Arts & Ideas

A motorbike adorned with a zebu skull is one of the central images of Djibril Diop Mambéty's classic 1973 film, whose title translates as The Journey of the Hyena. Listed as one of the 100 greatest films of all time in the Sight and Sound magazine poll, it mixes West African oral traditions with influences from the French New Wave and Soviet cinema. Mory and Anta are two young people growing up in a newly independent Senegal who fantasise about leaving Dakar for a new life in France, but how can they realise those dreams and do they really want to leave? Matthew Sweet is joined by New Generation Thinker Sarah Jilani, Estrella Sendra Fernandez and Ashley Clark.Sarah Jilani is a lecturer in English at City, University of London and has written on neocolonialism in Francophone West African cinema. Estrella Sendra Fernandez lectures in film and screen studies at SOAS, University of London. She directed the award-winning documentary film Témoignages de l’autre côté about migration in Senegal. Ashley Clark is curatorial director at the Criterion Collection. He is the author of the book Facing Blackness: Media and Minstrelsy in Spike Lee’s “Bamboozled”Producer: Torquil MacLeodImage: Mareme Niang (Right), and Magaye Niang in a still from the film Touki Bouki Le Voyage de la Hyène, 1973 Senegal. Director : Djibril Diop Mambéty. Image credit: AlamyIn the Free Thinking archives you can find a series of programmes exploring silent film, star actors including Jean-Paul Belmondo, Marlene Dietrich, Dirk Bogarde, and classics of cinema around the world including Kurosawa's Rashomon, Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali, the films of Jacques Tati and Charlie Chaplin.

Drama and gaming are being used in a pair of projects exploring adolescent mental health. Dr Daisy Fancourt finds out why this meeting of the arts and science might unlock new ideas for treatments and discovers the different ways in which young people are participating in the projects. Professor Eunice Ma is the Provost of Falmouth University and is co-leading a new project called ATTUNE. This will look at the way adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) can affect adolescents' mental health with the aim of developing new approaches to prevention and care. Edmund Sonuga-Barke is Professor of Developmental Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience at King’s College London and is leading a new project called RE-STAR which aims to help young people with neuroatypicalities such as Attention Deficit/Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). You can find information about the projects on this link https://www.ukri.org/news/24-million-investment-into-adolescent-mental-health/ The podcast is made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI. You can find a playlist called New Research on the website for Radio 3's Free Thinking programme and all the episodes are available as Arts & Ideas podcasts. Producer: Phoebe McFarlane

Love during a lockdown is at the centre of Sarah Hall's latest book Burntcoat. Monica Ali's new novel is called Love Marriage and looks at love across two cultures and different ideas about feminism, family and careers. Adam Mars-Jones' Box Hill is a darkly affecting love story between men set in 1975. The authors join Shahidha Bari for a conversation exploring writing about relationships.Burntcoat by Sarah Hall and Box Hill by Adam Mars-Jones are both out now. Monica Ali's novel Love Marriage is published in February 2022.Producer: Jessica TreenYou can find other conversations about writing in the Free Thinking Prose and Poetry playlist https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p047v6vh

From Aldous Huxley to cat pictures by Louis Wain: altered states of consciousness can be induced by taking drugs, but they also include dreams, tiredness, grief, and various states of mental illness. Matthew Sweet is joined by Turner Prize winning artist Tai Shani, whose recent work Neon Hieroglyphs explores the history and culture of the hallucinogenic fungus ergot; Sarah Shin, editor of an anthology Altered States; Gary Lachman, historian of the occult whose most recent book Dreaming Ahead of Time explores precognitive dreams; and David Luck, archivist at the Bethlem Museum of the Mind, currently staging an exhibition of Louis Wain's cat pictures which are often described as being psychedelic.Producer: Luke MulhallYou can find Tai Shani's artwork online at the Serpentine Gallery https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/tai-shani-untitled-hieroglyphs/Animal Therapy: The Cats of Louis Wain runs at the Bethlem Museum of the Mind until April 14th and there's also an online version https://museumofthemind.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/animal-therapy-the-cats-of-louis-wainAltered States edited by Sarah Shin and Dreaming Ahead of Time by Gary Lachman are out now.In the Free Thinking archives you can find Matthew Sweet discussing Drugs and Consciousness with guests including David Nutt https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0000nllAnd David Nutt shared his musical choices with Michael Berkley on Radio 3's Private Passions https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006tnv3Image: Louis Wain's painting Kaleidoscope Cats. Image credit: By permission of Bethlem Museum of the Mind

