Does climate change force people to flee their homes and livelihoods? Does it cause wars that create refugees? Dr Helen Adams and Professor Michael Collyer explain how various factors are at play, from resources, to politics, to family ties. Dr Helen Adams is an environmental social scientist based at King’s College, London. Her research looks at the interactions between humans and climate change, well-being and resources. Professor Michael Collyer is Professor of Geography at the University of ...
Jun 15, 2021•26 min
"Tunnel vision is deadly. We need lateral vision. That is what anthropology can impart: anthro-vision." So says renowned economist GillianTett, who trained as an anthropologist. She joins Anne McElvoy along with Tulsi Menon, who trained in anthropology and now works in advertising, for a debate about what the discipline offers business. We look back at the history of anthropology with Frances Larson, author of a new book about forgotten women anthropologists, and a previous book which looked at ...
Jun 11, 2021•45 min
"Tunnel vision is deadly. We need lateral vision. That is what anthropology can impart: anthro-vision." So says renowned economist GillianTett, who trained as an anthropologist. She joins Anne McElvoy along with Tulsi Menon, who trained in anthropology and now works in advertising, for a debate about what the discipline offers business. We look back at the history of anthropology with Frances Larson, author of a new book about forgotten women anthropologists, and a previous book which looked at ...
Jun 11, 2021•45 min
From Bitcoin mines to green investment bonds: how easy is it to change the way finance works to make it greener? Professor Yu Xiong and Professor Nick Robins share their research, knowledge and concerns of these high-tech financial systems with Professor Des Fitzgerald. Professor Yu Xiong is Associate Dean International and director of the Centre for Innovation and Commercialization at the Surrey Business School, University of Surrey. His research focuses on sustainability and technological issu...
Jun 10, 2021•27 min
From Frankie Howerd to Sherlock: Beryl Vertue is the producer of some classic TV shows including Men Behaving Badly. She took Steptoe and Son to America, negotiated for writer Terry Nation to retain some of the rights for his Dr Who Daleks creation, and back when she began in the 1960s, worked with a Who's Who of comedy writing talent at Associated London Scripts as well as representing Tony Hancock and Frankie Howerd as their agent. As chairman of the family firm Hartswood Films, her more recen...
Jun 09, 2021•46 min
A Bouillabaisse soup inspired hat paraded by the surrealist artist Eileen Agar in 1948 caused raised eyebrows to the passers-by captured in the Pathé news footage on show in the Whitechapel Gallery's exhibition exploring her career. It's just one of many displays showcasing women's art open this summer at galleries across the UK, so today's Free Thinking looks at what it means to put women's art back on the walls and into the way we look at art history. Shahidha Bari is joined by Whitechapel cur...
Jun 08, 2021•45 min
How real are flooding dangers in Britain and Ireland? Two researchers who have been working with local communities in Wales, Norfolk and Ireland tell Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough about the impact of changing landscapes, how sand dunes beat concrete, and how audio postcodes can help the people of Norfolk reflect on their with local wildlife along the longest protected coast in Europe. Dr Emma McKinley is a research fellow at the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Cardiff University, an...
Jun 08, 2021•27 min
Is climate change to blame for global conflicts and disputes over resources? Or is this rush to blame water shortages just post-Colonial thinking? Dr Ayesha Siddiqi and Professor Jan Selby talk to Professor Des Fitzgerald talk about their research, where geography and politics collide. Dr Ayesha Siddiqi is a development and postcolonial geographer at the University of Cambridge. She shares her expertise in natural disasters and politics, security and development in the Global South. Professor Ja...
Jun 05, 2021•26 min
How green is office working? Have changes since Covid helped us plan for a more environmentally friendly way of working? Philosopher Dr Alexander Douglas and Dr Jane Parry, who works on Work after Lockdown, talk to Des Fitzgerald about the future of work in a post-Covid-19 world and the implications for our environment. Dr Alexander Douglas is a Lecturer in Philosophy in the School of Philosophical, Anthropological and Film Studies at the University of St Andrews. He is a founder and co-director...
Jun 04, 2021•27 min
Is encouraging action still art? What does it mean to make art about the environment? Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough brings together a curator, researchers and artists to discuss these questions. She hears about suggestions from artists, inspired by the forward thinking Gustav Metzger (1926 - 2017), collated by curator Hans Ulrich Obrist. These include the idea from Futurefarmers that we "make an unannounced visit to a farm and take a good long look at the farmer's bookshelf" or Forensic Architect...
