Free Thinking

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Futurism Jul 22, 2022

Show notes

"The beauty of speed. Time and space died yesterday. We already live in the absolute, because we have created the eternal, omnipresent speed." Part of the 1909 manifesto drawn up by Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti that declared the aims of the groundbreaking Futurist branch of modernism. Their rejection of the past included embracing the march of machinery, the power of youth and of violence so how do we view this now? Matthew Sweet is joined by Steven Connor, Selena Daly, Rosalind McKever, and Nathan Waddell.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Image: Futurist food

Originally broadcast as part of the Modernism season on BBC Radio 3 and 4 and BBC Sounds. There is a collection on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07p3nxh

And across the Proms season, various interval features are focusing on cultural openings and events from 1922. You can find those available to download as Arts and Ideas podcasts.

Modernism around the world Jul 21, 2022

Show notes

Murals which aimed to synthesise the history and culture of Mexico, Japanese novels exploring urban alienation, an exhibition of Bauhaus paintings from Germany which inspired a generation of Indian artists.

Presenter Rana Mitter is joined by Jade Munslow Ong, Christopher Harding, Maria Blanco, and Devika Singh.

Amongst the Modernist writers and artists mentioned are: Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro Mexican artist Diego Rivera, and poet Manuel Maples Arce Brazilian artist Tarsila do Amaral Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier, and painter Wifredo Lam Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges Indian writer and artist Rabindranath Tagore, and artist Amrita Sher-Gil South African writers Olive Schreiner, Roy Campbell, Solomon Plaatje, Rolfes Dhlomo Japanese theorist Okakura Kakuzō, and writers Edogawa Ranpo, and Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Image: the Indian polymath and modernist Rabindranath Tagore Image credit: Keystone France/Getty Images

Originally broadcast as part of the Modernism season on BBC Radio 3 and 4 and BBC Sounds. There is a collection on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07p3nxh

And across the Proms season, various interval features are focusing on cultural openings and events from 1922. You can find those available to download as Arts and Ideas podcasts.

The Daleks Jul 14, 2022

Show notes

The Daleks are back! As restorations of the two 1960s Dr Who films are rereleased in British cinemas, Matthew Sweet lifts the lid on the most memorable monsters of post-war British science fiction. Expert guests will have 2000 rels - that’s 45 earth minutes - to explore Dalek culture, politics and philosophy, and to explore how Terry Nation’s creations carry the weight of the second world war, the cold war and contemporary arguments about race and difference. Matthew is joined by Roberta Tovey, who played the Doctor's granddaughter Susan in the 1960s film adaptation of the Dalek stories; Nicholas Briggs, who uses a voice modulator to give us the voice of the Daleks; political journalist Stephen Bush; and by Jonn Elledge, whose blog A Misadventure In Space And Time charts his project of watching every available episode of Doctor Who in order, from 1963 to today. Plus, the writer, actor, director and producer Mark Gatiss.

Doctor Who And The Daleks and Daleks: Invasion Earth are being given a 4K restoration and screenings in UK cinemas across the summer.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

You can find more discussions about key tv programmes, films, books and art in our playlist on the Free Thinking programme website called Landmarks which runs from 2001 Space Odyssey and Jaws to writing by Hannah Arendt, Simone De Beauvoir and John Wyndham

Satyajit Ray's films Jul 14, 2022

Show notes

Tariq Ali picks Pather Panchali and New Generation Thinker Sarah Jilani describes Jalsaghar or The Music Room. Rana Mitter presents this programme which looks at what marked out the directing of Satyajit Ray. The BFI has a season of his films screening across July and August and is re-releasing The Big City. Rana's other guests are the programme of the BFI season and herself a film-maker, Sangeeta Datta, and Professor Chandak Sengoopta from Birkbeck, University of London.

Sarah Jilani researches postcolonial film and literature at the University of Cambridge. She is a 2021 New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who use their research to make radio programmes.

Professor Chandook Sengoopta is writing on the historical, cultural and ideological contexts that shaped the work and impact of the film-maker, writer, designer and composer Satyajit Ray.

