Arts & Ideas
1,985 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 2 months ago - ★★★★ - 268 ratingsLeading thinkers discuss the ideas shaping our lives – looking back at the news and making links between past and present. Broadcast as Free Thinking, Fridays at 9pm on BBC Radio 4. Presented by Matthew Sweet, Shahidha Bari and Anne McElvoy.
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Episodes
The Essay New Generation Thinkers Jean Rhys's Dress
April 20, 2021 21:45 - 13 minutes - 12.7 MBBlousy chrysanthemums pattern the cotton dress, designed for wearing indoors, that a pregnant Sophie Oliver found herself owning. It helped her come to terms with motherhood. In this Essay, the New Generation Thinker reflects upon the daydreams of Jean Rhys, the way she tried to connect with her daughter Maryvonne through clothes and examples from her fiction where fashion allows dissatisfied female characters to express and transform themselves. Producer: Ruth Watts Dr Sophie Oliver lectu...
Maryse Condé's writing plus Suzanne O'Sullivan
April 20, 2021 21:34 - 45 minutes - 41.2 MBShahida Bari reads I Tituba, the story of the West Indian slave accused in Salem.
New Generation Thinkers: The Feurtado's Fire
April 19, 2021 22:00 - 13 minutes - 12.5 MBClaude Mackay the Haarlem poet wrote about his experiences of an earthquake in Kingston in 1907. Twenty years earlier the city was putting itself back together following a devastating fire set off by a disgruntled employee. New Generation Thinker Christienna Fryar has been reading through diaries and archives and her Essay suggests that there are lessons we can take about the way societies rebuild after disasters. Producer: Luke Mulhall Dr Christienna Fryar is Lecturer in Black British His...
The Battle of Culloden, Outlander, Peter Watkins
April 15, 2021 17:00 - 44 minutes - 41 MB16 April 1746, the Jacobite rising was quelled by the Duke of Cumberland's army at the Battle of Culloden. Marking this anniversary here's a chance to hear Matthew Sweet discussing portrayals of Scotland's Highlands in the Peter Watkins' film Culloden and in the Outlander series of books which have become a successful TV series. His guests in a conversation recorded at the Edinburgh Festival in 2014 are Outlander author Diana Gabaldon, historian Tom Devine and media expert John Cook. They ex...
Jacques Tati's Trafic
April 14, 2021 11:00 - 45 minutes - 41.9 MBMonsieur Hulot is a car designer who takes a chaotic journey to an auto-show in Amsterdam to show off his prototype in this comic film from 1971. It's the last of Jacques Tati's films to feature Hulot, whose name is said to be inspired in part by the French name for Charlie Chaplin's character in The Tramp - Charlot, and whom Rowan Atkinson has cited as an influence on his comic creation Mr Bean. Matthew Sweet discusses Jacques Tati with fellow film historians Adam Scovell, Muriel Zagha and ...
Octavia Butler's Kindred
April 13, 2021 21:44 - 44 minutes - 40.9 MB"A hermit in the middle of Los Angeles" is one way she described herself - born in 1947, Butler became a writer who wanted to "tell stories filled with facts. Make people touch and taste and know." Since her death in 2006, her writing has been widely taken up and praised for its foresight in suggesting developments such as big pharma and for its critique of American history. Shahidha Bari is joined by the author Irenosen Okojie and the scholar Gerry Canavan and Nisi Shawl, writer, editor, jo...
Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalism and Schizophrenia
April 08, 2021 21:45 - 44 minutes - 41.1 MBCapitalism and Schizophrenia is a major text of French poststructuralist thought by Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Made up of the two volumes Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus, it articulates a new way of doing both philosophy and psychoanalysis that insists on the concrete relevance and transformative potential of the disciplines for day-to-day life. Matthew Sweet is joined by Henry Somers-Hall, Reader in Philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London and editor of A Thousand Plat...
Milton: Samson Agonistes
April 08, 2021 10:36 - 44 minutes - 40.6 MBBlind, and with his hair cut and his strength shorn - in Milton's dramtic poem Samson has already been betrayed by Delilah. It goes on to explore ideas about violence , revenge and tragedy. Published on May 29th 1671 alongside Paradise Regained, Milton's notes show that he started thinking of ideas for this work 30 years earlier. In 1741 Handel finished writing his version - a three act oratorio called Samson. Rana Mitter is joined by New Generation Thinker Islam Issa, music expert Professor...
