Arts & Ideas

Should we worry about the world getting healthier? Thomas Bollyky thinks we should. Jane Stevens Crawshaw looks at cleanliness and disease in Renaissance cities & Penny Woolcock films Oxford and LA. Rana Mitter presents. For the first time in recorded history, parasites, viruses, bacteria, and other infectious diseases are not the leading cause of death and disability in any region of the world but that doesn't mean our cities are healthier and more prosperous. Jane Steven Crawshaw from Oxford Brookes researches plague hospitals and quarantine. From cleaning up C15th Venice and Milan, Rana Mitter also considers C21st Oxford and Los Angeles in new films by Penny Woolcock which explore their different mythologies. Her recent projects have also included the different responses she and a gang member have walking down the same street and a range of views on personal gun use. Jennifer Ingleheart reveals the books deemed too racy for Oxford undergraduates that were hidden away in the Bodleian Library's Phi Collection.Thomas Bollyky is director of the global health program and senior fellow for global health, economics, and development at the Council on Foreign Relations. His book is called Plagues and the Paradox of Progress: Why the World is Getting Healthier in Worrisome Ways.Fantastic Cities - an exhibition of Penny Woolcock's work runs at Modern Art Oxford until March 2019.The Story of Phi, curated by Jennifer Ingleheart, is at the Bodleian Library until 13th January 2019.Hear more from Penny Woolcock discussing her career at the Free Thinking Festival https://bbc.in/2E31s0UProducer: Torquil MacLeod

Doris Kearns Goodwin on POTUS, crisis management and ambition - from Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt through FDR and LBJ to Donald Trump. Novelist Georgina Harding and Philip Woods compare notes on the impact of the war in Burma and depictions in fiction, war reporting and memoirs. New Generation Thinker Louisa Egbunike looks at the campaigning of Obi Egbuna the Nigerian-born novelist (1938- 2014), playwright and political activist who led the United Coloured People's Association. Anne McElvoy presents.Doris Kearns Goodwin is a Pulitzer prize winning historian whose latest book is called Leadership: Lessons from the Presidents for Turbulent Times. Georgina Harding's latest novel is called Land of the Living. Philip Woods is the author of Reporting the Retreat: War Correspondents in Burma.

Eric Kaufmann talks to Philip Dodd about white identity, immigration and populism. Plus Hungarian politics with cultural historian, Krisztina Robert, journalist, Matyas Sarkozi and Zsuzsa Szelenyi of the Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna.Eric Kaufmann's book is called Whiteshift: populism, immigration and the future of White majorities. Krisztina Robert teaches at the University of RoehamptonProducer: Zahid Warley

Peter Frankopan brings his history of ties across Asia into the present while Maya Jasanoff, winner of the world's richest history prize, uses the novels of Joseph Conrad to show that the novelist was wrestling with the same problems and opportunities of globalisation we face today. Historian Peter Mandler also joins Rana Mitter to discuss new proposals for publishing historican research. As the centenary of the birth of Orkney film maker and poet Margaret Tait is celebrated nationally, New Generation Thinker, Elsa Richardson, discusses how Tait's medical training shaped her subsequent film work and writing while the curator Peter Todd concentrates on the influence of Orkney and why Tait's films still speak to us today. Maya Jasanoff, winner of The 2018 Cundill Prize, announced in Canada on November 15th. https://www.cundillprize.com/ for her book The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World available now Peter Frankopan was one of this year's judges. His books include the best selling The Silk Roads: A New History of the World and The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World and created an illustrated version for children. Peter Mandler, Professor of Modern Cultural History at University of CambridgeStalking The Image: Margaret Tait and Her Legacy at Glasgow Museum of Modern Art until May 5th 2019 Peter Todd, curator of Rhythm and Poetry The films of Margaret Tait at British Film Institute until Friday 30 Nov 2018 and The BFI will be releasing her only feature film 'Blue Black Permanent' on Blu-ray disc in Spring 2019. Elsa Richardson, New Generation Thinker, reseaches intersection between the medical and cultural history, University of StrathclydeNew Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select academics who can turn their research into radio.

A 3,000 year old Iranian ritual, archaeology on a council estate, and London's Greek Cypriot community: Matthew Sweet hops on the 29 bus route, puts on some VR glasses, and visits the hospital which was home to "the Elephant Man" as he talks to researchers showcasing their projects at the 2018 Being Human Festival. Petros Karatsareas and Athena Mandis guide Matthew through the moves made by the Greek Cypriot diaspora in London along the 29 bus route. Carenza Lewis and Ian Waites of the University of Lincoln explain why they've organised an archaeological dig on a 1960s council estate. Nadia Valman and Karen Crosby are organising a slide projection onto the walls of the Royal London Hospital Living Zoroastrianism is an exhibition on show at the Brunei Gallery at SOAS (until December 15th) in which Virtual Reality allows visitors to experience a 3,000 year old ritual from pre-Islamic Iran, stages by Almut Hintze and Anna Sowa You can find events around the UK in the Being Human Festival of research into the Humanities here https://beinghumanfestival.org/ Producer: Luke Mulhall

