Arts & Ideas

Eimear McBride is the author of A Girl is a Half-formed Thing and The Lesser Bohemians Professor Finn Fordham from Royal Holloway, University of London is the author of Lots of Fun at Finnegans Wake: I do I undo I redo: and he edited Finnegans Wake for Oxford World Classics Eleanor Lybeck is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker teaches at the University of Oxford and is the author of All on Show: The Circus in Irish Literature and Culture. Derek Pyle is the director of Waywords & Meansigns, an experimental project that sets Finnegans Wake to music With additional Producer: Luke Mulhall

New Generation Thinker Emma Butcher on the first soldier memoirs to talk about pain, terror and trauma. The Napoleonic Wars, like all wars, had their celebrities. Chief among them, Wellington and Napoleon, whose petty rivalry and military bravado ensured their status as household names long after Waterloo. But these wars also saw the rise of a new genre of personal and emotional war literature which took the public by storm. The writers were foot soldiers rather than officers, infantrymen like George Gleig and John Malcolm. Both fought in some of the most decisive battles on the Continent but it is their written accounts of their daily lives, of the true nature of war, its personal costs and the terrors endured, which ensured their best-selling status. This is the story of the rise and rise of the military memoir, with foot soldier as hero, and the way his war stories were lapped up with horrified glee by the armchair readers back home, transforming the image of soldiering for good. Emma Butcher is a Leverhulme Early Career Researcher at the University of Leicester and a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to select academics who can turn their research into radio. She is currently writing her second book, Children in the Age of Modern War, has written for the BBC History Magazine and made Radio 3 programmes on the Brontës, child soldiers, and children in art.Emma Butcher on Kids with Guns https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09vz5lp Emma Butcher on Branwell Bronte https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05770my Producer: Jacqueline Smith

New Generation Thinker Alun Withey on what made 18th-century men shave off centuries of manly growth. Recorded before an audience at the York Festival of Ideas. You can hear audience questions from the event as an episode of the BBC Arts&Ideas podcast.To be clean-shaven was the mark of a C18 gentleman, beard-wearing marked out the rough rustic. For the first time, men were beginning to shave themselves instead of visiting the barber, and a whole new market emerged to cater for rising demand in all sorts of shaving products - soaps, pastes and powders. But the way these were promoted suggests there was confusion over exactly what the ideal man should be. On the one hand, razor makers appealed to masculine characteristics like hardness, control and temper in their advertisements whilst perfumers and other manufacturers of shaving soaps, stressed softness, ease and luxury. So enter the world of Georgian personal grooming to discover the 18th century's inner man.Alun Withey lectures in the Centre for Medical History at the University of Exeter and is a Wellcome Research Fellow and a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker. He has edited an essay collection on the history of facial hair (Palgrave), curated a photographic exhibition of Victorian beards in the Florence Nightingale Museum in London and has written for BBC History Magazine and History Today. He blogs at dralun.wordpress.comAlun Withey on C16 medical history https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p022kyp1 Alun Withey visits Bamburgh Castle https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p036l4q0 Alun Withey's article about the C19th attitude towards beards https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/31SKHd61RYxJBryrQ4NfmWJ/nine-reasons-victorians-thought-men-were-better-with-beards Producer: Jacqueline Smith.

Johny Pitts, Caryl Phillips and Nat Illumine discuss the idea of Afropean identity with Matthew Sweet. Plus New Generation Thinker Dina Rezk on Jehane Noujaim's Oscar nominated documentary The Square and Egyptian politics. Georgia Parris discusses her first film Mari - a family drama of birth, death and contemporary dance. Johny Pitts is one of the team behind https://afropean.com/ an online multimedia, multidisciplinary journal exploring the social, cultural and aesthetic interplay of black and European cultures. He runs this with Nat Illumine. Johny Pitts has just published a book Afropean: Notes from Black Europe Caryl Phillips' most recent novel A View of the Empire at Sunset is inspired by the travels of the writer Jean Rhys who moved from Dominica to Edwardian England and 1920s Paris and his first play Strange Fruit (1980) is being re-staged at the Bush Theatre in London until July 27th 2019. Mari by Georgia Parris is at selected cinemas from June 21st 2019.New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the AHRC to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio. You can hear more from the 2019 Thinkers in this launch programme https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0004dsv Dina Rezk teaches at the University of Reading. You can find extended conversations with Claudia Rankine, Teju Cole, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Spike Lee and Paul Gilroy included in our playlist on the Free Thinking website and available as BBC Arts&Ideas podcasts https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04ly0c8 Producer: Fiona McLean

