Arts & Ideas

The most famous imposter of the seventeenth century - Mary Carleton. John Gallagher, of the University of Leeds, argues that the story of the "German Princess" raises questions about what evidence we believe and the currency of shame. Her real name was thought to be Mary Moders and she became a media sensation in Restoration London, after her husband’s family, greedy for the riches they believed her to be concealing, accused her of bigamy and put her on trial for her life. Her life, and what remains to us of it, forces us to ask hard questions of the sources from her time. Whose word do we trust?

Sophie Coulombeau tells the story of John Trusler, an eccentric Anglican minister who was the quintessential 18th-century entrepreneur. He was a prolific author, an innovative publisher, a would-be inventor, and a ‘medical gentleman’ of dubious qualifications. Dismissed by many as a conman and scoundrel, today, few have heard of the man but his madcap schemes often succeeded, in different forms, a century or two later. In his efforts we can trace the ancestors of the thesaurus, the self-help book, Comic Sans, professional ghostwriting, the Society of Authors, and electrotherapy. New Generation Thinker Sophie Coulombeau, from Cardiff University, argues that telling his story can help us to reinterpret and rehabilitate the very idea of 'failure'.

Our romantic attachment to the idea of wildwood, the impossibility of ever getting back to some primeval grove, and the possibilities opening up about the health and wellbeing of future forests, are debated by Rana Mitter with ecologist and conservationist, Keith Kirby, who knew and worked with Rackham, botanist Fraser Mitchell whose work with pollen is helping to uncover the deep history of trees and environmental archaeologist, Suzi Richer, who is assembling oral histories of woodcraftship and exploring different ways we have imagined the forest. Also celebrating the habitat where many good trees went to die, Donald Murray, author and poet, celebrates peat bogs, for themselves and their place in human cultures around the world. In midsummer week, Radio 3 enters one of the most potent sources of the human imagination. 'Into the Forest' explores the enchantment, escape and magical danger of the forest in summer, with slow radio moments featuring the sounds of the forest, allowing time out from today’s often frenetic world

Colin Grant, Hannah Lowe and Jay Bernard discuss writing about Windrush 70 years on with Shahidha Bari. Plus Alexandra Harris looks at trees in art as part of Radio 3's Into the Forest season of programmes and Jonathan Eato and Nduduzo Makhintini discuss their research into South African jazz -- one of the subjects in the British Academy Summer Showcase.Colin Grant has written books including Bageye at the Wheel, A Smell of Burning, I & I Natural Mystics and Negro with a Hat.Hannah Lowe's poems include Ormonde, a specially produced chapbook charting the voyage of the 1947 SS Ormonde from Jamaica to the UK through the lens of her Chinese-Jamaican immigrant father, a passenger on the boat. Jay Bernard was awarded the 2018 Ted Hughes award for new poetry for Surge: Side A, an exploration of the 1981 New Cross fire. More information about Windrush is at http://www.windrush70.com/ Alexandra Harris is the author of books including Weatherland, Virginia Woolf, Modernism on Sea and Romantic Moderns.You can hear a Landmark discussion about Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway available on bbc.co.uk/FreeThinking and the The Royal Society of Literature is marking Dalloway Day at the British Library today.The British Academy Summer Showcase - a new free festival of ideas - runs June 22nd - 23rd at 10-11 Carlton House Terrace, London, SW1Y 5AH . Opening times are 11am - 5pm with an evening opening on 22nd. And the South African Jazz Archive when it opens will be in Stellenbosch.Producer: Zahid Warley

Ursula Le Guin's idea of the forest is explored by philosopher and Green party politician Rupert Read and novelist Zen Cho. Plus Matthew Sweet talks to Ian Hislop about this year's winner of the Paul Foot Award for Investigative Journalism, and for Radio 3's 'Into the Forest' we ask whether, if a tree falls in the wood and nobody is around, it makes a sound.Usula Le Guin (1929 - 2018) published her science fiction novella The Word for World Is Forest in 1972.In midsummer week, Radio 3 enters one of the most potent sources of the human imagination. 'Into the Forest' explores the enchantment, escape and magical danger of the forest in summer, with slow radio moments featuring the sounds of the forest, allowing time out from today's often frenetic world.Producer: Luke Mulhall

