Free Thinking - Peggy Seeger
Philip Dodd talks to one of the icons of what used to be called the counter-culture, Peggy Seeger. Her voice and career are emblematic of a life lived against the establishment grain.
Mar 25, 2015•44 min
Arts & Ideas
Leading 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
Free Thinking - Secularism & Religion
In the first of three programmes exploring fractures and faultlines in contemporary society, Philip Dodd and guests discuss the tension between secularism and religion. With philosopher and atheist Daniel Dennett, sociologist of religion Linda Woodhead, and the writer and 'futurist' thinker Ziauddin Sardar.
Mar 24, 2015•44 min
Free Thinking - School Report
Anne McElvoy hears from young people involved in the BBC's School Report Day. School children who have come to north-east England from other countries describe what home means. Writer Bidisha and sociologist David Ralph discuss how migrants and refugees construct a sense of home. Also, ahead of a new exhibition, British Museum curator Ian Jenkins and classicist Edith Hall discuss ideas of beauty in ancient Greece and how the body was portrayed.
Mar 19, 2015•44 min
Free Thinking - Sociology in the 21 century
Does the discipline of Sociology still have a role to play in the 21st century?To examine where we are at with Sociology in 2015, Philip Dodd is joined by three leading practitioners, the LSE's Richard Sennett, Frank Furedi from the University of Kent, and Monika Krause at Goldsmiths, as well as the journalist and author, Peter Oborne.
Mar 18, 2015•45 min
Free Thinking - Madness/Civilisation
Matthew Sweet talks to Andrew Scull, author of Madness in Civilisation and Lisa Appignanesi about how different cultures around the world and through time have dealt with what we might call madness, insanity or the loss of reason. Matthew Beaumont also presents his history of an ancient crime but one still on the statute books of Massachussetts - Night Walking. Alongside, Deborah Longworth with a view of the flaneuse, the female solitary ambler and a pen-portrait of Dorothy Richardson whose rela...
Mar 17, 2015•45 min
Free Thinking - Tom McCarthy
Anne McElvoy looks at what we mean by the idea of fairness. She also talks to novelist Tom McCarthy who was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for his novel C. His new work Satin Island follows a man working for a consultancy trying to sum up our age - who wonders whether there is a logic which holds the world together.
Mar 12, 2015•45 min
Free Thinking - Hanif Kureishi
An extended interview in which Philip Dodd is joined by novelist, screenwriter and dramatist Hanif Kureishi. He discusses subjects including immigration, sexuality and mortality.
Mar 11, 2015•45 min
Free Thinking - Age of Earthquakes
Douglas Coupland, Shumon Basar and Hans Ulrich Obrist explain the Extreme Present to Matthew Sweet. Their co-authored book The Age of Earthquakes builds on Marshall McLuhan's analysis of how technology influenced culture in the 1960s and is described as "a new history of how we are feeling in the world today when the future seems to be happening much faster than we ever thought." Also, Mathematician Hannah Fry and film critic Kevin Jackson explore the ways in which number-crunching geniuses have...
Mar 10, 2015•45 min
Free Thinking - Kazuo Ishiguro
Novelist Kazuo Ishiguro talks to Anne McElvoy about his latest book – The Buried Giant. And as two separate productions of Sophocles’ tragedy, Antigone, are performed on stage in London – the playwright Roy Williams and the Greek scholar and translator, Oliver Taplin assess the enduring appeal of the play.
Mar 05, 2015•45 min
Free Thinking - Against Democracy
Churchill famously commented that ‘democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.' Rana Mitter and his guests David Runciman, Professor of Politics, University of Cambridge; Duncan Kelly, Reader in Political Thought, University of Cambridge; Patricia Thornton, University Lecturer in the Politics of China, University of Oxford and Tim Stanley, blogger and columnist for The Daily Telegraph test Free Thinking to its limits by look...
Mar 04, 2015•45 min
Free Thinking - John Gray
John Gray talks to Matthew Sweet about why the Aztecs might have had a better understanding of freedom than we do and other human illusions about meaning and progress. Also we consider how artistic movements become successful as the National Gallery stages an exhibition devoted to Paul Durand-Ruel, the french art dealer who discovered the Impressionists. Matthew talks to National gallery curator Christopher Riopelle. Also Jacky Klein, art historian and Godfrey Barker, man of letters and art crit...
