Arts & Ideas

Matthew Sweet is joined by critics Ryan Gilbey and Ellen E Jones to look at the films nominated for this year's Academy Awards and the tradition of films with a campaigning message. Film historian Vanda Krefft charts the complicated life of William Fox, the man who founded the Fox Film Corporation. Comedian Lucy Porter and author Steve Massa celebrate the women of the silent era who starred alongside the likes of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. The Man Who Made the Movies: The Meteoric Rise and Tragic Fall of William Fox is by Vanda Krefft. Slapstick Divas: The Women of Silent Comedy is by Steve Massa. Producer: Craig Templeton Smith

Fiona Sampson, Daisy Hay, Christopher Frayling and David H. Guston join Matthew Sweet to discuss Mary Shelley's story in film, fiction and the view of AI scientists now.In Search of Mary Shelley: The Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein by the poet and writer Fiona Sampson is out now.Christopher Frayling has published Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred YearsDr Daisy Hay is Senior Lecturer, English Literature and Archival Studies at the University of Exeter and a BBC Radio 3 and AHRC New Generation Thinker who will be publishing later this year a book on The Making of Frankenstein. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley Annotated for scientists, engineers and creators of all kinds edited by David H. Guston, Ed Finn and Jason Scott Robert Late Junction tonight is looking at music and AI, asking can we create a digital version of the ideal Late Junction collaborator using computer code alone?The Radio 3 Sunday feature Select, Edit, Paste presented by Clemency Burton-Hill has been exploring new technologies and the arts. Producer: Zahid Warley

Leïla Slimani, President Macron's champion of French culture and language, is interviewed by presenter Shahidha Bari about her new role and her novel Lullaby which won the 2016 Prix Goncourt Plus Emile Chabal from the University of Edinburgh discusses Savages: The Wedding by Sabri Louatah - a novel imagining the first Arab candidate for President is shot. The TV rights for the quartet of books have been sold and the first book is winning prizes and comparisons with the Neopolitan novels of Elena Ferrante. Fleur Darkin of Scottish Dance Theatre talks about her stage adaptation of L'Amant by Marguerite Duras, while Julia Waters from the University of Reading explains how the French colonial experience in Indochina informed the work of Duras and other writers.Lullaby by Leïla Slimani is now published in English in a translation by Sam Taylor. Savages The Saint-Étienne Quartet Volume 1: The Wedding is written by Sabri Louatah and translated into English by Gavin Bowd. The Lover, adapted and directed by Fleur Darkin and Jemima Levick, is at the Lyceum, Edinburgh from 20th January to 3rd February.Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

A car race around Australia is fictionalised in Peter Carey's latest novel. He talks to Rana Mitter about depicting race and racing. Josephine Quinn questions whether the Phoenicians existed as she looks at the way ancient texts and artworks helped construct an identity for the ancient civilization on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, stretching through what is now Syria, Lebanon and northern Israel. Classicist and novelist Natalie Haynes discusses Ovid's tales and Rana Mitter speaks to this year's TS Eliot Prize winner Ocean Vuong.Peter Carey's latest novel is called A Long Way Home.Josephine Quinn has published In Search of the Phoenicians. Natalie Haynes most recent novel is called The Children of Jocasta. Radio 3's The Essay this week consists of five retellings of Ovid. Ocean Vuong's Night Sky with Exit Wounds is out now.Producer: Debbie Kilbride

Matthew Sweet discusses protests like the 1968 uprising at Columbia University, 1985's Battle of the Beanfield and the acid house movement with guests Paul Hartnoll of Orbital, novelist Tony White, editor Paul Cronin and writer Tessa DeCarlo. The Fountain in the Forest by Tony White is available nowA Time To Stir: Columbia '68 edited by Paul Cronin is out nowProducer: Debbie Kilbride

Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough explores the uncanny possibilities of the In Between with the neuroscientist Dean Burnett, award-winning poet Vahni Capildeo, artist Alexandra Carr, writer and walker of London and other wastelands, Iain Sinclair, and the philosopher, Emily Thomas. How do our brains and bodies react in the In Between spaces of the airport lounge or the station platform where we're waiting to move on but temporarily in stasis and why have so many artists, writers and poets used these places to explore the uncanny, the strange and ourselves?

Amit Chaudhuri, Karen McCarthy Woolf, Daniel Mendelsohn and Emily Wilson join Philip Dodd to explore translating, rewriting and using Homer's epic work to frame a memoir. Emily Wilson has published a new translation of The Odyssey Daniel Mendelsohn has written An Odyssey: A Father, A Son and An Epic Karen McCarthy Woolf wrote Nightshift as part of a BBC Radio 4's Odyssey Project which commissioned ten writers to create a contemporary response. Her most recent collection is called Seasonal Disturbances. Amit Chaudhuri has written a novel called Odysseus Abroad which draws on A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and The Odyssey.

