Arts & Ideas

Anne McElvoy talks to the French novelist Laurent Binet about his playful novel The 7th Function of Language, inspired by the death of Roland Barthes which has won the Prix de la FNAC and Prix Interallié. Emile Chabal considers what's next for France and Europe after the election of Emmanuel Macron. Plus, why blockchains, the technology underpinning cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, have the potential to revolutionize the world economy. Or do they? Three experts - Ajit Tripathi, Colin Platt and Izabella Kaminska - discuss.The 7th Function of Language by Laurent Binet, translated by Sam Taylor, is out now. Producer: Craig Templeton Smith.

Playwright Mark Ravenhill and critic Matt Wolf debate desire and politics with Philip Dodd as Tony Kushner's Angels in America is revived at the National Theatre in London. Writer and theatre director Yaël Farber explains her vision of the story of Salomé as one set in an occupied desert country where a radical is on hunger strike and a girl's dance is at the centre of a revolution. Peggy Reynolds and Matt Cook discuss the exhibition Queer British Art 1861-9167. Salomé is at the National Theatre from May 2nd to July 15th with an NT live broadcast around the UK on June 22nd. Angels in America: part one Millennium Approaches is an NT live broadcast on July 20th and runs in rep until August 19th. Angels in America: part two Perstroika is an NT live broadcast on July 27th and runs in rep until August 19th. Queer British Art 1861-9167 runs at Tate Britain until October 1st 2017. A Gay History of Britain: Love and Sex Between Men Since the Middle Ages by Matt Cook is out now. Tony Kushner's drama Caroline, or Change is at the Chichester Theatre until June 3rd in a production starring Sharon D. Clarke The Russell-Cotes Museum in Bournemouth opens Refracted: Collection Highlights, which has been co-curated with members of the local LGBT+ community May 13th which runs until September 8th and includes a photography exhibition opening in August. Desire Love Identity: exploring LGBTQ histories is a free display in Room 69a which runs at the British Museum until October 15th.Producer: Fiona McLean

Rana Mitter is joined by the 6 shortlisted authors and an audience at the British Academy for a discussion about writing history. This is the first year that the Wolfson History Prize has announced a shortlist. The winner will be named on May 15th. Daniel Beer, THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD: SIBERIAN EXILE UNDER THE TSARSChris Given-Wilson, HENRY IVChristopher de Hamel, MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE MANUSCRIPTSSasha Handley, SLEEP IN EARLY MODERN ENGLANDLyndal Roper, MARTIN LUTHER: RENEGADE AND PROPHETMatthew Strickland, HENRY THE YOUNG KING, 1155-1183Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Professor John Carey joins New Generation Thinkers Islam Issa and Joe Moshenska and presenter Philip Dodd to discuss Milton's poem, the first version of which was published in 1667. The discussion explores the influence of Protestant thinking, the Reformation and the Renaissance on Milton's depiction of religious and political beliefs as part of Radio 3's Breaking Free series of programmes exploring the impact of Martin Luther's Revolution.Dr Islam Issa from Birmingham City University has written Milton in the Arab-Muslim World Professor John Carey has written The Essential Paradise Lost. He is an Emeritus professor at Merton, Oxford - an Honorary Professor of Liverpool University, a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Literature. Dr Joe Moshenska is the author of A Stain In The Blood: The Remakable Voyage of Sir Kenelm Digby and teaches at the University of Cambridge. Dr Mandy Green from Durham University is the author of Milton's Ovidian Eve. Reader: Kerry GoodersonProducer: Torquil MacLeod.

Rana Mitter looks at new research into the way daily life changed in Britain after the Reformation for Radio 3's series of programmes exploring Martin Luther's Revolution. His guests are:Alec Ryrie, Professor in Religion and Theology at the University of Durham and author of: Protestants: The Faith that Made the Modern World 201; Tom Charlton, New Generation Thinker is currently studying the history of Protestant nonconformity at Dr Williams's Library, London Elizabeth Goodwin from the University of Sheffield and Birmingham is an expert on Nuns in the Reformation Tara Hamling from the University of Birminghamb is the author of Decorating the Godly Household: Religious Art in Protestant Britain c.1560-c.1660.Producer Jacqueline Smith

Peter Stanford, Ulinka Rublack and Diarmaid MacCulloch join Anne McElvoy to explore the question Martin Luther - Fundamentalist, Reactionary or Enlightened Creator of the Modern World? The discussion was recorded in front of an audience at theLiterary Festival for Radio 3's Breaking Free series of programmes exploring Martin Luther's Revolution. 500 years ago Martin Luther launched the Protestant Reformation when he nailed a sheet of paper to the door of a church in a small university town in Germany. That sheet and the incendiary ideas it contained flared up into religious persecution and war, eventually burning a huge hole through 16th century Christendom. And yet the man who sparked this revolution has somehow been lost in the glare of events. Peter Stanford is the author of a new biography of Luther Ulinka Rublack is the author of Reformation Europe Diarmaid MacCulloch's most recent book is All Things Made New - Writings on the Reformation Producer Zahid Warley.

