Arts & Ideas

Muppets in Moscow is Natasha Lance Rogoff's account of launching a Russian version of the American tv series Sesame Street. If a single announcer supplies the dialogue dubbing when a foreign film is shown in Russia where do you find the technical skills you need? Should you feature exclusively ethnically Russian actors or include nationalities from former Soviet republics? What puppets from Russian folklore might be suitable and what kind of education for children are you trying to achieve? Anne McElvoy asks Natasha about how she found the answers to these questions and how that period of Russian TV differs from the media landscape there today.Plus New Generation Thinker Victoria Donovan looks at punk protest and films such as Little Vera (1988); Lucy Weir traces the ways in which art and music responded to the era of Perestroika and beyond; and, Tamar Koplatadze explores how literature from across the former republics of the USSR is beginning to process the Soviet past.Producer: Ruth Watts

How sewing machines wrecked sewing. Why people mistrusted tin cans. What the invention of stainless steel had to do with the military. New research into the impact of industrialisation on materials like tin, steel and sewing machines is shared by the academics Chris Corker from the University of York, Lindsay Middleton from the University of Glasgow, and Serena Dyer who teaches at De Montfort University. Chris Harding hosts the conversation.Producer: Tim Bano

Hungry Ghosts is the new novel set in colonial Trinidad by Kevin Jared Hosein. Colin Grant has written a memoir about his Jamaican family. A new art project, Windrush Portraits, is a collaboration between Mary Evans and Michael Elliott with communities in both Kingston, Jamaica, and Southampton, UK. Shahidha Bari looks at the way ghosts of history haunt these artworks.Producer: Robyn ReadHungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein is out now. Colin Grant's memoir I'm Black So You Don't Have to Be is out now and you can find out more about his work at https://colingrant.info/ Colin is also Director of the Royal Literary Fund website Writers Mosaic https://writersmosaic.org.uk/ This is an online magazine and developmental resource focused on UK writers of the global majority. Windrush Projects will see special billboards on display across Jamaica throughout February 2023 and the artists Mary Evans and Michael Elliott will make new artworks, created in collaboration with communities that will be presented during October 2023 (Black History Month in the UK) in both Southampton, UK and Kingston, Jamaica.You can find a collection of conversations exploring different aspects of Black History on the Free Thinking programme website. It includes recent episodes about Phillis Wheatley, Gwendolyn Brooks, Idrissa Ouédraogo, Amílcar Cabral and the Victorian circus performer Pablo Fanque https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08t2qbp

Haggling with Indian customs officials and presenting a mighty emperor with the distinctly unimpressive gifts of a cheap sword and a broken carriage are two particularly inauspicious moments that feature in the tale told by historian and New Generation Thinker Nandini Das in her new book about the four years Thomas Roe spent as James VI and I's ambassador to the Mughal Empire. Peter Frankopan has previously written about The Silk Roads and the First Crusade. Now he has turned his attention to writing a 5 billion year long history of the natural world, geography and climate change and the influence that these have had on shaping empires and civilisations. Nandini and Peter join Rana Mitter to share insights from their research and to discuss different ways writing history.Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire by Nandini Das is out on 16th March. Peter Frankopan's The Earth Transformed: An Untold History is published on 2nd March.Producer: Torquil MacLeod.You can hear Nandini Das presenting a Sunday feature about a wager journey made in Tudor England by Shakespeare's clown Will Kemp available on BBC Sounds and another feature The Kristapurana follows Thomas Stephens to Goa https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00016st Peter Frankopan discussed What Kind of History Should we Write ? with Rana Mitter and Cundill prize winner Maya Jasanoff in a previous Free Thinking episode https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00016vf

A new exhibition at the Ashmolean looks at the digs conducted by Sir Arthur Evans at Knossos in Crete. At the National Theatre Janet McTeer stars as the Cretan princess Phaedra in a new play by Simon Stone. Classicist Natalie Haynes, curator Andrew Shapland and Minoan archaeologist Nicoletta Momigliano join Rana Mitter to explore what the artefacts found at Knossos can tell us about the world of the Minoans and to delve into the powerful myths these Bronze Age Cretans left us.Labyrinth: Knossos, Myth and Reality runs at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford from 10 Feb 2023 to 30 July 2023 Phaedra a new play by Simon Stone after Euripides, Seneca and Racine runs from 1 February to 8 April at the National Theatre in London Natalie Haynes is the author of books including Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths A production of Medea starring Sophie Okenedo and Ben Daniels runs at the Soho Theatre in London from Feb to 22nd April A debut novel called Phaedra by Laura Shepperton puts the stories of Medea and Phaedra together.Producer: Torquil MacLeodRadio 3's Words and Music has an episode inspired by The Aeniad broadcasting on Sunday February 26th at 17.30 and available on BBC Sounds for the following month You can find more conversations about the Classics in the Free Thinking archives including a discussion with Bettany Hughes, Paul Cartledge and Colm Toibin recorded at Hay 2017: Women's Voices in the Classical World

