Would it help to see Superheroes do their recycling? Do viewers feel more invested in climate protests depending on what the protesters look like? And how does bingeing box sets contribute to emissions and a bigger carbon footprint? Pietari Kaapa explains how blockbusters might be able to have a bigger impact than documentaries about the climate emergency, and Sylvia Hayes describes the changes in news images of climate change protest influence audiences. Sylvia Hayes is a postgraduate researche...
Oct 28, 2021•27 min
Christienna Fryar speaks to the researchers uncovering classical music that has been left out of the canon – discovering the stories of three composers whose voices and stories have been marginalised and obscured over time, despite their profound influence on music: the 18th-century French polymath Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, the Japanese trailblazer Kikuko Kanai and the prolific African-American composer Julia Perry. Christopher Dingle, a Professor of Music at the Royal Birming...
Oct 28, 2021•47 min
The government plans to plant 30,000 hectares of trees each year by 2025. But how practical is it and what would the real impact be? Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough talks to Dr Julie Urquhart of the University of Gloucestershire about why we need more information about carbon capture to help select the best places and the best tree species to plant. William Macalpine is based at Rothamsted – his project explores how cutting back and coppicing willows as a crop encourages a rapid growth cycle and re...
Oct 26, 2021•27 min
Photographing at nightfall, capturing the sense of light in classical music, the charged body of a black Jaguar in the Amazon: Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough's guests poet Pascale Petit, photographer Jasper Goodall, literary expert Alexandra Harris and composer Sally Beamish discuss the way twilight has been reflected in their own work and that of writers and painters of the past. Pascale Petit's collection Fauverie draws on her experiences of watching wildlife at both ends of the day. Her most re...
Oct 26, 2021•45 min
How can we come up with ethical and equal solutions to the climate emergency, helping rural communities to develop, and learn from the experience of indigenous communities. Alison Mohr explains how food waste can be turned into energy, and how giving communities access to energy, football and cold drinks can create business opportunities and help people help themselves. Antonio Ioris shares his experience of working with indigenous communities in Brazil, how they are coping with impacts on their...
Oct 25, 2021•26 min
Child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education are amongst the topics explored in over 20 books by the author Buchi Emecheta. Born in 1944 in an Ibusa village, she lost her father aged eight, travelled to London and made a career as a writer whilst bringing up five children on her own, working by day and studying at night for a degree. Shahidha Bari is joined in the studio by her son Sylvester Onwordi, New Generation Thinker Louisa Egbunike, publisher Margaret Busby...
Oct 23, 2021•45 min
Gardening and George Orwell might not be the first pairing that comes to mind but he uses gardening metaphors in his writing and made many notes about the growth of vegetables and flowers he had planted. Rebecca Solnit discusses how this focus helps us understand his work and that of other writers interested in flowers. Shahidha Bari is also joined by Amy de la Haye, curator and author of 'Ravishing: The Rose in Fashion', Randy Malamud, whose study of cut flowers in culture is called 'Strange Br...
Oct 21, 2021•45 min
Emissions, reputation and shame: what does the history of climate conferences tell us about what to expect at COP26? Professor Paul Harris and Professor John Vogler look at whether there are different ways of approaching some of the key questions to ensure greater success in meeting targets. Why do emissions created in China for businesses based in Europe but using Chinese labour count against China’s pollution tally rather than the European businesses? Should there be a more joined up way of th...
Oct 21, 2021•27 min
Do we value the right ideas? Two concepts come in for close scrutiny in this edition of Free Thinking: Rationality and Tradition. So, what are they, how has our understanding of them changed over time and why do we seem to place such little emphasis on each in our contemporary world? Presenter Anne McElvoy will listening to the arguments as Steven Pinker makes the case for rationality and Tim Stanley for tradition. Steven Pinker is Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and auth...
Oct 20, 2021•45 min
How have we shaped the landscapes around us, and how have landscapes shaped us? From flooding in Cumbria to community groups in Staffordshire, how can understanding the history of a landscape help planners, council policy, and current residents? Do we need to rethink the way we archive information about changes to landscapes? Professor Neil Macdonald has explored the history of relationships with landscapes, whilst artist and scientist Nicole Manley is delving into hidden knowledge to discover w...
Oct 20, 2021•27 min
Who complained about Olivier's Othello? Stephen Bourne has been mining the archives to find out who raised questions about Laurence Olivier's blacked up performance in 1964. It's one of the stories he tells in his new book, which also includes memories of meeting performers including Carmen Munroe, Corinne Skinner-Carter and Elisabeth Welch. Nadine Deller hosts a podcast linked to the National Theatre's Black plays archive and she's particularly interested in women playwrights whose work deserve...
Oct 19, 2021•43 min
Should we consider nature economically, socially, spiritually or culturally? What is the financial worth of bees? And do whales value each other? Dr Rupert Read and Professor Steve Waters explore how humans value nature and how that can impact climate change, whether that’s setting a play in a nature reserve, or considering the fact that whales go on holiday. Dr Rupert Read is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia, and a climate and environmental campaigner. You c...
Oct 15, 2021•27 min
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
