Arts & Ideas

Rachel Reeves MP, Hull academic Jane Thomas and New Generation Thinker Katie Cooper discuss the novel South Riding and the writing and politics of Winifred Holtby with Matthew Sweet and an audience in Hull at the Contains Strong Language Festival. With readings by Rachel Dale.Winifred Holtby (23 June 1898 – 29 September 1935) came from a farming family in Yorkshire, met Vera Brittain at Oxford University and shared a house in London as they began their careers as writers. Brittain went on to publish Testament of Youth. Holtby made her name with journalism for newspapers including the Manchester Guardian and the feminist magazine Time and Tide and published 14 books including the first critical study of Virginia Woolf. When her doctor gave her only two more years to live, she devoted herself to writing her novel South Riding which was published the year after she died aged 37.Rachel Reeves is Labour MP for Leeds and the author of books including Women of Westminster: The MPs Who Changed Politics Jane Thomas is Professor of Victorian and early 20th century literature at Hull University. Dr Katie Cooper teaches at the University of East Anglia and is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker working on a project exploring writers' organisations and free expression.Contains Strong Language is the BBC's national poetry and spoken word festival which took place in Hull for the first time 3 years ago as part of the City of Culture celebrations.Producer Fiona McLean

Rana Mitter and guests look at the history of atheism and morality. Alec Ryrie's new book 'Unbelievers: an emotional history of doubt' argues that the rationality arguments for non-belief developed after congregations began to doubt the church. The Barber Institute in Birmingham begins a new exhibition into one of the more enigmatic sacred artists of c15 Antwerp, Jan de Beer. Sarah Wise has contributed a chapter on Morality to a new imprint of Charles' Booth's notorious London Poverty Maps. Jenny Kilbride lived and worked in the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic in Ditchling, Sussex where her father had moved as a weaver to work in an Arts and Crafts community in the 1920s. A new Exhibition in the Ditchling Art and Craft Museum explores the legacy of the group - their faith, social creed, and wares.Charles Booth's Poverty Maps have been republished and a project at LSE allows you to search them https://booth.lse.ac.uk/ Sarah Wise is the author of The Italian Boy, the Blackest Streets, Inconvenient People: Lunacy, Liberty and the Mad Doctors in Victorian England The Barber Institute in Birmingham is showing Truly Bright and Memorable: Jan de Beer's Renaissance Masterpieces from October 25th to January 19th. Alec Ryrie is a Professor at Durham University whose books include Protestants: the Faith that Made the Modern World, the Age of Reformation and his most recent Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt. Jenny Kilbride still weaves, and Disruption, Devotion + Distributism is at the Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft until April 2020.You can find a collection of programmes Free Thinking on religious belief on the programme website. All are available as Arts & Ideas downloads https://bbc.in/2N2g3fk Producer: Alex Mansfield.

Should we really be celebrating the 500th anniversary of the arrival of Cortés and European settlers in Mexico? Is this a "first encounter" - and how do you decipher history when there isn't anything written down? Claudia Rogers compares notes with Nandini Das. Nandini has been re-reading the accounts written by John Rolfe of his marriage to Pocahontas and looking at what we gain when we flip the narrative and see from the point of view of indigenous people. Hosted by New Generation Thinker John Gallagher from the University of Leeds. Professor Nandini Das is Project Director for Tide: http://www.tideproject.uk/ Travel, Transculturality and Identity in England c1550- 1700 is an ERC funded project. Claudia Rogers currently teaches at the University of Leeds, where she completed her PhD, and continues her connection with the University of Sheffield as an Honorary Research Fellow. You can view the Lienzo de Tlaxcala online http://www.mesolore.org/cultures/synopsis/3/Nahua This episode is one of a series of conversations - New Thinking - produced in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UK Research & Innovation. New Generation Thinkers is an annual scheme to showcase academic research in radio and podcasts. You can find more information on the Arts and Humanities Research Council website https://ahrc.ukri.orgProducer: Luke Mulhall