John Milton's Samson Agonistes
April 07, 2021 21:00 - 44 minutes - 40.7 MBBlind, and with his hair cut and his strength shorn - in Milton's dramtic poem Samson has already been betrayed by Delilah. It goes on to explore ideas about violence, revenge and tragedy. Published on May 29th 1671 alongside Paradise Regained, Milton's notes show that he started thinking of ideas for this work 30 years earlier. In 1741 Handel finished writing his version - a three act oratorio called Samson. Rana Mitter is joined by New Generation Thinker Islam Issa, music expert Professor ...
The Liverpool Biennial debate
April 06, 2021 11:23 - 44 minutes - 41 MBSlavery and empire building shaped Liverpool's development. Can art works help give a new understanding of the city's history? In a discussion organised in partnership with the Liverpool Biennial, Anne McElvoy is joined by the Festival curator Manuela Moscoso, by the artist Xaviera Simmons, the historian Dr Diana Jeater and the composer Neo Muyanga. The Biennial runs from 20 March to 6 June 2021 with art works sited around the city. Neo Muyanga is a composer and sound artist whose work trav...
Spy talk
April 01, 2021 11:00 - 45 minutes - 41.2 MBOne Cold War spy has his story retold by journalist Simon Kuper, while the granddaughter of another - Charlotte Philby - writes novels that explore the human side and cost of espionage. Nigel Inkster, former MI6 director of operations and intelligence, looks at the role of spying in present day relations between China and the US, while journalist Margaret Coker explains how old school intelligence gathering without any hi-tech bells and whistles has been reaping rewards in Iraq. Rana Mitter ...
From Blackface to Beyoncé
March 31, 2021 21:00 - 44 minutes - 41.1 MBHanif Abdurraqib, the American poet and essayist, has written a book in praise of black performance challenging stereotypes and recovering figures including the magician Ellen Armstrong who performed along the Atlantic seaboard in the 1900s, the dancer William Henry Lane described by Dickens and Merry Clayton, the gospel singer who performed on the Rolling Stones song Gimme Shelter. He joins New Generation Thinker Adjoa Osei and Dawn Walton, founder of Eclipse Theatre Company for a conversat...
Writing About Faith
March 30, 2021 19:06 - 45 minutes - 41.8 MBIn Frank Skinner's A Comedian's Prayer Book the broadcaster presents a series of prayers which read like a stand-up routine exploring questions of belief. A practising Roman Catholic, Skinner's questions include the correct way of addressing God, what it means to be humble, and an unpicking of some of the metaphors used in the Bible. Jeet Thayil was born into a Syrian Christian family in Kerala, and his latest novel, Names of the Women, imagines the New Testament from the viewpoint of the ...
Churchill's reputation
March 25, 2021 17:00 - 44 minutes - 41 MBWartime saviour or the symbol of nostalgic imperialism ? David Reynolds, Priya Satia, Richard Toye and Allen Packwood join Anne McElvoy to look at the ways Churchill's story and legacy are being written now by both historians and in the press. How can we untangle the culture war that is raging over his reputation and what can we learn if we look at the research coming out of the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge? Richard Toye is Professor of History at the University of Exeter co-autho...
Pleasure
March 24, 2021 22:00 - 46 minutes - 42.3 MBAs lockdowns have forced us to forgo the delights of the outside world, have we developed a taste for simple pleasures? Many have reported enjoying cooking and eating more than usual, or appreciating simple treats such as a walk in nature. Has the grey monotony of this period caused music to sound more vibrant, and colours to appear more vivid? And what is the science, philosophy and psychology behind the enjoyment of simple pleasures? Matthew Sweet asks taste and wine expert Barry Smith; co...
Frantz Fanon
March 23, 2021 22:44 - 44 minutes - 40.8 MBIrrational feelings of dread, fear, and hate in a subject whose threat is often exaggerated or "phobogenesis" - one of the psychological terms explored in Frantz Fanon's 1952 book Black Skin, White Masks, which sets out the way black people have been affected by colonial subjugation. Matthew Sweet, Tariq Ali, New Generation Thinker Alexandra Reza and Kehinde Andrews re-read Fanon's arguments and look at the influence of his thinking outlined in his books Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and Th...
Books to Make Space For on the Bookshelf: There's No Story There
March 19, 2021 22:45 - 13 minutes - 12.5 MBThe dangerous world of an explosives factory is the setting of Inez Holden’s 1944 novel There’s No Story There. A bohemian figure who went on to write film scripts for J Arthur Rank, to report on the Nuremberg Trials, and produce articles published in Cyril Connolly's magazine Horizon - Holden campaigned for workers’ rights and was close friend of George Orwell, and though she published ten books in her lifetime, she fell out of fashion - until now. New Generation Thinker Lisa Mullen re-read...
