Arts & Ideas

Harlots - the TV series about 18th century female sex workers - and translating historical fact into onscreen drama. Shahidha Bari is joined by Hallie Rubenhold, Moira Buffini, and Laura Lammasniemi in a conversation organised in partnership with the Royal Society of Literature.Harlots depicts the stories of working women detailed in 1757 in Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies. Historian Hallie Rubenhold has researched their history and Moira Buffini has translated that into TV scripts. They join Shahidha Bari alongside legal historian Laura Lammasniemi to look at the opportunities and pitfalls in creating historical dramas and what we know and don't know about the lives of sex workers in the 18th century.Hallie Rubenhold’s book The Covent Garden Ladies is about Harris’s List and inspired the series Harlots, to which she was historical consultant. She is author of The Five: The Untold Lives of The Women Killed By Jack The Ripper, which won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and has also been optioned as a drama series; and she is author of Lady Worsley's Whim, which became the TV drama The Scandalous Lady W.Scriptwriter Moira Buffini is writer of Harlots, new the film The Dig, which reimagines the events of the 1939 excavation of Sutton Hoo, and Jane Eyre. Her plays include wonder.land, Handbagged, and Dinner.Laura Lammasniemi is Assistant Professor at the University of Warwick Law School. She is currently a Leverhulme Fellow working on a project called Narratives Of Sexual Consent In Criminal Courts, 1870-1950, which looks at how the concept of consent has been understood historically in contexts, such as rape, age of consent, and BDSM.Producer: Emma Wallace

The devil's daughter features in a new novel from Jenni Fagan; Salena Godden's debut novel imagines Mrs Death. To discuss conjuring fear, they join Shahidha Bari alongside a pair of historians - Tabitha Stanmore, who researches magic from early modern royal courts to village life, and Daniel Ogden, who has looked at werewolf tales in ancient Greece and Rome.Jenni Fagan's latest novel is called Luckenbooth, and her first book, The Panopticon, has been filmed. Fagan was listed by Granta as one of the 2013 Granta Best of Young British Novelists. There is more information about her drama and poetry collection, There’s A Witch In The Word Machine, on her website - https://jennifagan.com/Salena Godden's novel is Mrs Death Misses Death, published on 28 January 2021, and she's been made a new Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. You can find more about her poetry and her radio show, Roaring 20s, on her website - http://www.salenagodden.co.uk/Tabitha Stanmore is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Bristol, working on witchcraft.Daniel Ogden is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Exeter. His book is called The Werewolf In The Ancient World.You might be interested in other episodes looking at witchcraft:Author Marie Dariessecq - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0000qklThe relevance of magic in the contemporary world - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000kvssHistorians Marina Warner and Susannah Lipscomb look at Witchfinding - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06kckxkNovelists Zoe Gilbert, Madeline Miller and Kirsty Logan compare notes on Charms - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b1q0xcProducer: Emma Wallace

New research on female slave owners in Britain, women on Caribbean plantations, and the daughter of a prominent slave trader. Christienna Fryar talks to researchers Katie Donnington, Meleisa Ono-George, and Hannah Young. We hear about the daughter of Thomas Hibbert - one of the most prominent slave traders in Kingston, Jamaica - and the revelation that before she died she had intended to ask her mother to free the enslaved people she held; the risks taken by women who had children with their owners and who fought for the rights of those children; and female absentee slave owners in Britain.Katie Donnington lectures in history at London South Bank University. She has published a book called The Bonds Of Family: Slavery, Commerce And Culture In The British Atlantic World. She was an historical advisor for the BBC2 documentary Britain’s Forgotten Slave-Owners (2015), and co-curated Slavery, Culture, and Collecting at the Museum of London Docklands (2018-2019).Dr Meleisa Ono-George is at the University of Warwick. She has researched the ways in which women of African descent in Jamaica were discussed in relation to prostitution, concubinage, and other forms of sexual-economic exchange in legal, political, and cultural discourses in nineteenth century Jamaica and Britain.Hannah Young is at the University of Southampton, where she focuses on late eighteenth and early 19th century Britain, with a particular interest in exploring the relationship between Britain and empire and absentee slave ownership.This episode was made in partnership with the AHRC, part of UKRI. You can find more about New Research in a playlist on the Free Thinking programme website - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90 - where you’ll find other episodes in the New Thinking strand showcasing academic research. You might also be interested in this conversation featuring Katie and Christienna and a novelist and dramatist who have considered slavery history: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000f7d5This episode looks at the law on modern slavery: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jnmcProducer: Emma Wallace

If, and, then are the 3 words which underpin Simon Baron-Cohen's exploration of how humans reason and develop solutions to problems in his latest book The Pattern Seekers. He joins author Michelle Gallen, film historian Andrew Roberts and Bonnie Evans whose research includes the history of childhood and developmental science in a discussion about how we understand autism presented by Matthew Sweet.Michelle Gallen's novel Big Girl, Small Town is available now. Simon Baron-Cohen is clinical psychologist and professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge where he runs the Autism Research Centre. His book is called The Pattern Seekers - A New Theory of Human Invention. Bonnie Evans has written The Metamorphosis of Autism: A History of Child Development in Britain and is Senior Researcher at Queen Mary, University of London on the collaborative Wellcome Trust project https://www.autism-through-cinema.org.uk/ You might be interested that the winner of the Royal Society Science Books Prize 2020 was Camilla Pang's memoir Explaining Humans: What Science Can Teach Us about Life, Love and RelationshipsProducer: Torquil MacLeod

From spy to one of the first professional woman writers in Britain - Aphra Behn was a prolific playwright, poet, translator and fiction writer in the Restoration period. Claire Bowditch has spent years comparing different printed versions of her dramas to work out what were printer errors and how involved was Aphra Behn in the printing process. Annalisa Nicholson is researching a French salon in London created by the French noblewoman Hortense Mancini - whom Behn dedicated a play to. Is this evidence of a relationship between them? Tom Charlton looks at the politics of the period and Behn's loyalty to the Stuart crown. John Gallagher hosts the conversation.Claire Bowditch is an AHRC Post-Doctoral Research Associate at Loughborough University working on this project https://www.aphrabehn.online/front-page/ Tom Charlton is a New Generation Thinker, and a Stirling Research Fellow, working at Dr Williams's Library and one of the editorial team for the Oxford University Press edition of the Reliquiae Baxterianae https://dwl.ac.uk and http://www.baxterianae.com/home.html AnnaLisa Nicholson is working on her PDH at the University of Cambridge https://profiles.ahrcdtp.csah.cam.ac.uk/directory/anna-lisa-nicholson John Gallagher is a New Generation Thinker who lecture in Early Modern History at the University of Leeds https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/history/staff/774/dr-john-gallagherThis episode was made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI. You can find a playlist focused on New Research on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90 or sign up for the Arts & Ideas podcast and look out for New Thinking episodes https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02nrvk3/episodes/downloads Producer: Ruth Watts

From exile in Siberia to the novels which set a template - Rana Mitter and his guests Alex Christofi, Muireann Maguire, Claire Whiteheadand Viv Groskop look at the life and writing of Fyodor Dostoevsky (11 November 1821 – 27 January 1881).Crime and Punishment published in 1886 was the second novel following Dostoevsky's return from ten years of exile in Siberia. It examined ideas about rationality, morality and individualism which Dostoevsky also examined in Notes from the Underground in 1864 - sometimes called the first existentialist novel. In his career he published 12 novels, four novellas, 16 short stories, and numerous other pieces of writing.Alex Christofi's new biography out at the end of January is called Dostoevsky in Love: An Intimate Life Dr Muireann Maguire is Senior Lecturer in Russian at the University of Exeter. She has published a collection of Russian 20th-century ghost stories, Red Spectres and Stalin's Ghosts: Gothic Themes in early Soviet literature and is working on a project called RusTRANS: The Dark Side of Translation: 20th and 21st Century Translation from Russian as a Political Phenomenon in the UK, Ireland, and the USA Claire Whitehead is a Reader in Russian Literature at the University of St Andrews and has written The Poetics of Early Russian Crime Fiction, 1860-1917: Deciphering Tales of Detection and is working on a project with an author illustrator https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~lostdetectives/ Viv Groskop is a comedian and writer whose 2018 book The Anna Karenina Fix is a bestseller in RussiaIn the Free Thinking archives you can find conversations about Russia and Fear https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0006fl6 Soviet history featuring the authors Svetlana Alexievich and Stephen Kotkin https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09d3q93 Tarkovsky's 1979 film Stalker hears research into tourism in Chernobyl https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0775023 Cundill Prize winning historian Daniel Beer, Masha Gessen and Mary Dejevsky consider Totalitarianism and Punishment https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09h659tProducer: Luke Mulhall

