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
Testosterone. The grey zone. Indian science.
September 20, 2017 21:45 - 44 minutes - 40.4 MBCordelia Fine debates the effects of testosterone. Adrian Owen explores the “grey zone” of consciousness. Curator Matt Kimberley and Jahnavi Phalkey discuss scientific discoveries made in India and how they should be displayed at the London Science Museum. Plus Chair of the Judges for the Royal Society Science Book Prize Richard Fortey joins in the round table with presenter Matthew Sweet exploring whether it’s good to personalise science stories.
Diplomacy: Sir John Jenkins, Gabrielle Rifkind, Michael Burleigh, Dr Beyza Unal.
September 20, 2017 11:40 - 45 minutes - 41.2 MBPhilip Dodd and guests explore the art of negotiation and discuss JT Rogers' play Oslo which opens at the National Theatre this week. It draws on the experiences of Norwegian diplomat Mona Juul and her husband, social scientist Terje Rød-Larsen who fixed secret meetings between the State of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Sir John Jenkins is a former diplomat and Executive Director of The International Institute for Strategic Studies - Middle East. He's been HM Consul-Gener...
Free Thinking: Russian Nationalism. Scythians. Hull and Port Talbot on stage.
September 15, 2017 11:16 - 39 minutes - 36.5 MBAnne Applebaum talks to Anne McElvoy about Russian nationalism and Ukrainian history in a programme exploring the importance of borders and the way identities are bound up with a sense of place. Nick Tandavanitj and Rhiannon White discuss creating drama out of the specific histories of Hull and Port Talbot. St John Simpson, curator of a British Museum exhibition devoted to a nomadic culture of antiquity, explains the ethos of the Scythians. Anne Applebaum is a Professor at LSE and a colu...
Free Thinking: Social Conservatism, Kathe Kollwitz and John Ashbery
September 14, 2017 10:18 - 45 minutes - 41.6 MBPhilip Dodd and Joanna Kavenna discuss the challenges of art in an age of irony as the work of Käthe Kollwitz goes on display in Birmingham at the Ikon Gallery. Lawrence Norfolk pays tribute to the work of the great American poet, John Ashbery, who died last week. Plus a discussion of social conservatism in the USA, Europe and the UK with Sophie Gaston from the think tank, Demos and the political commentators, Tim Stanley and Charlie Wolf. Kollwitz was born in Königsberg in East Prussia in...
Free Thinking: Washing in public. Sir Peter Hall (1930 - 2017)
September 12, 2017 22:21 - 44 minutes - 41.1 MBPublic pools, the "steamie" and the Turkish bath; debates about hygiene and the role and revival of these public spaces are explored by Matthew Sweet and guests as Scottish theatres host a 30th anniversary tour of Tony Roper's play depicting 1950s Glasgow women washing their clothes in a public washhouse. Joining Matthew will be Chris Renwick, author of 'Bread for All: The Origins of the Welfare State', and Claire Launchbury, who has studied women's use of public baths in Middle Eastern ci...
Proms Extra: Alan Hollinghurst
September 04, 2017 10:42 - 19 minutes - 18 MBThe Booker Prize winning novelist, Alan Hollinghurst, talks to Anne McElvoy about the art of fiction and his new book, The Sparsholt Affair Producer: Zahid Warley
Proms Extra: Lenin
September 01, 2017 11:30 - 40 minutes - 37.2 MBAnne McElvoy is joined by historians Helen Rappaport and Victor Sebestyen to consider the figure of Lenin, as the Proms marks the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Victor Sebestyen, author of Lenin the Dictator: An Intimate Portrait And Helen Rappaport, author of Caught in the Revolution: Petrograd 1917
Proms Extra: Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address
August 29, 2017 13:30 - 27 minutes - 24.8 MBProfessor Kathleen Burk, University College London, reflects on Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address with BBC Radio 3 New Generation Thinker Joanna Cohen. Event hosted by Rana Mitter.
