Arts & Ideas
1,985 episodes - English - Latest episode: 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
Revisit: Mark Haddon
April 29, 2020 14:30 - 43 minutes - 39.8 MBThe Porpoise, Haddon's latest novel is now out in paperback. Anne McElvoy talks to him about the language of bloke, writing female characters and taking inspiration from Shakespeare and the legend of Pericles. The conversation ranges across his career in theatre, children's writing and stories for adults, the impact of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time which he published in 2003 and his recent illness. Recorded in front of an audience as part of the BBC Proms Plus series of ...
Cary Grant
April 29, 2020 09:00 - 44 minutes - 41.2 MBThe double life of the Bristol born Hollywood star of films including Suspicion, The Philadelphia Story and Charade. Matthew Sweet and guests imagine an evening in the film star's company. Born Archie Leach in 1904, he starred in films by Alfred Hitchcock, played opposite actors including Doris Day and Audrey Hepburn, Deborah Kerr, Sophia Loren and Katherine Hepburn, and sat on the board of MGM films, before his death in 1986. Charlotte Crofts runs the bi-annual Cary Grant Festival and is a...
Revisit: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring
April 22, 2020 08:00 - 43 minutes - 40.2 MBPresenter Rana Mitter is joined by guests Tony Juniper, Emily Shuckburgh, Dieter Helm and Kapka Kassabova to discuss Rachel Carson’s passionate book, Silent Spring, first published in 1962 and said to be the work which launched the environmental movement. Recorded at the 2019 Hay Festival. Tony Juniper is a campaigner, sustainability adviser and writer of work including Saving Planet Earth and How many lightbulbs does it take to change a planet? Emily Shuckburgh is a climate scientist ...
Alternative Realities
April 21, 2020 01:03 - 44 minutes - 41.1 MBFrom a Victorian Maths Professor to Aldous Huxley, AJ Ayer and Barbara Ehrenreich - Shahidha Bari explores the impact of life changing experiences & the fourth dimension talking to Mark Blacklock, Jeffrey Kripal and Lisa Mullen. Mark Blacklock has written a novel called Hinton which traces the life and ideas of Charles Howard Hinton (1853 – 1907) who wrote an article in 1880 called What is the Fourth Dimension. Jeffrey Kripal holds the J Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thoug...
Revisit: Shakespeare's Bookshelf
April 16, 2020 08:00 - 43 minutes - 40 MBRana Mitter is joined by Edith Hall, Nandini Das and Beatrice Groves to explore the books which inspired Shakespeare from the Bible and classical stories to the writing of some of Shakespeare's contemporaries. Edith Hall is Professor in the Classics Department and Centre for Hellenic Studies at King's College London. Her books include Introducing The Ancient Greeks and has co-written A People's History of Classics with Henry Stead. Nandini Das is Professor of English Literature at the Univ...
Deep Time and the Earth
April 09, 2020 08:00 - 56 minutes - 51.9 MBLewis Dartnell, Gaia Vince and David Farrier join Rana Mitter to look at deep ecology. Gaia Vince is the author of Transendence: How Humans Evolved Through Fire, Language, Beauty And Time Lewis Dartnell's book is called Origins: How the earth shaped history David Farrier has written a book called In Search of Future Fossils. You can find a Free Thinking programme exploring rivers and geopolitics https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00051hb Matthew Sweet talks to animal expert Jane Goodall htt...
Belonging
April 08, 2020 10:26 - 43 minutes - 40.1 MBPhilip Dodd talks to actor Christopher Eccleston and historian Ruth Dudley Edwards and asks them for their views on the way identity and a sense of belonging are shifting. Producer: Torquil MacLeod You can hear Christopher Eccleston in BBC Radio 3's Drama Schreber, see him in the RSC Macbeth production as part of the BBC Culture in Quarantine season and in the latest series of the TV drama the A Word. Ruth Dudley Edwards' books include The Seven — The Lives and Legacies of the Founding...