Diving from Tudor times through the Brooklyn Naval Yard in the Second World War to present day deep water sculpture parks and swimming with whales. Rana Mitter talks to prize-winning writer Jennifer Egan about the Sea as metaphor and how the research for her latest novel, Manhattan Beach, was the inspiration for its time-shifting, punky, award-laden predecessor, The Goon Squad. He hears from historian Miranda Kaufmann about the existence of a black population of skilled workers in Tudor England, one of whom dived salvage on the wreck of the Mary Rose after she sank laden with cannons on her way to wage war against the French. And he's joined by marine biologist, Alex Rogers, writer and whale lover Philip Hoare, and Jason de Caires Taylor, creator of the world's first underwater sculpture parks to discuss why decades after we first saw our blue and watery planet hanging in space, we still find it easier to ignore our oceans than explore them.

When Philip Astley and his trick riders performed in 1768 in a circle not a straight line in a field behind where Waterloo station is now, the idea of the circus ring was born. Matthew Sweet looks at the career of the impresario, his 42 foot diameter ring which is still the big top template and 250 years of circus with historian Vanessa Toulmin, performer Andrew Van Buren whose family have worked for 35 years to bring Astley's name to greater public attention, writer Naomi Frisby whose research focuses on women's bodies in relation to circuses and sideshows and Tom Rack, artistic director of NoFit State circusCircus250 is a celebration with events around the UK and Ireland. Producer Torquil MacLeod.

Philip Dodd is joined by Roger Scruton, Haroon Mirza, Kevin Davey and Kirsty Gunn to explore writing, modernism and experiment from T. S. Eliot onwards. Roger Scruton's books include 'How to be a Conservative' and 'England: An Elegy'. His most recent is 'Where We Are'. Kevin Davey's novel 'Playing Possum' was shortlisted for the 2017 Goldsmiths Prize - a prize for writing which embodies the spirit of invention Kirsty Gunn is the author of novels including 'The Big Music' and 'The Boy and the Sea'Haroon Miza has new work at the Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne from 20th January-8th April Producer: Debbie Kilbride Main Image: L-R: Kevin Davey, Haroon Mirza, Kirsty Gunn, Roger Scruton and presenter Philip Dodd.

No need to RSVP just turn up and tune in to Free Thinking's end of year salon. Matthew Sweet is our host and he's promising wit and wisdom as well as a host of guests: Jake Arnott, Malika Booker, Neil Brand, David Aaronovitch and Katherine Cooper. Malika Booker co-founded Malika’s Poetry Kitchen in 2001 to create a nourishing and encouraging community of writers dedicated to the development of their writing. She is currently the Douglas Caster Cultural Fellow at the University of Leeds. Her first poetry collection was called Pepper Seed and she also writes dramas. Jake Arnott is the author of six novels including The Long Firm and The Fatal Tree. He took part in the tenth anniversary tour of the Polari LGBT literary salon. Dr Katherine Cooper teaches at the University of East Anglia and is researching the PEN archive and gatherings involving authors including H.G. Wells, Graham Greene and Margaret Storm Jameson. She is a BBC Radio 3 and AHRC New Generation Thinker. Neil Brand is a composer, dramatist and author and regular silent film accompanist at the BFI National Film Theatre and at the Barbican in London. David Aaronovitch is a journalist, broadcaster and author of books including his memoir Party Animals: My Family and Other Communists; Producer: Zahid Warley

Are pets theraputic? Is it moral to domesticate animals? Anne McElvoy explores the history of our relationship with pets with John Bradshaw author of Cat Sense and Dog Sense, Philip Howell who has researched the role of the domestic dog in Victorian Britain, bioethicist and writer Jessica Pierce who questions whether we should keep pets at all and novelist Laura Purcell. John Bradshaw has written The Animals Among Us: The New Science of Anthrozoology; Cat Sense: The Feline Enigma Revealed and Dog Sense: How the New Science of Dog Behavior Can Make You a Better Friend to Your Pet. He is director of the Anthrozoology Institute at the University of Bristol.Laura Purcell published the ghost story The Silent Companions earlier this year. The Animal's Agenca : Freedom, Compassion, and Coexistence in the Human Age by Jessica Pierce and Marc Bekoff was published this year - her other books include Run Spot Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets. Philip Howell is a Senior Lecturer at Fellow at Emmanuel College Cambridge who has published At Home and Astray: The Domestic Dog in Victorian Britain.

Philip Dodd discusses the significance of David Storey's groundbreaking 1960 novel with social historian Juliet Gardiner, journalist Rod Liddle, writer Anthony Clavane and the author's daughter Kate Storey.