Proms Extra: Ancient Rome
August 29, 2017 12:00 - 39 minutes - 36.6 MBMatthew Sweet talks to the classicist, writer and stand- up comedian, Natalie Haynes, about the glory that was Rome -with readings by the actor, Peter Marinker,from Virgil, Sulpicia, Gibbon and Dickens. Producer: Zahid Warley
Proms Extra: Unfinished Art and Literature
August 23, 2017 17:30 - 32 minutes - 29.5 MBMichelangelo and Coleridge, Dickens and the Impressionists, all left work that they or others deemed unfinished, interrupted or incomplete. In front of a BBC R3 Proms audience at Imperial Collge in London, the poet and broadcaster, Ian McMillan is joined by the writer Meg Rosoff who completed the novel ‘Beck’ for her friend, the late Mal Peet, and art historian and curator, Karen Serres from the Courtauld Gallery to talk about what is meant by unfinished art and literature and why it distur...
Proms Extra: Djinn
August 18, 2017 10:30 - 31 minutes - 29 MBIan McMillan and a pre-Proms audience at Imperial College London have the smoky essence of Djinn conjured for them by literary scholar and New Generation Thinker Shahidha Bari and novelist Elif Shafak whose books are full of djinn. Shafak reads from her novel The Bastard of Istanbul and reflects on her grandmothers' very different versions of personal genie while Shahidha explores the idea that djinn and their abilities to fly and build huge castles in one night are part of the human drive ...
Proms Extra: Sleep and Insomnia
August 16, 2017 12:07 - 22 minutes - 20.5 MBNick Littlehales, sports sleep coach and chair of the British Sleep Council, talks with novelist A. L. Kennedy about sleep and insomnia. The event is hosted by Rana Mitter.
Proms Extra: Cuneiform 07082017
August 08, 2017 17:00 - 40 minutes - 37.5 MBA pre-Prom audience at Imperial College in London listens in as Shaidha Bari talks to Assyriologist Irving Finkel about cuneiform; how the script survived, what it tells us about life in the cities of Ur, Ninevah and Babylon and the way some of the most memorable stories ever told travelled from culture to culture. On the fare demonic puns, a four thousand year old joke, why the Ark might have been round and just how painful life was for Sumerian school chidren.
Proms Extra: Ella Fitzgerald
August 07, 2017 13:16 - 21 minutes - 19.3 MBKevin LeGendre and Claire Martin discuss Ella Fitzgerald
Proms Extra: Sentimentality
August 03, 2017 13:19 - 20 minutes - 18.8 MBAnne McElvoy is joined by New Generation Thinker Seán Williams and writer Rachel Hewitt to consider Friedrich Schiller’s essay On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry and what it means to be sentimental in that period?
Proms Extra: Happiness
August 02, 2017 13:46 - 20 minutes - 18.7 MBWill Abberley asks novelist Charlotte Mendelson why writers seem reluctant to engage with happiness and why so much literature is full of unhappy people; they are joined by psychologist and broadcaster Claudia Hammond.
Proms Extra: Sea Journeys and Voyages
August 01, 2017 16:38 - 21 minutes - 19.3 MBRana Mitter is joined by Sir Barry Cunliffe and Professor Edith Hall to consider epic sea journeys in history.
Proms Extra: Europe in Writing
August 01, 2017 14:19 - 21 minutes - 19.8 MBNovelist Lawrence Norfolk makes a selection of European writers who have considered the idea of ‘Europe’, with readings performed by Peter Marinker. Hosted by New Generation Thinker Nandini Das.
Proms Extra: Opium and Creativity in the 19th c.
July 24, 2017 13:00 - 27 minutes - 25.2 MBFrom Thomas De Quincy via Coleridge to Berlioz, a second-generation opium addict, Daisy Hay and Richard Davenport-Hines discuss why drugs were thought integral to creativity first in England and later in France. They tell Matthew Sweet and an audience at Imperial College London about opium as pain relief and creator of dreams and constipation, why arsenic was the Viagra of its day, and why it's just possible that Paris was as revolutionary as it was in the 19th century because it was full o...
Proms Extra: Music and Moods
July 18, 2017 14:22 - 20 minutes - 19.2 MBThomas Dixon, Director of the Centre for the History of Emotions, and musicologist Wiebke Thormählen look at mood: how composers and writers have engaged with themes of sentimentality, happiness and sorrow in their work, presented by Matthew Sweet. Producer: Fiona McLean
Proms Extra - Deep Time
July 17, 2017 11:44 - 39 minutes - 35.9 MBRana Mitter talks to geologist Iain Stewart and geographer Nicholas Crane about the concept of "Deep Time".
