Free Thinking

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The Goodies Sep 25, 2018

Show notes

Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie talk to Matthew Sweet about how humour changes and the targets of their TV comedy show which ran during the '70s and early '80s. A box set of the 67 half hour episodes is being released.

Producer: Harry Parker.

What Nietzsche teaches us Sep 20, 2018

Show notes

How Nietzsche might have responded to current debates, including Trump, 'post-truth', identity and Europe. Kwame Anthony Appiah talks about his new work on identity and biographer Sue Prideaux and philosophers Hugo Drochon and Katrina Mitcheson join Matthew Sweet to think about Nietzsche.

I Am Dynamite! A Life of Nietzsche by Sue Prideaux is published on October 30th. Her books include Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream, which was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and Strindberg: A Life, which received the Duff Cooper Prize and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize. Kwame Anthony Appiah is the author of books including As If, Idealization Ideals, Cosmpolitan: Ethics in a World of Strangers and his new book which draws on his thinking for BBC Radio 4's Reith Lectures is called The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity.

You can find a playlist of discussions about Culture Wars and Identity here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06jngzt

Producer: Luke Mulhall.

What Camus and Claude Lévi-Strauss teach us Sep 19, 2018

Show notes

Rana Mitter talks to poet and writer Ben Okri and writer and journalist Agnes Poirier about the contemporary resonance of The Outsider by Albert Camus (1913-1960), and as a new biography of the anthropological giant, Claude Levi-Strauss by Emmanuelle Loyer comes out in English, he talks to anthropologist, Adam Kuper about travel, anthropology and how we classify. Rana is also joined by Peter Moore who has written a history of the ship Endeavour which carried James Cook on his first explorations of the southern ocean.

The Outsider (L’Étranger publ 1942) by Albert Camus adapted for the stage by Ben Okri runs at Print Room at the Coronet in London 14 Sep – 13 Oct 2018. Agnes Poirier: The Left Bank: Art, Passion, and the Rebirth of Paris, 1940-50 is out now

Endeavour: The Ship and the Attitude that Changed the World by Peter Moore is out now. Oceania runs at the Royal Academy in London from 29 September — 10 December 2018.

Adam Kuper, Visiting Professor of Anthropology, LSE and Boston University.

Emmanuelle Loyer is a historian at Sciences Po. Lévi-Strauss : A Biography, by Emmanuelle Loyer, was awarded the 2015 Prix Femina Essai and has now been translated into English by Ninon Vinsonneau & Jonathan Magidoff. Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009).

Look for BBC Ideas or use this link - https://bbc.in/2xitWPt - to see a short film about the thoughts of post war Paris Philosophers and Existentialism on our programme notes. It’s part of their playlist of what different Isms mean

What St Augustine teaches us Sep 18, 2018

Show notes

Ideas of tryanny, martyrdom, sin and grace in a new play set against Indian politics today and an exhibition which might be called pornographic. April De Angelis has relocated a Lope De Vega play to contemporary India, and a backdrop of political unrest. The original Fuenteovejuna was inspired by an incident in 1476 when inhabitants of a village banded together to seek retribution on a commander who mistreated them. The Spanish Baroque artist and printmaker, Jusepe de Ribera (1591-1652) is known for his depictions of human suffering, a popular subject for artists during the Catholic Counter-Reformation. The curator Xavier Bray looks at this savage imagery. Then historian Gillian Clark and theologian John Milbank discuss the legacy of Augustine of Hippo. Anne McElvoy presents.

The Village runs at the Theatre Royal Stratford East from 7 Sep - 6 OcT 2018 written by April De Angelis and directed by Nadia Fall. Ribera: Art of Violence runs at Dulwich Picture Gallery from Sept 26th to Jan 27th 2019. Gillian Clark has edited Augustine: Confessions Books I-IV; Augustine: The Confessions and she's working on a commentary of Augustine's City of God. John Milbank directs the Centre of Theology and Philosophy at the University of Nottingham. His books include Paul's New Moment: Continental Philosophy and the Future of Christian Theology, With Slavoj Žižek and Creston Davis; the essay "Postmodern Critical Augustinianism: A Short Summa in Forty-two Responses to Unasked Questions", found in The Postmodern God: a Theological Reader, edited by Graham Ward

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Sebastian Faulks Sep 13, 2018

Show notes

The author of Birdsong talks to Anne McElvoy in one of the first conversations about his new novel. Sebastian Faulks discusses depicting France past and present from World War I to Algeria and immigration now as he publishes his latest novel called Paris Echo. Recorded with an audience at the BBC Proms.

Producer: Fiona McLean

Women Finding a Voice Sep 12, 2018

Show notes

Deborah Frances-White host of podcast The Guilty Feminist joins Catherine Fletcher. Novelist Michèle Roberts reviews a portrait of artist Louise Bourgeois woven from conversations, and comedian and classicist Natalie Haynes discusses co-writing a modern political comedy based on The Assembly Women by Aristophanes, whilst Jeanie O'Hare talks about filling in the gaps in Shakespeare's depiction of Queen Margaret in her new play.