Mildred Pierce, James M Cain's 1941 novel was turned into a noir film starring Joan Crawford which earnt her an Academy Award. Matthew Sweet and his guests crime writers Denise Mina & Laura Lippman + academics Sarah Churchwell & Lizzie Mackarel have been re-watching the film and comparing it with the novel as they consider how the social realism and depiction of suburban female life differs from his other books which became hit films The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity.Laura Lippman's novels include the PI Tess Monaghan series and stand alone titles such as Lady in the Lake, Sunburn and After I'm Gone. Denise Mina's crime novels have won many prizes and her latest The Less Dead has been shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award. Sarah Churchwell is Professor of American Literature and Public Understanding of the Humanities at the University of London and the author of books including The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe and Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great GatsbyYou can find other Free Thinking discussions of film and the relationship between novels and film on the programme website including Jonathan Coe's recent novel looking at Billy Wilder and his late films https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000p1dx Michael Caine in the film Get Carter made by from Ted Lewis's 1970 novel Jack's Return Home https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000mt05 Tarkovsky's Stalker https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0775023 Rashomon and the writing of Akutagawa, which led to the film by Kurosawa https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b01vwk Marnie and Winston Graham's novel https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b098n4j4 Many are in this playlist called Landmarks https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01jwn44Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Marlene Dietrich: sensual screen siren, political radical, 20th-century sex symbol, and - eventually - septuagenarian cabaret star. Cabraret legend Le Gateau Chocolat, film historian Pamela Hutchinson, writer Phuong Le, and academic Lucy Bolton join Matthew Sweet to delve into a life fully lived.From her formative collaborations with Josef von Sternberg, to entertaining the troops throughout World War II, to a late blossoming live performance career and touring as a cabaret artist into her seventies, Dietrich's life traces the line of western history throughout almost the whole twentieth century. What did she mean, and what did she become? Matthew and his guests follow the story through films including The Blue Angel, Shanghai Express, and Touch of Evil.Pamela Hutchinson is the curator of The BFI's Marlene Dietrich: Falling in Love Again, which runs at BFI Southbank throughout December.Le Gateau Chocolat’s work spans drag, cabaret, opera, musical theatre, children’s theatre and live art.Lucy Bolton is the editor of Lasting Stars: Images that Fade and Personas that Endure and Reader in Film Studies at Queen Mary University London.Phuong Le is a Paris-based film writer. She writes for publications including Music Mezzanine, Vague Visages and Film Comment magazine.You can find Le Gateau Chocolat discussing Weimar the subversion of cabaret culture in an episode recorded at the Barbican centre https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b7r7And you might be interested in other discussions of film stars and directors including Billy Wilder, Cary Grant, Betty Balfour and Early Cinema and director Alice Guy-Blaché which are all available to download as Arts & Ideas podcasts from the Free Thinking programme website.Producer: Caitlin Benedict

Brian Cox on the stars and planets. Archaelogist Susan Greaney on Stonehenge and Maes Howe at solstice, the shadowy paintings of Wright of Derby and Artemisia Gentileschi and the candlelight of Hanukkah in art and literature picked out by Alexandra Harris and the philosophy of Plato and light giving ideas from Sophie-Grace Chappell: Shahidha Bari and guests look at light as BBC Radio 3 broadcasts a series of music programmes, concerts, walks and features looking at Light in Darkness.Physicist Professor Brian Cox joins the BBC SO and Principal Guest Conductor Dalia Stasevska to explore the questions raised by music and the Cosmos concerning eternity, death, rebirth and meaning in a concert being broadcast by BBC Radio 3 on the afternoon of December 23rd. In Autumn 2021 he will be embarking on another Horizons Arena Tour around the UK making the latest thinking about the Cosmos accessible to the wider public.Professor Alexandra Harris is the author of books including Weatherland and Romantic Moderns and was one of the first BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinkers.Professor Sophie-Grace Chappell is the author of many philosophy books and is currently considering the idea of epiphanies.Susan Greaney works with English Heritage at Stonehenge, is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker.Producer: Ruth WattsYou might also be interested in Free Thinking conversations about Ice https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001jzq Ancient wisdom and remote living https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000q3by Antartica https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04p5267 Diving Deep https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09k8kqr Archaeology https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03xpn5p

What links Beethoven & Hegel's philosophy of freedom? Anne McElvoy talks to New Generation Thinker Seán Williams, Christoph Schuringa, Gary Browning, and Alison Stone about Hegel's discussion of freedom, law, family, markets and the state in his Principles of the Philosophy of Right 1820.Dr Christoph Schuringa is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the New College of the Humanities in London Gary Browning is Professor in Political Thought at Oxford Brookes University Alison Stone is Professor of European Philosophy in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University Seán Williams is Senior Lecturer in German and European Cultural History at the University of SheffieldYou can find a playlist of programmes examining various philosophical themes on the Free Thinking website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07x0twxProducer: Luke Mulhall

The solitude of remote lands and medieval monks; mapping and navigating by the stars and the survival strategies of Indigenous Peoples living around the Arctic circle as the ice melts are all part of today's conversation as Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough is joined by British Museum curator Amber Lincoln, author and GP Gavin Francis and historian and New Generation Thinker Seb Falk.Gavin Francis is the author of Island Dreams: Mapping an Obsession; Shapeshifters: On Medicine and Human Change Adventures in Human Being which won the Saltire Prize for non-fiction and was a BMA book of the year and True North: Travels in Arctic Europe. Arctic Climate and Culture is an exhibition at the British Museum running until 21 Feb 2021 with a catalogue which details artefacts and skills such as making a bag of fish skin, sleds carved from wood and bone, soapstone kettles and decorated ivory needle cases. Seb Falk is the author of The Light Ages - a history of Medieval Science which follows the life of medieval monk John of Westwyck - an inventor and astrologer who was exiled from St Albans to a clifftop priory at Tynemouth. He lectures at Cambridge University and is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to turn research into radio.You can find Gavin Francis in conversation about his book ShapeShifters in a Free Thinking Festival discussion Can There be Multiple Versions of Me https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09wvlxs and in a discussion about Thomas Browne https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05sy6qv Seb Falk delivers a Radio 3 Essay on John Gower https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b7hvgy and shows how to use your hands to count to 9,999 https://www.sebfalk.com/post/medieval-finger-counting-on-the-bbc And Eleanor Barraclough presents a series of Radio 3 features exploring topics including The Pine Tree, the Apocalypse, the Supernatural North in this playlist featuring New Generation Thinkers https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08zhs35Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Magic in medicine, surgery, and business; cross-dressing on the panto stage; and the history of pantomime and magic. Lisa Mullen is joined by Kate Newey, Will Houston, and Naomi Paxton.Naomi Paxton is a researcher at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, a magician and performer as Ada Campe, and is a member of the Magic Circle and their first Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Officer. Her research includes popular entertainment and the suffragettes, and she has performed as a magician's assistant. Her recent book is Stage rights! The Actresses’ Franchise League, activism and politics 1908–58, and she is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker - http://www.naomipaxton.co.uk/Will Houston of Imperial College London is a magician and historian of magic, who looks at how magic can be used in medicine, surgery, business and accountancy. He is Honorary Research Associate in the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London, and is the Imperial College London/Royal College of Music Centre for Performance Science's Magician in Residence. He is also a member of the Magic Circle - http://drhoustoun.co.uk/Kate Newey is Professor in Drama at the University of Exeter who has been researching pantomime and is also involved in a project looking at theatre and visual culture in the nineteenth century - https://theatreandvisualculture19.wordpress.com/You can find more conversations about New Research in this playlist - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90 And this playlist, focused on discussions, essays, and features involving New Generation Thinkers, including Naomi Paxton's exploration of Suffragette Punch and Judy - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08zhs35A Free Thinking discussion about Playing God in medieval drama - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0000v24A Free Thinking discussion about Ice, including the use of stage effects in seventeenth century drama - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001jzqThis episode was made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI.Producer: Emma Wallace