A novel by Maylis de Kerangal which traces a heart transplant is the winner of this year's Wellcome Book Prize and the inspiration for a film out in the UK this week. Also, Anne McElvoy discusses nation states and war with US Professor of Political Philosophy Susan Buck-Morss and Professor AC Grayling. The 50th anniversary of the Biafran war and fictional representations of it are explored with New Generation Thinker Louisa Egbunike - organiser of the Igbo Conference at SOAS - and Professor Akachi Ezeigbo.Maylis de Kerangal is the author of 'Mend The Living'. The film is called 'Heal the Living' and is in UK cinemas from Friday 28 April. 'War: An Enquiry' by AC Grayling is out now. Susan Buck Morss's talk at the London School of Economics is available to listen to as a download from their website. Professor Akachi Ezeigbo is the author the Biafran War novel 'Roses and Bullets'. Further information about the Igbo Conference at SOAS is available from the conference website. Producer: Karl Bos Editor: Robyn Read

Paul Kingsnorth, former deputy-editor of The Ecologist, co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project and author of novels including The Wake and Beast, talks about his changing attitude to the environmental movement. Environmental lawyer James Thornton and writer Martin Goodman recount their travels from Poland to Ghana, Alaska to China, to see how citizens are using public interest law to protect their planet. Plus, critic Maria Delgado and biographer Adam Feinstein consider the lost poems of that Chilean lover of nature, Pablo Neruda. Client Earth by James Thornton and Martin Goodman is published on the 11th of May. Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist by Paul Kingsnorth is out now. The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry selected and introduced by Paul Kingsnorth is out now. Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda Poems, by Pablo Neruda is published on Thursday 27 April 2017. Neruda a film by Pablo Larraín starring Gael García Bernal as a policeman searching for the Chilean politician Pablo Neruda played by Luis Gnecco is out in cinemas across the UK now. Producer: Craig Templeton Smith.

Michèle Roberts' latest novel evokes Victorian London. Matthew Sweet asks how it smelt and what do museums do to create past smells. Plus a cultural history of dentistry with the medical historian Richard Barnett. The Walworth Beauty by Michèle Roberts is out now. The Smile Stealers: The Fine and Foul Art of Dentistry by Richard Barnett is out now. Producer: Fiona McLean.

The American poet Mark Doty, Professor Sarah Churchwell and the young British poet Andrew McMillan join Matthew Sweet for a programme dedicated to one of the classics of American poetry, Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Readings performed by William Hope. Producer: Fiona McLean. Originally broadcast on Thu 8 Oct 2015.

Philip Dodd interviews John Irving - author of novels including The World According to Garp, The Cider House Rules, A Prayer for Owen Meany. His new book is called Avenue of Mysteries and imagines the life of a crippled street-child from Mexico, Juan Diego, and his sister Lupe, who can read minds. The action cuts between Diego's present as a globe trotting, best selling writer visiting the Philippines, and his memories of his childhood in Mexico and working at a circus. The Avenue of Mysteries by John Irving is out now. Producer: Robyn Read. Original broadcast Wed 3 Feb 2016.

Anne McElvoy invites three novelists into the studio to discuss Love - the theme of each of their latest novels. A L Kennedy's Serious Sweet examines love in later life, Tahmima Anam explores different aspects ofyoung love in The Bones of Grace and Alain de Botton says no-one lives happy ever after, we should talk a lot more about what comes next - hence the title of his book The Course of Love. Aside from whether Romanticism is plague or blessing, the writers also discuss whether writers themselves make good lovers and the challenge of making life choices in an increasingly mobile and crowded world. A L Kennedy's Serious Sweet is now out in paperback. Tahmima Anam's The Bones of Grace is out in paperback in June. Alain de Botton's The Course of Love is out in paperback in June. Producer: Jacqueline Smith Originally broadcast Thu 5 May 2016.

Tim Birkhead and Phyllis Lee explore long-lived animal species and their survival strategies. If the modern world is obsessed with short term success, could animals offer a better understanding of the long term state of our planet? Want to sample the health of our oceans? Ask a migratory bird. Or the advantage of becoming a mother later in life? Ask an elephant. Free Thinking presenter Rana Mitter hears how their lives have shaped the minds and emotions of the field scientists who study them over decades. Professor Tim Birkhead is 45 years into his study of the guillemots of Skomer Island. He began his academic career at Newcastle University. A Fellow of the Royal Society he is now based at Sheffield University and specialises in researching the behaviour of birds. His books include Bird Sense: What it is like to Be a Bird and The Most Perfect Thing: the Inside (and Outside) of a Bird’s Egg. Professor Phyllis Lee has worked for 35 years on the world’s longest-running elephant study in Kenya’s Amboseli National Park. An award-winning evolutionary psychologist, she is now based at the University of Stirling, and continues to work on a number of research projects on forest and Asian elephants as well as primates from around the world. She has published widely on this, on conservation attitudes as well as on human-wildlife interactions. Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead. Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Jay Griffiths, Vincent Deary, Louise Robinson and Matthew Smith discuss our mental health. How do depression and dementia affect our sense of time and the rhythms of daily life? Our body clocks have long been seen by scientists as integral to our physical and mental health – but what happens when mental illness disrupts or even stops that clock? Presenter Anne McElvoy is joined by those who have suffered depression and dementia and those who treat it – and they attempt to offer some solutions. Jay Griffiths is the author of Tristimania: a Diary of Manic Depression and a book Pip Pip which explores attitudes to time across the world. Doctor Vincent Deary teaches at Northumbria University, works as a clinician in the UK’s first trans-diagnostic Fatigue Clinic and is the author of a trilogy about How To Live – the first of which is called How We Are. Professor Louise Robinson is Director of Newcastle University’s Institute for Ageing and Professor of Primary Care and Ageing. Professor Matthew Smith is a New Generation Thinker from 2012 who teaches at Strathclyde University at the Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare. Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead. Producer: Zahid Warley