New Thinking: Religion and ordinary lives
April 07, 2020 07:00 - 43 minutes - 39.5 MBFrom the experiences of Quaker wives in the seventeenth century to the samplers and bibles in the homes of workers in the Industrial Revolution - Dr Naomi Pullin from the University of Warwick, and Professor Hannah Barker of the University of Manchester join historian and New Generation Thinker Tom Charlton to compare notes on the way their research marks a shift in the way religious beliefs of past times are being studied. Naomi Pullin is the author of Female Friends and the Making of Tran...
Revisit: What does game playing teach us
April 04, 2020 17:56 - 42 minutes - 38.6 MBUniversity Challenge star Bobby Seagull, writer and critic Jordan Erica Webber, games consultant and researcher Dr Laura Mitchell, and British Museum curator Irving Finkel join Shahidha Bari in the Free Thinking studio to get out the playing cards and the board games and consider the value of play, competitiveness and game theory. Bobby Seagull has published The Life-Changing Magic of Numbers. Irving Finkel has written Ancient Board Games, the Lewis Chessmen, Cuneiform, The Writing in Stone...
Knees
April 02, 2020 21:00 - 43 minutes - 39.7 MBFrom dance to prayer, servants to scientists, knees ups to being on our knees - Matthew Sweet talks to art critic Louisa Buck, historian and New Generation Thinker Joe Moshenska, author Tracy Chevalier and dancer and choreographer Russell Maliphant. Tracy Chevalier's novels include A Single Thread - a novel depicting the work of "broderers" creating cushions and kneelers for Winchester Cathedral in the 1930s. Russell Maliphant formed Russell Maliphant Company in 1996 and has worked with co...
New Thinking: Wordsworth
March 31, 2020 07:00 - 43 minutes - 39.6 MBApril 7th 1770 was the day William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, Cumbria. As we prepare to mark this anniversary, poet and New Generation Thinker Sarah Jackson is joined by Sally Bushell, Professor of Romantic and Victorian Literature, and Simon Bainbridge, Professor of Romantic Studies – Co-Directors of The Wordsworth Centre for the Study of Poetry at the University of Lancaster to discuss new insights into Wordsworth's writing. Sally Bushell has edited The Cambridge Companion to ‘Ly...
The Declaration Of Arbroath
March 25, 2020 09:00 - 43 minutes - 39.8 MBAnne McElvoy and guests discuss the 700th anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath and Scottish politics today. She is joined by Kylie Murray, New Generation Thinker and Fellow in Early Scottish Literature at Cambridge University; Robert Crawford, poet and Professor of Modern Scottish Literature at the University of St Andrews; John Lloyd, journalist and author of new book, Should Auld Aquaintance Be Forgot -The Great Mistake of Scottish Independence; and by Richard Finlay, Professor of Sc...
How do we build a new masculinity ?
March 24, 2020 08:00 - 44 minutes - 40.9 MBArtist and photographer Sunil Gupta, authors CN Lester (Trans Like Me) and Tom Shakespeare (The Sexual Politics of Disability), and Barbican curator Alona Pardo join Matthew Sweet in a discussion prompted by the Barbican exhibition called Masculinities: Liberation Through Photography to debate whether the old construct of masculinity in our culture is broken? As new ideas and thinking enter the debate, what is essential and what we can do away with as we look to build a new masculinity? Pro...
What's so great about EM Forster
March 23, 2020 08:00 - 58 minutes - 53.5 MBDeborah Levy and Laurence Scott talk to Shahidha Bari about the writer's work from his earliest novel Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) to his Essay Aspects of the Novel (1927). Recorded in partnership with the Royal Society of Literature at the British Library. Producer: Torquil MacLeod Laurence Scott is the author of The Four-Dimensional Human and Picnic, Comma, Lightning. He presented a Radio 3 Sunday Feature about Merchant Ivory which includes interviews about their film adpatations of...
