Free Thinking

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How archictecture shapes society Feb 27, 2020

Show notes

Ricky Burdett, Liza Fior, Des Fitzgerald, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg & Edwin Heathcote discuss ideals made concrete in an event chaired by Anne McElvoy with an audience recorded as part of the LSE Shape the World Festival 2020.

Ricky Burdett is Professor of Urban Studies at LSE and Director of LSE Cities. Liza Fior is an award-winning architect and designer; founding partner of muf architecture/art. Des Fitzgerald is a sociologist at Cardiff University and AHRC\BBC New Generation Thinker who works on cities and mental health. Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg is an artist exploring the human values that shape design, science, technology, and nature. Through artworks, writing, and curatorial projects, Daisy examines the human impulse to "better" the world. Edwin Heathcote is architecture and design critic for the Financial Times.

You can find and download previous LSE Free Thinking debates on the programme website How Big Should the State Be ? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09sqw6p Authority in the Era of Populism - What makes a good leader? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002rwv Breaking Free: Martin Luther's Revolution https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08nf02y Utopianism in Politics From Thomas More to the present day https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07054cy

A Free Thinking discussion recorded at RIBA with an architectural gang of 5 "The Brits Who Built Modern Britain" https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03x1p4n Cities and Safety https://www.bbc.com/programmes/b06rwvrc Cities and Resilience https://www.bbc.com/programmes/b04yb7kd

Producer: Eliane Glaser

New Thinking: Everything to Everybody - Shakespeare for the people Feb 27, 2020

Show notes

Islam Issa hears from actor Adrian Lester and Professor Ewan Fernie about a project that will revive the Birmingham Shakespeare Memorial Library. Founded with the help of George Dawson - a man who had a powerful vision of Birmingham as a progressive social and cultural centre in the mid 19th century - the library houses Britain's most important Shakespeare collection, comprising 43,000 volumes, including a copy of the First Folio 1623. Over three years, the Everything to Everybody project aims to share these cultural riches with the people of Birmingham in a wide range of imaginative ways.

More information available here: https://everythingtoeverybody.bham.ac.uk/

This episode is one of a series of conversations - New Thinking - produced in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UK Research & Innovation. Further podcasts are available on the BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking website under the playlist New Research https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Japan Now 2020 Feb 27, 2020

Show notes

Hiromi Ito, Tomoko Sawada, and Yukiko Motoya, look at women's roles in Japanese culture today plus the Japanese view of English-language literature with translator Motoyuki Shibata. Philip Dodd presents. Bethan Jones acted as the translator.

Japan Now 2020 is a series of events taking place in Sheffield, Norwich and London organised by Modern Culture culminating in a day of events at the British Library on Saturday February 22nd.

Hiromi Itō is one of the most prominent women writers in Japan who looks at sexuality motherhood and the body in her work which is translated by Jeffrey Angles. Yukiko Motoya’s first book in English, Picnic In The Storm, is a collection of short stories which include salary men being swept skywards by their umbrellas, to a married couple morphing into one another’s bodies. It was the winner of the Akutagawa Prize and the Kenzaburo Oe Prize. It is translated by Asa Yoneda Tomoko Sawada is a photographer and performance artist whose work explores gender roles and cultural stereotypes from a strongly feminist perspective. Translator Motoyuki Shibata, has introduced writers like Paul Auster, Richard Powers, Edward Gorey and Steven Millhauser to Japanese readers.

You can find more programmes in the playlist Free Thinking explores Japanese culture https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0657spq

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Genes, racism, ageing and evidence Feb 25, 2020

Show notes

Neuroscientist and former record producer Daniel Levitin & geneticist Adam Rutherford join Rana Mitter to discuss the latest scientific discoveries about memory and the human genome. How difficult is it to confront pseudoscience? Jillian Luke reveals how blushing in Renaissance art has been weaponised by white nationalists, while Suda Perera explains why medical aid workers in the Democratic Republic of Congo are treated with distrust.

Daniel Levitin has published The Changing Mind: A Neuroscientist's Guide to Ageing Well. You can download his BBC Proms Lecture about music and science as a podcast https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02xfqpc Adam Rutherford's latest book is called How To Argue With a Racist. You can hear him on BBC Sounds presenting Inside Science and The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

African Empire Stories Feb 20, 2020

Show notes

Petina Gappah on writing David Livingstone's African companions back into history. Sarah LeFanu looks at the Boer War experiences of Rudyard Kipling, Mary Kingsley & Arthur Conan Doyle and their views of Empire. Matthew Sweet presents.

Petina Gappah's novel is called Out of Darkness Shining Light - Being a Faithful Account of the Final Years and Earthly Days of Doctor David Livingstone and His Last Journey from the Interior to the Coast of Africa, as Narrated by His African Companions, in Three Volumes.

Sarah LeFanu's book is called Something of Themselves: Kipling, Kingsley, Conan Doyle and the Anglo-Boer War.

Laleh Khalilis' book, Sinews of War and Trade - Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula is published in May.

Recent programmes on The Thirty-Nine Steps is https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02twj9g And on The East India Company is https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000c0f7

Producer: Alex Mansfield.

The Surreal World of Alejandro Jodorowsky Feb 19, 2020

Show notes

Matthew Sweet talks to the Chilean French director and gets a take on his occult, drug filled and violently psychedelic world from critics Larushka Ivan Zadeh and Adam Scovell. Jodorowksy's 1973 surrealist fantasy film The Holy Mountain certificate 18 (the rating specifies that it contains strong bloody violence) has been re-released in cinemas in a 4K restoration and is being screened around the UK including events coming up at Tyneside Cinema, the ICA in London. The Alejandro Jodorowsky Collection is released on blu-ray 30th March 2020.

