by Bram Stoker via Wyl's novel The Many, centred on a derelict home in a coastal village and ideas about outsiders, to Celtic Cornish Breton connections.In our archives and available to download, you can find a Free Thinking discussion about ideas of Revenge and Daphne du Maurier's My Cousin Rachel - about a young man brought up in Cornwall and the widow of his cousin who comes to the county. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08slx9wOur Green Thinking playlist includes programmes exploring oceans, rising UK sea levels and the insights gained from new research. The Green Thinking podcast is 26 episodes 26 minutes long for COP 26 hearing from a range of academics looking at challenges facing the planet.Producer: Luke Mulhall

What role do museums and heritage organisations have to play in the climate emergency? How do we stop cultural and historical landmarks from falling into the sea, or is it time to learn to say goodbye? Rodney Harrison and Caitlin DeSilvey share their expertise, from lost lighthouses to net-zero carbon museums, and their work on a shared project, Heritage Futures www.heritage-futures.org. Rodney Harrison is Professor of Heritage Studies at University College London and AHRC Heritage Priority Area Leadership Fellow (2017-2021). He co-leads the project ‘Reimagining Museums for Climate Action’ – which includes an exhibition opening on 25 June at the Glasgow Science Centre for COP26 which aims to inspire radical change in museums to address the climate crisis. This project included an international design competition where people were invited to submit concepts around how museums might adapt to and address the challenges of climate change. You can read more about the exhibition and see the design proposals here: https://museumsforclimateaction.orgAnd, you find out more about AHRC’s Heritage Priority Area here: https://heritage-research.orgCaitlin DeSilvey is Professor of Cultural Geography at the University of Exeter and together with Rodney Harrison, was on the research team for the AHRC-funded project, Heritage Futures. She is currently leading the AHRC-funded follow on project, Landscape Futures and the Challenge of Change: Towards Integrated Cultural/Natural Heritage Decision Making. You can read more about the project here: https://www.exeter.ac.uk/esi/research/projects/landscape-futures/ She also supervises an AHRC-funded collaborative doctoral partnership with Historic England on coastal archaeology and climate change, which you can learn about here: www.tinyurl.com/tventure Dr Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough is a New Generation Thinker based at the University of Durham.You can find a new podcast series Green Thinking: 26 episodes 26 minutes long in the run up to COP26 made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI, exploring the latest research and ideas around understanding and tackling the climate and nature emergency. New Generation Thinkers Des Fitzgerald and Eleanor Barraclough will be in conversation with researchers on a wide-range of subjects from cryptocurrencies and finance to eco poetry and fast fashion.The podcasts are all available from the Arts & Ideas podcast feed - and collected on the Free Thinking website under Green Thinking where you can also find programmes on mushrooms, forests, rivers, eco-criticism and soil. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07zg0r2 For more information about the research the AHRC’s supports around climate change and the natural world you can visit: https://www.ukri.org/our-work/responding-to-climate-change/ or follow @ahrcpress on twitter. To join the discussion about the research covered in this podcast and the series please use the hashtag #GreenThinkingPodcast.Producer: Sofie Vilcins

From the Great Exhibition of 1851 to Shanghai 2010, Owen Hatherley, Emily MacGregor and Paul Greenhalgh explore visions of the future offered by world's fairs and expos with Matthew Sweet. Emily MacGregor describes the row which blew up over music commissioned by William Grant Still for the 1939/40 New York World's Fair. Paul Greenhalgh tells us about world's fairs from London and Paris to Shanghai. Owen Hatherley describes visiting an expo in Kazakhstan.Owen Hatherley's new book is called Clean Living Under Difficult Circumstances: Finding a Home in the Ruins of Modernism. He has made a film about the modernism represented in the buildings which house the London Czech and Slovak embassies as part of the London Festival of Architecture https://www.londonfestivalofarchitecture.org/Paul Greenhalgh is the author of Fair World: A History of World's Fairs and Expositions from London to Shanghai 1851-2010. His latest book is Ceramic, Art & Civilisation. He is Director of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich and a Professor of Art History.Dr Emily MacGregor is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Music Department at King's College, London and is currently working on a project exploring The Symphony in 1933. You can hear more about the composer William Grant Still if you look up Composer of the WeekProducer: Torquil MacLeodYou can find other programmes hearing from architects and exploring architecture on BBC Radio 3 this week including Words and Music and a Music Matters report on Bold Tendencies, who host concerts in a former car park in Peckham.

Poets Yvonne Reddick and John Wedgewood Clarke are using poetry and creative writing to explore our, and their, relationships with the environment. John is focusing on a small polluted river in Cornwall, while Yvonne explores her family relationships. And they aren’t the first poets to do so - she also shares her research into how previous poets, including Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney, were concerned about the climate emergency.Dr Yvonne Reddick is Research Fellow at the University of Central Lancashire and an AHRC Leadership Fellow specialising in poetry of the Anthropocene. You can read here poetry here: https://yvonnereddick.org/poems/ She researches writers’ engagement with environmental issues, and edits Magma poetry magazine https://magmapoetry.com/Dr John Wedgewood Clarke is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Exeter and an AHRC Leadership Fellow. His current project, Red River: Listening to a Polluted River (AHRC-funded), uses poetry and writing to explore our relationship with the environment and pollution: https://redriverpoetry.com/ The project involves a number of local walks in Cornwall which you can join here: https://redriverpoetry.com/eventsDr Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough is a New Generation Thinker based at the University of Durham. We hear Maya Chowdhry’s poem ‘It’s Official: Drought Spell Doom For Mango Trees’. You can find this poem, and others, in Magma magazine.You can find a new podcast series Green Thinking: 26 episodes 26 minutes long in the run up to COP26 made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI, exploring the latest research and ideas around understanding and tackling the climate and nature emergency. New Generation Thinkers Des Fitzgerald and Eleanor Barraclough will be in conversation with researchers on a wide-range of subjects from cryptocurrencies and finance to eco poetry and fast fashion.The podcasts are all available from the Arts & Ideas podcast feed - and collected on the Free Thinking website under Green Thinking where you can also find programmes on mushrooms, forests, rivers, eco-criticism and soil. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07zg0r2 For more information about the research the AHRC’s supports around climate change and the natural world you can visit: https://www.ukri.org/our-work/responding-to-climate-change/ or follow @ahrcpress on twitter. To join the discussion about the research covered in this podcast and the series please use the hashtag #GreenThinkingPodcast.Producer: Sofie Vilcins

Peace, prosperity and formica - that's one way of describing the vision on show at the Festival of Britain in 1951. But domesticity had a radical side and in this Free Thinking conversation, Shahidha Bari talks to researchers Sophie Scott-Brown and Rachele Dini and looks at the domestic appliances selected for display in the newly re-opened Museum of the Home, talking to Director Sonia Solicari about how ideas about home, homelessness and home-making have shaped what is on show.Museum of the Home, previously the Geffrye Museum re-opened on June 12th 2021 https://www.museumofthehome.org.uk/Producer: Luke MulhallPart of BBC Radio 3's programming tying into the London Festival of Architecture. Madeleine Bunting recorded a series of Essays considering different ideas about home, homesickness, homelessness and Homelands which is being broadcast this week on BBC Radio 3 and available on BBC Sounds.You might be interested in a Free Thinking discussion called Fiction in 1946 recorded at London's Southbank Centre with Lara Feigel, Kevin Jackson and Benjamin Markovits https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07wrq03Enid Marx, Edward Bawden and Charles Rennie Mackintosh are discussed in this episode called Designing the Future https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b2mgpl

