Free Thinking

Latest Episodes:

Oliver Postgate Oct 21, 2022

Show notes

The creator of much-loved children's TV classics including The Clangers, Bagpuss and Pogles' Wood is discussed by Matthew Sweet and his guests Daniel Postgate who took over Smallfilms from his father, singer Sandra Kerr who was the voice of Madeleine in Bagpuss, composer and author Neil Brand, and writer and broadcaster Samira Ahmed. Oliver Postgate's father was a communist and his mother was a political activist, daughter of prominent Labour figure George Lansbury - how much of this political background can we find in the fantastical worlds that he created? There's also discussion of the music that plays such a major role in the programmes - the deep folk roots of the songs performed by Sandra and John Faulkner in Bagpuss and Vernon Elliot's sparse and poignant compositions for The Clangers, Noggin the Nog and Ivor the Engine.

CLANGERS: The Complete Scripts 1969-1974 is published on November 10th.

You can find more programmes celebrating 100 years of the BBC on iPlayer and BBC Sounds.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

British Academy Book Prize 2022 Oct 18, 2022

Show notes

Deafness and communication, writing Chinese, women as killers in Chile, German postwar history, testimony from a Swedish village and a global history of science are the topics explored in the books shortlisted for this year's prize for Global Cultural Understanding run by the British Academy. Rana Mitter talks to the six authors about their findings. The books are:

The Invention of Miracles: Language, Power, and Alexander Graham Bell's Quest to End Deafness by Katie Booth Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich by Harald Jähner Osebol: Voices from a Swedish Village by Marit Kapla Horizons: A Global History of Science by James Poskett When Women Kill: Four Crimes Retold by Alia Trabucco Zerán Kingdom of Characters: A Tale of Language, Obsession and Genius in Modern China by Jing Tsu

The prize of £25,000 will be awarded on October 26th 2022. You can find interviews with writers shortlisted in previous year's on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00106pn and https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000n0bv

Producer: Tim Bano

Romanticism Revisited Oct 13, 2022

Show notes

The ridiculous side of Romanticism, a new biopic of Emily Brontë and an exhibition about Fuseli and women are on today's agenda as Shahidha Bari is joined by New Generation Thinkers Emma Butcher, Sophie Oliver, Chris Harding and by Andrew McInnes.

Emily from writer/director Frances O'Connor starring Emma Mackey as Emily Brontë opens at cinemas across the UK this week.

Fuseli and the Modern Woman: Fashion, Fantasy, Fetishism runs at the Courtauld Gallery in London from Oct 14th to Jan 8th 2023

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born 21 October 1772.

You can find more about Fuseli in the book Dinner with Joseph Johnson written by New Generation Thinker Daisy Hay and longlisted for the Baillie Gifford prize - she discussed it in an episode of Free Thinking called Teaching and Inspiration

Producer: Luke Mulhall

The Frieze/Radio 3 Museum Directors Debate 2022 Oct 12, 2022

Show notes

Hong Kong, Paris and New York galleries and museums are in the spotlight as we hear the latest in a series of discussions exploring what it means to run museums and galleries in the 21st century. For the Frieze/Radio 3 Museum Directors Debate 2022 Anne McElvoy is joined by Suhanya Raffel (director of M+ Museum for Visual Culture, Hong Kong), Richard Armstrong (director of the Guggenheim Museum, NYC) and Nathalie Bondil (head of museums and exhibitions at the Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris).

The directors chose 3 artists whose work is either currently on show or has been recently displayed at their institutions: the graffiti painter Tsang Tsou-choi, better known as "King of Kowloon"; Cecilia Vicuña (currently showing at Tate Modern in the Turbine Hall 16 April 2023) and the Jordanian sculptor Mona Saudi who died earlier this year and whose work can be seen outside the Institut du Monde Arabe. They also discuss issues including their approach to questions about donors, decolonisation and digital displays.

