Does emotion or reason dictate the financial markets? Anne McElvoy is joined by Frances Hudson, Global Thematic Strategist at Standard Life Investments; Daniel Ben Ami, financial journalist, author of 'Cowardly Capitalism' Greg Davis, Head of Behavioural and Quantitative Investment Philosophy, Barclays and Adrian Wooldridge of the Economist whose book 'The Fourth Revolution - The Global Race to Reinvent the State is out now.' Recorded at The Bowler Hat at this year's City of London Festival....
Jul 17, 2014•44 min
Billy Kahora, one of the writers nominated for this year's Caine Prize for African writing joins Philip Dodd to reflect on the way artists in Kenya respond to the political and religious unrest in the country.
Jul 16, 2014•44 min
Matthew Sweet interviews Karen Joy Fowler author of a novel which looks at the consequences of introducing a primate into a family and the human fascination with anthropomorphism with animal studies experts Susan McHugh and Giovanni Aloi. From Cape Town the South African man of the theatre Athol Fugard pays tribute to his late friend and fellow activist the author Nadine Gordimer. After today’s Howard League conference on community sentencing Matthew asks David Wilson and Gerard Lemos, comment...
Jul 15, 2014•45 min
With Anne McElvoy. Curator Frances Spalding and Dr Alexandra Harris discuss what portaits of Virginia Woolf convey of her character as a new exhibition opens at the National Portrait Gallery. Richard Flanagan's father was a Japanese POW on the "Death Railway". The Australian novelist's new book The Narrow Road to the Deep North was inspired by this.New Generation Thinker Alun Withey looks back at medical history. Stella Rimmington, former director general of MI5 and diplomat Alan Judd discuss tu...
Jul 10, 2014•44 min
Philip Dodd is joined by political commentator Steve Richards to discuss the new production of Richard III which stars Martin Freeman and is set in the 1970s. Historian Joanna Bourke considers changing medical attitudes to pain. She's joined by Marion Coutts, who has written about her husband's death in The Iceberg, and by the comedian Arthur Smith. Should we equate animals with humans when talking about rights? New Generation Thinker Alasdair Cochrane argues for a shift in our thinking.
Jul 09, 2014•45 min
Richard Linklater filmed the actor who stars in Boyhood over 12 years from a 6 year old to a college youth. Matthew Sweet and author Toby Litt review the project and discuss growing up. Artist Cory Arcangel talks about his book composed from tweets and working in digital media. He also explores the themes explored in Digital Revolution at the Barbican Centre, which brings together film-makers, artists, game developers and musicians. As state schools across England prepare for the introduction of...
Jul 08, 2014•45 min
'€˜Oh what a lovely Savas' begins Rana Mitter in this edition of Free Thinking, using the Turkish word for War. Along with Sean McMeekin of the Koc University in Istanbul, the novelist Kamila Shamsie, Naoko Shimazu of Birkbeck College and Erez Manela of Harvard University Rana puts Japan, China, India, the Ottomans, Koreans and others centre stage in the years 1914 to 1918. If you weren’t from one of the European Great Powers could you even get into the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 which was...
Jul 03, 2014•44 min
Yael Farber directs Richard Armitage in the Crucible at the Old Vic. She talks to Philip Dodd about fear, conspiracy and her South African roots. Also Liberalism past and present. Edmund Fawcett author of Liberalism: The History of an Idea is in the studio alongside historian and Telegraph writer Tim Stanley and Alex Callinicos, Professor at King's College, London. Plus another column from one of the 2014 Radio 3 New Generation Thinkers: Tiffany Watt-Smith explores war neuroses and shell shock a...
Jul 02, 2014•45 min
From Paul Nash paintings of blasted tree stumps in the first world war to today's commemorative planting: Paul Gough, Gabriel Hemery and Gail Ritchie join Samira Ahmed to explore woods and trees in war and peacetime.