How welcome are selfies in modern art galleries and museums? What kind of labelling should be on display and should more objects be repatriated? Laurence des Cars from the Musée d'Orsay, Kennie Ting from Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore and Philip Tinari from UCCA Beijing join Anne McElvoy and an audience at the Royal Institute of British Architects for this year's Frieze Free Thinking debate about the issues facing museum directors. The Frieze Art Fair ran in London October 3-6 and returns to Los Angeles Feb 2020 and New York May 2020.Laurence des Cars became Director of the Musée de l’Orangerie in 2014. From 2007 to 2014, she was the French operator responsible for the development of the Louvre Abu Dhabi.Philip Tinari is Director and CEO of UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing. During his tenure, UCCA has mounted more than seventy exhibitions. From 2009 to 2012 he founded and edited LEAP, the first internationally distributed, bilingual magazine of contemporary art in ChinaKennie Ting is the Director of the Asian Civilisations Museum and the Peranakan Museum, and concurrently Group Director, Museums at the National Heritage Board (NHB) Singapore. He has changed the focus from a geographical to a thematic, cross-cultural way of looking at art. He is the author of The Romance of the Grand Tour – 100 Years of Travel in South East Asia and Singapore 1819 – A Living Legacy.You can hear Michael Govan, Sabine Haag and Hartwig Fischer in The Frieze Debate: Museums in the 21st Century https://bbc.in/2O5LF6V and this year's in depth conversation with Michael Govan is also available as a BBC Arts&Ideas podcast https://bbc.in/2mST8tn and in the visual arts playlist on the Free Thinking website.

Matthew Sweet on Chaplin's 1941 film and rising populism today with guests including Francesca Santoro L'hoir who acted alongside Chaplin as a child plus Ece Temelkuran, Peter Pomerantsev and Frank Dikotter.Dutch Historian Frank Dikotter, who teaches in China, has published books on The Cultural Revolution, Mao's Famine and most recently How to Be a Dictator: the Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century which looks at Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Ceausescu, “Papa Doc” Duvalier, Kim Il Sung and Mengistu Haile MariamThe Turkish journalist, novelist and poet Ece Temelkuran is the author of How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to DictatorshipPeter Pomerantsev's books include Nothing is True and Everything is Possible and This is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality. You can hear Peter taking part in our Free Thinking discussion about George Orwell's novel 1984 if you look up the collection of Landmarks of Culture on the Free Thinking website or use this link https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0005nrlProducer: Torquil MacLeod

From Sean the Sheep & Damien Hirst to a knitted bikini. Shahidha Bari with a woolly episode talks to writer and knitter Esther Rutter, shepherd Axel Linden, medievalist John Lee and cultural historian Alexandra Harris.Esther Rutter is the author of This Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain's Knitted History. Shepherd Axel Linden farms in Ostergotland county in the south east of Sweden and has written On Sheep - Diary of a Swedish Shepherd. Professor Alexandra Harris considers sheep in art and literature including works by Andy Goldsworthy, Damien Hirst and Holman Hunt. John Lee is the author of a book about cloth making in the late Middle Ages called The Medieval Clothier.Producer: Paula McGinley

Anne McElvoy talks prehistory with archaeologist Mike Pitts and artist Renee So plus critic Alex Clark gives her take on this year's Booker Prize winners - Bernadine Evaristo and Margaret Atwood, and director Tinuke Craig discusses putting Gorky on stage in a new version written by Mike Bartlett.Ancient and Modern by Renee So is at the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill until 12th January Digging up Britain: Ten discoveries, a million years of history by Mike Pitts is available now Vassa by Gorky in a new version by Mike Bartlett runs at the Almeida Theatre in London until November 23rd.You can hear Booker prize winner Bernadine Evaristo talking about her depiction of 12 characters aged 12 to 93 in Girl, Woman, Other on the Free Thinking we broadcast back in May when the novel was published https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0004s6n . You can find it in the Free Thinking Prose and Poetry playlist on the programme website.Also in the New Thinking archive, which focuses on new research from UK universities, an episode called Neolithic Revelations: A lack of Neolithic dental floss proves to be a boon for archaeologists. Penny Bickle and Jim Leary share some surprising findings.

As the British Museum opens an exhibition on orientalism Inspired by the East, Matthew Sweet's guests include Ziauddin Sardar, editor of Critical Muslim, artist Inci Eviner, and historian Tom Holland, whose new book explores the Making of the Western Mind. Plus cultural critic Fatima Bhutto argues that the days of US inspired culture dominating the world are over and art forms from the global south such as Bollywood films, K-Pop and Turkish telenovelas are taking over.Fatima Bhutto's book is called New Kings of the World: Dispatches from Bollywood, Dizi, and K-PopCritical Muslim is a quarterly publication of ideas and issues showcasing thinking on Islam and what it means to be a Muslim in a changing, interconnected world.Tom Holland's books include Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West; Millennium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom and latest Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind (U.S. edition subtitled 'How the Christian Revolution Remade the World')Inspired by the east: how the Islamic world influenced western art runs at the British Museum in London from 10 October 2019 – 26 January 2020 and features contemporary art work by Inci Eviner.