The American sculptor Michael Rakowitz on how his own Iraqi heritage drove him to make art about the disappearance of artefacts and people. From shame to sympathy - New Generation Thinker Emily Cock looks at the way the British State used facial disfigurement to mark criminals for life. Nicholas Jubber has travelled Europe from Iceland to Turkey exploring the popularity of ancient epic tales - and ahead of the British Academy's summer showcase, we hear from Turkey about new ways of involving local villages in the cultural heritage around them.....and how a conversation between primatologists and archaeologists are refining the story of how stone tool use developed. Michael Radowitz Whitechapel Gallery London 4 June 2019 – 25 August 2019 Nicholas Jubber's book 'Epic Continent' out now Emily Cock teaches at Cardiff University and holds a Leverhulme Fellowship for her research project Fragile Faces: Disfigurement in Britain & its Colonies (1600–1850). Isilay Gursu Cultural Heritage Management Fellow British Institute at Ankara and Tomos Proffitt, Institute of Archaeology, British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow University College London both appearing in British Academy Summer Showcase 21 - 22 June 2019 https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the AHRC to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio. Image: Michael Rakowitz (portrait) with The invisible enemy should not exist (Northwest palace of Nimrud, Room N) 2018 (Photo John Nguyen/PA Wire, Courtesy Whitechapel Gallery) You can hear a discussion of The Odyssey with Amit Chaudhuri, Karen McCarthy Woolf, Daniel Mendelsohn and Emily Wilson https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09kqjc0 Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Rana Mitter hears about a project that assesses the experiences of Muslim women in the UK cultural industries and talks to political artist John Keane. Author Katherine Rundell explains why adults should be reading children's books. Plus New Generation Thinker Majed Akhter on the sailor and activist Dada Amir Haider Khan and why his global approach to workers' rights has lessons for us now.Beyond Faith: Muslim Women Artists Today which includes work by Usarae Gul is at the Whitworth, Manchester from Friday 14th June until October 2019John Keane's exhibition If you knew me. If you knew yourself. You would not kill me. is at Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh as part of the Aldeburgh Festival until Sunday 23rd June.Why You Should Read Children's Books, Even Though You Are Old And Wise by Katherine Rundell is published on 13th June.New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the AHRC to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio. You can hear more from the 2019 Thinkers in this launch programme https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0004dsv Majed Akhter teaches at King's College London.You find hear the discussion about representations of Rwanda on TV and how the country has moved on from the conflict here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001dt8 Taryn Simon https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08q2pkg Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Peter Pomerantsev, Joanna Kavenna, New Generation Thinker Lisa Mullen and Dorian Lynskey join Matthew Sweet to debate George Orwell's vision of a world of surveillance, war and propaganda published in June 1949. How far does his vision of the future chime with our times and what predictions might we make of our own future ? Dorian Lynskey has written The Ministry of Truth Joanna Kavenna's new novel Zed - a dystopian absurdist thriller is published in early July. Peter Pomerantsev's new book This Is NOT Propaganda: Adventures in the war against reality is published in August. Lisa Mullen has published a book of criticism mid-century Gothic and is continuing her research on George Orwell. You can hear her Free Thinking Festival Essay about the role of Orwell's wife Eileen asking Who Wrote Animal Farm? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000413q Part of a week long focus Free Thinking the Future. You can find more interviews and discussions to download and catch up with on the playlist on our website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zwn4d You can find more Landmarks of Culture from 2001 Space Odyssey to Zamyatin's We in our playlist https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01jwn44 Producer: Zahid Warley

A panel of researchers share insights into the law and warfare, gender and AI & Anne McElvoy talks to David Brooks and Hilary Cottam about compassion and creating communities.Part of a week long focus Free Thinking the Future. You can find more interviews and discussions to download and catch up with on the playlist on our website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zwn4dBest selling US author and columnist David Brooks has just published The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life. You can hear him talking to Rana Mitter about his book The Road to Character https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05w8131 Hilary Cottam is Visiting Professor at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose and the author of Radical Help. Ryan Abbott is Professor of Law and Health Sciences at the University of Surrey. Peter Dunne is a lecturer at the University of Bristol Law School Craig Jones is a lecturer in political geography at the University of Newcastle. A BBC Ideas playlist of films Are You Robot Ready is here https://www.bbc.com/ideas/playlists/are-you-robot-ready Producer: Chris Wilson

Joy Buolamwini founder of the Algorithmic Justice League and MIT media lab researcher, Anders Sandberg of the Future of the Human Institute at Oxford, artist Anna Ridler & Sheffield Robotics' Michael Szollosy join Matthew Sweet and an audience at the Barbican to debate whether creativity is something uniquely human. AI: More Than Human runs at the Barbican Gallery until August 26th 2019. Part of a week long focus Free Thinking the Future. You can find more interviews and discussions to download and catch up with on the playlist on our website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zwn4d Producer: Luke MulhallA playlist of videos on BBC Ideas Are You Robot Ready is here https://www.bbc.com/ideas/playlists/are-you-robot-ready

How does writing about art help us embrace a new way of seeing the work ? Rana Mitter is joined at the Hay Festival by the novelist and art essayist Siri Hustvedt , the writer and broadcaster Simon Schama and, marking the 500th anniversary of the Italian Renaissance painter Leonardo da Vinci, the Radio 3/AHRC New Generation Thinker and historian of Renaissance and early modern Europe Catherine Fletcher. Siri Hustvedt’s books include her novels What I Loved, The Summer without Men and The Blazing World and her essays on paintings, Mysteries of the Rectangle and Living, Thinking, Looking. Simon Schama is the author of Rembrandt’s Eyes, Landscape and Memory and The Power of Art. Catherine Fletcher’s work includes Our Man in Rome: Henry VIII and his Italian Ambassador and The Black Prince of Florence. She teaches at Swansea University. Producer: Fiona McLean

Rachel Carson’s passionate book, Silent Spring, first published in 1962 is said to be the work which launched the environmental movement. But how does it speak to us now? For a recording of Free Thinking’s Cultural Landmark series at the Hay Festival, presenter Rana Mitter is joined by guests Tony Juniper, Emily Shuckburgh, Dieter Helm and Kapka Kassabova.Tony Juniper is a campaigner, sustainability adviser and writer of work including Saving Planet Earth and How many lightbulbs does it take to change a planet? Emily Shuckburgh is a climate scientist and mathematician at the British Antarctic Survey and the co-author (with the Prince of Wales and Tony Juniper) of the Ladybird Book on Climate Change. Dieter Helm is an economist specialising in utilities, regulation and the environment. His recent books include Burn Out: the Endgame for Fossil Fuels, The Carbon Crunch, Nature in the Balance and Natural Capital: Valuing the Planet. Kapka Kassabova is a novelist, poet and journalist whose work includes Border,, Someone else’s life and Villa Pacifica. You can hear her talking to Free Thinking about winning the Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding here https://bbc.in/2TsFZ51You can find a collection of all the discussions of Landmarks of culture as a playlist on the Free Thinking website / and available to download as BBC Arts&Ideas podcasts https://bbc.in/2Jw9y5QProducer: Fiona McLean

Author Nicola Upson has imagined the life of Stanley Spencer from the viewpoint of his maidservant. Ella Parry-Davies researches the lives of women from the Philippines who work as domestic and care workers. The novel The Farm by Joanne Ramos imagines a surrogacy service provided by Filippina women for wealthy American clients. Gulzaar Barn researches the ethics of surrogacy. Naomi Paxton presents. Nicola Upson has turned from novels featuring Josephine Tey as a detective to write a potrait of the British artist Stanley Spencer, his relationships with his wives Hilda Carline and Patricia Preece and her partner Dorothy Hepworth in her novel called Stanley and Elsie. Joanne Ramos was born in the Philippines and moved to Wisconsin when she was six. The Farm, her first novel, imagines the lives of Hosts at a surrogacy service. New Generation Thinker Gulzaar Barn is at King's College London working on the ethics of surrogacy. You can hear her Free Thinking Festival Essay https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0003t1w New Generation Thinker Ella Parry-Davies has just returned from a research trip in Lebanon. Hear more from the 2019 New Generation Thinkers in this broadcast from the Free Thinking Festival https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p036y2hb/members/all Producer: Robyn Read