From death cafes to bronze age burials, C19th mourning rings to the way healthcare professionals cope when patients die. Eleanor Barraclough looks at research showcased in the Being Human Festival at UK universities. Laura O'Brien at Northumbria University is running a death cafe and looking at the way celebrities can "live on" after their death. New Generation Thinker Danielle Thom works at the Museum of London and has been researching the history behind some of the jewelry in their collection. Duncan Garrow from Reading University is leading a major research project into prehistoric grave goods. Medical historian Agnes Arnold-Forster has been asking surgeons and other health professionals about how they deal with death.The Being Human Festival organises free events based on research into the Humanities at universities around the UK. It runs from Nov 15th - 24th 2018 https://beinghumanfestival.org/ Producer: Torquil MacLeod

New Scots words to add to the The Dictionar o the Scots Leid and a quiz about words from medieval Ireland are 2 of the Being Human Festival projects explored by Shahidha Bari. Plus how researchers are using film to explore social history and a major new exhibition about the sculptor and painter Elisabeth Frink (1930-1993).The Being Human Festival showcases research into the Humanities at universities around the UK. It runs from Nov 15th - 24th 2018 https://beinghumanfestival.org/ Watch the winning films from the AHRC Research in Film Awards 2018: https://bit.ly/2JYfgu2Elisabeth Frink: Humans and Other Animals is The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia until 24th of February. You can see more work by Frink at Beaux Arts Mayfair Gallery, London until 1st December and at Tate Britain until 4 February. You can hear New Generation Thinkers presenting the Radio 3 Sunday Feature here https://bbc.in/2B3o7HP A Mystery about Gilbert and Sullivan. Medieval Passions and Moderm Immersive Drama. https://bbc.in/2Fhp3wA Is it Wrong to have Children? Why Bin Laden did not like Shakespeare.Producer: Debbie Kilbride

Journalist Peter Hitchens; the Rector of St James’s Church Piccadilly Lucy Winkett; performer and director Neil Bartlett and Professor Steve Brown from the Open University join Anne McElvoy at the Imperial War Museum for their 2018 Remembrance Lecture. In 1919, the first national silence was observed to commemorate the end of the First World War. Organised silences were designed to remember the human impact of conflict, but do twenty-first century collective silences fulfil that purpose? This debate brings together a panel of speakers to discuss the role of organised silences and what it means to be silent about conflict in 2018. IWM’s annual remembrance lecture appears as part of Making a New World a free season of exhibitions, installations and immersive experiences taking place at IWM London and IWM North in 2018. Through art, photography, film, live music, dance and conversations, the season explores themes of remembrance and how the First World War has shaped today’s society, bringing together five major exhibitions – Lest We Forget? at IWM North and Renewal: Life after the First World War in Photographs, I Was There: Room of Voices, Mimesis: African Solider and Moments of Silence at IWM London. Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Shahidha Bari is joined by cultural historian Ana Carden-Coyne, literary scholar Santanu Das, and Julia Neville, co-ordinator of the Exeter First World War Hospitals Project, to discuss the 1914-1918 War. Their research turns the War into a mosaic of feeling and experience, a sensory dislocation and cultural melting pot. Dr Ana Carden-Coyne is Director of the Centre for the Cultural History of War (CCHW) in the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures, University of Manchester, and author of The Politics of Wounds: Military Patients and Medical Power in the First World War, Santanu Das, Professor of English Literature, Kings College London. His book India, Empire and the First World War: Words, Objects, Images and Music Is out now Dr Julia Neville, is an Honorary Fellow in the History Department at Exeter University, and serves on the Council of the Devon History Society. She co-ordinates the Exeter War Hospitals Research Project. This podcast was made with the assistance of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) which funds research at universities and museums, galleries and archives across the UK into the arts and humanities. The AHRC works in partnership with BBC Radio 3 on the New Generation Thinkers scheme to make academic research available to a wider audience.

Better than Proust -- the man who made literature out of colloquial French -- the arch chronicler of human depravity --- some of the things that are said about Louis Ferdinand Céline, author of Journey to the End of the Night - one of the masterpieces of 20th century literature. His semi- autobiographical novel, first published in 1932, is a ferocious assault on the hypocrisy and idiocy of his time. It follows its anti hero Ferdinand Bardamu from the battlefields of the First World War to Africa and America before returning to Paris and a chilling confrontation with his demons. The book established Céline as a an original and dangerous voice amongst the generation of writers who emerged from the carnage of the Great War. The fluency of his prose, its tone and bristling attitude has won him many admirers among them Philip Roth and Joseph Heller. He's entered popular culture too -- being quoted by Jim Morrison in the Doors' song End of the Night. But as well as the praise there's been criticism - not least for the vicious anti-Semitism that surfaces in some of his later work. To explore the novel and the man Rana Mitter is joined by the writers, Marie Darrieussecq and Tibor Fischer, the literary historian, Andrew Hussey, and Céline's latest biographer, Damian Catani.Marie Darrieussecq is the author of novels including Pig Tales, Tom is Dead and her latest Our Life in the Forest Andrew Hussey is the author of The French Intifada : The Long War Between France and its Arabs Tibor Fischer is the author of the novels, How to Rule the World, Under the Frog and The Thought Gang. Damian Catani teaches at Birkbeck College in London and is writing a biography of Céline that will be published in 2020 by Reaktion Books. Producer: Zahid Warley