Stew, the name for brothels in London. A townhouse set to become luxury flats in the centre of Soho is the focus of the new novel Hot Stew from Fiona Mozley, who was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for her debut book Elmet. SI Martin founded the 500 Years of Black London walks nearly 20 years ago. In his novel Incomparable World he depicts a bustling eighteenth century London which offers a refuge for the many black Americans who fought for liberty on the side of the British. Plus pianist and composer Belle Chen on her six original new pieces exploring London - each composition with its genesis in a field recording in the city from both before and during the pandemic. They join architects Eric Parry and Alison Brooks, and presenter Laurence Scott, for a conversation about the development of London, as part of the London Festival of Architecture. Alison Brooks is one of the judges for this year's Davidson Prize Exhibition: a digital showcase of architects’ solutions to ways of living in a post-pandemic world. Eric Parry has been thinking about the changing city skyline.Fiona Mozley's novel called Hot Stew is out now, as is Incomparable World by SI Martin - part of the Black Britain: Writing Back series of books chosen by Bernadine Evaristo for republishing.You can find out more about the music of Belle Chen here - https://www.bellechen.com/The London Festival of Architecture runs throughout June with events online and around the city https://www.londonfestivalofarchitecture.org/ https://www.alisonbrooksarchitects.com/ https://www.ericparryarchitects.co.uk/On BBC Radio 3 Essential Classics is broadcasting five classic choices of music composed for particular buildings. Words and Music inspired by architecture features readings by Marilyn Nnadebe and Henry Goodman, from writers including Caleb Femi, Marwa al-Sabouni, Susanna Clark, Thomas Hardy, Andrew Marvell, Adrienne Rich, and music from Hildegard of Bingen to Iain Chambers. Music Matters explored buildings, acoustics, and music, looking at Bold Tendencies and the former car park they use as a venue in Peckham, in London.Producer: Emma Wallace

From Greek tragedy to Covid conspiracies via LGBTQI activism in Uganda, artist Leilah Babirye, classicist Natalie Haynes and BBC correspondent Marianna Spring join Matthew Sweet to explore the many roles of masks.Leilah Babirye's first solo exhibition in Europe - Ebika Bya ba Kuchu mu Buganda (Kuchu Clans of Buganda) II - is at the Stephen Friedman Gallery, London until 31st July. Pandora's Jar: Women in Greek Myths by Natalie Haynes is now out in paperback. You can hear Natalie sharing her musical choices with Michael Berkeley on Private Passions on BBC Radio 3. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006tnv3 And Natalie discusses the legacy of the Trojan War in this episode of Free Thinking https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000bg2kProducer: Torquil MacLeod

Are you coming back? That is what potter Edmund de Waal was asked by readers when he published his best-selling book about his family's refugee history The Hare with Amber Eyes. It's not a question he had easy answers for. In Refugee Week, Anne McElvoy and her guests, Edmund de Waal, Frances Stonor Saunders and Fariha Shaikh look at what it means to have to move your family and belongings - from the Jewish people who fled from central Europe to the colonial settlers of Charles Dickens's novels.Edmund de Waal's latest book is called Letters to Camondo. You can find a recent series of Radio 3's The Essay De Waal's Itinerant Pots available on BBC Sounds. If you want to hear the conversation between him and Nobel prize winning author Orhan Pamuk in the Free Thinking studio - check out our archives all available to download as Arts & Ideas podcasts. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p033cmt3Frances Stonor Saunders has published a history of her family's travels from Romania, to Turkey, Egypt and then Britain in The Suitcase: Six Attempts to Cross a Border You can hear Frances Stonor Saunders discussing American Abstract Expressionist Art with novelist William Boyd in the Free Thinking archives https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p048m2v5Dr Fariha Shaikh is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council which choses ten academics each year to turn their research into radio. She is a senior lecturer in Victorian Literature at the Department of English Literature at the University of Birmingham.Producer: Ruth Watts

A Somali man arrested for murder in 1950s Cardiff inspired the latest novel from Nadifa Mohamed. She talks to Rana Mitter about uncovering this miscarriage of justice in a newspaper cutting with the headline, "Woman Weeps as Somali is Hanged". On stage at the National Theatre in London, Michael Sheen, Karl Johnson, and Siân Phillips lead the cast in a production of Under Milk Wood, so we look at the craft of Dylan Thomas's writing and talk to Siân Owen about her framing of the story for the National Theatre stage. And we hear about the links between art and community demonstrated by the Cardiff collective called Gentle/Radical who've been nominated for this year's Turner Prize, and look at the work on show in Artes Mundi 9 at the National Museum, Cardiff, Chapter Arts Centre, and g39.Nadifa Mohamed's novel, out now, is called The Fortune Men. You can find her discussing the writing life alongside Irenosen Okojie in the Free Thinking playlist called Prose and Poetry - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p047v6vhUnder Milk Wood runs at the National Theatre in London from 16 June–24 July 2021.An exhibition of work by Gentle/Radical will be held at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry from 29 September 2021 - 12 January 2022, as part of the UK City of Culture 2021 celebrations. The Turner Prize winners will be announced on 1 December 2021.The Artes Mundi 9 Prize exhibition is now open at the National Museum Cardiff, Chapter Arts Centre, and g39 until 5 September. The prize winner is announced on 17 June 2021.BBC Cardiff Singer Of The World 2021 is taking place between 12 and 19 June in Cardiff, with broadcasts on BBC Radio 3.Producer: Emma Wallace

Does climate change force people to flee their homes and livelihoods? Does it cause wars that create refugees? Dr Helen Adams and Professor Michael Collyer explain how various factors are at play, from resources, to politics, to family ties.Dr Helen Adams is an environmental social scientist based at King’s College, London. Her research looks at the interactions between humans and climate change, well-being and resources.Professor Michael Collyer is Professor of Geography at the University of Sussex. He works on the relationships between people and places, migration and displacement. Collyer is a member of the ESRC network ‘Urban Transformations’ which showcases research on cities, you can read their blog posts here: https://urbantransformations.ox.ac.uk/news-debate/Professor Des Fitzgerald is a New Generation Thinker based at the University of Exeter.You can find a new podcast series Green Thinking: 26 episodes 26 minutes long in the run up to COP26 made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI, exploring the latest research and ideas around understanding and tackling the climate and nature emergency. New Generation Thinkers Des Fitzgerald and Eleanor Barraclough will be in conversation with researchers on a wide-range of subjects from cryptocurrencies and finance to eco poetry and fast fashion.The podcasts are all available from the Arts & Ideas podcast feed - and collected on the Free Thinking website under Green Thinking where you can also find programmes on mushrooms, forests, rivers, eco-criticism and soil. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07zg0r2 For more information about the research the AHRC’s supports around climate change and the natural world you can visit: https://www.ukri.org/our-work/responding-to-climate-change/ or follow @ahrcpress on twitter. To join the discussion about the research covered in this podcast and the series please use the hashtag #GreenThinkingPodcast.Producer: Marcus Smith