Books to Make Space For On The Bookshelf: Closer
March 18, 2021 23:00 - 14 minutes - 13.4 MBDrugs, sex, violence and thinking about death are at the core of the George Miles cycle of five novels. New Generation Thinker Diarmuid Hester draws the links between the author Dennis Cooper and the radicalism of the Marquis de Sade. Now 68, Cooper's books have been praised for his non naturalistic writing and the texture of teenage thought that he captures in the series, which begins with Closer, and condemned for depravity. George Miles was his childhood friend and then lover, who ended u...
Syria: hope and poetry
March 18, 2021 10:14 - 45 minutes - 41.4 MBTwo years of staying inside her own home in Homs, whilst 60 per cent of her neighbourhood was turned into rubble hasn't deterred architect Marwa al-Sabouni. She talks to Anne McElvoy about rebuilding and hope. Adélie Chevée researches the use of media by the Syrian opposition, and Kareem James Abu-Zeid is an Egyptian-American translator, editor, and writer who spent 16 years working on a version of Songs of Mihyar the Damascene by Adonis, a poem which has been compared to TS Eliot's The Wast...
Books to Make Space For on the Bookshelf: Sindhubala
March 17, 2021 22:45 - 13 minutes - 12.5 MBThe rights of tribal people, the lives of ordinary workers and the depiction of female desire were amongst the themes explored by the writer Mahasweta Devi. Born in Dhaka in 1926, she attended the school established by Rabindranath Tagore and before her death in 2016 she had published over 100 novels and 20 collections of short stories. Sindhubala is one such story, which traces the tale of a woman made to become a healer of children and for New Generation Thinker Preti Taneja, Mahasweta's w...
Introducing New Generation Thinkers 2021
March 17, 2021 22:45 - 44 minutes - 40.5 MBFrom clues in paintings to colonial trade to letters sent between Australia and England; the links between a Durham based poet and India to the female singers and dancers from Latin America who were contemporaries of Picasso and Josephine Baker; the significance of the Cyrillic alphabet in building nations to why we should pay attention to brackets, commas and colons: African film and ideas about empire to depictions of Iran in nineteenth century French literature and art; how activism affec...
Books To Make Space For On The Bookshelf: John Halifax, Gentleman
March 16, 2021 20:00 - 13 minutes - 12.7 MBDinah Mulock Craik achieved fame and fortune as the author of the 1856 bestselling novel John Halifax, Gentleman. New Generation Thinker Clare Walker Gore reads this rags-to-riches tale of an orphan boy who rises in the world through sheer hard work and sterling character and her essay looks at the way it encapsulates the most cherished values of its period – but, she argues, both it and the author are more subversive than they first appear. Though she was seen as an icon of the self-improvi...
New Thinking: what do we learn from census stats?
March 16, 2021 18:46 - 44 minutes - 41 MBEveryday lives from the past are often hard to reconstruct. As we prepare for the Census 2021, what stories can we tell from past censuses and the records held at Kew at the National Archives? John Gallagher is joined by four researchers whose work sheds light on women entrepreneurs, the health of residents in Brighton and Hastings, and the story of a house in a suburb of York - Tang Hall. Dr Carrie Van Lieshout from the Open University is working on a project called A Century of Migrant Bu...
New Research: what do we learn from census stats?
March 16, 2021 18:46 - 44 minutes - 41 MBEveryday lives from the past are often hard to reconstruct. As we prepare for the Census 2021, what stories can we tell from past censuses and the records held at Kew at the National Archives? John Gallagher is joined by four researchers whose work sheds light on women entrepreneurs, the health of residents in Brighton and Hastings, and the story of a house in a suburb of York - Tang Hall. Dr Carrie Van Lieshout from the Open University is working on a project called A Century of Migrant Bus...
Books to Make Space For on the Bookshelf: The Black Lizard
March 15, 2021 22:45 - 14 minutes - 13.4 MBEdogawa Rampo's stories give us a Japanese version of Sherlock Holmes. New Generation Thinker Christopher Harding traces the way detective fiction chimed with the modernising of Japan, when the ability to reason and think problems through logically was celebrated, when cities were changing and other arts mourned a lost rural idyll. In The Black Lizard, the hero Akechi Kogorō plays a cat and mouse game with a female criminal who has kidnapped a businessman's daughter. Christopher Harding is ...
