Arts & Ideas

As Dad's Army inspires a new film, Matthew Sweet looks at the history of the fifth column with historians Juliet Gardiner and Steven Fielding. He also meets robot designer Lola Cañamero who, along with writer Laurence Scott, talks about modelling emotions and how interacting with AI affects us. New Generation Thinker Jonathan Healey explores utopia in sci-fi as a series of events mark the 500th anniversary of Thomas More's text Utopia. Dad's Army is directed by Oliver Parker and includes performances from Catherine Zeta Jones, Michael Gambon, Tom Courtenay, Toby Jones, Bill Nighy, Mark Gatiss and Ian Lavender amongst others. States of Mind: Tracing the edges of consciousness runs at Wellcome Collection in London from 4 February - 16 October 2016 A Friday Night Late Spectacular, Feeling Emotional, takes place on Friday 5 February 19:00-23:00 exploring the art and science of human emotions. Utopias is the theme of this year's LSE Space For Thought Literary Festival. In a discussion on Friday 26 February 2016 Toby Litt, Patrick Parrinder, Samantha Shannon explore the history of the utopian genre in literature and its present state. Radio 3's Free Thinking explores Utopia in politics past and present in a debate recorded at LSE on Wednesday February 17th at broadcast on Thursday February 18th. Getting Real about Utopia Date: Wednesday 17 February 2016 6.30pm Location: Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building, LSE Speakers: Professor Justin Champion, Dr John Guy, Kwasi Kwarteng, Gisela Stuart Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

As Radio 3 broadcasts Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun as the Sunday Drama hear theatre directors Kwame Kwei-Armah, Yael Farber and Dawn Walton and historians Kit Davis and Althea Legal Miller on her life, work and its resonances today.

Gardening writer Anna Pavord visits the Royal Academy exhibition Painting the Modern Garden and talks to Anne McElvoy about her new book Landskipping. New Generation Thinker Peter Mackay joins the conversation about landscapes and - as Radio 3 marks the Celtic Connections Festival in Glasgow with a focus on folk - he explores the way folk traditions have fed into Scottish poetry. As arguments about whether the statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College, Oxford should be allowed to remain in place continue to divide students and alumni, journalist Nick Cohen and former Rector of Exeter College, Oxford Dame Frances Cairncross discuss how present day funding of colleges and universities can also be a contentious issue. New Generation Thinker Peter Mackay explores the contrasting folk traditions in Irish and Scottish poetry as Radio 3 begins a weekend exploring folk connections.

Philip Dodd presents a programme for Holocaust Memorial Day. Howard Jacobson discusses reinventing Shylock and exploring anti-semitism as he publishes his new novel. Historian Karen Leeder has been reading about Stefan Zweig and Joseph Roth in Ostend 1936 - and a collection of Zweig's writings Messages From a Lost World: Europe on the Brink. Sculptor Michael Sandle is known for creating memorials. He shows Philip Dodd round his new exhibition which marks his 80th year. Key works of his include St George and the Dragon at Blackfriars, the International Maritime Organization Seafarer's Memorial on the Albert Embankment in London, and the Malta Seige Memorial, in the Grand Harbour of Valletta, Malta which includes one of the largest bells ever forged which rings at Noon each day.

Matthew Sweet and guests explore the art of the con.... If you've ever fallen for a scam, you'll be reassured by Maria Konnikova's new book The Confidence Game, in which she explains why most of us are easy prey to con artists. Orson Welles was infamous early in his career for a radio broadcast of HG Wells' War of the Worlds which - it's said - caused genuine panic that aliens were invading earth. For Free Thinking Larushka Ivan-Zadeh discusses Welles's last film, F For Fake, which tells the tangled story of art forger Elmyr de Hory. And Gary Lachman and Kevin Jackson visit a new exhibition about Elizabethan alchemist, philosopher and mathematician John Dee - a mysterious figure who during his long career was sometimes a con-artist, and sometimes the conned.

Anne McElvoy looks at what happened to the Arab Spring five years on, talking to Egyptian novelist Alaa Al-Aswany - whose new novel is called The Automobile Club of Egypt - and to satirist and critic Karl Sharro. They will be joined by Lebanese actress Sahar Assaf talking about performing in Dario Fo and Franca Rame's monologue An Arab Woman Speaks. Also in the programme, Owen Hatherley discusses his latest book The Ministry of Nostalgia. And, lexicographer Tony Thorne and writer Hannah Jane Parkinson discuss how social media is affecting language. The English premiere of Dario Fo and Franca Rame's An Arab Woman Speaks is on at the New Diorama Theatre in London until 6th February. Producer: Luke Mulhall