"Tunnel vision is deadly. We need lateral vision. That is what anthropology can impart: anthro-vision." So says renowned economist GillianTett, who trained as an anthropologist. She joins Anne McElvoy along with Tulsi Menon, who trained in anthropology and now works in advertising, for a debate about what the discipline offers business. We look back at the history of anthropology with Frances Larson, author of a new book about forgotten women anthropologists, and a previous book which looked at the West's obsession with severed heads. And we explore the way the discipline of anthropology is changing, talking to Faye Harrison - Professor of Anthropology at Illinois and the editor of Decolonising Anthropology.Anthrovision: How Anthropology Can Explain Business and Life by Gillian Tett, Editor-at-Large at the Financial Times, is out now. Frances Larson's books are titled Undreamed Shores: The Hidden Heroines of British Anthropology and Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found.In the Free Thinking archives you can find a discussion about Family Ties and reshaping history - hearing about Joseph Henrich's work on WEIRD - Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic and ideas about kinship https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000mjt2In the Nayef Al Rodhan 2020 discussion with shortlisted authors Rana Mitter talks to Charles King about his history The Reinvention of Humanity: A Story of Race, Sex, Gender and the Discovery of Culture which tracks the work of Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, Ella Deloria and Zora Neale Hurston https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000n0bvThe Free Thinking Festival discussion 20 Words for Joy ... Feelings around the world brought together Veronica Strang, Aatish Taseer and Thomas Dixon https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0004ds4Producer: Eliane Glaser.

"Tunnel vision is deadly. We need lateral vision. That is what anthropology can impart: anthro-vision." So says renowned economist GillianTett, who trained as an anthropologist. She joins Anne McElvoy along with Tulsi Menon, who trained in anthropology and now works in advertising, for a debate about what the discipline offers business. We look back at the history of anthropology with Frances Larson, author of a new book about forgotten women anthropologists, and a previous book which looked at the West's obsession with severed heads. And we explore the way the discipline of anthropology is changing, talking to Faye Harrison - Professor of Anthropology at Illinois and the editor of Decolonising Anthropology.Anthrovision: How Anthropology Can Explain Business and Life by Gillian Tett, Editor-at-Large at the Financial Times, is out now. Frances Larson's books are titled Undreamed Shores: The Hidden Heroines of British Anthropology and Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found.In the Free Thinking archives you can find a discussion about Family Ties and reshaping history - hearing about Joseph Henrich's work on WEIRD - Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic and ideas about kinship https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000mjt2In the Nayef Al Rodhan 2020 discussion with shortlisted authors Rana Mitter talks to Charles King about his history The Reinvention of Humanity: A Story of Race, Sex, Gender and the Discovery of Culture which tracks the work of Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, Ella Deloria and Zora Neale Hurston https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000n0bvThe Free Thinking Festival discussion 20 Words for Joy ... Feelings around the world brought together Veronica Strang, Aatish Taseer and Thomas Dixon https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0004ds4Producer: Eliane Glaser.

From Bitcoin mines to green investment bonds: how easy is it to change the way finance works to make it greener? Professor Yu Xiong and Professor Nick Robins share their research, knowledge and concerns of these high-tech financial systems with Professor Des Fitzgerald. Professor Yu Xiong is Associate Dean International and director of the Centre for Innovation and Commercialization at the Surrey Business School, University of Surrey. His research focuses on sustainability and technological issues with global supply chains, as well as cryptocurrencies and blockchain. Professor Nick Robins is Professor in Practice – Sustainable Finance at the London School of Economics. His work focuses on how to mobilise finance for climate change, and how financial systems can support the restoration of nature. You can read blog posts by Nick Robins on his research here: https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/profile/nick-robins/#newsProfessor Des Fitzgerald is a New Generation Thinker based at the University of Exeter.You can find a new podcast series Green Thinking: 26 episodes 26 minutes long in the run up to COP26 made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI, exploring the latest research and ideas around understanding and tackling the climate and nature emergency. New Generation Thinkers Des Fitzgerald and Eleanor Barraclough will be in conversation with researchers on a wide-range of subjects from cryptocurrencies and finance to eco poetry and fast fashion.The podcasts are all available from the Arts & Ideas podcast feed - and collected on the Free Thinking website under Green Thinking where you can also find programmes on mushrooms, forests, rivers, eco-criticism and soil. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07zg0r2 For more information about the research the AHRC’s supports around climate change and the natural world you can visit: https://www.ukri.org/our-work/responding-to-climate-change/ or follow @ahrcpress on twitter. To join the discussion about the research covered in this podcast and the series please use the hashtag #GreenThinkingPodcast.Producer: Marcus Smith

From Frankie Howerd to Sherlock: Beryl Vertue is the producer of some classic TV shows including Men Behaving Badly. She took Steptoe and Son to America, negotiated for writer Terry Nation to retain some of the rights for his Dr Who Daleks creation, and back when she began in the 1960s, worked with a Who's Who of comedy writing talent at Associated London Scripts as well as representing Tony Hancock and Frankie Howerd as their agent. As chairman of the family firm Hartswood Films, her more recent projects have included revamping Dracula and Sherlock for TV. She discusses the successes and failures she has had in her six decade career with Matthew Sweet and shares with him what it was like working with Ken Russell and Tina Turner on Tommy and what she thinks makes a good deal.Producer: Torquil MacLeodYou can find other conversations about classic TV in the Free Thinking archives including Quatermass: Nigel Kneale's groundbreaking 1950s TV sci-fi series with Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat, Una McCormack , Claire Langhamer and Matthew Kneale https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b03y The Goodies: Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden, and Bill Oddie talk to Matthew Sweet about how humour changes and the targets of their TV comedy show which ran during the '70s and early '80s https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0000hcb British TV and film producer Tony Garnett talks to Matthew Sweet about a career which encompassed the Wednesday Play for the BBC, This Life and Undercover. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07h6r8l

A Bouillabaisse soup inspired hat paraded by the surrealist artist Eileen Agar in 1948 caused raised eyebrows to the passers-by captured in the Pathé news footage on show in the Whitechapel Gallery's exhibition exploring her career. It's just one of many displays showcasing women's art open this summer at galleries across the UK, so today's Free Thinking looks at what it means to put women's art back on the walls and into the way we look at art history. Shahidha Bari is joined by Whitechapel curator Lydia Yee, by Frieze editor-at-large and podcaster Jennifer Higgie, by New Generation Thinker Adjoa Osei, who specialises in studying the contribution of Afro Latin-American women artists, and by the artist Veronica Ryan. Her work runs from a neon crocheted fishing line, to bronze and clay sculptures, and work made from tea-stained fabrics.Veronica Ryan: Along A Spectrum runs at Spike Island, Bristol, from 19 May 19 to 5 September 2021. Her sculptures responding to the work of Barbara Hepworth feature in Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life at the Hepworth Wakefield 21 May 2021 – 27 Feb 2022, and in Breaking The Mould: Sculpture By Women Since 1945 - An Arts Council Collection Touring Exhibition, which opens at the Longside Gallery at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park 29 May–5 Sep 2021.Eileen Agar: Angel Of Anarchy runs at the Whitechapel Gallery 19 May - 29 Aug 2021, alongside another focus on women artists in Phantoms of Surrealism 19 May - 12 Dec 2021.Jennifer Higgie's book The Mirror And The Palette: Rebellion, Revolution And Resilience - 500 Years Of Women's Self Portraits is out now, and she presents a podcast, Bow Down: Women In Art.Adjoa Osei is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to work with academics to put their research on radio.You can also find exhibitions of The Life And Legacy of Constance Spry at the Garden Museum; Ellen Harvey and Barbara Walker at Turner Contemporary; Infinity Mirror Rooms by Yayoi Kusama at Tate Modern; Charlotte Perriand - The Modern Life at the Design Museum; Paula Rego at Tate Britain; Karla Black at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh; Sophie Tauber-Arp coming to Tate Modern; and Joan Eardley's centenary marked at the Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh.Producer: Emma WallaceImage: Veronica Ryan Courtesy: Alison Jacques, London, and Create, London; photo: Lisa Whiting