Caryl Churchill's C21st Bluebeard, the fragility of a glass girl and other myths reworked in 4 new short dramas. Jen Harvie discusses the storytelling on stage of one of Britain's leading dramatists. Hetta Howes looks back at American author Rachel Ingalls who died earlier this year aged 78. Her novel Mrs Caliban depicts a lonely housewife who befriends a sea monster.The German born US based artist Kiki Smith has produced sculptures, tapestries and artworks looking at pain and bodily decay and real and imaginary creatures in bronze, glass, gold and ink for her first solo UK exhibition in a public institution in 20 years. Gerald Scarfe has just published Long Drawn Out Trip: My Life moving from his early days at Punch and Private Eye to his designs for Pink Floyd’s The Wall and Disney’s Hercules. He's also putting together an illustrated coffee table book Scarfe: Sixty Years Of Being Rude which will be published in November. Glass, Kill, Bluebeard, Imp 4 short dramas by Caryl Churchill, directed by James MacDonald run at London's Royal Court Theatre from September 18th - October 12th. Kiki Smith: I Am A Wanderer runs at Modern Art Oxford from September 28th to January 19th 2020. Hetta Howes is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council which puts academic research onto the radio. She presents our podcast New Thinking which showcases new research. You can find past episodes on topics ranging from the philosophy of pregnancy to the links between dentistry and archaeology by signing up for the BBC Arts&Ideas podcast or looking on the Free Thinking website collection New Research.Producer Zahid Warley

Laurence Scott looks at the way Dutch writers are addressing history and contemporary life with Rodaan Al Galidi, Eva Meijer, Onno Blom, Herman Koch and Toon Tellegen.Eva Meijer is an author, artist, singer, songwriter and philosopher. Her non-fiction study on animal Communication, Animal Languages has been published this year and her first novel to be translated into English Bird Cottage, has been nominated for the BNG and Libris prizes in the Netherlands and is being translated into several languages.Rodaan Al Galidi is a trained engineer who fled his native Iraq and arrived in the Netherlands in 1998. He taught himself Dutch and now writes both prose and poetry. His novel De autist en de postduif (The autist and the carrier-pigeon) was one of the books in 2011 given the EU Prize for Literature.Onno Blom is an author, literary reviewer and freelance journalist who has appears regularly discussing books on the Dutch radio show TROS Nieuws, has worked as editor-in-chief at the publishing house Prometheus and whose biography of the Dutch artist and sculptor Jan Hendrik Wolkers won the 2018 Dutch biography prize.Herman Koch is an actor and a writer. His best-selling novelist, The Dinner, was published in 55 countries and sold more than a million copies. His new book, The Ditch, is a literary thriller.Toon Tellegen is is one of the best-known Dutch writers. In 2007 he received two major prizes for his entire oeuvre. He considers himself in the first place a poet and has published more than twenty collections of poetry to date, among them Raptors. He is also a novelist and a prolific and popular children’s author.Events put on by the Dutch Foundation for Literature, New Dutch Writing and Modern Culture take Dutch writers to Norwich, London.Producer: Zahid Warley

Michael Govan, Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art outlines the issues facing museum directors talking with Philip Dodd and an audience at the Frieze London Art Fair. They debate the "authority" of museums, the idea of "great" art and he answers critics of his rebuilding plan.Michael Govan took over running LACMA in 2006 following his work at the DIA Art Foundation in New York City. The Los Angeles museum has partnered with Chinese-Indonesian entrepreneur Budi Tek to create a new foundation, to which Tek will donate his vast Chinese art collection. Plans also include establishing a satellite museum in South Los Angeles and new Peter Zumthor designs for redisplaying the LACMA collections.You can find more interviews to download with artists, curators and museum directors in the Visual Arts playlist on the Free Thinking programme website https://bbc.in/2DpskGSYou might also be interested in the new podcast and Essay series from Radio 3 The Way I See It which sees works of art from the collection of MOMA in New York chosen and discussed by guests including Steve Martin, Steve Reich, Margaret Cho and Roxane Gay. Producer Robyn Read.