Matthew Sweet hears from Naomi Wolf about ways in which the state interfered in the private lives of its citizens in the 19th century, resulting in a penal codification of homosexuality with long-reaching consequences. They're joined by literary scholar Sarah Parker who tells the story of Michael Field, the pseudonym of two female poets and dramatists who sought literary fame in the late 19th century, and by philosopher Luis de Miranda who explains why neon is good to think with as a metaphor for the present and a better future. Naomi Wolf's Outrages: Sex, Censorship and the Criminalisation of Love is out now Luis de Miranda's Being and Neoness is out now Sarah Parker teaches at School of Arts, English and Drama at the University of Loughborough. She has edited a collection of essays on Michael Field, out in December. Prod: Jacqueline Smith

The walking & photographs of WG Sebald on show in Norwich, American poet Carolyn Forché on the stranger who gave her an insider's view of politics in El Salvador whilst she was in her '20s. Plus an exhibition of money and Jewish history. Laurence Scott presents.Adam Scovell, Philippa Comber and Sean Williams discuss the influence of the German writer WG Sebald who settled in Norfolk. His novel The Rings of Saturn follows a narrator walking in Suffolk, and in part explores links between the county and German history and emigrants. Lines of Sight: W.G. Sebald’s East Anglia An exhibition celebrating the work of the author W.G. Sebald on the 75th anniversary of his birth runs at Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery 10 May 2019 – 5 January 2020 in collaboration with The University of East Anglia Adam Scovell is a film critic and author whose new novella is called Mothlight. Dr Seán Williams is a New Generation Thinker who teaches Germanic Studies at the University of Sheffield Phillippa Comber is the author of Ariadne's Thread – In Memory of W.G. Sebald and In This Trembling Shade, ten poems set to music as a song cycle.BBC Radio 3/AHRC New Generation Thinker Brendan McGeever is at the Pears Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism at Birkbeck University London which was involved in developing the exhibition Jews Money Myth running at the Jewish Museum London until July 7th 2019. Carolyn Forché's Memoir is called What You Have Heard is True. A man who might be a lone wolf, a communist, a CIA operative, a sharpshooter, a revolutionary, a small coffee farmer, drives from El Salvador to invite the 27 year old Forché to visit and learn about his country and she decides to say yes. Producer: Eliane Glaser

Should we widen the net of who has a say over river management and would this be better for our rivers and ultimately ourselves. What are rivers themselves trying to tell us. Shahidha Bari meets four people with artistic, scholarly and personal relationships with fresh running water. Veronica Strang has studied the way peoples and rivers interact around the world and contributed the UN's work on bringing culture into water management; poet John Clarke is working on a poetic soundscape of one polluted Cornish river with his musical collaborator, Rob Mackay ; archaeologist Susan Greaney is an expert on the Neolithic and how people in prehistory would have understood rivers in a holistic way while environmentalist, angler and author, Charles Rangeley-Wilson takes a holistic approach to the health of rivers today from source to sea. Veronica Strang, Executive Director of the Institute for Advanced Study at University of Durham and her books include Water: Nature and Culture and The Meaning of Water; in 2007 she was awarded an International Water Prize as one of UNESCO's, Les Lumières de L'Eau [Water's Leading Lights] and was subsequently involved in editing a major UNESCO/MAB publication on Water and Cultural Diversity. Dr John Clarke teaches at the University of Exeter. Red River: Listening to a Polluted River explores global river pollution and the emotional impact of environmental damage through a small polluted river in West Cornwall. Susan Greaney is an archaeologist with a specialism in British prehistory and is a PhD researcher at Cardiff University and AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker Charles Rangeley-Wilson is a passionate fly-fisherman and author of Silver Shoals: The Five Fish that made Britain and Silt Road – the Story of a Lost River

With an audience at the British Library, Professor Bhabha gives a short talk and discusses ideas about nations and a postcolonial approach to politics, literature and history. Shahidha Bari hosts in a Free Thinking event organised with the Royal Society of Literature. ‘Nations, like narratives, lose their origins in the myths of time and only fully realise their horizons in the mind’s eye. Such an image of the nation – or narration – might seem impossibly romantic and excessively metaphorical, but it is from those traditions of political thought and literary language that the nation emerges as a powerful historical idea in the west.’ So begins Nation and Narration, first published in 1990. For Professor Bhabha, one of the world’s leading cultural theorists, known for his work on hybridity, mimicry, difference, ambivalence and the ‘Third Space’, ‘literature is the repository of culture, tradition, the life in language itself.’ Homi K Bhabha is the Director of the Mahindra Humanities Center, and Senior Advisor to the President and Provost at Harvard University. His works exploring postcolonial theory, contemporary art, and cosmopolitanism, include Nation and Narration and The Location of Culture, which was reprinted as a Routledge Classic in 2004.Producer: Zahid Warley

The worlds large water infrastructure projects often result in geo-political flashpoints - Rana Mitter hears from Majed Akhter about problems from the US to Pakistan while Dustin Garrick outlines a water crisis that is also a crisis in governance and why new management of the Murray-Darling basin in Australia may provide hints about a way forward. And aside from Romulus and Remus, what prompted the founding of Ancient Rome. Archaeologist Andrea Brock outlines her new research that shows the emergence of a new island at a special spot on the Tiber in the 7th century BC led to massive infrastructure projects and urban growth. Dr Dustin Garrick is the co-director of the Smith School Water Programme at the University of Oxford and American Association of Science Leshner leadership fellow. Dr Majed Akhter is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker who lectures at King's College, London. Before becoming a geographer, he was a resource economist and an industrial engineer.Dr Andrea Brock is a lecturer in ancient history at the University of St Andrews. Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Matthew Sweet talks Spaghetti Westerns and Sergio Leone with Christopher Frayling and Samira Ahmed. They also look at the film worlds of Stanley Kubrick as an exhibition runs at London's Design Museum. Plus magic, mind games and the role of the magician's assistant. New Generation Thinker Naomi Paxton and Gustav Kuhn from Goldsmiths, University of London bring their conjuring tricks into the studio.You can hear Christopher Frayling with Brian Cox and the actors Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood discussing Kubrick's 2001 here https://bbc.in/2H8q76pStanley Kubrick: The Exhibition runs to 15th September 2019 at the Design Museum in London.Smoke and Mirrors: The Psychology of Magic runs at the Wellcome Collection in London until 15th September 2019 including performances of magic by Dr Gustav Kuhn and a Friday Late on May 10th.Experiencing the Impossible by Gustav Kuhn is published by MIT Press.