Edward Said's thinking
March 12, 2021 14:38 - 45 minutes - 41.2 MBOrientalism was his book, published in 1978, which outlined Said's view that imperialism and a romanticised version of Arab Culture clouded the way the East was depicted by Western scholars. In 1981 he published Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World (revised in 1997). Timothy Brennan puts these books and other initiatives, such as the founding of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra with Daniel Barenboim; and his advocacy for the establishment o...
The Vietnam Paris connection
March 11, 2021 19:39 - 44 minutes - 41 MBViet Thanh Nguyen's novel The Sympathizer won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Its follow-up takes the lead character to Parisian salons and an underworld of drug dealing so Free Thinking tracks the French connection through film, history and philosophy as Matthew Sweet is joined by Viet Thanh Nguyen, by film critic Phuong Le and by Peter Salmon - author of a biography of Derrida - he's been investigating the ideas of the Vietnamese thinker Tran Duc Thao who inspired some of Derrida's work. ...
New Thinking: From life on Mars to space junk
March 09, 2021 15:04 - 44 minutes - 40.5 MBMars is the focus of current space exploration but how far back does this interest go? Dr Joshua Nall tells Seb Falk about the Mars globe held at the Whipple Science Museum in Cambridge. Hannah Smithson explains her research into the way we see colour and explains the different perceptions of that blue/black/gold/white dress. Timothy Peacock has been studying the fears about Skylab falling to earth, looking at government files and the media reporting of the 1979 re-entry and distintegration ...
Speech, Voice, Accents and AI Free Thinking
March 04, 2021 22:44 - 44 minutes - 40.8 MBFrom prejudice against accents to early attempts to create an artificial voice - Matthew Sweet is joined by the academics Sadie Ryan, Allison Koenecke and Lynda Clark. Sadie Ryan hosts a podcast Accentricity and is part of the Manchester Voices project team https://www.manchestervoices.org/project-team/ You can find a New Thinking podcast episode looking in more detail at that project https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07h30hm Lynda Clark is part of the InGAME (Innovation in Games and Media...
Breakdown: Horatio Clare, Stevie Smith
March 03, 2021 10:01 - 44 minutes - 41 MBParanoia, the collateral damage on his family and the investigations he makes into drugs used to treat such a breakdown: Horatio Clare talks to Laurence Scott about his Journey through Madness, Mania and Healing. Plus the poetry of Stevie Smith (20 September 1902 – 7 March 1971). Author of the much quoted lines Not Waving but Drowning; Stevie Smith suffered from depression and acute shyness. New Generation Thinker Noreen Masud looks at her writing. Horatio Clare has recorded a series of dif...
New Thinking: Girls
March 02, 2021 20:25 - 43 minutes - 40.2 MBThe films Cuties and Rocks present a contemporary image of girlhood. What do they tell us about what it is to be a girl and to negotiate growing up? We hear from three researchers who look at: the influence of such films made by female directors; the role of aunties in giving advice about health and the body; and the portrayal of female friendship in boarding school novels by authors like Enid Blyton. Shahidha Bari is joined by Chisomo Kalinga, Tiffany Watt Smith, and Elspeth Mitchell. Chi...
Saint John Henry Newman
March 01, 2021 17:21 - 45 minutes - 41.2 MBCatherine Pepinster, Kate Kennedy, Tim Stanley and New Generation Thinker Dafydd Mills Daniel join Rana Mitter to look at the poet, theologian and now Saint John Henry. The programme marks 175 years since Newman's conversion from the high church tradition of Anglicanism and the Oxford Movement to the Catholic faith on 23 Feb 1846, with a conversation exploring his thinking and poetic writing. Catherine Pepinster is former editor of the Tablet and the author of The Keys and the Kingdom: The ...
Foucault: The History of Sexuality 4
February 25, 2021 22:44 - 44 minutes - 41 MBShahidha Bari is joined by Lisa Downing, Stuart Elden, and Stephen Shapiro to read volume 4 of Foucault's History of Sexuality, translated into English for the first time, which examines beliefs and practices among the early Christians in Medieval Europe. Although he had specified in his will that his works shouldn't be published after he died (in 1984), the rights holders of Foucault decided that these ideas could now be made public. So what do they tell us and how influential has his appro...
