Free Thinking

Latest Episodes:

Ibsen Sep 26, 2022

Show notes

The individual versus the masses is at the heart of Enemy of the People. A bank manager speculating with his customers' money is the story told in John Gabriel Borkman. Lucinda Coxon and Steve Waters have written new versions of these Ibsen plays. They join Norwegian actor and director Kåre Conradi, theatre critic and writer Mark Lawson and presenter Anne McElvoy to explore the ways in which Ibsen's characters and dramas resonate now.

John Gabriel Borkman starring Simon Russell Beale, Lia Williams and Clare Higgins runs at the Bridge Theatre, London September 24th to November 26th. Drama on 3 scripted by Steve Waters will be on air early in 2023. Kåre Conradi has established The Norwegian Ibsen Company which has brought productions to the Print Room at the Coronet Theatre in London. Conradi is an actor and a lifetime employee at The National Theatre of Norway. Mark Lawson is theatre critic for The Tablet and has written many radio dramas for BBC Radio 4.

Producer: Ruth Watts

On BBC Sounds and the Free Thinking programme website you can find previous discussions about Adapting Molière https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00138km John McGrath's Scottish drama https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0017tzt Shakespeare https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06406hm Lorraine Hansbery https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06tpdh3 and other key thinkers and writers on morality like Hannah Arendt/ Iris Murdoch/ Thomas Mann in our landmarks collection https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01jwn44

The Black Country - past and present Sep 23, 2022

Show notes

Matthew Sweet and guests explore the roots and resonance of "the Black Country" region

The Black Country - past and present Sep 22, 2022

Show notes

Matthew Sweet and guests explore the roots and resonance of "The Black Country" region

The Normans Sep 21, 2022

Show notes

Ruthless mercenaries who happened to be very good at PR or a dynamic force in Medieval European politics? Rana Mitter and guests Judith Green and Eleanor Parker discuss the current state of scholarship on the Normans. Plus: from the idea of the Norman yoke, to dreams of Hereward the Wake, to contemporary discussions about the right to roam and Brexit, what role have ideas of the Normans and Anglo-Saxons played in the British political imagination? Historian of ideas Sophie Scott Brown, and Phillip Blonde, director of the think tank Res Publica join Rana to debate.

Judith Green's book The Normans: Power, Conquest and Culture in 11th Century Europe looks at the role the Normans played in shaping their world, from Northern France and England, to Southern Italy, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East.

Eleanor Parker's book Conquered: The Last Children of Anglo-Saxon England looks at the generation that came of age as the Normans invaded and consolidated their hold over England, and examines the role they played in shaping the society that followed.

Dr Sophie Scott-Brown is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of East Anglia, where she teaches intellectual history and is the author of The Histories of Raphael Samuel - A Portrait of A People’s Historian (2017)

Producer: Luke Mulhall

You can find past episodes of Free Thinking discussing Tudor history, The Vikings and Victorian streets all available to download as Arts & Ideas podcasts.

Cuba, cold war and RAF Fylingdales Sep 20, 2022

Show notes

Ian McEwan's new novel Lessons sets a relationship against the backdrop of the Cuban missile crisis and the fall of the wall in Berlin. Researcher and artist Michael Mulvihill, from the University of Newcastle, has been recording the sounds of radar interference and uncovering the archives held at RAF Fylingdales in Yorkshire which depict the replacement of the "golf balls" and the technology involved in operating the early warning systems. Jessica Douthwaite, University of Stirling, is looking at how the cold war is collected and represented in museum collections across the UK and is a historian of civilian experiences of the cold war in Britain. Christoph Laucht, from Swansea University, researches responses the the nuclear threat They join Anne McElvoy to discuss the impact of the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962 and public fears about nuclear conflict.

You can find out more at https://fylingdalesarchive.org.uk/ Operations began there on 17th September 1963 and about Michael Mulvihill's Arts and Humanities Research Council project at https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FS013067%2F1

Lessons by Ian McEwan is published in September 2022. His other books include On Chesil Beach set 3 months before the Cuban missile crisis.

