Free Thinking

Latest Episodes:

20 Words for Joy ... Feelings Around the World. Apr 24, 2019

Show notes

We talk about “human emotion” as if all people, everywhere, feel the same. But three thinkers with an international perspective discuss how the expression and interpretation of emotions differs around the world. China specialist and Radio 3 presenter Rana Mitter hosts this Free Thinking Festival discussion.

Aatish Taseer is a writer and journalist who was born in London, grew up in New Delhi and now lives in Manhattan. His first novel, The Temple-Goers was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award. His latest book is The Twice Born: Life and death on the Ganges. Among other publications he has written for Time Magazine, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times.

Thomas Dixon was the first director of Queen Mary University of London's Centre for the History of the Emotions, the first of its kind in the UK. He is currently researching anger and has explored the histories of friendship, tears, and the British stiff upper lip in books Weeping Britannia: Portrait of a Nation in Tears and The Invention of Altruism: Making Moral Meanings in Victorian Britain. You can hear his Free Thinking Festival Lecture here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0756nqp

Veronica Strang is an environmental anthropologist at Durham University who has researched with indigenous communities in Australia for many years. Her book Uncommon Ground: Landscape, Values and the Environment is about understanding people’s emotional and imaginative attachments to places. She recently assisted the United Nations with research exploring cultural and spiritual values in relation to water.

Producer: Zahid Warley

Does My Pet Love Me? Apr 23, 2019

Show notes

Two animal psychologists and a historian of animal studies join Eleanor Rosamund Barraclought to discuss whether it's possible to recognise similar traits in humans, chimps, crows, hawks, dogs and cats in terms of affinity and attachment, despite different evolutionary paths. How do we know when a chimp wants to play? How does one crow decide what to feed its mate? The Free Thinking Festival explores the emotional similarities and differences between humans & animals.

Nicky Clayton is a scientist and a dancer who began as a zoologist and moved into psychology. She is Professor of Comparative Cognition at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of the Royal Society. She is also Scientist in Residence at dance company Rambert and co-founder of The Captured Thought blog and project. Her expertise is in studying members of the crow family, who have huge brains for their body size, and in studying thinking with and without words.

Kim Bard is a Professor at the University of Portsmouth. She has studied the development of emotions, cognition, communication, and attachment in captive young chimpanzees for over 30 years. Her research concerns understanding the process of development in evolution and contributes to captive animal welfare.

Erica Fudge is Professor of English Studies and Director of the British Animal Studies Network at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. She has written widely on modern and historical human-animal relationships and has recently finished a study of people's lives with their livestock animals in early modern England titled Quick Cattle and Dying Wishes.

Producer: Jacqueline Smith

The New Age of Sentimentality Apr 18, 2019

Show notes

Charles Dickens. Walt Disney. The Romantic poets..These renowned artists and entertainers were all accused of being “over-sentimental”. But is our own age topping them all – with its culture of grief memoirs, gushing obituaries and feel-good fiction? Three Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature join Rana Mitter at the Free Thinking Festival to take a hard look at whether contemporary culture has “gone soft”.

Lisa Appignanesi is the author of books including Everyday Madness: On Grief, Anger, Loss and Love; Mad, Bad, and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors; All About Love: Anatomy of an Unruly Emotion and Trials of Passion: Crimes in the Name of Love and Madness. She is Chair of the Royal Society of Literature Council.

Irenosen Okojie is author of a novel Butterfly Fish and a short story collection Speak Gigantular - surreal tales of love and loneliness. She has written for The New York Times, The Observer, and The Huffington Post and is currently running a writing workshop at London’s South Bank.

Rachel Hewitt’s books include A Revolution of Feeling:The Decade that Forged the Modern Mind and Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey. She is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Newcastle University, where she is also Deputy Director of the Newcastle Centre for Literary Arts.

Producer: Zahid Warley

Why We Need Weepies Apr 17, 2019

Show notes

Poet and critic Bridget Minamore, TV drama expert John Yorke and film expert Melanie Williams join Matthew Sweet for a Brief Encounter at the Free Thinking Festival to look at the devices – music, close ups and the cliffhangers that cinema and TV employ to make us cry. From Bambi to Titanic, how have directors managed to trigger our tear ducts? And has the big screen actually shaped our understanding of emotion in modern life.

John Yorke is the author of How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them. Former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has shaped stories and big emotional moments in British TV working on series such as Shameless and Life On Mars, EastEnders and Holby City, Bodies and Wolf Hall.