Now, Now Louison written by Jean Frémon, translated by Cole Swensen and published by Les Fugitives is out now. Deborah Frances-White has published The Guilty Feminist as a book out now. Women In Power - A Musical Comedy runs at the Nuffield Southampton Theatres from 06 September, 2018 - 29 September, 2018. It has been written by Wendy Cope, Jenny Eclair, Suhayla El-Bushra, Natalie Haynes, Shappi Khorsandi, Brona C Titley and Jess Phillips MP and is directed by Blanche McIntyre. Queen Margaret runs at the Royal Exchange, Manchester from Sept 14th to Oct 6th featuring Jade Anouka as Queen Margaret.

Producer: Fiona McLean

Design Sep 11, 2018

Show notes

A silent room and a design to encourage disobedience are amongst the exhibits that Matthew Sweet and Laurence Scott visit at the London Design Biennale as they consider the role of Design in the week the V&A opens a new museum in Dundee. New Generation Thinker Kylie Murray talks about her discoveries of scribblings in the margins of books and what they tell us about Dundee's connections with France in late medieval times. Plus film critic Peter Biskind explores the effect of superhero and zombie movies on the American psyche.

The Sky Is Falling: How Vampires, Zombies, Androids and Superheroes Made America Great For Extremism by Peter Biskind is out now. Laurence Scott is the author of Picnic, Comma, Lightning: In Search of a New Reality; The Four Dimensional Human: Ways of Being in the Digital World. Kylie Murray is a Fellow, Lecturer, and Director of Studies in English at Christ’s College, Cambridge whose research specialism is the literature of Medieval and Early-Modern Scotland, c.1100-c.1625 in Scots, French, and Latin

The London Design Biennale runs until September 23rd. The V&A in Dundee designed by Kengo Kuma opens with a 3D Festival this weekend. Design Research for Change is a showcase of 67 Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded Design research projects at Truman Brewery, London from 20th – 23rd September 2018.

Producer: Craig Smith

Landmark Jaws: Sharks and Whales Aug 20, 2018

Show notes

Novelist Will Self, shark expert Gareth Fraser and film expert Ian Hunter join Matthew Sweet for a discussion about sharks, whales and the impact of the book and film Jaws.

Jaws started out as a novel which reads as a sociological study of a small American coastal resort full of rather unlikeable characters. It ended up as an iconic film whose heroes engage in a fight to the death with a Great White Man-Eating Machine.

Matthew Sweet discusses how the shark came to fill the space once held by the whale, why big teeth still fill our nightmares and whether all publicity is good publicity for the denizens of the oceans with writer Will Self, whose novel 'Shark' was inspired by the film, and Gareth Fraser, who now studies the dental configurations of sharks all because he once sat in a dark cinema, as did life-long Jaws fan, the film expert Ian Hunter.

The artist Fiona Tan, whose exhibition was partly inspired by 'Jonah the Giant Whale', a preserved whale exhibited inside a lorry which toured across Europe from the 1950s to the mid-1970s will also appear out of the deep.

Presenter: Matthew Sweet

Guest: Gareth Fraser, Dept of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield Guest: Ian Hunter, School of Media and Communication, De Montford University Guest: Will Self's latest novel is called 'Shark' Guest: Fiona Tan's exhibition at BALTIC called Depot and draws on Newcastle's history as a whaling port. It run from 10 Jul to 01 Nov 2015.

Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Howard Jacobson Jul 12, 2018

Show notes

Why We Need the Novel Now. Man Booker Prize winner Howard Jacobson delivers a keynote lecture and talks to presenter Shahidha Bari and an audience at the Southbank Centre in London as part of the Man Booker 50 Festival. In the age of Twitter and no-platforming, Jacobson argues that the novel has never been more necessary.

Howard Jacobson won the Man Booker Prize in 2010 for The Finkler Question and was shortlisted for J in 2014

Producer: Zahid Warley

Helaine Blumenfeld, Dale Harding; Stella Tillyard Jul 12, 2018

Show notes

Helaine Blumenfeld is a sculptor who divides her time between her family in England and her work-family in Italy. As an exhibition featuring much new work opens in Ely Cathedral, she talks to Anne McElvoy about expressing her thoughts in marble, the importance of risk to the artist and why total immersion without distraction produces her best work. As the Liverpool Biennial gets under way Dale Harding, an Australian artist and descendant of the Bidjara, Ghungalu and Garingbal peoples of Central Queensland, explains his own education in the medium of wood and why his art is part of the making and story-telling traditions and brutal recent history of his cultural family. Back to the 17th century and Stella Tillyard tells Anne about the inspiration behind her new novel: the immense human effort (and human sacrifice) it took to reclaim land from the sea in East Anglia, Holland and the islands of what is now New York. And pirates...New Generation Thinker and Ottoman historian, Michael Talbot, looks to change their image. Helaine Blumenfeld 'Tree of Life' at Ely Cathedral 13 JULY - 26 OCTOBER 2018 Dale Harding See his work at Tate Liverpool as part of Liverpool Biennial 2018: Beautiful world, where are you? from 14 July – 28 October. Stella Tillyard 'The Great Level' is out now. Michael Talbot is a lecturer in the History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Middle East at the University of Greenwich . New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio. Presenter: Anne McElvoy Producer: Jacqueline Smith

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