Producer: Ruth Watts

You can find other discussions about history in the Free Thinking archives including an episode looking at the Stasi poetry circle https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001556q

Immortality Sep 16, 2022

Show notes

Karel Čapek's 1922 play The Makropulos Affair about a famous singer who has lived for over 300 years was adapted into an opera by the composer Leoš Janáček and premiered in 1926. George Bernard Shaw's play Back to Methuselah, which premiered in 1922, also looks at human destiny and ideas about long life. As Welsh National Opera's new touring production of The Makropulos Affair opens in Cardiff, Matthew Sweet and guests New Generation Thinker Sarah Dillon, classicist Charlotte Higgins and philosopher Rebecca Roache explore the quest for endless youth in literature, film and myth and discussions of the idea by philosophers including Bernard Williams.

The Makropulos Affair opens at the Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff on Friday 16th September for three performances and then goes on tour to Llandudno, Plymouth, Birmingham, Southampton and Oxford.

Professor Sarah Dillon is working on a student guide How to Study the Contemporary and researching a literary history of AI. Her books include Storylistening: Narrative Evidence and Public Reasoning and she is on the editorial boards of C21: Journal of Twenty-First Century Writing and Fantastika. Charlotte Higgins' books include Greek Myths: A New Retelling and Red Thread: On Mazes and Labrynths

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

The Free Thinking programme website has a playlist called Free Thinking the Future which includes discussions about AI, robots and an interview with Ray Kurzweil https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zwn4d

The Lindisfarne Gospels and new discoveries Sep 14, 2022

Show notes

A dig at Lindisfarne this September aims to find out more about the early Medieval monastery raided by Vikings. New Generation Thinker David Petts from Durham University shares his findings on Holy Island. Professor Michelle Brown has been looking closely at the text and illustrations in the Lindisfarne Gospels and the culture of producing books in Anglo Saxon England. And as the gospels produced by Eadfrith, a monk at Lindisfarne who became bishop in c. 698 until his death in c. 722, go on show at the Laing Gallery in Newcastle, New Generation Thinker Jake Morris-Campbell writes a poem to mark their return to the North East. Shahidha Bari hosts.

You can find out more about the dig at https://projects.digventures.com/lindisfarne/ and about the gospels https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/lindisfarne-gospels Michelle Brown is giving a number of talks associated with the exhibition at the Laing Gallery which runs from Saturday 17 September - Saturday 3 December with a host of related exhibitions and events across the region https://laingartgallery.org.uk/lindisfarne-gospels-2022 Jake Morris-Campbell's poetry collection called Corrigenda For Costafine Town is out now from Blue Diode Publishing. You can also hear him talking about mining and dark places in a recording from the After Dark Festival at Sage Gateshead https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0015c8p

Radio 3's weekly curation of readings and music Words and Music takes inspiration from Northumbria and can be heard on Sunday September 25th at 5.30pm or on BBC Sounds for 28 days. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006x35f

Producer: Ruth Watts

New Thinking: What language did Columbus speak? Sep 13, 2022

Show notes

Christopher Columbus spoke to lots of people: his family and kin in Genova, merchants in Venice, royalty in Madrid, the crew of his ship, not to mention the people he met on the other side of the Atlantic. Today, we would consider this a case of multilingualism. But is that how Columbus would have seen it? What language did he think he spoke himself? In the same period a pidgin language developed to allow linguistically diverse communities in the eastern Mediterranean and north Africa to carry out trade, diplomacy, and general communication. We look at the latest research on this language, known as lingua franca, and consider what it might tell us about communication amongst the linguistic communities of the same region today. New Generation Thinker John Gallagher is joined by guests Dr Joanna Nolan, Professor Nandini Das, Dr Birgül Yılmaz, and translator David Bellos.

