Arts & Ideas

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.

The writers of TV sitcoms The Likely Lads, Porridge and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet talk to Matthew Sweet. As a restoration of the film version of The Likely Lads is released, Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais discuss depicting working lives in the 1960s, the pretensions and social changes of the '70s and how their characters might have voted over Brexit. The Likely Lads film has been restored and made available on Blu-ray and 2 previously lost episodes of the TV series have been found. Producer: Craig Templeton Smith

From politics to religion, gangster films to espionage, Philip Dodd considers acts of betrayal, with theologian, Elaine Storkey, columnist Peter Hitchens, author Jenny McCartney and historian Owen Matthews. Producer: Craig Templeton Smith

A history of orphans in Britain, fears about post war brainwashing, childrens' letters to C19 newspapers and portraits on show at Compton Verney. Anne McElvoy presents. New Generation Thinker and historian Emma Butcher is researching writing from children about the trauma of war. She visits Compton Verney. Jeremy Seabrook is researching the treatment of orphans from the 17th century onwards. Historian Sian Pooley reveals what children were writing to local papers about in the late 19th century and artist Emma Smith describes the post-war anxieties about children being brainwashed that inform her exhibition Wunderblock. Painting Childhood: From Holbein to Freud runs at Compton Verney from March 16th to June 16th 2019. Emma Smith's exhibition Wunderblock is at the Freud Museum in London until 26th May Orphans: A History by Jeremy Seabrook is out now.Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Authors Max Porter, Samantha Harvey and Alisdair Benjamin discuss empathy and the role it plays in writing and reading. How does it work? Is it the same in fiction and non-fiction? And how is it faring in a world where data sometimes seems to have replaced feeling. Chris Harding talks to all three about their latest books, Lanny, Let Me Not be Mad and the Western Wind in his search for answers.Let Me Not Be Mad by the neuropsychologist AK Benjamin is out now. Max Porter's second novel is called Lanny. His first, Grief is the Thing with Feathers, has now been turned into a stage production featuring Cillian Murphy which runs at the Barbican from 25 Mar—13 Apr 2019 Samantha Harvey's latest novel The Western Wind - set in a C15th Somerset village - is now out in paperback. Her previous books include The Wilderness - which depicts an architect suffering from Alzheimers who is attempting to order his memories. Producer: Zahid Warley

Valeria Luiselli talks to Laurence Scott about the desert border between Mexico and USA & capturing the sound, history and contemporary politics in her novel Lost Children Archive. The poet George Szirtes' first prose work brings his Hungarian mother superbly to life and works backwards through the years to explore the truth of being alive in the world. And Pulitzer-prize-winning short story writer Jhumpa Lahiri on her new anthology of stories from Italy, and why the Italian language releases a part of her unfulfilled by either her Bengali heritage or American upbringing. Jhumpa Lahiri has edited The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories which is out now. Valeria Luiselli's novel Lost Children Archive is out now George Szirtes' memoir The Photographer at Sixteen: The Death and Life of a Fighter is out now

Artist Hew Locke and historians Suzannah Lipscomb, Aanchal Malhotra & Anindya Raychaudhuri talk to Rana Mitter about using objects and archives to create new images of the past, from Guyana to India and Pakistan to women in C16th France.Suzannah Lipscomb's book The Voices of Nîmes: Women, Sex, and Marriage in Reformation Languedoc uses the evidence of 1,200 cases brought before the consistories – or moral courts – of the Huguenot church of Languedoc between 1561 and 1615 to summon up the lives of ordinary women. Hew Locke Here's The Thing - the most comprehensive show of his art in the UK runs at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham from March 8th to 2nd June 2019 and then tours to Kansas City and Maine. Aanchal Malhotra is the author of Remnants of Partition : 21 Objects from a Continent Divided. She is also the co-founder of the Museum of Material Memory Anindya Raychaudhuri teaches at the University of St Andrews and is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker. He has published Homemaking: Radical Nostalgia and the Construction of a South Asian Diaspora. You can hear his Essay on Partitioned Memories for BBC Radio 3 here https://bbc.in/2SJjLew Producer: Luke Mulhall

Painter George Shaw, crime writer Dreda Say Mitchell and drama expert Katie Beswick join Matthew Sweet to look at depictions of estate living - from the writing of Andrea Dunbar to SLICK on Sheffield's Park Hill estate to the images of the Tile Hill estate in Coventry where George Shaw grew up, which he creates using Humbrol enamel - the kind of paint used for Airfix kits. Plus a view of the French banlieue from artist Kader Attia.George Shaw: A Corner of a Foreign Field is at the Holburne Museum, Bath to 6th May 2019. Katie Beswick has just published Social Housing in Performance. Dreda Say Mitchell's latest book is called Spare Room. She also writes the Flesh and Blood Series set in London's gangland and the Gangland Girls series. Kader Attia: The Museum of Emotion runs at the Hayward Gallery at London's SouthBank Centre to May 6th 2019.