Rana Mitter goes underground to discover a world which long fed the human imagination and which fulfils all humanity's practical needs outside of food and yet which has become something we like to ignore, hide, conceal and forget. Counting the potential costs for all our futures, three enthusiasts for all that lies beneath, the engineer Professor Paul Younger from Glasgow University ; Ted Nield editor of the bi-monthly magazine Geoscientist and MIT's Rosalind Williams. Professor Paul Younger from Glasgow University is the author of Water: All That Matters and Energy: All That Matters Ted Nield is the author of Underlands: A Journey Through Britain's Lost Landscape Rosalind Williams is the author of Notes on the Underground' and 'The Triumph of the Human Empire'. Producer: Jacqueline Smith.

Merlin Holland, Will Self and Fiona Shaw join Matthew Sweet for a discussion about Oscar Wilde's novel which was published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in the July 1890 issue and then as a book 121 years ago in 1891. It prompted discussions about censorship and hedonism and went on to play a considerable part in the writer's downfall. Endlessly filmed, The Picture of Dorian Gray seems to communicate directly to successive generations - but how much about its writer can it really tell us. Merlin Holland, Oscar Wilde's grandson, has adapted it for a new stage version which runs at The Trafalgar Studios in London from January 18th to February 13th. Will Self's novel Dorian: An Imitation updated the story to the late 20th century. Fiona Shaw played Agatha in the 2009 film version, Dorian Gray. Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Matthew Sweet is joined by Professor Christopher Frayling to look at the revival of Westerns and Bryony Hanson and Laurence Scott consider the 2016 Oscar contenders.

Philip Dodd wrestles with an especially knotty question – does France have to stop being French to survive? Its a question which owes its urgency to recent events from the massacres of last year to the rise of the Right and an apparent erosion of the secular values that underpin the Fifth Republic. What price the France of Camus and New Wave Cinema in the face of globalisation? To answer these questions Philip is joined by the political commentator Anne-Elizabeth Moutet, the historian Liz Buettner, the Muslim scholar, Ziauddin Sardar and Andy Martin, an expert in 20th century French literature which did so much to fix the features of modern France in our minds. Producer: Zahid Warley.Europe After Empire by Elizabeth Buettner is published in April Islam Beyond the Mad Max Jihadis by Ziauddin Sardar is published in February

Anne McElvoy talks to the winner of this year's TS Eliot poetry prize Sarah Howe - who won for her first collection; Anne talks to leading physicist Lisa Randall - author of Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs and explores new architecture with Douglas Murphy and Owen Hopkins. New Generation Thinker Jonathan Healey looks at what history can tell us about coping with flooding.

Anne McElvoy looks at changing fashions and values in the art world as she talks to Observer critic Laura Cumming about her researches into a 19th-century court case involving a Velázquez portrait. New Generation Thinker Joe Moshenska joins the conversation to explain more about the trip to Spain during which the future Charles I was painted by the Spanish artist. Curator Liz Gilmore and dealer Julian Hartnoll discuss the British painter John Bratby who was celebrated and seen as an enfant terrible of the art world in the '50s and '60s. He is believed to have painted over 1500 works and an exhibition at the Jerwood Gallery in Hastings has drawn upon paintings brought in by members of the public. Artist Gayle Chong Kwan is working on a project based upon the North Eastern food dish Pan Haggerty. She talks about the walks, videos and photographs she has been creating as part of her residency in East Durham. Laura Cumming's book is called The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velázquez John Bratby: Everything But The Kitchen Sink Including The Kitchen Sink runs at the Jerwood Gallery in Hastings from January 30th to April 17th. The Pan Hag Project is being produced in conjunction with Forma Arts. Producer: Ella-Mai Robey

With two plays by Lorraine Hansberry being staged in the UK in 2016, Philip Dodd looks at her writing and its resonance today. When A Raisin in the Sun opened in 1959 it was the first play written by a black woman to be performed on Broadway. It is now touring the UK and being broadcast at the end of January on BBC Radio 3. Les Blancs - written 11 years later - is set in an African country on the brink of civil war and is staged at the National Theatre in Spring. The new production of Raisin in the Sun is being directed by Dawn Walton and Yael Farber is in charge of the National's account of Les Blancs - both directors will be joined by the playwright, Kwame Kwei Armah to discuss Hansberry. Kwame Kwei-Armah, who runs Baltimore's Centre Stage, put on what he called the Raisin Cycle in 2013 which included Bruce Norris's Clybourne Park and his own Beneatha's Place, both responses to Hansberry. Philip's other guests are the historian Dr Althea Legal- Miller and the anthropologist, Kit Davis. Les Blancs directed by Yael Farber opens at the National Theatre on March 24th. A Raisin in the Sun directed by Dawn Walton artistic director of Eclipse Theatre company opens at the Sheffield Crucible Studio Theatre on Jan 28th and tours to New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich; Nuffield Theatre, Southampton; Liverpool Playhouse; Watford Palace Theatre; The Albany, Deptford ; The Belgrade, Coventry. A BBC Radio 3 production of A Raisin in the Sun is being broadcast on Sunday January 31st.Producer: Zahid Warley