Des Fitzgerald talks to the winners of the AHRC and Wellcome Trust Medical Humanities Awards 2020. Each has looked at how the arts can help our understanding of health and wellbeing - and, includes research into how the stigma surrounding obesity contributes to the obesity crisis and innovative art therapy techniques with long term mental health benefits for patients. AHRC and Wellcome Trust Medical Humanities Awards 2020 • Best Research Award: The Hearing the Voice team at Durham University • Best Early Career Research Award: Dr Oli Williams, The Healthcare Improvement Studies Institute Postdoctoral Fellow at Kings College London • Best International Award: Dr Dora Vargha, Senior Lecturer in Medical Humanities, University of Exeter • Best Community Research Award: Laura Drysdale, Director of Restoration Trust • Leadership Award: Dr Victoria Bates, Senior Lecturer in Modern History (University of Bristol) Angela Woods is Associate Professor of Medical Humanities at Durham University. Over the last eight years, her Hearing the Voice team has looked to help those who are distressed by their voices, to find out what those voices are like and why they happen, and to explore how hearing voices is an important and meaningful part of human experience. Oli Williams is a postdoctoral fellow based at King’s College London. His doctoral research joins the dots between inequality, health, and everyday life. It demonstrates how the ‘war on obesity’ promotes stigma among people living in one of the most deprived areas in England. Victoria Bates is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at Bristol University. Her research expertise ranges from nineteenth-century forensic medicine to current-day sensory studies. She has recently focused on developing partnerships with creative professionals in healthcare settings. Laura Drysdale is Director of the Restoration Trust. Since 2015 The Restoration Trust has partnered Norfolk Record Office and local mental health providers to run Change Minds, an archives and mental health programme. Over 15 three-hour sessions, a facilitated group of around 10 people investigate case records of patients in local 19th century asylums. They use this research as the basis for creative writing, art and theatre, leading to a shared public event. And, Dora Vargha is Senior Lecturer in Medical Humanities at the University of Exeter. Her research on the Cold War politics of polio epidemics in the 1950s places a crucial moment in global health history in its geopolitical context.This episode was put together in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI as part of our series New Thinking focusing on new research at UK universities.

Wittgenstein changed his mind, Heidegger revolutionised philosophy (and the German language), and both the Frankfurt School and the Vienna Circle were in full swing. Matthew Sweet is joined by Wolfram Eilenberger, David Edmonds and Esther Leslie. Plus, a report on the plight of the Lukacs Archive in Budapest.Wolfram Eilenberger's book Time of the Magicians, translated by Shaun Whiteside, is a group portrait of four young philosophers in the aftermath of World War I. He is the founding editor of Philosophie Magazin and broadcasts regularly in Germany.David Edmonds is co-author with John Eidinow of Wittgenstein's Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers. He produces the podcast series Philosophy Bites with Nigel WarburtonEsther Leslie is the author of Walter Benjamin: Overpowering Conformism. Her translations include Georg Lukacs, A Defence of History and Class Consciousness. She is Professor in Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck University of London.You can find conversations about Mary Midgely, Boethius, French philosophy and spies and Kierkegaard if you delve into our playlist of Free Thinking on Philosophy:https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07x0twxProducer: Luke MulhallShow less

Jared Diamond, Camilla Townsend, Tom Holland and Emma Griffin talk to Rana Mitter. What lessons for the pandemic are there in looking back at times of upheaval in history from the rise and fall of the Aztec Empire to the move from rural to urban living in Britain's Industrial Revolution.Tom Holland's books include Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic; Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind; Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West.Camilla Townsend is the author of the book Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs, which is one of the books shortlisted for the 2020 Cundill History prize.Emma Griffin is the author of books including Liberty's Dawn: A People's History of the Industrial Revolution and Bread Winner: An Intimate History of the Victorian Economy. She was chosen as a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker in 2012.Jared Diamond is the author of books including The World until Yesterday, Upheaval: How Nations Cope with Crisis and Change and Natural Experiments of HistoryProducer: Luke Mulhall

From surrealism and science fiction to inspiration drawn from historic objects in stately homes and the painting of Francis Bacon: Shahidha Bari hosts a conversation with Will Harris, who has written long-form poems; new Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature Max Porter and Chloe Aridjis, who have written poetic novels which play with form; and academic Xine Yao, who looks at speculative fiction.Max Porter is the author of Grief Is The Thing With Feathers and Lanny. He has also collaborated with the Indie folk band Tunng and has a book out in January called The Death of Francis Bacon. You can hear dramatizations of Lanny at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000pqdc and Grief Is The Thing with Feathers on BBC Sounds https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000plzlChloe Aridjis is a London-based Mexican writer who has published the novels Book of Clouds, Asunder and Sea Monsters, and was awarded the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 2020. She was co-curator of a Leonora Carrington exhibition at Tate Liverpool and writes for Frieze.They have been announced as Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature to mark the 200th anniversary of the RSL https://rsliterature.org/Will Harris is a writer of Chinese Indonesian and British heritage who won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2020 and is shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2021 for his collection RENDANG. He co-edited the spring 2020 issue of The Poetry Review with Mary Jean Chan.Xine Yao is one of the 2020 New Generation Thinkers on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the AHRC to turn research into radio. She teaches at UCL on American Literature in English to 1900, with an interest in literatures in English from the Black and Asian diasporas, science fiction, the Gothic, and comics/graphic novels.You can find more conversations in the playlist Prose and Poetry on the Free Thinking website, which includes Max Porter discussing empathy, Christine Yao looking at science fiction and the experimental writing of the Oulipo group, and a whole series of conversations recorded in partnership with the Royal Society of Literature. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p047v6vhProducer: Emma Wallace

April 1916. By the Nile, the foremost poets of the Middle East are arguing about Shakespeare. In 2004, Egyptian singer Essam Karika released his urban song Oh Romeo.Reflecting on his travels and encounters around the Arab world, New Generation Thinker Islam Issa, from Birmingham City University, discusses how canonical English writers (Shakespeare and Milton) creep into the popular culture of the region today. Recorded with an audience at Sage Gateshead as part of BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in 2018.Islam's Issa's book, Milton in the Arab-Muslim World, won the Milton Society of America's 'Outstanding First Book' award. His exhibition Stories of Sacrifice won the Muslim News Awards 'Excellence in Community Relations' prize.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 can turn their research into radio. There are now 100 early career academics who have passed through the scheme.Producer: Fiona McLean.

From Tudor courts to plantations to the Arab Spring and modern political philosophy: a debate in partnership with Bristol Festival of Ideas hosted by Shahidha Bari.Jeffrey Howard is an Associate Professor of Political Theory at University College London. He writes and teaches about the moral obligations of democratic citizens and political leaders, focusing on the topics of counter-extremism, crime and punishment, and free speech. Joanne Paul, Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at University of Sussex, has studied the advice given to monarchs and statesmen in the Tudor period, seeking to understand the inner workings of power in the court and the ways in which ordinary people could hope to make their own voices heard. Dina Rezk is an Associate Professor at the University of Reading teaching on intelligence, 20th Century Middle Eastern history, popular culture and terrorism/insurgency, reform and revolt. Christienna Fryar was Lecturer in the History of Slavery and Unfree Labour at the University of Liverpool and now leads the MA in Black British History at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research looks at Britain's centuries-long imperial and especially post emancipation entanglements with the Caribbean.Shahidha Bari is the author of Dressed: The Secret Life of Clothes and Professor of Fashion Cultures and Histories at London College of Fashion at the University of the Arts London. She is a Fellow of the Forum for Philosophy at the London School of Economics and was chosen as a New Generation Thinker in the first year of the scheme.You can find more Bristol Festival of Ideas events https://www.ideasfestival.co.uk/You can find more information about the New Generation Thinkers scheme on the website of the AHRC https://ahrc.ukri.org/ and a playlist of discussions, essays and short features showcasing the different research topics of New Generation Thinkers on the Free Thinking website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0144txn From beer to Vegetarian pioneers, dams in Pakistan to gangs in Glasgow, disabled characters in Dickens to remembering Partition, the Japanese Stonehenge to a Medici prince.Producer: Torquil MacLeod