You can find other discussions with directors from galleries in Singapore, Dresden, Washington, Paris, Beijing and London in the Free Thinking collection exploring art, architecture, photography and museums https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p026wnjl Frieze London runs from Oct 12th - 16th 2022

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Miles Davis and On The Corner Oct 11, 2022

Show notes

From James Brown to Stockhausen, the influences which fed into Miles Davis's 1972 album On The Corner are explored by Matthew Sweet and guests, 50 years after its release. Bill Laswell, Chelsea Carmichael, Kevin LeGendre and Paul Tingen join Matthew to celebrate an album that was dismissed by some jazz critics as evidence of Davis 'selling out' when it came out, but that has gone on to be appreciated as an important and influential milestone.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Bill Laswell's many recordings and productions include Panthalassa: The Music of Miles Davis 1969-1974. Chelsea Carmichael is a saxophonist and composer. Her most recent album is The River Doesn't Like Strangers. Paul Tingen is the author of Miles Beyond: The Electric Explorations of Miles Davis, 1967-1991. Kevin Le Gendre is one of the presenters of BBC Radio 3's J to Z broadcast Saturdays at 5pm

You can hear Matthew and Kevin exploring the politics, history and music which fed into Marvin Gaye's What's Going On in a previous episode of Free Thinking https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0011l7t Radio 3 will be broadcasting a range of programmes from the London Jazz Festival between Nov 11th and 20th https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0011l7t

How We Read Oct 07, 2022

Show notes

The word 'reading' may appear to describe something specific and universal, but in reality it's more of an umbrella term, covering a huge range of ways in which people interact with text. Dyslexia and hyperlexia may be two of the more obvious departures from normative ideas of reading, but whether we're neurodivergent or not we all read in different ways that can vary significantly depending on what we're reading and why we're reading it. Matthew Sweet is joined by Matt Rubery, Louise Creechan and poets Debris Stevenson and Anthony Anaxagorou.

Matt Rubery, Professor of Modern Literature at Queen Mary, University of London has worked on books including The Untold Story of the Talking Book; Audiobooks, Literature, and Sound Studies, Further Reading and Reader’s Block: A History of Reading Differences. You can hear more from him in an episode about the history of publishing called Whose Book is it Anyway? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b080xzm6 Dr Louise Creechan is studying is a Lecturer in Literary Medical Humanities at Durham University and a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to showcase academic research. You can hear her discuss Dickens' Bleak House in an episode called Teaching and Inspiration https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00169jh Debris Stevenson describes herself as 'Dyslexic educator, Grime-poet and Dancehall raving social activist'. Anthony Anaxagorou's latest collection of poetry is Heritage Aesthetics, published on 3rd November 2022. Free Thinking has a playlist featuring discussions about prose and poetry https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p047v6vh

The theme of this year's National Poetry Day is the Environment and you can hear Radio 3's weekly curation of readings and music inspired by that topic on Sunday at 5.30pm and then on BBC Sounds for 28 days https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006x35f

Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

Female power and influence past and present Oct 05, 2022

Show notes

Kamila Shamsie's new novel Best of Friends follows two women from Pakistan who take different route to power. Rona Munro's new plays explore the courts of James IV and Mary Stuart. Caroline Moorehead has written a biography of Edda Mussolini, the Italian leader's favourite daughter. Anne McElvoy talks to them about power and influence past and present.

Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie is out now. You can hear her discussing her novel Home Fire and the Antigone story in a previous episode of Free Thinking https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b095qhsm Edda Mussolini: The Most Dangerous Woman in Europe by Caroline Moorehead is out on October 27th 2022. James IV - Queen of the Fight by Rona Munro:is touring from Sept 30th to Nov 12th 2022 It is presented by Raw Material and Capital Theatres in association with National Theatre of Scotland www.capitaltheatres.com Mary by Rona Munro runs at the Hampstead Theatre in London from 21 Oct to 26 Nov 2022 www.hampsteadtheatre.com You can hear Rona discussing previous plays in the James trilogy and a drama inspired by Manchester in the Industrial Revolution in a previous episode of Free Thinking https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b050xpsd And Free Thinking has a playlist exploring Women in the World https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p084ttwp