Storm up the stairs and slam your bedroom doors, because Matthew Sweet and guests are considering The Teenager on Free Thinking tonight. David Aaronovitch remembers the trials of growing up in a Stalinist household as his new book Party Animals is published. He's joined in the studio by his brother Ben - who is also an author. Plus, Matthew Sweet considers the social history of those difficult years talking to the neuroscientist Iroise Dumontheil of Birkbeck University of London and musician Viv Albertine and comparing different decades of teenage life. And Simon Stephens talks about the revival of his play Herons which explores the impact of gang bullying on a 14 year old boy. Party Animals by David Aaronovitch is out now. Ben Aaronovitch is the author of Rivers of London. Herons by Simon Stephens is at the Lyric Hammersmith from January 21st to February 13th. Producer: Laura Thomas

Ruth Scurr discusses her biography of the 17th-century antiquary and biographer John Aubrey - which has appeared on many of the newspaper selections of Books of the Year. Christopher Hampton and actress Adjoa Andoh talk to Anne McElvoy about a new production of Hampton's version of Les Liaisons Dangereuses which opens at London's Donmar Warehouse. New Generation Thinker Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough reviews a new TV version of Beowulf and how it compares to the poem she teaches. And the science writer and broadcaster, Marcus Chown, will be sharing his thoughts about his close encounter with Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Producer: Zahid Warley

Tonight, Philip Dodd and guests reflect on safe cities, past and present - on how literature, technology, law and social engineering imagine safety and its absence in cities - and whether safe cities are in the end an oxymoron. Philip is joined by senior urban fellow at LSE Cities, Adam Greenfield, writer Beatrix Campbell, criminologist Peter Fussey, director of The Runnymede Trust Omar Khan, and historian of London Jerry White, who will be discussing Joseph Conrad's terrorist novel, The Secret Agent.

Long As part of Radio 3's Northern Lights season, Matthew Sweet discusses Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries with the writer Colm Toibin, the film critic Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and the Swedish cultural attache Ellen Wettmark. Released in 1957 and inspired by Bergman's own memories of childhood holidays in a summerhouse in the north of Sweden, Wild Strawberries tells the story of elderly professor Isak Borg, who travels from his home in Stockholm to receive an honorary doctorate. On the way, he's visited by childhood memories. The film stars veteran actor and director Victor Sjostrom, Bibi Andersson and Ingrid Thulin. With additional contributions from the film historian Kevin Brownlow and Jan Holmberg from the Ingmar Bergman Foundation, which administers Bergman's archives.

Matthew Sweet chairs the British Academy of Song Writers, Composers and Authors debate about relevance and the contemporary across art forms. He is joined by Mark Baldwin Artistic Director of Rambert Dance Company, Catherine Wood curator at Tate, Jennifer Walshe composer and vocalist, Vayu Naidu storyteller and Sarah Kent art critic and performer. Recorded in front of an audience at the studios of Rambert on London's South Bank.Part of BBC Radio 3's coverage of the BASCA awards which you can hear broadcast on Saturday's Hear and Now. Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

Margaret Atwood, Arnaldur Indriadason and MJ McGrath talk to Rana Mitter about crime fiction and cold settings as part of Radio 3's Northern Lights Season. It's 100 years since Freud published his seminal paper The Unconscious. Rana Mitter and guests New Generation Thinker Shahidha Bari, psychotherapist Mark Vernon and Dr Suzanne O'Sullivan - author of It's All in Your Head - discuss the role notions of the unconscious have played in psychology and culture ever since. New Generation Thinker Naomi Paxton shares her research. Margaret Atwood is the author of books including Stone Mattress and the MaddAddam trilogy. Arnaldur Indriadason's novels include Strange Shores, The Draining Lake and Oblivion. MJ McGrath's novels include The Bone Seeker, White Heat and The Boy In The Snow. Producer: Luke Mulhall.

