Free Thinking

Latest Episodes:

Deep Time and the Earth Apr 09, 2020

Show notes

Lewis Dartnell, Gaia Vince and David Farrier join Rana Mitter to look at deep ecology.

Gaia Vince is the author of Transendence: How Humans Evolved Through Fire, Language, Beauty And Time Lewis Dartnell's book is called Origins: How the earth shaped history David Farrier has written a book called In Search of Future Fossils.

You can find a Free Thinking programme exploring rivers and geopolitics https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00051hb Matthew Sweet talks to animal expert Jane Goodall https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00066qd The influential writing of Arne Naess is discussed at in the middle of this programme after a conversation about the Thames estuary https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07tzydt

Producers: Luke Mulhall and Alex Mansfield

Belonging Apr 08, 2020

Show notes

Philip Dodd talks to actor Christopher Eccleston and historian Ruth Dudley Edwards and asks them for their views on the way identity and a sense of belonging are shifting.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

You can hear Christopher Eccleston in BBC Radio 3's Drama Schreber, see him in the RSC Macbeth production as part of the BBC Culture in Quarantine season and in the latest series of the TV drama the A Word. Ruth Dudley Edwards' books include The Seven — The Lives and Legacies of the Founding Fathers of the Irish Republic and her latest crime fiction title Killing The Emperors

New Thinking: Religion and ordinary lives Apr 07, 2020

Show notes

From the experiences of Quaker wives in the seventeenth century to the samplers and bibles in the homes of workers in the Industrial Revolution - Dr Naomi Pullin from the University of Warwick, and Professor Hannah Barker of the University of Manchester join historian and New Generation Thinker Tom Charlton to compare notes on the way their research marks a shift in the way religious beliefs of past times are being studied.

Naomi Pullin is the author of Female Friends and the Making of Transatlantic Quakerism, 1650-1750 Hannah Barker is Director of the John Rylands Research Institute and Historical Advisor for the National Trust at Quarry Bank Mill and has written on family, gender and business in the Industrial Revolution.

This episode is one of a series of conversations, produced in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation. You can find more on the website of the AHRC, and on the website for the Free Thinking discussion programme where there’s a playlist called New Research.

You might be interested in this Free Thinking discussion about religious divisions, puppet shows and politics in the middle of this programme https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0000xvn There is a playlist Free Thinking explores religious belief on the programme website featuring Richard Dawkins, Simon Schama, Karen Armstrong, Shelina Janmohamed and others https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03mwxlp

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Revisit: What does game playing teach us Apr 04, 2020

Show notes

University Challenge star Bobby Seagull, writer and critic Jordan Erica Webber, games consultant and researcher Dr Laura Mitchell, and British Museum curator Irving Finkel join Shahidha Bari in the Free Thinking studio to get out the playing cards and the board games and consider the value of play, competitiveness and game theory.

Bobby Seagull has published The Life-Changing Magic of Numbers. Irving Finkel has written Ancient Board Games, the Lewis Chessmen, Cuneiform, The Writing in Stone. He is on the Editorial Board of Board Games Studies and discovered the rules for the royal game of Ur.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

You might be interested in other discussions about The Way We Live Now in this playlist on the Free Thinking programme website which includes discussions about boredom, drugs and consiousness, what is speech and What Nietzche teaches us https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p072637b

Knees Apr 02, 2020

Show notes

From dance to prayer, servants to scientists, knees ups to being on our knees - Matthew Sweet talks to art critic Louisa Buck, historian and New Generation Thinker Joe Moshenska, author Tracy Chevalier and dancer and choreographer Russell Maliphant.

Tracy Chevalier's novels include A Single Thread - a novel depicting the work of "broderers" creating cushions and kneelers for Winchester Cathedral in the 1930s.

Russell Maliphant formed Russell Maliphant Company in 1996 and has worked with companies and artists including Sylvie Guillem, Robert Lepage, Isaac Julian, Balletboyz and Lyon Opera Ballet. He created Broken Fall for Sylvie Guillem and Balletboyz which premiered at the Royal Opera House and received an Olivier award for best new dance production.

Producer: Paula McGinley

If you are interested in craft you might like our discussion on the joy of sewing with Clare Hunter and Jade Halbert https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002mk2 or The Woolly episode https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0009bw4 with Esther Rutter & Alex Harris

or Darian Leader and Seb Falk join Lisa Le Feuvre and Thrishantha Nanayakkara to look at Hands with Matthew Sweet https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03z2nbj

New Thinking: Wordsworth Mar 31, 2020

Show notes

April 7th 1770 was the day William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, Cumbria. As we prepare to mark this anniversary, poet and New Generation Thinker Sarah Jackson is joined by Sally Bushell, Professor of Romantic and Victorian Literature, and Simon Bainbridge, Professor of Romantic Studies – Co-Directors of The Wordsworth Centre for the Study of Poetry at the University of Lancaster to discuss new insights into Wordsworth's writing.