How real are flooding dangers in Britain and Ireland? Two researchers who have been working with local communities in Wales, Norfolk and Ireland tell Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough about the impact of changing landscapes, how sand dunes beat concrete, and how audio postcodes can help the people of Norfolk reflect on their with local wildlife along the longest protected coast in Europe. Dr Emma McKinley is a research fellow at the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Cardiff University, and her research focuses on understanding the connections and emotions between society and the sea. Emma is also Manager of the Severn Estuary Partnership which brings people together to protect and benefit the Severn Estuary. You can read more about the partnership and get involved here: https://severnestuarypartnership.org.ukProfessor George Revill is part of the School of Social Sciences and Global Studies at the Open University. His project ‘Listening to Climate Change’ is focusing on North Norfolk, using sound and music to encourage local people to think about their relationship with the sea landscape. You can read more about the project and watch some of the project videos here: https://heritage-research.org/case-studies/sounding-coastal-changelistening-climate-change-experiments-sonic-democracy/Dr Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough is a New Generation Thinker based at the University of Durham. You can find a new podcast series Green Thinking: 26 episodes 26 minutes long in the run up to COP26 made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI, exploring the latest research and ideas around understanding and tackling the climate and nature emergency. New Generation Thinkers Des Fitzgerald and Eleanor Barraclough will be in conversation with researchers on a wide-range of subjects from cryptocurrencies and finance to eco poetry and fast fashion. The podcasts are all available from the Arts & Ideas podcast feed - and collected on the Free Thinking website under Green Thinking where you can also find programmes on mushrooms, forests, rivers, eco-criticism and soil. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07zg0r2 For more information about the research the AHRC’s supports around climate change and the natural world you can visit: https://www.ukri.org/our-work/responding-to-climate-change/ or follow @ahrcpress on twitter. To join the discussion about the research covered in this podcast and the series please use the hashtag #GreenThinkingPodcast. Producer: Sofie Vilcins

Is climate change to blame for global conflicts and disputes over resources? Or is this rush to blame water shortages just post-Colonial thinking? Dr Ayesha Siddiqi and Professor Jan Selby talk to Professor Des Fitzgerald talk about their research, where geography and politics collide.Dr Ayesha Siddiqi is a development and postcolonial geographer at the University of Cambridge. She shares her expertise in natural disasters and politics, security and development in the Global South. Professor Jan Selby is Professor of Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield. His work focuses on climate change, water, and politics, with a focus on the Israeli-Palestinian confict.Professor Des Fitzgerald is a New Generation Thinker based at the University of Exeter.You can find a new podcast series Green Thinking: 26 episodes 26 minutes long in the run up to COP26 made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI, exploring the latest research and ideas around understanding and tackling the climate and nature emergency. New Generation Thinkers Des Fitzgerald and Eleanor Barraclough will be in conversation with researchers on a wide-range of subjects from cryptocurrencies and finance to eco poetry and fast fashion.The podcasts are all available from the Arts & Ideas podcast feed - and collected on the Free Thinking website under Green Thinking where you can also find programmes on mushrooms, forests, rivers, eco-criticism and soil. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07zg0r2For more information about the research the AHRC’s supports around climate change and the natural world you can visit https://www.ukri.org/our-work/responding-to-climate-change/ or follow @ahrcpress on twitter. To join the discussion about the research covered in this podcast and the series please use the hashtag #GreenThinkingPodcast. Producer: Marcus Smith

How green is office working? Have changes since Covid helped us plan for a more environmentally friendly way of working? Philosopher Dr Alexander Douglas and Dr Jane Parry, who works on Work after Lockdown, talk to Des Fitzgerald about the future of work in a post-Covid-19 world and the implications for our environment.Dr Alexander Douglas is a Lecturer in Philosophy in the School of Philosophical, Anthropological and Film Studies at the University of St Andrews. He is a founder and co-director of the Future of Work and Income Research Network (funded by AHRC) at the Centre for Ethics, Philosophy, and Public Affairs.Dr Jane Parry is a Lecturer and Director of Research for HRM and Organisational Behaviour within Southampton Business School at the University of Southampton. She is the Principal Investigator on the project, Work after Lockdown, which is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (part of UKRI). You can read more about the project and contribute to their worker wellbeing survey at https://www.workafterlockdown.uk/participate.Professor Des Fitzgerald is a New Generation Thinker based at the University of Exeter.You can find a new podcast series Green Thinking: 26 episodes 26 minutes long in the run up to COP26 made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI, exploring the latest research and ideas around understanding and tackling the climate and nature emergency. New Generation Thinkers Des Fitzgerald and Eleanor Barraclough will be in conversation with researchers on a wide-range of subjects from cryptocurrencies and finance to eco poetry and fast fashion.The podcasts are all available from the Arts & Ideas podcast feed - and collected on the Free Thinking website under Green Thinking where you can also find programmes on mushrooms, forests, rivers, eco-criticism and soil. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07zg0r2For more information about the research the AHRC’s supports around climate change and the natural world you can visit: Responding to climate change – UKRI or follow @ahrcpress on twitter. To join the discussion about the research covered in this podcast and the series please use the hashtag #GreenThinkingPodcast. Producer: Marcus Smith

Is encouraging action still art? What does it mean to make art about the environment? Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough brings together a curator, researchers and artists to discuss these questions. She hears about suggestions from artists, inspired by the forward thinking Gustav Metzger (1926 - 2017), collated by curator Hans Ulrich Obrist. These include the idea from Futurefarmers that we "make an unannounced visit to a farm and take a good long look at the farmer's bookshelf" or Forensic Architecture's call for us to "Look at an air bubble" or Olafur Eliasson's "Look down, look up" and a poetic call to action inspired by the writer Audre Lorde (1934-1992): you can find an episode all about her work in the Free Thinking archives. Lucy Neal describes a project that has involved a forest camp in Coventry looking back at the ideas of the suffragettes. Wayne Binitie shares his experiences of taking photographs of melting ice sheets, recreating them in a gallery and making sound and music. Dr Jenna C. Ashton describes her work with communities in Manchester thinking about how they face up to changes in the climate and reflect those in a pageant planned for next year.140 Artists' Ideas for Planet Earth edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Kostas Stasinopoulos is published now - and draws on the environmental programme Back to Earth run by the Serpentine Gallery where Obrist is an Artistic Director https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/art-and-ideas/ You can find out more about his paintings and photographs at http://waynebinitie.com/ and an exhibition of his work is due to open later this year. Walking Forest by the artists Ruth Ben-Tovim, Anne-Marie Culhane, Lucy Neal and Shelley Castle, commissioned by Coventry 2021 City of Culture is one of the 15 Season For Change arts commissions ahead of COP 26 https://www.seasonforchange.org.uk/ Dr Jenna C. Ashton is a Lecturer in Heritage Studies at the University of Manchester and co-founded CIWA, the Centre for International Women Artists, a collective artist studio and gallery in Manchester, UK https://creative-climate-resilience.org/You can find a new podcast series Green Thinking: 26 episodes 26 minutes long in the run up to COP26 made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI, exploring the latest research and ideas around understanding and tackling the climate and nature emergency. New Generation Thinkers Dr Des Fitzgerald and Dr Eleanor Barraclough will be in conversation with researchers on a wide-range of subjects from cryptocurrencies and finance to eco poetry and fast fashion. They're all available from the Arts & Ideas podcast feed - and collected on the Free Thinking website under Green Thinking where you can also find programmes on mushrooms, forests, rivers, eco-criticism and soil. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07zg0r2Producer: Sofie Vilcins