Who holds the power? The US activist and author Rebecca Solnit talks to Shahidha Bari about pros and cons of anger, US border patrols, rape cases in courts and shifts in the point of view of Hollywood films. Plus a look at the theme of National Poetry Day 2019 - Truth with the poet David Cain author of Truth Street - A Hillsborough Poem and Fiona Benson - whose collection is called Vertigo & Ghost.Rebecca Solnit's fourth Essay collection is called Whose Story Is This ? Old Conflicts, New Chapters.Producer: Torquil MacLeod

A 15,000-line epic, Poly-Olbion has inspired Professor Andrew McRae from the University of Exeter and the Places of Poetry project which asks you to pin newly written poems to a modern version of William Hole's map of England and Wales. Why did Michael Drayton leave out Scotland? And what do the modern poems tell us about Brexit Britain? Hetta Howes finds out and talks to writers Pete Kalu & Will Harris alongside Dr Corinne Fowler from the University of Leicester about the Colonial Countryside Project. This has taken 100 children, 10 National Trust properties and 10 writers whose work is being published by Peepal Tree Press and has put the spotlight on stories such as former plantation owner who lived in Speke Hall in Liverpool. Find out more information on https://www.placesofpoetry.org.uk and https://colonialcountryside.wordpress.com/ and http://poly-olbion.exeter.ac.uk/ Will Harris has also worked with the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and https://museumofcolour.org.uk/This episode is one of a series of conversations - New Thinking - produced in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UK Research & Innovation. New Generation Thinkers is an annual scheme to showcase academic research in radio and podcasts. You can find more information on the Arts and Humanities Research Council website https://ahrc.ukri.orgProducer: Debbie Kilbride

Rana Mitter talks to Jason Webster, Ed Morales, Iain Sinclair and Iwona Blazwick, about the shifting concepts of identity in the Ibero-Latin world, from the days before Spain was a single Spain, through the indigenous and the artistic of South America, to the multiplicity of ethnic and cultural identities represented in the US by the neologism "Latinx".

"They do not come into our house in jackboots... This is not totalitarianism. This is a new kind of power." Shoshana Zuboff discusses surveillance capitalism, the links between Pokémon Go and BF Skinner, the behavioural psychologist she studied with at Harvard in the 1970s. Plus the mystery of the cuckoo clock in The Third Man. To mark the 70th anniversary of Carol Reed's classic post-War thriller, Matthew Sweet visits the archive of the British Film Institute with Angela Allen, the script supervisor for the film. And we retrace Stieg Larsson's investigation into the unsolved assassination of Olof Palme in 1986 with Jan Stocklassa, author of the book The Man Who Played With Fire.If you look up Free Thinking and Learning from Sweden you can hear about British and Swedish cultural exchange from Abba to Ikea https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09z68sn and our programme called Dark Sweden gives you journalist Kajsa Norman on crime in modern Sweden.Shoshana Zuboff's book is called The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.Films about emotions from anger and joy to the manipulation of adverts made at our Free Thinking Festival can be found on https://www.bbc.com/ideas/playlists/free-thinking-2019. The discussions include a debate about the manipulative power of advertising How They Manipulate Our Emotions https://bbc.in/2WYmOlO and you can see a film about it on bbc.com/ideas/videos/how-ads-manipulateProduced by Luke Mulhall

Comedian Sofie Hagen, Colombian novelist Héctor Abad, political journalist Isabel Hardman, artistic director John O'Shea & psychologist Dr Colette Hirsch, who are behind a new exhibition about anxiety, join Shahidha Bari.On Edge: Living in an Age of Anxiety is a new exhibition at Science Gallery London until 19th January 2020 which combines art, design, psychology and neuroscience drawing on research from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King’s College London.Comedian Sofie Hagen has explored her experience of anxiety in many of her shows notably Shimmer Shatter which described with brutal honesty what she calls her outsider status and why she's been known to hide public toilets so she doesn't have to deal with other people. Her new show The Bumswing runs until June 14th 2020. Tour details and her podcast Made of Human Podcast on https://www.sofiehagen.comPolitical journalist Isabel Hardman has written about going through a severe bout of anxiety 2 years ago which forced her to take a lengthy break from her job at the Spectator. As she puts it herself, "my mind was full of words flying angrily around like startled gulls." She argues that Government policy should do much more to tackle the issue of mental health care. Her latest book is called Why We Get the Wrong Politicians.Born and brought up in Colombia, journalist and novelist Héctor Abad has written a memoir called Oblivion about his late father who was killed by right wing paramilitaries in 1987.In the Free Thinking archives - Anxiety and the Teenage Brain hears a student, university counsellor and psychologist Stephen Briers from TV's Teen Angels give their take on anxiety https://bbc.in/2D4WPRVProducer: Paula McGinley