Long Joanne Harris, the multi-million selling author of Chocolat, discusses her new novel, The Gospel of Loki, inspired by the Norse god of trickery, mischief and deception, a shape-shifter whose cultural manifestations range from 13th-century legends to Marvel comics and video games. She’s joined by Radio 3 New Generation Thinker Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough. They debate the enduring power of Norse mythology in conversation with Free Thinking presenter Anne McElvoy recorded in front of an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead and broadcast as part of The Northern Lights season.

Anne McElvoy discusses Mein Kampf coming out of copyright with Ben Barkow of the Wiener Library in London, Heinrich von Berenberg – a publisher based in Berlin and Nicholas Stargardt, author of The German War and a professor of Modern European History at Oxford. Photographer Anna Fox and painter Chantal Joffe discuss an exhibition of Julia Margaret Cameron photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum. New Yorker journalist Larissa MacFarquhar talks to Anne McElvoy about altruism.

Philip Dodd and New Generation Thinker Christopher Harding review the newly translated novel from Nobel prize winner Kenzaburo Oe; historian Naoko Shimazu and curator Mizuki Takahashi discuss the chequered history of the concept of Cool Japan; British Bangladeshi writer Tahmima Anam reviews the new exhibition Artist and Empire at Tate Britain. Artist Hew Locke and curator and art historian Sarah Thomas investigate how Empire creates complexity and difficulty around the question of what is British Art. Artist and Empire: Facing Britain's Imperial Past runs at Tate Britain from 25 November 2015 – 10 April 2016 Death By Water written by Kenzaburo Oe is translated by Deborah Boliver Boehm.Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Italian author Umberto Eco is in conversation with Matthew Sweet. Eco is the author of essays, novels, childrens' books and criticism including his best-selling story The Name of the Rose. His new novel Numero Zero explores the lure of conspiracy theories and the power of the media.

Do men and women have different attitudes to rule breaking? With changing ideas about gender, can we say that our minds are wired differently? Helen Fraser, head of the Girls' Day School Trust said recently that 'being the compliant girl is never going to get you anywhere'. What are the rules today for relationships and getting on in society? Is it time to throw out received ideas and challenge the advice given to young people?Free Thinking presenter Rana Mitter chairs a debate with a panel featuring :Sheila Hancock - actress and author of three non-fiction books and a novel Miss Carter's WarJournalist Bim Adewunmi - culture editor at Buzz Feed UK, who writes often about popular culture and how it intersects with gender and raceNeil Bartlett, theatre director and author whose most recent novel is The Disappearance BoyJonny Mitchell, the headmaster in Channel 4's Educating Yorkshire and now the Head of the Co-operative Academy of Leeds.Recorded in front of an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead.Producer: Zahid Warley.

Every day we read lurid headlines about alcohol abuse and the consequences of binge drinking for the young at home and abroad. But a deeper look reveals a complicated picture of alcohol use in Britain. Champagne is still linked with celebration, while pubs are closing up and down the country. University freshers' weeks are adjusting to reflect the increasing number of students who are teetotal - but doctors are reporting a rise in patients with liver damage. How should society accommodate people who drink to excess and those who don't want to drink at all?Dr Sally Marlow from King's College, London is an expert in addiction. In a specially commissioned Free Thinking talk she explores the hypocrisy in society around alcohol.Joining the debate chaired by Free Thinking presenter Philip Dodd are:Professor Barry Smith - philosopher from the University of London's School of Advanced Study and wine columnist for Prospect magazine.David Yelland – former editor of the Sun and a Trustee of Action on Addiction and Patron of the National Association for Children of Alcoholics.Shelina Zahra Janmohamed, author of Love in a Headscarf and Muslim women's activist, who blogs at Spirit 21 and who is a lifelong teetotaller.Recorded in front of an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead.Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

"By 2029 computers will have emotional intelligence and be as convincing as people". Ray Kurzweil, Google's Director of Engineering, predicts this scenario – also explored in Channel 4's recent hit drama, Humans. So what are the skills needed for the 21st century workplace and do humans have them?According to Paul Mason, TV journalist and author of PostCapitalism, we face seismic change in part due to the revolution in information technology.Paul Mason joins Lucy Armstrong, Chief Executive of The Alchemists - who help companies grow, and Richard and Daniel Susskind, authors of The Future of the Professions, who argue we will no longer need doctors, lawyers, accountants, teachers and others to work as they did in the 20th century.Chaired by Free Thinking presenter Rana Mitter in front of an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead.Producer: Luke Mulhall