Catherine Fletcher talks to Professor Stephen Greenblatt about the Adam and Eve story in the Christian tradition; to Islam Issa about Islam's version which tells a rather more gender-equality story of the original first couple. Jennifer Evans and Sara Read reveal how the story impacted on mothers and would-be mothers over centuries through their reading of 16th and 17th century medical textbooks. Garlic was one interesting diagnostic of pregnancy while menstrual periods played their part in murder trials. Professor Stephen Greenblatt is the author of The Rise and Fall of Adam & Eve Islam Issa is a New Generation Thinker and author of Milton in the Arab-Muslim World.Jennifer Evans is a director of the Perceptions of Pregnancy research network, author of Aphrodisiacs, Fertility and Medicine in early modern England and editor of Perceptions of Pregnancy from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century .Sara Read is author of Maids, Wives, Widows: Exploring Early Modern Women’s Lives, 1540-1740 ; Maladies and Medicine: Exploring Health and Healing, 1540-1740 co-authored with Jennifer Evans. (2017)

Matthew Sweet debates the merits of bad films with critics Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and Tim Robey as The Disaster Artist, James Franco's film inspired by cult classic The Room opens in UK cinemas. Plus the power of underground protest, of art and of the mind as we hear from psychologist Tali Sharot, from Jonathan Lerner on his time in the Weathermen, an organisation dedicated to the violent overthrowing of the United States government during the Vietnam era and from Lubaina Himid winner of this year's Turner Prize.Jonathan Lerner's book on his early years is 'Swords in the Kingdom: Reflections of an American Revolutionary' is published now. Tali Sharot is associate professor of cognitive neuroscience in the department of Experimental Psychology at University College London and author of The Influential Mind - What the Brain Reveals About Our Power To Change Others. The Disaster Artist, produced and directed by James Franco, is inspired by the making of Tommy Wiseau's 2003 cult film The Room which became a cult classic. Producer: Fiona McLean

Masha Gessen has traced the lives of 4 Russians born as the Soviet Union crumbled. Daniel Beer won the Cundill History Prize for his history of punishment in Tsarist times. Mary Dejevsky writes and reports on Russian politics now. Philip Dodd presents. Masha Gessen's book is called The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia. Daniel Beer's prize winning book is The House of the Dead: Siberian Exile under the Tsars

Matthew Sweet discusses the Vietnam War with the film maker Ken Burns who has spent the last decade making a monumental documentary about America's ill fated war in South East Asia. The award winninng poet, Sasha Dugdale, reads from her latest collection, Joy; and Kate Flint traces the history of flash photography from its origins in the nineteenth century to Weegee and Gordon Parks in the twentieth and Hiroshi Sugimoto and Martin Parr todayThe Vietnam War - a film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick is released by PBS as a 10 disc DVD set.Joy by Sasha Dugdale is published by Carcanet .Flash! Photography, writing and Surprising Illumination by Kate Flint, Provost Professor of Art History and English at the University of Southern California is out now. Producer: Zahid Warley .

New Yorker essayist Adam Gopnik talks to Shahidha Bari about city living. Plus artist Lucinda Rogers on depicting changes to a London market, a new report into prosperity and New Generation Thinker Alastair Fraser from the University of Glasgow shares his research . At the Stranger's Gate by Adam Gopnik, a staff writer for the New Yorker, is a memoir recalling 1980s New York and the early years of his marriage. Lucinda Rogers: On Gentrification Drawings from Ridley Road Market is on display at the House of Illustration in London until March 25th 2018. Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

The Rt Hon Lord David Willetts talks to Philip Dodd about universities. The UK Minister for Universities and Science from 2010 to 2014, his new book considers both the history and the global role they now play. Plus a discussion about scandal old and new - is it a driving force for social change or once the outrage has passed does everything revert to the status quo. Historian and New Generation Thinker Tom Charlton, journalist Michael White and biographer Frances Wilson, author of lives of Thomas De Quincey and royal courtesan Harriette Wilson look at scandals past and present.

Philip Dodd looks at 2000 years of Arab Christians, at the modern rise of Pentecostalism and a novel depicting a man who decides to build a new church. Laura Premack from Lancaster University researches pentecostalism in Brazil, Nigeria and the USA. Neil Griffiths is author of a novel called As a God Might Be. Aurélie Clemente-Ruiz is Director of Exhibitions Department at the Institut du monde arabe in Paris where Eastern Christians: 2000 Years of History is on until January 14th 2018. It then tours to the MuBA Eugene Leroy, Fine Arts Museum of Tourcoing from 22nd February to 12 June 2018.

Kelly and Zach Weinersmith share visions of the future with Rana Mitter. Plus former Australian PM Kevin Rudd on power and what images does Finland conjure 100 years after independence? We hear from Pauliina Stahlberg, Director of the Finnish Institute and Anne Robbins, curator of Lake Keitele: A Vision of Finland which runs at the National Gallery in London until 4 February 2018.Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve and/or Ruin Everything by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith is out now. You can find a collection of Free Thinking the Future conversations on the programme website. Kevin Rudd's Memoir is called Not for the Faint-hearted: A Personal Reflection on Life, Politics and Purpose 1957-2007 Producer: Debbie Kilbride

New Generation Thinkers Shahidha Bari & Laurence Scott consider how archives come to life with events from the Being Human Festival including klezmer music, stories from conflict in Northern Ireland and voices from marginalised communities.