Carlos Frenk, Eugenia Cheng, Jim Al-Khalili and Louisa Preston debate time and space with presenter Rana Mitter and an audience at Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead.We can measure time passing but what actually is it? What do scientists mean when they suggest that time is an illusion. Can time exist in a black hole? Is everyone’s experience of time subjective? What is the connection between time and space? How does maths help us understand the universe?Professor Carlos Frenk is founding Director of the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University and the winner of the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 2014.Dr Eugenia Cheng is Scientist in Residence at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an Honorary Fellow of the University of Sheffield. She is trilingual, a concert-level classical pianist and the author of Beyond Infinity: An Expedition To The Outer Limits Of The Mathematical Universe.Jim Al-Khalili is Professor of Physics at the University of Surrey and presenter of BBC Radio 4’s The Life Scientific and TV documentaries. His books include Paradox: the Nine Greatest Enigmas in Science, Black Holes, Wormholes and Time Machines and Quantum: a Guide for the Perplexed.Dr Louisa Preston is a UK Space Agency Aurora Research Fellow. An astrobiologist, planetary geologist and author, she is based at Birkbeck, University of London. Her first book is Goldilocks and the Water Bears: the Search for Life in the Universe.Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Poet Simon Armitage and writer Alexandra Harris explore time and place in modern Britain. Presented by Philip Dodd and recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead. Simon Armitage, Professor of Poetry at Oxford University, has been described as ‘the best poet of his generation’. His latest collection The Unaccompanied explores life against a backdrop of economic recession and social division where globalisation has made alienation a common experience. He was born in West Yorkshire and lives near Saddleworth Moor. His work includes his translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and books exploring the South west’s coast path and the Pennine Way. Alexandra Harris is Professor of Literature at the University of Liverpool and a New Generation Thinker. She is the author of Weatherland: Writers and Artists under English Skies and Romantic Moderns. Producer: Fiona McLean

Island city mentality or gateway to the world? Hull-based crime writer and former journalist David Mark, poet Adelle Stripe and Slung Low artistic director Alan Lane join Matthew Sweet to debate Hull's links with the wider world, while playwright Esther Wilson suggest what residents can learn from another port city which has been City of Culture - Liverpool. Recorded with an audience at Hull Truck Theatre as part of Radio 3's Uproot festival for Hull 2017. Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

‘Is it the world that’s busy, or is it my mind?’ Haemin Sunim, the multi-million selling author of The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down, discusses East and West and calm in a fast-paced world with New Generation Thinker Christopher Harding and presenter Rana Mitter. Born to Korean-American parents and educated at Harvard, Haemin Sunim is known for books, podcasts and a popular YouTube series exploring Buddhism in the 21st century. He studied at UC Berkeley, Harvard and Princeton before receiving formal monastic training in Korea and teaching Buddhism at Hampshire College in Amherst Massachusetts. He has more than a million followers on Twitter and Facebook and now lives in Seoul. Christopher Harding, one of Radio 3’s New Generation Thinkers, is a cultural historian of modern Japan, India and the UK with a particular interest in religion and spirituality, philosophy and mental health, based at the University of Edinburgh. He also runs a blog, The Boredom Project. Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead. Producer: Luke Mulhall

An introduction to the academics whose ideas will be making radio waves across 2017. The New Generation Thinkers is an annual competition run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 researchers at the start of their careers who can turn their fascinating research into stimulating programmes. In this event, the 2017 selection make their first public appearance together: their topics include music and health and Shakespeare in Arabic. Hosted by Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough of Durham University, who has just published Beyond the Northlands: Viking Voyages and the Old Norse Sagas. 4 years ago she was one of the New Generation Thinkers. Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead. Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Tony Sewell and Mike Grenier discuss the challenges of education in the 21st century with Philip Dodd and an audience at Sage Gateshead as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival. Can idle curiosity, slow burning passion and a time for reflection be at the heart of our schools? Or does the increasingly rapid pace of technological change make that sort of teaching a luxury at best - or, at worst, an educational philosophy stuck in a time warp? Mike Grenier is a House Master at Eton College and the co-founder of the Slow Education Movement, educators arguing the need to make time in the classroom for creative teaching and learning. Dr Tony Sewell, CBE is the director of the London based charity, Generating Genius, which aims to help children achieve educational success. He began his career as a school teacher and, in 2012, was appointed to chair the Mayor’s Education Inquiry into London schools. He works in both the UK and the Caribbean and helped to set up the Science, Maths and Information Technology Centre at Jamaica’s University of the West Indies. Producer: Fiona McLean