Gazelle Twin (Elizabeth Bernholz), Julia Bardsley, Hannah Catherine Jones, Luke Turner & William Fowler join Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough and an audience at Café OTO at the Late Junction Festival for a debate about trends within British culture. Gazelle Twin (Elizabeth Bernholz) is a British composer, producer and musician Julia Bardsley,is a performer and lecturer Hannah Catherine Jones is a multi-instrumentalist and founder of Peckham Chamber Orchestra Luke Turner is co-founder and editor of arts magazine The Quietus and author of a memoir Out of the Woods. William Fowler is Curator of Artists' Moving Image at the BFI National Archive. BFI's Derek Jarman's Blu-ray box set available 18th March 2019. https://bit.ly/2VRl5hg You might also be interested in Enchantment Witches and Woodland https://bbc.in/2C2fQnK Encyclopedias and Knowledge - includes a discussion about Mark Fisher K Punk https://bbc.in/2UO8V8n Into the Eerie - an episode of Radio 3's Sunday Feature https://bbc.in/2EM26PF Charms - authors Zoe Gilbert, Madeline Miller and Kirsty Logan https://bbc.in/2FZfflG Producer: Debbie Kilbride

Lying about a sexual attack, resisting parental pressures to marry, using the law to fight for inheritance and divorce. Shahidha Bari talks to the fiction writers Ayelet Gundar-Goshen and Layla AlAmmar about their new books which depict girls who feel they need to conceal truths about sexual encounters. Historian Jennifer Aston looks at examples of nineteenth century British women fighting for divorce. Jessica Malay researches the Countess of Pembroke, Lady Anne Clifford (1590-1676)The Pact We Made by Layla AlAmmar and Liar by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen are out now. Jennifer Aston from the University of Northumbria is researching divorce and domestic violence in England and Wales, c.1857-1923. Jessica Malay from the University of Huddersfield is responsible for the first print edition of Lady Anne Clifford's Great Books of Record. She is also the author of a book on a 17th century woman who wrote of her troubled marriage, which includes harrowing experiences of domestic abuse who went through two court cases pursuing a separation from her husband. The book is the Case of Mistress Mary Hampson. Lakeland Arts is re-uniting a portrait of Lady Anne Clifford loaned by the National Portrait Gallery with an image of her mother Lady Margaret Russell at the Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Cumbria from 22 March - 22 June 2019. From our archives: New Research into the Women's Suffrage Movement https://bbc.in/2tLwvr2 Women's Voices in the Classical World https://bbc.in/2EMjC6y Neglected Women: Lady Mary Wroth, Margaret Cavendish, Charlotte Robinson https://bbc.in/2VwTh1D Rewriting C20th British Philosophy https://bbc.in/2ErYT9P Discrimination https://bbc.in/2pQKMko Deborah Frances White and Women Finding a Voice https://bbc.in/2NDf9Io Producer: Robyn Read

How self-revealing and frank should a writer be? Lara Feigel, David Aaronovitch, Melissa Benn and Xiaolu Guo join Matthew Sweet to look at the life of Doris Lessing and her 1962 novel in which she explores difficult love, life, war, politics and dreams.Inspired by her re-reading of Doris Lessing, Lara Feigel has written a revealing book which is part memoir part biography called "Free Woman: Life, Liberation and Doris Lessing". It is out in paperback. Melissa Benn's books include Mother and Child, One of Us and School Wars David Aaronovitch is the author of Party Animals: My Family and Other Communists and a former winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Journalism. Xiaolu Guo has written a memoir Once Upon a Time in the East, and novels including UFO in Her Eyes, and Lovers In the Age of Indifference.Producer: Fiona McLean