Matthew Sweet is joined by guests including comedian Alexei Sayle, TV presenter Janet Ellis and film critics Adam Mars Jones and New Generation Thinker Iain Smith to look at remakes and new interpretations of the '80s from Stephen King's 1986 horror novel IT - now in cinemas as It Chapter Two, Rambo - first seen on screen in 1982 and now the inspiration for Last Blood and My Beautiful Launderette, which Hanif Kureishi has adapted for a UK theatre tour this Autumn - to TV series like Stranger Things.Second Sight The Selected Film Writing of Adam Mars-Jones is out now.The Film of My Beautiful Launderette has been reissued on DVD by the BFI and a theatrical version by Hanif Kureishi opens at the Curve Leicester Sept 20th and travels to Cheltenham, Leeds, Coventry, Birmingham.Alexei Sayle's books include Thatcher Stole My Trousers. During the 1980s he performed with the Comic Strip, in the Secret Policeman's Other Ball, The Young Ones and various other TV series and movies including Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Revelation Of The Daleks. Doctor Who and Whoops Apocalypse. His series Alexei Sayle's Imaginary Sandwich Bar can currently be heard on BBC Radio 4.Janet Ellis presented TV series Blue Peter and Jigsaw between 1979 and 1987. Her second novel How It Was is out now.Dr Iain Smith teaches film at Kings College, London and is the author of The Hollywood Meme: Transnational Adaptations in World Cinema.Producer: Craig Templeton Smith

Lauren Elkin, Lisa Appignanesi and biographer Ben Moser debate Susan Sontag's life and ideas with presenter Laurence Scott, focusing in on her 1966 essay collection, which argued for a new way of approaching art and culture.Ben Moser is the author of Sontag: Her life and work which is out now. Lauren Elkin teaches at the University of Liverpool and is the author of Flâneuse: Women Walk the City. She is researching Sontag's time in Sarajevo in 1993 when she staged Waiting for Godot during the Siege following the declaration of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s independence from Yugoslavia. Lisa Appignanesi is a Visiting Professor in the Department of English at King's College London and Chair of the Royal Society of Literature Council . Her books include Everday Madness, Simone De Beauvoir, Freud's Women.You can hear more from Lisa including her BBC Radio 3 interview with Susan Sontag if you search for the Sunday Feature Afterwords: Susan Sontag https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00022p1Producer: Luke Mulhall

Moral philosopher Susan Neiman studies lessons from German & US history. Ursula Owen went from Virago to Index on Censorship. Christopher Hampton has translated an Ödön von Horváth novel about the fallout from an accusation of racism. Anne McElvoy brings them together for a conversation about tolerance, censorship and parallels between the past and the present. Written in exile while in flight from the Nazis, Youth Without God was the last book by Ödön von Horváth (1901-1938), a German-writing Austro-Hungarian-born playwright and novelist . Christopher Hampton's stage version has its UK stage premiere at the Coronet Theatre, Notting Hill London from 19 Sep–19 Oct Susan Neiman's latest book Learning from the Germans: Confronting Race and the Memory of Evil looks at western struggles with the legacies of racism and colonialism. A white girl from the American South, Susan Neiman is also a Jewish woman living in Berlin and the book draws on these experiences. Urusula Owen's parents were German Jews who fled Berlin for London. Her career has seen her work as a founder director of Virago Press and later as Chief Executive of Index on Censorship. Her memoir is called Single Journey Only. Producer: Harry Parker

Should we be renting our clothes instead of buying new ? Plus how robots are influencing the colour of our fashions. Mark Sumner and Stephen Westland both teach in the School of Design at the University of Leeds and they're involved in the Future Fashion Factory. This is a major government funded project working with industry and university research aiming to boost sustainability in fashion by using technology in new ways, looking at what we can do to change consumer and company attitudes to #fastfashion and the way neural networks can cut waste by accurately predicting what colours we really want to wear next season. Shahidha Bari hears from them and New Generation Thinker Jade Halbert from the University of Huddersfield describes her trip to a clothes recycling facility in Yorkshire. Colourpedia project at Leeds https://www.colourpedia.org More information also at https://futurefashionfactory.org/This episode is one of a series of conversations - New Thinking - produced in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UK Research & Innovation. New Generation Thinkers is an annual scheme to showcase academic research in radio and podcasts. You can find more information on the Arts and Humanities Research Council website https://ahrc.ukri.orgProducer: Torquil MacLeod

