Could the modern world be built on the back of our craving for an addictive substance? Matthew Sweet marshals historians Mimi Goodall and Dexnell Peters, and artist and theorist Ayesha Hameed, to see how far we can push the idea that our desire for sugar led to the development of new forms of agriculture, as well as slavery, empire and capitalism, indeed the initiation of a new era in the earth's geological history and climate. And they consider how we can think through such massive, world-histo...
Oct 14, 2021•45 min
A novel about Matisse, hand glazed ceramic panels, red ochre to Yves Klein blue, the story of female pioneers of colour theory: Laurence Scott is joined by the artist Lubna Chowdhary, author Michèle Roberts and art historians James Fox and Kelly Grovier to celebrate colour and find out more about the history of different colours and the way we look at them. Lubna Chowdhary's exhibition at Peer in London until November will be expanded when it goes on show in Middlesborough at MIMA in 2022 https:...
Oct 13, 2021•45 min
The National Gallery in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut were among the many arts institutions forced to close during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. How has this experience changed the running of these galleries and museums? Anne McElvoy talks to: Gabriele Finaldi - Director of the National Gallery in London, which filmed its Artemisia Gentileschi exhibition and then sold online passes to view the show. Courtne...
Oct 12, 2021•45 min
Climate change presents new challenges to human health. As temperatures rise, tropical and sub-tropical diseases are already becoming more widespread. While climate change has consequences on human health, engaging with the natural world can also have benefits for physical and mental health. But, how do we best communicate and explain these issues and the choices we face. Des Fitzgerald talks to Samantha Walton and Christopher Sanders about their research and discuss the challenges the climate a...
Oct 08, 2021•26 min
The theme of this year's National Poetry Day is choice. Shahidha Bari is joined by Marvin Thompson, winner of this year's Poetry Society National Poetry Competition, and poet and New Generation Thinker Jake Morris-Campbell to discuss the choices poets make in their work, and the choices audiences make in their reception of poetry too. But is choice an illusion? What does it mean to choose anyway? Philosopher Clare Carlisle discusses the analysis of choice offered by the 17th century Dutch philos...
Oct 07, 2021•45 min
Names to put back into the conversation about the history of British Theatre are suggested by Naomi Paxton’s guests in this New Thinking podcast. Stephen Bourne is the author of Deep Are the Roots – Trailblazers Who Changed Black British Theatre. Nadine Deller is an academic whose research focuses on the place of Black women in the Black Plays Archive. She hosts That Black Theatre Podcast in collaboration with the National Theatre and is based at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Nao...
Oct 06, 2021•34 min
Racial injustice in USA; ghost towns in post-industrial Scotland; how maritime history looks from the viewpoint of Aboriginal Australians and Parsis, Mauritians and Malays; the roots of violence that has plagued postcolonial society. These are topics covered in the books shortlisted for the British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding. Rana Mitter talks to the four authors who are: Cal Flynn for Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape Eddie S. Glaude Jr. for Begi...
Oct 06, 2021•45 min
The Full English or Continental? What does our breakfast choice signify and how has it been represented in culture? 60 years on from the opening of the film Breakfast at Tiffany's - taken from Truman Capote's novella - Matthew Sweet and his guests consider a range of examples from monks and nuns breaking the fast, through films and TV series depicting the upper class English choices to the clubs promoted by the Black Panthers and poverty campaigner Marcus Rashford. Matthew is joined by medieval ...
Oct 05, 2021•44 min
Children walking to school, or cycling is the aim of a project in Manchester which one of today's guests, Dr Sarah Mander, works on. She shares her ideas about how to change our patterns of transport use from the morning walk to work or school to worldwide shipping. Professor Tim Schwanen is exploring inclusive transition towards electric mobility and he heads up the transport studies unit at the University of Oxford. They talk to Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough Professor Tim Schwanen oversees vari...
Oct 01, 2021•26 min
Archiving or hoarding - the mother in Ruth Ozeki's new novel The Book of Form and Emptiness is overwhelmed by the newspaper cuttings she is supposed to categorise for her job. In his new history of indexes, Dennis Duncan tells us about why people were criticised as "index rakers" in the Restoration, and the links between Cicero, the idea of alphabetical ordering and a former Bishop of Lincoln. Saxophone player Alam Nathoo is helping Ruth Ozeki launch her novel at the Southbank Centre in London a...