Anne McElvoy reads a new biography of Chaucer by Marion Turner called Chaucer: A European Life and talks to writer Bernardine Evaristo about her depiction of 12 characters aged 12 to 93 in her novel Girl, Woman, Other and to Candice Carty-Williams about her best-selling first novel and podcast Queenie. Plus Matt Wolf looks at representations of money, capitalism and the American dream on stage. You can hear Queenie being read on BBC Radio 4 here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p075drzyAll My Sons by Arthur Miller with Sally Field and Bill Pullman in the cast runs at the Old Vic Theatre until June 8th.Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller with Wendell Pierce, Sharon D Clarke and Arinzé Kene runs at the Young Vic Theatre until 29th June The Lehman Trilogy by Stefano Massini adapted by Ben Power runs at the Picadilly Theatre in London's West End in May for a 12 week run. King Hedley II by August Wilson runs at the Theatre Royal Stratford East from 17th May to 15th June. Producer: Fiona McLean

Rana Mitter and an audience at the British Academy hear from the six historians on this year's shortlist. The books are: Building Anglo-Saxon England by John Blair Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice by Mary Fulbrook Trading in War: London’s Maritime World in the Age of Cook and Nelson by Margarette Lincoln Birds in the Ancient World: Winged Words by Jeremy Mynott Oscar: A Life by Matthew Sturgis Empress: Queen Victoria and India by Miles TaylorThe winner of the Wolfson History Prize 2019 will be named at a ceremony at Claridge’s Hotel, London, on Tuesday 11 June You can find more discussions about history on the Free Thinking website and podcasts showcasing new academic and historical research here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90

Elaine Showalter, Michael Schmidt, Peter Riley and Katie McGettigan with Laurence Scott on the 19th century writers who shaped the idea of America. 1819 was the year that Herman Melville, Walt Whitman and Julia Ward Howe were born. Whitman's Leaves of Grass, , Melville's novels Moby Dick and The Confidence Man and Julia Ward Howe's passionate opposition to slavery and her advocacy of women's suffrage gave birth to the idea of America. But these authors also have a connection with England - a reading group in Bolton dedicated to Whitman, Melville's visit to Liverpool and Julia Ward Howe's encounters with Browning, the Wordsworths and Oscar Wilde.Katie McGettigan is the author of Herman Melville: Modernity and the Material Text Peter Riley's most recent book is Whitman, Melville, Crane and the Labours of American Poetry Elaine Showalter is the author of the biography The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Howe Michael Schmidt is one of the founders of Carcanet Press You can find more information about research and events @Born1819 Listen back to or download the Free Thinking/BBC Arts& Ideas discussion about Ruskin, Bazalgette and Arthur Hugh Clough https://bbc.in/2TLoOfAProducer: Zahid Warley

Kierkegaard humiliated the woman he was due to marry by publicly breaking the engagement - yet one of his most important books is a detailed analysis of the meaning of love. Socrates loved asking the question 'What is love?' but his conversations on the topic are often inconclusive. Matthew Sweet discusses new biographies of each thinker, with their authors Clare Carlisle and Armand D'Angour. Plus Matthew talks to the winner of this year's Wellcome Book Prize for writing which illuminates the many ways that health, medicine and illness touch our lives. Clare Carlisle is the author of Philosopher Of The Heart: The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard Armand D'Angour has written Socrates In Love Information about the books listed for this year's Wellcome Prize for science writing can be found here https://wellcomebookprize.org/

Poet Jackie Kay & performer Selina Thompson plus Jonathan Rollins and Elizabeth Lorde-Rollins the children of Audre Lorde discuss the influence of the US writer & civil rights activist whose work considers feminism, lesbianism, civil rights and black female identity. Shahidha Bari presents. In her famous essay The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House (1980), Lorde wrote:"Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference – those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older – know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."Lorde's writing includes poetry collections such as The First Cities (1968), Cables to Rage (1970) and The Black Unicorn (1978). Her Essays include Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984) and Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference. She also wrote Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982) her novel chronicling her own childhood and sexuality.Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches and The Black Unicorn are being reprinted in the UK this July.Presenter: Shahidha BariProducer: Debbie Kilbride

From Berlin techno music to the Glasgow ‘rag trade’, divisive dams to fake news - hear the research topics of 10 early career academics introduced by New Generation Thinker Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough at the Free Thinking FestivalNew Generation Thinkers is an annual scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 researchers to work on ideas for radio Dr Jeff Howard - University College London - is investigating how to respond to ‘dangerous speech’, lies and ‘fake news’Dr Emily Cock - Cardiff University - is exploring changing attitudes towards facial disfigurement, from C17 to nowDr Ella Parry- Davies -British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama - is researching the home lives of migrant communities of Philippine women in London and BeirutDr Brendan McGeever - Lecturer in the Sociology of Racialization and Antisemitism, Birkbeck, University of London - researches the forgotten Russian pogroms of 1919 Dr Tom Smith - Lecturer in German, University of St Andrews - is exploring the emotional experience of techno music in Berlin and beyondDr Dina Rezk - Associate Professor in Middle Eastern History, University of Reading - has looked at how Dr Bassem Youssef, ‘Egypt’s Jon Stewart’ shot to fameChristine Faraday - University of Cambridge - who is looking into the history of the power of human sightDr Jade Halbert - University of Huddersfield - rediscovers the post-war ‘rag trade’ in British fashionDr Majed Akhter - King's College London - is examining the contentious history of dams built in the 20th centurySusan Greaney - Cardiff University - is unearthing Neolithic humans attitudes to the ground beneath them and the underworldProducer: Jacqueline Smith.