Stories of objects, ghosts and histories lost and found recorded on location in Portsmouth's most haunted house, the site of a sacrifice in Canterbury and at the TfL Lost Luggage Office. Presenter Matthew Sweet meets academics taking part in Being Human which showcases research from universities around the UK.How can the reflections of a warrior-poet from the distant past and the adventures of an Iron Age tribesman from the far future help us rethink our relationship with a city centre in the Britain of today? Matthew Sweet travels to Canterbury to find out. The Transport for London lost property office is a labyrinthine cornucopia hidden away under the streets of central London. A visit there leads to reflections on our complicated relationships with things in a consumer society dominated by mass-produced goods, and the history of the concept of lost property casts a revealing light on the development of the city as an ordered space. And, some say that Wymering Manor in Portsmouth is one of the most haunted houses in the country. Whether that's true or not, Matthew goes there to examine the ways in which the past of a building intrudes into its present. Matthew's guests include: Michael Bintley and Sonia Overall in Canterbury Kate Smith and Paul Cowan at the TFL Lost Property Office Karen Fielder and Benjamin Ffrench in PortsmouthProducer Luke Mulhall.

BBC Head of News, James Harding, offers his verdict of a new stage version of Network, starring Bryan Cranston. Philosopher, Gloria Origgi, considers the importance of reputation in the digital age. Plus, presenter Rana Mitter meets with the 'father of Virtual Reality', Jaron Lanier. Jaron Lanier's books include You Are Not a Gadget, Who Owns the Future, and Dawn of the New Everything. Network scripted by Lee Hall and directed by Ivo van Hove, based on the Paddy Chayefsky film, runs at the National Theatre until February 2018 and stars Bryan Cranston as news anchor-man Howard Beale.Reputation: What it is and why it matters by Gloria Origgi is out now. Producer: Craig Templeton Smith

‘There are three urgent and indeed great problems that we face today… that is the problem of racism, the problem of poverty and the problem of war.’ The words of Martin Luther King in 1967 when he visited Newcastle upon Tyne to receive an honorary degree. Words that underlie a discussion about poetry and protest which features in the festival marking the 50th anniversary of that visit. The poets Jackie Kay, Fred D’Aguiar and Major Jackson join Shahidha Bari and an audience at Newcastle University to explore the nature of protest poetry and to launch a poetry anthology celebrating the spirit of Dr King. Producer: Zahid Warley.MAJOR JACKSON Going to Meet the Man As if one day, a grand gesture of the brain, an expired subscription to silence, a decision raw as a concert of habaneros on the lips: a renewal to decency like a trash can smashing a storefront or the shattering glass face of a time-clock: where once a man forced to the ground, a woman spread-eagled against a wall, where a shot into the back of an unarmed teen: finally, a decisive spark, the engine of action, this civilian standoff: on one side, a barricade of shields, helmets, batons, and pepperspray: on the other, a cocktail of fire, all that is just and good"Going to Meet the Man" originally published by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. in Holding Company,© Major Jackson, 2010 The Mighty Stream: Poems in Celebration of Martin Luther King edited by Carolyn Forché and Jackie Kay is published by Bloodaxe. Photo: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. signs the Degree Roll At Newcastle University after receiving an honorary Doctor of Civil Law degree, Newcastle, England, November 14, 1967. Credit: Getty Images

Author Boris Akunin and broadcaster and writer Zinovy Zinik in conversation with Anne McElvoy, recorded with an audience at Pushkin House.Pushkin House has commissioned a pavilion on Bloomsbury Square in London from the architect and artist Alexander Brodsky, titled '101st km - Further and Everywhere', as part of the Bloomsbury Festival. Anne visits this with Pushkin House Director Clem Cecil.Boris Akunin is the pen name of Grigory Chkhartishvili, who was born in Georgia in 1956. An essayist, historian, playwright and translator, he is best known as the author of crime and historical fiction featuring the 19th-century detective Erast Fandorin.Zinovy Zinik is a Russian-born British novelist, essayist and short story writer whose books include The Mushroom Picker. Having lost his Russian citizenship with his emigration from the USSR in 1975, Zinik settled down in Britain in 1976.Part of Radio 3's Breaking Free: A Century of Russian CultureProducer: Torquil MacLeod.

