Arts & Ideas

Lea Ypi, author of a memoir entitled Free: Coming of Age at the End of History, joins Matthew Sweet to explore the history and culture of Albania - its art, music and literature. They're joined by Adela Demetja - curator and director of the Tirana Art Lab - Centre for Contemporary Art in Albania and curator of the Albania pavilion in last year's Venice Biennale, which featured the work of Lumturi Blloshmi. Ani Kokobobo, Associate Professor and chair of Slavic Languages & Literatures at the University of Kansas and translator of Ismail Kadare, discusses Kadare's major works including his 1981 novel The Palace of Dreams. Violinist Aurel Qirjo performs in studio - music featured on the album At least wave your handkerchief at me: The joys and sorrows of Southern Albanian song, by his band Saz'iso. Producer: Eliane Glaser

What ethical questions arise from new human-machine relations as we are increasingly asked, as citizens and workers, to collaborate with AI systems? And how might a feminist approach to AI design help us shape an equitable future for AI-Human relations?Research Associate, Kerry McInerney, discusses how facial recognition AI software is being deployed in job recruitment and to tackle gender based violence. Lecturer, Kendra Briken describes her work on the integration of the human labour force with AI, including in the nursing profession.Research Fellow, Eleanor Drage, discusses the use of Facial Recognition by the UK police and its implications for civic rights and privacy.Kerry McInerney and Eleanor Drage co-host THE GOOD ROBOT Podcast and are Research Associates at the University of Cambridge’s Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. Their book The Good Robot: Feminist Voices on the Future of Technology is out soon.Kendra Briken is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. This episode of the New Thinking podcast was put together in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI as part of our series New Thinking focusing on new research at UK universities. There is a collection of discussions Free Thinking the Future on BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking programme website, from AI and creativity to our increasing reliance on robotics and automation. All of the conversations are available to download as the Arts and Ideas podcast.For more information about the research the AHRC support around AI https://www.ukri.org/what-we-offer/browse-our-areas-of-investment-and-support/research-into-artificial-intelligence/ Producer: Jayne Egerton

Billy Waters became a celebrity in early 19th century London as a talented street performer. New Generation Thinker Oskar Jensen and Mary L. Shannon join Rana Mitter to tell Billy's story and those of other musicians performing on the streets of London at the time. Charlie Taverner has written a history of Street Food. We also hear from Marigold Hughes about the latest production from Streetwise Opera, an organisation that devises opera productions with people who are or have been homeless.Vagabonds: Life on the Streets of Nineteenth-century London by Oskar Jensen is out now. Mary L. Shannon's book 'Billy Waters Is Dancing’ will be published later this year. Street Food: Hawkers and the History of London by Charlie Taverner is out now Streetwise Opera, BBC Concert Orchestra and The Sixteen perform Re:sound at the Southbank Centre, London on Weds 22nd March and at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London on Sun 26th March.Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Cinderella is opening in a new ballet production at the Royal Opera House and Mothering Sunday is coming up so Matthew Sweet is joined by New Generation Thinkers Sabina Dosani and Emma Whipday and Marina Warner for a conversation about good and bad mothering and how images are changing.Marina Warner's many books include From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers Frederick Ashton's ballet Cinderella has been re-imagined using video design for a new production running at the Royal Opera House 27th March - 3rd MayProducer: Eliane Glaser

A Persian epic depicted in The Yellow Book which Aubrey Beardsley was art editor for, Iranian figures on the French operatic stage and Rudyard Kipling's links with decadent ideas: Shahidha Bari is joined by Dr Julia Hartley, Dr Alexander Bubb and Professor Jennifer Yee to discuss new research into late nineteenth century art, literature and opera and what we mean by decadence. Was it really a-political and focused on surface and ornament? And how far are ideas about art for art's sake and sex for sex's sake linked?Producer: Robyn ReadDr Alexander Bubb teaches at the University of Roehampton, London and is the author of Flights of Translation: Popular Circulation and Reception of Asian Literature in the Victorian World. Professor Jennifer Yee teaches Modern Languages at the University of Oxford and has edited a book French Decadence in a Global Context. Julia Hartley is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker who teaches at Glasgow University. Later this year she will be publishing Iran and French Orientalism: Persia in the Literary Culture of Nineteenth-Century FranceYou might be interested in a Radio 3 Sunday Feature asking Should Feminists Read Baudelaire ? And the Free Thinking programme website has a collection of discussions exploring Prose, Poetry and Drama