Actress Juliet Stevenson - whose work on theatre, film and TV includes Les Liaisons Dangereuses, The Village and the BAFTA award winning Truly Madly Deeply – comes to Sage. She’s joined on stage by Natalie Abrahami, who directed Stevenson in an acclaimed recent revival of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days at the Young Vic in London. They ask: how easy is it to break rules in the theatre?The text of a play contains stage directions - sometimes very precise. If the play is a classic, audiences and critics may have fixed ideas about what they expect to see. Matthew Sweet chairs a discussion which lifts the curtain on the experimentation that goes on in the rehearsal room and before the TV cameras roll.Natalie Abrahami is directing a production of Queen Anne at the Royal Shakespeare Company. It's a new play by Helen Edmundson which explores the relationship between Queen Anne and the Duchess of Marlborough. It runs at the RSC from November 19th 2015. Producer: Sarah Crawley

What is going on inside Britain's families? From three-parent families and surrogacy, to stepfamilies - the fastest rising type of home in the UK - the days of the 'traditional' family are apparently over. The divorce rate in the UK stands at 42%, the highest in the EU, yet nearly 75% of us apparently consider ourselves to be happy with our lives at home. So what are the new rules of family life?Joining Free Thinking presenter Anne McElvoy are:Anne Fine - the first Children's Laureate and an acclaimed author of books for adults and children including Madame Doubtfire and Telling Liddy.Tobias Jones - a novelist and communalist who opened his home as a sanctuary for people in a period of crisis and explores the results in his new book, A Place of Refuge: an Experiment in Communal Living.Professor Sarah Cunningham-Burley, Professor of Medical and Family Sociology, Centre for Population Health Sciences and founding co-director, Centre for Research on Families and Relationships, University of Edinburgh.Dr Tom Shakespeare from the University of East Anglia researches disability studies, medical sociology and ethical aspects of genetics.Recorded in front of an audience during the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead.Producer: Luke Mulhall

Angela Carter's work was described by Salman Rushdie as 'without equal and without rival'. The award winning author of novels including The Bloody Chamber, Wise Children and Nights at the Circus was a pioneer of English magic realism who re-imagined fairy tales and explored boundary breaking and rebelling against the confines of society. Her non- fiction book The Sadeian Woman explored the ideology of pornography. Thirteen years after her early death, the novelists Joanna Kavenna and Natasha Pulley join Angela Carter's literary executor Susannah Clapp and her friend the cultural critic Christopher Frayling to discuss Carter's writing and influence with Free Thinking presenter Philip Dodd. The readings are performed by Emily Woof. Christopher Frayling is the author of Inside the Bloody Chamber: on Angela Carter, the Gothic, and other weird tales which draws on the letters he and Carter exchanged. Joanna Kavenna is the author of five novels including Come to the Edge. In 2013 she was included in the Granta List of 20 best young writers. Natasha Pulley is the author of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street and a graduate of the creative writing programme at the University of East Anglia. Susannah Clapp is the author of A Card from Angela Carter and Theatre Critic for The Observer. Recorded in front of an audience at the Free Thinking Festival Sage Gateshead. Producer: Zahid Warley

The 18th century was the age of politeness - and of bawdiness. Fine manners and fine art co-existed with earthy attitudes to sex and the body, even in the most elevated circles. Curator and art historian Danielle Thom of the Victoria and Albert Museum explains why classical sculpture, the high point of 18th-century artistic taste, had a surprising influence on rude, lewd and erotic prints; and what this tells us about the surprisingly modern attitude to sexuality in the Georgian period.The New Generation Thinkers are the winners of an annual scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics at the start of their careers who can turn their research into fascinating broadcasts.The Essay was recorded in front of an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead. If you want to hear Danielle Thom answer questions about her research you can download The Essay and conversation as an Arts and Ideas podcast. Producer: Zahid Warley

The brutal treatment of Jews in Vichy France during the Second World War that culminated in their roundup and deportation is widely known. But is this the only way to consider Jewish life at this time? Focusing on the Jewish Scouting Movement. Daniel Lee from the University of Sheffield reveals the possibility of coexistence between the Vichy regime and the Jews, exposing a world of Jewish creativity and expression that flourished just as the regime’s antisemitic measures intensified.The New Generation Thinkers are the winners of an annual scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics at the start of their careers who can turn their research into fascinating broadcasts.The Essay was recorded in front of an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead. If you want to hear Daniel Lee discussing his research you can download The Essay and conversation as an Arts and Ideas podcast. Producer: Zahid Warley

From a breakfast drink to start the day to the treatment of bullet-wounds, beer has been a constant accompaniment to British life for centuries. Nowhere was this truer than in Imperial India where beer played a central role in colonial commerce, medicine and leisure. Sam Goodman of the University of Bournemouth explores this colonial drinking culture and how many of its habits have lingered to the present day, noting that whilst the Empire might be long gone, British taste for beer has proved remarkably consistent.The New Generation Thinkers are the winners of an annual scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics at the start of their careers who can turn their research into fascinating broadcasts.Recording in front of an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead. If you want to hear Sam Goodman discuss his research you can download The Essay and conversation as an Arts and Ideas podcast. Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