"The greatest documentary of all time"? Michael Nyman, Alexei Popogrebsky, Ian Christie and Larushka Ivan-Zadeh join Matthew Sweet to discuss Dziga Vertov's 1929 film, Man with a Movie Camera, which was voted top of a poll conducted by Sight and Sound Magazine. Vertov's film is a kind of cinematic symphony of urban life in the Soviet Union. It fizzes with ideas and is the embodiment of the notion that cinema can promote revolutionary consciousness. For some its an achievement to set along side the films of Eisenstein. Both could lay claim to being the greatest film maker of their time and their friendship ended in rivalry. Man with a Movie Camera counts amongst its admirers the novelist, Salman Rushdie and the enfant terrible of the French New Wave, Jean-Luc Godard.Michael Nyman has composed scores for the three major films that the pioneering Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov made in the late 1920s and is now working on an opera about Vertov. Ian Christie is Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck University London. He is co-editor, with Richard Taylor, of The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents 1896-1939 and Eisenstein rediscovered. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh is chief film critic for the Metro newspaper. Alexei Popogrebsky is a film director and screenwriter whose work includes How I Ended this Summer and Prostye veshchi. Plus, on the website you can find Salman Rushdie's comments about watching the film. Part of Radio 3’s Breaking Free: A Century of Russian Culture Producer: Zahid Warley

Nobel prize winner Svetlana Alexeivich on the Soviet Woman's Stories of World War II and why they did not want them published; Stephen Kotkin with Volume II of his biograph of Joseph Stalin explores the bloody creation of a Soviet State capable of standing up to hostile global countries. Ran Mitter talks to them about their top down/bottom up histories of Soviet Culture and also hears from Juliane Fürst about Soviet hipsters and hippies who challenged the system in ways that required no words. Svetlana Alexeivich's books include The Unwomanly Face of War, Boys in Zinc and Chernobyl Prayer.Stalin, Vol 2: Waiting for Hitler, 1928-1941 by Steven Kotkin has just been published. Stalin, Vol 1: Paradoxes of Power 1878-1928 is now in paperback. Steven Kotkin is Professor of History and International Affairs at Princeton University. Juliane Fürst, Reader in Modern History at Bristol, is the co-producer of the documentary Soviet hippies (dir. Terje Toomistu) and the author of Stalin's Last Generation: Soviet Post-War Youth and the Emergence of Mature Socialism.Part of Radio 3’s Breaking Free: A Century of Russian Culture

Comedian Janey Godley, historian John Gallagher, poet and journalist Bridget Minamore and author and science writer Dr Emma Byrne discuss with Matthew Sweet swearing on stage, in pain and protest and when new terms entered our language. Swearing Is Good For You by Emma Byrne is out now. Please note this programme may contain strong language.Producer: Debbie Kilbride

David Hendy, Glyn Maxwell, Kate Kennedy and Lucy Walker with Philip Dodd and an audience at Aldeburgh in a discussion exploring Britten’s relationship with radio in Britain and in America, with his subjects as varied as mountaineering (with words from Christopher Isherwood), a dramatisation of Homer’s Odyssey and short stories by D.H. Lawrence (with a young W.H. Auden). But why was Britten so reluctant to accept a job at the BBC’s Music department in the 1930s? David Hendy is a historian of the BBC and Professor of Media and Cultural History at the University of Sussex.Glyn Maxwell is a poet and librettist who has traced the journey of Auden and MacNeice to Iceland.Kate Kennedy is a biographer and editor of the forthcoming ‘Literary Britten’Lucy Walker is Director of Programmes and Learning at the Britten-Pears Foundation. Recorded in front of an audience as part of the Britten on the Radio weekend at the Britten Studio at Snape Maltings.Producer: Fiona McLean.

What does Gulliver's Travels say to us now? Satirical cartoonist Martin Rowson and Daniel Cook from the University of Dundee assess the legacy of Swift's best-known work. And Monochrome exhibition co-curator Jennifer Sliwka and photographer Sarah Pickering discuss exhibits ranging from black and white art on glass, vellum, ceramic, silk, wood, and canvas from Leonardo da Vinci to Gerhard Richter to a room filled with yellow light by the artist Olafur Eliasson, who created the Sun installation at Tate Modern. And New Generation Thinker Will Abberley tells Anne about a new project to compile a comprehensive history of British nature writing.Monochrome: Painting in Black and White runs at the National Gallery in London from October 30th until February 18th 2018.Swift at 350: A Graphic Anthology is launched at Dundee on November 25th along with a series of events for families, Telling Tall Tales, Gulliver! A Fantastical Pantomime and an exhibition at the local library in Dundee. Find out more at www.beinghumanfestival.org. Martin Rowson is taking part in a discussion about satire at the British Library on November 28th with Jonathan Coe, Rory Bremner, Judith Hawley, and Sathnam Sanghera.Land Lines – Modern British Nature Writing 1789-2014 - Finding the UK's favourite nature book. Find out More at http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/favouritenaturebooks/