Gillian Clarke, Sabrina Mahfouz and Michael Symmons Roberts respond to the war poet Wilfred Owen with their own new commissions from the Royal Society of Literature. Shahidha Bari hosts a discussion recorded with an audience at the British Library on the 100th anniversary of Owen's death during the crossing of the Sambre–Oise Canal on 4 November 1918, exactly 7 days (almost to the hour) before the signing of the Armistice which ended World War I. Born in Cardiff, Gillian Clarke’s work has been on the GCSE and A Level exam syllabus for the past thirty years. She was the first woman to win the Wilfred Owen Award – for a sustained body of work that includes memorable war poems – in 2012. Sabrina Mahfouz was brought up in London and Cairo, and is a playwright, poet, novelist and editor. She was elected an RSL Fellow in 2018. Poet and Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, Michael Symmons Roberts grew up less than a mile from Greenham Common and has often written about the Cold War ‘peace’.Producer: Fiona McLean

Henry Hardy has written In Search of Isaiah Berlin: A Literary Adventure Diving For Seahorses: A Journey Through the Science of Memory by Hilde Østby and Ylva Østby explores the study of memory from the Renaissance to the present day. Dafydd Daniel is a New Generation Thinker and the McDonald Lecturer in Theology and Ethics, University of Oxford.

The exile of English Catholics 450 years ago, suffragette Punch and Judy plus Shahidha Bari interviews Kapka Kassabova, the winner of a prize for fostering global understanding.The British Academy’s Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding was announced this week. The winner Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova is out in paperback.Dr Lucy Underwood teaches at the University of Warwick and is the author of Childhood, youth and religious dissent in post-Reformation England. Dr Caroline Bowden is Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the School of History at Queen Mary University of London.Alison Shell is Professor of English at UCL. She is currently writing a monograph on ‘The Drama of the British Counter-Reformation’New Generation Thinker Naomi Paxton is running an event day at the National Theatre in London on November 17th featuring suffragette Punch and Judy. She has also helped curate - What Difference Did the War Make? World War One and Votes for Women which is on show in November in Westminster Hall, LondonProducer: Torquil MacLeod

The memes that make us laugh - have we become meaner or can schadenfreude be a positive thing? Philosophical traditions around the world - can you outline the ideas of Nishida as well as Nietzsche? Is Japan facing a key moment of change in what it means to be Japanese? Julian Baggini, and New Generation Thinkers Tiffany Watt Smith and Christopher Harding join Rana Mitter. Plus "starchitects" - inspirational big names or a symptom of what has gone wrong with architecture? Professor James Stevens Curl and Christine Murray discuss. Professor James Stevens Curl's most recent book is Making Dystopia: The Strange Rise and Survival of Architectural Barbarism. Christine Murray is former Editor in Chief of the Architectural Review and Architect's Journal. She is founder of a new magazine The Developer. Tiffany Watt Smith has written Schadenfraude: The Joy of Another's Misfortune. You can find her programme about babies laughing here https://bbc.in/2OVRDbh Julian Baggini's latest book is called How The World Thinks. You can hear him debate identity at the Free Thinking Festival https://bbc.in/2DN2Jok Christopher Harding's book is called Japan Story. You can find his series of Radio 3 Essays: Dark Blossoms exploring aspects of Japanese cultural history https://bbc.in/2NDfAhU and tne Free Thinking programme website has a playlist of discussions about Japanese culture https://bbc.in/2A5vnme New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select academics who can turn their research into radio. Producer: Robyn Read

From a hanged man who came back to life to walk from Swansea to Hereford, to a woman who travelled from London to Evesham in a wheelbarrow, studying pilgrimage opens up a unique window on the world of the middle ages. Catherine Clarke, Anthony Bale, and Sophie Ambler explain to Shahidha Bari how research into pilgrimage helps us understand how medieval people thought about themselves and their lives, the kinds of things they worried about, how they spent their disposable income, and interacted with the politics of their day. Catherine Clarke is Professor of English at the University of Southampton and leads a project to reconstruct the medieval pilgrimage route from Swansea to Hereford. Anthony Bale is Professor of Medieval Studies at Birkbeck University of London. Sophie Therese Ambler is Lecturer in Later Medieval British and European History at Lancaster University. This podcast was made with the assistance of the AHRC - the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) which funds research at universities and museums, galleries and archives across the UK into the arts and humanities. The AHRC works in partnership with BBC Radio 3 on the New Generation Thinkers scheme to make academic research available to a wider audience.