Free Thinking: Landmark: Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy
July 13, 2017 21:45 - 52 minutes - 48 MBSimon Heffer, novelist and co-director of the Fun Palaces campaign Stella Duffy, New Generation Thinker Will Abberley and the writer and sociologist Tiffany Jenkins join Matthew Sweet and an audience at the University of Sussex to debate the ideas explored by Matthew Arnold and their resonance today. The series of periodical essays were first published in Cornhill Magazine, 1867-68, and subsequently published as a book in 1869. Arnold argued that modern life was producing a society of 'Phil...
Free Thinking: Art in the Age of Black Power; History of Racist Ideas in US
July 12, 2017 21:00 - 44 minutes - 40.3 MBTate Modern offers a retrospective on the Art of the Black Power Movement in America and explores how 'Black Art' was defined by artists across the United States and its interplay with the civil rights movement. Rana Mitter is joined by Gaylene Gould, writer and artist and Head of Cinema and Events at the BFI, who reviews the 'Soul of A Nation' exhibition. Rana is also joined by the reggae poet and recording artist, Linton Kwesi Johnson "Writing was a political act and poetry was a cultural ...
Free Thinking - Queer Icons: Plato's Symposium. Part of Gay Britannia.
July 11, 2017 21:45 - 54 minutes - 49.7 MBShahidha Bari discusses LGBTQ in the history of philosophy.As part of the BBC's Queer Icons series Philosopher Sophie-Grace Chappell discusses Plato's Symposium, and novelist Adam Mars-Jones talks about Bruce Bagemihl's book Biological Exuberance which explored homosexuality in the animal kingdom. Plus, we hear from the winner of this year's Caine Prize for African Writing. Queer Icons is a project to mark the 50th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality in which 50 leading...
Free Thinking – Writing Love: Jonathan Dollimore, Heer Ranjha. Queer Icons: Sappho. Part of Gay Britannia
July 06, 2017 21:45 - 43 minutes - 40.3 MBThe Punjabi "Romeo and Juliet" is explored at Bradford Lit Fest plus New Generation Thinker Catherine Fletcher talks to Jonathan Dollimore about his memoir and the influence of the Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence which he set up at Sussex University. The Greek poet Sappho is championed by Professor Margaret Reynolds as part of Queer Icons - a project to mark the 50th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality in which 50 leading figures choose an LGBT artwork that is spe...
Free Thinking – Philip Hoare and Elizabeth Jane Burnett on wild swimming. Jake Arnott on Joe Orton
July 05, 2017 21:45 - 44 minutes - 40.3 MBMatthew Sweet talks to Philip Hoare about literary history and the ocean. Poet Elizabeth Jane Burnett performs snippets from her collection, Swims. Writer Jake Arnott reassesses the film Prick Up Your Ears as it's re-released in cinemas. Continuing the 'Queer Icon' series, Philip Hoare plumps for Cecil Beaton's image of Stephen Tennant. Philip Hoare's new book is called RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR Queer Icons is a project to mark the 50th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality in...
Free Thinking: Food
July 04, 2017 21:45 - 42 minutes - 38.9 MBCan going out for a meal really be an aesthetic experience, like going to a gallery or a theatre? What kind of statement are we making when we say we don’t like beetroot? And what can the great thinkers of history – the philosopher David Hume, the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss – tell us about table manners? And which thousand islands are we talking about when we talk about a thousand island dressing? Matthew Sweet explores the joys of food with philosopher Barry Smith, restaurant crit...
Free Thinking: Canada 150: Sydney Newman and British TV; Vahni Capildeo; Shubbak Festival 2017
June 29, 2017 21:00 - 43 minutes - 40.2 MBMatthew Sweet looks at the Canadian influence on British TV drama in the early 1960s, with director Alvin Rakoff, Sydney Newman biographer, Ryan Danes, and Graeme Burk, contributor to the publication of Newman's memoirs. Newman was instrumental in setting up Armchair Theatre, The Avengers and Doctor Who and The Wednesday Play at a time when broadcasting was in an excitingly fluid state. The British-Trinidadian poet Vahni Capildeo on her Forward Prize winning collection Measures of Expatria...
Free Thinking: Canada 150: Identity Robbie Richardson, Alison MacLeod, Deborah Pearson + Rupi Kaur and Kevan Funk.
