Free Thinking

Latest Episodes:

Free Thinking - Umberto Eco Dec 01, 2015

Show notes

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.

Rule Making and Rule Breaking for Women and Men. Nov 26, 2015

Show notes

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 War

Journalist Bim Adewunmi - culture editor at Buzz Feed UK, who writes often about popular culture and how it intersects with gender and race

Neil Bartlett, theatre director and author whose most recent novel is The Disappearance Boy

Jonny 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.

Free Thinking Festival - Breathalysing Britain: Free Spirits or a Drain on Society? Nov 25, 2015

Show notes

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.

Free Thinking Festival - Work Available: No Humans Need Apply Nov 25, 2015

Show notes

"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

Free Thinking Festival - Stage Directions Nov 25, 2015

Show notes

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

Free Thinking Festival - The Family Is Dead! Long Live the Family! Nov 24, 2015

Show notes

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

Free Thinking Festival – Landmark: Angela Carter Nov 23, 2015

Show notes

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 Free Thinking Festival Essay : Sculpture and Seduction in the 18th Century Nov 20, 2015

Show notes

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 Free Thinking Festival Essay : Jews in Occupied France: Coexistence with the Enemy? Nov 19, 2015

Show notes

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 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

The Free Thinking Festival Essay - Beer and the British Empire Nov 18, 2015

Show notes

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.

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.

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