Michael Rosen and Kimberley Reynolds talk to Anne McElvoy about socialist fairy tales and radicalism in books for children. Nikita Gill and Katherine Webber on giving traditional tales a modern twist.Reading & Revolution: An Anthology of Radical Writing for Children 1900-1960 is out nowWorkers' Tales: Socialist Fairy Tales, Fables and Allegories from Great Britain is published on 13th November Fierce Fairytales & Other Stories to Stir Your Soul by Nikita Gill is out nowKatherine Wheeler is the author of Only Love Can Break Your Heart and Wing JonesA Very Very Very Dark Matter by Michael McDonagh is at the Bridge Theatre in London until 6th JanuaryProducer: Torquil MacLeod

The film director talks to Matthew Sweet about his career and his approach to dramatising history. His new film Peterloo depicts the 1819 massacre at a rally in Manchester where a crowd of 60,000–80,000 were demanding the reform of parliamentary representation. It follows his film about the painter Mr Turner and the 2004 film Vera Drake which depicted the 1950s - a period when abortions were illegal in England. Peterloo is in UK cinemas from 2 November Jacqueline Riding's Peterloo - The Story of the Manchester Massacre is available nowProducer: Debbie Kilbride

How do you put the Bible on stage or make a modern medieval mystery play? Shahidha Bari talks to the National Theatre of Brent's Patrick Barlow as his play The Messiah starts at UK tour. New Generation Thinker Daisy Black watches a new medieval mystery play in Stoke. Plus the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms exhibition at the British Library sees a giant Northumbrian Bible returned to Britain for the first time in 1300 years. And historian Iona Hine discusses her research into how we understand biblical stories and what difference translation makes. The Messiah by Patrick Barlow, with additional material by John Ramm, Jude Kelly and Julian Hough opens at Birmingham Repertory Theatre 18 Oct 2018 - 27 Oct 18 starring Hugh Dennis, Lesley Garrett and John Marquez. It tours to Cardiff, Sheffield and Chichester and then goes to the London West End. Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War runs at the British Library from Fri 19 Oct 2018 - Tue 19 Feb 2019 covering 600 years and featuring 180 treasures including the Codex Amiatinus, a giant Northumbrian Bible taken to Italy in 716The Mysteries - newly created dramas by Sam Pritchard and Chris Thorpe have been performed in five different venues across the North of England exploring the impact of different landscapes on communities. All of them can be seen at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester from 25 October–11 November 2018. Iona Hine researches at the University of Sheffield. https://www.dhi.ac.uk/hine/ Her thesis was called Englishing the Bible in Early Modern Europe. Producer: Luke Mulhall

Matthew Sweet takes to the woods with thoroughly modern witch, William Hunter, and writer and folklorist, Zoe Gilbert, to look for green men and suitable spots for a ritual. If modern magic is all about re-enchanting the world then old magic was more about fear and keeping witches out but as a new exhibition opens in Oxford, Dafydd Daniel and Lisa Mullen discuss whether magical thinking is an inevitable part of being human while in Marie Darrieussecq's new novel set in a not very far away and dystopian future, the forest is the last haven for fugitives. Our Life in the Forest by Marie Darrieussecq also looks at clones and trafficking. Her first novel, Pig Tales, was translated into thirty-five languages. As Radio 3 explores the idea of forests of the imagination she joins presenter Matthew Sweet along with New Generation Thinkers Dr Dafydd Daniel, who teaches at Jesus College, University of Oxford and Dr Lisa Mullen, who is the Steven Isenberg Junior Research Fellow, Worcester College. Zoe Gilbert's novel Folk is out now.Spellbound: Magic, Ritual & Witchcraft runs at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford until 6 January 2019. A playlist of Radio 3's Into the Forest programmes is here https://bbc.in/2RUE1LaProducer: Jacqueline Smith.

What's it like to be banned from your own country or to have your writing spark a row? Rana Mitter's guests talk identity, borders, forest landscapes and the long impact of the Ottoman empire. The American political scientist Francis Fukuyama is associated with the phrase "the end of history". His latest book Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment looks at what he sees as the threats to Liberalism. Alev Scott has travelled through 12 countries, talking to figures including warlords and refugees for her book Ottoman Odyssey: Travels Through a Lost Empire but she can't return to her birthplace. She's joined by New Generation Thinker Michael Talbot who teaches at the University of Greenwich and whose research has uncovered the drunken antics of soldiers in post World War I Istanbul. He's a contributor to http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/ and he reviews Like a Sword Wound by Ahmet Altan -published now in an English translation by Yelda Türedi and Brendan Freely. It's the first book in the Ottoman Quartet, a narrative that spans the history of Turkey during the decline of the Ottoman Empire. The writer is now in prison for life. The Polish novelist Olga Tokarczuk won the 2018 Man Booker International Prize for her novel Flights. Her latest novel to be translated into English by Antonia Lloyd Jones is called Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead and became the film Spoor directed by directed by Agnieszka Holland. Her writing has been called anti-Catholic. You can find more discussions about borders, home and belonging in this playlist of programmes https://bbc.in/2QALzkL