Science progresses by breaking the rules of the past. New observations need new theories to explain them. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity made sense of observations that Newton’s Laws of Motion could not. But how can we distinguish between the brilliant ideas that change our view of the world and those that are plain wrong? And does that make science too cautious to try out new ideas?Joining Free Thinking presenter Rana Mitter are:Professor Carlos Frenk, founding Director of the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University and winner of the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 2014Jim al-Khalili, 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 PerplexedDr Katy Price from Queen Mary, University of London, author of Loving Faster Than Light: Romance and Readers in Einstein’s UniverseDr Tom Shakespeare from the University of East Anglia, who co-founded the Café Scientifique network, which now has hundreds of affiliates in UK and worldwide.Recorded in front of an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead Producer: Torquil MacLeod

The 1667 recipe book by Sir Kenelm Digby featured tea with eggs brought from China, sugared mallow-leaves that cured gonorrhea and ‘pan cotto' cooked by Roman Cardinals. Digby had journeyed far and wide to collect his dishes, feasting with pirate chieftains in Algiers and munching melons in the eastern Mediterranean.Joe Moshenska of the University of Cambridge explores Kenelm Digby’s culinary travels, revealing startling contacts between Britain and the East, between alchemy and cookery, and between the past and the present.The New Generation Thinkers are the winners of an annual scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics at the start of their careers who can turn their research into fascinating broadcasts.The Essay was recorded in front of an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead. If you want to hear Joe Moshenka discuss his research you can download The Essay and conversation as an Arts and Ideas podcast. Producer: Torquil MacLeod

The 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum and this year's general election led to a passionate debate about nationhood and nationalism. But not for the first time. Kylie Murray of the University of Oxford discusses the ways in which feelings surrounding Anglo-Scottish relations and visions of Scottish national identity reached a peak of imaginative, sometimes intemperate expression in 15th-century Scottish literature. Among the jewels - Abbot Walter Bower’s Scotichronicon, the most re-published text in Scotland for the next two hundred years – and the inspiration behind one of Scotland’s greatest epic poems, Blind Harry’s The Wallace, where two hundred years after the Wars of Independence, the old hero is virtually re-invented as a second messiah. The New Generation Thinkers are the winners of an annual scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics at the start of their careers who can turn their research into fascinating broadcasts.The Essay was recorded in front of an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead. If you want to hear Kylie Murray discussing her research you can download The Essay and conversation as an Arts and Ideas podcast.

In the hunger for new ideas, are we forgetting the hard-earned lessons of the past? Rana Mitter chairs a discussion recorded in front of an audience at this year's Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead . James Rebanks is the Cumbrian shepherd sharing his farming knowledge with thousands of followers on his twitter account @herdyshepherd1 His book A Shepherd’s Life has been reprinted several times since its publication earlier this year. Professor Veronica Strang is a cultural anthropologist based at Durham University and the author of The Meaning of Water who has worked with communities all over the world exploring how they think of their relationship with the non-human and the land.

Thousands of soldiers fought in kilted regiments during the First World War. But what kind of cultural identity was adopted with the kilt? How far was it pervaded by a fatalistic sense of the Celt who ‘went forth to the war but … always fell’, or by the memory of the Highland Clearances? Peter Mackay of the University of St Andrews explores poetry and first-hand accounts from the war to find out.The New Generation Thinkers are the winners of an annual scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics at the start of their careers who can turn their research into fascinating broadcasts.The Essay was recorded in front of an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead. If you want to hear Peter Mackay discussing his research you can download The Essay and conversation as an Arts and Ideas podcast.

For nearly 200 years, the name Cunard has evoked glamorous images of sleek cruise ships and transatlantic sea travel. Yet the legacy of the Cunard family's black sheep, the disinherited granddaughter Nancy Cunard, is less well-known. Sandeep Parmar of the University of Liverpool explores the tragic life of this scion of a wealthy family who became a revolutionary poet, publisher, modernist muse, anti-fascist and anti-racism activist.The New Generation Thinkers are the winners of an annual scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics at the start of their careers who can turn their research into fascinating broadcasts.The Essay was recorded in front of an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead. If you want to hear Sandeep Parmar discussing her research you can download The Essay and conversation as an Arts and Ideas podcastProducer: Torquil Macleod

From TV talent contests such as The Great British Bake Off and Strictly Come Dancing to the pressures of school exams and job interviews – competition is at the heart of the way we live our lives. What can we learn from sports stars whose lives are geared to cultivating a healthy competitive instinct? Is the desire to be successful bringing out the best in us - or the worst?Constructively and co-operatively arguing with Free Thinking presenter Anne McElvoy are:Margaret Heffernan, entrepreneur, CEO and author of A Bigger Prize: Why Competition isn’t Everything and Wilful BlindnessMatthew Syed, former England Table Tennis number one and Times columnist and author whose books include Bounce: The myth of talent and the power of practice and, most recently, Black Box Thinking: The Surprising Truth about Success.Cath Bishop, Olympic medallist and World Champion rower, worked as a British diplomat specialising in conflict issues, working in Bosnia and Iraq and is now a leadership speaker specialising in topics relating to high performance and resilience.Christopher Frayling, author and broadcaster, former head of Arts Council EnglandRecorded in front of an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead. Producer: Luke Mulhall

Widows are exceptions to every rule”, Charles Dickens tells us in his first novel, The Pickwick Papers, published in 1837. Eighty years later, in 1917, a tune called “Widows are Wonderful” rings through the theatres and homes of a war-stricken Britain. “Widow! That great, vacant estate!” writes poet Sylvia Plath after the Second World War as the country grieves in silence. Nadine Muller of Liverpool John Moores University uncovers the hidden history of widows in Britain from the 19th century to the present day and explores what has made them so tragically melancholic, exceptional, and wonderful in British culture.The New Generation Thinkers are the winners of an annual scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics at the start of their careers who can turn their research into fascinating broadcasts.The Essay was recorded in front of an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead. If you want to hear Nadine discussing her research you can download the Essay and conversation as an Arts and Ideas podcast.

'We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further'. Richard Dawkins' book "The God Delusion" created waves when it was first published nearly 10 years ago. Rebutting religions of all kinds Dawkins became one of 'the New Atheists', a group of thinkers including Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett. He first came to public attention though in 1976 with his iconic book "The Selfish Gene" which popularised the gene-centred view of evolution. In 2013 he was voted the world's top thinker in Prospect magazine's poll of over 10,000 readers from over 100 countries. Richard Dawkins talks to Philip Dodd about his memoir, "Brief Candle in the Dark" in which he explores his life in the intersection between culture, religion and science. Recorded in front of an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead Producer: Luke Mulhall

The colourful life of Arthur Macmurrough Kavanagh overturns everything we think we know about disabled people’s lives in the 19th century. Born without hands and feet, he was an adventurous traveller and a Member of Parliament, a tiger-hunting landowner whose attempts to resist the rising tide of Irish nationalism were ultimately defeated, and whose amazing career has been largely forgotten. But how did his first biographer meet the challenge of writing his life? Clare Walker Gore of the University of Cambridge discusses The Life of Arthur Macmurrough Kavanagh and what this fascinating biography contributes to our understanding of disabled people in the 19th century.The New Generation Thinkers are the winners of an annual scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics at the start of their careers who can turn their research into fascinating broadcasts.The Essay was recorded in front of an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead. If you want to hear Clare Walker Gore answer questions about her research you can download The Essay and conversation as an Arts and Ideas podcast.

Are the rules of drama increasingly influencing the way the world is presented to us? TV news bulletins now employ chapter headings, dramatisations and music. Hollywood transforms real life stories into dramatized blockbusters at a dizzying rate. As it becomes harder to separate fact from fiction are we overvaluing the ‘real’? In this new multimedia environment, do we understand what the new rules of fiction and storytelling are?Sorting out facts from faction with Free Thinking presenter Matthew Sweet are:John Yorke, a visiting Professor at Newcastle University, is a former Controller of Drama at the BBC and Channel 4, whose CV includes East Enders, Shameless, Life on Mars, George Gently and Wolf Hall. He is the author of Into the Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them.Journalist Bim Adewunmi is culture editor at Buzz Feed UK and writes often about popular culture and how it intersects with gender and raceAllan Little is a journalist and broadcaster and has been a foreign affairs reporter for the BBC for 25 years, reporting from more than eighty countries. He was recently awarded the Charles Wheeler Award for Outstanding Contribution to Broadcast Journalism.Emily Woof is a radio and theatre writer, a performer and novelist. She grew up in Newcastle. Her latest novel is The Lightning Tree.Recorded in front of an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead.Producer: Torquil Macleod

For over 400 years it's been claimed that the first Medici Duke of Florence was mixed race, his mother a slave of African descent. Catherine Fletcher of Swansea University asks if this extraordinary story about the 16th-century Italian political dynasty could be true. Or do the tales of Alessandro de' Medici tell us more about the history of racism and anti-racism than about the man himself?The New Generation Thinkers are the winners of an annual scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics at the start of their careers who can turn their research into fascinating broadcasts.The Essay was recorded in front of an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead. If you want to hear Catherine Fletcher discussing her research you can download the Essay and conversation as an Arts and Ideas podcast.