We talk about “human emotion” as if all people, everywhere, feel the same. But three thinkers with an international perspective discuss how the expression and interpretation of emotions differs around the world. China specialist and Radio 3 presenter Rana Mitter hosts this Free Thinking Festival discussion. Aatish Taseer is a writer and journalist who was born in London, grew up in New Delhi and now lives in Manhattan. His first novel, The Temple-Goers was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award. His latest book is The Twice Born: Life and death on the Ganges. Among other publications he has written for Time Magazine, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times.Thomas Dixon was the first director of Queen Mary University of London's Centre for the History of the Emotions, the first of its kind in the UK. He is currently researching anger and has explored the histories of friendship, tears, and the British stiff upper lip in books Weeping Britannia: Portrait of a Nation in Tears and The Invention of Altruism: Making Moral Meanings in Victorian Britain. You can hear his Free Thinking Festival Lecture here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0756nqp Veronica Strang is an environmental anthropologist at Durham University who has researched with indigenous communities in Australia for many years. Her book Uncommon Ground: Landscape, Values and the Environment is about understanding people’s emotional and imaginative attachments to places. She recently assisted the United Nations with research exploring cultural and spiritual values in relation to water.Producer: Zahid Warley

Two animal psychologists and a historian of animal studies join Eleanor Rosamund Barraclought to discuss whether it's possible to recognise similar traits in humans, chimps, crows, hawks, dogs and cats in terms of affinity and attachment, despite different evolutionary paths. How do we know when a chimp wants to play? How does one crow decide what to feed its mate? The Free Thinking Festival explores the emotional similarities and differences between humans & animals. Nicky Clayton is a scientist and a dancer who began as a zoologist and moved into psychology. She is Professor of Comparative Cognition at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of the Royal Society. She is also Scientist in Residence at dance company Rambert and co-founder of The Captured Thought blog and project. Her expertise is in studying members of the crow family, who have huge brains for their body size, and in studying thinking with and without words. Kim Bard is a Professor at the University of Portsmouth. She has studied the development of emotions, cognition, communication, and attachment in captive young chimpanzees for over 30 years. Her research concerns understanding the process of development in evolution and contributes to captive animal welfare. Erica Fudge is Professor of English Studies and Director of the British Animal Studies Network at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. She has written widely on modern and historical human-animal relationships and has recently finished a study of people's lives with their livestock animals in early modern England titled Quick Cattle and Dying Wishes.Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Charles Dickens. Walt Disney. The Romantic poets..These renowned artists and entertainers were all accused of being “over-sentimental”. But is our own age topping them all – with its culture of grief memoirs, gushing obituaries and feel-good fiction? Three Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature join Rana Mitter at the Free Thinking Festival to take a hard look at whether contemporary culture has “gone soft”. Lisa Appignanesi is the author of books including Everyday Madness: On Grief, Anger, Loss and Love; Mad, Bad, and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors; All About Love: Anatomy of an Unruly Emotion and Trials of Passion: Crimes in the Name of Love and Madness. She is Chair of the Royal Society of Literature Council. Irenosen Okojie is author of a novel Butterfly Fish and a short story collection Speak Gigantular - surreal tales of love and loneliness. She has written for The New York Times, The Observer, and The Huffington Post and is currently running a writing workshop at London’s South Bank. Rachel Hewitt’s books include A Revolution of Feeling:The Decade that Forged the Modern Mind and Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey. She is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Newcastle University, where she is also Deputy Director of the Newcastle Centre for Literary Arts.Producer: Zahid Warley

Poet and critic Bridget Minamore, TV drama expert John Yorke and film expert Melanie Williams join Matthew Sweet for a Brief Encounter at the Free Thinking Festival to look at the devices – music, close ups and the cliffhangers that cinema and TV employ to make us cry. From Bambi to Titanic, how have directors managed to trigger our tear ducts? And has the big screen actually shaped our understanding of emotion in modern life. John Yorke is the author of How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them. Former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has shaped stories and big emotional moments in British TV working on series such as Shameless and Life On Mars, EastEnders and Holby City, Bodies and Wolf Hall.Melanie Williams is the author of Female Stars of British Cinema, a book about David Lean and British Women’s Cinema. She teaches at the University of East Anglia. Bridget Minamore has published a poetry pamphlet about modern love and loss Titanic, her journalism includes writing for The Guardian and The Stage. She has written with organisations including The Royal Opera House, The National Theatre and Tate Modern.Producer: Fiona McLean

Pascale Petit’s collection of poetry, Mama Amazonica, which explores motherhood, illness and pain through the foliage and creatures of the Amazon rainforest, won the 2018 Prize. Peter Pomerantsev’s winning book in 2016, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible, is a journey into the political and ethical landscape of modern Russia. In 2013, former Home Secretary Alan Johnson won the Prize with This Boy, a visceral memoir of growing up poor in 1950s and 60s London. Hisham Matar’s debut novel set within the highly charged political landscape of Libya, In the Country of Men, won in 2007. 2019 Ondaatje Prize shortlist as announced during the recording of this programme. Rania Abouzeid No Turning Back: Life, Loss, and Hope in Wartime Syria (Oneworld)Aida Edemariam The Wife’s Tale: A Personal History (4th Estate)Aminatta Forna Happiness (Bloomsbury)Sarah Moss Ghost Wall (Granta)Guy Stagg The Crossway (Picador)Adam Weymouth Kings of the Yukon: A River Journey (Particular Books) The winner of this annual award of £10,000 for a distinguished work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry, evoking the spirit of a place will be announced on May 13th 2019.