Future Thinking
March 20, 2020 08:00 - 40 minutes - 36.9 MBMark Honigsbaum historian of epidemics, literary scholars Lisa Mullen & Sarah Dillon, UNESCO's Riel Miller & philosopher Rupert Read talk with Matthew Sweet. If uncertainty is a feature of our situation at the moment, it's the stock in trade of people who try to think about the future. Riel Miller is an economist at UNESCO, who works on future literacy. Rupert Read is an environmental campaigner with Extinction Rebellion and is speaking here in a personal capacity. Sarah Dillon is New Gener...
Contagion and Viruses
March 19, 2020 20:48 - 40 minutes - 37.1 MBMatthew Sweet investigates viruses and how they could disrupt our understanding of the nature of organisms, and looks at what history can teach us about the current pandemic. With philosopher John Dupré, historian Mark Honigsbaum, New Generation Thinker Lisa Mullen and artist Matt Adams who works with Blast Theory. Mark Honigsbaum is the author of The Pandemic Century: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria and Hubris. Lisa Mullen has written Mid-Century Gothic: The Uncanny Objects of Moderni...
Shoes
March 19, 2020 15:28 - 44 minutes - 41.1 MBFrom Roman sandals to trainers and stilettos. Shahidha Bari looks at the shoe trade, with guests including Thomas Turner, who has written about sneakers in his book The Sports Shoe, A History From Field To Fashion; Tansy Hoskins, who examines global commerce in her book Footwork: What Your Shoes Are Doing To The World; Rebecca Shawcross, Shoe Curator at Northampton Museum & Art Gallery; and Roman shoe expert Owen Humphreys from Museum of London Archaeology. Producer: Emma Wallace
New Thinking: Science Fiction
March 18, 2020 17:20 - 48 minutes - 44.1 MBIt's sometimes defined as 'the literature of cognitive estrangement'. In other words, it's a genre that helps us see things in a new light. Hetta Howes discusses current academic thinking on science fiction, as a way of thinking that extends beyond writing, film and TV to architecture and beyond. With Caroline Edwards, Senior Lecturer in Modern & Contemporary Literature at Birkbeck, University of London, and Amy Butt, Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Reading. This conversatio...
Does Growth Matter?
March 17, 2020 22:00 - 47 minutes - 43.7 MBThe rate of social and technological change in the 20th century was unarguably frenetic. A key measure used by politicians, economists and journalists in that time has been GDP growth. But is Growth as a pointer still fit for purpose? And should all countries still aspire to achieve growth? Is the world on a longer-term slowdown? Would that be a bad thing? And as the shock of coronavirus echoes through communities and economies around the world, will our conceptions of value and cost be rede...
Slebs: Warhol, Beaton and celebrity culture
March 12, 2020 23:20 - 45 minutes - 41.7 MBEntertainment writer Caroline Frost, New Generation Thinker Lisa Mullen and historian & podcast host Greg Jenner join Matthew Sweet as exhibitions about Cecil Beaton and Andy Warhol open in London. Greg Jenner presents the BBC Sounds podcast You're Dead to Me and has just published a book called Dead Famous: An Unexpected history of celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen Cecil Beaton's Bright Young Things runs at the National Portrait Gallery from March 12th to June 7th. Andy Warhol r...
Advertising & Artemisia
March 11, 2020 22:00 - 44 minutes - 41 MBNew Generation Thinker Catherine Fletcher and Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones join Rana Mitter to discuss how women's stories have shaped art and advertising from the baroque painter Artemesia Gentileschi to the suffragettes promoting boot polish in 20th-century England. And against the backdrop of the Me Too movement, Rana hears how the best-selling novel Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 became a rallying cry for young women in south Korea. Catherine Fletcher's new book about the Italian Renaissa...