Christopher Harding explores the Tokyo of a century ago, the bustling, cosmopolitan capital of a growing empire, where the meaning of ‘time’ was hotly contested. Critics attacked the relentless ‘clock time’ of new factories and businesses and the ‘leisure time’ of youngsters who favoured cafes or poetry rather than exerting themselves in empire-building. Buddhist thinkers and folklorists claimed that Japan must rediscover its natural sense of time as seasonal and cyclical, rather than mechanical. New Generation Thinker Christopher Harding contemplates the way these attempts at escape became useful fodder for Japan’s militarist ideologues – working for the Emperor, his palace tucked away amongst the trees in central Tokyo, whose own sense of time stretched back into myth and from there into divinity. Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio. Producer: Luke Mulhall

The former Health Minister, now broadcaster and writer, Edwina Currie; the journalist and broadcaster Miranda Sawyer; and the English teacher and columnist Lola Okolosie discuss the different times of our lives with Free Thinking presenter Anne McElvoy.Recent scientific research has found that women have the time of their lives at the age of 34. Later though, as they juggle parenthood and work they are at their most stressed. But, by the age of 58 they start to get their life-work balance sorted out. With more time to relax and no babies on the horizon life looks better. And, with an average life expectancy of 82.9 years, perhaps women may have time to enjoy their new lives.Edwina Currie was a Conservative MP for 14 years before retiring in 1988. Since then she has presented TV and radio programmes, appeared on Strictly Come Dancing and as the Wicked Queen in pantomime. She has been described as ‘a brash and energetic life force’. Her books include Diaries 1987-1992 and novels including The Ambassador, Chasing Men, This Honourable House, and A Parliamentary Affair.Miranda Sawyer began her career writing for Smash Hits and now writes for newspapers and magazines including The Observer. She has interviewed arts figures for BBC Two’s Culture Show, and presented programmes on 6 Music, BBC Radio 4 and podcasts. Her new book Out of Time explores her midlife crisis.Lola Okolosie is an English teacher and regular columnist for The Guardian on race, politics, education and feminism. She is editor-at-large for Media Diversified, an online publishing platform.Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead.Producer: Craig Smith

New Generation Thinker Preti Taneja, Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at Warwick University, on the creation of modern India. How did a modernist style develop in India between the 1900s and the 1950s? Preti Taneja, who grew up in Letchworth Garden City, traces the way the Garden City Movement inspired the work of Edwin Lutyens in his reshaping of her parents’ New Delhi. The first generation of post-Independence architects built on this legacy, drawing also from Le Corbusier, who designed India’s first post-partition planned city, Chandigarh, with its famous 'open hand' sculpture; and from Frank Lloyd Wright and Walter Gropius, to create some of the most iconic public buildings across India today. In art, something similar was happening: painter MF Hussain and a group of fellow radicals wanting to break away from Indian traditions and make an international statement. They formed The Progressive Artists Group in December 1947, just months after Partition. Preti Taneja’s essay explores this cultural re-imagining of the new nation, when architects and artists tried to come to terms with India’s political and aesthetic history, looking forward to a future they could design, build and express themselves: one that was meant to shape human behaviour for the better. Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio. Producer: Fiona McLean

John Gallagher, New Generation Thinker, marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of what might be the greatest, but littlest-known, book of travels of early modern England. Fynes Moryson was a young fellow of a Cambridge college when he left on a journey to Jerusalem and back. His monumental book 'An Itinerary' is a colourful, funny and touching account of one man's curious journey, meeting bandits in northern Germany, disguising himself as a Catholic Italian in order to see Rome and burying his brother's body by the side of the road on his return.John Gallagher’s Essay brings to life one of the great travel accounts of any period which includes detailed instructions to English travellers on how best to disguise themselves when travelling through Catholic Europe.Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 with the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio. Producer: Fiona McLean

Sathnam Sanghera, Judy Wajcman, Griselda Togobo and Robert Colvile join Radio 3 presenter Matthew Sweet to look at the history of the workplace from factory floor to hot desk to the gig economy and debate whether the merging of workplace and home creates more stress.Bosses have always monitored and changed our working day, clocking staff in and out the factory, analyzing productivity through time and motion studies, using remote monitoring, introducing flexible working and “logging on later.”Sathnam Sanghera is a journalist and award-winning author of Marriage Material: A Novel and The Boy with the Topknot: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton. Before becoming a writer he (among other things) worked at a burger chain, a hospital laundry, a market research firm, a sewing factory and a literacy project in New York.Judy Wajcman is a Professor of Society at LSE and the author of Pressed for Time: The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism .Griselda Togobo is an entrepreneur, engineer, chartered accountant and the head of Forward Ladies, an organisation which aims to help companies maximise the potential of their female staff.Robert Colvile is a journalist and author of The Great Acceleration - a new book about how technology is speeding up the pace of life.Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead.Producer: Craig Smith