Melanie Williams is the author of Female Stars of British Cinema, a book about David Lean and British Women’s Cinema. She teaches at the University of East Anglia.

Bridget Minamore has published a poetry pamphlet about modern love and loss Titanic, her journalism includes writing for The Guardian and The Stage. She has written with organisations including The Royal Opera House, The National Theatre and Tate Modern.

Producer: Fiona McLean

The Spirit of a Place: A Free Thinking Royal Society of Literature Discussion Apr 17, 2019

Show notes

Pascale Petit’s collection of poetry, Mama Amazonica, which explores motherhood, illness and pain through the foliage and creatures of the Amazon rainforest, won the 2018 Prize. Peter Pomerantsev’s winning book in 2016, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible, is a journey into the political and ethical landscape of modern Russia. In 2013, former Home Secretary Alan Johnson won the Prize with This Boy, a visceral memoir of growing up poor in 1950s and 60s London. Hisham Matar’s debut novel set within the highly charged political landscape of Libya, In the Country of Men, won in 2007.

2019 Ondaatje Prize shortlist as announced during the recording of this programme.

Rania Abouzeid No Turning Back: Life, Loss, and Hope in Wartime Syria (Oneworld)

Aida Edemariam The Wife’s Tale: A Personal History (4th Estate)

Aminatta Forna Happiness (Bloomsbury)

Sarah Moss Ghost Wall (Granta)

Guy Stagg The Crossway (Picador)

Adam Weymouth Kings of the Yukon: A River Journey (Particular Books)

The winner of this annual award of £10,000 for a distinguished work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry, evoking the spirit of a place will be announced on May 13th 2019.

Should Doctors Cry? Apr 16, 2019

Show notes

Anne McElvoy debates at the Free Thinking Festival with intensive care doctor Aoife Abbey, GP & Prof Louise Robinson, Naeem Soomro expert in using robotic surgery and Michael Brown medical historian. Does emotion have any place in relationships with patients in a more open age? Medical professionals are trained to adopt “clinical distance” when dealing with patients. Tradition says that getting emotional weakens their judgement of medical evidence and can cause safeguarding issues. But how can those in caring roles prevent disinterest seeming like un-interest?

Aoife Abbey is a doctor working in Intensive Care whose book Seven Signs of Life is an account of her experiences told through the emotions she encounters on a daily basis. Aoife previously wrote a blog as The Secret Doctor for the British Medical Association and works on a national training programme for doctors in intensive care medicine. She is a council member of the Intensive Care Society (UK).

Michael Brown is a cultural historian at the University of Roehampton who is currently leading a project for the Wellcome Trust entitled Surgery & Emotion exploring this relationship from 1800 to the present. He is the author of Performing Medicine: Medical Culture and Identity in Provincial England, c. 1760-1850

Louise Robinson is Director of Newcastle University’s Institute for Ageing, Professor of Primary Care and Ageing and a GP. She leads one of only three Alzheimer Society national Centres of Excellence on Dementia Care and is a member of the national dementia care guidelines development group.

Dr Naeem Soomro is Leading Consultant Urologist at Freeman Hospital, Newcastle. He has pioneered minimally invasive and robotic surgery in the North East and has developed the biggest multi-speciality robotic surgery program in the UK.

Producer: Fiona McLean

The Unsaid Apr 11, 2019

Show notes

Sarah Moss is a novelist and Professor at the University of Warwick. Her most recent book Ghost Wall articulates the tangled space of love, abuse and resistance. Her previous novels include Cold Earth, Night Waking, Signs for Lost Children and The Tidal Zone. She has written for The Guardian, New Statesman, The Independent and BBC Radio.

Michael Richardson is a Lecturer in Human Geography at Newcastle University. He has longstanding research interests in masculinities and intergenerational relationships on post-industrial Tyneside. He is a trustee of North East Young Dads and Lads project and works closely with Seven Stories: The National Centre for Children's Books.

Harriet Shawcross is an award-winning filmmaker and journalist. Her first book Unspeakable reflects on how, as a teenager, she stopped speaking at school for almost a year, communicating only when absolutely necessary. It mixes personal experience with travel diaries and interviews including Eve Ensler creator of The Vagina Monologues.