Putting women back into the C20th history of British philosophy. Shahidha Bari talks to Alex Clark about the 2018 Man Booker Prize, considers the thinking of Mary Midgley whose death at the age of 99 was announced last week and puts her alongside Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, and Iris Murdoch who were undergraduates at Oxford University during WWII. The In Parenthesis project of Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman asks whether you can call them a philosophical school. Plus, Mark Robinson of the University of Exeter on how new archaeological discoveries in the Amazon are changing our understanding of the rain forest. http://www.womeninparenthesis.co.uk/about/ Mary Midgely talks to Rana Mitter about her philosophy in 2009 https://bbc.in/2RRA4qF Mary Midgley at Free Thinking Festival November 2010 plus Havi Carel https://bbc.in/2P1wqf6 What Nietzsche teaches us https://bbc.in/2OxoLFR Edith Hall, Simon Critchley, Bernard-Henri Levy https://bbc.in/2PBLld1 Radio 3's Into the Forest playlist of programmes https://bbc.in/2RUE1LaProducer: Luke Mulhall

Is soap opera the heir to the gothic novel? Is America seeing a resurgence of gothic TV and fiction? Shahidha Bari looks at new Gothic research with Nick Groom and Xavier Aldana Reyes. Vampires weren’t invented by horror writers, but were first encountered by doctors, priests and bureaucrats working in central Europe in the mid 17th century - that's the argument of The Vampire: A New History written by "the Goth Prof" Nick Groom from Exeter University. Xavier Aldana Reyes researches at the Gothic Centre at Manchester Metropolitan University and has written Spanish Gothic and Horror Film and Affect. We also hear about the TV research of Helen Wheatley from the University of Warwick 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.

Helena Kennedy on #MeToo and the message it sends that the British legal system needs to get its house in order. Plus power in Pinter's plays and rape in Chaucer. Shahida Bari talks to theatre directors Jamie Lloyd and Lia Williams about language and the roles for women on stage in the Pinter at the Pinter Season, an event featuring all of Harold Pinter's short plays, performed together for the first time. And Professor Elizabeth Robertson has been researching references to rape in Chaucer's writing and attitudes towards consent in Medieval times. Helena Kennedy's book is called Eve was Shamed: how British Justice is Failing Women Pinter at the Pinter runs in London's West End until 23rd February 2019. Elizabeth Robertson, Professor and Chair of English Language, University of Glasgow has written Chaucer, Chaucerian Consent: Women, Religion and Subjection in Late Medieval England You can hear a longer conversation with Elizabeth Robertson in our new podcast about academic research https://bbc.in/2yrTZU5

The Scottish Clearances by Tom Devine, Professor Emeritus, University of Edinburgh. The Farm, a new novel by Hector Abad is translated by Anne McLean The Future of Capitalism by Paul Collier, Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government and a Professorial Fellow of St Antony's College. Anne McElvoy presents a short film Is Capitalism Here to Stay for BBC Ideas https://www.bbc.com/ideas/ Browse their A-Z of Isms

Does LSD open the doors of perception or just mess with your head? Leo Butler tells Matthew Sweet about writing a play inspired by taking part in the world's first LSD medical trials since the 1960s. Philosophers Peg O'Connor and Barry Smith lock horns with neuropsychopharmacologist David Nutt over whether drug-induced hallucinations allow access to a deeper reality. Producer: Torquil MacLeod

How does Chaucer write about rape and consent ? What links Kim Kardashian West & Margery Kempe - an English Christian mystic and mother of 14 children who wrote about her religious visions in the 1420s in what has been called the first autobiography in English. Alicia Spencer-Hall, Elizabeth Robertson and New Generation Thinker Hetta Howes join Shahidha Bari for a conversation about new research and what a feminist take brings to our understanding of the medieval period.Made with the assistance of the AHRC - the Arts and Humanities Research Council which funds research into the humanities and works with BBC Radio 3 on the New Generation Thinkers scheme to make academic research available to a wider audience.

.Museum directors from USA, Austria and Britain look at the challenges of displaying their collections for new audiences. Anne McElvoy's guests include Michael Govan, Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art LACMA, Sabine Haag, Director, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna and Hartwig Fischer, Director of the British Museum. Recorded with an audience at the Royal Institution in London as one of the events for the 2018 Frieze London Art Fair. Find our playlist of discussions about the Visual Arts https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p026wnjl Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

Matthew Sweet talks to the author of The Essex Serpent, Sarah Perry, about her re-imagining of the Melmoth story, first published in 1920 by the Irish playwright, novelist and clergyman Charles Maturin. His Melmoth the Wanderer was a critique of Catholicism following a scholar who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for living 150 years longer. Sarah Perry's version begins in Prague with a female scholar who feels she's being watched. Plus, experts on the Gothic Roger Luckhurst and Helen Wheatley discuss the apparently perennial appeal of the Gothic in literature, cinema and on television. And, Matthew talks to Richard Maclean Smith, whose podcast and book UNEXPLAINED report on the odd, mysterious and uncanny. Melmoth by Sarah Perry is out now. Professor Roger Luckhurst is the author of The Mummy's Curse: The true history of a dark fantasy, Helen Wheatley's publications include Gothic Television Rosemary's Baby (1968) was directed by Roman Polanski from the novel by Ira Levin. Night of the Living Dead is a 1968 American independent horror film written, directed, photographed and edited by George A. RomeroProducer: Luke Mulhall

