Arts & Ideas

Anne McElvoy talks to New Generation Thinker and medical historian Alun Withey and former NHS executive Mark Britnell about health systems past and present. She discusses with Abigail Morris of the Jewish Museum an exhibition there exploring the cultural significance of blood and hears from Jane Taylor about her lecture and play exploring a strange but true tale of resurrection which is part of the Being Human Festival of the Humanities running across UK universities. Professor Daniel Pick discusses his research into psychology and remembers Professor Lisa Jardine - whose death was announced earlier this week. Mark Britnell's book is called In Search of the Perfect Health System and is out now. Blood runs at the Jewish Museum in London from November 5th - February 28th. Being Human: a festival of the humanities organised in conjunction with universities across the UK runs from November 12th - 22nd. http://beinghumanfestival.org/ Several of BBC Radio 3 and the AHRC's New Generation Thinkers are taking part. Newes From The Dead - Jane Taylor's semi-staged lecture is being performed at The Thackray Medical Museum in Leeds on Thursday 19th November.

Erica Jong has followed her book "Fear of Flying" with "Fear of Dying". She talks to Philip Dodd about feminism and ageing. Richard Jones discusses Eugene O'Neill's 1922 drama The Hairy Ape - which stars Bertie Carvel as the ship labourer trying to find a way to belong in the divided society of New York. Ben Bernanke, former chair of the US Federal Reserve, has a more contemporary view of the divide between rich and poor in New York. The Hairy Ape is at The Old Vic Theatre in London from October 17th to November 21st. Erica Jong's latest book is called Fear of Dying. Ben Bernanke's book is called The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and its Aftermath

As Halloween fast approaches, Matthew Sweet is joined round the Free Thinking cauldron by guests including Marina Warner and Suzannah Lipscomb to consider the season of the witch. Film critic Larushka Ivan-zadeh and Claire Nally from Northumbria University review new blockbuster The Last Witch Hunter starring Vin Diesel, and consider the depictions of witches on film ahead of a screening of Vincent Price's 1968 horror classic Witchfinder General. Catherine Spooner of Lancaster University and historian Suzzanah Lipscomb offer an historical guide to the famous witch trials from Pendle to Salem. And author Marina Warner discusses her father's relationship with the ghost writer M.R. James.

The new James Bond film Spectre is reviewed by New Generation Thinker Sam Goodman. The Egyptian feminist writer Nawal El Saadawi talks to Rana Mitter about facing death threats and surviving prison - and her novels which include Memoirs of a Woman Doctor and God Dies by the Nile. Lord Browne, former CEO of BP, makes the case for business to engage with society in a discussion with Mark Littlewood from the Institute of Economic Affairs. Dr Elisabeth Kendall has been studying the way so called Islamic State use classical Arabic poetry on social media. Elisabeth Kendall is the author of Twenty-First Century Jihad Connect: How Companies Succeed by Engaging Radically with Society by John Browne with Robin Nuttall and Tommy Standlen, is out now. Sam Goodman is the author of British Spy Fiction and the End of Empire Spectre certificate 12A is out in cinemas nationwide from Monday. Nawal El Sadaawi is the author of The Hidden Face of Eve, Woman at Point Zero, The hidden face of Eve, God Dies By The Nile.

Marilynne Robinson, Thomas Harding, Imtiaz Dharker discuss ideas of home with Philip Dodd. Are we becoming increasingly rootless, or simply finding new ways to put down roots. Pulitzer Prize winning author Marilynne Robinson is the author of a novel called Home and finds her own roots in Iowa and in her Calvinist faith. In her new collection of essays The Givenness of Things, she explores the ideas that make up the religious and philosophical homeland of Europe and America – Calvinism, Humanism, the Reformation, the self. Thomas Harding’s family originate in Germany. In his new book The House by the Lake he relates the changing ownership and fortunes of his family’s summer house in eastern Berlin and with it the history of Germany from the thirties up to the present. It's his follow up to his best-selling book Hanns and Rudolph.Poet and artist Imtiaz Dharker describes herself as a "Pakistani Calvinist Scottish Muslim" and her life has taken her from Lahore, to Glasgow, to Bombay, to Wales and finally to London – "I think displacement is often a good and useful thing for a writer", she says. And as a new exhibition dedicated to The World of Charles and Ray Eames opens, Edwin Heathcote takes Philip on an imaginative tour of their iconic house, Case Study House #8, which they designed to "express man's life in the modern world."The World of Charles and Ray Eames runs at the Barbican in London from 21st October to 14th February. Marilynne Robinson's Essay collection The Givenness of Things is out now. Thomas Harding's book is called The House by the Lake Imtiaz Dharker's most recent poetry collection is called Over The Moon.