Sally Bushell has edited The Cambridge Companion to ‘Lyrical Ballads’ . You can find more about her research project here https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/chronotopic-cartographies/ Simon Bainbridge is the author of Mountaineering and British Romanticism

The conversation was recorded with an audience at the Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama at the University of Manchester. It's part of a series of discussions focusing on new academic research in UK universities produced in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation. You can find more episodes in the collection on the Free Thinking programme website called New Research and uploaded into the BBC Arts & Ideas podcast feed as episodes called New Thinking.

Producer: Karl Bos

You may also like to check out BBC Radio 3's Sunday Feature exploring Wordsworth https://www.bbc.com/programmes/m000h020

The Declaration Of Arbroath Mar 25, 2020

Show notes

Anne McElvoy and guests discuss the 700th anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath and Scottish politics today. She is joined by Kylie Murray, New Generation Thinker and Fellow in Early Scottish Literature at Cambridge University; Robert Crawford, poet and Professor of Modern Scottish Literature at the University of St Andrews; John Lloyd, journalist and author of new book, Should Auld Aquaintance Be Forgot -The Great Mistake of Scottish Independence; and by Richard Finlay, Professor of Scottish History at the University of Strathclyde.

Producer: Emma Wallace

How do we build a new masculinity ? Mar 24, 2020

Show notes

Artist and photographer Sunil Gupta, authors CN Lester (Trans Like Me) and Tom Shakespeare (The Sexual Politics of Disability), and Barbican curator Alona Pardo join Matthew Sweet in a discussion prompted by the Barbican exhibition called Masculinities: Liberation Through Photography to debate whether the old construct of masculinity in our culture is broken? As new ideas and thinking enter the debate, what is essential and what we can do away with as we look to build a new masculinity?

You can find other Free Thinking discussions looking at identity The Changing Image of Masculinity discussed by JJ Bola, Derek Owusu & Ben Lerner https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b0mx Beards, Listening, Masculinity https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0833ypd Jordan B Peterson https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b3fk63 Can there be multiple versions of me https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09wvlxs TV presenter and campaigner June Sarpong, performer Emma Frankland, GP and author Gavin Francis and philosopher Julian Baggini discuss the changing self with Anne McElvoy Weimar and the subversion of cabaret culture https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b7r7

What's so great about EM Forster Mar 23, 2020

Show notes

Deborah Levy and Laurence Scott talk to Shahidha Bari about the writer's work from his earliest novel Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) to his Essay Aspects of the Novel (1927). Recorded in partnership with the Royal Society of Literature at the British Library.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Laurence Scott is the author of The Four-Dimensional Human and Picnic, Comma, Lightning. He presented a Radio 3 Sunday Feature about Merchant Ivory which includes interviews about their film adpatations of EM Forster's work https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04003kn Deborah Levy is the author of novels including Hot Milk, Swimming Home and The Man Who Saw Everything

Find more programmes about literature in this Free Thinking Prose and Poetry playlist on our website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p047v6vh You'll find Deborah Levy on Writing and Frankness, Wilfred Owen Poetry and Peace, winners of the RSL Ondaatje Prize debating place all recorded with the Royal Society of Literature at the British Library. Our Landmarks collection includes programmes about George Eliot, James Joyce, George Orwell and many other writers https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01jwn44

Future Thinking Mar 20, 2020

Show notes

Mark Honigsbaum historian of epidemics, literary scholars Lisa Mullen & Sarah Dillon, UNESCO's Riel Miller & philosopher Rupert Read talk with Matthew Sweet. If uncertainty is a feature of our situation at the moment, it's the stock in trade of people who try to think about the future.

Riel Miller is an economist at UNESCO, who works on future literacy. Rupert Read is an environmental campaigner with Extinction Rebellion and is speaking here in a personal capacity. Sarah Dillon is New Generation Thinker and editor of a new book AI Narratives: A History of Imaginative Thinking about Intelligent Machines Lisa Mullen is a New Generation Thinker and author of Mid Century Gothic Mark Honigsbaum is the author of The Pandemic Century: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria and Hubris.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

In the Free Thinking archives: New Generation Thinker Sarah Dillon’s Essay on is science fiction is sexist https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03g2wkp A discussion about Zamyatin’s novel We https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03f8bqz A discussion with Naomi Alderman, Roger Luckhurst and Alessandro Vincentelli on science fiction & space travel https://www.bbc.com/programmes/b04ps158 Matthew Sweet explores psychohistory and Isaac Asimov and guiding the future https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000d84g Naomi Alderman is in conversation with Margaret Atwood https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07xhzy8 Ursula Le Guin's The Word for World is Forest https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b6yb37 and a New Thinking podcast made with the AHRC in which Hetta Howes talks sci fi with Caroline Edwards and Amy Butt https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p086zq4g

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