Free Thinking

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Why We Need New News Nov 22, 2019

Show notes

New research looking at at reporting secret assassinations, countering propaganda & how we could update TV news bulletins, from the Being Human Festival, an annual event which involves public events put on by universities across the UK, presented by Shahidha Bari.

Steve Poole teaches at the University of the West of England and is involved in a project - Romancing the Gibbet - that uses smartphone apps to evoke memories of C18th hangings hidden in the English landscape Dr Clare George is Miller Archivist at the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies at the University of London. She is involved in recreating the Austrian political cabaret theatre that operated in London during WWII to counter Nazi propaganda. Andrew Calcutt teaches at the University of East London and is part of a project which asks what new ways can we tell the news, putting forward experimental formats and asking for audience responses to them. Luca Trenta teaches at Swansea University and is working on a project looking at Kings, Presidents, and Spies: Assassinations from Medieval times to the Present - asking what we are told and what is kept hidden from news reports.

You can find out more at https://beinghumanfestival.org/

You can find more insights from cutting edge academic studies in our New Research Collection on the Free Thinking programme website and available to download as the BBC Arts & Ideas podcast from BBC Sounds https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

The Legacy of the Trojan War Nov 21, 2019

Show notes

Why do the legendary walls of a Bronze Age city in Asia still cast such a long shadow? Novelist and classics expert Natalie Haynes, Alev Scott author of Ottoman Odyssey, archaeologist Naoíse Mac Sweeney and medievalist Hetta Howes join Rana Mitter to share new perspectives on the conflict immortalised in Homer's Iliad as the British Museum opens an exhibition dedicated to Troy.

Troy: Myth and Reality runs at the British Museum in London from November 21st to 8th March 2020. Natalie Haynes is the author of novels which retell Greek myths including The Amber Fury, the Children of Jocasta and A Thousand Ships: This is the Woman's War. Hetta Howes teaches medieval literature at City University and is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and the AHRC to put research on radio. Alev Scott is the author of Ottoman Odyssey and Turkish Awakening. Naoíse Mac Sweeney is Associate Professor of Ancient History at the University of Leicester.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Being Human: Love Stories Nov 14, 2019

Show notes

Naomi Paxton assembles a squad of researchers to talk about dating, relationships, and what how we fall in love says about us from the National Archives to London's gay bars.

Dr Cordelia Beattie from the University of Edinburgh has unearthed two new manuscripts by the 17th-century woman Mrs Alice Thornton, which put her life, loves and relationship with God in a new light. Now they’re becoming a play in collaboration with writer and performer Debbie Cannon.

Dr João Florêncio is from the University of Exeter and his research on pornography, sex and dating in post-AIDS crisis gay culture is being transformed into a performance at The Glory in London.

Another queer performance space, London's Royal Vauxhall Tavern, is the venue for a drag show based on research into LGBTQ+ personal ads from a 1920s magazine done by Victoria Iglikowski-Broad as part of her work at the National Archives.

Professor Lucy Bland of Anglia Ruskin University has created Being Mixed Race: Stories of Britain’s Black GI Babies, an exhibition in partnership with the Black Cultural Archives, which features photography and oral histories from the children, now in their 70s.

Dr Erin Maglaque of the University of Sheffield explores the meanings of dreams in the Renaissance, and the strange erotic dreamscapes of a 1499 book written by a Dominican Friar.

A list of all the events at universities across the UK for the 2019 Being Human Festival can be found at their website: https://beinghumanfestival.org/

The festival runs from Nov 14th – 23rd but if you like hearing new ideas you can find our New Research playlist on the Free Thinking website, from death cafes to ghosts in Portsmouth to the London Transport lost luggage office: https://bbc.in/2n5dakT

Producer: Caitlin Benedict

The Changing Image of Masculinity. Nov 14, 2019

Show notes

"Man Up". "He's Safe" "No Homo" How do men talk and write about masculinity? Laurence Scott talks to authors Ben Lerner, Derek Owusu and JJ Bola about crying, competitiveness, anger - and the pressure to perform.

Ben Lerner is the author of Leaving the Atocha Station, 10:04 and his latest novel is called The Topeka School. He holds a prize commonly called the "genius grant" as a MacArthur Fellow. Derek Owusu's latest novel is called That Reminds Me. He has also presented the podcast Mostly Lit and edited Safe: On Black British Men Reclaiming Space a collection of Essays which includes an Essay by JJ Bola. JJ Bola has also written a novel No Place to Call Home, a poetry collection Refuge, and non-fiction book on masculinity, Mask Off: Masculinity Redefined.

You can find more Identity Discussions in a playlist on the Free Thinking website including Caryl Philips and Johny Pitts on Afropean identities https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0005sjw Emma Frankland, June Sarpong on a panel asking Can There Be Multiple Versions of Me? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p061zr74

Producer: Robyn Read

Weimar and the Subversion of Cabaret Culture Nov 12, 2019

Show notes

Matthew Sweet, performers Lucy McCormick and Gateau Chocolat, curator Florence Ostende, New Generation Thinker Lisa Mullen and Gaylene Gould with an audience at London's Barbican Centre

From 1919 when the Weimar constitution said all were equal and had the right to freedom of expression, through to the Mbari Writers and Artists club in Nigeria, to the UK today, clubs and cabarets have always been spaces of creativity. The panel consider a series of moments in history to ask when and how club culture started to influence our wider society.

Florence Ostende is the curator of Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art which runs at the Barbican Art Gallery until January 19th 2020 curated and organised by Barbican Centre, London, in collaboration with the Belvedere, Vienna.

