Arts & Ideas

Kelly and Zach Weinersmith share visions of the future with Rana Mitter. Plus former Australian PM Kevin Rudd on power and what images does Finland conjure 100 years after independence? We hear from Pauliina Stahlberg, Director of the Finnish Institute and Anne Robbins, curator of Lake Keitele: A Vision of Finland which runs at the National Gallery in London until 4 February 2018.Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve and/or Ruin Everything by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith is out now. You can find a collection of Free Thinking the Future conversations on the programme website. Kevin Rudd's Memoir is called Not for the Faint-hearted: A Personal Reflection on Life, Politics and Purpose 1957-2007 Producer: Debbie Kilbride

New Generation Thinkers Shahidha Bari & Laurence Scott consider how archives come to life with events from the Being Human Festival including klezmer music, stories from conflict in Northern Ireland and voices from marginalised communities.

Stories of objects, ghosts and histories lost and found recorded on location in Portsmouth's most haunted house, the site of a sacrifice in Canterbury and at the TfL Lost Luggage Office. Presenter Matthew Sweet meets academics taking part in Being Human which showcases research from universities around the UK.How can the reflections of a warrior-poet from the distant past and the adventures of an Iron Age tribesman from the far future help us rethink our relationship with a city centre in the Britain of today? Matthew Sweet travels to Canterbury to find out. The Transport for London lost property office is a labyrinthine cornucopia hidden away under the streets of central London. A visit there leads to reflections on our complicated relationships with things in a consumer society dominated by mass-produced goods, and the history of the concept of lost property casts a revealing light on the development of the city as an ordered space. And, some say that Wymering Manor in Portsmouth is one of the most haunted houses in the country. Whether that's true or not, Matthew goes there to examine the ways in which the past of a building intrudes into its present. Matthew's guests include: Michael Bintley and Sonia Overall in Canterbury Kate Smith and Paul Cowan at the TFL Lost Property Office Karen Fielder and Benjamin Ffrench in PortsmouthProducer Luke Mulhall.

BBC Head of News, James Harding, offers his verdict of a new stage version of Network, starring Bryan Cranston. Philosopher, Gloria Origgi, considers the importance of reputation in the digital age. Plus, presenter Rana Mitter meets with the 'father of Virtual Reality', Jaron Lanier. Jaron Lanier's books include You Are Not a Gadget, Who Owns the Future, and Dawn of the New Everything. Network scripted by Lee Hall and directed by Ivo van Hove, based on the Paddy Chayefsky film, runs at the National Theatre until February 2018 and stars Bryan Cranston as news anchor-man Howard Beale.Reputation: What it is and why it matters by Gloria Origgi is out now. Producer: Craig Templeton Smith

‘There are three urgent and indeed great problems that we face today… that is the problem of racism, the problem of poverty and the problem of war.’ The words of Martin Luther King in 1967 when he visited Newcastle upon Tyne to receive an honorary degree. Words that underlie a discussion about poetry and protest which features in the festival marking the 50th anniversary of that visit. The poets Jackie Kay, Fred D’Aguiar and Major Jackson join Shahidha Bari and an audience at Newcastle University to explore the nature of protest poetry and to launch a poetry anthology celebrating the spirit of Dr King. Producer: Zahid Warley.MAJOR JACKSON Going to Meet the Man As if one day, a grand gesture of the brain, an expired subscription to silence, a decision raw as a concert of habaneros on the lips: a renewal to decency like a trash can smashing a storefront or the shattering glass face of a time-clock: where once a man forced to the ground, a woman spread-eagled against a wall, where a shot into the back of an unarmed teen: finally, a decisive spark, the engine of action, this civilian standoff: on one side, a barricade of shields, helmets, batons, and pepperspray: on the other, a cocktail of fire, all that is just and good"Going to Meet the Man" originally published by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. in Holding Company,© Major Jackson, 2010 The Mighty Stream: Poems in Celebration of Martin Luther King edited by Carolyn Forché and Jackie Kay is published by Bloodaxe. Photo: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. signs the Degree Roll At Newcastle University after receiving an honorary Doctor of Civil Law degree, Newcastle, England, November 14, 1967. Credit: Getty Images