Alex Cox discusses surveillance, mind bending and the power of the individual versus the collective in the 1967 cult TV series The Prisoner. Plus Christopher Fowler, Clare Walker Gore and Lynda Nead look back at bestsellers from the past which deserve re-reading and the way movies and fiction of the 1950s reflected both the smog and fashions of post-war British culture. Christopher Fowler's The Book of Forgotten Authors catalogues 99 writers whom he thinks should be better known. The Prisoner first aired in Canada in 1967 and ran for 17 episodes. I am (not) a Number: Decoding The Prisoner by Alex Cox is published later this year. The Tiger in the Smoke: Art and Culture in Post-war Britain by Professor Lynda Nead is published by London and New Haven: Yale University Press / Paul Mellon Studies in British Art.Clare Walker Gore is a New Generation Thinker based at the University of Cambridge who has edited a critical edition of Dinah Mulock Craik’s out-of-print novel A Noble Life, published by Victorian Secrets - an independent publisher which makes available scholarly editions of unjustly neglected Victorian novels. Producer: Karl Bos

Yanis Varoufakis discusses economics and Marxist analysis with Philip Dodd and Ruth Lea. Plus the new play from Richard Bean and Clive Coleman - the team behind One Man, Two Guvnors. which stars Rory Kinnear stars as the 32-year-old Karl Marx hiding out in Dean Street, Soho. And poet Tara Bergin on her version of Eleanor Marx. Young Marx by Richard Bean and Clive Coleman opens Nicholas Hytner's new London base The Bridge Theatre running until December 31st. It will be streamed in cinemas as National Theatre Live on December 7th. Yanis Varoufakis' new book has just published Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: A Brief History of Capitalism. Tara Bergin's collection The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx was shortlisted for this year's Forward Poetry Prize. Producer: Zahid Warley.

Web guru Tim O'Reilly on algorithm regulation and the magical worlds of Harry Potter, Philip Pullman and Tove Jansson with guests Aisha Bushby, young adult author, and New Generation Thinkers Hetta Howes and Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough.

Matthew Sweet discusses memory and Marnie with novelist and Freud scholar Lisa Appignanesi, Andrew Graham - son of the novelist Winston Graham who wrote the 1961 novel which Alfred Hitchcock turned into a film in 1964, Gwyneth Hughes - who wrote the screenplay of 'The Girl', an exploration of Hitchcock’s relationship with Tippi Hedren, and Hitchcock and Marnie scholar Murray Pomerance. plus the audience at Wellcome Collection in London.Recorded as part of BBC Radio 3's series of programmes Why Music? The Key to Memory.Lisa Appignanesi - Trials of Passion: Crimes in the Name of Love and Madness Murray Pomerance - Marnie: BFIClassicNico Muhly's opera based on Marnie premieres at English National Opera on November 18th and will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

Dr Foster writer Mike Bartlett on his new play Albion. Alex Clark reports from the Man Booker prize ceremony. And former SNP MP George Kerevan, David Goodhart and Marián Arribas-Tomé from UEA discuss whether the 21st century is set to be a century of small nations. The Man Booker Prize shortlist 2017 is : 4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund Exit West by Mohsin Hamid Elmet by Fiona Mozley Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders Autumn by Ali Smith Mike Bartlett's play Albion runs at the Almeida Theatre in London from October 10th to November 24th. David Goodhart is Head of Demography, Immigration & Integration at Policy Exchange and author of The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of PoliticsProducer: Torquil MacLeod.

The Gunpowder Plot in a new tv dramatisation by Ronan Bennett plus presenter Rana Mitter explores anti-Catholic prejudice in Britain today with Catherine Pepinster and Tim Stanley, and historians Richard McGregor and Hans van de Ven discuss relations between Japan, US and China. And the Icelandic poet and songwriter Sjón on hisrole in Poetry International as it celebrates its 50th anniversary since it was founded in 1967 by former poet laureate Ted Hughes. Richard McGregor is former Beijing bureau chief for The Financial Times and the author of Asia's Reckoning: China, Japan, and the Fate of U.S. Power in the Pacific Century. Hans van de Ven has written China at War: triumph and tragedy in the emergence of the new China 1937 - 1952. He is Professor of Modern Chinese History, Department of East Asian Studies, University of Cambridge. 'Gunpowder' a 3-part TV series developed by Ronan Bennett, Kit Harington and Daniel West will air on BBC TV Poetry International is on London's Southbank from Friday 13th-Sunday 15th October as part of the London Literature Festival. Catherine Pepinster has written The Keys and the Kingdom: The British and the Papacy from John Paul II to Francis. You can hear Ronan Bennett's Private Passions on BBC Radio 3 on November 5th. Producer: Fiona McLean.

Simon Schama and Devorah Baum join Philip Dodd for a conversation ranging from the expulsion of Jewish people from Spain in 1492 to Jewish jokes today. Plus, poet Michael Longley considers his preoccupations with The Great War, The Troubles and the natural world. Belonging: The Story of the Jews 1492-1900 is the title of Simon Schama's latest book. Devorah Baum teaches at the University of Southampton and has written Feeling Jewish (A Book for Just About Anyone) and The Jewish Joke. Michael Longley is the recipient of the 2017 PEN Pinter Prize. His latest collection is called Angel Hill. The Pen Pinter prize is awarded annually to a writer from Britain, the Republic of Ireland or the Commonwealth who, in the words of Harold Pinter's Nobel Literature Prize speech, casts an 'unflinching, unswerving gaze upon the world' and shows a 'fierce intellectual determination...to define the real truth of our lives and our societies.' Producer: Craig Templeton Smith

Novelists Salman Rushdie and Lionel Shriver join science writer Marcus Chown and historian Rachel Hewitt to discuss fiction, US politics, living in uncertain times and the new West End play from Simon Stephens Heisenberg: The Uncertainty Principle. Presented Shahidha Bari.