Sangeeta Datta is director of Baithak UK http://www.baithak.info/director-sangeeta-datta. You can find details of the season she has put together at BFI.org.uk

Tariq Ali has written more than 2 dozen books on world history, culture and politics https://www.versobooks.com/authors/63-tariq-ali

You can find a collection of Radio 3 programmes exploring film on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/FJbG166KXBn9xzLKPfrwpc/all-about-film-on-radio-3

Producer: Jayne Egerton

France, music hall and history Jul 13, 2022

Show notes

How does France look when viewed from different places and at different times? Graham Robb knows France well from his academic career and decades of travels and offers an alternative route through French history in his new book. Hannah Scott has looked at the role of low-brow music in forming an idea of ‘Britishness’ for the French at the height of cross-channel rivalry in the last century. Tash Aw has translated the latest work of biographical writing by Édouard Louis. Professor Ginette Vincendeau is currently co-editing a book on Paris in the cinema. They join Anne McElvoy to explore ideas of France and the French through it's history and culture.

Graham Robb has published widely on French literature and history and was a fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. His latest book is France: An Adventure History

Hannah Scott is an academic track fellow at the University of Newcastle. She is the author of Singing the English: Britain in the French Musical Lowbrow 1870-1904

Ginette Vincendeau is a Professor in Film Studies at King's College, University of London. She is is currently co-editing a book on Paris in the cinema. She has recently published on ethnicity in contemporary French cinema and is researching popular French directors of the 1950s and 1960s.

A Woman's Battles and Transformations by Édouard Louis (author)and translated by Tash Aw is out now.

Édouard Louis's earlier book Who Killed My Father has been adapted into a stage drama by Ivo Van Hove. You can see that at the Young Vic in London between 7th September and the 24th September and you can hear Édouard talking to Philip Dodd about street protest, gilets jaunes and his own upbringing in this episode of Free Thinking https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0704m92

Producer: Ruth Watts

Women warriors and power brokers Jul 13, 2022

Show notes

Aethelflaed and Bertha are two of the figures discussed in the new history of women in the Middle Ages written by Janina Ramirez. Choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh has taken the heroine who fights Tancredi the crusading knight and reframed the story set to the music composed by Monteverdi's Il Combattimento. Cat Jarman is a bioarchaeologist who has tracked the way a Viking ‘Carnelian’ bead travelled to England from 8th-century Baghdad, with all that it tells us about women and power.

They join Shahidha Bari to discuss ideas about women as warriors and power brokers.

Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It by Janina Ramirez is published July 21st 2022

Shobana Jeyasingh's new dance work Clorinda Agonistes premieres on July 13th and 14th at Grange Festival, Hampshire and then can be seen at Sadlers Wells Sept 9th and 10th, Snape Maltings October 8th, the Lowry Oct 18th and 19th, Oxford Playhouse 15th and 16th November.

River Kings: A New History of the Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads by Cat Jarman is out now.

Producer in Salford: Cecile Wright

You might be interested in another discussion about women fighting hearing from Maaza Mengiste, Christina Lamb, Julie Wheelwright https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000g4bz available on the Free Thinking programme website and to download as an Arts & Ideas podcast our our discussion about Vikings https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0015582

and we have a whole collection called Women in the World https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p084ttwp

The Black Fantastic Jul 07, 2022

Show notes

From Beyonce to Octavia Butler, from Chris Ofili to Jordan Peele, the speculative and the mythical have been used as powerful tools to shape Black art, film, music and writing. Ekow Eshun, who has curated a new exhibition on this theme at the Hayward Gallery, joins Shahidha Bari along with DJ/turntablist NikNak and New Generation Thinker Louisa Egbunike to discuss how this idea of the Black Fantastic relates to and in some ways challenges Afrofuturism.

In the Black Fantastic runs at the Hayward Gallery, London until 18th September 2022. The exhibition is accompanied by a book and by a season of films at the BFI, including Djibril Diop Mambéty's 1973 film Touki Bouki which you can hear being discussed by Matthew Sweet and guests in another edition of Free Thinking available on BBC Sounds.