Fighting Women
March 10, 2020 22:00 - 44 minutes - 41 MBMaaza Mengiste, Christina Lamb, Julie Wheelwright join Eleanor Barraclough to look at women's experience of fighting from Ethiopia's war with Mussolini to modern day Sudan back to Amazonians and British and French colonial troops in Canada. And academic Shawn Sobers discusses his research into the years Haile Selassie spent living in Bath after he escaped from a war-torn Ethiopia. Our Bodies, Their Battlefields by Christina Lamb looks at rape as a weapon in war. Maaza Mengiste's novel The S...
Jewish Identity in 2020
March 06, 2020 13:46 - 44 minutes - 41.1 MBHoward Jacobson, Bari Weiss, Hadley Freeman, and Jonathan Freedland join Matthew Sweet.
Storm Jameson - women writers to put back on the bookshelf
March 05, 2020 22:45 - 14 minutes - 13.5 MBWhat is a writer's duty? Katie Cooper considers Storm Jameson's campaigning for refugees, her 1940 appeal To the Conscience of the World and why her fiction fell out of favour but is now seeing a revival of interest. Born in Yorkshire in 1891, she wrote war novels and speculative fiction, collections of criticism - including an analysis of modern drama in Europe, the introduction to the 1952 British edition of The Diary of Anne Frank and a host of novels set in European countries. During t...
Frank Ramsey
March 05, 2020 11:54 - 1 hour - 57.3 MBShahidha Bari looks at the legacy of Frank Ramsey who died in 1930 aged 27, but not before doing work that changed the course of philosophy, logic, mathematics and economics. Shahidha is joined by Cheryl Misak, who has recently published the first biography of Ramsey, and philosopher Steven Methven. Plus, philosopher Emily Thomas on the role travel has played in the development of philosophy. Cheryl Misak's biography Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers is out now. Emily Thomas' The Mean...
New Thinking: Women in Virtual Reality
March 05, 2020 03:00 - 45 minutes - 41.2 MBHetta Howes learns how Sylvia Xueni Pan from Goldsmiths, University of London is using VR to do everything from training GPs not to overprescribe antibiotics to creating a groundbreaking Peaky Blinders game. While Sarah Ellis, Director of Digital Development at the RSC, is working with researchers and practitioners like Sylvia to create extraordinary virtual experiences for theatre audiences. They are among the many women playing key roles in the creative industries - the fastest growing se...
Anne Enright + the value of gossip
March 04, 2020 12:39 - 44 minutes - 40.6 MBThe Irish novelist Anne Enright talks to Laurence Scott about her new book Actress and being the inaugural Irish laureate, plus a discussion of gossip past and present with Emily Butterworth, Daisy Black and political journalist and writer Marie Le Conte. Anne Enright's novels include The Gathering; The Forgotten Waltz and The Green Road. Emily Butterworth works on early modern literature and thought, with a particular interest in Montaigne and in deviant speech and language. Her book The...
Lady Mary Wroth - women writer to put back on the bookshelf
February 28, 2020 16:16 - 14 minutes - 13.3 MBAuthor of the first prose romance published in England in 1621, her reputation at court was ruined by her thinly veiled autobiographical writing. Visit the family home, Penshurst Place in Kent, and you can see Lady Mary Wroth's portrait, but New Generation Thinker Nandini Das says you can also find her in the pages of her book The Countess of Montgomery's Urania which places centre stage women who "love and are not afraid to love." Scandal led to her withdrawing it from sale and herself from...
Charlotte Smith - women writers to put back on the bookshelf
February 28, 2020 16:06 - 14 minutes - 13.1 MBNew Generation Thinker Sophie Coulombeau argues that we should salute this woman who supported her family through her writing, who perfected sonnets about solitude before Wordsworth began writing his, and who explored the struggles of women and refugees in her fiction. Mother to 12 children, Charlotte Turner Smith wrote ten novels, three poetry collections and four children's books and translated French fiction. In 1788 her first novel, Emmeline, sold 1500 copies within months but by the tim...
