Free Thinking

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Rivers, different cultures, different values May 15, 2019

Show notes

Should we widen the net of who has a say over river management and would this be better for our rivers and ultimately ourselves. What are rivers themselves trying to tell us. Shahidha Bari meets four people with artistic, scholarly and personal relationships with fresh running water. Veronica Strang has studied the way peoples and rivers interact around the world and contributed the UN's work on bringing culture into water management; poet John Clarke is working on a poetic soundscape of one polluted Cornish river with his musical collaborator, Rob Mackay ; archaeologist Susan Greaney is an expert on the Neolithic and how people in prehistory would have understood rivers in a holistic way while environmentalist, angler and author, Charles Rangeley-Wilson takes a holistic approach to the health of rivers today from source to sea.

Veronica Strang, Executive Director of the Institute for Advanced Study at University of Durham and her books include Water: Nature and Culture and The Meaning of Water; in 2007 she was awarded an International Water Prize as one of UNESCO's, Les Lumières de L'Eau [Water's Leading Lights] and was subsequently involved in editing a major UNESCO/MAB publication on Water and Cultural Diversity. Dr John Clarke teaches at the University of Exeter. Red River: Listening to a Polluted River explores global river pollution and the emotional impact of environmental damage through a small polluted river in West Cornwall. Susan Greaney is an archaeologist with a specialism in British prehistory and is a PhD researcher at Cardiff University and AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker Charles Rangeley-Wilson is a passionate fly-fisherman and author of Silver Shoals: The Five Fish that made Britain and Silt Road – the Story of a Lost River

Free Thinking:Homi Bhabha: On Memory and Migration May 15, 2019

Show notes

With an audience at the British Library, Professor Bhabha gives a short talk and discusses ideas about nations and a postcolonial approach to politics, literature and history. Shahidha Bari hosts in a Free Thinking event organised with the Royal Society of Literature.

‘Nations, like narratives, lose their origins in the myths of time and only fully realise their horizons in the mind’s eye. Such an image of the nation – or narration – might seem impossibly romantic and excessively metaphorical, but it is from those traditions of political thought and literary language that the nation emerges as a powerful historical idea in the west.’ So begins Nation and Narration, first published in 1990. For Professor Bhabha, one of the world’s leading cultural theorists, known for his work on hybridity, mimicry, difference, ambivalence and the ‘Third Space’, ‘literature is the repository of culture, tradition, the life in language itself.’

Homi K Bhabha is the Director of the Mahindra Humanities Center, and Senior Advisor to the President and Provost at Harvard University. His works exploring postcolonial theory, contemporary art, and cosmopolitanism, include Nation and Narration and The Location of Culture, which was reprinted as a Routledge Classic in 2004.

Producer: Zahid Warley

Rivers and geopolitics May 14, 2019

Show notes

The worlds large water infrastructure projects often result in geo-political flashpoints - Rana Mitter hears from Majed Akhter about problems from the US to Pakistan while Dustin Garrick outlines a water crisis that is also a crisis in governance and why new management of the Murray-Darling basin in Australia may provide hints about a way forward. And aside from Romulus and Remus, what prompted the founding of Ancient Rome. Archaeologist Andrea Brock outlines her new research that shows the emergence of a new island at a special spot on the Tiber in the 7th century BC led to massive infrastructure projects and urban growth.

Dr Dustin Garrick is the co-director of the Smith School Water Programme at the University of Oxford and American Association of Science Leshner leadership fellow.

Dr Majed Akhter is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker who lectures at King's College, London. Before becoming a geographer, he was a resource economist and an industrial engineer.

Dr Andrea Brock is a lecturer in ancient history at the University of St Andrews.

Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Sergio Leone, Kubrick, Magic & the Mind. May 10, 2019

Show notes

Matthew Sweet talks Spaghetti Westerns and Sergio Leone with Christopher Frayling and Samira Ahmed. They also look at the film worlds of Stanley Kubrick as an exhibition runs at London's Design Museum. Plus magic, mind games and the role of the magician's assistant. New Generation Thinker Naomi Paxton and Gustav Kuhn from Goldsmiths, University of London bring their conjuring tricks into the studio.

You can hear Christopher Frayling with Brian Cox and the actors Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood discussing Kubrick's 2001 here https://bbc.in/2H8q76p

Stanley Kubrick: The Exhibition runs to 15th September 2019 at the Design Museum in London.

Smoke and Mirrors: The Psychology of Magic runs at the Wellcome Collection in London until 15th September 2019 including performances of magic by Dr Gustav Kuhn and a Friday Late on May 10th.

Experiencing the Impossible by Gustav Kuhn is published by MIT Press.

Chaucer. Bernardine Evaristo. May 08, 2019

Show notes

Anne McElvoy reads a new biography of Chaucer by Marion Turner called Chaucer: A European Life and talks to writer Bernardine Evaristo about her depiction of 12 characters aged 12 to 93 in her novel Girl, Woman, Other and to Candice Carty-Williams about her best-selling first novel and podcast Queenie. Plus Matt Wolf looks at representations of money, capitalism and the American dream on stage.

You can hear Queenie being read on BBC Radio 4 here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p075drzy

All My Sons by Arthur Miller with Sally Field and Bill Pullman in the cast runs at the Old Vic Theatre until June 8th.