The photographers, David Bailey and Don McCullin, came to prominence in the 1960s but their pictures did more than define a decade. Don McCullin's work in Vietnam, Biafra, Northern Ireland, Cyprus and the Middle East have come to epitomise what we mean by war photography and David Bailey's portraits of Jean Shrimpton, Mick Jagger and Catherine Deneuve established a new idiom for glamour. Yet fame has tended to obscure the full range of both men's work. Bailey, for example, has produced a huge volume of images conjuring up a spectral London as well as his portraits while McCulllin has infused the Somerset levels where he now lives with a haunted beauty. As Philip Dodd discovered when he visited David Bailey in his studio and caught up with Don McCullin on the eve of his Tate show both men have vivid memories of the Blitz and were transformed by their experience of National Service. Don McCullin is on show at Tate Britain until May 6th 2019. David Bailey: The Sixties is on show at Gagosian Gallery, Davies Street in London until March 30th. Producer: Zahid Warley

Shahidha Bari talks to Fatimah Asghar about poetry and the Emmy nominated web series Brown Girls. We have a look at the miniatures of Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver – court painters to Queen Elizabeth and James the first who both feature in an exhibition which invites visitors to pick up a magnifying glass to inspect every detail of their jewel-like images. Plus the popular history of sewing with Clare Hunter. She is also joined by historians Christina Faraday, who studies art in Tudor and Jacobean England and Jade Halbert, who researches the British Fashion Industry.Elizabethan Treasures: Miniatures by Hilliard and Oliver runs at the National Portait Gallery in London from February 21st to May 19th 2019. Clare Hunter has written Threads of Life The Great British Sewing Bee is on air on BBC Two. Fatimah Asghar's poetry collection is called If They Come For Us.

Laurence Scott, Will Self and New Generation Thinkers Lisa Mullen and Danielle Thom look at redundant features in design plus a visit to Collect: International Art Fair for Modern Craft and Design, presented at the Crafts Council, at the Saatchi Gallery in London. And, we discuss the 19th century French novelist Karl-Joris Huysmans as art critic, with Huysmans scholar and translator Brendan King. Collect, The International Art Fair for Contemporary Objects is on at the Saatchi Gallery in London from 28 February - 3 March 2019 Danielle Thom is a curator at the Museum of London. Lisa Mullen is the author of Mid-century Gothic: The uncanny objects of modernity in British literature and culture after the Second World WarProducer: Luke Mulhall

Historian Hallie Rubenhold reveals the previously untold stories of the five women killed by the Ripper and challenges the myths that have grown up around the Whitechapel Murders of 1888.

Fumio Obata and Jocelyne Allen discuss graphic art and manga.

What is required of a good leader in an age of disruption? Jamie Bartlett, Professor Mary Kaldor, Dame Louise Casey, Dame Heather Rabbatts, Rupert Reid debate at the London School of Economics. Anne McElvoy chairs.Jamie Bartlett is writer and technology industry analyst at the think tank Demos.Mary Kaldor is Professor of Global Governance at LSE.Louise Casey is former head of the Respect Task Force, the UK’s first Victims’ Commissioner, director general of Troubled Families.Heather Rabbatts is former chief executive of the London boroughs of Lambeth, Merton, and Hammersmith and Fulham.Rupert Reid is Director of Research and Strategy at the centre right think tank Policy ExchangeThe London School of Economics Festival New World Disorders runs from February 25th to 2nd March http://www.lse.ac.uk/Events/LSE-Festival/NewWorldDisorders Producer: Eliane Glaser

Shahidha Bari talks poetry and the web series Brown Girls, plus the history of sewing.

How loud should you be? Italian American performer Patti LuPone talks to Philip Dodd about why she doesn’t consider herself an American, her politics, unsuccessful auditions, backbiting, corporate entertainment, #Me Too. Her career has taken her from a Broadway debut in a Chekhov play in 1973 to performances in the original productions of plays by David Mamet and musicals including Evita on Broadway and Les Misérables and Sunset Boulevard in London’s West End. She won a Tony award for her role as Rose in the 2008 Broadway revival of the musical Gypsy. She’s currently taking the role of Joanne in the production of Stephen Sondheim’s Company in London’s West End. The show directed by Marianne Elliott runs until March 30th 2019 Patti LuPone: A Memoir was published in 2010. Producer: Debbie Kilbride

Shahidha Bari discusses new research on the the ins and outs of Renaissance culture: John Gallagher on civility, Emily Butterworth on news and gossip, Lauren Working on material culture, Sarah Knight and Hannah Crawforth on 'difficultness'.This podcast is made with the assistance of the AHRC - the Arts and Humanities Research Council which funds research at universities and museums, galleries and archives across the UK into the arts and humanities and works in partnership with BBC Radio 3 on the New Generation Thinkers scheme to make academic research available to a wider audience.