Anne McElvoy debates at the Free Thinking Festival with intensive care doctor Aoife Abbey, GP & Prof Louise Robinson, Naeem Soomro expert in using robotic surgery and Michael Brown medical historian. Does emotion have any place in relationships with patients in a more open age? Medical professionals are trained to adopt “clinical distance” when dealing with patients. Tradition says that getting emotional weakens their judgement of medical evidence and can cause safeguarding issues. But how can those in caring roles prevent disinterest seeming like un-interest? Aoife Abbey is a doctor working in Intensive Care whose book Seven Signs of Life is an account of her experiences told through the emotions she encounters on a daily basis. Aoife previously wrote a blog as The Secret Doctor for the British Medical Association and works on a national training programme for doctors in intensive care medicine. She is a council member of the Intensive Care Society (UK). Michael Brown is a cultural historian at the University of Roehampton who is currently leading a project for the Wellcome Trust entitled Surgery & Emotion exploring this relationship from 1800 to the present. He is the author of Performing Medicine: Medical Culture and Identity in Provincial England, c. 1760-1850Louise Robinson is Director of Newcastle University’s Institute for Ageing, Professor of Primary Care and Ageing and a GP. She leads one of only three Alzheimer Society national Centres of Excellence on Dementia Care and is a member of the national dementia care guidelines development group.Dr Naeem Soomro is Leading Consultant Urologist at Freeman Hospital, Newcastle. He has pioneered minimally invasive and robotic surgery in the North East and has developed the biggest multi-speciality robotic surgery program in the UK.Producer: Fiona McLean

You don't have to be religious to believe that, as the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, "all human beings have the right to be free and treated equally." However, drawing on a wide range of examples including Shakespeare's Richard III to Disney's Jiminy Cricket, New Generation Thinker Dafydd Mills Daniel argues that the UN's emphasis on "reason and conscience" as the drivers of liberty and equality make the modern conception of human rights more religious, and less liberal, than both secular proponents and conservative critics have supposed. Dafydd Mills Daniel is the McDonald Departmental Lecturer in Christian Ethics and Theology at Jesus College, University of Oxford. He is researching Newton and alchemyThe Essay was recorded at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year who can turn their research into radio.Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Michael Talbot asks how can power be exerted over water? What do borders mean in the featureless desert of the ocean? These were questions faced by the Ottoman Empire in the 17th and 18th centuries when an imaginary line was used to create a legally enforced border at sea for the Sultans in Istanbul who called themselves “rulers of the two seas”, the Black and the Mediterranean. Michael Talbot lectures about the history of the Ottoman Empire and the Modern Middle East at the University of Greenwich, London. The Essay was recorded at Sage Gateshead as part of the Free Thinking Festival. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year who can turn their research into radio. Producer: Luke Mulhall

Sarah Moss is a novelist and Professor at the University of Warwick. Her most recent book Ghost Wall articulates the tangled space of love, abuse and resistance. Her previous novels include Cold Earth, Night Waking, Signs for Lost Children and The Tidal Zone. She has written for The Guardian, New Statesman, The Independent and BBC Radio.Michael Richardson is a Lecturer in Human Geography at Newcastle University. He has longstanding research interests in masculinities and intergenerational relationships on post-industrial Tyneside. He is a trustee of North East Young Dads and Lads project and works closely with Seven Stories: The National Centre for Children's Books.Harriet Shawcross is an award-winning filmmaker and journalist. Her first book Unspeakable reflects on how, as a teenager, she stopped speaking at school for almost a year, communicating only when absolutely necessary. It mixes personal experience with travel diaries and interviews including Eve Ensler creator of The Vagina Monologues.Una is a comics artist and writer. Her first graphic novel Becoming Unbecoming is about Una’s own encounters with sexual violence and survival. Her other titles include On Sanity: One Day In Two Lives and Cree, commissioned by New Writing North and Durham Book Festival.Producer: Luke Mulhall

You are a liberal who opposes art being banned. But would a movie that calls for you to be killed change your view of censorship? This was the quandary facing Salman Rushdie when filmmakers in Pakistan produced a James Bond-style action thriller in which a trio of Islamist guerrillas are inspired by Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa to track down and kill the author of The Satanic Verses. In the year of the 30th anniversary of the fatwa against the novelist from Iranian clerics, film historian Dr Iain Robert Smith explores what this largely-forgotten episode from the Rushdie affair can tell us about current debates on freedom of expression. Iain Robert Smith researches the impact of globalisation on popular films made around the world. He teaches at King’s College, London. The Essay was recorded at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year who can turn their research into radio.Producer: Fiona McLean

Can we ever really know the feelings of byegone generations? Author and TV historian Tracy Borman shares the clues we have to the emotional lives of Tudor royalty and archaeologist Penny Spikins explains what million year old human remains tell us about how prehistoric people felt. Paul Pickering explores what we know about the emotions of the Manchester Chartists and the way songs have carried political feelings. New Generation Thinker Elsa Richardson teaches a course on the history of emotions. Rana Mitter hosts with an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead Tracy Borman is joint Chief Curator for Historic Royal Palaces, Chief Executive of the Heritage Education Trust. Her books include Henry VIII and the Men Who Made Him, The Private Life of the Tudors, Thomas Cromwell: The Hidden Story Of Henry VIII's Most Faithful ServantPenny Spikins is Senior Lecturer in the Archaeology of Human Origins at the University of York. Her books include How Compassion Made Us Human looking at archaeological evidence for the earliest examples of healthcare, and Neanderthal social lives. Paul Pickering is a Professor and Director of the Research School of Humanities and the Arts at the Australian National University. The author of books on subjects ranging from C19 radical politics in the British world, monuments and public memory, re-enactment history - his most recent, Sounds of Liberty, is about music and politics. He is currently a Visiting Professor at Durham University working in a team studying the question: 'Who are the People?'Elsa Richardson became a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker in 2018. She teaches on the history of the emotions and is a Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.Producer: Craig Smith

Was George Orwell’s wife his forgotten collaborator on one of the most famous books in the world? Lisa Mullen takes a new look at Animal Farm from the perspective of the smart and resourceful Eileen Blair – and uncovers a hidden story about sex, fertility, and the politics of women’s work. Why are some contributions less equal than others? Lisa Mullen is Steven Isenberg Junior Research Fellow at Worcester College, University of Oxford and the author of Mid-century gothic: uncanny objects in British literature and culture after the Second World War. Her Essay is recorded with an audience at Sage Gateshead as part of the Free Thinking Festival and a longer version with audience questions is available as a BBC Arts & Ideas podcast. 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.