Margaret Oliphant - women writers to put back on the bookshelf
February 28, 2020 16:05 - 13 minutes - 12.8 MBThe novel Miss Marjoribanks (1866) brought to life a large comic heroine who bucked 19th-century conventions. New Generation Thinker Clare Walker Gore's essay outlines the prolific writing career of Margaret Oliphant and laments the way she was used by fellow novelist Virginia Woolf as a symbol of the dangers of needing to write for money to keep yourself and your family afloat.
Yolande Mukagasana - women writers to put back on the bookshelf
February 28, 2020 15:40 - 14 minutes - 13.1 MBNew Generation Thinker Zoe Norridge describes translating the testimony of a nurse who survived the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. In Rwanda, Yolande Mukagasana is a well-known writer, public figure and campaigner for remembrance of the genocide. She has authored three testimonies, a collection of interviews with survivors and perpetrators and two volumes of Rwandan stories. Her work has received numerous international prizes, including an Honorable Mention for the UNESCO Edu...
How archictecture shapes society
February 27, 2020 22:00 - 45 minutes - 41.3 MBRicky Burdett, Liza Fior, Des Fitzgerald, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg & Edwin Heathcote discuss ideals made concrete in an event chaired by Anne McElvoy with an audience recorded as part of the LSE Shape the World Festival 2020. Ricky Burdett is Professor of Urban Studies at LSE and Director of LSE Cities. Liza Fior is an award-winning architect and designer; founding partner of muf architecture/art. Des Fitzgerald is a sociologist at Cardiff University and AHRC\BBC New Generation Thinker who...
New Thinking: Everything to Everybody - Shakespeare for the people
February 27, 2020 14:30 - 39 minutes - 36.1 MBIslam Issa hears from actor Adrian Lester and Professor Ewan Fernie about a project that will revive the Birmingham Shakespeare Memorial Library. Founded with the help of George Dawson - a man who had a powerful vision of Birmingham as a progressive social and cultural centre in the mid 19th century - the library houses Britain's most important Shakespeare collection, comprising 43,000 volumes, including a copy of the First Folio 1623. Over three years, the Everything to Everybody project ai...
Japan Now 2020
February 27, 2020 13:48 - 45 minutes - 41.3 MBHiromi Ito, Tomoko Sawada, and Yukiko Motoya, look at women's roles in Japanese culture today plus the Japanese view of English-language literature with translator Motoyuki Shibata. Philip Dodd presents. Bethan Jones acted as the translator. Japan Now 2020 is a series of events taking place in Sheffield, Norwich and London organised by Modern Culture culminating in a day of events at the British Library on Saturday February 22nd. Hiromi Itō is one of the most prominent women writers in Jap...
Genes, racism, ageing and evidence
February 25, 2020 22:00 - 44 minutes - 40.8 MBNeuroscientist and former record producer Daniel Levitin & geneticist Adam Rutherford join Rana Mitter to discuss the latest scientific discoveries about memory and the human genome. How difficult is it to confront pseudoscience? Jillian Luke reveals how blushing in Renaissance art has been weaponised by white nationalists, while Suda Perera explains why medical aid workers in the Democratic Republic of Congo are treated with distrust. Daniel Levitin has published The Changing Mind: A Neuro...
African Empire Stories
February 20, 2020 22:00 - 1 hour - 60.1 MBPetina Gappah on writing David Livingstone's African companions back into history. Sarah LeFanu looks at the Boer War experiences of Rudyard Kipling, Mary Kingsley & Arthur Conan Doyle and their views of Empire. Matthew Sweet presents. Petina Gappah's novel is called Out of Darkness Shining Light - Being a Faithful Account of the Final Years and Earthly Days of Doctor David Livingstone and His Last Journey from the Interior to the Coast of Africa, as Narrated by His African Companions, in ...