Jul 01, 2014•44 min
Jonathan Powell and historians Margaret MacMillan, Orlando Figes and Adam Tooze explore the Great Powers with Anne McElvoy. The First World War shattered the power balance in Europe. As we confront an uncertain world order, who are the great powers today, how has their role changed and where do they now stand in determining geo-politics?
Jun 26, 2014•44 min
Samira Ahmed discusses feminism with American artist Barbara Kruger and journalist Laurie Penny;and cartoonist Posy Simmonds talks about the role of cartoonists responding to politics and international affairs
Jun 25, 2014•44 min
The Thirty-Nine Steps first appeared in Blackwoods Magazine in August and September 1915 and depicts Europe on the edge of war in May and June 1914. It quickly became popular reading in the trenches and on the home front, and nearly a hundred years and three film adaptations later, its popularity is enduring. In a special edition of Free Thinking, as part of Radio 3's focus on World War One, Matthew Sweet talks to Buchan's biographer Andrew Lownie and Buchan scholars Dr Michael Redley and Dr Kat...
Jun 24, 2014•45 min
A new collection of Ranter writings from the English Civil War sheds light on their extreme libertarian views. Anne McElvoy is joined by the book's editor Nigel Smith. Plus journalist Rod Liddle and Conservative Party politician Douglas Carswell discuss libertarianism today. New Generation Thinker Naomi Paxton reflects on the Actresses' Franchise League. And a 62 metre photographic installation unveiled at London's Gloucester Road Tube station depicts the US reconnaissance base in North Yorkshir...
Jun 19, 2014•45 min
Philip Dodd talks to the artist, Sean Scully, about his latest show and explores our perception of colour with neuroscientist Jamie Ward and fashion expert, Caroline Cox.
Jun 18, 2014•44 min
Matthew Sweet talks to Philip Hensher, who's novel The Emperor Waltz draws together stories about a man who founds the first gay bookshop in London, a young painter who joins the Bauhaus and a woman fascinated by a Roman cult. We also discuss John La Rose's New Beacon project which was was the focal point of a black radical publishing industry that emerged in the UK in the late sixties, with the poets Linton Kwesi Johnson and Anthony Joseph and the co-founder of New Beacon Sarah White. New Gener...
Jun 17, 2014•45 min
Prize-winning first novelists Eimear McBride and Nathan Filer join Anne McElvoy to discuss literary experimentation. Matt Thorne gives us a first night review of the European premiere of Anne Washburn's play Mr Burns which is set in a world without electricity. New Generation Thinker Sophie Coulombeau examines British philosopher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham€'s €'Universal Tattoo'€™. And as Chancellor George Osborne makes his annual Mansion House speech to the City of London we get Peter K...
Jun 12, 2014•45 min
The director of the Hayward Ralph Rugoff, former principal Royal Ballet dancer Deborah Bull and neuroscientist Professor Patrick Haggard explore presentations of and research into the human body. And what is the meaning of 'community' with philosopher and writer Julian Baggini, journalist and historian Tim Stanley and writer Ziauddin Sardar. Plus Preti Taneja, one of the 2014 Radio 3 New Generation Thinkers, on the female casting of King Lear.
Jun 11, 2014•45 min
Amma Asante's film Belle depicts an illegitimate mixed-race girl brought up in eighteenth-century London in Kenwood House, the household of Lord Mansfield. Director Amma Asante and Dr Kit Davies talk to Matthew Sweet about the issues raised in the film. Writer Rosamund Bartlett has a first night review of Brian Friel's stage version of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons which opens at London's Donmar Warehouse tonight. There's the first column from the 2014 Radio 3 New Generation Thinkers: Tom Charlton...
Jun 10, 2014•45 min
Philip Dodd discusses Kenneth Clark's Civilisation and arts broadcasting with Janina Ramirez, Kim Evans, Gus Casely-Hayford and Charles Uzzell-Edwards, aka artist Pure Evil.
Jun 05, 2014•44 min
Rana Mitter remembers what happened in Tiananmen Square on June 4th 1989 with people who were there. He also asks what the sociological background to events on that day was. And how has the memory or even the truth of that day and what lay behind it faired in the 25 years that have followed?