Humans, Animals, Ecologies
February 24, 2021 22:45 - 56 minutes - 52.1 MBJoanna Bourke is an historian whose previous work has looked at fear, pain, sexual violence and dismemberment. Her new book is a history and examination of bestiality and zoophilia, tracing our changing understandings from Leviticus, to modern psychiatry, the animal rights movement, and beyond. Anna Tsing's book The Mushroom at the End of the World was an examination of human interactions with fungi and their environments, and vice versa, in post-industrial landscapes. Her new online projec...
Adoption, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Renée Vivien & Violette Leduc
February 19, 2021 16:15 - 45 minutes - 41.3 MBOvercoming long term illness, controlling her money and eloping to revolutionary Italy: Fiona Sampson's new biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning focuses on her as someone interested in inventing herself - not as an ailing romantic heroine. Peggy Reynolds began her academic career studying Browning's long poem Aurora Leigh. She's been reading about motherhood in literature and psychology books as preparation for adopting a child and her new book traces the pain and pitfalls involved in nav...
Turkey: Adnan Menderes, populism, and history
February 17, 2021 19:24 - 45 minutes - 41.3 MBTurkey and 50s Prime Minister Menderes, Erdogan today, and how history is used for political power. Matthew Sweet is joined by Jeremy Seal, Ece Temelkuran, Michael Talbot & Nilay Ozlu. Before his execution in 1961, the Turkish prime minister Adnan Menderes saw Turkey admitted to NATO, investment in agriculture, education and health care, but also conflict with the Greek community. On 17 February 1959 he was involved in a plane crash near Gatwick on his way to a conference about Cyprus. Jere...
Pakistan, Politics and Water Supplies
February 16, 2021 22:45 - 44 minutes - 41.1 MBIn Karachi Vice, journalist Samira Shackle tracks the lives of a Karachi ambulance driver, street school teacher and crime reporter amongst others - and uses their story to map a history of different political groupings across the city and the recent decades. New Generation Thinker Majed Akhter from Kings College, London researches water shortages and dam building. Ejaz Haider is a journalist based in Lahore. They share their views of Pakistan with Rana Mitter. Karachi Vice: Life and Death...
Coins, the magic money tree and a cashless world
February 12, 2021 11:30 - 44 minutes - 40.9 MBFrom minting coins to digital currencies, Anne McElvoy is joined by Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff, British Museum coin curator Tom Hockenhull, historian of science Patricia Fara and political economist Ann Pettifor to explore the physical and virtual life of money as we approach the fiftieth anniversary of Decimal Day in the UK. The discussion ranges from the symbolism of images we find stamped on individual coins to the cashless society, and whether or not there is a magic money tree. Fe...
Darwin's The Descent of Man (1871)
February 10, 2021 22:45 - 44 minutes - 40.9 MBMatthew Sweet is joined by Xine Yao, Joe Cain, and Ruth Mace, who've been re-reading Charles Darwin's 1871 book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. The book offered a radical reinterpretation of what it means to be human by situating us completely within the natural world as a product of natural selection. But it is also a book of its times, as reflected in the language Darwin uses to talk about race and gender. University College, London where our speakers are based - hold...
New Thinking: Fashion Stories in Museums
February 09, 2021 19:17 - 44 minutes - 40.5 MBWhat we learn from the tattered costumes of actress Ellen Terry, the couture created by Alexander McQueen, and the everyday wardrobe of American women at the turn of the 20th century. V&A fashion curator Claire Wilcox has curated exhibitions on Frida Kahlo and Alexander McQueen, and has written a memoir, called Patch Work. She talks to Shahidha Bari about the pleasures and the challenges of conserving fashion and using it to tell bigger stories in museum displays. They're joined by Veronica...
Class and social mobility
February 04, 2021 16:00 - 44 minutes - 41.1 MBHow easy is it to climb out of the working class in Britain? Have attitudes to social mobility changed at all? Matthew Sweet talks to Professor Selina Todd about her latest book, Snakes and Ladders, which explores the myths and realities of the past century. They're joined by an accents specialist, a policy thinker and journalist, and a data analyst. Professor Selina Todd is author of Snakes and Ladders: The Great British Social Mobility Myth; The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Cl...
Patricia Lockwood and André Aciman
February 03, 2021 11:59 - 44 minutes - 41 MBPatricia Lockwood and André Aciman share their sense of the way digital media, and the layers of history press in on our sense of the present moment as they talk about their new books with presenter Laurence Scott. Patricia Lockwood is a poet and author of the memoir Priestdaddy. Her new novel No One is Talking About This considers the way a world saturated by social media memes, 24/7 news and doom scrolling can become fractured by a health emergency. André Aciman, author of Call Me By Your...