Matthew Sweet goes on a ghost hunt in Portsmouth with Karl Bell and is joined by Susan Owens and Stuart Evers to look at hauntings and what they tell us about our fears through the ages. James Burton from Goldsmiths and New Generation Thinker Sarah Dillon watch a vision of Los Angeles in 2049 in the Blade Runner sequel.

Alan Hollinghurst talks to Anne McElvoy and a Proms Extra audience about his new novel The Sparsholt Affair, which traces a family and changing attitudes to sexuality across generations. It's the sixth novel from the author whose Booker Prize winning The Line of Beauty was dramatised for TV and who began his literary career with The Swimming Pool Library published in 1988. Recorded last month as a Proms Extra event with an audience at Imperial College. Producer: Zahid Warley

Niall Ferguson talks to Philip Dodd about a less hierarchical history. Jane Munro looks at Degas's depictions of the human body. Sarah Lamb describes dancing MacMillan's ballets. The Square and the Tower: Networks, hierarchies and the struggle for global power by Niall Ferguson is out now. Degas - A Passion for Perfection runs at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge until January 14th 2018. Jane Munro has edited a catalogue containing essays to mark the centenary of Degas's death which is published by Yale University Press. Kenneth MacMillan - A National Celebration - featuring 6 ballet companies from across Britain - takes place at the Royal Opera House between October 18th and November 1st. Producer: Robyn Read

Poets Michael Symmons Roberts and Helen Mort and academic Stewart Mottram join Matthew Sweet in Hull to discuss the language of love and the politics underpinning Marvell's poem in a special recording for National Poetry Day. Readings are performed by Matt Sutton. Published posthumously in 1861, the poem has been seen as following traditions of carpe diem love poetry exhorting the female reader to seize the day and respond more quickly to the poet/lover but it has also been argued that the metaphors are ambiguous and the poem can be read as an ironic version of sexual seduction. Many of the phrases and ideas about time in the poem have inspired other authors and been re-used as book titles and lines in films including within A Matter of Life and Death, The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock and the writing of Ursula K Le Guin. Recorded with an audience at the University of Hull as part of the BBC's festival Contains Strong Language. Producer: Fiona McLean.

Philip Blond, Eliza Filby, Tom Simpson and Simon Heffer join Rana Mitter to look back to Edwardian England and at conservative thinking now. New Generation Thinkers Eleanor Lybeck and Leah Broad share their research into touring opera and the links between Sibelius's music for theatre and his symphonies. Simon Heffer's latest book is called The Age of Decadence: Britain 1880-1914 Opera: Passion, Power and Politics opens at the Victoria and Albert Museum on September 30th. Tickets cost £19 and BBC Radio 3 is broadcasting the operas featured in the exhibition. The BBC Symphony Orchestra embark upon a cycle of Sibelius to mark 100 years since Finland gained independence. Catch up with tonight's performance of Sibelius 5 on the Radio 3 website. Eliza Filby is the author of God and Mrs Thatcher Philip Blond is the Director of think tank Res Publica. Tom Simpson is a New Generation Thinker and Associate Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford You can find a discussion of The Union Jack and of George Dangerfield's The Strange Death of Liberal England in the Free Thinking collection of Landmarks on our website. Producer: Luke Mulhall.

Family ties and radicalisation in Kamila Shamsie's novel Home Fire; images of beggars and slaughterhouses in the old postcards collected by John Kasmin, the art dealer who promoted abstract artists including Anthony Caro and Gillian Ayres. Plus Dido, Queen of Carthage - from Virgil and Christopher Marlowe to Purcell and TS Eliot - classicist Natalie Haynes and theatre director Rebecca McCutcheon discuss the different interpretations. Kamila Shamsie's novels include Burnt Shadows which links events in Nagasaki and partition in India to Pakistan in the early 1980s, New York post 9/11 and Afghanistan in the wake of a US bombing campaign; and A God in Every Stone moves from the time of Persian Darius I to the experiences of Indian troops fighting the First World War and the independence movement in Peshawar. John Kasmin's Postcards series published by Trivia Press is themed into collections Meat; Scrub; Elders; Size; and Wreck. Dido, Queen of Carthage is at the Swan theatre in Stratford with Kimberley Sykes directing for the Royal Shakespeare Company until October 28th 2017. Natalie Haynes is the author The Ancient Guide to Modern Life and her latest novel is The Children of Jocasta. Rebecca McCutcheon directed performances of Christopher Marlowe's drama in a women's refuge and at Kensington Palace and her theatre company Lost Text, Found Space is now working on staging a rarely performed play by Elizabeth Inchbold at a Victorian House in Peckham.