According to Madmen’s ad executive Don Draper, “what you call love was invented by guys like me… to sell nylons.” So how does advertising and gaming grab us by our emotions? Can we know when we’re being manipulated? And is there anything we can do about it? Presenter Shahidha Bari hosts a Free Thinking Festival debate at Sage Gateshead.Ad man Robert Heath worked on campaigns including the Marlboro Cowboy, Castrol GTX Liquid Engineering, and Heineken “Refreshes the Parts”. He is the author of The Hidden Power of Advertising and Seducing the Subconscious: The Psychology of Emotional Influence in Advertising.Claudia Hammond presents All in the Mind and Mind Changers on BBC Radio 4 and Health Check on BBC World Service. She is the author of Emotional Rollercoaster: A journey through the science of feelings and Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception and Mind over Money: the psychology of money and how to use it better.Darshana Jayemanne is Lecturer in Games and Art at Abertay University. He is investigating the role of emotion in young people's digital play (collaborating with the NSPCC) and how this can be used to raise awareness of climate change (along with the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research).May Abdalla is co-director and founder of Anagram - a studio which won the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival Storyscapes Award for Door Into The Dark - a blindfolded sensory experience about what it means to be lost. They are working on a VR experience about the Uncanny with the Freud Museum and an immersive documentary about imagined realities exploring schizophrenia and online gaming.

Harriet Shawcross is a film-maker whose first book Unspeakable reflects on how, as a teenager, she stopped speaking at school for almost a year, communicating only when absolutely necessary. It mixes personal experience with travel diaries and interviews. Ambassador William J. Burns is known as America’s ‘secret diplomatic weapon’. Having served five presidents and ten secretaries of state, he has been central to the past four decades’ most consequential foreign policy episodes. Now retired from the US Foreign Service, he is President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and has written The Back Channel: American Diplomacy in a Disordered World. Kathryn Tickell is widely acclaimed as the world’s foremost exponent of the Northumbrian pipes. Presenter for BBC Radio 3's "Music Planet" she has just released Hollowbone with her new band The Darkening. Thomas Dixon was the first director of Queen Mary University of London's Centre for the History of the Emotions. He is currently researching anger and has explored the histories of friendship, tears, and the British stiff upper lip in books Weeping Britannia: Portrait of a Nation in Tears and The Invention of Altruism: Making Moral Meanings in Victorian Britain. He gave the Free Thinking Lecture 2019 which you can also find as a BBC Arts&Ideas podcast.

Matthew Sweet and a panel of experts stand-up for their emotion of choice in a debate about the most pertinent emotion for understanding Britain today. Is it Joy? Anger? Anxiety? Schadenfruede or shame? The panel express their feelings and an audience vote at the 2019 Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead has the final say. Kehinde Andrews is Professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University. His books include Back to Black: Retelling Black Radicalism for the 21st Century and Resisting Racism: Race, Inequality and the Black Supplementary School Movement. Denise Mina’s crime novels include The Long Drop, The DI Alex Morrow series, the Paddy Meehan series which were filmed by BBC TV, The Garnetthill series, and graphic novels. She has been inducted into the Crime Writer’s Association Hall of Fame. Tiffany Watt Smith is the author of The Book of Human Emotions and Schadenfreude: The Joy of Another’s Misfortune and was one of the BBC Radio 3 New Generation Thinkers in 2014. A bout of chicken pox prevented her from promoting her ideas about schadenfraude so her husband, the writer Michael Hughes took her place in this debate. Jen Harvie is Professor of Contemporary Theatre and Performance at Queen Mary University of London, the author with Paul Allain of The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance and with Professor Dan Rebellato (Royal Holloway, University of London), she co-edits Palgrave Macmillan’s large series of small books Theatre &Hetta Howes is a Lecturer in English at City University in Medieval and Early Modern Literature and is a BBC Radio 3/AHRC New Generation Thinker You can find short films by Tiffany and others at https://www.bbc.com/ideas/playlists/the-story-of-human-emotions Producer: Debbie Kilbride

What was more important in the construction of an eighteenth-century man’s body: the dumbbell or the dumbwaiter? Who had the most enviable body shape: the svelte Apollo Belvedere or the rotund John Bull? Dr Sarah Goldsmith, from the University of Leicester, explores the early origins of modern gym culture in the tantalisingly elusive and occasionally surprisingly sweaty world of eighteenth-century male physicality.Sarah Goldsmith is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Centure for Urban History and School of History, University of Leicester.Her Essay was recorded in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead as part of this year's Free Thinking Festival.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.

Elsa Richardson uncovers the early history of the wellbeing industry and introduces Eustace Hamilton Miles, a diet guru who made his name selling health to Edwardian Britons. Reformers promoted the ‘simple life’, one that emphasised fresh air, exercise and the consumption of ‘sun-fired’ foods such as wholegrains, fruits and vegetables but this ‘simple life’ was also a highly profitable enterprise. Elsa Richardson teaches on the history of the emotions and is a Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. The Essay was recorded at this year's Free Thinking Festival with an audience at Sage Gateshead. 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 radioProducer: Zahid Warley

What does it mean to feel that your political position is righteous? At a time of rising tempers among electorates, should we all “calm down - or harness our rage? Kehinde Andrews is Professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University. His books include Back to Black: Retelling Black Radicalism for the 21st Century and Resisting Racism: Race, Inequality and the Black Supplementary School Movement. He writes for The Guardian, Independent and Ebony Magazine. Dr Fern Riddell is a historian and New Generation Thinker whose latest book Death In Ten Minutes, is about the Suffragette bomber and birth control activist, Kitty Marion. She writes for The Guardian, Huffington Post, Times Higher Education, The Telegraph and BBC History Magazine and was a consultant for BBC’s Ripper Street, Decline and Fall and ITV2’s TimeWasters. Will Davies is a political economist at Goldsmiths, University of London and co-director of the Political Economy Research Centre. His books include Nervous States: How feeling Took Over the World and The Happiness Industry: How the government & big business sold us well-being. He has written for The Guardian, The New Statesman and The Atlantic. Jo Anne Nadler is a political journalist and former producer/reporter on BBC Political Programmes. She has been a Conservative councillor in the London borough of Wandsworth and her books include William Hague - In His Own Right and Too Nice to be a Tory. Producer: Luke Mulhall