Sep 30, 2021•45 min
Would he condemn Hitler? That's the question novelist Thomas Mann was continually asked, after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929 following novels such as Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mountain. Colm Toibin's new novel The Magician details the differences of opinion between Mann and his brother, and the way his children were part of a bold and experimental younger generation of writers. Anne McElvoy brings Colm Toibin, Sean Williams and Dr Erica Wickerson together for a discussion about...
Sep 29, 2021•45 min
From a "monthly nurse" registered in the census, to local newspaper reports of strikes and industrial accidents, an auction of household goods and furniture to the records of an asylum: just some of the sources and stories that have gone into the most recent programmes broadcast in the BBC TV series A House Through Time. In this podcast exploring the research process, producer Kat Feavers and freelance researcher and historian Melanie Backe-Hansen share some of the work that goes on behind the s...
Sep 28, 2021•37 min
Historical novelist Philippa Gregory, historians Susan Doran and Nandini Das, and literary scholar and author Adam Roberts join Matthew Sweet at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry to discuss the enduring appeal of Tudor history and the role that historical fiction plays in shaping our view of history. Plus the connection between Sir Walter Scott and nearby Kenilworth Castle. Part of the BBC Contains Strong Language festival. Elizabeth and Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens opens at the British Librar...
Sep 28, 2021•45 min
Rebellion and causing offence: Shahidha Bari looks at punk and finds that beyond the filth and the fury of the ‘70s music scene, it provided a new vocabulary for artists that’s shaped the cultural scene to the present day, with photographs of the British punk scene on show, a new documentary coming in the Autumn and the opening of a play this week drawing on the idea of punk. Shahidha's guests are: Morgan Lloyd Malcolm whose drama, opening in Sheffield, features women in a prison becoming inspir...
Sep 23, 2021•45 min
Soil nurtures plant, animal and human life. Industrial farming practices have depleted soil and agrochemicals have been used to revive it. In recent years some farmers have adopted regenerative methods, to create and nurture soil, before turning their attention to growing crops and livestock. So what does the latest research suggests we need to change if we are to encourage greater sustainability in our soil culture and practices? Des Fitzgerald talks to Maria Puig de la Bellacasa and Daryl Stum...
Sep 23, 2021•27 min
Hannah Arendt tackled the big ideas behind possibly the most dangerous period of the twentieth century: Anti-Semitism, Imperialism and Totalitarianism. These phenomena and the concepts of freedom and evil were all the more immediate to her, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany. In recent years there has been a renewed interest in her writing which has often focused on mass propaganda, the differences between fact and fiction and the rise of the strong man leader. It's 70 years since Hannah Arendt ...
Sep 21, 2021•45 min
"I have no relation or friend" - words spoken by Frankenstein's monster in Mary Shelley's 1818 novel. That story, alongside Georg Büchner's expressionist classic Woyzeck, has inspired the new production for English National Ballet put together by Akram Khan. He joins poet Hannah Lowe, who's been reflecting on her experiences of teaching London teenagers; Tash Aw, who explores his Chinese and Malaysian heritage, and his status as insider and outsider in memoir Strangers on a Pier; and New Generat...
Sep 16, 2021•45 min
The fast fashion industry stands accused of depleting natural resources, creating vast carbon emissions and producing endless garments destined for landfill. So, what can be done? Researchers across creative and scientific disciplines have been looking at how the fashion industry can cut waste, recycle, consume less – and, critically, change our attitudes to what we wear. Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough talks to Professor Jane Harris and Professor Simon McQueen Mason about how we can change clothes...
Sep 16, 2021•27 min
One definition of a glitch is a short-lived fault in a system operating otherwise as it should. Glitches in digital systems have been used by artists for at least a decade to produce work with a characteristic aesthetic, that invite reflection on the computer systems that play an ever bigger part in our lives. Matthew Sweet is joined by the artists and theorist of glitches Rosa Menkman and Antonio Roberts to discuss the glitch as a meeting point between technology and aesthetics, along with the ...
Sep 15, 2021•45 min
Descending into the nine circles of Hell is one of the key ideas set out in Dante's Inferno. Today's Free Thinking looks at the way his thinking and imagery have been taken up by other artists and writers. Rana Mitter's guests include the art historian Martin Kemp, the painter Emma Safe, the scholar and Dante website creator Deborah Parker and the New Generation Thinker Julia Hartley from Kings College London. Professor Martin Kemp's latest book is called Visions of Heaven: Dante and the Art of ...