The colourful life of Arthur MacMurrough Kavanagh overturns everything we think we know about disabled people’s lives in the 19th century. Born without hands and feet, he was an adventurous traveller and a Member of Parliament, a tiger-hunting landowner whose attempts to resist the rising tide of Irish nationalism were ultimately defeated, and whose amazing career has been largely forgotten. But how did his first biographer meet the challenge of writing his life?New Generation Thinker Clare Walker Gore of the University of Cambridge discusses the gaps in his published biography and what attitudes they reflect.The New Generation Thinkers scheme is ten years old in 2020. Jointly run by BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, each year it offers ten academics at the start of their careers a chance to bring fascinating research to a wider public. This week we hear five essays from this last decade of stimulating ideas.This Essay was recorded in front of an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead in 2015.Producer: Zahid Warley

From pension schemes for police force dogs to political rights - can other animals be regarded as members of our democratic communities, with rights to political consideration, representation or even participation? New Generation Alasdair Cochrane, from the University of Sheffield, believes that the exclusion of non-humans from civic institutions cannot be justified, and explores recent attempts in court to re-imagine a political world that takes animals seriously.The Essay was recorded in front of an audience at BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival of Ideas at Sage Gateshead in 2014. The court case referred to in the Essay was ruled on by a court in New York in 2017 when it was judged that in the case of caged adult male chimps Tommy and Kiko that there is no precedent for apes being considered people.The New Generation Thinkers scheme is ten years old in 2020. Jointly run by BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, each year it offers ten academics at the start of their careers a chance to bring fascinating research to a wider public. This week we hear five essays from this last decade of stimulating ideas.You can find a playlist of other Essays, Documentaries and Discussions featuring New Generation Thinkers from across the different years on the Free Thinking website.Producer: Jacqueline Smith

From sleeping space to work space? Matthew Sweet is joined by historian of emotions Tiffany Watt Smith, expert on the suffragettes and a history of sex Fern Riddell, author of The Four-Dimensional Human: Ways of Being in the Digital World Laurence Scott and Tudor historian Joe Moshenska.Matthew Sweet's guests recording in their bedrooms are all New Generation Thinkers, which now has 100 early career academics on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to turn research into radio.Fern Riddell's books include Death in Ten Minutes Kitty Marion: Activist, Arsonist, Suffragette; The Victorian Guide to Sex. She presents the history channel podcast Not What You Thought You Knew. Tiffany Watt Smith is the author of The Book of Human Emotions, Schadenfreude: The Joy of Another’s Misfortune. She is Director of the Centre for the History of the Emotions at Queen Mary, University of London.Laurence Scott has written Picnic Comma Lightning and The Four-Dimensional Human: Ways of Being in the Digital World, which was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction and was a winner of the Jerwood Prize.Joe Moshenska is the author of A Stain in the Blood: The Remarkable Voyage of Sir Kenelm Digby and Iconoclasm as Child’s Play. He teaches at the University of Oxford and presented a BBC Radio 4 documentary about Milton's Paradise Lost.You can find more information about the New Generation Thinkers scheme on the website of the AHRC:https://ahrc.ukri.org/and a playlist of discussions, essays and short features showcasing the different research topics of New Generation Thinkers on the Free Thinking website:https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0144txnFrom beer to Vegetarian pioneers, dams in Pakistan to gangs in Glasgow, disabled characters in Dickens to remembering Partition, the Japanese Stonehenge to a Medici prince.Producer: Luke Mulhall

Corin Throsby looks at the extraordinary fan mail received by the poet Lord Byron. The New Generation Thinkers scheme is ten years old in 2020. Jointly run by BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, each year it offers ten academics at the start of their careers a chance to bring fascinating research to a wider public. This week we hear five essays from this last decade of stimulating ideas.We think of fan mail as a recent phenomenon, but in the early 19th century the poet Byron received hundreds of letters from lovesick admirers. Cambridge academic Corin Throsby takes us on a journey into Byron's intimate fan mail and shows what those letters reveal about the creation of a celebrity culture that has continued into the present.This essay was recorded in front of an audience at the BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking Festival 2011 at Sage Gateshead. You can hear Corin Throsby presenting Radio 3's Sunday Feature series Literary Pursuits on Truman Capote https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000gl43 and find another Essay from her recorded at the York Festival of Ideas A Romanticist Reflects on Breast Feeding https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08wn2rmProducer: Craig Smith

Would you don a diving suit or take a drug in a quest to understand the life of someone else? "Following in the footsteps" is an obsession for biographers as they travel the world to bring their subjects to life, sometimes with dangerous consequences.Hull University Professor of Creative Writing Martin Goodman, biographer of the sorcerer Carlos Castaneda, the Indian mystic Mother Meera and the scientist John Scott Haldane, draws on visits to high peaks, the seabed, coal mines and monasteries to reveal the challenges of the biographer's art. This episode was recorded at Sage Gateshead at the Free Thinking Festival in 2012.The New Generation Thinkers scheme is 10 years old in 2020. Jointly run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, each year it offers ten academics at the start of their careers a chance to bring fascinating research to a wider public. This week we hear five essays from this last decade of stimulating ideas. You can also find a playlist of Documentaries, Discussions and other Essays by New Generation Thinkers on the Free Thinking website and over the weekend of November 28th and 29th they will appear across a variety of Radio 3 music programmes.You can find Martin Goodman discussing his most recent novel J SS Bach in an episode of Free Thinking called Art and Refugees from Nazi Germany https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00027m6Producer: Adrian Washbourne

Democracy, Hong Kong and USA Free ThinkingHong Kong has seen elections postponed, pro-democracy protesters arrested and a sweeping new national security law imposed by Beijing this year outlawing sedition and subversion. Rana Mitter asks whether Hong Kong can retain its unique identity and how the city's culture can help us make sense of these turbulent times. And, is there Trumpism without President Trump? Following the fortunes of the Republican Party in the US elections, we consider where the ideas associated with the 45th president sit in the history of conservative political thought.Tammy Ho is Associate Professor of English at HK Baptist University, and a specialist on Hong Kong identity in literatureZuraidah Ibrahim is deputy executive editor of the South China Morning Post, the main English-language newspaper in the city, and she is the co-author of Rebel City: Hong Kong’s Year of Water and FireJeffrey Wasserstrom is Professor of Chinese history at the University of California and the author of Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink, based on meetings with many of the Hong Kong protestorsColleen Graffy is Professor of International Law at Pepperdine University's Caruso School of Law. She served in the George W Bush administration as deputy assistant secretary of state for diplomacyHenry Olsen is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Centre and a regular columnist for the Washington Post, as well as the conservative journal National Review. His recent book is The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar ConservatismProducer Ruth Watts

Teaching writing - mentors Helen Mort and Blake Morrison compare notes. Plus as Georges Perec's memoir I Remember is published in English for the first time, we look at the rules of writing proposed by the Oulipo group which was founded in 1960 by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais. Georges Perec (1936 – 1982) came up with a "story-making machine" and created a novel in which the letter 'e' never appears. Queneau's Exercices de Style recounts a bus journey ninety-nine times. Shahidha Bari talks to Adam Scovell and Lauren Elkin about Oulipo. Helen Mort's books include poetry collections Division Street and No Map Could Show Them and a debut novel Black Car Burning and she is a Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University https://www.helenmort.com/ Blake Morrison's books include poetry collections Dark Glasses and Pendle Witches, And When Did You Last See Your Father? which won the JR Ackerley Prize for Autobiography and a study of the murder of James Bulger, As If. He is Professor of Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London. http://www.blakemorrison.net/ Their conversation is part of the series Critical Friends organised in partnership with the Royal Society of Literature https://rsliterature.org/ You can find more writerly conversations in the Free Thinking playlist Prose and Poetry https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p047v6vh Adam Scovell is the author of novellas including How Pale the Winter Has Made Us and Mothlight Lauren Elkin is the author of The End of Oulipo? An Attempt to Exhaust a Movement and Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London George Perec's I Remember translated into English by David Bellos and Philip Terry has just been published by Editions Gallic. Producer: Ruth Watts