This New Thinking episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast was made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI. You can find other episodes focusing on language in the playlist New Research on the Free Thinking programme website The impact of being multi-lingual https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08s6mjd Birmingham’s Shakespeare Library https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p084zd37 An Encyclopedia of Shakespeare’s Language https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07h2z4r City Talk: a project to map Manchester accents https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07h30hm

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Dr Joanna Nolan teaches at SOAS, University of London and is the author of The Elusive Case of Lingua Franca: Fact and Fiction

Touki Bouki Jul 26, 2022

Show notes

A motorbike adorned with a zebu skull is one of the central images of Djibril Diop Mambéty's classic 1973 film, whose title translates as The Journey of the Hyena. Listed as one of the 100 greatest films of all time in the Sight and Sound magazine poll, it mixes West African oral traditions with influences from the French New Wave and Soviet cinema. Mory and Anta are two young people growing up in a newly independent Senegal who fantasise about leaving Dakar for a new life in France, but how can they realise those dreams and do they really want to leave? Matthew Sweet is joined by New Generation Thinker Sarah Jilani, Estrella Sendra Fernandez and Ashley Clark. Touki Bouki is being screened at the BFI London on July 27th as part of the Black Fantastic season of films drawing on science fiction, myth and Afrofuturism. The curator of that season Ekow Eshun joined Shahidha Bari in a recent Free Thinking episode which you can find on BBC Sounds and as the Arts and Ideas podcast.

Sarah Jilani is a lecturer in English at City, University of London and has written on neocolonialism in Francophone West African cinema.

Estrella Sendra Fernandez lectures in film and screen studies at SOAS, University of London. She directed the award-winning documentary film Témoignages de l’autre côté about migration in Senegal.

Ashley Clark is curatorial director at the Criterion Collection. He is the author of the book Facing Blackness: Media and Minstrelsy in Spike Lee’s “Bamboozled”

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

In the Free Thinking archives you can find a series of programmes exploring silent film, star actors including Jean-Paul Belmondo, Marlene Dietrich, Dirk Bogarde, and classics of cinema around the world including Kurosawa's Rashomon, Satyajit Ray's films, the films of Jacques Tati and Charlie Chaplin.

Filming Sunday Bloody Sunday Jul 25, 2022

Show notes

Glenda Jackson is the subject of a BFI season and in this film she plays part of a love triangle in John Schlesinger's follow up to his Oscar winning Midnight Cowboy. The plot written by Penelope Gilliat centres on an artist who has relationships with a female job consultant and a male doctor. Was the 1971 film ahead of its times? Matthew Sweet re-watches it with guests including Glenda Jackson, playwright Mark Ravenhill, film historian Melanie Williams and BFI National Archive curator Simon McCallum. They discuss the different elements of the film, including the score, which features the trio Soave sia il vento from Mozart's opera Così fan tutte, the very precise decor and evocation of late 60s London and filming inside a Jewish synagogue. The Glenda Jackson season runs at the BFI across July with a screening of this film on July 24th.

Producer: Fiona McLean

Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) still courtesy BFI Sunday Bloody Sunday is available on Blu-ray

You can find Matthew Sweet discussing other classics of British Cinema in the Free Thinking archives including:

British New Wave Films of the 60s - Joely Richardson and Melanie Williams evaluate the impact and legacy of Woodfall Films, the company behind Look Back in Anger, A Taste of Honey and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09ysnl2

An extended interview with Mike Leigh, recorded as he released his historical drama Peterloo, but also looks back at his film from 1984 Four Days in July https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0000tqw

Early Cinema looks back at a pioneer of British film Robert Paul and at the work of Alice Guy https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000dy2b

Philip Dodd explores the novel and film of David Storey's This Sporting Life with social historian Juliet Gardiner, journalist Rod Liddle, writer Anthony Clavane and the author's daughter Kate Storey https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09j0rt6

Samira Ahmed convenes a discussion about British Social Realism in Film https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01pz16k

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