Alternative Realities

From 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 Thought at Rice University and his book The Flip: Who You Really Are and Why It Matters has just been published in the UK. It includes the experiences of figures including AJ Ayer,, Hans Berger, Huxley, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Michael Shermer. Lisa Mullen is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker and author of a book called Mid-century gothic: The uncanny objects of modernity in British literature and culture after the Second World War. Lisa recommends Powell and Pressburger's Second World War film A Matter of Life and Death. Mark recommends Edwin Abbott Abbott's satirical novella Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions published in 1884.

Producer: Robyn Read and Craig Templeton Smith

You might also be interested in the Free Thinking playlist on philosophy on the website which includes programmes about pansychism https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0144txn or in Shahidha's discussion about the new biography of Maths Professor Frank Ramsey https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000fws2