Melting glaciers, cacophonous refugee camps, voices in heads, bathroom altercations and indigenous communities in crisis are the subjects of this year's AHRC Research In Film Awards.Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough talks to researchers and filmmakers from the winning films, which are:Inspiration Award: ‘To Be A Marma’ - Ed Owles Best Doctoral of Early Career Film: ‘Voices Apart’ - David Heinemann Best Climate Emergency Film: ‘A Short Film About Ice’ - Adam Laity Best Animated Film: ‘Bathroom Privileges’ - Ellie Land Best Research Film: ‘Shelter without Shelter’ - Mark E BreezeYou can hear Tom Scott Smith discussing his research into refugee shelters in this episode of New Thinking called Refugees https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000k37n This episode of Free Thinking is put together in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI as one of a series of discussions focusing on new academic research also available to download as New Thinking episodes on the BBC Arts & Ideas podcast feed. You can find the whole collection here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90

Would you change your nose if you could? What about an entire face transplant? Des Fitzgerald speaks to researchers investigating the past and future of facial difference and medical intervention and looks at videos from participants in the AboutFace project, which are being launched as part of the Being Human Festival this November.Emily Cock, from the University of Cardiff, looks at our relationship with our noses throughout history – from duels and sexual diseases to racial prejudice.Fay Bound Alberti, from the University of York, talks about a project called AboutFace, which she is running to look at the emotional impact of face transplant surgery, investigating the moral questions it raises, looking at the impact of facial difference in the age of the selfie, and the emergence of facial transplantation as a response to severe trauma. There have been fewer than 50 face transplants globally since the first was performed in 2005 and none in the UK to date. You can find more at https://aboutfaceyork.com/ @AboutFaceYorkFay is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow from the Department of History at the University of York and is working with Sarah Hall on the launch of new videos as part of the 2020 Being Human Festival https://beinghumanfestival.org/ The BBC has a series of programmes reflecting the anniversary of the Disability Discrimination Act UKEmily Cock is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, undertaking a three-year project Fragile Faces: Disfigurement in Britain and its Colonies (1600–1850). Her book is called Rhinoplasty and the nose in early modern British medicine and cultureShe and host Des Fitzgerald, from the University of Exeter, are New Generation Thinkers on the scheme run by the BBC with the AHRC to work with academics to put research onto radio.You can find a playlist called New Research on the Free Thinking website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90This episode was made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI.

What connects a "double elephant" sized map, an academy of dissenters and Daniel Defoe? Shahidha Bari makes a virtual visit to the University of Derby's hub for the Being Human Festival 2020. Today the East Midlands city of Derby is often overlooked, but it was one of the powerhouses of the industrial revolution. Historians and archivists have been exploring Derby as a postcolonial city and uncovering its hidden past. We hear how an intricate set of world maps by the 18th-century cartographer Hermann Moll may have arrived in Derby and what they tell us about the city's relationship with the world. What light can the Mexican silver coins Arkwright used to pay his mill workers at Cromford shed on 19th-century global trade and piracy? And how did Derby's little theatre club formed after the Second World War give rise to a star of the British cinema, Alan Bates?Shahidha Bari speaks to historians from the University of Derby; Dr Cath Feely, Professor Paul Elliot and Dr Oliver Godsmark. And we hear from Laura Phillips, Head of Interpretation and Display at Derby Museums. and Mark Young, Librarian at Derby Local Studies Library.Being Human Festival: https://beinghumanfestival.org/Other programmes in our Free Thinking New Research playlist includes: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09fnz6t Lost and Found in the Archives https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b6hk Love Stories https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b082kwts What the Archives revealProducer: Ruth Watts

What does it mean to make art to commemorate histories of conflict? Anne McElvoy's guests are artists Es Devlin and Machiko Weston, Art Fund director Jenny Waldman, chair of the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group Ekow Eshun and Paris Agar from the IWM as Radio 3 joins with the Imperial War Museum for the 2020 Remembrance Debate.Es Devlin and Machiko Weston worked together on a digital artwork commission to mark the 75th anniversary of Hiroshima. What images and words were appropriate to use? https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/i-saw-the-world-end1,600 volunteers, all men, dressed in replica World War I British army uniforms, and appeared on station platforms and public spaces across the UK in Jeremy Deller's artwork We're Here Because We're Here. That was on of the many projects commissioned by Jenny Waldman as part of 14-18 NOW, the UK's official arts programme for the First World War Centenary.Ekow Eshun is chair of the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group and creative director of the Calvert 22 Foundation.Paris Agar is an art curator on the Cold War and Late 20th Century team at the IWM who worked on the What Remains, Culture Under Attack programming and projects to mark the Fall of the Berlin Wall anniversary.Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Matthew Sweet and guests discuss the history and ideas behind the charity shop, our relationship with 'stuff', and musical typewriters - aspects of November's Being Human Festival.Matthew talks to researchers whose work is featured in the festival, which showcases research from a series of UK universities. His guests are anthropologist and soprano Jennifer Cearns from University College London; George Gosling, a historian at the University of Wolverhampton; Georgina Brewis of University College London's Institute of Education; plus Vaibhav Singh from the University of Reading, who shares his research into typewriters and plays a tune on a musical typewriter.https://beinghumanfestival.org/You can find conversations about love stories, researching archives, beer and buses, and haunted houses in previous episodes related to Being Human Festivals, alongside other new academic research in the Free Thinking playlist called New Researchhttps://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90Producer: Emma Wallace

Mr Wilder & Me is the title of the new novel from Jonathan Coe, who won the Costa Prize for his book Middle England. He is one of Matthew Sweet's guests in a programme exploring the life and work of the Austrian born director behind Hollywood hits including Sunset Boulevard, Double Indemnity and Some Like it Hot. They are joined by film critics Phuong Le and Melanie Williams and Paul Diamond, the son of Billy Wilder's long time writing partner I.A.L. Diamond who worked on scripts for Some Like It Hot; The Apartment (which won an Academy Award for Best Screenplay); Irma la Douce; and The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.Jonathan Coe's Mr Wilder & Me is out now.In the Free Thinking archives and available to download as Arts & Ideas podcasts you can find Matthew Sweet discussing films including Tarkovksy's Stalker https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0775023 the career of Cary Grant https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000hn1z Silent Film Star Betty Balfour https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04007l1 Laurel and Hardy's The Music Box https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001xwdYou can also find him discussing the stage adaptation of Jonathan Coe's novel The Rotters' Club in an event recorded at the Birmingham Rep Theatre https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b076b15hProducer: Torquil MacLeod

This November sees the 25th anniversary of the UK Disability Discrimination Act. As we consider what contemporary progress has been made we'll uncover the long history of disabled people’s political activism, look back at the treatment of disabled people in Royal Courts and at fictional portrayals of disability in 19th-century novels from Dickens and George Eliot to Charlotte M Yonge and Dinah Mulock Craik. Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough presents.Professor David Turner is the author of Disability in Eighteenth-Century England: Imagining Physical Impairment which won the Disability History Association Outstanding Publication Award for the best book published worldwide in disability history. He teaches at Swansea University and was advisor on the BBC Radio 4 series Disability: A New History. His latest book is Disability in the Industrial Revolution: Physical Impairment in British coalmining 1780-1880 (co-authored with Daniel Blackie). Dr Clare Walker Gore has just published Plotting Disability in the Nineteenth-Century Novel. She teaches English at the University of Cambridge and is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker.This episode of Free Thinking is put together in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI as one of a series of discussions focusing on new academic research also available to download as New Thinking episodes on the BBC Arts & Ideas podcast feed. You can find the whole collection here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90Jessica Secmezsoy-Urquhart is at the University of St Andrews. They look at the disabled history of the royal court in Renaissance England and Scotland and the role of the Court Fool. They also make films and broadcasts for The Social on BBC Scotland.