Poet Andrew McMillan, philosopher and psychologist Laura Mucha, poet and novelist Lavinia Greenlaw & writer Elanor Dymott explores who and why we love. Presented by Anne McElvoy.Laura Mucha has written Love Factually: the science of who, how and why we love Andrew McMillan's new book of poetry is called Playtime Lavinia Greenlaw's novel In the City of Love's Sleep is out in paperback and her new book of poetry is called The Built Moment Elanor Dymott's latest novel Slacktide is out now. It follows her first novel Every Contact Leaves a Trace. Producer Fiona McLean

West Africa has a fundamental place in the shaping of the modern world and its story is told in a new history by Toby Green. He joins Rana Mitter in the Free Thinking studio alongside Xue Xinran who explores China's recent history through the lives and relationships of one family and Dennis Duncan of the Bodleian Library muses on why the English needed English dictionaries and the desirability of a universal language. A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave trrade to the Age of Revolution by Toby Green is out now The Promise: Tales of Love and Loss by Xue Xinran is out now Babel: Adventures in Translation 5 February 2019 — 2 June 2019 at Bodleian Libraries, ST Lee Gallery, Weston Library, Oxford

The film-maker Spike Lee talks to Matthew Sweet about black power and prejudice, the politics of blackface, and the Oscars as his film BlacKkKlansman is nominated for six Academy Awards. Since 1983, his production company has produced over 35 films. His first film in 1986 was a comedy drama She's Gotta Have It filmed in black and white which he turned into a Netflix drama in 2017. In 1989 Do The Right Thing was nominated for Best Original Screenplay in the Academy Awards. Best Picture that year went to Driving Miss Daisy. Spike Lee has been awarded Best Adapted Screenplay at the 2019 BAFTAs for BlacKkKlansman - which is on general release at UK cinemas certificate 15. Producer: Zahid Warley.

Self-knowledge, intellectual vices & conspiracy theories are debated by Professor Quassim Cassam and presenter Matthew Sweet. Plus New Generation Thinker Simon Beard discusses an exhibition of artwork commissioned by the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. And a re-release of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1973 sci-fi TV series Wire World on a Wire takes us into cybernetics and artificial life. Quassim Cassam's new book is called Vices of the Mind. Ground Zero Earth curated by Yasmine Rix runs at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk February 15th - March 22nd 2019. Producer: Debbie Kilbride

Jimmy Wales talks Diderot & collecting knowledge + Tariq Goddard on Mark Fisher aka k-punk. The French writer Diderot was thrown into prison in 1749 for his atheism, worked on ideas of democracy at the Russian court of Catherine the Great and collaborated on the creation of the first Encyclopédie. Biographer Andrew S. Curran and Jenny Mander look at Diderot's approach to editing the first encyclopedia. Plus writer and publisher Tariq Goddard on the work and legacy of his collaborator and friend, the critical theorist Mark Fisher who analysed the culture of Capitalism following the economic crash of 2008. Shahidha Bari presents. Diderot and the art of Thinking Freely by Andrew S Curran is out now. k-punk: the collected and unpublished writings of Mark Fisher (2004-2017) edited by Darren Ambrose is out now. Producer: Luke Mulhall

Gilet jaune and novelist Edouard Louis, food expert Fabio Parasecoli, journalist, Gavin Mortimer and the historians Jerry White & Joanna Marchant with Philip Dodd. Whether it’s Berlin, Moscow or the Paris of the gilet jaunes - streets play a vital role in our history and culture. They're focal points of celebration and of protest ; they're gathering places for the young and old; places for a promenade or for fânerie; they're where the homeless build makeshift shelters and where musicians busk: they're also where we refresh our jaded palates; they are by definition, theatrical. Yellow vest and novelist, Edouard Louis is the author of Who Killed My Father, The End of Eddy and History of Violence. Historian Jerry White is the author of London in the 18th Century: A Great and Monstrous Thing Joanna Marchant is head of Widening Participation at King's College, London Fabio Parasecoli is Professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at New York University. Gavin Mortimer is a journalist based in Paris. He writes for The Spectator magazine.Producer: Zahid Warley