Author Boris Akunin and broadcaster and writer Zinovy Zinik in conversation with Anne McElvoy, recorded with an audience at Pushkin House.Pushkin House has commissioned a pavilion on Bloomsbury Square in London from the architect and artist Alexander Brodsky, titled '101st km - Further and Everywhere', as part of the Bloomsbury Festival. Anne visits this with Pushkin House Director Clem Cecil.Boris Akunin is the pen name of Grigory Chkhartishvili, who was born in Georgia in 1956. An essayist, historian, playwright and translator, he is best known as the author of crime and historical fiction featuring the 19th-century detective Erast Fandorin.Zinovy Zinik is a Russian-born British novelist, essayist and short story writer whose books include The Mushroom Picker. Having lost his Russian citizenship with his emigration from the USSR in 1975, Zinik settled down in Britain in 1976.Part of Radio 3's Breaking Free: A Century of Russian CultureProducer: Torquil MacLeod.

"The greatest documentary of all time"? Michael Nyman, Alexei Popogrebsky, Ian Christie and Larushka Ivan-Zadeh join Matthew Sweet to discuss Dziga Vertov's 1929 film, Man with a Movie Camera, which was voted top of a poll conducted by Sight and Sound Magazine. Vertov's film is a kind of cinematic symphony of urban life in the Soviet Union. It fizzes with ideas and is the embodiment of the notion that cinema can promote revolutionary consciousness. For some its an achievement to set along side the films of Eisenstein. Both could lay claim to being the greatest film maker of their time and their friendship ended in rivalry. Man with a Movie Camera counts amongst its admirers the novelist, Salman Rushdie and the enfant terrible of the French New Wave, Jean-Luc Godard.Michael Nyman has composed scores for the three major films that the pioneering Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov made in the late 1920s and is now working on an opera about Vertov. Ian Christie is Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck University London. He is co-editor, with Richard Taylor, of The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents 1896-1939 and Eisenstein rediscovered. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh is chief film critic for the Metro newspaper. Alexei Popogrebsky is a film director and screenwriter whose work includes How I Ended this Summer and Prostye veshchi. Plus, on the website you can find Salman Rushdie's comments about watching the film. Part of Radio 3’s Breaking Free: A Century of Russian Culture Producer: Zahid Warley

Nobel prize winner Svetlana Alexeivich on the Soviet Woman's Stories of World War II and why they did not want them published; Stephen Kotkin with Volume II of his biograph of Joseph Stalin explores the bloody creation of a Soviet State capable of standing up to hostile global countries. Ran Mitter talks to them about their top down/bottom up histories of Soviet Culture and also hears from Juliane Fürst about Soviet hipsters and hippies who challenged the system in ways that required no words. Svetlana Alexeivich's books include The Unwomanly Face of War, Boys in Zinc and Chernobyl Prayer.Stalin, Vol 2: Waiting for Hitler, 1928-1941 by Steven Kotkin has just been published. Stalin, Vol 1: Paradoxes of Power 1878-1928 is now in paperback. Steven Kotkin is Professor of History and International Affairs at Princeton University. Juliane Fürst, Reader in Modern History at Bristol, is the co-producer of the documentary Soviet hippies (dir. Terje Toomistu) and the author of Stalin's Last Generation: Soviet Post-War Youth and the Emergence of Mature Socialism.Part of Radio 3’s Breaking Free: A Century of Russian Culture

Comedian Janey Godley, historian John Gallagher, poet and journalist Bridget Minamore and author and science writer Dr Emma Byrne discuss with Matthew Sweet swearing on stage, in pain and protest and when new terms entered our language. Swearing Is Good For You by Emma Byrne is out now. Please note this programme may contain strong language.Producer: Debbie Kilbride

David Hendy, Glyn Maxwell, Kate Kennedy and Lucy Walker with Philip Dodd and an audience at Aldeburgh in a discussion exploring Britten’s relationship with radio in Britain and in America, with his subjects as varied as mountaineering (with words from Christopher Isherwood), a dramatisation of Homer’s Odyssey and short stories by D.H. Lawrence (with a young W.H. Auden). But why was Britten so reluctant to accept a job at the BBC’s Music department in the 1930s? David Hendy is a historian of the BBC and Professor of Media and Cultural History at the University of Sussex.Glyn Maxwell is a poet and librettist who has traced the journey of Auden and MacNeice to Iceland.Kate Kennedy is a biographer and editor of the forthcoming ‘Literary Britten’Lucy Walker is Director of Programmes and Learning at the Britten-Pears Foundation. Recorded in front of an audience as part of the Britten on the Radio weekend at the Britten Studio at Snape Maltings.Producer: Fiona McLean.