NikNak is touring the UK with Sankofa, her latest multi-media project and album, from 12th-18th July. Details can be found on the Sound UK website.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Writing about money Jul 06, 2022

Show notes

How does money shape history and how do we write about it? Anne McElvoy discusses those questions with a finalist in the political writing category of the 2022 Orwell Prize. In Uncommon Wealth: Britain and the Aftermath of Empire, Kojo Koram traces the some of the economic problems faced across the world today with wealth inequality, with sovereign debt, austerity, and precarious employment and how they are bound up in decolonisation. She also talks to leading UK economist Richard Davies about how Covid has had an impact on our understanding of economics. And John Ramsden is concerned with restoring the forgotten place of economics in poetry from Coleridge's interest in cycles of boom and bust to Jonathan Swift's fascination with trade sanctions. Dhruti Shah is a journalist and the author of Bear Markets and Beyond: A bestiary of business terms.

Kojo Koram teaches at the School of Law at Birkbeck College, University of London, and writes on issues of law, race and empire. He is the editor of The War on Drugs and the Global Colour Line and author of Uncommon Wealth: Britain and the Aftermath of Empire.

Richard Davies is the author of Extreme Economies: Survival, Failure, Future Limits for the World’s Economies. A former adviser at the Bank of England and HM Treasury, he now runs the UK’s Economics Observatory.

John Ramsden is a former career diplomat and ambassador. He is the author of The Poets’ Guide to Economics

Dhruti Shah is a journalist and the author of Bear Markets and Beyond: A bestiary of business terms.

The Orwell Festival of Political Writing, held across Bloomsbury and online from 22nd June to 14th July, when the winners are announced: https://www.orwellfestival.co.uk/

Producer: Ruth Watts

Vampires and the Penny Dreadful Jun 30, 2022

Show notes

Varney the Vampire was a blood soaked gothic horror story serialised in cheap print over the course of a couple of years in the nineteenth century. The resulting "penny dreadful" tale spilled out of a large volume when it was finally published in book form. In spite of his comfort with crosses, daylight and garlic, Varney's capacity to reflect on his actions made him an early model for Dracula. Matthew Sweet explores why a work, so often overlooked, was so important to the development of the vampire genre.

Roger Luckhurst is Professor in Modern and Contemporary Literature at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the author of Gothic: an illustrated history and editor of The Cambridge companion to Dracula.

Joan Passey is a lecturer at the University of Bristol. She is the author of Cornish Gothic and editor of Cornish Horrors. And, she is a 2022 New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to turn research into radio.

Sam George is an Associate Professor at the University of Hertfordshire and is the convener of the Open Graves, Open Minds Gothic research project. Her books include: In the Company of Wolves: Werewolves, Wolves, and Wild Children and Open Graves, Open Minds, Representations of the Vampire from the Enlightenment to the Present Day.

Producer: Ruth Watts

David Chalmers & Iain McGilchrist Jun 29, 2022

Show notes

David Chalmers is credited with setting the terms for much of the work done in the philosophy of mind today when he posed the 'hard problem' of consciousness: how does matter, which is fundamentally inanimate, give rise to or interact with consciousness, which is qualitative and phenomenal - always a 'what it's like'? His most recent book, Reality +, is an investigation of the possibility that our entire experience could be an illusion.

Iain McGilchrist is a literary scholar turned psychiatrist whose 2009 book The Master And His Emissary developed the 'two hemisphere' model of the brain and cognition according to which the left hemisphere is rational, precise, but limited, and the right hemisphere is intuitive, creative, and expansive. Starting with this model, McGilchrist went on to analyse nothing less than the rise and fall of civilizations in terms of the interplay between these two aspects of human nature. His new book The Matter With Things goes even further, developing the hemisphere model into a means for explaining our basic relationship with reality - and suggesting ways it could be improved.

David Chalmers and Iain McGilchrist expound, explain and defend their work to Christopher Harding.

Produced by Luke Mulhall

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