Free Thinking

Latest Episodes:

Are We Afraid of Being Alone? Mar 20, 2018

Show notes

Author of A Book of Silence Sara Maitland, medievalist John-Henry Clay, and writer Lionel Shriver face the crowd to contemplate the many sides to solitude. Chaired by Rana Mitter with an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead.

“If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company”. Was Jean Paul Sartre right or are we just hot-wired to prefer the company of others? Is it even possible - as the famous hermit St Cuthbert once did - to experience true seclusion in our age of hyperconnectivity? And as we flock to cities in increasing numbers why do so many of us feel so isolated and alone?

Sara Maitland has lived by herself for the last twenty years on an isolated moor in northern Galloway, taking pleasure in silence and solitude. She is the author of numerous short stories, novels and non-fiction books including A Book of Silence.

Lionel Shriver’s novels include The Standing Chandelier, The Mandibles, and We Need to Talk About Kevin. Her forthcoming collection of stories Property, explores how our possessions act as proxies for ourselves.

John-Henry Clay is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Durham University whose main research interests are in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon history and archaeology, and the themes of conversion and religious identity. John is also the author of historical fiction including The Lion and the Lamb and At the Ruin of the World.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Has Social Media Cracked the Code to the Crowd? Mar 15, 2018

Show notes

Author of Fully Connected Julia Hobsbawm, Social Media director at DEMOS Jamie Bartlett, writer Laurence Scott and tech blogger Abeba Birhane switch off their phones to focus on the impact of tech on the way we behave. Social media has allowed us to express our individuality and at the same time to interact like never before. But as the forces behind our digital lives become more sophisticated and powerful, are we in danger of succumbing to mass manipulation? Presented by Anne McElvoy with an audience at Sage Gateshead.

Julia Hobsbawm’s most recent book Fully Connected explores how to cope in an age of data and deadline overload by proposing new ways to develop healthy connectedness with and without technology. She writes and speaks about Social Health and about how to form satisfying interpersonal relationships with each other.

Jamie Bartlett is Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at Demos with the University of Sussex. His book The Dark Net describes underground and emerging internet subcultures and his forthcoming Radicals looks at how the influence of radical groups on the political fringes is growing.

Laurence Scott teaches at Arcadia University and became a Radio 3/AHRC New Generation Thinker in 2011. In his book, The Four–Dimensional Human: Ways of Being in the Digital World, Laurence explores how life is being reframed in a digital age.

Abeba Birhane is pursuing a PhD in cognitive science at University College Dublin. She blogs regularly about the evolution of algorithms and the ethical considerations around such technology.

Producer Craig Smith.

Podcast: There Is No I in Team Mar 15, 2018

Show notes

Army captain turned MP Johnny Mercer, Theatre Director Elizabeth Newman and former footballer Paul Fletcher compare notes on leadership and teamwork - presented by Rana Mitter with an audience at Sage Gateshead. There is no I in Team .. but there's a ME if you look hard enough”, joked David Brent in the BBC sitcom, The Office. But for individuals with a proven track record in leadership, how do you get the best from your group while handling the demands of the individual?

Johnny Mercer served three tours of Afghanistan during his military career before retiring from the army to pursue a future in politics. He was elected Conservative MP for Plymouth Moor View in 2015.

Elizabeth Newman is the artistic director of the Octagon Theatre in Bolton. Previously she was an associate director at Southwark Playhouse. In 2014, she was awarded the David Fraser/Andrea Wonfor Television Directors’ Bursary for experienced theatre directors to work with top UK broadcasters and production companies and has recently completed filming an episode of Doctors for the BBC. In 2017 she was named ‘Bolton’s Woman of the Year’.

Paul Fletcher played as a striker playing for Bolton Wanderers, Burnley and the England Under 23 team before leg injuries put paid to his playing career. He has been Chief Executive at Huddersfield Town masterminding the building of the Alfred McAlpine Stadium, at Bolton Wanderers when the Reebok Stadium was built, and CEO of Burnley. He has just collaborated with the writer Alastair Campbell on a novel depicting a football manager called Saturday Bloody Saturday and with Ken Sharp he has written The Seven Golden Secrets of a Successful Stadium

Producer: Zahid Warley

The Dance of Nature Mar 14, 2018

Show notes

From schools of fish to starlings to atomic particles. what does group behaviour look like in nature? Rana Mitter is joined by BBC Radio 4’s presenter of The Life Scientific Jim Al-Khalili, Melissa Bateson, Andrew McBain and Richard Bevan. Recorded with an audience at Sage Gateshead for the 2018 Free Thinking Festival.