Historian Fern Riddell and composer Debbie Wiseman on why the piano is essentially erotic while psychologist Frank Tallis and Tiffany Watt Smith explore obsessive love with presenter Matthew Sweet. Plus Grainne Sweeney curator of an exhibition which looks at the way inventors from the North East of England have shaped the world we live in today. Dr Frank Tallis is a writer and clinical psychologist and author of The Incurable Romantic: and Other Unsettling Revelations as well as a series of detective novels The Liebermann Papers and horror and supernatural fiction. Dr Fern Riddell is a New Generation Thinker and author of Death In Ten Minutes: Kitty Marion. Actress. Arsonist. Suffragette. Jane Campion's prize winning film The Piano is being re-released to mark 25 years since it was made. Debbie Wiseman's most recent recordings include her score for the film Edie, and Live at the Barbican. Dr Tiffany Watt Smith is a New Generation Thinker and author of The Book of Human Emotions The Great Exhibition of the North runs from 22 June—9 September 2018 in a variety of museums, galleries, music venues and public squares in Newcastle and Gateshead. It includes Which Way North at the Great North Museum: Hancock from Friday 22 June - Sunday 9 September 2018.Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Commentator Douglas Murray, journalist Bari Weiss and writer Ed Husain join Philip Dodd to explore the 'Intellectual Dark Web'. Their YouTube videos and podcasts receive millions of views and downloads. They sell out theatres across the US. But these aren't rock stars or the latest pop sensation. They are a collection of public intellectuals, scientists, political columnists, and stand up-comedians who are at the front line of the raging 'culture wars'. As two of its leading figures, neuroscience Sam Harris and clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson, prepare for a UK tour, Philip Dodd finds out more about this popular movement. The Strange Death of Europe by Douglas Murray is out now. The House of Islam: A Global History by Ed Husain is out now. Producer: Craig Templeton Smith.

Mark Lilla could be called the conscience of liberal America. He talks to Anne McElvoy about life after identity politics. 2018 New Generation Thinker Gulzaar Barn discusses whether paying people for taking part in medical trials is different from other forms of "labour". Plus Owen Hatherley's latest book is called Trans-Europe Express: Tours of a Lost Continent. He discusses what makes a European city and who should take responsibility for shaping our urban environment whether its Hull or Thessaloniki with Deborah Saunt from DSDHA - who are working on new plans for the West End of London following the opening of Crossrail stations.Mark Lilla's new book, The Once and Future Liberal, is a ferocious analysis of the American left’s abdication as well as a call to arms. The time for evangelism - of speaking truth to power is over, he says, now it’s all about seizing power to defend truth. Gulzaar Barn lectures in philosophy at the University of Birmingham working on moral, political, and feminist philosophy. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 with the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics at the start of their careers who can turn their research into radio. You can find a collection of short columns reflecting their research on bbc.co.uk/FreeThinking Producer: Zahid Warley

Matthew Sweet meets with physician, anthropologist, author and Jimmy Carter's former 'drugs czar', Peter Bourne. Comparing his life to the title character in the film Forrest Gump, the trained psychiatrist and Vietnam veteran looks back on an eclectic career spanning six decades. He talks about his involvement in the civil rights movement, his close relationship with Jimmy Carter (and how he convinced him to run for president), serving as an Assistant Secretary-General at the UN, and his awkward encounter with Saddam Hussein. The author of a Fidel Castro biography, Bourne also caught the attention of the author Robert Ludlum. Producer: Craig Templeton Smith.

From people-watching with Aristotle in a London park, to meeting in a luxury hotel at midnight to discuss the fate of a continent, to using a lunchtime five-a-side game as the starting point for a meditation on the human condition, this programme treats 'philosophy' as a verb rather than a noun. Bernard-Henri Lévy is in London to perform a one-man play on Brexit. Simon Critchley's new book is What We Think About When We Think About Football, and Edith Hall's is Aristotle's Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life. Shahidha Bari talks to each of them about bringing philosophy out of the academy. Producer: Luke Mulhall