"Before there were books there were stories". Salman Rushdie's opening words in his collected Essays from 2003-2020. In one of them he reveals that Alice in Wonderland made such an impression on him as a child that he can still recite Jabberwocky. So Free Thinking brought him together with the literary historian Lucy Powell and with Mark Blacklock, who has studied literature about the fourth dimension, for a conversation about the power of dreams, the place of logic and irrationality and the truth of maths - inspired by the new exhibition about Alice in Wonderland on at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Matthew Sweet hosts the discussion.Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser runs at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London from 22nd May 2021 Salman Rushdie's Essay Collection is called Languages of Truth. You can find him discussing Uncertainty and his novel The Golden House in a previous Free Thinking. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09784ld Lucy Powell is a New Generation Thinker whose research has included looking at birds in fiction. You can find her discussing birds with Helen MacDonald and Professor Tim Birkhead in a Proms Plus discussion https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06fw7db Mark Blacklock is the author of a novel called Hinton which explores the thinking of Charles Hinton about the fourth dimension. You can find him discussing that in a Free Thinking episode called Alternative Realities https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000hftd He also shares his knowledge about HG Wells in a programme called Wells' Women https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04b4r1xLate Junction on BBC Radio 3 has been asking people to send in their dreams to the artist Sam Potter. He's created an AI programme dream machine which morphs these into texts which composers have then worked on. If you tune into Late Junction on Friday nights BBC Radio 3 11pm throughout June you can hear the dreamlike results https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006tp52Producer: Luke Mulhall

Should Kew re-label its plants? What do you see when you study a still life painting on the gallery walls? How do nineteenth century authors depict deadly plants? New Generation Thinker Christienna Fryar discusses new ways of understanding British history through horticulture with her four guests: Lauren Working, is one of the 2021 New Generation Thinkers. She has studied the Jamestown colony, and delivers a postcard about still life painting and its connection to the exotic luxuries of early empire building. Her book is called The Making of an Imperial Polity: Civility and America in the Jacobean Metropolis. Katie Donington, has worked on a British botanist and plant collector George Hibbert who made his money from the plants on the sugar plantations, and then paid for specimens to be brought back to England from one of James Cook's expeditions. Daisy Butcher, has edited a collection called The Botanical Gothic, which brings together 19th century stories about deadly plants, mostly plants brought back to the UK from far-flung parts of the world that turn out to be threatening. Sharon Willoughby, head of interpretation at Kew Gardens, is looking at the way Kew presents its collections, starting for example, to use Chinese names for Chinese plants which were well known to Chinese scholars before the plant collectors arrived from countries including Britain to bring specimens to display here.You might be interested in the Free Thinking discussion looking at Darwin's The Descent of Man https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000s31z Napoleon the gardener and art thief is discussed by guests including biographer Ruth Scurr https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000vr1w Trees of Knowledge hears from Peter Wohlleben and Emanuele Coccia https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001nj1 And an upcoming episode of The Verb with Ian McMillan on June 11th will hear more from Peter Wohlleben and from poet Jason Allen-Paisant We are also launching a podcast made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council - Green Thinking - which features academic research into the issues linking the climate challenge and society. You can find that on the Green Thinking playlist on our programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07zg0r2 and available to download as the Arts & Ideas podcast.New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to work with academics to share their research on the radio. This episode was made in partnership with the AHRC, part of UKRI. You can find a playlist exploring New Research on the Free Thinking website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90Image: The Temperate House at The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Credit: Paul Kerley / BBC

'What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence'. Thus ends the only book the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein published in his lifetime. But it's a book that's had people talking ever since it was published a century years ago. In an event hosted by the Austrian Cultural Forum, and in collaboration with the British Wittgenstein Society, Shahidha Bari discusses the contexts and contents of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus at 100 with Wittgenstein's biographer Ray Monk, the philosophers Juliet Floyd and Dawn Wilson, and Wittgenstein's niece Monica Nadler Wittgenstein.In the Preface to his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein claims to have solved all the problems of philosophy. The youngest son of one of the wealthiest families in Europe, based in Vienna, Ludwig moved to England in 1908 to study the then cutting edge-topic of flight aerodynamics. From there he developed an interest in pure mathematics, which led him to philosophy, and to the revolutionary work of the logician Gottlob Frege. Frege recommended he went to Cambridge to study with Bertrand Russell, who quickly recognised him as "perhaps the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived".The work that Wittgenstein began in Cambridge eventually led to the composition of the Tractatus, but not before the intervention of the First World War, during which he signed up to the Austro-Hungarian Army and fought in some of the fiercest battles on the Eastern Front, even volunteering for an observation post in no-man's-land. Finished whilst he was still in military service, the Tractatus combines an innovative account of the nature of logic with searching investigation of personhood and mysticism. Written in an aphoristic style that seems to conceal as much as it reveals, it is a major work of Viennese Modernism as well as a foundational text of analytical philosophy.You can find a playlist of conversations about philosophy on the Free Thinking website which include Wolfram Eilenberger, David Edmonds, Esther Leslie with Matthew Sweet looking at the different philosophical schools current in the 1920s Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman on reclaiming the role of women in British 20th century philosophy Stephen Mulhall and Denis McManus, and the historian and New Generation Thinker Tiffany Watt Smith on Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07x0twxProducer: Luke Mulhall

Wearing denim, workwear, or sharp tailoring makes a statement about how we think of ourselves. Charlie Porter has been exploring the relationship between artists and clothes. He joins writer Olivia Laing and Ekow Eshun for a conversation about clothing, bodies, and our expression of our sexuality, hosted by Shahidha Bari.Olivia Laing's latest book is called Everybody: A Book About FreedomCharlie Porter has published What Artists Wear. A former Turner prize judge, he writes and curates and is a visiting Fashion lecturer at the University of Westminster.British-Ghanaian photographer James Barnor's work is on show at the Serpentine Gallery in London from 19 May - 22 October 2021.Ekow Eshun has curated An Infinity of Traces, which runs at the Lisson Gallery in London from 13 April – 5 June 2021, featuring UK-based established and emerging Black artists whose work explores notions of race, history, being, and belonging.Jade Montserrat, one of the artists featured in Ekow's show, talked to Free Thinking in a programme about collage and Dada https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000k9wsProducer: Emma WallaceYou can find more conversations in the Free Thinking archive and available to download as Arts & Ideas podcasts, including;Olivia Laing on her novel inspired by Kathy Acker, and a discussion of Alison Bechdel's Fun Home - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b7mryz The body past and present, discussed by painter Chantal Joffe, historian Catherine Fletcher, and philosopher Heather Widdows - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b7my7k Fashion stories in museums, with guests including V&A curator Claire Wilcox - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000s2by JJ Bola, Derek Owusu, and Ben Lerner on the changing image of masculinity - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b0mx How do we build a new masculinity? Sunil Gupta, CN Lester, Tom Shakespeare, and Alona Pardo - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000gm6h The politics of fashion and drag with Scrumbly Koldewyn, and a report from the Royal Vauxhall Tavern - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09zcjchImage Credit: Getty Images/Jonathan Knowles