Jim Al-Khalili is Professor of Physics at the University of Surrey and presenter of BBC Radio 4’s The Life Scientific and TV documentaries including Gravity and Me: The Force that Shapes Our Lives and The Beginning and End of the Universe. His books include Paradox: the Nine Greatest Enigmas in Science, Black Holes, Wormholes and Time Machines, Quantum: a Guide for the Perplexed and he’s edited What’s Next ? What Science Can Tell Us About Our Future.

Melissa Bateson is Professor of Ethology at Newcastle University, an expert in behavioural biology who has studied the behaviour of starlings, hummingbirds and humans.

Andrew McBain is a Professor of Microbiology at the University of Manchester. His research focuses on the responses of biofilms to antimicrobial treatments and the interaction of microorganisms colonising the skin, nasopharynx, oral cavity and intestine with the human host in health and disease

Richard Bevan is a lecturer in the School of Natural and Environmental Sciences at Newcastle University. His research interests are in animal ecophysiology; the way that animals interact with their environment both physiologically and behaviourally and how this is vital in understanding and interpreting their biology.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

The Population Bomb Mar 12, 2018

Show notes

The geographer Danny Dorling; Lionel Shriver, the author and patron of Population Matters; and Stephen Emmott, author of 10 Billion, join Matthew Sweet and an audience at Sage Gateshead to debate whether we should have fewer children.

In 1968 a Stanford university professor, Dr Paul E. Ehrlich, published The Population Bomb. This call to arms became a global bestseller, influenced public policy and made its author a celebrity. It predicted mass starvation in the US and an England underwater by the year 2000. It also suggested adding ‘temporary sterilants’ to the water supply as a way to stem the ensuing crisis. For decades it has come under fire for its alarmist tone and laughable foresight but with global population set to hit ten billion by 2050, will Ehrlich eventually be proved right?

Danny Dorling is Professor of Geography at Oxford University and the author of Population 10 Billion. His research focuses on housing, health, employment, education and poverty. His recent books include Do We Need Economic Inequality? The Equality Effect, and he co-wrote Why Demography Matters.

Lionel Shriver’s novels include The Standing Chandelier, The Mandibles, and the award-winning We Need to Talk About Kevin. Lionel is a regular columnist at The Spectator and has written for numerous other publications including for The Wall Street Journal, New Statesman, and The Economist. She is a patron of Population Matters.

Stephen Emmott is the author of Ten Billion, which he performed as a drama at the Royal Court Theatre. He is a Professor at Cambridge. His work develops new computational methods and ways of thinking about complex living systems.

Producer: Craig Templeton Smith.

The Free Thinking Lecture: Linda Yueh on Globalisation Mar 09, 2018

Show notes

Leading economic expert, Linda Yueh, delivers her vision for restoring faith in the free market to an audience at Sage Gateshead. Chaired by Philip Dodd.

We live in a world where experts of all stripes are struggling to win over the confidence of the general population. Last year, the Bank of England said it was stepping up its efforts to minimise a ‘twin deficit’ of public understanding and trust in an area that has come under particular fire recently: economics. In a timely defence of her profession, and by drawing on ideas put forward by several titans of economic theory, Linda Yueh, the former Chief Business Correspondent for BBC News, opens the Free Thinking festival 2018 with a unique take on how we fix the globalised free market to benefit the one and the many.

Linda Yueh is Adjunct Professor of Economics at London Business School and Fellow in Economics at St Edmund Hall, Oxford University as well Visiting Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics IDEAS research centre. She is the author of The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today.

Recorded with an audience at Sage Gateshead as part of BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival.