Una is a comics artist and writer. Her first graphic novel Becoming Unbecoming is about Una’s own encounters with sexual violence and survival. Her other titles include On Sanity: One Day In Two Lives and Cree, commissioned by New Writing North and Durham Book Festival.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

The Way We Used To Feel Apr 10, 2019

Show notes

Can we ever really know the feelings of byegone generations? Author and TV historian Tracy Borman shares the clues we have to the emotional lives of Tudor royalty and archaeologist Penny Spikins explains what million year old human remains tell us about how prehistoric people felt. Paul Pickering explores what we know about the emotions of the Manchester Chartists and the way songs have carried political feelings. New Generation Thinker Elsa Richardson teaches a course on the history of emotions. Rana Mitter hosts with an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead

Tracy Borman is joint Chief Curator for Historic Royal Palaces, Chief Executive of the Heritage Education Trust. Her books include Henry VIII and the Men Who Made Him, The Private Life of the Tudors, Thomas Cromwell: The Hidden Story Of Henry VIII's Most Faithful Servant

Penny Spikins is Senior Lecturer in the Archaeology of Human Origins at the University of York. Her books include How Compassion Made Us Human looking at archaeological evidence for the earliest examples of healthcare, and Neanderthal social lives.

Paul Pickering is a Professor and Director of the Research School of Humanities and the Arts at the Australian National University. The author of books on subjects ranging from C19 radical politics in the British world, monuments and public memory, re-enactment history - his most recent, Sounds of Liberty, is about music and politics. He is currently a Visiting Professor at Durham University working in a team studying the question: 'Who are the People?'

Elsa Richardson became a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker in 2018. She teaches on the history of the emotions and is a Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.

Producer: Craig Smith

How They Manipulate Our Emotions Apr 09, 2019

Show notes

According to Madmen’s ad executive Don Draper, “what you call love was invented by guys like me… to sell nylons.” So how does advertising and gaming grab us by our emotions? Can we know when we’re being manipulated? And is there anything we can do about it? Presenter Shahidha Bari hosts a Free Thinking Festival debate at Sage Gateshead.

Ad man Robert Heath worked on campaigns including the Marlboro Cowboy, Castrol GTX Liquid Engineering, and Heineken “Refreshes the Parts”. He is the author of The Hidden Power of Advertising and Seducing the Subconscious: The Psychology of Emotional Influence in Advertising.

Claudia Hammond presents All in the Mind and Mind Changers on BBC Radio 4 and Health Check on BBC World Service. She is the author of Emotional Rollercoaster: A journey through the science of feelings and Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception and Mind over Money: the psychology of money and how to use it better.

Darshana Jayemanne is Lecturer in Games and Art at Abertay University. He is investigating the role of emotion in young people's digital play (collaborating with the NSPCC) and how this can be used to raise awareness of climate change (along with the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research).

May Abdalla is co-director and founder of Anagram - a studio which won the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival Storyscapes Award for Door Into The Dark - a blindfolded sensory experience about what it means to be lost. They are working on a VR experience about the Uncanny with the Freud Museum and an immersive documentary about imagined realities exploring schizophrenia and online gaming.

The Emotion of Now Apr 08, 2019

Show notes

Matthew Sweet and a panel of experts stand-up for their emotion of choice in a debate about the most pertinent emotion for understanding Britain today. Is it Joy? Anger? Anxiety? Schadenfruede or shame? The panel express their feelings and an audience vote at the 2019 Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead has the final say.

Kehinde Andrews is Professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University. His books include Back to Black: Retelling Black Radicalism for the 21st Century and Resisting Racism: Race, Inequality and the Black Supplementary School Movement.

Denise Mina’s crime novels include The Long Drop, The DI Alex Morrow series, the Paddy Meehan series which were filmed by BBC TV, The Garnetthill series, and graphic novels. She has been inducted into the Crime Writer’s Association Hall of Fame.

Tiffany Watt Smith is the author of The Book of Human Emotions and Schadenfreude: The Joy of Another’s Misfortune and was one of the BBC Radio 3 New Generation Thinkers in 2014. A bout of chicken pox prevented her from promoting her ideas about schadenfraude so her husband, the writer Michael Hughes took her place in this debate.

Jen Harvie is Professor of Contemporary Theatre and Performance at Queen Mary University of London, the author with Paul Allain of The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance and with Professor Dan Rebellato (Royal Holloway, University of London), she co-edits Palgrave Macmillan’s large series of small books Theatre &

Hetta Howes is a Lecturer in English at City University in Medieval and Early Modern Literature and is a BBC Radio 3/AHRC New Generation Thinker

You can find short films by Tiffany and others at https://www.bbc.com/ideas/playlists/the-story-of-human-emotions

Producer: Debbie Kilbride

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