From East Africa to Arabia, the First World War to Mozambique, Rana Mitter discusses the impact of war on society and culture. Margaret MacMillan's most recent book is called War: How Conflict Shaped Us and takes a deep dive into the history of conflict. Rob Johnson considers what we gain by exploring the overlooked side of Lawrence of Arabia - his thoughts on warfare and military strategy. And, the end of the Gaza empire, and the clash in East Africa between Belgian, German, British and French forces are explored in novels by Mia Couto and Abdulrazak Gurnah. They compare notes about the way fiction can trace changes in relationships due to war.Producer: Ruth Watts

From online dance, pavement performances of plays, and the part played by audiences in Greek theatres and Shakespeare's Globe - how is performance adapting in the Covid era, and how are we rethinking what an audience is? Shahidha Bari hosts a discussion, with Kwame Kwei-Armah of the Young Vic; Kirsty Sedgman from the University of Bristol, who looks at theatre from Ancient Greece on; Lucy Weir, who teaches dance at the University of Edinburgh and is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker; and Ted Hodgkinson, who programmes literary events at the Southbank Centre in London.This episode is part of the programming for BBC Radio 3's residency at London's Southbank Centre and their Inside Out Season of Music and Literary Events, which include concerts broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 and available to catch up with via BBC Sounds, and a series of author interviews and discussions.The Young Vic is marking its 50th anniversary with a series of events, including Twenty Twenty - 3 plays centred around the themes of Home, Heritage, and History which mark the culmination of a year-long community project with Blackfriars Settlement, Certitude, and Thames Reach, and various online films.You can find discussions about how Covid has affected classical and musical audiences and programming on BBC Radio 3's Music Matters programmes https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006tnvxProducer: Emma Wallace

From carers and refugees, New Deal America in the 30s back to Enlightenment values - Anne McElvoy explores the intersections between community and the individual, care and conscience with: Robert D. Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett, authors of The Upswing, arguing for a return to the communitarian American values of the New Deal-era1920s Madeleine Bunting, whose book Labours of Love looks at the crisis of care in the UK today New Generation Thinker Dafydd Mills Daniel, whose book Conscience and the Age of Reason traces the history of the idea of conscience from the 18th century Enlightenment to today. Novelist Jenny Erpenbeck, whose past work has included a novel Go, Went, Gone, exploring the integration of asylum seekers into German society and whose new work is a collection of essays called Not A Novel. You might also be interested in the playlist called The Way We Live Now on the Free Thinking website which includes Rutger Bregman on Kindness, discussions about modern slavery, refugees, gambling and narcissism https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p072637bThis episode is tied into Radio 3's residency at London's Southbank Centre and their Inside Out programme of talks and concerts which have included interviews with social reformers and campaigners - and an installation of images and poetry called Everyday Heroes marking the work of carers.Producer: Luke Mulhall

How has the pandemic changed our experience of urban space and what is the future for cities like London? Caleb Femi was young people's poetry laureate for London. Katie Beswick and Julia King research the way we use our streets. Irit Katz studies how the urban environment is shaped by crisis.Caleb Femi's Poor - a collection of poetry and photographs of the lives of young black men in Peckham - is published in November 2020. Katie Beswick is the author of Social Housing in Performance: The English Council Estate on and off Stage and teaches at the University of Exeter. Julia King is a Research Fellow at LSE Cities looking at "Streets for All" https://www.lse.ac.uk/cities . Irit Katz lectures in Architecture and Urban Studies at the University of Cambridge.This episode is part of the programming for BBC Radio 3's Residency at London's Southbank Centre which is broadcasting live concerts and tying into their talks and literature series of online events Inside Out.Producer: Torquil MacLeod

His stinging critique of European colonial racism and hypocrisy Discours sur le Colonialisme was first published in 1950. How does it resonate today? A founder of the Négritude movement, Aimé Césaire (26 June 1913 – 17 April 2008) also wrote poetry and a biography of Haitian revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture. To discuss the influence of Césaire's writing, Rana Mitter is joined by Sudhir Hazareesingh, who has just published his own biography of Toussaint; New Generation Thinker Alexandra Reza, from the University of Oxford; and Jason Allen-Paisant who lectures in Caribbean Poetry and Decolonial Thought at the University of Leeds.Black Spartacus: The Epic Life Of Toussaint Louverture by Sudhir Hazareesingh is out now and will be read as a Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 from 16 November. Dr Sudhir Hazareesingh, who teaches the University of Oxford, has also written How the French Think. You can hear him in this Free Thinking episode https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b060zrykAlexandra Reza teaches post-colonial literature at the University of Oxford and is a New Generation Thinker - a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council that selects ten academics each year to turn their research into radio.Writing by Jason Allen-Paisant has been published in Granta, PN Review, Callaloo, and Carcanet’s New Poetries Series VIII, among other placesThis episode is linked to BBC Radio 3's residency at London's Southbank Centre and the BBC Culture in Quarantine initiative https://www.bbc.co.uk/artsYou can find other episodes devoted to influential books, plays, films, and art in a Free Thinking playlist called Landmarks of Culture, which includes the writing of Wole Soyinka, Audre Lorde, Susan Sontag, and Rachael Carson. You can find it on the Free Thinking programme website and all are available to download as Arts & Ideas podcasts. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0144txnProducer: Emma Wallace

Sunil Gupta says his photographs ask what does it mean to be a gay Indian man? Shahidha Bari looks at his work and talks to the winners of the 2020 Polari Prize, which usually takes place at London's Southbank Centre, and to Paul Burston, founder of the salon. https://www.polarisalon.com/Amrou Al-Kadhi's memoir Life as a Unicorn deals with their life growing up as a queer Arab Muslim drag queen through stories of tropical aquariums, quantum physics and Egyptian divas. They are the winner of the Polari First Book Prize 2020.Kate Davies's In at the Deep End is a novel that charts a twenty-something civil servant's introduction to lesbian sex, the queer community and complicated, toxic relationships. She is the winner of the Polari Overall Book Prize 2020.From Here to Eternity: Sunil Gupta a Retrospective runs at the Photographers' Gallery until 24th Jan 2021, including images from his street photography, the 1970s New York Gay Liberation scene, his series The New Pre-Raphaelites and newer digital works.This episode is part of BBC Radio 3's residency at London's Southbank Centre and the BBC Culture in Quarantine initiative https://www.bbc.co.uk/artsYou might also be interested in the Free Thinking playlist of discussions called Culture Wars and Identity Discussions which includes a debate about new masculinities hearing from Sunil Gupta and others https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06jngztMain image: Sunil Gupta, Untitled #13, 2008, From the series The New Pre-Raphaelites, Courtesy the artist and Hales Gallery, Stephen Bulger Gallery and Vadehra Art Gallery © Sunil Gupta. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2020Producer: Caitlin Benedict

How a Croydon housewife baffled a 1930s ghost hunter - the author of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, Kate Summerscale, talks to Matthew Sweet about her discovery of a dossier of interviews about a poltergeist "terrorising" Alma Fielding which made headlines in the 1938 Sunday Pictorial newspaper.30 artists interested in seances and spirituality are on show in an exhibition co-curated by Simon Grant and the Drawing Room Gallery in partnership with Hayward Touring.Plus we return to a radio experiment in telepathy and a 1920s on air seance with psychologist Richard Wiseman, author of Paranormality amongst many other books. Can you sense what card he is holding?Kate Summerscale's latest book The Haunting of Alma Fielding is out now and is being read as Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 from October 24th.The Hayward Gallery Touring exhibition Not Without My Ghosts: The Artist as Medium developed in partnership with Drawing Room, London runs there until Nov 1st, then it is at Millennium Gallery, Museums Sheffield 19th Nov - 7 March 2021, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea 20 March - June 13 2021, Grundy Art Gallery Blackpool.The 1927 BBC telepathy experiment with Sir Oliver Lodge described by Richard Wiseman was listed in the Radio Times and you can read about it here: https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/1a8b7f91de874debaa392671d7542ea3#This episode is part of BBC Radio 3's residency at the Southbank Centre and the BBC Culture in Quarantine initiative https://www.bbc.co.uk/artsIn the Free Thinking archives and available as Arts & Ideas podcasts are episodes in which Matthew Sweet goes ghost hunting in Portsmouth https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09dynj0 Shahidha Bari discusses ghost stories and Halloween with curator Irving Finkel, writers Jeremy Dyson, Kirsty Logan, Nisha Ramayya and Adam Scovell https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0009t19 Matthew Sweet looks at the history of magic https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000kvss and at Piranesi and disturbing architecture hearing from guests including Susanna Clarke and Lucy Arnold https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000mlgh and at mystics and reality hearing about spiritualist Daniel Dunglas Home from New Generation Thinker Edmund Richardson https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07f6r54Producer: Alex Mansfield