Producer: Craig Templeton Smith

New Research into the UK Women's Suffrage Movement. Mar 08, 2018

Show notes

How did interior design help gain women the vote? Were arson attacks justified? Who took part in a six-week march? What role did an Indian princess play? Helen Pankhurst, Jane Robinson, Fern Ridell, Shahida Rahman and Miranda Garrett discuss the history of women's suffrage with Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough in this centenary year of the Bill which gave some women the right to vote.

Fern Riddell is the author of Death in 10 Minutes - Kitty Marion: Activist, Arsonist, Suffragette Helen Pankhurst is the author of Deeds Not Words: The Story of Women’s Rights, Then and Now. Jane Robinson has written Hearts and Minds: The Untold Story of the Great Pilgrimage and How Women Won the Vote. Miranda Garrett is co-editor with Zoë Thomas of Suffrage and the Arts: Visual Culture, Politics and Enterprise

The Golden Notebook Mar 07, 2018

Show notes

How self-revealing and frank should a writer be? Lara Feigel, David Aaronovitch, Melissa Benn and Xiaolu Guo join Matthew Sweet to look at the life of Doris Lessing and her 1962 novel in which she explores difficult love, life, war, politics and dreams.

Inspired by her re-reading of Doris Lessing, Lara Feigel has written a revealing book which is part memoir part biography called "Free Woman: Life, Liberation and Doris Lessing".

Melissa Benn's books include Mother and Child, One of Us and School Wars

David Aaronovitch is the author of Party Animals: My Family and Other Communists and a former winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Journalism.

Xiaolu Guo has written a memoir Once Upon a Time in the East, and novels including UFO in Her Eyes, and Lovers In the Age of Indifference.

Producer: Fiona McLean

A Sentimental Journey Mar 01, 2018

Show notes

Laurence Sterne's subjective travel book was published in 1768. Mary Newbould and Duncan Large discuss its influence. Plus novelist Philip Hensher on his new book The Friendly Ones and writing fiction about neighbourliness, families and the Bangladesh Liberation War. Walker Nick Hunt discusses his journeys following the pathways taken by European winds such as the Mistral and the Foehn and the conversations he had about nationalism, immigration and myths. Presented by New Generation Thinker Seán Williams.

The Friendly Ones by Philip Hensher is published on March 8th. Nick Hunt's book Where the Wild Winds Are: Walking Europe's Winds from the Pennines to Provence is out now.

‘Alas, Poor Yorick!’: A Sterne 250-Year Anniversary Conference takes place at Cambridge 18 - 21 March and an Essay Collection is being published called ‘A Legacy to the World’: New Approaches to Laurence Sterne’s ‘A Sentimental Journey’ and other Works to be edited by W.B Gerard, Paul Goring, and M-C. Newbould. A new edition of A Sentimental Journey, illustrated by Martin Rowson, has been published by the Laurence Sterne Trust

An evening of music and readings to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the funeral of Laurence Sterne in the church where the original service took place. St George's, Hanover Square, London W1S 1FX on 22 March 2018 features David Owen Norris, Susanne Heinrich, The Hilliard Ensemble, Patrick Hughes, Carmen Troncoso et al.

What Lies Beneath; Neanderthal Cave Art to Fatbergs Feb 28, 2018

Show notes

The archaeologist Francis Pryor tells Shahidha Bari about a lifetime of building vistas of our history and prehistory through the evidence of pottery shards, holes in the mud and broken bones and palaeo-archaeologist Paul Pettitt who co-discovered Britain's first cave art explains why darkness informed a critical component in the development of the human brain and archaeologist Ruth Whitehouse reflects on the use of caves for ritual. They are joined by Sharon Robinson-Calver who has been tasked with the on-going conservation of a piece of London's fatberg and poet Sean Borodale whose latest collection arises from field studies in grave yards, caves and mines. Together they discuss why the past draws them back and how that past signposts itself.

Francis Pryor 'Paths to the Past' is out on March 1st 2018 Paul Pettitt, Professor of Archaeology, University of Durham and Member of the Behaviour, Ecology and Evolution Research (BEER) Centre Ruth Whitehouse, Emeritus Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology, University College London Sean Borodale 'Asylum' is out on March 1st 2018 Sharon Robinson-Calver, Head of Conservation and Collection Care at Museum of London: Fatberg! on show until July

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected