The 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 Unbrid...
Mar 04, 2020•44 min
Author 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 pub...
Feb 28, 2020•14 min
New 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 time of...
Feb 28, 2020•14 min
The 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.
Feb 28, 2020•14 min
New 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 Education f...
Feb 28, 2020•14 min
Ricky 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 w...
Feb 27, 2020•45 min
Islam 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 aims t...
Feb 27, 2020•39 min
Hiromi 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 Japan who...
Feb 27, 2020•45 min
Neuroscientist 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 Neuros...
Feb 25, 2020•45 min
Petina 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 Th...
Feb 20, 2020•1 hr 6 min
Matthew 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 Collec...
Feb 19, 2020•46 min
Morgan 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. In ...
Feb 13, 2020•50 min
Kate 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 Baartmann, p...
Feb 13, 2020•45 min
From 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 advi...
Feb 12, 2020•44 min
Alice 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 rele...
Feb 07, 2020•45 min
Lisa 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 Bug...
Feb 05, 2020•46 min
The 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 at th...
Feb 05, 2020•45 min
From 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 Mach...
Jan 31, 2020•46 min
Are 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 31st t...
Jan 30, 2020•46 min
From 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: Mary...
Jan 30, 2020•45 min
Anne 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 Pol...
Jan 28, 2020•45 min
Matthew 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...
Jan 24, 2020•47 min
Astrophysicist 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 the Inst...
Jan 22, 2020•45 min
Nikita 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 abou...
Jan 21, 2020•46 min
Would you change your nose if you could? What about an entire face transplant? Des Fitzgerald speaks to two researchers investigating the past and future of facial difference and medical intervention. Emily Cock, from the University of Cardiff looks at our relationship with our noses throughout history – from duels and sexual diseases to racial prejudice. Fay Bound Alberti, from the University of York, talks about a project called AboutFace which she is running to look at the emotional impact of...
Jan 17, 2020•41 min
100 years on from Isaac Asimov's birth, Matthew Sweet looks at one of the bigger ideas contained in some of his 500 books; Psychohistory. The idea, from Asimov's Foundation series, was that rather like the behaviour of a gas could be reduced to statistical probabilities of the behaviour of billions of molecules, so the history of billions of human beings across the fictional galactic empire could be predicted through a few laws he called 'Psychohistory'. The idea inspired many to think that soci...
Jan 16, 2020•46 min
Do men and women use the same language when talking about novels they have enjoyed? How have attitudes in publishing changed towards both readers and writers if figures show that women buy 80% of all novels ? Lennie Goodings is Chair of the Virago publishing house and has now written a memoir. She joins New Generation Thinkers Emma Butcher and Joanne Paul; and Helen Taylor, author of Why Women Read Fiction. Naomi Paxton hosts the conversation about writing and reading. Why Women Read Fiction: Th...
Jan 16, 2020•45 min
Laurence Scott hears about a pioneer of vegetarianism and advocates for nudism and camping as the academics Elsa Richardson, Annebella Pollen, Ben Anderson and Tiffany Boyle discuss the Life Reform Movement. Ideas included arguments for a basic income, healthy eating, gymnastics, world peace and what a perfect body looked like. The movement emerged in the second half of the 19th century and was a loose collection of groups and individuals who pursued social reform of all kinds and their ideas we...
Jan 15, 2020•53 min
Sally Potter joins Rana Mitter to discuss the relationship between philosophy and film. Also in the studio are philosophers Helen Beebee, Max de Gaynesford, and Lucy Bolton. You can find more discussions on the Free Thinking programme website Philosophy playlist https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07x0twx Producer: Luke Mulhall
Jan 10, 2020•53 min
How do I know that anybody else experiences the world in the way I do? Or even if other people experience anything at all? In the 20th century the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein responded to this challenge by thinking about whether we can make sense of the idea of a private language, a language understood only by the speaker. His so-called 'private language argument' has the potential to transform both the way philosophy is done, and the way we understand ourselves and our relationship with oth...
Jan 09, 2020•1 hr 8 min