Witchcraft, witch-trials and the image of the witch are explored by historian Professor Suzannah Lipscomb and Dr Thomas Waters. Hosted by New Generation Thinker Fern Riddell. Dr Thomas Waters is the author of Cursed Britain: A History of Witchcraft and Black Magic in Modern Times. Suzannah Lipscomb has presented a Channel 5 TV programme on witchcraft and written a Ladybird Expert Book on the topic. Produced by Luke Mulhall

Caroline Dower is a psychotherapist and currently Head of the Counselling Service at Durham University. She has a special interest in the experience of psychological distress, and the experience of anxiety in young adults.Ceyda Uzun is a student at Kings College London, currently in her final year studying English Literature. She is a former Into Film Reporter and Head Editor of The Strand Magazine who has written on topics including mental health, identity and youth culture.Stephen Briers is a British clinical psychologist who took part in BBC Three's Little Angels and Teen Angels, working with Tanya Byron. He has presented the Channel 4 series, Make Me A Grownup, The 10 Demandments for Channel Five and appeared on GMTV. He has written a parenting book called Superpowers for Parents, Help your Child to Succeed in Life and contributes frequently to the Times Educational Supplement.BBC Action Line 08000 155 998 - http://www.bbc.co.uk/actionline

The best selling thriller writer, Ruth Ware and the editor of the popular Letters of Note anthologies, Shaun Usher, join Sophie Coulombeau to discuss letter writing in the 21st century. Producer: Zahid Warley

Why the bible story of Jephtha caused more controversy than your average burnt offering. Reverend Richard Coles and Old Testament scholar Dr Deborah Rooke explain it all. Presented by John Gallagher. Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Writer and broadcaster, Horatio Clare and the rapper and playwright, Testament join Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough to explore the ways in which the British landscape - urban and rural -- inspires writers. Producer: Zahid Warley

Nina Simone - singer, pianist, civil rights activist and black feminist icon -- Kevin Legendre, Ayanna Witter-Johnson and Zena Edwards discuss her achievements and legacy. Producer: Zahid Warley

Presenter Seán Williams discusses Beethoven the man and. Through a series of readings we learn what inspired the composer’s work.

Anindya Raychaudhuri discusses Kipling's Jungle Books with children's novelist Frances Hardinge and academic Sue Walsh, recorded in front of an audience at Imperial College Union. How does Kipling use language to create character and discuss identity? And can we separate the adventure and storytelling from the imperialist baggage of the Jungle Books? Producer: Luke Mulhall

Enter a world where huts walk on chicken legs, fish grant wishes and Baba Yaga sharpens her iron tooth with writers Marina Warner and Sophie Anderson. Presented by Victoria Donovan.Producer: Torquil MacLeod

New research on slavery with historians Christienna Fryar, Kevin Waite, and Andrea Livesey. A Different Drummer was the debut novel of Kelley - first published when he was 24. Compared to William Faulkner and James Baldwin, it was forgotten until an article about it led to republication. Kelley died aged 79 in 2017. His story imagines the day the black population of a Southern US town decide to get up and all go. Canadian writer Esi Edugyan has imagined a black slave becoming a scientist in her novel Washington Black. Laurence Scott presents.

Historians Lee Jackson and Kathryn Hughes discuss what kept Queen Victoria's subjects amused indoors and outdoors. Presenter: Rana MitterKathryn Hughes, historian and author of Victorians UnboundLee Jackson, the author of Palaces of Pleasure, How the Victorians invented Mass Entertainment.

Berlioz originally presented an early version of The Shepherd's Farewell - part of The Childhood of Christ, at this year's Proms - as the work of ‘Ducré’. It soon emerged that Ducré was not a forgotten 17th century composer, but a hoax created to satirize Parisian high society.Shahidha Bari presents an exploration of the literary hoax - from Thomas Chatterton's invented 15th century monk to faked Shakespeare deeds and a racy "discovered" diary. She is joined Nick Groom, Professor of English at Exeter University and author of "The Forger's Shadow", to guide us through this long and rich tradition.Clive Hayward brings these fraudsters, forgeries and fabulations to life with readings from some of the most creative and audacious examples.Producer: Ciaran Bermingham