Matthew Smith, a New Generation Thinker, goes deep into the American Psychiatric Association archives, where lies an unpublished historical manuscript entitled The Magic Years. Written during the early 1970s, it eulogised the giant strides of post-war American psychiatry made in this period of hope and promise when even the complete eradication of mental illness was thought possible. As a medical historian Matthew argues that, while psychiatrists today might dismiss The Magic Years - and the science behind it - as misguided or naïve, it actually has much to teach us.New Generation Thinker Matthew Smith is from the University of Strathclyde.Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead. New Generation Thinkers is scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio programmes. Producer: Zahid Warley

Matthew Smith, a New Generation Thinker, goes deep into the American Psychiatric Association archives, where lies an unpublished historical manuscript entitled The Magic Years. Written during the early 1970s, it eulogised the giant strides of post-war American psychiatry made in this period of hope and promise when even the complete eradication of mental illness was thought possible. As a medical historian Matthew argues that, while psychiatrists today might dismiss The Magic Years - and the science behind it - as misguided or naïve, it actually has much to teach us.New Generation Thinker Matthew Smith is from the University of Strathclyde.Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead. New Generation Thinkers is scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio programmes. Producer: Zahid Warley

Three leading historians, Bettany Hughes, Sir Richard J Evans and John Hall join Free Thinking presenter Philip Dodd to consider tumultuous times and how we make sense of sweeping change from classical times, through empire building and the industrial revolution to the present day. True revolutions are rare game-changers in the slow unravelling of the human story. Others fizzle out like small showy rockets, all light and no heat. But how obvious is it at the time ?Dr Bettany Hughes is well known as a TV and radio broadcaster, an award-winning historian and author specialising in ancient and medieval history and culture. Her books include Helen of Troy, The Hemlock Cup and, most recently, Istanbul: a Tale of Three Cities. Sir Richard J Evans is an academic and historian, best known for his research on the history of Germany in the 19th and 20th centuries. President of Wolfson College in Cambridge, his most recent books are The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815-1914, The Third Reich in History and Memory and Altered Pasts: Counterfactual in History.Professor John Hall is IAS Fellow at University College, Durham University (Jan – March 2017). Normally based at McGill University in Montreal, Professor Hall is currently writing about Nations, States and Empires. His books include The Importance of Being Civil, The World of States, Powers and Liberties:The Causes and Consequences of the Rise of the West.Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead.Producer: Torquil MacLeod

From 1941 to 1968 Catherine Fletcher’s grandfather Donald Hudson was a missionary in India. Catherine tells his story during those turbulent years and reflects on the way British people with family history in India understand that past – in this the anniversary year of the end of colonial India.Originally from Yorkshire, Donald Hudson arrived in Dhaka, now in Bangladesh, to find a city in chaos amid communal riots. He stayed for two years and then moved to one of the most significant British missionary institutions in India, the Baptist Missionary College at Serampore, outside Kolkata, where he was based through famine and then Partition in 1948.Catherine Fletcher is a Radio 3 New Generation Thinker from Swansea University.Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead.New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year who work with us to turn their research into radio. Producer: Luke Mulhall

In our fast moving, busy world it is hard – if not impossible – to imagine what it would be like to be incarcerated on our own. Captured in Beirut while working as an envoy for the Archbishop of Canterbury, Terry Waite spent five years as a hostage mostly held in solitary confinement. The writer Erwin James served 20 years of a life sentence in prison before his release in 2004. They discuss the experience of isolation with Dr Cleo Van Velsen, a Consultant Psychiatrist in Forensic Psychotherapy. Chaired by Free Thinking presenter Anne McElvoy.Terry Waite is a humanitarian campaigner and author. He remains actively involved with hostages and their families, as well as working with those on the margins of society. His latest books are Out of the Silence: Memories, Poems, Reflections and a 25th Anniversary Edition of his memoir Taken on Trust.Dr Cleo van Velsen is a Consultant Psychiatrist in Forensic Psychotherapy with extensive experience in the assessment, management and treatment of those suffering with personality difficulties, violence and trauma.Erwin James is a Guardian columnist and freelance writer and a trustee of the Prison Reform Trust. He is the author of A Life Inside: a Prisoner’s Notebook and his new book, Redeemable: a Memoir of Darkness and Hope.Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead.Producer: Jacqueline Smith

New Generation Thinker Victoria Donovan from the University of St Andrews explores the dilemmas of post-war reconstruction in Soviet Russia and asks why the atheist Communist regime was prepared to spend millions on the restoration of religious architecture. On encountering the war-charred ruins of historic Novgorod in 1944, the Soviet historian Dmitry Likhachev mourned Russia’s transformation into a ‘graveyard without headstones’. Yet, just 20 years later, the town had risen from the ashes; even the onion-domed churches had been restored. How did this happen? Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year who work with us to turn their research into radio. Producer: Luke Mulhall