The Startup Wife is the title of Tahmima Anam's latest novel. Anne McElvoy talks to her about writing about the work/life balance and ideas about risk. New Generation Thinker Mirela Ivanova, from the University of Oxford, is researching Balkan history. She writes us a postcard about the strangely changing look of the main museum in Sofia, Bulgaria and why it's significant. And we look back at Roman history as the British Museum opens an exhibition Nero: the man behind the myth, talking to curator, Dr Thorsten Opper and historian, Tom Holland.Producer: Ruth WattsTahmima Anam is taking part in the Hay Festival. Her novel The Startup Wife is being read on BBC Radio 4 from June 6th at 22.45 You can hear her on Free Thinking comparing notes about the writing life with crime author Ian Rankin in a conversation organised in partnership with the Royal Society of Literature and Bradford Lit Fest https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000khk6 She also discusses writing about love in her novel The Bones of Grace in a conversation with Alain de Boton and AL Kennedy https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b078xlft And she's written a Radio 3 Essay about her place of refuge https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000hwzcNero: the man behind the myth runs at the British Museum in London from May 27th 2021 to October 24th 2021.New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who turn their research into radio.You can find information about Hay Festival at hayfestival.comImage: Tahmima Anam Credit: Abeer Y. Hoque

Is Gogglebox the main place on TV where you now find criticism? What does that tell us about the role of the critic today? Suzi Feay, Arifa Akbar and Charlotte Mullins join Matthew Sweet to review a new art exhibition at the Barbican showcasing the art and ideas of Jean Dubuffet and to reflect on what being a critic means. Matthew pays tribute to the thinking of Kevin Jackson (3 January 1955 – 10 May 2021) who took part in many critical discussions on BBC Radio 3. New Generation Thinker Vid Simoniti teaches philosophy and art at Liverpool University and he's written us a postcard reflecting on what it means when algorithms dictate the culture we consume.Jean Dubuffet: Brutal Beauty runs at the Barbican, London from May 17th 2021 to August 22nd 2021. Dubuffet (1901-1985) collected artwork made by people outside the arts establishment and in his own work he incorporated butterfly wings, sand, lava, collages of cut up paintings and graffiti. Talking about the portraits he made he said, ‘Funny noses, big mouths, crooked teeth, hairy ears, I’m not against all that’.You can find a playlist focusing on the Visual Arts on the Free Thinking website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p026wnjlNew Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio.Producer: Torquil MacLeod

A ghostly Franco visits an elderly man in the latest novel by Patrick McGrath. He joins historian Duncan Wheeler and the makers of a prize winning documentary Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar, as Rana Mitter's guests for a discussion of the Spanish Civil War, the ghosts and silences that remain and how history is now being written.The Silence of Others, backed by Pedro Almodóvar and directed by Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar has been screened at festivals across the world and has picked up many prizes. https://thesilenceofothers.com/Duncan Wheeler is Chair of Spanish Studies at the University of Leeds and has published Following Franco: Spanish Culture and Politics in Transition.Patrick McGrath is the author of novels including Spider which was filmed by David Cronenburg, Asylum which was adapted by Patrick Marber and short stories collected under the title Writing Madness. His new novel depicting Francis McNulty, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, has the title Last Days in Cleaver Square.Producer: Ruth WattsOn the Free Thinking website you can find past episodes with Rana Mitter discussing history and Pakistan, War in fact and fiction from World War I to African conflicts; What does a black history curriculum look like? and Deep Time and Human History. All episodes are available to download as Arts & Ideas podcasts. New Generation Thinker Anindya Raychaudhuri's postcard about aerial bombardment and the Spanish Civil War is on BBC Sounds https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p046wn7wImage: Valley of the Fallen from above which shows the Benedictine Abbey, near Madrid, Spain Credit: BBC/Craig Hastings

Toussaint Louverture's revolutionary leadership in Haiti; Ravenna's place as a hub of culture and a meeting point of East and West; how motherhood and work have changed from Victorian Manchester factories to the modern boardroom; a 3,000 year history of attacks on libraries and book burnings; battles in the Atlantic from the Vikings to conflicts over slavery in the Caribbean and on the North American coast; recovering the voices of children who experienced the Holocaust: Rana Mitter looks at how the six authors shortlisted for the UK's most prestigious history prize have tackled these topics.The books shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2021 are:Survivors: Children’s Lives after the Holocaust by Rebecca Clifford Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture by Sudhir Hazareesingh Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe by Judith Herrin Double Lives: A History of Working Motherhood by Helen McCarthy Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack by Richard Ovenden Atlantic Wars: From the Fifteenth Century to the Age of Revolution by Geoffrey PlankThe winner will be announced on Wednesday 9 June 2021 in a virtual ceremony. The winner will be awarded £40,000 and each of the shortlisted authors receives £4,000.Producer: Torquil MacLeodIn the Free Thinking archives you can find interviews with the authors shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize in previous years and a host of discussions about history looking at topics including Napoleon, John Henry Newman, Adnam Menderes and Turkish history, Northern Ireland, what we can learn from the upheavals of industrial revolution and empires ending, war in fact and fiction, Churchill, family ties and reshaping history with guests including Margaret McMillan, Tom Holland, Jared Diamond, Priya Atwal, Camilla Townsend, Ruth Scurr, Roy Foster and David Reynolds amongst others.

Singer Umm Kulthum, Mounira al-Mahdiyya, Badia Masabni. These are the names of the pioneering performers working in Cairo's dance halls and theatres in the 1020s whom Raphael Cormack has written about in his new book. From that period of cosmopolitan culture to the uprising in 2011 - how has Egypt shifted ? New Generation Thinker Dina Rezk lectures at the University of Reading and she's been reading the new novel by Alaa Al Aswany - The Republic of False Truths. Edmund Richardson researches Alexander the Great and he's written about a Victorian pilgrim, spy, doctor, archaeologist Charles Masson who found a lost city in Afghanistan. Anne McElvoy presents.Raphael Cormack's book is called Midnight in Cairo: The Female Stars of Egypt's Roaring '20sDina Rezk is a New Generation Thinker and Associate Professor of History at the University of Reading. Her recent research has focused on the upheavals of the 'Arab Spring' across the Middle East.Edmund Richardson is a New Generation Thinker and Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Durham. His book is called Alexandria: The Quest for the Lost CityProducer: Ruth WattsImage: People celebrate at Tahrir Square, Cairo on 3rd July 2013 Credit: BBC (Abdel Khalik Salah)