June 29, 2017 13:21 - 43 minutes - 40.1 MBShahidha Bari and Laurence Scott look at images of Canada from First Nations art through Anne of Green Gables on TV to poems and art posted on Instagram and Twitter by Rupi Kaur. Their studio guests are author Alison MacLeod, Robbie Richardson and Deborah Pearson. Plus film maker Kevan Funk. Rupi Kaur has published a book called Milk and Honey and you can find images of her art via her website https://www.rupikaur.com/ Robbie Richardson from the University of Kent is writing a book about ...
Free Thinking - Canada 150: Robert Lepage, Katherine Ryan.
June 27, 2017 21:45 - 43 minutes - 40.2 MBPhilip Dodd explores the influence of Canadian history and the difference between stand up and performing a one man show. Katherine Ryan is based in the UK and about to perform at summer festivals and in an autumn tour. The French Canadian playwright, performer and opera director Robert Lepage recently staged his autobiographical "memory play", 887, at the Barbican in London. He has directed a ring cycle for the Metropolitan Opera which was featured in a 2012 documentary Wagner's Dream and p...
Free Thinking - Man and Machine: Garry Kasparov, Wyndham Lewis. 2017 New Generation Thinker Simon Beard
June 22, 2017 21:45 - 44 minutes - 40.6 MBGarry Kasparov talks to Philip Dodd about being defeated by a supercomputer in the chess match he played in 1997 and how this affected his view of AI. 100 years ago, Wyndham Lewis was first commissioned as a war artist; Richard Slocombe, curator of a new exhibition and art historian Anna Grueztner Robins discuss his art with John Keane who was a war artist in the Gulf War. 2017 New Generation Thinker Simon Beard outlines his research into overpopulation and our attitude towards death. Garr...
Free Thinking - Terrorism: Richard English, Baroness Warsi, 2017 New Generation Thinker Thomas Simpson.
June 22, 2017 19:31 - 1 hour - 59.8 MBRana Mitter goes to a drama which asks the audience to play jury in a trial following the hijacking of a plane. He's joined by Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, whose book 'The Enemy Within' looks at attitudes towards the Islamic community in Britain, Richard English author of 'Does Terrorism Work?: A History', Faisal Devji, author of several studies of political Islam and the ideology of Jihad, and 2017 New Generation Thinker Thomas Simpson. 'Terror' by Ferdinand von Schirach in a translation by Da...
Free Thinking: Tom McCarthy. Jacobitism; Satirical Indexes; A Museum of Modern Nature
June 20, 2017 21:00 - 46 minutes - 42.4 MBEssayist Tom McCarthy joins presenter Anne McElvoy, academics Dennis Duncan + Peter Mackay and the curator of A Museum of Modern Nature. As a new exhibition opens in Edinburgh, 'Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobites', poet and New Generation Thinker Peter Mackay explores the hundreds of artefacts gathered from home and abroad and gives us his reflections on the old old story of the Kings over the Water. Dennis Duncan from The Bodleian Centre for the Study of the Book brings a tale of h...
Free Thinking: Churchill, Pocahontas and The Idiot
June 15, 2017 21:45 - 44 minutes - 40.5 MBAnne McElvoy is joined by screenwriter Alex von Tunzelmann who discusses her new film, Churchill. New Generation Thinker Christopher Bannister, an expert on the propaganda unit The Ministry of Information, reveals the influence it still wields today. Academic Nandini Das and Stephanie Pratt, an art historian with Native American heritage, consider the complicated legacy of Pocahontas 400 years after her death. Plus, writer Elif Batuman offers a linguistic guide to the nuisances of the Turk...
Free Thinking: Narcissism
June 14, 2017 21:45 - 44 minutes - 40.4 MBShahidha Bari and Laurence Scott explore our obsession with the self. Take a look in the mirror with author and photographer Will Storr, the novelist, Olivia Sudjic, Tom Jackson, creator of Postcard from the Past and the neuroscientist, Sophie Scott. Producer: Zahid Warley Will Storr's book Selfie is published by Picador Olivia Sudjic's novel, Sympathy is published by One - the Pushkin Press imprint Tom Jackson's Postcard from the Past is published by Fourth Estate and @PastPostcard Sophie...
Free Thinking: Will Self, R. D. Laing and Mandy.