The Surreal World of Alejandro Jodorowsky
February 19, 2020 13:21 - 46 minutes - 42.1 MBMatthew Sweet talks to the Chilean French director and gets a take on his occult, drug filled and violently psychedelic world from critics Larushka Ivan Zadeh and Adam Scovell. Jodorowksy's 1973 surrealist fantasy film The Holy Mountain certificate 18 (the rating specifies that it contains strong bloody violence) has been re-released in cinemas in a 4K restoration and is being screened around the UK including events coming up at Tyneside Cinema, the ICA in London. The Alejandro Jodorowsky Co...
Queer histories
February 13, 2020 22:00 - 49 minutes - 45.4 MBMorgan M Page, Jana Funke & Senthorum Raj look at how we apply modern LGBT+ language and identities to historical figures both real and fictional and what it means to have to "prove" your identity today in today's legal world. Shahidha Bari presents. Morgan M Page is a writer, performance + video artist, and trans historian whose podcast is called One From The Vaults Jana Funke teaches Medical Humanities at the University of Exeter Senthorum Raj teaches at Keele University School of Law. I...
The History of Sex
February 13, 2020 12:08 - 45 minutes - 41.6 MBKate Lister started tweeting as Whores of Yore in 2015 to kick off a conversation about how we talk about sex. She has just published A Curious History of Sex which looks at everything from slang through the ages to medieval impotence tests, the relevance of oysters, bicycling and the tart card. Robin Mitchell's new book is called Venus Noire: Black Women and Colonial Fantasies in Nineteenth-Century France. In it she traces visual and literary representations of 3 black women: Sarah Baartman...
The shadow of slavery
February 12, 2020 14:39 - 44 minutes - 40.4 MBFrom sugar and spice, to reparations and memorials: slavery and how we acknowledge it is debated by Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough and her panel of writers and academics: Dr Katie Donington, Dr Christienna Fryar, author Rosanna Amaka, and playwright and journalist Juliet Gilkes Romero. Dr Katie Donington teaches history at London South Bank University. Her research focuses on the cultural, commercial, political, and familial worlds of slave owners in Jamaica and Britain. She was an historical...
Early cinema: why are we obsessed with firsts?
February 07, 2020 17:05 - 44 minutes - 41.2 MBAlice Guy-Blaché the pioneering film director, a British film pioneer Robert Paul and how the Boer War led to animated film are the topics for discussion as Matthew Sweet talks to Donna Kornhaber, Ian Christie and Pamela B. Green. Ahead of this weekend's Oscars ceremony they reflect on early film innovations. Alice Guy or Alice Guy-Blaché (July 1, 1873 – March 24, 1968) is considered a pioneer of narrative film. A new documentary Be Natural the untold story of Alice Guy-Blaché is on general...
Samuel Beckett & the purpose of culture
February 05, 2020 22:00 - 45 minutes - 41.7 MBLisa Dwan tells Philip Dodd what playing Beckett taught her about herself and feminism; playwright Mark Ravenhill, arts editor Jan Dalley & sp!ked author Alexander Adams discuss the proposition that the arts are increasingly expected to be uplifting and inspirational and to confirm identities. Where do the pessimism and shattered identities of Beckett's work fit into this view of culture? Beckett Triple Bill is at Jermyn Street Theatre, London until 8th February starring Lisa Dwan, Niall Bu...
Mocking power past and present.
February 05, 2020 10:37 - 44 minutes - 41 MBThe German joker Tyll Ulenspiegel. Anne McElvoy with best selling novelist Daniel Kehlmann plus Prof Karen Leeder who has been looking at changing versions of the Dresden bombing. Daniel Kehlmann's new book is called Tyll, translated by Ross Benjamin. A Netflix TV series has been commissioned. His book Measuring The World about mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss and German geographer Alexander von Humboldt became the world's second best-selling novel in 2006. Professor Karen Leeder teaches ...