Burkinabé filmmaker Idrissa Ouédraogo (21 January 1954 – 18 February 2018) was awarded the Grand Prix at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival for his film Tilaï. Much of Ouédraogo's work deals with the tensions between rural and city life and tradition and modernity in his native Burkina Faso. Matthew Sweet is joined by Boukary Sawadogo who teaches cinema studies at City College of New York and New Generation Thinker Sarah Jilani.Boukary Sawadogo is the author of books including “West African Screen Media: Comedy, TV Series, and Transnationalization” and “African Film Studies: An Introduction”Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Proust as an agony uncle, Romeo and Juliet rewritten as 21st century Welsh teenagers in a new drama by Gary Owen, the Lesbian coming of age novel by Rita Mae Brown that inspired the lead character in Willy Russell's Educating Rita to change her name and a new book inspired by the historical figures who collaborated on the first English medical textbook on homosexuality. Tom Crewe's novel The New Life depicts the married lives and love triangles of John Addington Symonds and Henry Havelock Ellis and the impact of Oscar Wilde's trial on their attempts to publish their study of what they called "inversion". Naomi Paxton is joined by Tom Crewe, Gary Owen and New Generation Thinkers Julia Hartley and Diarmuid Hester.Romeo and Julie by Gary Owen runs at the National Theatre in London until April 1st and then moves to the Sherman Theatre Cardiff Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown was first published in 1973 and is available now as a paperback. On the Radio 3 website you can find an Essay from Diarmuid Hester about the writing of Dennis Cooper and a Sunday Feature about the radical life of suffrage pioneer Edith Craig. New Generation Thinker Julia Hartley has published a book looking at reading Proust and Dante. Tom Crewe's novel is called The New Life.Other conversations about love in the Free Thinking archives include Sappho, Jonathan Dollimore and a Punjabi version of Romeo and Juliet A quartet of researchers exploring dating, relationships and stories from the National Archives to London's gay bars. Free Thinking, Being Human: Love Stories And we’ve discussions of poetry, philosophy and novels about love with the likes of AL Kennedy and Andrew McMillan, Alain de Boton and Tahmima Anam And a discussion and article about Rude Valentines' cards https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/34JCKJtrl07f5kY3G9kFNpd/eight-incredibly-offensive-victorian-valentinesProducer: Robyn Read

From Orwell and Shakespeare back to Greek myth, Aesop, and early Christianity: Matthew Sweet and guests look at a cultural history of the donkey. EO, a film out in UK cinemas this month, follows the life of a donkey born in a Polish circus.New Generation Thinker Lisa Mullen is an expert on George Orwell and lecturer in film at the University of Cambridge Lucy Grig is Senior Lecturer in Roman History at the University of Edinburgh Faith Burden is Executive Director of Equine Operations at the Donkey Sanctuary in Devon Directed by Jerzy Skolimowski EO is inspired by Robert Bresson's 1966 film Au Hasard Balthazar and is showing at venues across the UK organised by the BFI.Producer: Luke Mulhall

Soldiers fighting in the Crimean War lapped up this story and it also influenced the young William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones who read it at Oxford. The Heir of Redclyffe, published in 1853, reflects the mid-Victorian trend for medievalism and resurgence of High Church Anglicanism, combining gothic melodrama with sharply observed social realism, sprightly dialogue and wry humour. Although Charlotte M Yonge came to be associated mainly with domestic realism, in her long career (1823–1901) she worked across a wide range of genres, writing biographies, histories, children's books, and novels from historical epics to long-running family sagas. In Yonge's bicentenary year, New Generation Thinker Clare Walker-Gore argues that now is the time to rediscover this brilliant and neglected woman writer.Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Playwright Zinnie Harris, author Isabelle Schuler and New Generation Thinker Emma Whipday and Michelle Assay have looked at the murdering husband and wife of Shakespeare's Scottish play. Chris Harding hosts a discussion about the Macbeth story from Kurosawa and Shostakovich to a novel called Lady MacBethad and a play called Macbeth an Undoing.Macbeth - an Undoing by Zinnie Harris runs at the Lyceum Edinburgh from Feb 4th to 25th 2023. Throne of Blood Akira Kurosawa's 1957 film is part of a BFI season celebrating the director which runs across February. https://whatson.bfi.org.uk You can find Free Thinking discussions about Rashomon https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b01vwk and Seven Samurai https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03yqt07 available on BBC Sounds Lady MacBethad by Isabelle Schuler is published March 2023. Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk from the New York Metropolitan Opera, starring soprano Svetlana Sozdateleva and tenor Brandon Jovanovich and conducted by Keri-Lynn Wilson is being broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on February 25th and available on BBC Sounds for a month afterwards. Alice Birch’s 2016 version of this story relocated to Yorkshire is a film available for rent. Michelle Assay is a musician and has researched Shakespeare. A collection called Free Thinking explores Shakespeare are all available to download as the Arts & Ideas podcast and on BBC Sounds https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06406hmProducer: Ruth Watts