Adam Scovell is the author of books including How Pale the Winter Has Made Us, Mothlight and Folk Horror. He writes for Sight and Sound. Larushak Ivan-Zadeh is Chief Film Critic for the Metro newspaper.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Queer histories Feb 13, 2020

Show notes

Morgan M Page, Jana Funke & Senthorum Raj look at how we apply modern LGBT+ language and identities to historical figures both real and fictional and what it means to have to "prove" your identity today in today's legal world. Shahidha Bari presents.

Morgan M Page is a writer, performance + video artist, and trans historian whose podcast is called One From The Vaults Jana Funke teaches Medical Humanities at the University of Exeter Senthorum Raj teaches at Keele University School of Law.

In the Free Thinking archives you can find programmes Writing Love: Jonathan Dollimore, Sappho https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08wn522 Queer Icons: Plato's Symposium https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08xcx1f Censorship and Sex Naomi Wolf on John Addington Symonds and Sarah Parker on Michael Field https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00057k4 HD and Bryher are discussed, alongside Jane Harrison and Hope Mirrlees in this episode Pioneering Women: academics and classics https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000dj0g Tom Smith explores the East German Military's fascination with its soldiers' sexuality https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00061m5 Weimar and the Subversion of Cabaret Culture https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b7r7

Production team Caitlin Benedict & Alex Mansfield

The History of Sex Feb 13, 2020

Show notes

Kate Lister started tweeting as Whores of Yore in 2015 to kick off a conversation about how we talk about sex. She has just published A Curious History of Sex which looks at everything from slang through the ages to medieval impotence tests, the relevance of oysters, bicycling and the tart card. Robin Mitchell's new book is called Venus Noire: Black Women and Colonial Fantasies in Nineteenth-Century France. In it she traces visual and literary representations of 3 black women: Sarah Baartmann, popularly known as the Hottentot Venus; Ourika, a young Senegalese girl and Jeanne Duval, long-time lover of the poet Charles Baudelaire. Fern Riddell's books include The Victorian Guide to Sex and Sex: A Brief History. She hosts the podcast series #NotWhatYouThought and is a historian on the New Generation Thinker scheme which aims to put academic research on the radio. It's a partnership between BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. You can find her talking about depictions of Eroticism in a Free Thinking conversation about The Piano and Love https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b6t06b and exploring the life of the singer and suffragette Kitty Marion in a Sunday Feature https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04n2zcp

An exhibition called With Love opens at the National Archives in Kew displaying letters spanning 500 years, which explore intimate expressions of love. You can hear archivist Vicky Iglikowski-Broad talking on a Free Thinking programme called Being Human: Love Stories https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b6hk Anne McElvoy explores who and why we love with philosopher Laura Mucha, poet and novelist Lavinia Greenlaw, novelist Elanor Dymott and poet Andrew McMillan. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002hk8

Producer: Luke Mulhall

The shadow of slavery Feb 12, 2020

Show notes

From sugar and spice, to reparations and memorials: slavery and how we acknowledge it is debated by Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough and her panel of writers and academics: Dr Katie Donington, Dr Christienna Fryar, author Rosanna Amaka, and playwright and journalist Juliet Gilkes Romero.

Dr Katie Donington teaches history at London South Bank University. Her research focuses on the cultural, commercial, political, and familial worlds of slave owners in Jamaica and Britain. She was an historical advisor for the BAFTA award-winning BBC2 documentary, Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners (2015), and was co-curator of Slavery, Culture and Collecting at the Museum of London Docklands.

Dr Christienna Fryar is leading a new MA in Black British History at Goldsmiths, University of London, following her role as Lecturer in the History of Slavery and Unfree Labour at the University of Liverpool.

Rosanna Amaka's novel is called The Book of Echoes, and is published by Doubleday.

The Whip by Juliet Gilkes Romero runs at the RSC Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon until 21 March 2020.

You can find the Legacies of British Slave Ownership database here https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/

In the Free Thinking archives you can hear: Author Esi Edugyen in Slavery Stories https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001bch Artist and film director Steve McQueen and a debate about Slavery narratives https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03pdf14

Steve McQueen runs at Tate Modern until 11 May 2020. The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates is out now

Producer: Emma Wallace

Early cinema: why are we obsessed with firsts? Feb 07, 2020

Show notes

Alice Guy-Blaché the pioneering film director, a British film pioneer Robert Paul and how the Boer War led to animated film are the topics for discussion as Matthew Sweet talks to Donna Kornhaber, Ian Christie and Pamela B. Green. Ahead of this weekend's Oscars ceremony they reflect on early film innovations.

Alice Guy or Alice Guy-Blaché (July 1, 1873 – March 24, 1968) is considered a pioneer of narrative film. A new documentary Be Natural the untold story of Alice Guy-Blaché is on general release in the UK from January 2020.

Robert Paul (3 October 1869 – 28 March 1943) was also an early pioneer of British film. He also worked as an electrician and scientific instrument maker. Ian Christie has written a biography called Robert Paul and the Origins of British Cinema. An exhibition about Paul runs at Bradford's National Science and Media Museum until March 2020.

Donna Kornhaber has published Nightmares in the Dream Sanctuary: War and the Animated Film.

Producer: Caitlin Benedict

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