June 13, 2017 21:45 - 44 minutes - 40.5 MBWill Self joins Matthew Sweet to discuss the mind, consciousness, ADHD, Alzheimer’s and PTSD - all woven together in his new novel Phone. Mad to be Normal director, Robert Mullan, talks about the man at the centre of his film, controversial psychiatrist R. D. Laing. Critic Melanie Williams considers Mandy, Alexander Mackendrick's 1952 film about a deaf child learning to find her way in post-war Britain. Mandy was played by the child actress Mandy Miller who recalls her starring role from six...
Free Thinking: Political Sketch Writing. Enclosure Acts. 2017. Branwell Bronte. Pushkin House Book Prize 2017
June 08, 2017 21:45 - 43 minutes - 40 MBAnne McElvoy looks at the style of the election campaign and how it's been reflected by political sketch writers with John Crace and Quentin Letts. As Common by DC Moore opens at London's National Theatre, Simon Jenkins and Jonathan Healey discuss the impact of the Enclosure Acts. New Generation Thinker Emma Butcher from the University of Hull marks 200 years since Branwell Brontë was born. The winner of this year's Pushkin House Russian Book Prize - Rosalind Blakesley - talks to Anne along ...
Free Thinking - Revenge: My Cousin Rachel, Natalie Haynes, 2017 New Generation Thinker Islam Issa.
June 07, 2017 21:45 - 43 minutes - 40.1 MBMatthew Sweet sees a film version of Daphne Du Maurier's novel directed by Roger Michell and looks at revenge in Shakespeare and Greek drama with 2017 New Generation Thinker Islam Issa and classicist and author Natalie Haynes. Andrew O'Hagan discusses his new book of essays exploring his relationship with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and the Australian web developer who may or not be the inventor of the Bitcoin. Natalie Haynes new novel is called The Children of Jocasta. Andrew O'Hagan'...
Free Thinking - Arundhati Roy
June 06, 2017 21:45 - 44 minutes - 40.6 MBArundhati Roy, the Man Booker prize winning author and campaigner is in conversation with Philip Dodd as she publishes her second novel 20 years after The God of Small Things. Arundhati Roy's new novel is called The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. It is being read on BBC Radio 4's Book at Bedtime. Producer: Zahid Warley
Free Thinking - Hay 2017: Writing History with Sebastian Barry, Jake Arnott, Madeleine Thien.
June 01, 2017 21:00 - 54 minutes - 50.2 MBThe authors of three historical novels discuss the way research and family history have informed their fiction in a discussion recorded at the Hay Festival chaired by New Generation Thinker Sarah Dillon from the University of Cambridge. Jake Arnott has set novels in the 1960s, the 1940s and the 1900s and in his latest novel The Fatal Tree he depicts the criminal world in 18th century London. Madeleine Thien’s novel Do Not Say We Have Nothing explores the impact of the Cultural Revolution ...
Free Thinking: Ecstasy. Carpe Diem. 2017 New Generation Thinker Hetta Howes on medieval ecstasy.
June 01, 2017 11:55 - 56 minutes - 52 MBWhy we need to seize the moment and lose control more often is discussed by philosophers Jules Evans and Roman Krznaric and Canon Angela Tilby. And presenter Rana Mitter is joined by 2017 New Generation Thinker Hetta Howes, whose research looks at medieval attitudes to ecstasy. 'Carpe Diem Regained: The Vanishing Art of Seizing the Day' by Roman Krznaric is out now www.carpediem.click Jules Evans is a 2013 New Generation Thinker who blogs at http://www.philosophyforlife.org/ His book The ...
Free Thinking: Hay 2017: Women's Voices in the Classical World.
May 30, 2017 21:00 - 47 minutes - 43.9 MBColm Toibin, Bettany Hughes and Paul Cartledge join New Generation Thinker Catherine Fletcher for a discussion recorded at Hay. Colm Toibin’s new novel House of Names explores the story of Clytemnestra and the murder of her husband Agamemnon. His other novels include The Testament of Mary, Brooklyn and Nora Webster. Paul Cartledge is A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture Emeritus at the University of Cambridge and the author of many books which look at the classical world including Anci...
Free Thinking: Artist Tom Phillips at 80; How do we save our plants?
May 25, 2017 22:03 - 46 minutes - 42.2 MBThe artist Tom Phillips talks to Philip Dodd about his career as he marks his 80th birthday. His works range from sculptures, like a tennis ball with his own hair, to commissions for the Imperial War Museum and Peckham, and portraits of subjects including Sir Harrison Birtwistle and the Monty Python team. His interest in literature is seen in his version of Dante's Inferno and art made from reworking the text of a Victorian novel, in addition to his post card collection, photographic diaries...