Le Gateau Chocolat and Lucy McCormick both performed in Effigies of Wickedness – a show from ENO and the Gate Theatre which was based on songs banned by the Nazis.

Le Gateau Chocolat is a drag artist and contemporary opera performer who has performed internationally from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe to the Beyreuth Festival opera house.

Lucy McCormick's hit shows include Triple Threat and Post Popular. She’s been an Artist in Residence for the Royal Vauxhall Tavern’s DUCKIE nights, and a Research Fellow at Queen Mary University London.

Gaylene Gould is a cultural director and curator who has spearheaded a series of projects involving film, writing and art for Tate, the V&A and h club.

Dr Lisa Mullen teaches film and literature at the University of Cambridge and is the author of Mid Century Gothic. She is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to put research on the radio.

Producer: Caitlin Benedict.

The 2019 Free Thinking Imperial War Museum Remembrance Debate Nov 07, 2019

Show notes

Who decides what’s worth saving and what is culturally significant to protect in wartimes and war zones? The panel, hosted by Anne McElvoy, are:

Sir Peter Bazalgette - Chairman of ITV and former Chairman of Arts Council England Carrie Reichardt - International Artist and grassroots activist Zahed Tajeddin - Syrian-born Artist and Archaeologist Rebecca Newell - IWM’s Head of Art

Recorded with an audience at the Imperial War Museum, London on Weds November 6th. What Remains, an exhibition with over 50 photographs, oral histories, objects and artworks, created in partnership with Historic England, explores why cultural heritage is attacked during war and the ways we save, protect and restore what is targeted. It runs until 5 Jan 2020. As does Art in Exile which puts on display for the first time documents revealing IWM’s plan for evacuating our art collection during the Second World War.

The 2018 Imperial War Museum Free Thinking Lecture looked at how we remember war and asked Why are we silent when conflict is loud? Peter Hitchens; Rector Lucy Winkett; Neil Bartlett and Professor Steve Brown joined Anne McElvoy and an audience. https://bbc.in/2odyOUM and on our website you can find a collection of Free Thinking on War https://bbc.in/32EK0bI which includes discussions about Trees, Catch 22, a conversation between an ex marine and a Gulf war government advisor and analysis of writing by Wilfred Owen, Celine, David Jones, Robert Musil and John Buchan.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

Quatermass Nov 05, 2019

Show notes

Dr Who collaborators Mark Gatiss & Stephen Moffat, academics Una McCormack & Claire Langhamer and Matthew Kneale join Matthew Sweet to celebrate Nigel Kneale's groundbreaking 1953 BBC TV sci-fi serial The Quatermass Experiment, which spawned two late 1950s sequels and an ITV final run in autumn 1979.

Producer Torquil MacLeod.

Halloween. Ghost Stories Nov 01, 2019

Show notes

Shahidha Bari's guests include author Kirsty Logan and former League of Gentlemen writer and performer Jeremy Dyson, whose play Ghost Stories is back in the West End. Joining them is the film critic and author of a novella called Mothlight, Adam Scovell, poet Nisha Ramayya whose work States of the Body produced by Love speaks of goddesses who symbolise all the attributes of women and British Museum curator and expert on ancient Mesopotamian medicine and magic Irving Finkel.

Cars, Parking and Motorways Oct 30, 2019

Show notes

Where are we? How did we get here, and where are we going?

Our relationship with the self-propelled small metal boxes in which we spend so much of our time is not as simple as it feels.

Why did we learn to need them? How did they shape our cities, our typewriters and our bacon slicers? Should we now redesign our roads, streets and even our skies for AI driven cars? What do we learn by looking at suburban car parks? A discussion reflecting on speed, automobiles, AI and the 60th anniversary of the M1 motorway. Anne McElvoy presents.

Brendan Cormier is curator of the forthcoming exhibition Cars: Accelerating the Modern World, which opens in November. Nicole Badstuber of the University of Westminster studies our commuting habit and the trends in journeying that modern life inflicts on all of us. Jack Stilgoe is a senior lecturer at UCL who studies governance and oversight of emerging technologies, looking in particular at driverless futures. Gareth E Rees is author of Car Park Life, a journal of empty spaces and discarded moment, described as "A Retail Park Heart of Darkness".

M1 Symphony, a soundscape documentary telling the story of Britain’s first motorway, featuring a specially-commissioned composition from former BBC Proms Inspire composer Alex Woolf, performed by the BBC Philharmonic is available to hear if you search for BBC Radio 3's Sunday Feature.

On BBC.com/Ideas you can find a short film exploring the history of motorway service stations

Producer: Alex Mansfield.

Writing Real Life from Brexit to Grenfell Oct 30, 2019

Show notes

Ali Smith, Jay Bernard and James Graham join Matthew Sweet at the British Library in a discussion organised with the Royal Society of Literature.

Making art from real events is as old to writing as the pen – older. But what happens when the events you are writing about are recent, or happening as you write? What are the writer’s duties to fact? How can writing bear witness to contemporary moments of social upheaval or human disasters? In writing the ‘now’, where does non-fiction stop and fictive creation begin? In this discussion, three writers, across forms, consider how to write real events.

Ali Smith has published three novels in a four-novel seasonal cycle, Autumn, Winter and Spring, exploring time, society and art in the context of Brexit Britain. Jay Bernard’s collection, Surge, explores the significance of events ranging from the New Cross Fire in 1981 to the 2017 Grenfell disaster. James Graham’s play The Vote took place in the last 90 minutes before polls closed in the 2015 General Election, and was broadcast live on Channel 4 on election night. His 2019 drama for Channel 4, Brexit: The Uncivil War, explored the very recent history of the Brexit referendum.

Producer: Zahid Warley.

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