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller with Wendell Pierce, Sharon D Clarke and Arinzé Kene runs at the Young Vic Theatre until 29th June

The Lehman Trilogy by Stefano Massini adapted by Ben Power runs at the Picadilly Theatre in London's West End in May for a 12 week run.

King Hedley II by August Wilson runs at the Theatre Royal Stratford East from 17th May to 15th June.

Producer: Fiona McLean

Wolfson History Prize Discussion. May 08, 2019

Show notes

Rana Mitter and an audience at the British Academy hear from the six historians on this year's shortlist. The books are:

Building Anglo-Saxon England by John Blair Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice by Mary Fulbrook Trading in War: London’s Maritime World in the Age of Cook and Nelson by Margarette Lincoln Birds in the Ancient World: Winged Words by Jeremy Mynott Oscar: A Life by Matthew Sturgis Empress: Queen Victoria and India by Miles Taylor

The winner of the Wolfson History Prize 2019 will be named at a ceremony at Claridge’s Hotel, London, on Tuesday 11 June You can find more discussions about history on the Free Thinking website and podcasts showcasing new academic and historical research here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90

Free Thinking: 1819-The American Model May 07, 2019

Show notes

Elaine Showalter, Michael Schmidt, Peter Riley and Katie McGettigan with Laurence Scott on the 19th century writers who shaped the idea of America.

1819 was the year that Herman Melville, Walt Whitman and Julia Ward Howe were born. Whitman's Leaves of Grass, , Melville's novels Moby Dick and The Confidence Man and Julia Ward Howe's passionate opposition to slavery and her advocacy of women's suffrage gave birth to the idea of America. But these authors also have a connection with England - a reading group in Bolton dedicated to Whitman, Melville's visit to Liverpool and Julia Ward Howe's encounters with Browning, the Wordsworths and Oscar Wilde.

Katie McGettigan is the author of Herman Melville: Modernity and the Material Text Peter Riley's most recent book is Whitman, Melville, Crane and the Labours of American Poetry Elaine Showalter is the author of the biography The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Howe Michael Schmidt is one of the founders of Carcanet Press

You can find more information about research and events @Born1819 Listen back to or download the Free Thinking/BBC Arts& Ideas discussion about Ruskin, Bazalgette and Arthur Hugh Clough https://bbc.in/2TLoOfA

Producer: Zahid Warley

Learning about love from Kierkegaard & Socrates. The Wellcome Book Prize May 02, 2019

Show notes

Kierkegaard humiliated the woman he was due to marry by publicly breaking the engagement - yet one of his most important books is a detailed analysis of the meaning of love. Socrates loved asking the question 'What is love?' but his conversations on the topic are often inconclusive. Matthew Sweet discusses new biographies of each thinker, with their authors Clare Carlisle and Armand D'Angour.

Plus Matthew talks to the winner of this year's Wellcome Book Prize for writing which illuminates the many ways that health, medicine and illness touch our lives.

Clare Carlisle is the author of Philosopher Of The Heart: The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard Armand D'Angour has written Socrates In Love Information about the books listed for this year's Wellcome Prize for science writing can be found here https://wellcomebookprize.org/

Landmark: Audre Lorde Apr 30, 2019

Show notes

Poet Jackie Kay & performer Selina Thompson plus Jonathan Rollins and Elizabeth Lorde-Rollins the children of Audre Lorde discuss the influence of the US writer & civil rights activist whose work considers feminism, lesbianism, civil rights and black female identity. Shahidha Bari presents.

In her famous essay The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House (1980), Lorde wrote:

"Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference – those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older – know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."

Lorde's writing includes poetry collections such as The First Cities (1968), Cables to Rage (1970) and The Black Unicorn (1978). Her Essays include Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984) and Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference. She also wrote Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982) her novel chronicling her own childhood and sexuality.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches and The Black Unicorn are being reprinted in the UK this July.

Presenter: Shahidha Bari

Producer: Debbie Kilbride

Introducing the 2019 New Generation Thinkers Apr 25, 2019

Show notes

From Berlin techno music to the Glasgow ‘rag trade’, divisive dams to fake news - hear the research topics of 10 early career academics introduced by New Generation Thinker Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough at the Free Thinking Festival

New Generation Thinkers is an annual scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 researchers to work on ideas for radio

Dr Jeff Howard - University College London - is investigating how to respond to ‘dangerous speech’, lies and ‘fake news’

Dr Emily Cock - Cardiff University - is exploring changing attitudes towards facial disfigurement, from C17 to now

Dr Ella Parry- Davies -British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama - is researching the home lives of migrant communities of Philippine women in London and Beirut

Dr Brendan McGeever - Lecturer in the Sociology of Racialization and Antisemitism, Birkbeck, University of London - researches the forgotten Russian pogroms of 1919

Dr Tom Smith - Lecturer in German, University of St Andrews - is exploring the emotional experience of techno music in Berlin and beyond

Dr Dina Rezk - Associate Professor in Middle Eastern History, University of Reading - has looked at how Dr Bassem Youssef, ‘Egypt’s Jon Stewart’ shot to fame

Christine Faraday - University of Cambridge - who is looking into the history of the power of human sight

Dr Jade Halbert - University of Huddersfield - rediscovers the post-war ‘rag trade’ in British fashion

Dr Majed Akhter - King's College London - is examining the contentious history of dams built in the 20th century

Susan Greaney - Cardiff University - is unearthing Neolithic humans attitudes to the ground beneath them and the underworld

Producer: Jacqueline Smith.

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