New Generation Thinker Katherine Cooper looks at literary refugees in the Second World War and tells the untold story of the work done by British writers to save their European colleagues. She shows how HG Wells, Rebecca West and JB Priestley became intertwined with the lives of writers fleeing persecution on the continent. Katherine peeps into drawing rooms, visits the archives of PEN, scrutinises the correspondence and draws on the fiction of key literary figures to explore crucial allegiances formed in wartime London. Why did these British writers believe that by saving Europe’s literary voices they were saving Europe itself?Katherine Cooper is Senior Research Associate at the University of East Anglia, School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing. Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead.New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year and then work with them to turn their research into radio.Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Damon Hill, Tanni Grey-Thompson and former Colonel Lincoln Jopp consider whether the rush of adrenaline makes us think better? It brings us an increase in our strength, heightened senses, a lack of pain and a burst of energy. How is it connected to our expertise in handling crises and what is the aftermath?Joining Radio 3 presenter Rana Mitter and an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead are guests who have lived and observed decision-making under pressure, at top speed:Damon Hill is a former Formula One racing driver, broadcaster and author of Watching the Wheels: the Autobiography.Tanni Grey-Thompson picked up 16 Paralympic medals during her career (including 11 golds) and won the London Marathon six times. Colonel Lincoln Jopp MC served in the army for 27 years, commanding in conflict zones around the world including Northern Ireland, Iraq, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone.Producer: Torquil MacLeod

New Generation Thinker Louisa Egbunike from Manchester Metropolitan University considers images of war and ghosts of the past. News reports of the Biafran war (1967-1970), with their depictions of starving children, created images of Africa which have become imprinted. Biafra endured a campaign of heavy shelling, creating a constant stream of refugees out of fallen areas as territory was lost to Nigeria. Within Igbo culture specific rites and rituals need to be performed when a person dies. To die and be buried ‘abroad’, away from one’s ancestral home or to not be buried properly, impedes the transition to the realm of the ancestors. Louisa Egbunike explores the legacy of the Biafran war and considers the image of those spirits unable to journey to the next realm, and left to roam the earth. Recorded in front of an audience as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year who can turn their research into radio. Producer: Zahid Warley

George Saunders, Kirsty Logan, Jenn Asworth and Paul McVeigh discuss writing fiction short and long with presenter Matthew Sweet. Acclaimed American short story writer George Saunders talks about travelling in time to explore Abraham Lincoln’s life during the American Civil War when the President’s beloved young son died. These historical events have inspired Saunder’s first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, whilst his short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, McSweeeney’s and GQ. He compares notes on the art of the short story with Paul McVeigh, Jenn Ashworth and Kirsty Logan, who’ve been commissioned by New Writing North and the WordFactory to write Flash Fiction on this year's Free Thinking Festival theme of The Speed of Life. Kirsty Logan is the author of books including The Gracekeepers and The Rental Heart & Other Fairytales and a range of short stories. Jenn Ashworth’s books include Fell, The Friday Gospels, A Kind of Intimacy and Cold Light and a selection of short stories. Paul McVeigh has won prizes including the Polari prize for his debut novel The Good Son. Born in Belfast he is co-founder of the London Short Story Festival, writes a blog and has represented the UK at events in Mexico and Turkey. Recorded in front of an audience as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead. The stories commissioned for the Festival are available to listen to as an Arts and Ideas podcast available for 30 days. Producer: Zahid Warley

New Generation Thinker Edmund Richardson with the story of Alexander the Great’s lost city, buried beneath Bagram airbase, a CIA detention site and wrecked Soviet tanks. For centuries, it was a meeting point of East and West. Then it vanished. In 1832, it was discovered by the unlikeliest person imaginable: a ragged British con-man called Charles Masson, on the run from a death sentence. Today, Alexander’s lost civilization is lost again. And Masson? For his next trick, he accidentally started the most disastrous war of the nineteenth century. Edmund Richardson’s Essay tells the story of the liar and the lost city, of how the unlikeliest people can change history. Recorded in front of an audience as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 with the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio. Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Harriet Harman, who has just written her autobiography A Woman’s Work, was first elected a Labour MP in 1982 and has served as the acting leader of her party twice in her career. She talks to Free Thinking presenter Philip Dodd about championing women’s rights and sustaining a political career in a fast-changing political landscape. In his final year of office, President Obama talked about how difficult it is today to keep the public focused on the long term when the short term response has taken over. “The 24-hour news cycle”, he said,” is just so lightning fast and the attention span I think is so short that sometimes it's difficult to keep everybody focused on the long term.” Are UK politicians now better at campaigning than producing policies that look to the future? Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead. Producer: Luke Mulhall