Matthew Sweet talks to Richard Mabey about his new book The Cabaret of Plants: Botany and the Imagination and hears how so much of our history has been driven by our discovery and exploitation of their properties but it's time to put our own human social preoccupations aside. Joining them, Andrea Wulf presents her findings on the extraordinary scientist Alexander von Humboldt, a seminal figure in human attempts to understand nature. And it was nearly fifty years ago that The Black Panther Party was founded. Stanley Nelson, director of a new documentary history, Vanguard of the Revolution and Mohammed Mubarak, one of the movements official photographers join Matthew to discuss the Black Panthers' role in a political awakening for black Americans and their impact on wider American culture. Presenter: Matthew Sweet Guest: Richard Mabey author of The Cabaret of Plants: Botany and the Imagination Guest: Mohammed Mubarak Guest: Stanley Nelson, dir The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution Andrea Wulf author of The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt The Lost Hero of Science

The actress and author Meera Syal and playwright Tanika Gupta discuss adapting Syal's novel Anita and Me for the stage. Chosen as a GCSE set text, the novel Anita and Me depicts the friendship of a Punjabi teenager Meena and Anita, a white more rebellious girl living in the same West Midlands village in the 1970s. Filmed in 2002, the autobiographical novel has now been adapted for stage by Tanika Gupta, directed by the Artistic Director of Birmingham Rep Roxana Silbert. Rana Mitter chairs a discussion about Anita and Me, growing up in 70s Britain, the surrogacy industry in India and having a rebel in the family with questions from an audience at Birmingham Rep Theatre and as part of the Birmingham Literature Festival. Anita and Me runs at Birmingham Repertory Theatre until October 24th. It's on at Theatre Royal Stratford East from October 29th - November 21st. Meera Syal's latest novel is called The House of Hidden Mothers.

Salman Rushdie talks to Philip Dodd about a sense of belonging, why we are living in strange times and how his new novel mixes 1001 Nights with comic book heroes. Also historian Niall Ferguson on Henry Kissinger and cold war politics. Salman Rushdie's novel is called Two Years Eight Months and Twenty Eight Nights. Niall Ferguson's biography of Henry Kissinger is called Kissinger: Volume I: The Idealist, 1923-1968

Matthew Sweet hears from Alex Clark direct from the 2015 Man Booker Award ceremony on this year's winning novel. There's discussion of imaginative histories of Weather and Twilight with Alex Harris and Peter Davidson. They'll be explaining why painters first noticed the witching hour at the end of the 18th century, and why Anglo-Saxons only told stories about the winter, why April showers were precious in the middle-ages and fog was the novelists' weather of choice in the 19th century. Plus the poet Michael Rosen, whose new anthology links anti-Semitism, fascism and war with the lives of his parents and grandparents, joins Matthew in the great outdoors to remember the Kibbo Kift Kin, the 1920s youth movement which combined woodcraft with cutting edge costume and art and arcane and possibly occult dreams of changing the world forever. The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift, a new book by Annebella Pollen accompanies Intellectual Barbarians, an exhibition at London's Whitechapel Gallery, marking the short but colourful history of an organisation which fell foul of both Right and Left.

The American poet Mark Doty, Professor Sarah Churchwell and the young British poet Andrew McMillan join Matthew Sweet for a programme on National Poetry Day dedicated to one of the classics of American poetry, Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Readings will be performed by William Hope.

Antony Sher and the stars of next Sunday's Drama on 3: Death of a Salesman, Zoë Wanamaker and David Suchet, discuss acting Arthur Miller with Philip Dodd. Also, are university campuses becoming places where free speech and debate is difficult? To discuss Free Thinking brings together Director of Curriculum for Cohesion and university lecturer Dr Matthew Tariq Wilkinson, journalist and Deputy Editor of the New Statesman Helen Lewis, and lawyer and author Anthony Julius.

James Fenton discusses his career as a poet and journalist ahead of collecting the PEN Pinter Prize 2015 in a ceremony tonight. New Generation Thinker Naomi Paxton researches the plays performed by Suffragettes. She offers her verdict on the film Suffragette, starring Meryl Streep, Helena Bonham Carter and Carey Mulligan. And Margaret Thatcher left Downing Street 25 years ago. Anne McElvoy is at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester to discuss her legacy with her official biographer, Charles Moore, and Conservative MP, Kwasi Kwarteng.

Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro discusses 1606 - the year Macbeth was written. And Matthew Sweet is joined by Sonia Massai and Andrew Hilton to review the new film starring Michael Fassbender and look at other cinematic versions of "the Scottish play". Matthew also talks to playwright Barrie Keeffe about a revival of his 1977 play Barbarians, while Radio 3 New Generation Thinker Fern Riddell offers her take on the controversy surrounding the Jack The Ripper Museum in London's East End.

On the final day of Jeremy Corbyn's first Labour Party conference as Leader, Philip Dodd presents a discussion about populism in politics, with philosopher Roger Scruton, historian Justin Champion, journalist and commentator John Lloyd, and activist Sirio Canos Donnay, a representative of the Spanish populist movement Podemos. Romola Garai stars in a new production of Measure for Measure directed by Joe Hill-Gibbins. They discuss this drama of puritanism and carnal desire.

Margaret Atwood's new novel imagines the future of sexual desire in a social experiment. Professors Yuval Harari and Barry Cunliffe explore the long history of mankind. And Rana Mitter visits the new exhibition about Celts at the British Museum and discusses it with historian and author Dr Janina Ramirez and Professor Barry Cunliffe.

Orhan Pamuk, novelist and Nobel Prize winner is in conversation with Edmund de Waal - the potter and best-selling author of the Hare with Amber Eyes - who has been on a quest to explore the history of porcelain. Philip Dodd chairs a conversation ranging across the colours white and red, appreciating and conserving craft skills, the way historic objects are displayed in museums, and the changing identity of cities such as Desden, Jingdezhen and Istanbul.

Rana Mitter explores why we sleep with pioneering researcher into the body clock, Russell Foster; Matt Berry, actor, comedian and writer who wrestles with insomnia; Brigitte Steger who has explored Japanese and other global sleeping cultures and Katharine Craik, a renaissance scholar whose new opera project for children is called Watching...back in the 16th century the watching hours were part of a segmented sleep pattern which only disappeared with the industrial revolution.

Professor Lynda Nead has curated an exhibition at the Foundling Museum in London which looks at depictions of "the Fallen Woman" in Victorian England by artists including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Richard Redgrave, George Frederic Watts and Thomas Faed. The display includes a specially-commissioned sound installation by musician and composer Steve Lewinson. Lynda Nead joins Anne McElvoy along with James Bartholomew, an historian of the Welfare State who has studied Victorian responses to poverty. Gillian Tett is managing editor of the New York office of The Financial Times. She reported on the financial crisis of 2007-8 in close detail, but before she became a journalist Tett trained as an anthropologist. Her latest book, The Silo Effect, combines reportage with anthropology to identify the deep structure in our thinking that contributed to the crisis: the tendency to organize things into discrete silos. Steve Silberman is a Wired reporter and author of an article on "The Geek Syndrome" which went viral. He talks to Anne McElvoy about why we need to think about autism in a new way, along with Matthew Smith, an historian of psychiatry at the University of Strathclyde and former Radio 3 New Generation Thinker.

Rana Mitter is joined by young academics who are exploring Indian history during British rule and looking at India in the second world war

Frederick Forsyth discusses spy fiction and fact as he publishes his memoirs and Matthew Sweet explores our emotions with New Generation Thinker Dr Tiffany Watt-Smith, Thomas Dixon and Susie Orbach. Also a review of portraits chosen at the National Portrait Gallery by Simon Schama

South African artist William Kentridge discusses making animated films, drawings and directing the opera Lulu. William Boyd's latest novel Sweet Caress traces the life and work of a photographer. Philip Dodd talks to him about viewing 20th century history and news events through the lens of a fictional photo journalist. New Generation Thinker Zoe Norridge, documentary photographer Anna Fox and Eamonn McCabe – portrait photographer and former picture editor of the Guardian newspaper - discuss the impact of digital photography on the way we see the world.

Radio 3 presenter Ian McMillan, poet Kate Clanchy and Judith Palmer of the Poetry Society introduce the winning entries in this year's Proms Poetry Competition. The Poems are read by Carolyn Pickles.

dha Bari and Houda Echouafni on this powerful islamic folk-cycle - Arabian Nights

David Hare, one of Britain's leading playwrights, discusses his new memoir, 'The Blue Touch Paper', with Matthew Sweet. When the National Theatre published its poll of the hundred best plays of the 20th century, David Hare had written five of them. He explains how he became a writer and the high price he and those around him paid for that decision.

