Arts & Ideas

Reader’s Digest magazine is celebrating its centenary this year. In the first of a series of features looking back at cultural milestones in 1922 – the year the BBC was founded – New Generation Thinker Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough finds out about the history of the Reader’s Digest talking to Professor Sarah Churchwell and Dr Victoria Bazin.Producer: Torquil MacLeod You can find a playlist about books, art and philosophy from 1922 in a collection called Modernism on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07p3nxh

Louise Jameson joins Matthew Sweet to recall the women who ran the digs she stayed in as a touring actor and the landladies that she's played (including a homicidal one!). Historian Gillian Williamson looks at how life in boarding houses in Georgian London has been portrayed both in contemporary accounts and in fiction, while Lillian Crawford encounters some memorable landladies in Ealing comedies and other post-war British films.Gillian Williamson is the author of Lodgers, Landlords, and Landladies in Georgian London.Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

Are animals a human invention? What is a lama like? Do plants have sex? Was Amelia Earhart eaten by crabs? These are just some of the questions posed by Shahidha Bari and addressed by her guests Katherine Rundell, Dan Taylor, Helen Cowie and Stella Sandford, as they trace the history of human conceptualisations of animals and the natural world. From the Medieval tendency to draw moral lessons from animals, to Linnaeus' attempts to organise them into taxonomies, via Darwin's abolition of the distinction between humans and animals, to the sense of wonder at the natural world needed to orient us towards tackling ecological crises. Plus, the growing area of plant philosophy and how it overturns the history of western metaphysics.Producer: Luke Mulhall

The list of contributors joining Lisa Mullen: Henry Eliot, author of a book of bookish lists which details everything from the different deaths of Greek tragedians to the contents of Joan Didion's travel bag; Florence Hazrat, New Generation Thinker and historian of punctuation; Liam Young, author of a book about lists as a way of organising knowledge, from Ancient Mesopotamia to Buzzfeed; and Joanna Nolan, a researcher in sociolinguistics at SOAS who asks whether lists are ever private languages.Eliot's Book of Bookish Lists, List Cultures by Liam Cole Young and An Admirable Point: A Brief History of the Punctuation Mark by Florence Hazrat and The Elusive Case of Lingua Franca: Fact and Fiction by Joanna Nolan are out now and you can hear Joanna talking about that research in a previous episode called What Language Did Columbus Speak? A Radio 3 Essay from Florence Hazrat called Pause for Thought exploring the way punctuation has developed over the centuries is available now on BBC Sounds The Free Thinking programme website has a collection of discussions exploring The Way We Live Now including episodes about breakfast, hitchhiking, immortality, writing about money, tattoos, mental health Producer: Luke Mulhall

Russell T. Davies is joined by his friend and author of Love from the Pink Palace, Jill Nalder, to discuss their importance in one another’s lives, the role of literature in their lives, and the TV series It’s a Sin with New Generation Thinker and psychiatrist Sabina Dosani and chair Matthew Sweet in a conversation recorded in partnership with the Royal Society of Literature at the British Library.Producer: Torquil MacLeod

From a Norwich workhouse to performing as "The American Voltigeur" - Pablo Fanque, or William Darby as he was born, was a star of 1830s circus in Britain. Nearly a hundred years later one of the names topping the bill was Lillian Leitzel. Kate Holmes is also an aerial performer and she shares her research into female aerialists with John Woolf, author of Black Victorians. Plus the presenter Shahidha Bari is also joined by New Generation Thinker Naomi Paxton who compares researching early music hall and pantomime performers with the experience of taking part in a professional panto and by novelist Lianne Dillsworth whose novel Theatre of Marvels imagines a Black British actress who performs at Crillick's Theatre as the "Great Amazonia".Producer: Sofie VilcinsBlack Victorians: Hidden in History by John Woolf and Keshia N Abraham is out now. John Woolf has also published The Wonders: : Lifting the Curtain on the Freak Show, Circus and Victorian Age Naomi Paxton made a Sunday Feature for Radio 3 about suffragette theatre and Punch and Judy https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0008qdl She is now playing the baddie, Queen Rat in Dick Whittington at The Theatre Chipping Norton Lianne Dillsworth's Theatre of Marvels is out now.You can find more programmes on Free Thinking about Victorian life Oskar Jensen and Fern Riddell are amongst Matthew Sweet's guests in a conversation about Victorian Streets https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0017v2s Kathryn Hughes talks Victorian Bodies and George Eliot https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b088jl64 How the Victorians tried to make us sound the same looks at ideas about accents and reading https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001fng4 Matthew Sweet looks at the career of impresario Philip Astley and 250 years of the circus https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09k8gyw How we talk about sex and female bodies, including Saartje Baartman https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000f5n6Swing High short documentary film was directed by Jack Cummings, and was produced by Metro Goldwyn Mayer in 1932.