Mar 03, 2015•44 min
Free Thinking - David Cohen prize
Rana Mitter talks to Tony Harrison, the winner of the biennial David Cohen prize - one of our most prestigious literary awards. Two other writers join Rana - Ru Freeman and Romesh Gunesekara. Both from Sri Lanka and both on the programme to discuss the role of the writer in a country recovering from civil war. Finally, as part of the BBC's Get Creative initiative, the mathematician, Marcus du Sautoy, will be explaining why he values the arts as much as numbers.
Feb 26, 2015•44 min
Free Thinking - Social Identity
Philip Dodd looks at the value of the arts with the former Chief Scientific Advisor to the EU, biologist Anne Glover,and discusses the notion of belonging and social identity in Europe with Dutch author Tommy Wieringa, Hungarian film director Kornel Mondruczo and academics Eric Kaufmann and Vesna Popovski.
Feb 25, 2015•45 min
Free Thinking - Paul Foot Award
As this year's Paul Foot Awards are announced for campaigning and investigative journalism, Anne McElvoy reports from the ceremony and talks to this year's winner. Anne also talks to the Director of the London School of Economics, the sociologist Dr Craig Calhoun about the things that inspired him to take up a career in the social sciences. The artist Alinah Azadeh talks about her latest project, two banners celebrating the 1965 Race Relations Act and the 1897 founding of the National Union of W...
Feb 24, 2015•45 min
Free Thinking - David Grossman
Matthew Sweet talks to the Israeli novelist David Grossman about his book Falling Out of Time which mixes poetry, drama and fiction to explore the emotion of grief and loss. His own son died in 2006. He is also the author of non fiction books including Death as a Way of Life: From Oslo to the Geneva Agreement. They discuss his fiction and the part he hopes it can play in the discourse about Israel today. Originally broadcast on 11 March 2014.
Feb 19, 2015•44 min
Free Thinking - Buddhism
Rana Mitter discusses Buddhism, in Western therapy and in Eastern politics with psychotherapist Mark Vernon, Rupert Gethin - Professor of Buddhist Studies in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies and co-director of the Centre for Buddhist Studies at the University of Bristol, Dr Anne Mette Fisker-Nielsen expert in religion and politics in Contemporary Japan and Christopher Harding – Cultural historian of India and Japan
Feb 18, 2015•45 min
Free Thinking Landmark - 1001 Nights
It's three hundred years since the death of Antoine Galland, a French orientalist and archaeologist, whose translation of The One Thousand and One Nights kick-started its adventures in the West via the works of English orientalists, Richard Burton, Edward Lane and John Payne. Philip Dodd asks a panel of experts on these hugely influential tales, plus story-tellers who continue to wrest new life out of them. He talks to Scholars Robert Irwin and Wen-chin Ouyang, the theatre director Tim Supple an...
Feb 17, 2015•44 min
Free Thinking - Britain's Economy
Will Hutton joins Anne McElvoy for a programme focusing on economics and wealth in Britain. They're joined by Richard Davies, The Economist's Economics Editor, Wendy Carlin, Professor of Economics and Macroeconomics at UCL and Luke Johnson the Chairman of Risk Capital Partners and the former Chairman of Channel 4 Television.
Feb 12, 2015•45 min
Free Thinking - Karim Miske; Aatish Taseer: 11 Feb15
Karim Miské and Aatish Taseer discuss their recent novels, the French tradition of secularism and the influences of religion with Philip Dodd. They're joined by historians Dr Sudhir Hazareesingh and Dr Ruth Scurr.
Feb 11, 2015•45 min
Free Thinking - Eroticism & Utopia
Dylan Evans tells Matthew Sweet about his experimental community in the Scottish Highlands and why the Utopia Experiment failed. They are joined by Elaine Barker who has looked at communities set up by religious cults and Joe Duggan of Transition Town in Crystal Palace. Also our changing attitudes to eroticism on film. In the week when the release of the film Fifty Shades of Grey is causing much excitment Matthew discusses prudishness and prurience in British cinema with film historian Melanie W...
Feb 10, 2015•45 min
Free Thinking - Greece & Russia
Anne McElvoy assesses reports that members of the new Greek government are rediscovering age-old links between Greece and Russia. With Roderic Lynne, former British ambassador to Moscow; Mary Dejevsky, Professor Vassilis Fouskis and Spyros Economides. Plus as Sheffield Theatres begin a season looking back at the work of Sarah Kane, Director Daniel Evans discusses her writing and also a review of Indian Summers - Channel 4's new costume drama about the end of colonial rule with Preti Taneja and N...