The Northern Irish author of Cal and Grace Notes, Bernard MacLaverty talks to Anne McElvoy about his novel Midwinter Break plus Clair Wills on her research into post war immigration to Britain and the differing expectations and experience of migrants and European refugees. The daughter of Irish immigrants - she now teaches at Princeton University in USA. Joining in the discussion Will Jones, who researches the politics of migration and is working on developing the idea of matching markets which would match refugee preferences with state priorities. Anne also hears from Catherine Nixey a young historian with a tale to tell of who did for the pagans. Nixey claims that the old story of Roman paganism dying of its own accord and Christianity moving into a void is one told by the victors. The Christians in fact annihilated belief systems across the Empire in a concerted attack on their philosophy, buildings and artworks. Midwinter Break by Bernard MacLaverty is out now in hardback. Clair Wills book is called Lovers and Strangers: An Immigrant History of Post-War Britain. William Jones, Centre of International Public Policy, Royal Holloway University of London The Darkening Age by Catherine Nixey out now in hardback. Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Cordelia Fine debates the effects of testosterone. Adrian Owen explores the “grey zone” of consciousness. Curator Matt Kimberley and Jahnavi Phalkey discuss scientific discoveries made in India and how they should be displayed at the London Science Museum. Plus Chair of the Judges for the Royal Society Science Book Prize Richard Fortey joins in the round table with presenter Matthew Sweet exploring whether it’s good to personalise science stories.

Philip Dodd and guests explore the art of negotiation and discuss JT Rogers' play Oslo which opens at the National Theatre this week. It draws on the experiences of Norwegian diplomat Mona Juul and her husband, social scientist Terje Rød-Larsen who fixed secret meetings between the State of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Sir John Jenkins is a former diplomat and Executive Director of The International Institute for Strategic Studies - Middle East. He's been HM Consul-General in Israel, and Ambassador to Syria, Iraq and Saudia Arabia. Gabrielle Rifkind is a senior consultant to the Middle East Programme, which she founded and directed until 2015. She is the Director of the Oxford Process, an independent preventive diplomacy initiative pioneered through her dialogue work with Oxford Research Group (ORG). Michael Burleigh is a historian and author of books including A Cultural History of Terrorism; Small Wars, Far Away Places: The Genesis of the Modern World and Moral Combat: A History of World War Two. Dr Beyza Unal is a research fellow with the International Security Department at Chatham House. She specializes in nuclear weapons policies and leads projects on chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons. Dr Unal is also conducting research on cybersecurity. Oslo plays at the National Theatre from 5 - 23 September. It opens in the West End at the Harold Pinter Theatre from 2 October to 30 December. Producer: Eliane Glaser.

Anne Applebaum talks to Anne McElvoy about Russian nationalism and Ukrainian history in a programme exploring the importance of borders and the way identities are bound up with a sense of place. Nick Tandavanitj and Rhiannon White discuss creating drama out of the specific histories of Hull and Port Talbot. St John Simpson, curator of a British Museum exhibition devoted to a nomadic culture of antiquity, explains the ethos of the Scythians. Anne Applebaum is a Professor at LSE and a columnist for The Washington Post. Her new book is called Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine and covers the period from 1917 to the present.Rhiannon White is co-artistic director of Common Wealth which is staging We're Still Here in Port Talbot at the Byass Works, Dock Road between 15 - 30 September in conjunction with National Theatre Wales. It's 6 years since they staged The Passion there. Nick Tandavanitj has worked with Blast Theory since 1994. 2097:We Made Ourselves Over comprises five short science fiction films – each accompanied by an interactive film for smartphones – and live events across both Hull and Aarhus. Scythians: warriors of ancient Siberia runs at the British Museum from 14 September 2017 – 14 January 2018. Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Philip Dodd and Joanna Kavenna discuss the challenges of art in an age of irony as the work of Käthe Kollwitz goes on display in Birmingham at the Ikon Gallery. Lawrence Norfolk pays tribute to the work of the great American poet, John Ashbery, who died last week. Plus a discussion of social conservatism in the USA, Europe and the UK with Sophie Gaston from the think tank, Demos and the political commentators, Tim Stanley and Charlie Wolf. Kollwitz was born in Königsberg in East Prussia in 1867 and the show gathers together 40 of her drawings and prints under the themes of social and political protest, self-portraits and images she made in response to the death of her son Peter in October 1914. Portrait of the Artist: Käthe Kollwitz A British Museum and Ikon Partnership Exhibition runs from 13 September 26 November 2017 with a fully illustrated catalogue.John Ashbery (July 28, 1927 – September 3, 2017) is the author of collections including Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror which won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 Image: Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945) Self Portrait, (1924) Woodcut Copyright: The Trustees of the British MuseumProducer: Zahid Warley