Free Thinking

Latest Episodes:

Free Thinking: Sleep - Freedom to Think Mar 17, 2017

Show notes

“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

Free Thinking - Rodney Graham at BALTIC, The Amber Collective. Mar 17, 2017

Show notes

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

Free Thinking: Images of America Mar 15, 2017

Show notes

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.

Free Thinking - Michael Lewis. Mar 09, 2017

Show notes

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

Free Thinking: Neglected Women: Lady Mary Wroth, Margaret Cavendish, Charlotte Robinson. Mar 08, 2017

Show notes

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.

Free Thinking: Landmark: Machiavelli's The Prince Mar 07, 2017

Show notes

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' Medici

Producer: Robyn Read

Free Thinking - Neil Jordan, Flat Time House, Teletubbies Mar 02, 2017

Show notes

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

Free Thinking: India/Pakistan: Mohsin Hamid. Gurinder Chadha's Viceroy's House. Preti Taneja and Sam Goodman Mar 01, 2017

Show notes

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

Free Thinking - Japan Now Festival at the British Library. Feb 28, 2017

Show notes

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

Free Thinking: 'Play' in urban design, Gillian Allnutt Feb 23, 2017

Show notes

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.

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