From Napoleon impersonators, caricature and ballads, to a play which asks what if he didn't die in exile - presenter Anne McElvoy is joined by actor and director Kathryn Hunter, biographer Michael Broers, historians Oskar Cox Jensen and Laura O'Brien and journalist Nabila Ramdani who looks at how Napoleon is viewed in 21st century FranceMichael Broers has published the second instalment of his biography which is called Napoleon The Spirit of The Age. Oskar Cox Jensen has published Napoleon and British Song. Laura O'Brien has published The Republican Line: Caricature and French Republican Identity

Recorded as his film Peterloo opened in cinemas and repeated now to mark this week's 200th anniversary of the Manchester massacre

The award-winning author of young adult novels, Patrice Lawrence and historian Emma Butcher - who specialises in 19th century child soldiers - discuss the construction of childhood past and present with New Generation Thinker and literary scholar, Lisa Mullen. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run annually by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to turn early career academics into broadcasters.

Tchaikovsky’s letters to his brothers and to his nephew - to whom his final Symphony, the Pathétique, is dedicated - are fascinating insights into the composer’s turbulent life and work. Though his sexuality has, in particular, long been a topic of speculation, it is only recently that many of these previously suppressed letters have come to light.Shahidha Bari presents a selection of the most intimate, witty and revelatory ones, with readings by actor and writer Tom Stuart. She is also joined by composer and pianist Rolf Hind, who will discuss why a "queer" reading of the letters might help our understanding of Tchaikovsky and his contested legacy.Producer: Ciaran Bermingham

Novelist and Gothic literature specialist Elizabeth Lowry joins the writer, documentarist, film-maker and psycho-geographer Iain Sinclair to discuss the dark glitter of the Gothic and the work of the American poet Edgar Allan Poe, with presenter Matthew Sweet.Elizabeth Lowry’s latest book is entitled 'Dark Water'Producer: Torquil MacLeod

One way that people deal with grief and suffering is to turn to tragic stories for example and catharsis. Rana Mitter discusses tragedy, ancient and modern with the award-winning poet Clare Pollard, author of ‘Ovid’s Heroines’, and the literary historian, Jennifer Wallace, whose new book is ‘Tragedy Since 9 /11’ Producer: Zahid Warley

In 2017, Sacha Dench, founder of Conservation Without Borders, flew the 4,000 mile migration route of Bewick swans from Arctic Russia to the UK in a paraglider. Drawing on her experience, the ‘Human Swan’ talks about the birds that have become symbolic of love, beauty, and mystery. Dance critic Sarah Crompton talks about the numerous productions of Swan Lake that she has seen and why the ballet has become such a staple of the repertoire.. Presenter Hetta Howes.Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Since 1983, Spike Lee's production company has produced over 35 films. His 1989 film Do The Right Thing was nominated for Best Original Screenplay in the Academy Awards. Best Picture that year went to Driving Miss Daisy. 30 years on Do the Right Thing has been re-released in cinemas in the UK and BlacKkKlansman is now out on DVD. It won Best Adapted Screenplay in the 2019 Academy Awards where Best Picture went to Green Book.

Taking their inspiration from the Russian and Finnish composers of 2019 Prom 22, Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough and an audience at Imperial College London hear from Mythos Podcaster Nicole Schmidt and the musical scholar and New Generation Thinker Leah Broad about the role of legends and landscapes in north European music. They'll be talking trolls and suncream, the political dimension of being folk or not folk enough, and the peculiar potency of midsummer with its emphasis on fertility, creation and destruction and unusual purple light.New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the BBC for early career academics and future broadcasters.

1996 was the summer of Woodstock, the moon landing, the Beatles’ Abbey Road and a gathering of beat poets at the Royal Albert Hall. Author and New Generation Thinker Preti Taneja is joined by poets Rachael Allen and Jacob Polley to take an un-nostalgic look at how the Sixties appear now. We'll also hear them perform some of their own poetry. The discussion is inspired by the programme for the Proms concert for Prom 11 The Sound of a Summer. For 30 days following the concert you can hear the music here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00070rj or find it on the Proms or BBC Radio 3 website.Producer: Zahid Warley.