Commercial surrogacy – the practice of paying another woman to carry a pregnancy to term – has been criticised for being exploitative, particularly when poorer women are recruited. Even if these women were paid more, and the exploitation element were reduced, would unease remain about “renting out” your body in this way? This essay from New Generation Thinker Gulzaar Barn will explore what, if anything, is different about the buying and selling of bodily services from other forms of trade. Should the body should be taken off the market ?Gulzaar Barn taught philosophy at the University of Birmingham and is now researching at King’s College, London in the Dickson Poon School of Law. The Essay was recorded at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year who can turn their research into radio.Producer: Zahid Warley

Have you ever been somewhere you shouldn't? In this essay, New Generation Thinker Ben Anderson creeps around, and explains how trespassers in the early-twentieth century helped create new attitudes to nature by stepping off the path.Descriptions of late-nineteenth century trespass and rock-climbing show how different experiences of nature led to fights with landowners and gamekeepers for the rights of urban people. People going off-piste also led to efforts to expose environmental inequalities in the Alps, and calls for the protection of wilderness as a playground for hard men. At a time of ever increasing awareness of the environment, walk your thoughts around how our own, personal experience of nature defines what we come to value, and what we might fight to protect, alter or ‘improve’.Ben Anderson lectures in twentieth century history at Keele University. The Essay was recorded at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead and - like all the Essays this week - a longer version including audience questions is available as an Arts& Ideas podcast. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year who can turn their research into radio.Producer: Jacqueline Smith

How much emotion should you show if you are a diplomat, a news reporter or a conciliation expert? Anne McElvoy chairs a Free Thinking Festival debate at Sage Gateshead with Gabriel Gatehouse, Gabrielle Rifkind and William J Burns. In the world of international affairs, the overriding philosophy for global professionals has been one of restraint and rationality – whether you are negotiating, mediating or observing. So how is this traditional idea of “being diplomatic” and even-handed faring in a more emotional and expressive age? Psychotherapist Gabrielle Rifkind works in conflict resolution in the Middle East. She directs The Oxford Process, a conflict prevention initiative specialising in managing radical disagreement. Her books include The Psychology of Political Extremism: What would Sigmund Freud have thought about Islamic State and The Fog of Peace: How to Prevent War. William J Burns’ book The Back Channel - American Diplomacy in a Disordered World charts his career as an American diplomat for over 3 decades. involved in negotiations with President Putin and secret nuclear talks with Iran. He is now President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Gabriel Gatehouse is a BBC reporter whose work includes the Panorama programme Marine Le Pen: Who's Funding France's Far Right? (2017) and Our World A Tale of Two Swedens. His reporting has included investigations in East Africa, the Ukraine and Russia, Libya and Iraq and the BBC Radio 4 series The Puppet Master

Daisy Black looks at religious imagery, food, anti-semitism and product placement in medieval mystery plays. Eaten by characters, dotted around the stage as saliva-prompting props, or nibbled by audiences - a medieval religious drama is glutted with food but Christianity’s vision of God as spiritual nutrition could provoke horror and fear as well as hunger. We'll hear about some of the gristly, crunchy medieval episodes of culinary performance as the Essay investigates the relationship between faith and food. In one play, sacramental bread is attacked in a kitchen, drawing disturbing parallels between the eucharist and cannibalism. Daisy Black lectures in English at the University of Wolverhampton and performs as a storyteller and freelance theatre director. Her essay was recorded at this year's Free Thinking Festival with an audience at Sage Gateshead. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year who can turn their research into radio. Producer: Luke Mulhall

Worrying is a natural part of growing-up. And yet the incidence of serious anxiety and depression is rapidly increasing. Psychologist Stephen Briers from TV's Teen Angels, student Ceyda Uzun and Durham University's head of counselling Caroline Dower join Anne McElvoy at the Free Thinking Festival to explore the possible causes and the influence of digital technology and social pressures. The discussion was recorded with an audience at Sage Gateshead. 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/actionlineProducer: Debbie Kilbride

From the story of Jonas Salk, who left the city of Pittsburgh for a medieval Italian town to create the space to think which led to the invention of the polio vaccine to the novelist JG Ballard depicting urban high rise living and the work of biologist EO Wilson who has explored the human biophilic urge to be in contact with natural living things - this talk looks at the links between our health and our environment. Des Fitzgerald is a sociologist of science and medicine at Cardiff University and 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 programmes.

Many legal systems have allowed the accused the defence of a “crime of passion”: attributing their act to a sudden explosion of feeling, rather than pre-meditated violence. Prosecutors, though, have argued that “passion” is simply another word for “insanity” or “malice”. David Wilson was the youngest prison governor in England aged 29. He is Emeritus Professor of Criminology and founding Director of the Centre for Applied Criminology at Birmingham City University. He presented the CBS series Voice of a Serial Killer and, for BBC Radio 4, In The Criminologist’s Chair. His latest book is My Life with Murderers: Behind Bars with the World’s Most Violent Men. Sophie Hannah is a poet and crime novelist who, with the blessing of the Christie estate, has written three new Poirot novels The Monogram Murders, Closed Casket and The Mystery of Three Quarters. Her latest publication is a self-help book entitled How to Hold a Grudge.Michael Hughes’ most recent novel Country maps Homer’s Iliad onto 1990s Northern Ireland to describe both the black comedy and the brutality of The Troubles. His previous novel is The Countenance Divine. He teaches creative writing and also works as a professional actor.

The idea of ‘emotions’ did not exist until the nineteenth century but now they are the subject of study and Professor Thomas Dixon was the first director of Queen Mary University of London's Centre for the History of the Emotions. He is currently researching anger and has explored the histories of friendship, tears, and the British stiff upper lip in books Weeping Britannia: Portrait of a Nation in Tears and The Invention of Altruism: Making Moral Meanings in Victorian Britain. Ranging from revolutionary feelings and the sentimental tales of Charles Dickens to the poetic rage of Audre Lorde, in his 2019 BBC Free Thinking Festival Lecture, Thomas Dixon paints a historical panorama of emotions and ends by asking what we can learn from our ancestors about the value of stoical restraint.