Jun 03, 2021•43 min
"Before there were books there were stories". Salman Rushdie's opening words in his collected Essays from 2003-2020. In one of them he reveals that Alice in Wonderland made such an impression on him as a child that he can still recite Jabberwocky. So Free Thinking brought him together with the literary historian Lucy Powell and with Mark Blacklock, who has studied literature about the fourth dimension, for a conversation about the power of dreams, the place of logic and irrationality and the tru...
Jun 02, 2021•45 min
Should Kew re-label its plants? What do you see when you study a still life painting on the gallery walls? How do nineteenth century authors depict deadly plants? New Generation Thinker Christienna Fryar discusses new ways of understanding British history through horticulture with her four guests: Lauren Working, is one of the 2021 New Generation Thinkers. She has studied the Jamestown colony, and delivers a postcard about still life painting and its connection to the exotic luxuries of early em...
Jun 01, 2021•44 min
'What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence'. Thus ends the only book the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein published in his lifetime. But it's a book that's had people talking ever since it was published a century years ago. In an event hosted by the Austrian Cultural Forum, and in collaboration with the British Wittgenstein Society, Shahidha Bari discusses the contexts and contents of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus at 100 with Wittgenstein's biographer Ray Monk, the philosophers...
May 27, 2021•1 hr 3 min
Wearing denim, workwear, or sharp tailoring makes a statement about how we think of ourselves. Charlie Porter has been exploring the relationship between artists and clothes. He joins writer Olivia Laing and Ekow Eshun for a conversation about clothing, bodies, and our expression of our sexuality, hosted by Shahidha Bari. Olivia Laing's latest book is called Everybody: A Book About Freedom Charlie Porter has published What Artists Wear. A former Turner prize judge, he writes and curates and is a...
May 26, 2021•46 min
The Startup Wife is the title of Tahmima Anam's latest novel. Anne McElvoy talks to her about writing about the work/life balance and ideas about risk. New Generation Thinker Mirela Ivanova, from the University of Oxford, is researching Balkan history. She writes us a postcard about the strangely changing look of the main museum in Sofia, Bulgaria and why it's significant. And we look back at Roman history as the British Museum opens an exhibition Nero: the man behind the myth, talking to curato...
May 25, 2021•45 min
Is Gogglebox the main place on TV where you now find criticism? What does that tell us about the role of the critic today? Suzi Feay, Arifa Akbar and Charlotte Mullins join Matthew Sweet to review a new art exhibition at the Barbican showcasing the art and ideas of Jean Dubuffet and to reflect on what being a critic means. Matthew pays tribute to the thinking of Kevin Jackson (3 January 1955 – 10 May 2021) who took part in many critical discussions on BBC Radio 3. New Generation Thinker Vid Simo...
May 20, 2021•46 min
A ghostly Franco visits an elderly man in the latest novel by Patrick McGrath. He joins historian Duncan Wheeler and the makers of a prize winning documentary Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar, as Rana Mitter's guests for a discussion of the Spanish Civil War, the ghosts and silences that remain and how history is now being written. The Silence of Others, backed by Pedro Almodóvar and directed by Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar has been screened at festivals across the world and has picked...
May 19, 2021•45 min
Toussaint Louverture's revolutionary leadership in Haiti; Ravenna's place as a hub of culture and a meeting point of East and West; how motherhood and work have changed from Victorian Manchester factories to the modern boardroom; a 3,000 year history of attacks on libraries and book burnings; battles in the Atlantic from the Vikings to conflicts over slavery in the Caribbean and on the North American coast; recovering the voices of children who experienced the Holocaust: Rana Mitter looks at how...
May 18, 2021•45 min
Singer Umm Kulthum, Mounira al-Mahdiyya, Badia Masabni. These are the names of the pioneering performers working in Cairo's dance halls and theatres in the 1020s whom Raphael Cormack has written about in his new book. From that period of cosmopolitan culture to the uprising in 2011 - how has Egypt shifted ? New Generation Thinker Dina Rezk lectures at the University of Reading and she's been reading the new novel by Alaa Al Aswany - The Republic of False Truths. Edmund Richardson researches Alex...
May 13, 2021•45 min
What stories are being uncovered by people working behind the scenes at museums and institutions? Lisa Mullen finds out talking to Tessa Jackson – Conservator; David Beavan – Senior Research Software Engineer, Turing Institute and Matt Harle – Archivist and curator at the Barbican. Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life runs at the Hepworth Wakefield from 21 May 2021 to 27 Feb 2022. The gallery also runs a Hepworth Research Network in partnership with the Department of History of Art at the University...