New Thinking: It all begins here? Understanding the Industrial Revolution
January 31, 2020 14:45 - 46 minutes - 42.4 MBFrom government intervention and workshop ingenuity, to Britain's 'mind blowing historical carbon debt' and ground that's been polluted for 200 years, via the slave economies of Jamaica and the southern US states. John Gallagher discusses new lines of thinking on the Industrial Revolution with historians Emma Griffin of the University of East Anglia, and William Ashworth of the University of Liverpool. More information about Living With Machines https://livingwithmachines.ac.uk/ Living with...
Fungi: An Alien Encounter
January 30, 2020 23:00 - 46 minutes - 42.3 MBAre fungi out to get us or here to help? Neither animal nor vegetable, they are both amongst us and within us, shaping or lives in ways it is difficult to imagine. They can also be very tasty. An exhibition of mushrooms at Somerset House in London prompts Matthew Sweet to look at what we can learn from them, the way they grow and depictions of them in the arts. Francesca Gavin is curator of Mushrooms: The Art, Design and Future of the Fungi, which runs at Somerset House in London from Jan 3...
How we see pregnancy past and present
January 30, 2020 11:21 - 45 minutes - 41.4 MBFrom Hans Holbein sketches to Beyoncé on Instagram – Anne McElvoy looks at the changing image of pregnant women in a new exhibition at the Foundling Museum. We hear about the cultural history of breast feeding with academic Jessica Cox and marvel at the story of a rabbit breeder. In 1726, King George I sent a doctor to examine Mary Toft after it was reported that she had given birth to over a dozen rabbits. Karen Harvey retells this story in a new book called The Imposteress Rabbit Breeder...
Remembering Auschwitz
January 28, 2020 18:50 - 45 minutes - 41.5 MBAnne Michaels, author of Fugitive Pieces, talks to Rana Mitter about her 1996 novel. Jewish Chronicle Literary Editor and author Gerald Jacobs, and historian and documentary maker Laurence Rees, join Rana for a discussion on the way fiction and history on TV and in books have represented the Holocaust. Dr Roland Clark from the University of Liverpool shares his research in the fascist past of Romania, and Rana speaks to Professor Anna Prazmowska of the London School of Economics about recent...
What is good listening?
January 24, 2020 17:39 - 46 minutes - 42.6 MBMatthew Sweet with NYT journalist Kate Murphy, Anne Karpf & David Toop in a conversation about paying attention and how to hear each other properly. Kate's new book You're Not Listening draws on her interviews with a range of people including priests, focus group co-ordinators and CIA interrogators. Former radio critic Anne Karpf is the author of the Human Voice and professor of Life Writing and Culture at London Metropolitan University. David Toop is a musician, composer and professor of Au...
Poetry and Science: A 19th century metre on the (uni)verse
January 22, 2020 22:00 - 45 minutes - 41.6 MBAstrophysicist Dame Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, poets Sam Illingworth and Sunayana Bhargava, and C19 expert and New Generation Thinker Greg Tate from the University of St Andrews join Anne McElvoy to discuss the parallels between poetry and Victorian laboratory work. Dame Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, is perhaps most famous for first discovering Pulsars - strange spinning massively dense stars that emit powerful regular pulses of radiation. she has been President of the Royal Astronomical Society and th...
Goddesses of academia
January 21, 2020 22:00 - 46 minutes - 42.1 MBNikita Gill on goddesses, Sandeep Parmar on Hope Mirlees, Francesca Wade looks at the careers of classicist Jane Harrison and LSE's Eileen Power and Victorian Leonard looks at attempts to write more women back into the story of classics. Shahidha Bari presents. Francesa Wade has written a new book called Square Haunting which traces the experiences of five women who lived in Bloomsbury's Mecklenburgh Square: Virginia Woolf, Dorothy L Sayers, HD, Eileen Power and Jane Harrison- tracing ideas...