Jun 04, 2014•45 min
Matthew Sweet discusses online identity theft and religious belief with American novelist Joshua Ferris, as he publishes his new novel To Rise Again at a Decent Hour. As the London Festival of Architecture opens with a debate on whether London needs more tall towers, Matthew talks to Sir Terry Farrell, Owen Hatherley, Nicholas Boys Smith, Angela Brady, about how London should look in the future. And we head to the Foundling Museum, whose latest exhibition marks the 250th anniversary of the death...
Jun 03, 2014•45 min
Arianna Huffington talks to Anne McElvoy about measuring success using The Third Metric. Richard Hytner and Kerrie Fleming look at stress in business and the nature of leadership. Zia Haider Rahman on his debut novel In the Light of What We Know which contains elements of his own Bangladeshi background, a scholarship to Oxford and time spent as an investment banker on Wall Street. Plus Anne pays tribute to the late Maya Angelou's influence and humour.
May 29, 2014•45 min
Presenter Rana Mitter, is joined on the BBC stage at the Hay Festival by writer and provocateur, PJ O'Rourke and the Freakonomics authors, the economist Steven D Levitt and journalist Stephen J Dubner to discuss decision-making, how emotional and economic stability leads to self-absorbtion, how difficult it is to stop and think about anything and why there is such a gulf between the economic and political and personal rationales for the nature of health care provision here in the UK, the US and ...
May 28, 2014•44 min
Rana Mitter talks to historian and MP Tristram Hunt about how Britain's experience of Empire shaped today's global cities. Plus a discussion about the future of India with Lord Bhikhu Parekh, Dr Shruti Patel and the writer, Pankaj Mishra.
May 27, 2014•44 min
Anne McElvoy looks at the resurgence of non-fiction writing and the essay as a form hearing from Jonathan Freedland, Wayne Kostenbaum and Maia Jenkins. Novelist Tim Winton talks about his new book Eyrie. Political commentators Robert Ford and Peter Kellner explore when does populism becomes extremism.
May 22, 2014•45 min
As the British Library launches a website devoted to writers' notebooks and manuscripts, Discovering Literature, novelist Lawrence Norfolk takes a look at his own notebooks, and talks to AS Byatt, John Cooper Clarke and David Mitchell about theirs. He's joined in the studio by Wendy Cope, Bidisha, and Rachel Foss of the British Library for a discussion about notebooks, creativity, and how the digital age might be changing literature.
May 21, 2014•45 min
Matthew Sweet talks to Iain Sinclair and New Generation Thinker Dr Greg Tate about a walk to mark John Clare's death 150 years ago. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute, discuss how privacy vs expression and remembering vs forgetting clash in the internet age. Plus Cherry Potter and Daniel Bird give us an assessment of Polish filmmaker Walerian Borowczyk.
May 20, 2014•45 min
Nick Payne talks to Anne McElvoy about his play Incognito and the man who stole Einstein's brain. New Generation Thinker Fern Riddell reviews Sky Atlantic's Penny Dreadful and our fascination with Victorian Gothic. Helen McCarthy and Pauline Neville-Jones discuss female diplomats. Plus another New Generation Thinker, Jules Evans, reports on the Reader Organisation's Conference at the British Library, the recent campaigns against the prison book ban and our relationship with reading.
May 15, 2014•44 min
Interview with the prominent Czech writer who has just published memoir, My Crazy Century, followed by a discussion debating whether Europe will always need an East. And why are we interested in science fiction film and theatre.
May 14, 2014•44 min
MJ Hyland reviews Simon Armitage's The Last Days of Troy at the Royal Exchange Manchester starring Lily Cole. Chris Harding looks at Japanese fears in Godzilla and The Wind Rises. Dr Philip Roscoe and Professor Geoffrey Wood on whether academia needs to change the focus of studies into financial systems. Plus Zoe Norridge discusses Deutsche Borse prize winner Richard Mosse and depictions of African countries affected by war.
May 13, 2014•45 min