Michael Cox explores the history of the London School of Economics with Stephanie Flanders

The American novelist Willa Cather's 'The Song of the Lark' was first published a hundred years ago in 1915. Her biographer Dame Hermione Lee talks to New Generation Thinker Sarah Dillon about Cather's story of a young girl who leaves her home town in Colorado to pursue a career as an opera singer. The reader is Laurel Lefkow. Recorded in front of an audience at the Royal College of Music.

Ian Christie on the Lumiere brothers' invention of the world's first film camera in 1895.

Why has Denmark played such a significant role in shaping modern ideas about childhood? The Danish-born historian and lecturer Lars Tharp and the writer on children's literature Julia Eccleshare explore the work and legacy of Hans Christian Andersen with Ian McMillan.

The history of the National Trust with Dame Helen Ghosh and Patrick Barkham.

The novelists Helen Dunmore and Louise Welsh discuss DH Lawrence's 'The Rainbow', first published a hundred years ago in 1915, with Rana Mitter. The novel, which was banned on publication, tells the story of the Brangwen family as they face the decline of their pastoral life in the face of industrialisation. Presented by Rana Mitter.

Philip Hoare and Merlin Holland discuss Wilde's tumultuous year. With Shahidha Bari.

Actress Lisa Dwan and singer Susan Bullock discuss the role of memory in performance.

Its early readers included Queen Victoria and a young Oscar Wilde. 150 years after it became a publishing sensation the writer Lynne Truss and children's novelist Philip Ardagh discuss 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' and its enduring appeal to readers, writers and film makers with Anne McElvoy.Recorded in front of an audience at the Royal College of Music.

Poets Jo Shapcott and Sean O'Brien discuss Ezra Pound's poetry collection, 'Cathay'.

Oscar-winning composer Steven Price on the inspiration of Holst's Planets Suite.

Award-winning actor Henry Goodman and director and designer Antony McDonald discuss the enduring appeal of the 1964 musical Fiddler on the Roof - one of the most successful in Broadway history - which tells the story of a Jewish community in 1905 Tsarist Russia. Rana Mitter presents.

Professor Karen Leeder and Professor Robert Vilain explore the great German Romantic poetry which inspired Beethoven throughout his life from Schiller's Ode to Joy to Goethe's Egmont and Treitschke's Fidelio.Recorded in front of an audience at the Royal College of Music

Rana Mitter with Nicholas Kenyon and Leanne Langley

Anne McElvoy discusses heroic triumph and failure with a trio of eminent historians

Philip Dodd discusses Camelot: The Shining City and reviews the new Harper Lee

Anne McElvoy on French intellectual traditions & rom-com; prophecies of Thomas the Rhymer

Philip Dodd discusses Legal Aid, Law, Language and Gore Vidal v William F Buckley Jr

Matthew Sweet on Jaws and the film-maker's role in creating the myth of a man-eating machine. Good or bad for the shark? Gareth Fraser, Ian Hunter, Will Self and Fiona Tan discuss.

Tariq Ali discusses Satyajit Ray's 1955 film Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) 60 years on. Rana Mitter is also joined by novelist Sunjeev Sahota and Neil Bartlett.

Anne McElvoy at Tate Modern with the Museum of the Year finalists.

The links between dance, art and the brain and the meaning of "the public"

Matthew Sweet on worrying - Joseph Cornell - Spy Fiction and the First film.

Anne McElvoy discusses the ways Scottish writers negotiate what it means to be Scottish with Janice Galloway, Kathleen Jamie, Peter Mackay and Murray Pittock.

Philip Dodd discusses community and talks a poet Claudia Rankine.

Matthew Sweet is in Cardiff to examine the role of the Left in Welsh politics and its bearing on today's debate about nationalism hearing from In Cardiff Matthew Sweet is joined by Professor Daniel Williams and Sir Deian Hopkin to discuss the role of the Left in Welsh politics and its bearing on today's debate about nationalism. He also talks about the Bardic tradition with the writers, Gwyneth Lewis and Iain Sinclair. And, takes a trip to Llandrindod Wells to sample the latest instalment in the National Theatre of Wales’ Big Democracy Project.