Sep 14, 2021•45 min
Catherine Pepinster, Kate Kennedy, Tim Stanley and New Generation Thinker Dafydd Mills Daniel join Rana Mitter to look at the poet, theologian and now Saint John Henry. The programme explores Newman's conversion from the high church tradition of Anglicanism and the Oxford Movement to the Catholic faith looking at his thinking, his poetic writing and what his story tells us about Catholicism and the British establishment. Catherine Pepinster is former editor of the Tablet and the author of The Ke...
Jul 29, 2021•45 min
From Roman sandals to trainers and stilettos. Shahidha Bari looks at the shoe trade, with guests including Thomas Turner, who has written about sneakers in his book The Sports Shoe, A History From Field To Fashion; Tansy Hoskins,who examines global commerce in her book Footwork: What Your Shoes Are Doing To The World; Rebecca Shawcross, Shoe Curator at Northampton Museum & Art Gallery; and Roman shoe expert Owen Humphreys from Museum of London Archaeology. Sneakers Unboxed: Studio to Street ...
Jul 28, 2021•45 min
Artists Sonia Boyce, Isaac Julien, Eddie Chambers and Harold Offeh talk to Anne McElvoy about their art and the influence of the British black arts movement - which began around the time of the First National Black Art Convention in 1982 organised by the Blk Art Group and held at Wolverhampton Polytechnic. Eddie Chambers has written Roots and Culture: Cultural Politics in the Making of Black Britain and Black Artists in British Art: A History since the 1950s. He teaches at the University of Texa...
Jul 27, 2021•44 min
Tokyo used to be presented as the ultimate hyper-modern city. But after years of economic recession the Tokyo of today has another side. A site of alienation and loneliness, anxiety about conformity and identity, it is a place where self-professed 'geeks' (or 'otaku'), mostly single middle-aged men, congregate in districts like Akibahara to pursue fanatical interests outside mainstream society, including cult-like followings of teenage girl singers known as Tokyo Idols. Novelist Tomoyuki Hoshino...
Jul 23, 2021•44 min
Who can you trust? That's the question posed in Rashōmon. In today's programme Rana Mitter's guests David Peace, Natasha Pulley, Yuna Tasaka and Jasper Sharp look at both the book and the film. Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's short story 'In a Grove', published in 1922, became the basis for the 1950 film from Akira Kurosawa 'Rashōmon', one of the first Japanese films to gain worldwide critical acclaim. 'The Rashōmon Effect' has become a byword for the literary technique where the same event is presented v...
Jul 22, 2021•44 min
Climate Change is expected to continue disrupting food production and consumption. Over recent years pressures have intensified on everyone, from those growing food and selling it, to those paying for and eating it. Researchers are considering how we can best ensure our food supplies are sustainable and secure into the future. We look at the possible options: from local food communities and digital small-holder farming to reducing our meat consumption – and, tackling food inequality. Des Fitzger...
Jul 20, 2021•27 min
A spinster dominated by her mother in Now Voyager (1942), a strong-willed Southern belle in Jezebel (1938) which won her an Academy award for best actress, a Broadway star in All About Eve (1950): just some of the 100 film roles played Bette Davis during a career which ran from the 1930s to the late 1980s. As the British Film Institute puts on a season of films throughout August, including a re-mastered version of Now Voyager, Matthew Sweet is joined by Sarah Churchwell, Lucy Bolton and Anna Bog...
Jul 20, 2021•45 min
Music from Orkney thunderstorms, dog walks in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park that have inspired a set of tiles, essays about the seasons from a diverse collection of writers: Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough's guests, composer Erland Cooper, writer Anita Roy, artist Alison Milner and Dr Pippa Marland, compare notes on the way they filter countryside experiences to create art, music and literature. Anita Roy and Pippa Marland have co-edited a collection of essays titled Gifts of Gravity and Light featu...
Jul 19, 2021•44 min
A "cubist" story - with a plot and timeline broken up and repetitive descriptions of objects, like a painting by Picasso, is one way in which the French nouveau romain of the 1960s has been described. Alain Robbe Grillet (1922 – 2008) was one of the main figures associated with this literary movement. He was also a member of the High Committee for the Defense and Expansion of French and published novels called Les Gommes (Erasers), Le Voyeur (the Voyeur), and collaborated on films with Alan Resn...
Jul 14, 2021•44 min
With extreme weather events expected to become more frequent in the future, are there any lessons we can learn from the past? Environmental historians have been looking at droughts, floods and hurricanes - and, considering the impact they had on communities and how they responded. Des Fitzgerald asks Georgina Endfield and Jean Stubbs how both local and international stories of extreme weather can encourage public awareness and engagement with preparing for the realities of climate change. Georgi...
Jul 14, 2021•27 min