New Thinking: Eco-Criticism
February 02, 2021 22:45 - 44 minutes - 40.5 MBFrom Bessie Head to Keats, Rachel Carson to Lorine Niedecker, Lisa Mullen and guests analyse links between literature and nature as an increasing number of university departments offer eco-criticism courses focusing on the way writers past and present have thought about the environment. Samuel Solnick specialises in environmental humanities at the University of Liverpool, and is particularly interested in the relationship between literature and science. His books include Poetry and the Anth...
What Makes a Good Lecture?
January 30, 2021 14:39 - 45 minutes - 41.4 MBMary Beard, Homi Bhabha and Seán Williams join Shahidha Bari to look at the etiquette of talks on zoom and the history of lectures. Lecturing someone can be a negative: you’re patronising or boring or telling them what to think. And yet, today we have TED talks, university staff are routinely recording lectures using video conferencing technology, and the history of thought is a history of persuasive speakers setting out their ideas before audiences. Dr Seán Williams is a BBC/AHRC New Gener...
Yiddish and Rotwelsch, Nazi France
January 27, 2021 22:45 - 43 minutes - 39.7 MBDiscovering his family's Nazi links is what happened to historian Martin Puchner when he set out to explore the use of a secret language by Jewish people and other travellers in middle Europe. He joins author and language expert Michael Rosen for a conversation with Matthew Sweet about Yiddish, Rotwelsch, codes and graffiti. Plus as we mark Holocaust Memorial Day hearing about new research into the takeover of railways and civic buildings in occupied France from historians Ludivine Broch and...
Food, The Environment & Richard Flanagan
January 26, 2021 18:50 - 44 minutes - 40.6 MBLab meat and robot bees: how veganism and tech can solve the climate crisis. Anne McElvoy considers how food impacts on the environment with guests Anthony Warner, Cassandra Coburn, and Alasdair Cochrane. Plus Man Booker Prize winning novelist Richard Flanagan on his new novel, The Living Sea of Waking Dreams – about a dying planet and a dying mother. Anthony Warner is author of Ending Hunger: The Quest To Feed The World Without Destroying It. Cassandra Coburn is the author of Enough: How ...
John Rawls's A Theory of Justice
January 21, 2021 14:00 - 44 minutes - 41.2 MBIn his 1971 book, A Theory of Justice, John Rawls argued that just societies should allow everyone to enjoy basic liberties while limiting inequality and improving the lives of the least well off. He argued that "the fairest rules are those to which everyone would agree if they did not know how much power they would have". Anne McElvoy discusses how his case for a liberal egalitarianism has fared since. Teresa Bejan is Associate Professor of Political Theory and Fellow of Oriel College at t...
James Baldwin and race in USA
January 20, 2021 14:35 - 44 minutes - 41.1 MBEddie Glaude Jr and Nadia Owusu compare notes on the relevance of James Baldwin's writing to understanding Donald Trump's America. Michael Burleigh gives his take on populism. Eddie S Glaude Jr has just published Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and its Urgent Lessons for Today. His previous books include Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul. He is the chair at the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. Nadia Owusu has published Aftersho...
Harlots & 18th Century Working Women
January 19, 2021 17:54 - 44 minutes - 41.2 MBHarlots - the TV series about 18th century female sex workers - and translating historical fact into onscreen drama. Shahidha Bari is joined by Hallie Rubenhold, Moira Buffini, and Laura Lammasniemi in a conversation organised in partnership with the Royal Society of Literature. Harlots depicts the stories of working women detailed in 1757 in Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies. Historian Hallie Rubenhold has researched their history and Moira Buffini has translated that into TV scripts. ...
Witchcraft, Werewolves, and Writing The Devil
January 14, 2021 13:30 - 45 minutes - 41.5 MBThe devil's daughter features in a new novel from Jenni Fagan; Salena Godden's debut novel imagines Mrs Death. To discuss conjuring fear, they join Shahidha Bari alongside a pair of historians - Tabitha Stanmore, who researches magic from early modern royal courts to village life, and Daniel Ogden, who has looked at werewolf tales in ancient Greece and Rome. Jenni Fagan's latest novel is called Luckenbooth, and her first book, The Panopticon, has been filmed. Fagan was listed by Granta as o...