Gandhi's power, portable citizenship and Indian writing. Rana Mitter talks to Ramachandra Guha about his new biography of Gandhi, hears about "portable citizenship from Indrajit Roy and discusses Indian writing and literary tradition with Amit Chaudhuri and Sandeep Parmar. Rana also breaks off from the subcontinent briefly to explore the mysterious disappearance of China's biggest film star, Fan Bingbing with the historian, Julia Lovell. Ramachandra Guha has written Gandhi: The Years that Changed the World, 1915-1948 Amit Chaudhuri's new collection of essays is called The Origins of Dislike: A Geneaology of Writerly Discontent New Generation Thinker Sandeep Parmar is a poet and Professor of English at the University of Liverpool whose books include Reading Mina Loy's Autobiographies: Myth of the Modern Woman. Dr Indrajit Roy lectures at the University of York and is the author of Politics of the Poor in Contemporary India Julia Lovell is the author of The Opium War and will publish a global history of Maoism next year. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra is the author of four books of poems, most recently The Transfiguring Places. His Oxford India Anthology of Twelve Modern Indian Poets (1992) and his An Illustrated History of Indian Literature in English (2003) have helped shaped ways of looking at Indian writing. Producer: Zahid Warley

Lisa Appignanesi, prize-winning writer and Freudian scholar, with a personal memoir that explores public and private loss and anger. Presenter Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough also looks at a Festival of Canadian and North American writing meeting authors Heather O'Neill and Cherie Dimaline whose novels explore the meaning of family in dystopian visions of Canada, urban and rural. And, as the Oceania exhibition opens at the Royal Academy in London and a new Pacific Gallery opens at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, Jo Walsh, artist and art producer, and cultural adviser, discusses the cultural protocols and disciplines which should be taken into account when mounting exhibitions of art from the Pacific nations and we look at the idea of cultural loss.Lisa Appignanesi : Everyday madness: On Grief, Anger, Loss and LoveHeather O'Neill is one of Canada's best known fiction writers. Also a poet and journalist, her latest novel is The Lonely Hearts Hotel. Cherie Dimaline is a writer and editor from the Georgian Bay Metis Community in Ontario. Dimaline's latest book is The Marrow Thieves. They are taking part in the inaugural Festival America in London this September. Jo Walsh, (Māori / Pākehā) is a London-based artist and founding member of In*ter*is*land Collective and works with major institutions, including the British Library and National Maritime Museum. Oceania at The Royal Academy, London, 29 September — 10 December 2018. Sackler Gallery: Pacific Encounters, one of four new galleries at National Maritime Museum, now open.

Can causing offence be a good thing? Philip Dodd explores this question with the Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Zizek, the American author, Camille Paglia and the Danish journalist, Flemming Rose. Camille Paglia is a Professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia whose Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson was rejected by seven publishers before it became a best-seller. Flemming Rose was Culture Editor at the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten when in September 2005 it published a series of cartoons of Muhammad which caused controversy. 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 will be available from October 9th. Flemming Rose is the author of The Tyranny of Silence, and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, Washington DC. Our playlist looking at Culture Wars and Discussions about Identity can be found here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06jngzt

Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie talk to Matthew Sweet about how humour changes and the targets of their TV comedy show which ran during the '70s and early '80s. A box set of the 67 half hour episodes is being released. Producer: Harry Parker.

How Nietzsche might have responded to current debates, including Trump, 'post-truth', identity and Europe. Kwame Anthony Appiah talks about his new work on identity and biographer Sue Prideaux and philosophers Hugo Drochon and Katrina Mitcheson join Matthew Sweet to think about Nietzsche. I Am Dynamite! A Life of Nietzsche by Sue Prideaux is published on October 30th. Her books include Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream, which was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and Strindberg: A Life, which received the Duff Cooper Prize and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize. Kwame Anthony Appiah is the author of books including As If, Idealization Ideals, Cosmpolitan: Ethics in a World of Strangers and his new book which draws on his thinking for BBC Radio 4's Reith Lectures is called The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity.You can find a playlist of discussions about Culture Wars and Identity here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06jngztProducer: Luke Mulhall.