The ruined priory of Tynemouth nestles on a Northumbrian cliff top, staring out at the fog and foam of the North Sea. In the 14th century it was a proving ground – and occasional prison camp – for monks from the wealthy mother monastery of St Albans. But the monks here didn’t just isolate themselves, pray and complain about the food (though they did do those things). They also studied astronomy. Writing treatises, computing tables and designing new instruments, they contemplated the nature of a divinely-wound clockwork universe. New Generation Thinker Seb Falk from the University of Cambridge brings to life a world where science and religion went hand-in-hand, where monks loved their gadgets, and where a wooden disc, a brass ring and some silk threads were all you needed to model the motions of the stars. Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio. Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Can the steady tortoise still beat the rapid hare in today’s world? Our panel, chaired by Free Thinking presenter Anne McElvoy, compare experiences of life in the fast lane with taking the slow route – in business, writing, leisure time. Pinky Lilani is an author, motivational speaker, food expert and women’s advocate, and nominated in the Woman’s Hour Power List. She was appointed a CBE in 2015 for services to women in business. Denise Mina wrote her first crime novel, Garnethill, while studying for her PhD at Strathclyde University. Now the award-winning writer of twelve novels, plays and graphic fiction she has presented radio and television programmes including a film about her own family. Her most recent novel featuring detective Alex Morrow is Blood Salt Water and her new novel The Long Drop was inspired by real historical events in Glasgow in 1957. Jay Griffiths is the author of Pip Pip which explores attitudes to time across the world. Other books include Tristimania: a Diary of Manic Depression and Wild: an Elemental Journey.John Gallagher is a Radio 3 New Generation Thinker who teaches history at the University of Cambridge.Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead.Producer: Craig Smith

“Take control of your sleep,” says Professor Russell Foster CBE, leading neuroscientist and this year’s opening lecturer on the festival theme of the Speed of Life. Sleeping consumes a third of our lifetimes, but Professor Foster believes our sleeping hours are still not properly appreciated. His research shows how our bodies, honed by three million years of evolution, follow a natural clock and not the man-made one in daily use. He believes that all life on the planet has developed a 24-hour timing system which humans now use to fine-tune our rhythms.And yet Britain’s sleep problems have never been more acute: three separate surveys over the past decade indicate insomnia has increased across the population – and it’s becoming a source of public debate and private misery. Hosted by Radio 3 presenter Matthew Sweet in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead.Russell Foster is Head of the Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology and Senior Fellow at Brasenose College Oxford.Producer: Fiona McLean

New Generation Thinker Shahidha Bari talks to Rodney Graham about making music, and art from film, video and photographs. Graham Rigby and Sirkka Liisa Konttinen describe documenting the North East as the Side Gallery celebrates its 40th year of displaying and collecting work from the Amber Film and Photography Collective. Artist Lucy Wood talks about her project Distant Neighbours which highlights the plights of refugees and migrants. Plus, Leyla Al-Sayad on the once thriving Yemeni community of South Shields. Rodney Graham is on show at BALTIC from 17 March - 11 June 2017.Lucy Wood's short film series, Distant Neighbours, features as part of the Gimme Shelter season at the Tyneside cinema.Leyla Al-Sayad'a Yemini project: http://www.theyemeniproject.org.uk/Producer: Craig Smith

Edward Luce, Sarah Churchwell, Michael Goldfarb and Michael Prodger join Anne McElvoy. As Grant Wood's painting American Gothic is on show at the Royal Academy in London, while US pop art is displayed at the British Museum, Free Thinking explores the changing idea of The American Dream and America First and the way these ideas are represented in political rhetoric, art and fiction. Michael Prodger writes on art for the New Statesman Sarah Churchwell is Professor of American Literature and the Public Understanding of the Humanities at the University of London's School of Advanced Study. Edward Luce is Chief Washington Correspondent and Columnist for the Financial Times Michael Goldfarb writes for The Guardian, The New York Times and The Washington Post and Globalpost.com and is a regular broadcaster. America After The Fall: Painting in the 1930s is on show at the Royal Academy until June 4th. The American Dream Pop To Present is on show at the British Museum until June 17th. Tyler Cowan's book is called The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream Rutger Bregman's book is called Utopia for Realists: And how we can get there Donald Trump has written Great Again: How to Fix Our Crippled America Edward Luce's book The Retreat of Western Liberalism will be published in early May. Producer: Eliane Glaser.

The Big Short, Liar's Poker and Flash Boys expose the culture of Wall Street trading works. The Blind Side, Coach and Moneyball explore the world of sport. For his latest book ‘The Undoing Project’, Michael Lewis looks at the friendship of two Nobel Prize-winning psychologists, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. Matthew Sweet talks to Michael Lewis about his investigative methods and how this latest book fits into his interest in the psychology of sportsmen, bankers and risk takers. The Undoing Project is out now. Producer: Fiona McLean

The work of scientist Margaret Cavendish, poet Lady Mary Wroth, and interior designer Charlotte Robinson are explored in a programme looking at why women are left out of some historical accounts. Tracy Chevalier's novels include stories inspired by fossil hunter Mary Anning, by early settlers of the American west, by women in the lives of painters including Vermeer and William Blake. Tracy Chevalier joins Ailsa Grant Ferguson, Emma Wilkins and Miranda Garrett who'll be sharing their new research with Anne McElvoy on International Women's Day. Tracy Chevalier is the author of At the Edge of the Orchard about an American pioneer family, Remarkable Creatures inspired by the Victorian fossil hunter Mary Anning and The Lady and the Unicorn - a love story set against the weaving of a set of medieval tapestries which hang in the Museum of Cluny in Paris. Her new book published in May is New Boy, a re-working of Othello set in an American school in the 1970s with a cast of 11 year olds. Producer: Luke Mulhall.