Conceptual artist Katie Paterson on art which produces candles scented with planetary odours – one of Saturn's moons has a hint of cherry…and how she and co-exhibitor the Romantic painter JMW Turner share an interest in the precise nature of moon light. Writers Julia Blackburn and Charlotte Runcie on the gaze of the beachcomber and searching for lost worlds along the tideline and Cutty Sark curator Hannah Stockton explains why the story of the famous tea cutter is one of survival. A place that exists only in moonlight: Katie Paterson & JMW Turner at Turner Contemporary Margate until May 6th 2019 Katie Paterson's First There is a Mountain project will tour 25 coastal beach locations from 31 March to 27 October 2019 Time Song: In Search of Doggerland by Julia Blackburn mixes personal history with the archaeological evidence for the Mesolithic peoples who lived on the land beneath the North Sea. Salt On Your Tongue - Women and the Sea by Charlotte Runcie describes her pregnancy and the death of her grandmother, set against shore walking and myths of women and the sea from ancient Greece to Scottish folk song. Cutty Sark 150 includes a range of events at Royal Museums Greenwich including a performance by the BBC Singers and of the Pirates of Penzance. You can hear a Free Thinking Landmark discussion of The Odyssey with Karen McCarthy Woolf, Amit Chaudhuri, Emily Wilson and Daniel Mendelsohn https://bbc.in/2S2QuiE and a discussion of Mermaids with Imogen Hermes Gowar and Sarah Peverley https://bbc.in/2FPeEH5Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Can causing offence be a good thing? Philip Dodd explores this question with the Slovenian philosopher, the American author and the Danish journalist. On the 15th February 1989 the Ayatollah Komeni issued a fatwah following the publication of Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses. Flemming Rose is the man who published the Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed and ignited international controversy. Slavoj Zizek has been called the most dangerous philosopher in the West; and Camille Paglia, the cultural critic and intellectual provocateur considers the topics she can and can’t teach now in the lecture theatres of America’s universities.Like A Thief In Broad Daylight: Power in the Era of Post-Human Capitalism by Slavoj Zizek is out now. Provocations: Collected Essays by Camille Paglia is out now. Flemming Rose is the author of The Tyranny of Silence, and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, Washington DC.Our Free Thinking arts & ideas playlist looking at Culture Wars and Discussions about Identity can be found here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06jngzt Producer: Zahid Warley

Following this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day, Anne McElvoy looks at new writing which reflects on this history and at a festival marking the impact on British culture of refugees and artists who fled from the Nazis. Ed Williams from leading marketing firm Edelman sifts through the fall-out from Davos. Martin Goodman's novel J SS Bach is published in March 2019. Daniel Snowman's books include The Hitler Emigrés: The Cultural Impact on Britain of Refugees from Nazism. Monica Bohm-Duchen has edited a book Insiders/Outsiders: Refugees from Nazi Europe and their contribution to British visual culture and initiated a festival which is working with 60 nationwide partners including Tate Britain, National Portrait Gallery, London Transport Museum, Pallant House Gallery and Glyndebourne. More information can be found at https://insidersoutsidersfestival.org/ Free Thinking past programmes include a debate about historical understandings of the holocaust and interviews with survivors https://bbc.in/2U86TzP Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Kate Maltby, Lucy Powell, Zoe Strimpel join Shahidha Bari. Virtue Rewarded is the subtitle of Samuel Richardson's 1740 novel Pamela, which began as a conduct book before he turned it into the new literary form of the novel. Playwright Martin Crimp has taken this book as the inspiration for his latest work When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other. Shahidha Bari & guests debate consent then and now + news of the £40,000 Artes Mundi 8 Prize which is awarded tonight in Cardiff.The Artes Mundi 8 shortlisted artists are Anna Boghiguian (Canada/Egypt); Bouchra Khalili (Morocco/France); Otobong Nkanga (Nigeria/Belgium); Trevor Paglen (USA); Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand). The exhibition runs at the National Museum Cardiff until Feb 24th 2019. New Generation Thinker Des Fitzgerald reports. Martin Crimp's play When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other is directed by Katie Mitchell and stars Cate Blanchett. It runs at the National Theatre in rep until March 2nd 2019. Producer: Luke Mulhall