Rana Mitter talks to poet and writer Ben Okri and writer and journalist Agnes Poirier about the contemporary resonance of The Outsider by Albert Camus (1913-1960), and as a new biography of the anthropological giant, Claude Levi-Strauss by Emmanuelle Loyer comes out in English, he talks to anthropologist, Adam Kuper about travel, anthropology and how we classify. Rana is also joined by Peter Moore who has written a history of the ship Endeavour which carried James Cook on his first explorations of the southern ocean. The Outsider (L’Étranger publ 1942) by Albert Camus adapted for the stage by Ben Okri runs at Print Room at the Coronet in London 14 Sep – 13 Oct 2018. Agnes Poirier: The Left Bank: Art, Passion, and the Rebirth of Paris, 1940-50 is out nowEndeavour: The Ship and the Attitude that Changed the World by Peter Moore is out now. Oceania runs at the Royal Academy in London from 29 September — 10 December 2018. Adam Kuper, Visiting Professor of Anthropology, LSE and Boston University.Emmanuelle Loyer is a historian at Sciences Po. Lévi-Strauss : A Biography, by Emmanuelle Loyer, was awarded the 2015 Prix Femina Essai and has now been translated into English by Ninon Vinsonneau & Jonathan Magidoff. Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009).Look for BBC Ideas or use this link - https://bbc.in/2xitWPt - to see a short film about the thoughts of post war Paris Philosophers and Existentialism on our programme notes. It’s part of their playlist of what different Isms mean

Ideas of tryanny, martyrdom, sin and grace in a new play set against Indian politics today and an exhibition which might be called pornographic. April De Angelis has relocated a Lope De Vega play to contemporary India, and a backdrop of political unrest. The original Fuenteovejuna was inspired by an incident in 1476 when inhabitants of a village banded together to seek retribution on a commander who mistreated them. The Spanish Baroque artist and printmaker, Jusepe de Ribera (1591-1652) is known for his depictions of human suffering, a popular subject for artists during the Catholic Counter-Reformation. The curator Xavier Bray looks at this savage imagery. Then historian Gillian Clark and theologian John Milbank discuss the legacy of Augustine of Hippo. Anne McElvoy presents. The Village runs at the Theatre Royal Stratford East from 7 Sep - 6 OcT 2018 written by April De Angelis and directed by Nadia Fall. Ribera: Art of Violence runs at Dulwich Picture Gallery from Sept 26th to Jan 27th 2019. Gillian Clark has edited Augustine: Confessions Books I-IV; Augustine: The Confessions and she's working on a commentary of Augustine's City of God. John Milbank directs the Centre of Theology and Philosophy at the University of Nottingham. His books include Paul's New Moment: Continental Philosophy and the Future of Christian Theology, With Slavoj Žižek and Creston Davis; the essay "Postmodern Critical Augustinianism: A Short Summa in Forty-two Responses to Unasked Questions", found in The Postmodern God: a Theological Reader, edited by Graham WardProducer: Torquil MacLeod

Bettany Hughes and Alex Clark discuss feminist retellings of The Iliad. Rachel Stirling reads extracts.

The author of Birdsong talks to Anne McElvoy in one of the first conversations about his new novel. Sebastian Faulks discusses depicting France past and present from World War I to Algeria and immigration now as he publishes his latest novel called Paris Echo. Recorded with an audience at the BBC Proms. Producer: Fiona McLean

Deborah Frances-White host of podcast The Guilty Feminist joins Catherine Fletcher. Novelist Michèle Roberts reviews a portrait of artist Louise Bourgeois woven from conversations, and comedian and classicist Natalie Haynes discusses co-writing a modern political comedy based on The Assembly Women by Aristophanes, whilst Jeanie O'Hare talks about filling in the gaps in Shakespeare's depiction of Queen Margaret in her new play. Now, Now Louison written by Jean Frémon, translated by Cole Swensen and published by Les Fugitives is out now. Deborah Frances-White has published The Guilty Feminist as a book out now. Women In Power - A Musical Comedy runs at the Nuffield Southampton Theatres from 06 September, 2018 - 29 September, 2018. It has been written by Wendy Cope, Jenny Eclair, Suhayla El-Bushra, Natalie Haynes, Shappi Khorsandi, Brona C Titley and Jess Phillips MP and is directed by Blanche McIntyre. Queen Margaret runs at the Royal Exchange, Manchester from Sept 14th to Oct 6th featuring Jade Anouka as Queen Margaret.Producer: Fiona McLean

A silent room and a design to encourage disobedience are amongst the exhibits that Matthew Sweet and Laurence Scott visit at the London Design Biennale as they consider the role of Design in the week the V&A opens a new museum in Dundee. New Generation Thinker Kylie Murray talks about her discoveries of scribblings in the margins of books and what they tell us about Dundee's connections with France in late medieval times. Plus film critic Peter Biskind explores the effect of superhero and zombie movies on the American psyche.The Sky Is Falling: How Vampires, Zombies, Androids and Superheroes Made America Great For Extremism by Peter Biskind is out now. Laurence Scott is the author of Picnic, Comma, Lightning: In Search of a New Reality; The Four Dimensional Human: Ways of Being in the Digital World. Kylie Murray is a Fellow, Lecturer, and Director of Studies in English at Christ’s College, Cambridge whose research specialism is the literature of Medieval and Early-Modern Scotland, c.1100-c.1625 in Scots, French, and LatinThe London Design Biennale runs until September 23rd. The V&A in Dundee designed by Kengo Kuma opens with a 3D Festival this weekend. Design Research for Change is a showcase of 67 Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded Design research projects at Truman Brewery, London from 20th – 23rd September 2018.Producer: Craig Smith