Naomi Paxton discusses the latest science and clinical practice with psychologist Dr Daisy Fancourt, a psychologist and epidemiologist who studies the relationship between music and health, and Dr Simon Opher, a GP in Gloucestershire who prescribes music and other cultural practices for his patients. Producer: Luke Mulhall

As the Proms marks the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landings, Professor Richard Wiseman, author of ‘Shoot For The Moon’ and Melanie Vandenbrouck the lead curator of the Moon exhibition at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich join Rana Mitter to discuss the legacy of the Apollo 11 mission. Producer: Zahid Warley

Matthew Sweet looks at book frontispieces, dust jackets, footnotes, indexes and marginalia with Dennis Duncan, and explores a research project investigating difficulty in culture, with Professor Sarah Knight and Dr Hannah Crawforth. Plus, New Generation Thinker Jeffrey Howard discusses hate speech. Jeffrey Howard lectures in political theory at University College London and is a 2019 New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to put academic research on the radio. On Difficulty: https://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/english/research/research-projects/on-difficulty-in-early-modern-literature Producer: Luke Mulhall

Anne McElvoy and new ways of understanding post-war Germany and Austria through history, film and literature with Florian Huber, Sophie Hardach, Adam Scovell and Tom Smith. Florian Huber Promise Me You'll Shoot Yourself explores a little understood wave of suicides across Germany towards the end of the Third Reich Sophie Hardach's latest novel called Confession with Blue Horses follows a family living in East Berlin who try to escape to the West. Adam Scovell is a film critic and author whose new novella is called Mothlight and blogs at Celluloid Wicker Man Tom Smith teaches German at the University of St Andrews and is a 2019 New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select academics who can turn their research into radio. You can hear an Essay about the Stasi persecution of queer soldiers recorded at the York Festival of Idea here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07dgydc Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Hetta Howes learns that the absence of dental floss in the Neolithic era has left archaeologists with invaluable information about how our ancestors lived and where they travelled to. While piles of pig bones near Stonehenge reveal a communal society that used feasting as a form of negotiation. Penny Bickle and Jim Leary, who both lecture in the University of York's Department of Archaeology, uncover their findings from research projects in the Vale of Pewsey, Alsace and Stonehenge. Penny's current project is 'Counter Culture: investigating Neolithic social diversity', while Jim has been working on 'Neolithic Pilgrimage? Rivers, mobility and monumentality in the land between Avebury and Stonehenge'. This episode is one of a series of conversations - New Thinking - produced in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UK Research & Innovation. Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Encyclopedia of Shakespeare's Language uses corpus linguistics, a statistical method that collates data on how frequently words are used and how often particular words appear alongside each other, to investigate Shakespeare's work. And the results are startling. John Gallagher talks to Professor Jonathan Culpeper and Professor Alison Findlay, both from Lancaster University, about how the project works, and the light it's shedding both on how Shakespeare worked as a writer, and on the development of the English language in Shakespeare's day. http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/shakespearelang/ Dr John Gallagher is a Lecturer in the History Department at the University of LeedsThis podcast was made with the assistance of the AHRC - the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) which funds research at universities and museums, galleries and archives across the UK into the arts and humanities. The AHRC works in partnership with BBC Radio 3 on the New Generation Thinkers scheme to make academic research available to a wider audience.

What is the metaphysical status of an unborn fetus in relation to its mother? Is it possible to know what pregnancy will mean for you before you become pregnant? How can the distinction between having a duty to do something and acting for a reason help us make sense of debates surrounding breast feeding? And why have philosophers of the past had so little to say on these matters? Hetta Howes gets to grips with the conceptual puzzles surrounding pregnancy and early motherhood with the philosophers at the University of Southampton investigating them: Professor Elselijn Kingma, Professor Fiona Woollard, and Dr Suki Finn. https://www.southampton.ac.uk/philosophy/research/projects/philosophy-of-pregnancy.pageThis podcast was made with the assistance of the AHRC - the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) which funds research at universities and museums, galleries and archives across the UK into the arts and humanities. The AHRC works in partnership with BBC Radio 3 on the New Generation Thinkers scheme to make academic research available to a wider audience.

Greater Manchester was created in the 1970s, bringing together areas that had previously been parts of Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Cheshire, as well as the City of Manchester itself. These areas all had (and have) quite different accents, so Erin Carrie and Rob Drummond, of Manchester Metropolitan University, have set out to document the accents of Greater Manchester, as a way of investigating whether there's a Greater Manchester identity, and what it is if there is one. John Gallagher talks to Erin and Rob about the methods they've used and what they've found out in the process. https://www.manchestervoices.org/ Dr John Gallagher is a Lecturer in the History Department at the University of LeedsThis podcast was made with the assistance of the AHRC - the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) which funds research at universities and museums, galleries and archives across the UK into the arts and humanities. The AHRC works in partnership with BBC Radio 3 on the New Generation Thinkers scheme to make academic research available to a wider audience.