What stories are being uncovered by people working behind the scenes at museums and institutions? Lisa Mullen finds out talking to Tessa Jackson – Conservator; David Beavan – Senior Research Software Engineer, Turing Institute and Matt Harle – Archivist and curator at the Barbican.Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life runs at the Hepworth Wakefield from 21 May 2021 to 27 Feb 2022. The gallery also runs a Hepworth Research Network in partnership with the Department of History of Art at the University of York and the School of Art, Design and Architecture at the University of Huddersfield. https://hepworthwakefield.org/our-story/hepworth-research-network/people/Matthew Harle is an archivist working with the Barbican as it prepares for its 40th anniversary so is assembling an archive alongside the Guildhall School of Music and Drama https://www.barbican.org.uk/our-story/our-archive/about-the-archive https://matthewharle.com/Barbican-ArchiveThe Alan Turing Institute https://www.turing.ac.uk/ is the national institute for data science and artificial intelligence running a host of research projects into topics including AI, Public Policy and Living with Machines - a project that rethinks the impact of technology on the lives of ordinary people during the Industrial Revolution. https://livingwithmachines.ac.uk You can hear more from historian Emma Griffin in this conversation about Understanding the Industrial Revolution https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p081y7h4This episode was made in partnership with the AHRC, part of UKRI. You can find a playlist exploring New Research on the Free Thinking website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90Producer: Sofie Vilcins

From the appeal of trickster gods Anansi and Loki to the joy of comics and fantasy: Booker prize winner Marlon James and Neil Gaiman, author of the book American Gods which has been turned into a TV series, talk writing and reading with Matthew Sweet in a conversation organised in partnership with the Royal Society of Literature and the British Library.Neil Gaiman is an author of books for children and adults whose titles include Norse Mythology, American Gods, The Graveyard Book, Good Omens (with Terry Pratchett), Coraline, and the Sandman graphic novels. He also writes children's books and poetry, has written and adapted for radio, TV and film and for DC Comics. Marlon James is the author of the Booker Prize winning and New York Times bestseller A Brief History of Seven Killings, The Book of Night Women, John Crow's Devil and his most recent - Black Leopard, Red Wolf - which is the first in The Dark Star Trilogy in which he plans to tell the same story from different perspectives.Producer: Torquil MacLeod.You can find a playlist called Prose and Poetry featuring a range of authors including Ian Rankin, Nadifa Mohamed, Paul Mendez, Ali Smith, Helen Mort, Max Porter, Hermione Lee, Derek Owusu, Jay Bernard, Ben Okri on the Free Thinking website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p047v6vh

The Bechdel test asks whether two women are having a conversation which doesn't relate to a man. Many films, books and plays fall foul of the measure which first appeared in the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, created by Matthew Sweet's guest today Alison Bechdel. Her memoir Fun Home became a Tony Award-winning musical and she has now published The Secret to Superhuman Strength which considers her relationship with exercise so she and Matthew go on an imaginary walk discussing topics including mushrooms, drinking, the response of her mum to being depicted in fiction, the lingering impact of a Catholic childhood and going to confession, the writing of Adrienne Rich and Coleridge and Bechdel's exploration of ideas about transcendence.Producer: Caitlin BenedictYou can find Matthew in conversation with other guests including Spike Lee, Sarah Perry, Jimmy Carter's former drugs tsar Peter Bourne and Michael Lewis in a playlist on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04ly0c8

The day before Napoleon's death on May 5th 1821, the willow tree he liked to sit under on St Helena was felled by tempestuous winds. Ruth Scurr has written Napoleon: A Life in Gardens and Shadows. Natasha Pulley's novel The Kingdoms imagines a history with Napoleon victorious in England, Emma Rothschild has traced a family in France over three centuries. Rana Mitter chairs a discussion about how looking at Napoleon as gardener, collector of art and founder of an institution dedicated to the arts and sciences in Egypt adds to our understanding of him as a military man and the panel consider alternative histories of France.Ruth Scurr's book Napoleon: A Life in Gardens and Shadows is out now. You can hear her discussing her book about John Aubrey in this episode of Free Thinking https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06rwvrf Natasha Pulley's novel The Kingdoms is published May 25th 2021. You can hear her discussing the Japanese novel and film Rashomon https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b01vwk and the writing of Angela Carter https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p038jdb7 Emma Rothschild has published An Infinite History: The Story of a Family in France over Three CenturiesProducer: Ruth WattsYou might be interested in another Free Thinking discussion about Napoleon in Fact and Fiction hearing from actor/director Kathryn Hunter, biographer Michael Broers historians Oskar Cox Jensen and Laura O'Brien, journalist Nabila Ramdani https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09s2nml and Radio 3's weekly curation of Words and Music features an episode focusing on authors and composers inspired by the life of Napoleon with readings from Jane Austen, Wordsworth, Anthony Burgess and Thackeray and music from Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev.

"We suffer from Johnson" - those words come in a poem written by his friend, the diarist Hester Thrale Piozzi (who died May 2nd 1821). Patience Agbabi's new novel time travels back to eighteenth century London and takes its teenage heroes to a tea party at Samuel Johnson's house. Thomas Lawrence sketched his biographer Boswell. His Jamaican servant Francis Barber inherited his watch. So Laurence Scott convenes his own virtual tea party to look at Samuel Johnson's world.New Generation Thinker Sophie Coulombeau is co-organiser of the first international conference on Hester Thrale Piozzi and will share her findings from her research into Piozzi's life and works. As an exhibition of Lawrence's portraits prepares to open at the Holburne Museum in Bath, we hear from curator, Amina Wright, about the young artist. Patience Agbabi's novel is called The Time-Thief and she explains why she was drawn to depict Samuel Johnson. And, New Generation Thinker Jake Subryan Richards writes a postcard reflecting on ideas about slavery, abolition and the law in eighteenth century England.New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to turn academic research into radio. You can find a playlist of discussions, features and Essays on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08zhs35Producer: Ruth WattsImage: Patience Agbabi Credit: Lyndon Douglas

A Northern Irish writer - what does that label mean? Lucy Caldwell compares notes with Caroline Magennis about the way authors are charting change and setting down experience - from working class memoirs of life in Derry to the poetry of Seamus Heaney, Sinéad Morrissey and others. And as we approach the centenary of the creation of Northern Ireland, Anne McElvoy talks to Roy Foster and Charles Townshend about the history and legacy of partition.Charles Townshend is Professor Emeritus of International History at Keele University, and Roy Foster is Professor and Honorary Fellow at Hertford College, University of Oxford. Amongst other titles, Roy Foster is the author of Vivid Faces: The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland, 1890-1923, and Charles Townshend's new book is The Partition: Ireland Divided, 1885-1925.Lucy Caldwell's new book is called Intimacies and is published in May, and she has also edited Being Various: New Irish Short Stories. In the interview she recommends books including the writing of Mary Beckett, The Glass Shore: Short Stories by Woman Writers from the North of Ireland edited by Sinéad Gleeson, and Inventory: A River, A City, A Family by Darran Anderson.Caroline Magennis is Reader in 20th and 21st Century Literature at the University of Salford, and her upcoming publication, Northern Irish Writing After the Troubles: Intimacies, Affects, Pleasures, will be available in August.Producer: Emma WallaceIf you want more conversations with writers from Northern Ireland you can find the following episodes on the Free Thinking website: Sinéad Morrissey on winning the TS Eliot Prize in 2014 - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03pdf10 Michael Longley talks about his poetry and winning the PEN Pinter prize - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b098hz1m Bernard MacClaverty talks to Anne McElvoy about depicting love and loss in a long relationship in his novel Midwinter Break - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09525cn Ruth Dudley Edwards looks at ideas about belonging - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000h2g4 Roy Foster and Paul Muldoon are in conversation - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b050xpsd

Eight churches were set on fire, and a taste for occult rituals and satanic imagery spiralled into suicide and murder in the Norwegian Black metal scene of the 1990s. Lucy Weir looks at the lessons we can take from this dark story about the way we look at mental health and newspaper reporting.Producer: Emma WallaceDr Lucy Weir is a specialist in dance and performance at the University of Edinburgh. You can hear her discussing the impact of Covid on dance performances in this Free Thinking discussion about audiences - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000nvlc, and her thoughts on dance and stillness - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000k33sShe is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to work with academics to turn their research into radio.