Why Hardy's spelling matters, how Lancashire reflected on the American Civil War through dialect poems printed in local newspapers, how education inspectors at Victorian schools policed pupils dropping the letter "h" : a quartet of academics: Greg Tate, Louise Creechan, Lynda Mugglestone and Simon Rennie join John Gallagher for the latest part of Free Thinking's series looking at the way we speak, accents and multilingualism. With recent research from the Sutton Trust showing prejudice against regional accents is still rife, this conversation looks at earlier examples of attempts to standardise English spelling and speaking and at where local dialects were celebrated.Producer: Luke MulhallThis New Thinking episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast was made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRIOther episodes include: What Language did Columbus Speak? Lingua franca in 15th century travel and today’s refugee camps Dead Languages: John Gallagher says hello in Oscan, the daily language of ancient Pompeii and looks at the translation of hieroglyphics The Black Country: Matthew Sweet hears about the way the region has been depicted in writing which seeks to celebrate the local accent.

What does sound add to looking at a painting? Four ambitious multi-media installations make up the shortlist for this year's Turner prize, addressing issues from environmental change to identity politics to motherhood. There is a trend for immersive art experiences but does triggering other senses than the visual help us understand art better? Meanwhile a set of exhibitions in London explores sight itself and how we see and are seen by others. We'll be asking what happens when we open ourselves up to the idea of seeing things differently.New Generation Thinker Vid Simoniti teaches on art and philosophy at the University of Liverpool. He joins presenter Catherine Fletcher to discuss this year's Turner prize along with Dr Cleo Hanaway-Oakley, whose research interests include the role of the senses in culture and the artist Sally Booth, who is visually impaired.In Plain Sight runs at the Wellcome Collection in London until 12 February 2023 The four shortlisted artists for the Turner Prize 2022 whose work is on display at Tate Liverpool until to 19 March 2023 are: Heather Phillipson, Ingrid Pollard, Veronica Ryan and Sin Wai Kin. The winner is announced on December 7th. Immersive shows in London currently include Mexican Geniuses: A Frida & Diego Immersive Experience runs at Canada Water; Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience, Klimt the immersive experience, Frameless, Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirror Rooms and The World of ASMR. Layers of Visions, featuring work by Sally Booth and others, is on show at the Kings' College exhibition space in Bush House Arcade, London until Dec 16th 2022 More information on her work is at https://sallybooth.co.uk/ Cleo Hanaway-Oakley discussed James Joyce and vision on a Free Thinking episode Bloomsday, Dalloway Day and 1922 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001828lThe Free Thinking programme website has a collection of episodes exploring Art, Architecture, Photography and Museums with recent episodes focusing on shows about Plastic and Clay; The Frieze/Radio 3 Museum Directors Debate 2022 hearing about running the Guggenheim New York, the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris and M+ in Hong Kong; Alexander the Great, and Hollow Earth: Art, Caves & The Subterranean Imaginary at Nottingham Contemporary.Producer in Salford: Olive Clancy

Soil degradation threatens our ecosystem and is among the most significant problems at a global level for agricultural production, food security and sustainability. World Soil Day 2022 on December 5th aims to heighten soil awareness so ahead of this, Anne McElvoy explores changes to both rural and urban farming. Mike Collins charts the evolution of the city farm; Jim Scown considers the relationship between soils, science and literary realism in Victorian Britain; Catherine Oliver asks why a growing number of city dwellers are rising with the rooster & discovering community in chicken keeping and Peter Wright, a film director, discusses his documentary, Arcadia, which captures the magic of rural Britain and our changing views towards the land and has a soundtrack from Adrian Utley (Portishead) and Will Gregory (Goldfrapp).Jim Scown is a New Generation Thinker and Post Graduate Researcher at Cardiff University Catherine Oliver, Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge Mike Collins is Head of Public Engagement for the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and has written an article for the BBC History magazine Peter Wright's documentary, Arcadia is being screened with the soundtrack by Adrian Utley (Portishead) and Will Gregory (Goldfrapp) performed live in Sunderland on November 30th and can be seen in Leeds and London March 2023You can find more discussions about Green Thinking in a collection on the Free Thinking programme website also available from the Arts & Ideas podcast feed - programmes includes episodes about mushrooms, forests, rivers, eco-criticism and designing the home https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07zg0r2

The first interracial kiss on American TV, a decidedly internationalist cast of characters: Star Trek has always been a deeply political programme but what are those politics? How did they arise in the Cold War America in which the show was initially developed? And where does the vision of an international (or even intergalactic) Federation developed in the series fit into the politics of today? Matthew Sweet is joined by George Takei, who played Lieutenant Sulu in the original Star Trek series, novelist and screenwriter Naomi Alderman, screenwriter and academic Una McCormack, and academic José-Antonio Orosco, author of Star Trek's Philosophy of Peace and Justice: A Global, Anti-Racist Approach.George Takei's Allegiance is at the Charing Cross Theatre in London from 7th January - 8th AprilProducer: Luke Mulhall