As new shows featuring the Post-impressionist, Pierre Bonnard and the video artist, Bill Viola, open in London, Laurence Scott and his guests discuss the way we experience art from the current vogue for slow looking to the 30 second appraisal scientists say is the norm for most gallery goers. How do small details reshape our understanding of paintings? What about looking more than once? Does digital art require more or less concentration ? Kelly Grovier's book A New Way of Seeing: The History of Art in 57 Works is out now.Pierre Bonnard: The Colour of Memory runs from 23 January to 6 May 2019 at Tate Modern. It will show 100 works of art by the French painter created between 1912 and 1947 and will include special evenings of "Slow Looking". Bill Viola / Michelangelo Life Death Rebirth runs at the Royal Academy in London from 26 January — 31 March 2019 The Free Thinking Visual Arts Playlist with interviews including Tacita Dean, Chantal Joffe and Sean Scully amongst others is here https://bbc.in/2DpskGS Producer: Zahid Warley

Matthew Sweet and critics Catherine Bray and Ryan Gilbey look at films making waves as the Academy announces this year's nominations. Writer Jan Asante and cultural theorist Bill Schwarz assess James Baldwin's legacy in the light of the film adaptation of his novel If Only Beale Street Could Talk. Language historian John Gallagher gets to grips with the dialogue in period dramas including The Favourite and Mary Queen of Scots. Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Do our heroes and heroines have to be perfect? How do religious ikons link to iconoclasm and the labelling of film idols & politicians "icons of our time". Matthew Sweet is joined by film historian Pamela Hutchinson, bioethicist Tom Shakespeare, historian Julia Lovell and psychotherapist Mark Vernon. Julia Lovell’s book Maoism a Global History is out soon Mark Vernon’s book A Secret History of Christianity is out soon.For more information about the BBC TV series of programmes profiling modern icons from sport, cinema, politics, exploration .... go to bbc.co.uk/icons Producer: Luke Mulhall

The must see sights on the Grand Tour, in Cold War Moscow & tourist hot spots now. Rana Mitter is joined by Roey Sweet, Sarah Goldsmith, Nick Barnett, Cindy Yu and Simon Calder.Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

Novelist John Lanchester, journalist Tim Marshall and historians David Frye and Kylie Murray join Anne McElvoy to discuss why we build walls rather than bridges and what it says about civilisations past, present and future from Persia to Berlin, the USA to a dystopian vision. John Lanchester's latest novel is called The Wall. David Frye has written Walls: A History of Civilisation in Blood and Brick is out now Tim Marshall's book Divided: Why We're living in an Age of Walls is out nowProducer Jacqueline Smith

Shahidha Bari, Josh Cohen, Madeleine Bunting, Lisa Baraitser, Rachel Long, and Sam Goodman explore the value of doing nothing and our wider experience of time.Josh Cohen is the author of Not Working: Why We Have to Stop. Lisa Baraitser is Professor of Psychosocial Theory at Birkbeck, University of London and co-creator of Waiting Times, a research project on waiting in healthcare http://waitingtimes.exeter.ac.uk/ Madeleine Bunting is a novelist and writer Rachel Long is a poet New Generation Thinker Sam Goodman from Bournemouth University has been studying the drinking culture in Colonial India. You might also be interested in BBC Radio 3's Words and Music exploring the idea that we are Creatures of Habit https://bbc.in/2E72xV0 Producer: Luke Mulhall

The social campaigning, engineering and writing of three Victorians - art critic and philanthropist John Ruskin, poet and assistant to Florence Nightingale Arthur Hugh Clough and the builder of London's sewer system Joseph Bazalgette. Greg Tate, Suzanne Fagence Cooper , Stephen Halliday and Kevin Jackson join Laurence Scott to debate the way these 3 Victorians changed the way we look at the world and shaped our understanding of the Victorians.Producer: Zahid Warley

Lucy Porter, Neil Brand and David Quantick join Matthew Sweet to talk about Cric e Croc or Flip i Flap or even Dick und Doof though, if you're not Italian, Polish or German, it's far more likely that Hollywood's most famous comedy duo will be known to you simply as Stan and Ollie. Laurel and Hardy to give them their more formal title won the hearts of cinema goers all over the world in the '30s and '40s with films such as Way out West, Sons of the Desert and The Music Box, the sublime short which is the focus of this edition of Free Thinking. With the release of a new film about their life Stan and Ollie - starring John C Reilly and Steve Coogan, and a month long season of their work already underway at the British Film Institute in London - Matthew Sweet is joined by the standup comedian, Lucy Porter, the Emmy award winning writer, David Quantick and playwright and musician, Neil Brand to pay tribute to their achievement and enduring appeal.Producer: Zahid Warley Lucy Porter begins a nationwide tour of her show - Pass it On - in February 2019. The BFI Laurel and Hardy season is on now at London's Southbank and runs until 26th January 2019.