Authors Sarah Dunant and Erica Benner, MP Gisela Stuart and historian Catherine Fletcher join Philip Dodd to explore the continuing relevance of Machiavelli's The Prince which was first circulated in 1513.Sarah Dunant's series of Renaissance novels include Blood and Beauty: the Borgias and In The Name of The Family: A Novel of Machiavelli and The Borgias. Erica Benner has written Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli's Lifelong Quest For Freedom. Catherine Fletcher is the author of The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro de' MediciProducer: Robyn Read

Worlds within worlds - Matthew Sweet talks to filmmaker and author Neil Jordan about his new novel Carnivalesque, which features a hall of mirrors and stolen children. He makes a tour of Flat Time House in south London and speaks to the Turner Prize-winning artist Laure Prouvost and curator Gareth Bell-Jones about the house's creator, the pioneering British conceptual artist John Latham (1921-2006). And to round things off, he ventures into the lush green world of the Teletubbies with broadcaster Samira Ahmed and child psychologist Sam Wass to explore the show's enduring fascination twenty years after it first appeared on television.Neil Jordan's latest novel is called Carnivalesque. A World View: John Latham is on at London's Serpentine Gallery from March 2nd to May 21st and includes a series of events at http://flattimeho.org.uk/Producer: Zahid Warley

Mohsin Hamid, author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, has now written a love story unfolding against today's refugee crisis. He joins Anne McElvoy to explore migration past and present. They're joined in the studio by New Generation Thinkers Preti Taneja and Sam Goodman who share their research and compare notes about Partition in film and fiction. Gurinder Chadha talks about her new film Viceroy's House, which features Hugh Bonneville and Gillian Anderson, Manish Dayal, Huma Qureshi, and Michael Gambon in a depiction of events in 1947 when Lord Mountbatten was the last Viceroy of India. Mohsin Hamid's novel Exit West is out now. Viceroy's House is released in cinemas around the UK from Friday March 3rd.Producer: Torquil MacLeod

New Generation Thinker Christopher Harding meets novelist Yoko Tawada, filmmaker Momoko Ando, Elmer Luke editor of a new series of chapbooks and Japanologist Alex Kerr.Alex Kerr is the author of Lost Japan and Dogs and Demons. Yoko Tawada's books include Memoirs of a Polar Bear which has just been translated into English. The Keshiki Series edited by Elmer Luke includes writing by Yoko Tawada, Aoko Matsuda, Keiichiro Hirano, Misumi Kubo, Masatsugo Ono and Natsuki Ekezawa. Momoko Ando graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art in London and studied film at New York University. Her films are Kakera: A Piece Of Our Life (2009) and 0.5mm (2014). They are all in England to take part in the Japan Now Festival at the British Library organised by Modern Culture. Producer: Fiona McLean

Philip Dodd considers the importance of 'play' in the way our city centres are designed, built, look and feel in the 21st century with architect Stephen Witherford, social anthropologist Clare Melhuish, urban planner Ben van Bruggen, and Jonathan Glancey author of 'What's So Great About the Eiffel Tower?'. Plus, Durham poet Gillian Allnutt discusses a life in words and receiving the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. What's So Great About the Eiffel Tower? by Jonathan Glancey is published on the 28th of February. Gillian Allnutt's latest collection poetry, Indwelling, is published by Bloodaxe Books.

Matthew Sweet talks to poet and writer Elizabeth-Jane Burnett, environmental scientist, Jules Pretty and geologist, Andrew Scott, and historians Matthew Kelly and Philip Coupland about Soil and Culture and Survival Stories For some Soil is where they come from, for others it is an object of aesthetic beauty, for most of us it is the means by which we get what we need to live. Poet and writer Elizabeth-Jane Burnett's forthcoming A Dictionary of Soil explores the lives lived within and through the soil of three fields which constitute the origins of her family's ancestral village. Agroecology expert, Jules Pretty says Soil We Can Rebuild It and in an environmentally friendly way and it will continue to feed us. Geologist Andrew Scott examines soils from deep time to discover what they can tell us about how the planet and life on Earth evolved. Historian Matthew Kelly is interested in the cultural history of landscape and focuses on environmental policy in Britain after World War II and Philip Coupland is the biographer of Jorian Jenks, a man who might have been regarded as the father of the British Green Movement if he hadn't joined Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists. They join Matthew Sweet to think through our developing relationship with the life-giving dirt beneath our feet and discuss whether a happy ending just might be possible.Presenter: Matthew SweetGuests: Jules Pretty, Professor of Environment and Society, University of Essex author 'The Earth Only Endures' (2007) and 'Agri-Culture' (2002) Andrew C. Scott, Emeritus Professor of Geology, Royal Holloway University of London author of ‘Fire on Earth: An Introduction’ (2014) Elizabeth-Jane Burnett, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, Newman University. Author of Swims (Pennned in the Margins, 2017) Philip Coupland 'Farming, Fascism and Ecology: A Life of Jorian Jenks' 2016 Matthew Kelly, Professor of Modern History, Northumbria University 'Quartz and Feldspar: Dartmoor A British Landscape in Modern Times' 2015Producer: Jacqueline Smith