Debt is central to the modern economy and it has long been so. The idea of debt has long been loaded with as much morality as financial meaning. Anne McElvoy explores our ideas about debt, what it is and how it works. Decisions about borrowing or paying down debt are currently being faced the world over. They’re informed by political beliefs and a whole history of ideas behind that. So, how have our ideas changed over time and what can or should be done about it?Professor Kenneth Rogoff is Maurits C. Boas Chair of International Economics at Harvard University, a former Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund and the author of This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. Vicky Pryce is an economist and a former Joint Head of the United Kingdom's Government Economic Service. New Generation Thinker Philip Roscoe is a Reader in the School of Management at the University of St Andrews and the author of How to Build a Stock Exchange: On the past, present and future of finance. And, New Generation Thinker, Dafydd Mills Daniel is a lecturer in Divinity at the University of St Andrews who looks at the history of philosophy and religious thought.Producer: Ruth Watts

Body language is being studied as a way of working out new ways of learning Sign Language and if British Sign Language is to be taught as a GCSE in schools who should do the teaching? As we mark 20 years since British Sign language was acknowledged as a language in its own right (18th March 2003) and then the passing in 2022 of recognition in law that it is an indigenous language of Great Britain: Naomi Paxton talks to two researchers in the field. Doctor Kate Rowley is the Deputy Director of the Deafness Cognition and Language Research Centre at UCL, and Doctor Gerardo Ortega is a lecturer in the Department of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Birmingham. They talk to New Generation Thinker Naomi Paxton about their research into language and literacy development in deaf children, body gestures and iconicity. Kate explains how regional accents are interpreted in sign language and Gerardo tells us how he and his team have created the first gesture dictionary in the Dutch community. They also discuss the importance of deaf education and the representation of deaf people in mainstream popular culture. And Kate and Gerardo share their own favourite sign.They are also joined in the studio by BSL interpreters Kal Newby and Susan Booth and you can find a transcript of the conversation on supporting content. This conversation is a New Thinking episode of the Arts & Ideas podcast made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI. You can find more discussions about New Research collected on BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking programme website

Iranian women using song to protest and whose voices do we pay attention to ? On International Women's Day, Shahidha Bari hosts a conversation with the authors of books called On Being Unreasonable and Who Gets Believed, an artist and a researcher looking at Iranian women using song. Michelle Assay is an academic specialising in music who was born in Iran and had to leave the country. Dina Nayeri is an Iranian American writer now based in Scotland and Kirsty Sedgman studies the behaviour of audiences. Alberta Whittle represented Scotland in the Venice Biennale and has exhibitions on at Bath's Holburne Museum and in Scotland.Alberta Whittle: Dipping below a waxing moon, the dance claims us for release is at the Holburne Museum until May 8th. Alberta Whittle | create dangerously runs at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art from Sat 1 Apr 2023 - Sun 7 Jan 2024 Kirsty Sedgman's On Being Unreasonable: Breaking the Rules and Making Things Better is out now https://kirstysedgman.com/ Dina Nayeri's latest book is called “Who Gets Believed? https://www.dinanayeri.com/ You can hear more from her in a previous episode of Free Thinking called Language and Belonging https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0006fh9 Free Thinking has a whole collection of programmes Women in the World with conversations ranging from fictional characters including The Wife of Bath and Lady Macbeth to Arabian queens, landladies, women warriors and goddesses ttps://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p084ttwpProducer: Jayne Egerton

Bullshit jobs, Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value, Debt: The First 5000 Years: the titles of some of David Graeber's books give a sense of his take on the world and his concerns. Matthew Sweet talks with archaeologist David Wengrow - co-author with Graeber of The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity and looks at Graeber's involvement with the Occupy movement and the influence of anarchist ideas. They are joined by historian of ideas Dr Sophie Scott-Brown, and by Kirsten Stevens-Wood, a lecturer for the School of Education and Social Policy at Cardiff Metropolitan University who studies communal living and intentional communities.Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia by David Graeber has been published posthumously in 2023.Producer: Luke Mulhall

The monk and poet Dom Sylvester Houédard (1924-92) used his Olivetti Lettera 22 typewriter to fuse art and writing in concrete poetry. Born in 1924 he worked in Army Intelligence in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore during the Second World war and in 1949 he joined the Benedictine Abbey of Prinknash, Gloucestershire. Matthew Sweet looks at his life and art with guests Nicola Simpson, Rey Conquer, Charles Verey and Greg Thomas.Charles Verey is writing a biography of Dom Sylvester Houédard and jointly editing a book of talks given by Dom Sylvester in the context of Beshara, in the last years of his life. Nicola Simpson is editor of The Cosmic Typewriter, The Life and Work of Dom Sylvester Houédard (Occasional Papers, 2012) and curator of The Cosmic Typewriter exhibition and symposium (South London Gallery, 2012) and The Yoga of Concrete (Norwich University of the Arts, 2010). Her research interests focus on the influence of Zen and Vajrayana Buddhism on British Conceptual Art of the 1960s and 1970s. She has also worked on an online exhibition at the Lisson Gallery Greg Thomas is a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Edinburgh studying concrete poetry. Rey Conquer writes on poetry and religion and lectures in German at the University of Oxford and researches the problem religious belief in art and literature poses to the secular imagination.Producer: Luke Mulhall