Producer: Ruth Watts

My Neighbour Totoro Oct 04, 2022

Show notes

A world of sprites and spirits encountered by childhood sisters in the 1988 animated feature film by Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away) and Studio Ghibli has been adapted for stage by the original composer Joe Hisaishi working with playwright Tom Morton-Smith and Director Phelim McDermott. Chris Harding and guests look at how this story relates to Japanese beliefs about ghosts and nature, and how Miyazaki used ideas of childhood innocence to critique post-War Japanese society.

Chris Harding is joined by Tom Morton-Smith, Michael Leader from the podcast Ghiblioteque, Dr Shiro Yoshioka, Lecturer in Japanese Studies at the University of Newcastle, and Dr Xine Yao, co-director of qUCL at University College London, and a Radio 3/AHRC New Generation Thinker.

My Neighbour Totoro from the Royal Shakespeare Company in collaboration with Improbable and Nippon TV runs at the Barbican Theatre in London from 8 Oct 2022—Sat 21 Jan 2023

Producer: Luke Mulhall

John Cowper Powys Sep 29, 2022

Show notes

With their casts of outsiders, deviants and miscreants, the novels of John Cowper Powys explore where meaning can be found in a world without God. Very often, the answer is in semi-mystical communion with nature and landscape. Heir of both Thomas Hardy and Friedrich Nietzsche, Powys was admired by contemporaries like Iris Murdoch, and anticipated lots of the concerns of ecocritical writers and thinkers of today. But few of his books are currently in print. To mark the 150th anniversary of his birth, Matthew Sweet discusses his life and writing with Margaret Drabble, John Gray, Iain Sinclair and Kevan Manwaring.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Claude McKay and the Harlem Renaissance Sep 28, 2022

Show notes

From a farming family in Jamaica to travelling in Europe and Northern Africa, the writer Claude McKay became a key figure in the artistic movement of the 1920s dubbed The Harlem Renaissance. Publishing under a pseudonym, his poems including To the White Friends and If We Must Die explored racial prejudice. Johnny Pitts has written an essay about working class community, disability and queer culture explored in Claude McKay's Romance in Marseille, which was published for the first time in 2020. Pearl Cleage's play Blues for an Alabama Sky is set in 1930s New York. The African-American playwright is the daughter of a civil rights activist, and has worked as speechwriter for Alabama's first black mayor, founded and edited the literary magazine Catalyst, and published many novels, plays and essays. Nadifa Mohamed's novels include Black Mamba Boy and her most recent The Fortune Men (shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize). They talk to Shahidha Bari about Claude McKay and the flourishing of ideas and black pride that led to the Harlem Renaissance.

Producer: Tim Bano

Blues For an Alabama Sky runs at the National Theatre in London from September 20th to November 5th.

Johny Pitts presents Open Book on Radio 4. His books include Afropean: Notes from Black Europe which you can hear him discussing on Free Thinking https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0005sjw His collaboration with Roger Robinson Home Is Not A Place exploring Black Britishness in the 21st century is out this month.

You can hear more from Nadifa talking about her latest novel The Fortune Men and comparing notes about the writing life with Irenosen Okojie in previous Free Thinking episodes available on our website in the prose and poetry playlist and from BBC Sounds https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000x06v and https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000k8sz

Alongside Verso’s reissue of Home to Harlem they have 3 other books out: Not Without Laughter by Langston Hughes, The Blacker The Berry by Wallace Thurman, and Quicksand And Passing by Nella Larson.

On BBC Sounds and in the Free Thinking archives you can find conversations about Black History https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08t2qbp and a Radio 3 Sunday Feature Harlem on Fire in which Afua Hirsch looks at the history of the literary magazine https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06s6z0b

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