May 12, 2021•44 min
From the appeal of trickster gods Anansi and Loki to the joy of comics and fantasy: Booker prize winner Marlon James and Neil Gaiman, author of the book American Gods which has been turned into a TV series, talk writing and reading with Matthew Sweet in a conversation organised in partnership with the Royal Society of Literature and the British Library. Neil Gaiman is an author of books for children and adults whose titles include Norse Mythology, American Gods, The Graveyard Book, Good Omens (w...
May 11, 2021•46 min
The Bechdel test asks whether two women are having a conversation which doesn't relate to a man. Many films, books and plays fall foul of the measure which first appeared in the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, created by Matthew Sweet's guest today Alison Bechdel. Her memoir Fun Home became a Tony Award-winning musical and she has now published The Secret to Superhuman Strength which considers her relationship with exercise so she and Matthew go on an imaginary walk discussing topics includi...
May 06, 2021•45 min
The day before Napoleon's death on May 5th 1821, the willow tree he liked to sit under on St Helena was felled by tempestuous winds. Ruth Scurr has written Napoleon: A Life in Gardens and Shadows. Natasha Pulley's novel The Kingdoms imagines a history with Napoleon victorious in England, Emma Rothschild has traced a family in France over three centuries. Rana Mitter chairs a discussion about how looking at Napoleon as gardener, collector of art and founder of an institution dedicated to the arts...
May 05, 2021•45 min
"We suffer from Johnson" - those words come in a poem written by his friend, the diarist Hester Thrale Piozzi (who died May 2nd 1821). Patience Agbabi's new novel time travels back to eighteenth century London and takes its teenage heroes to a tea party at Samuel Johnson's house. Thomas Lawrence sketched his biographer Boswell. His Jamaican servant Francis Barber inherited his watch. So Laurence Scott convenes his own virtual tea party to look at Samuel Johnson's world. New Generation Thinker So...
May 04, 2021•45 min
A Northern Irish writer - what does that label mean? Lucy Caldwell compares notes with Caroline Magennis about the way authors are charting change and setting down experience - from working class memoirs of life in Derry to the poetry of Seamus Heaney, Sinéad Morrissey and others. And as we approach the centenary of the creation of Northern Ireland, Anne McElvoy talks to Roy Foster and Charles Townshend about the history and legacy of partition. Charles Townshend is Professor Emeritus of Interna...
Apr 29, 2021•45 min
Eight churches were set on fire, and a taste for occult rituals and satanic imagery spiralled into suicide and murder in the Norwegian Black metal scene of the 1990s. Lucy Weir looks at the lessons we can take from this dark story about the way we look at mental health and newspaper reporting. Producer: Emma Wallace Dr Lucy Weir is a specialist in dance and performance at the University of Edinburgh. You can hear her discussing the impact of Covid on dance performances in this Free Thinking disc...
Apr 29, 2021•14 min
Darragh McGee takes the long view of the risk-based games we have played throughout history. He explores the experiences of their losers and the moral censure that their losses have attracted; from the eighteenth century gentry who learned to lose their fortune with good grace at the gaming tables of Bath to the twenty-first century smartphone user, facing an altogether more lonely ordeal. He considers the cultural history gambling - and, what the games we have staked our money on through the ce...
Apr 28, 2021•15 min
From the Jewishness of the New Testament to attempts by 19th- and early 20th-century British Jews to blend in to Christian England, Giles Fraser shows how the two religions have a vexed history but are also surprisingly interconnected in his new book called Chosen. He also looks back at 2011, when the Occupy London took over the steps and surroundings of St Pauls and the resulting division in the church about how to react to this protest movement led him to leave his job and to a crisis of confi...
Apr 28, 2021•46 min
Was Marx wrong when he said that philosophers can only interpret the world in various ways, and contrasted that with actually changing it? Epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, was once considered one of the more abstract areas of philosophy, far removed from the concerns of every-day life. Now, philosophers like Miranda Fricker have developed epistemological concepts that can help us recognise, understand, and address areas where disparities in knowledge feed into wider social and political...
Apr 27, 2021•45 min
The First Congress of Black Writers and Artists in Paris 1956 staged debates about colonial history which are still playing out in the protests of the Gilets Noirs. New Generation Thinker Alexandra Reza leafs through the pages of the journal Présence Africaine, and picks out a short story by Ousmane Sembène, tracing the dreams of a young woman from Senegal. Her experiences are echoed in a new experimental patchwork of writing by Nathalie Quintane called Les Enfants Vont Bien. And what links all ...
Apr 27, 2021•14 min