Jacques Derrida was the superstar philosopher of the 1980s and 90s. Often associated with the philosophical movement known as 'poststructualism', he made the enigmatic statement that 'There is nothing outside the text'. Today, one conspiracy theorist has commented that he studied poststructualism in college and learned from it that everything is narrative. Is Derrida and his style of thought a pathway to the 'post-truth' age? Or is that a crude distortion of an important body of philosophical work? Matthew Sweet discusses Derrida and his legacies with biographer Peter Salmon, philosopher Stella Sandford, and translator and friend of Derrida Nicholas Royle.You can find other discussions of philosophy on the Free Thinking playlist which includes discussions about Boethius, Aristotle, panpsychism, marxism, Mary Midgley https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07x0twx This includes Stella Sandford, Professor at Kingston University, in conversation with Bernard-Henri Lévy and Homi K Bhabha looking at the impact of Covid https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jq87Producer: Luke Mulhall

Poet Daljit Nagra and crime writer Val McDermid discuss capturing different forms of speech, a sense of place, and politics - in a conversation organised with the Royal Society of Literature and Durham Book Festival, and hosted by presenter Shahidha Bari. Plus, how the medieval fable of Reynard the Fox has lessons for us all today. As a new translation and retelling by Anne Louise Avery is published, she joins Shahidha to discuss the book with Noreen Masud - a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker from Durham University. Based on William Caxton's translation of the medieval Flemish folk tale, this is the story of a wily fox - a subversive, dashing, and anarchic character - summoned to the court of King Noble the Lion. But is he the character you want to emulate, or does Bruin the Bear offer us a better template?Reynard the Fox, a new version with illustrations, is published by the Bodleian Library, and is translated and retold by Anne Louise Avery.Daljit Nagra is the author of British Museum; Ramayana - A Retelling; Tippoo Sultan's Incredible White-Man-Eating Tiger Toy-Machine!!!; and, Look We Have Coming to Dover.Val McDermid is the author of several crime fiction series: Lindsay Gordon; Kate Brannigan; DCI Karen Pirie; and, beginning in 1995, the Tony Hill and Carol Jordan series, which was televised as Wire in the Blood. Her latest book - a Karen Pirie thriller - was published in August 2020 and is called Still Life.Details of events for Durham Book Festival https://durhambookfestival.com/ One of the events features Durham academic Emily Thomas talking about travel and philosophy - you can hear her in a Free Thinking episode called Maths and philosophy puzzles https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000fws2Crime writer Ian Rankin compared notes on writing about place with Bangladeshi born British author Tahmima Anam in an RSL conversation linked to the Bradford Literature Festival https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000khk6You can find more book talk on the website of the Royal Society of Literature https://rsliterature.org/There are more book interviews on the Free Thinking playlist Prose and Poetry https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p047v6vh This includes: Anne Fine with Romesh Gunesekara; Irenosen Okojie with Nadifa Mohamed; and Paul Mendez with Francesca Wade.Producer: Emma Wallace

From a VR version of Viking life and what you can learn from gaming, to describing collections in military museums, to the range of independent museums and the passions of their founders for everything from old engines to bakelite, witchcraft to shells. Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough looks at new research into a range of collections, why more are opening and what is missing.Fiona Candlin is Professor of Museology at Birkbeck, University of London. She leads the MAPPING MUSEUMS research project and has so far documented over 4,200 of the UKs independent museums, all opened in the last 60 years. She gives us a glimpse into the rich variety of topics covered by small museums around the UK, and discusses how they chart social change. http://museweb.dcs.bbk.ac.uk/homeHenrietta Lidchi is Chief Curator at the National Museum of World Cultures in the Netherlands and principal investigator on the AHRC-funded project Baggage and Belonging: Military Collections and the British Empire, 1750 – 1900 with National Museums Scotland. She tells us what makes the collections of Military museums unique. https://www.nms.ac.uk/collections-research/our-research/featured-projects/collecting-practices-of-the-british-army/And Sarah Maltby is Director of Attractions at the York Archaeological Trust. She’s leading research aimed at taking the JORVIK VIKING CENTRE online. How does a museum famed for recreating the physical realities of the Viking world using smells and re-enactment re-imagine itself virtually? https://www.jorvikvikingcentre.co.uk/Edward Harcourt talks about the project to create a virtual museum of objects and ideas suggested by the public. The Museum of Boundless Creativity will launch fully later this Autumn. https://ahrc.ukri.org/innovation/boundless-creativity/museum-of-boundless-creativity/This episode of Free Thinking is put together in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI as one of a series of discussions focusing on new academic research also available to download as New Thinking episodes on the BBC Arts & Ideas podcast feed. You can find the whole collection here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90Producer: Helen Fitzhenry.

Directors of the Hermitage, the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the National Gallery, Singapore explain how they are dealing both with the challenge of Covid-19 and the greater accountability demanded by worldwide social justice movements. Anne McElvoy hosts a discussion organised in collaboration with Frieze Masters and Frieze London, talking to:Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky, Director of the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. Kaywin Feldman, Director of the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. Chong Siak Ching, CEO of the National Gallery of Singapore.Producer: Torquil MacLeod.You can find previous discussions recorded with Frieze on the Free Thinking website and available to download as BBC Arts & Ideas podcasts. And this episode is part of the #MuseumPassion series of programmes being broadcast by the BBC in early October 2020

Biographers of Tom Stoppard, Sylvia Pankhurst and a little known SS soldier compare notes. How does the process differ if your subject is alive, if their story has already been enshrined in history, if they were active in the Nazi regime? Anne McElvoy talks to three authors about researching and writing a life history and the journeys it has taken them on from a Nazi letter discovered in an armchair, to the play scripts by a living dramatist who fled Nazi occupation in Czechoslovakia and has become part of the British arts establishment to the campaigning travels of a suffragette to Soviet Russia, Scandinavia, Europe & East Africa.Professor Dame Hermione Lee's latest biography is called Tom Stoppard: A Life. It's Book of the Week from October 5th on Radio 4 and BBC Sounds. She has previously written on Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf and Penelope Fitzgerald. Rachel Holmes is the author of Sylvia Pankhurst: Natural Born Rebel. Her previous book was Eleanor Marx: A Life Daniel Lee has written The SS Officer's Armchair: In Search of a Hidden Life. He teaches at Queen Mary, University of London and is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to turn academic research into radio.Delve into our website and you can find episodes exploring Suffrage history with Fern Riddell and Helen Pankhurst amongst the guests https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09th2dt Programmes about German history including Neil Mcgregor and Philip Sands https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b079mcgf or Sophie Hardach and Florian Huber https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0006sjx A debate about Jewish identity in 2020 with guests including Howard Jacobson and Bari Weiss https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000fwqd And there's Hermione Lee looking at Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00zt79p You can find more in the Prose and Poetry collection on the Free Thinking website.Producer: Ruth Watts

From Roman emperor Septimius Severus to Senegal's Signares to the ten days in Harlem that Fidel Castro used to link up with African leaders at the UN, through to the missed opportunity to enshrine racial equality in post war negotiations following World War I; Olivette Otele, Simon Hall and Jake Hodder share their research findings with New Generation Thinker Christienna Fryar.Olivette Otele is Professor of the History of Slavery at the University of Bristol and Vice-President of the Royal Historical Society. Her book African Europeans: An Untold History is published on 29 October 2020. Simon Hall is Professor of Modern History at the University of Leeds. His book Ten Days in Harlem: Fidel Castro and the Making of the 1960s is out now. Jake Hodder is Assistant Professor in the School of Geography at Nottingham University and has published articles on Black Internationalism and the global dynamics of race. New Generation Thinker Christienna Fryar runs the MA in Black British History at Goldsmiths, University of LondonYou can find Catherine Fletcher talking about Alessandro de Medici in this Essay for Radio 3 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06nrv7k Robin Mitchell discusses her researches into Ourika, Sarah Baartman and Jeanne Duval in a Free Thinking episode called How we talk about sex and women's bodies https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000f5n6 The Early Music Show on Radio 3 looks at the life of Joseph Boulogne de Saint Georges https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0801l4g The Shadow of Slavery discussed by Christienna Fryar, Katie Donington, Juliet Gilkes Romero and Rosanna Amaka https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000f7d5 Slavery Stories in the fiction of Esi Edugyan and William Melvin Kelley https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001bch What Does a Black History Curriculum Look Like ? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000kpl5 Johny Pitts looks at Afropean identities with Caryl Phillips https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0005sjwThis episode of Free Thinking is put together in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI as one of a series of discussions focusing on new academic research also available to download as New Thinking episodes on the BBC Arts & Ideas podcast feed. You can find the whole collection here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90Producer: Karl Bos