What’s the connection between Jane Austen’s particular choice of words in an afternoon in 1812, the oldest manuscript of Beowulf, fake news in 17th century England, and high definition digital photography? Laurence Scott talks to Kathryn Sutherland of St Anne’s College, Oxford, Noah Millstone of the University of Birmingham, and Andrew Prescott of the University of Glasgow about new possibilities for research opened up by digital technology.Producer: Luke Mulhall

An ecological fable about a perfect society which terrified children when it was first animated. Matthew Sweet reads Richard Adams' classic as a new version arrives on UK TV screens. He's joined by Dr Diana Bell, conservation biologist at UEA; Victoria Dickenson, author of Rabbit, a cultural history of rabbits; Brian Sibley, adaptor of the novel for a radio version and New Generation Thinker Lisa Mullen to debate rabbits both real and fictional. First published in 1972, Adams' novel follows rabbits escaping the destruction of their warren. Adams said that he told the tale to his daughters on car journeys and he rejected comparisons with the Bible tale of Moses and other religious symbolism. What do portrayals of rabbits in literature and film, from Peter Rabbit to Bugs Bunny, tell us about our own society? Matthew Sweet remembers being scared by the first animated film released in 1978. Now a new one from BBC TV and Netflix features the voices of James McAvoy, John Boyega and Gemma Arterton. Producer: Harry Parker

University Challenge star Bobby Seagull, writer and critic Jordan Erica Webber, games consultant and researcher Dr Laura Mitchell, and British Museum curator Irving Finkel join Shahidha Bari and others in the Free Thinking studio to get out the playing cards and the board games and consider the value of play, competitiveness and game theory. Bobby Seagull has published The Life-Changing Magic of Numbers.Irving Finkel has written Ancient Board Games, the Lewis Chessmen, Cuneiform, The Writing in Stone. He is on the Editorial Board of Board Games Studies and discovered the rules for the royal game of Ur. Producer: Luke Mulhall

Why Are We Here? What is a sentient being? These are questions we don't normally explore using plants but perhaps we should. Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough hears how identifying more closely with living beings who produce our oxygen and store the Sun's energy is a good way of navigating existential angst and have much to teach us about co-operation and mutual support and the unifying principles of life. Peter Wohlleben The Hidden Life of Trees: The Illustrated Edition is out now Emanuele Coccia The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture is out now Marion Sidebottom: https://www.marionsidebottom.co.uk/ Luke Turner has written Out of the Woods - a memoir about the way Epping Forest helped him deal with depression and his identity which is out in New Year.

Anne McElvoy wraps up warm for an account of life in Antarctica through prose and poetry, how the idea of the North Pole has fired the human imagination for centuries and an artist's interpretation of the Arctic through sound. Also how the spectacular stage effects that thrill panto audiences have their roots in the 17th century and the court of James I and VI - New Generation Thinker Thomas Charlton looks at theatre history.North Pole by Michael Bravo is published on 14th December.Ice Diaries: An Antarctic Memoir by Jean McNeil is out now.Kat Austen's concentration | The Matter of the Soul is available for purchase and download via Bandcamp. She was the 2017/18 Scott Polar Research Institute artist-in-residence. Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

"My generation, which was the rebel generation of black youth, has changed England and in changing England we've changed ourselves" - the words of Linton Kwesi Johnson - the man who invented dub poetry and used it to chronicle some of the key events of black British history, from the celebrated case of George Lindo, wrongly accused of robbery in Bradford in 1978, to the New Cross Fire and Brixton riots a few years later. Philip Dodd talks to him about the roots of his poetry, his love of music and the way he thinks Britain and black Britons have changed since 1963 when he arrived in London from Jamaica as an eleven year old boy.Producer: Zahid Warley