The Booker long-listed crime writer, Belinda Bauer and the novelist, Patricia Duncker, join Matthew Sweet to discuss sex and death in literature. Embracing everything from Emily Bronte to Margaret Atwood they consider the challenges and the pitfalls posed by both subjects and whether they’re easier to approach now than they were in the past.Producer: Zahid Warley

The appearance of the aurora borealis has entranced and intrigued people from cultures across the world, inspiring art, music and stories, including tonight's Proms world premiere of Iain Bell's Aurora. But what creates it? Why is it green? Physicists Melanie Windridge, author of Aurora: In Search of the Northern Lights, and Nathan Case of Aurorawatch UK discuss the science that lies behind the Northern Lights. BBC Radio 3 New Generation Thinker Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough is the author of Beyond the Northlands: Viking Voyages and the Old Norse Sagas.

W H Auden called his longest poem, The Age of Anxiety a baroque eclogue - a description which hints at its rich complexity. Its account of a meeting between four strangers in a New York bar inspired Leonard Bernstein’s second symphony and was much admired by T S Eliot. The writers Glyn Maxwell and Polly Clark explore some of the intricacies of the poem with Matthew Sweet and explain how Auden has influenced their poetry and prose.Producer: Zahid Warley

Novelist Louise Doughty, author of Apple Tree Yard and Stone Cradle, talks to writer Damian Le Bas, author of The Stopping Places, about their shared Romany heritage and the culture of the wider Romany diaspora. Presenter: Sophie Coulombeau

Fairy tales are not just familiar stories told to children but are also a means of conveying dark truths about morality and behaviour to adults. There are similarities between stories shared in different cultures . Composer Kerry Andrew has published her first novel Swansong and she performs many traditional songs. She talks to writer Katherine Langrish, author of Seven Miles of Steel Thistles and a “Troll Trilogy” about the cultural legacy of fairy tales and the lessons we can learn from them in a Proms Plus event recorded at Beit Hall, Imperial College London before an audience and chaired by Rana Mitter.

Novelist Will Self, shark expert Gareth Fraser and film expert Ian Hunter join Matthew Sweet for a discussion about sharks, whales and the impact of the book and film Jaws. Jaws started out as a novel which reads as a sociological study of a small American coastal resort full of rather unlikeable characters. It ended up as an iconic film whose heroes engage in a fight to the death with a Great White Man-Eating Machine. Matthew Sweet discusses how the shark came to fill the space once held by the whale, why big teeth still fill our nightmares and whether all publicity is good publicity for the denizens of the oceans with writer Will Self, whose novel 'Shark' was inspired by the film, and Gareth Fraser, who now studies the dental configurations of sharks all because he once sat in a dark cinema, as did life-long Jaws fan, the film expert Ian Hunter. The artist Fiona Tan, whose exhibition was partly inspired by 'Jonah the Giant Whale', a preserved whale exhibited inside a lorry which toured across Europe from the 1950s to the mid-1970s will also appear out of the deep. Presenter: Matthew Sweet Guest: Gareth Fraser, Dept of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield Guest: Ian Hunter, School of Media and Communication, De Montford University Guest: Will Self's latest novel is called 'Shark' Guest: Fiona Tan's exhibition at BALTIC called Depot and draws on Newcastle's history as a whaling port. It run from 10 Jul to 01 Nov 2015. Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Christopher Harding talked to the philosopher Mark Vernon and New Generation Thinker Hetta Howes about figures from the past and present who have searched for a sense of transcendence and experienced ecstatic states.

Historians Laura Rowe and Saul David discuss the controversy surrounding the 1915 German torpedo attack that sank the RMS Lusitania, killing 1198 passengers and crew. Presented by Anindya Raychaudhuri.

The Bible has provided much fruitful inspiration to poets, novelists and composers over the past two thousand years. BBC New Generation Thinker Dr Joe Moshenska teaches Milton at the University of Cambridge. He discusses ideas of doom, chaos and Biblical themes with the novelist Salley Vickers, whose novel Mr Golightly’s Holiday features God as protagonist. They look at the “weeping prophet” Jeremiah, Job, Cassandra and Tiresias and discuss whether creation is impossible without chaos with Nandini Das, Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool and an audience at Imperial College in London.

A series of classical tales, from the Iliad to the Inferno have been recast by modern poets. Sean O’Brien has written a version of Dante’s Inferno, and, for the stage, Aristophanes’ The Birds; he is Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University. Sandeep Parmar’s poetry includes Eidolon, the classical rewrite Helen of Troy in America, and she is a Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool. Catherine Fletcher invites them to reflect on how to find the right words and images when translating a classic work into a modern idiom and what it means to work on something which is well known as two Proms present new work inspired by Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos.

Poets Gillian Clarke and Peter Mackay discuss the rich seam of folklore that has influenced their work and the danger of losing our connection to these tales. Gillian is a former National Poet of Wales and winner of the Queen’s Medal for Poetry. Peter is a New Generation Thinker, originally from Lewis, and an expert in Scots and Irish poetry.