New critical biographies of Sylvia Plath and Seamus Heaney and a reissue of Anne Sexton's poems prompt a conversation for National Poetry Day about our image of a poet. Is it possible to separate a poet's life from their work? Shahidha Bari is joined by New Generation Thinkers Sophie Oliver and Peter Mackay, and by Plath biographer Heather Clark. And she talks to Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi about her new novel, The First Woman – a coming of age story of a young girl in Uganda, mixing modern feminism and folk beliefs against a backdrop of Idi Amin’s regime.The First Woman is out now. Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi teaches creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University, and her other books are Kintu and the short story collection Manchester Happened.Mercies: Selected Poems by Anne Sexton is being issued in the Penguin Modern Classics series in November 2020On Seamus Heaney by Roy Foster is published by Princeton University PressRed Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark is published in October by Vintage.Sophie Oliver teaches at the University of Liverpool and researches women and modernist writers, including Jean Rhys. She also writes for the TLS, Burlington Magazine, and The White Review.Peter Mackay teaches at the University of St Andrews and has published writing on Sorley MacLean; an anthology, An Leabhar Liath: 500 years of Gaelic Love and Transgressive Verse; and his own collection of poems Gu Leòr / Galore.Free Thinking has a playlist of conversations about prose and poetry on the website - all available to download as Arts & Ideas podcasts. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p047v6vhIf you have been affected by the mental health issues in this programme, you can find details of support organisations from the BBC Action Line website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/4WLs5NlwrySXJR2n8Snszdg/emotional-distress-information-and-supportProducer: Emma Wallace

From Cuyp's paintings, to Wordsworth's wanderings to modern dairy management and soil fertility via Victorian Industrial farming and talking Swiss satirical cows - Cumbrian farmer James Rebanks joins Matthew Sweet in a programme marking the anniversary of the poet Wordsworth, who helped shape attitudes to landscape. Other guests include New Generation Thinker Seán Williams from the University of Sheffield and Professor Karen Sayer from Leeds Trinity University who is writing Farm Animals in Britain, 1850-2001 and is part of a team of academics working on the project https://field-wt.co.uk/James Rebanks is the author of English Pastoral: An Inheritance; The Shepherd's Life and The Illustrated Herdwick Shepherd. An exhibition of paintings by Cuyp (1620–1691) at the Dordrechts Museum in Holland will now run from 3 October 2021– 6 March 2022Sean read his own translation from the 1850 Novel "The Cheese Dairy in Cattlejoy" by Jeremias Gotthelf.The contemporary cow-art Karen mentions is in an online exhibition at Reading's Museum of English Rural Life https://merl.reading.ac.uk/explore/online-exhibitions/sire/Producer: Alex MansfieldYou might also be interested in the Free Thinking Collection of episodes Green Thinking which includes discussions about soil, Rachel Carson's influential book Silent Spring, a Free Thinking festival discussion with James Rebanks and anthropologist Veronica Strang, Peter Wohlleben on trees, George Monbiot on the Green Man myth, Chris Packham on music https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07zg0r2 Our Woolly episode looks at sheep from medieval wool merchants and images of the lamb of God to Sean the Sheep on screen https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0009bw4You can find a discussion about Wordsworth with the directors of Lancaster University's Wordsworth Centre for the Study of Poetry https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p087kr4nRadio 3 is broadcasting new writing from the 2020 Contains Strong Language Festival in Cumbria on The Verb and as the Radio 3 Drama.

The tribe of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, having a Jamaican Welsh identity, the idea of freedom and anti-colonial resistance, the alarming rise of youth suicide among Indigenous people in Canada and how a group of pioneering cultural anthropologists – mostly women – shaped our interpretation of the modern world: these are the topics tackled in the shortlist for the 2020 prize for a book fostering global understanding. Rana Mitter talks to the authors.Imperial Intimacies: A Tale of Two Islands by Hazel V. Carby Insurgent Empire – Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent by Priyamvada Gopal Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power by Pekka Hämäläinen The Reinvention of Humanity: A Story of Race, Sex, Gender and the Discovery of Culture by Charles King All Our Relations: Indigenous trauma in the shadow of colonialism by Tanya TalagaThe international book prize, worth £25,000, and run by the British Academy, rewards and celebrates the best works of non-fiction that have contributed to global cultural understanding, throwing new light on the interconnections and divisions shaping cultural identity worldwide. Over 100 submissions were received and the winner is announced on Tuesday 27 October.Producer: Karl BosThe winner in 2019 was Toby Green for A Fistful of Shells – West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution and other previous winners include Kapka Kassabova, Neil MacGregor and Karen Armstrong. You can find interviews with the winenrs and the other shortlisted authors for the 2019 prize (Ed Morales, Julian Baggini, Julia Lovell, Aanchal Malhotra and Kwame Anthony Appiah in this Free Thinking collection https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07p3nxh

Edmund Fawcett's latest book focuses on the historic and contemporary conflicts in Conservatism. He describes how the constant tensions within the Conservative political thought have been exposed and what it might mean for the continuation of the tradition.Paul Vallely argues that philanthropy is about more than mere altruism. It is always an expression of power, regardless of any desire to make the world a better place. He discusses the contradictions at the heart of philanthropy from the Greeks to modern philanthrocapitalists - and how philanthropy might still do good.Ian Dunt and Grace Blakeley have written about the challenges facing Liberals and Socialists respectively. They discuss how these big intellectual traditions might survive contact with the current moment.Conservatism: The Fight for a Tradition by Edmund Fawcett is published by Princeton University PressPhilanthropy: From Aristotle to Zuckerberg by Paul Vallely is published by BloomsburyHow to be a Liberal: Thinking for Yourself in a Populist World by Ian Dunt is published by Canbury PressSocialist Futures: The Pandemic and the Post-Corbyn Era edited by Grace Blakeley is published by VersoThe Corona Crash: How the Pandemic Will Change Capitalism by Grace Blakeley is published by VersoProducer: Ruth Watts

How German argument differs from English, the links between Arabic and Chinese and different versions of The 1001 Nights to the use of slang and multiple languages in the work of young performers and writers in the West Midlands: John Gallagher looks at a series of research projects at different UK universities which are exploring the impact and benefits of multilingualism.Katrin Kohl is Professor of German Literature and a Fellow of Jesus College. She runs the Creative Multilingualism project. https://www.creativeml.ox.ac.uk/about/people/katrin-kohl https://www.creativeml.ox.ac.uk/creative-multilingualism-manifestoWen-chin Ouyang is a professor of Arabic literature and comparative literature at SOAS, University of London. Her books include editing an edition for Everyman's Library called The Arabian Nights: An Anthology and Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel: Nation-State, Modernity and Tradition. You can hear more from Wen-chin in this Free Thinking discussion of The One Thousand and One Nights https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b052gz7gRajinder Dudrah is Professor of Cultural Studies & Creative Industries at Birmingham City University. His books include the co-edited South Asian Creative and Cultural Industries (Dudrah, R. & Malik, K. 2020) and Graphic Novels and Visual Cultures in South Asia (Dudrah, R. & Dawson Varughese, E. 2020).Saturday, 26 September is the European Day of Languages 2020 and Wednesday, 30 September is International Translation Day 2020 which English PEN is marking with a programme of online events https://www.englishpen.org/posts/events/international-translation-day-2020/You might also be interested in this Free Thinking conversation about language and belonging featuring Preti Taneja with Guy Gunaratne, Dina Nayeri, Michael Rosen, Momtaza Mehri and Deena Mohamed. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07fvbhnHere is a Free Thinking episode that looks at the language journey of the 29 London bus https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00014qk Steven Pinker and Will Self explore Language in this episode of Free Thinking https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04hysms Arundhati Roy talks about translation and Professor Nicola McLelland and Vicky Gough of the British Council look at language learning in schools https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b5hk01This episode of Free Thinking is put together in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI as one of a series of discussions focusing on new academic research also available to download as New Thinking episodes on the BBC Arts & Ideas podcast feed. You can find the whole collection here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90Producer: Karl Bos