Does Britain need more people like Russell Brand, Vivienne Westwood, Richard Branson and Boris Johnson? In business people talk of the power of the ‘disruptive influence’, but is the route to success actually based on discipline and obeying rules - or should we emulate those mavericks prepared to take risks and think differently? Philip Dodd asks which institutions should consider ripping up their rule books and starting again. Joining this debate about law, politics, business and the history of our relationship with rule-breaking is: Simon Heffer is a historian, Daily Telegraph columnist and author of Strictly English: The correct way to write... and why it matters and High Minds. Peter Tatchell has been campaigning for human rights, democracy, LGBT freedom and global justice since 1967. Joyce Quin is a former MP for Gateshead East and has held a number of ministerial posts including at the Home Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office. She now sits in the House of Lords. Recorded in front of an audience at the Free Thinking Festival Sage Gateshead.

This year's Free Thinking Lecture is given by the American poet Claudia Rankine. Her book 'Citizen: An American Lyric' is a New York Times best seller and has become an instant classic. At one of the most volatile moments in American race history, her meditations on the language used to describe tennis star Serena Williams and on events such as the Ferguson riots and the shooting of the teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida provide the vehicle for an incisive interrogation of justice and injustice, exposing the myth of a 'post-racial' 21st century.A professor of English at the University of Southern California and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Claudia Rankine grew up first in Kingston Jamaica and then New York City and has also lived in England. 'Citizen' has been called 'the book of a generation' and one which 'throws a Molotov cocktail' at the idea that the struggle against racial injustice has been won.The winner of this year's Forward Prize for Poetry, the PEN Open Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award comes to Sage Gateshead to talk to Free Thinking presenter Matthew Sweet about the power of language and what it means to be black in the new millennium.Recorded in front of an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead.

Philip Dodd talks to one of the icons of what used to be called the counter-culture, Peggy Seeger. Another chance to hear a conversation recorded earlier this year before Peggy Seeger joins the line up of guests performing at Sage Gateshead over Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival this weekend. Peggy Seeger's voice and career are emblematic of a life lived against the establishment grain. Born in New York in 1935 she first made her name as one of the leaders of the British Folk Revival, and with her partner Ewan MacColl, she helped to create one of the most innovative radio series of the last fifty years, the Radio Ballads, which blended original music, sound effects, and first-person interviews. In the 1950s she had her US passport withdrawn following a visit to China and chose to stay in Europe. It wasn't wholly unexpected. She had long aligned herself with the radical left and was an outspoken champion of feminism - one of her most famous songs being "I'm Gonna Be an Engineer". When official US attitudes softened after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1994 she returned to live in the States, but recently moved back to the United Kingdom and is still recording and releasing albums, including her latest CD Everything Changes.

Long Irish novelist Edna O'Brien in conversation. As she publishes her latest novel The Little Red Chairs she looks back at her literary career which has included short stories, a memoir, plays and poems. Her first novel The Country Girls was published in 1960 and it was banned by the Irish censor for its discussion of sex and social attitudes. Her latest story The Little Red Chairs depicts a multi-cultural Ireland in which a wanted war criminal from the Balkans settles in a west coast village community.

Matthew Sweet is joined by chess grandmaster, Garry Kasparov, and former British ambassador to Russia, Tony Brenton, to discuss Putin and Putinism. BBC 6 Music's Stuart Maconie author of The Pie at Night - a book which explores northern leisure pursuits - reviews an exhibition about Salford Lads Club. Feminist and co-founder of the group Justice for Women, Julie Bindel, and Rachael Jolley, editor of Index on Censorship magazine look at the phenomenon of 'no platforming'. Radio journalist Gillian Reynolds pays tribute to Philip French and discusses working on Radio 3's Critics' Forum with the late film critic and radio producer. The Nippers of Salford Lads Club is on at the People's History Museum from Wed 28 Oct 2015 - Sun 17 Jan. Stuart Maconie's book is called The Pie at Night. Garry Kasparov's book is called Winter is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must be Stopped.

New Generation Thinker, Dr Alun Withey has researched an unusual experiment in health care which took place in the 18th century in Bamburgh in Northumberland.