Feb 05, 2015•44 min
Free Thinking - Paul Muldoon, Roy Foster. Rona Munro: 4 Feb15
Poet Paul Muldoon explores the history of Ireland in his new collection, One Thousand Things Worth Knowing. Historian Roy Foster's latest book is Vivid Faces: the Revolutionary Generation in Ireland 1890-1923. Rona Munro's new play Scuttlers runs at Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre from Feb 5th - March 7th directed by Wils Wilson. It depicts Manchester gangs and riots in the Industrial Revolution and in 2011.
Feb 04, 2015•44 min
Free Thinking - Eddie Marsan
Andrew O'Hagan talks to Matthew Sweet about identity, capturing memories and the impact of war in his new novel The Illuminations. Eddie Marsan talks about creating his character in the new film Still Life and about how much we know about a person's identity. Critic Charlotte Mullins considers the artists' obsession with capturing their image and that of their friends, as the National Portrait Gallery hosts a series of paintings by John Singer Sargent and Turner Contemporary in Margate looks at ...
Feb 03, 2015•44 min
Free Thinking - Race in America
Joyce Carol Oates new novel The Sacrifice depicts an act of racial violence which shocks a New Jersey town. Selma dramatises on film the life of Martin Luther King. Timberlake Wertenbaker's new play Jefferson's Garden puts on stage the founding of the American state. Anne McElvoy talks to Joyce Carol Oates and Timberlake Wertenbaker and is also joined by New Generation Thinker Joanna Cohen who studies American history and by Professor Kit Davis from SOAS.
Jan 29, 2015•44 min
Free Thinking - Tom Stoppard's The Hard Problem
Surgeon Henry Marsh and critic Susannah Clapp review the opening of Tom Stoppard's 'The Hard Problem' at the National Theatre tonight. Matthew Sweet is also joined by musician and neuroscientist Daniel Levitin to discuss his new book - 'The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload. And New Generation Thinker Alasdair Cochrane and Anne Phillips, author of a forthcoming book 'The Politics of the Human', discuss what comprises humanness.
Jan 28, 2015•45 min
Free Thinking - Holocaust
Rana Mitter talks to Richard J Evans' about his new book The Third Reich in History and Memory which reflects on how racist theories of Empire, promulgated over centuries, provided fertile ground for nazi theorists. They are joined by fellow-historians Jane Caplan and David Cesarani, to survey how history has explored this period and discuss the question, was the Final Solution unique in the history of genocide. Also in the studio, Andre Singer, Director of the documentary, Holocaust: Night Will...
Jan 27, 2015•46 min
Free Thinking - Cities & Resilience
New Generation Thinker Daisy Hay talks to Anne McElvoy about the relationship between Disraeli and his wife. Judith Rodin discusses cities and disaster planning with Ricky Burdett. Glass artist Brian Clarke outlines the role played by the art dealer Robert Fraser who showcased the work of emerging American and European artists from the 60s onwards. Fraser hosted avant garde art openings and supported artists including Jean Michel Basquiat, Gilbert and George, Bridget Riley and Eduardo Paolozzi....
Jan 22, 2015•45 min
Free Thinking Churchill & Englishness 21Jan15
Philip Dodd plus guests David Reynolds, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Simon Heffer and David Edgar discuss Winston Churchill and Englishness, in the week of the 50th anniversary of his death
Jan 21, 2015•44 min
Free Thinking - Dramatising Democracy
Author Michael Dobbs, dramatists James Graham and Paula Milne and TV producer Trudi-Ann Tierney join Anne McElvoy in the BBC Radio Theatre as part of BBC Democracy Day. They debate whether dramas like The West Wing, Borgen or This House aid our understanding of the way governments operate or do they foster cynicism about democracy?
Jan 20, 2015•44 min
Free Thinking - Russell T Davies
Matthew Sweet looks at today's announcement of this year's Oscar nominations focusing on the politics of the foreign film awards with critics Ian Christie, Karen Krizanovich and Phillip Bergson. TV dramatist Russell T Davies discusses his new projects for Channel 4, E4 and 4OD, Cucumber, Banana and Tofu which explore the passions and pitfalls of 21st century gay life.
Jan 15, 2015•45 min
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