Deborah Levy, Adam Phillips and Amia Srinivasan join Matthew Sweet at the British Library for a Royal Society of Literature debate. Why do we read? Why do we write? What do we reveal when we do? A writer, a psychotherapist and a philosopher discuss what we reveal about ourselves through literature and the difference, if any, between non-fiction, novels and the psychotherapist’s couch. Deborah Levy is a playwright, novelist and poet. In her ‘living autobiography’ The Cost of Living, she considers what it means to live with value, meaning and pleasure. Adam Phillips is a practising psychoanalyst and Visiting Professor in the English department at the University of York. Amia Srinivasan is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford, and works on topics in epistemology, metaphilosophy, social and political philosophy, and feminism. She is a contributing editor of the London Review of Books. Producer: Luke Mulhall

Who's pulling your strings - from advertisers and peer pressure to political campaigns and self-deception - hidden persuaders are everywhere. Journalist Poppy Noor, historian Sarah Marks, psychologist and magician, Gustav Kuhn, the philosopher, Quassim Cassam and Robert Colvile from the Centre for Policy Studies join Matthew Sweet to track them down. We're all confident that we know our own minds -- but do we? And if we don't, why not? Producer: Zahid WarleyQuassim Cassam is professor of philosophy at Warwick University. He is the author of Self Knowledge for Humans and his new book, Vices of the Mind will be published next year.Gustav Kuhn teaches psychology at Goldsmiths College, University of London. His book Experiencing the Impossible : The Science of Magic will be published next year.Sarah Marks is a post-doctoral researcher at Birkbeck College in London where she is one of the team involved in the Hidden Persuaders project.Poppy Noor is a journalist and contributes to The Guardian newspaper. Robert Colvile is the director of the Centre for Policy Studies.

Geneticist Sir Paul Nurse, current director of the Francis Crick Institute, and Tristram Hunt, historian and now director of the V&A, debate the impact of robots, the winners and losers in funding, whether our education system has the balance right between STEM and Arts subjects and they reveal their own arts and science hits and misses. Recorded before an audience at Queen Mary University London, the presenter is Shahidha Bari.Nearly 60 years on from C.P. Snow's 'Two Cultures' lecture in which the chemist and novelist argued that a great divide existed between art and science, this conversation considers the relationship between the two in 2018.Producer: Craig Templeton Smith

As her award-winning debut play, Nine Night, comes to London's West End, Natasha Gordon tells Anne about the grieving ritual that binds in the Jamaican diaspora. Nine Night at Trafalgar Studios, London, until February 23rd On the 50th anniversary of the publication of Bessie Head's first novel, two of her titles, When Rain Clouds Gather (1969) and Maru (1971), have just been republished. Head's influence and creativity are discussed by journalist Audrey Brown and literary scholar Louisa Uchum Egbunike. Black Earth Rising, Hugo Blick's serial on the Rwandan Genocide and the fraught and fractured nature of justice, is one of the dramas of the year. Zoe Norridge explores the drama's reception within Rwandan cultural politics and Phil Clark discusses his research on the impact of the International Criminal Court on African politics. . Audrey Brown is a South African journalist, curator and cultural commentator based in London Louisa Uchum Egbunike, specialist in African literature, School of Arts and Social Sciences of City, University of London and New Generation Thinker Phil Clark, School of Oriental and African Studies; his book Distant Justice: The Impact of the International Criminal Court on African Politics is out now. Zoe Norridge, Kings College London, teaches Comparative literature. Her current research focuses on cultural responses to the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Zoe is also Chair of the Ishami Foundation. She is a New Generation Thinker

The director of the 1971 film Get Carter, which starred Michael Caine, has now written his own crime novellas. Mike Hodges talks to Matthew Sweet. If Nordic Noir has reshaped an image of Sweden away from Abba into a society showing cracks - journalist Kajsa Norman has been tracking stories such as the cover-up of assaults on teenage girls at music festivals in 2015. She's called her book Sweden's Dark Soul: The Unravelling of a Utopia. Mike Hodges' trio of novellas is called Bait, Grist and Security. You can hear another Free Thinking Discussion with Anders Sandberg, Pia Lundgren, Kieran Long & Lars Blomgren about What We Have Learned From Sweden here https://bbc.in/2Q1euTl Producer: Debbie Kilbride

A long lost classic by William Melvin Kelley, who coined the term "woke" back in 1962 in a New York Times article, Esi Edugyan's Booker shortlisted novel, and new research on slavery with historians Christienna Fryar, Kevin Waite, and Andrea Livesey. Laurence Scott presents. 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 earlier this year. 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. You can hear more Free Thinking discussion on American culture and history here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06jzmf6Producer: Luke Mulhall