Free Thinking - Japan and Korea. Hokusai
May 24, 2017 21:45 - 50 minutes - 46.3 MBChris Harding discusses the work of Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai with Tim Clark, curator of a new exhibition at the British Museum and explores the relationship between Korea and Japan through the visual arts with art historian Angus Locker, Charlotte Horlyck, chair of the Centre for Korean Studies at the School of Oriental & African Studies, and Je Yun Moon, a curator at the Korean Cultural Centre UK overseeing a year-long festival of Korean arts. Plus Aidan Foster-Carter on the US in...
Free Thinking - Bella Bathurst. Mike Figgis. Birds in British literature. 2017 New Generation Thinker Daisy Fancourt.
May 23, 2017 21:45 - 44 minutes - 40.5 MBAuthor and photojournalist Bella Bathurst suddenly began to lose her hearing as an adult in 1997. Twelve years later, an operation enabled her to recover it. She has written a book about her experience, insights gained about listening and the science behind deafness. 2017 New Generation Thinker Daisy Fancourt researches the effect of the arts on immune response and public health. New Generation Thinker Will Abberley has curated an exhibition exploring birds in British literature. Direct...
Free Thinking: Fiona Shaw and Mark Ravenhill on Brecht, John Knox, 2017 New Generation Thinker Joanne Paul.
May 18, 2017 21:45 - 44 minutes - 40.4 MBAs dramas about John Knox and Galileo open at theatres in Edinburgh and London, Philip Dodd talks to Fiona Shaw and Mark Ravenhill about performing and staging Brecht and to Edinburgh Lyceum director David Greig. He's also joined by 2017 New Generation Thinker Joanne Paul, from the University of Sussex, who researches the idea of parrhesia or 'speaking truth to power'. And satirist Nev Fountain and stand-up comedian Simon Evans discuss whether comedy is still an effective weapon with which ...
Free Thinking: Rachel Seiffert. James Hawes,Richard Nelson. 2017 New Gen Thinker Alistair Fraser on gangs
May 17, 2017 21:00 - 44 minutes - 40.6 MBAnne McElvoy talks to the Tony award-winning playwright Richard Nelson about bringing his trilogy depicting a US family over the 2016 election year to the Brighton Festival. Novelist Rachel Seiffert was shortlisted for the Booker prize with her book The Dark Room. Her new novel is inspired by the arrival of the Nazis in a Ukrainian village. The political novelist, James Hawes, explains why a lack of a clear eastern border has informed German history for two thousand years. Plus the etymolog...
Free Thinking - Artist Taryn Simon. Deglobalisation. 2017 New Generation Thinker Eleanor Lybeck on the circus.
May 16, 2017 21:45 - 44 minutes - 40.3 MBArtist Taryn Simon, Master of Photography at this year's Photo London Art Fair, speaks to Matthew Sweet about her work including her latest project Image Atlas inspired by the top image results for given search terms across local engines throughout the world. 2017 New Generation Thinker Eleanor Lybeck from the University of Oxford on the artist Edward Seago and running away to the circus. What if globalisation isn't as unstoppable as once thought? As manufacturing technology advances will...
Free Thinking: Laurent Binet; the rise of blockchain tech.
May 11, 2017 21:45 - 44 minutes - 40.6 MBAnne McElvoy talks to the French novelist Laurent Binet about his playful novel The 7th Function of Language, inspired by the death of Roland Barthes which has won the Prix de la FNAC and Prix Interallié. Emile Chabal considers what's next for France and Europe after the election of Emmanuel Macron. Plus, why blockchains, the technology underpinning cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, have the potential to revolutionize the world economy. Or do they? Three experts - Ajit Tripathi, Colin Platt ...
Free Thinking: Salomé, Angels in America, Queer British Art
May 10, 2017 22:10 - 43 minutes - 40.1 MBPlaywright Mark Ravenhill and critic Matt Wolf debate desire and politics with Philip Dodd as Tony Kushner's Angels in America is revived at the National Theatre in London. Writer and theatre director Yaël Farber explains her vision of the story of Salomé as one set in an occupied desert country where a radical is on hunger strike and a girl's dance is at the centre of a revolution. Peggy Reynolds and Matt Cook discuss the exhibition Queer British Art 1861-9167. Salomé is at the National T...