Darragh McGee takes the long view of the risk-based games we have played throughout history. He explores the experiences of their losers and the moral censure that their losses have attracted; from the eighteenth century gentry who learned to lose their fortune with good grace at the gaming tables of Bath to the twenty-first century smartphone user, facing an altogether more lonely ordeal. He considers the cultural history gambling - and, what the games we have staked our money on through the centuries, tell us about ourselves and society.Producer: Ruth WattsDr Darragh McGee teaches in the Department for Health at the University of Bath. He is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year to turn their research into radio. You can hear him talking about gambling in this Free Thinking episode https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000khhq

From the Jewishness of the New Testament to attempts by 19th- and early 20th-century British Jews to blend in to Christian England, Giles Fraser shows how the two religions have a vexed history but are also surprisingly interconnected in his new book called Chosen. He also looks back at 2011, when the Occupy London took over the steps and surroundings of St Pauls and the resulting division in the church about how to react to this protest movement led him to leave his job and to a crisis of confidence. Miri Rubin, Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History at Queen Mary, University of London, and David Feldman, Professor of History and Director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism at Birkbeck, University of London, join Giles Fraser and Matthew Sweet to explore the degree to which you can emphasise similarities between Christianity and Judaism - what do you gain and what do you lose? Producer: Eliane GlaserYou can find a playlist of programmes exploring religious belief on the Free Thinking website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03mwxlp which includes Jonathan Freedland, Hadley Freeman, Howard Jacobson and Bari Weiss on Jewish Identity in 2020 Simon Schama and Devorah Baum on Jewish history and jokes and Frank Skinner, Jeet Thayil and Yaa Gyasi on Writing about Faith

Was Marx wrong when he said that philosophers can only interpret the world in various ways, and contrasted that with actually changing it?Epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, was once considered one of the more abstract areas of philosophy, far removed from the concerns of every-day life. Now, philosophers like Miranda Fricker have developed epistemological concepts that can help us recognise, understand, and address areas where disparities in knowledge feed into wider social and political disadvantages, for example indigenous people articulating their relationship with land using Western legal concepts like ‘ownership’ or patients trying to describe symptoms not addressed by medical text books. Shahidha Bari talks with Miranda Fricker, Havi Carel and Constantine Sandis.You can find a playlist of conversations about philosophy on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07x0twxProducer: Luke Mulhall

The First Congress of Black Writers and Artists in Paris 1956 staged debates about colonial history which are still playing out in the protests of the Gilets Noirs. New Generation Thinker Alexandra Reza leafs through the pages of the journal Présence Africaine, and picks out a short story by Ousmane Sembène, tracing the dreams of a young woman from Senegal. Her experiences are echoed in a new experimental patchwork of writing by Nathalie Quintane called Les Enfants Vont Bien. And what links all of these examples is the idea of papers, cahiers, and identity documents.Producer: Emma WallaceAlexandra Reza researches post-colonial literature at the University of Oxford. You can hear her in a Free Thinking discussion about Aimé Césaire https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000nmxfShe also appears alongside Tariq Ali and Kehinde Andrews in a discussion Frantz Fanon's Writing https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000tdtn And in a Free Thinking episode looking at the fiction of Maryse Condé https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000v86yShe is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select academics to turn their research into radio.

Gold fob seals, Sheffield silver, Mesolithic stone tools - these were some of the discoveries detailed in the 28 papers, books and pamphlets published by a soldier turned archaeologist who began looking at what you might find in the soil in the middle of a World War One battlefield. In her Essay, Seren Griffiths traces the way Francis Buckley used his training for military intelligence to shape the way he set about digging up and recording objects buried both in war-torn landscapes of France and Belgium and then on the Yorkshire moors around his home.Producer: Torquil MacLeodDr Seren Griffiths teaches at Manchester Metropolitan University and is involved in a project to use new scientific dating techniques to write the first historical narrative for two thousand years of what was previously 'prehistoric' Neolithic and Bronze Age Britain and Ireland. She has also organised public events at the excavations she co- directs at Bryn Celli Ddu in North Wales and you can hear her talking about midsummer at a Neolithic monument in an episode of Free Thinking. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to choose ten academics each year to turn their research into radio.

Chinatown, New York, in 1890 was described by photo-journalist Jacob Riis as "disappointing." He focused only on images of opium dens and gambling and complained about the people living there being "secretive". But could withholding your emotions be a deliberate tactic rather than a crass stereotype of inscrutability? Xine Yao has been reading short stories from the collection Mrs. Spring Fragrance, published in 1912 by Sui Sin Far and her Essay looks at what links the Asian American Exclusion Act of 1882, the first American federal law to exclude people on the basis of national or ethnic origin, to writings by the Martinican philosopher Édouard Glissant.Producer: Caitlin Benedict.Xine Yao researches early and nineteenth-century American literature and teaches at University College London. She hosts a podcast PhDivas and you can hear her in Free Thinking discussions about Darwin's Descent of Man, Mould-breaking Writing and in a programme with Ian Rankin and Tahmima Anam where she talks about science fiction. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to choose ten academics each year to turn their research into radio programmes. You can find more in this playlist on the Free Thinking website featuring discussions, essays and features from 10 years of the New Generation Thinkers scheme https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08zhs35

Vivian Maier left over 150,000 negatives when she died in 2009. Her boxes and boxes of unprinted street photographs were stacked alongside shoulder-high piles of newspapers in her Chicago home. The artist Francis Bacon's studio has been painstakingly recreated in the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin complete with paint-spattered furniture and over 7,000 items. New Generation Thinker Diarmuid Hester's research looks at ideas about waste and in this Essay he considers what the difference might be between hoarding and collecting and between the stuff assembled by these artists and his own father's shelves of matchday programmes.Producer: Luke MulhallDr Diarmuid Hester is radical cultural historian of the United States after 1950, and he teaches on sexually dissident literature, art, film, and performance at the University of Cambridge. He has published a critical biography of Dennis Cooper called Wrong and you can find his Essay for Radio 3 about Cooper in the series Books to Make Space For on the Bookshelf and his postcard about Derek Jarman's garden in the Free Thinking archives. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who turn their research into radio.

Malcolm Gladwell, Satyajit Ray's film Jalsaghar, Jessie Greengrass. Rana Mitter hosts.