The legend of Mélusine emerges in French literature of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries in the texts of Jean d’Arras and Coudrette. A beautiful young woman, the progeny of the union between a king and a fairy, is condemned to spend every Saturday with her body below the waist transformed into the tail of serpent. She agrees to marry only on the condition that her husband should never seek to see her on that day every week. Shahidha Bari explores the emergence of the hybrid mermaid-woman, her historical significance and the legacy of the medieval myth of Mélusine.Olivia Colquitt is an AHRC funded doctoral candidate at the University of Liverpool whose research focuses upon the socio-cultural significance of the late Middle English translations of the French prose romance Mélusine and its verse counterpart, Le Roman de Parthenay.Hetta Howes is Senior Lecturer in Medieval and Early Modern Literature at City, University of London and is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker. She is the author of Transformative Waters in Medieval Literature.Lydia Zeldenrust is an Associate Lecturer in Medieval Literature, where she currently holds a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship. She is the author of The Melusine Romance in Medieval Europe.Producer: Ruth Watts

Do we underappreciate comic writing ? It’s 400 years since the birth of France’s great satirical playwright, Jean-Baptiste Pocquelin, better known by his pen-name Molière. Stendhal described him as “the great painter of man as he is” and his works have continued to be translated and performed on both the French and British stage with recent adaptations by Christopher Hampton, Anil Gupta and the Scottish poet and playwright, Liz Lochhead. She joins Anne McElvoy to help consider what we make of Molière now and how well his plays work in translation, alongside Clare Finburgh-Delijani, Professor of European Theatre at Goldsmiths, University of London and Suzanne Jones, a Junior Research Fellow in French at St Anne’s College Oxford. Their discussion looks at various adaptations of Tartuffe, Moliere’s play translated as The Hypocrite or The Imposter, which was first performed in 1664.Listen out for a Words and Music episode which picks out key speeches from plays including The Miser, the Imaginary Invalid, The School for Wives and the Misanthrope. You can hear that on BBC Radio 3 at 5.30pm Sunday 16th - followed by a new adaptation of The Miser scripted by Barunka O’Shaughnessy. You can also find out about the court music of Lully in Composer of the Week and there's a special edition of Radio 3's Early Music Show.Producer: Ruth Watts

The conventional view of Neville Chamberlain's dealings with Hitler at the 1938 Munich Conference, paints him as weak and gullible - an appeaser. But why did appeasement become such a dirty word when negotiation and accommodation are such valuable diplomatic tools? Rana Mitter is joined by historian Tim Bouverie, screenwriter Alex von Tunzelmann and journalist Juliet Samuel to reassess Chamberlain's reputation and to examine how the long shadow of Munich still affects the actions of politicians in the 21st century.Tim Bouverie is the author of Appeasing Hitler: Chamberlain, Churchill and the Road to War. Alex von Tunzelmann wrote the screenplay for Jonathan Teplitzky's 2017 film Churchill. Juliet Samuel is a columnist who covers politics, economics, foreign policy and technology for The Telegraph.There's a new film adaptation of Robert Harris's best-selling novel Munich. Munich: The Edge of War is on selected release in cinemas from 7th January and available on Netflix from 21st January.Producer: Torquil MacLeodYou can find a playlist of programmes exploring War and Conflict on the Free Thinking website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06kgbyb

From duels to hygiene and medical protection to the image of the gloved aristocrat whose hands aren’t coarsened by work: Shahidha Bari dons a pair of gloves as she finds out about tranks, fourchettes, lace, wool and glove making which is on The Heritage Craft Assosicaion's 'Red List' of Endangered crafts. The Glove maker Riina Oun creates high-fashion bespoke gloves. She has collaborated with designers such as Giles Deacon and Meadham Kirchhoff, and she also teaches the art of gloving. Technologist Tom Chatfield considers the glove as cutting edge technology, explains what haptic feedback does for us and why the hand is so important in helping us navigate virtual worlds. Anne Green's book 'Gloves: An Intimate History', has just been published, a cultural history written as disposable protective gloves took on a whole new resonance. And Rebecca Unsworth brings us stories from her work with Birmingham Museums as she considers the smells of gloves and their role as the ultimate 17th century gift.Producer: Jessica TreenYou might be interested in other conversations about fashion in the Free Thinking archives: Fashion stories in Museums hears from V&A fashion curator Claire Wilcox, Veronica Isaac and Cassandra Davies Strodder https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000s2by Fashion, Art and the Body brings together Ekow Eshun, Charlie Porter and Olivia Laing https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000wc78 Jade Halbert discusses recycling of fashion in this episode https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00061m1 The Politics of Fashion and Drag hears from Scrumbly Koldewyn, visits the Vauxhall Tavern and talks to Jenny Gilbert https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09zcjch

Matthew Sweet explores Belmondo's central role in the revolutionary cinema of 1960s France and how he became one of the most celebrated screen actors of his generation with Ginette Vincendeau, Lucy Bolton and Phuong Le.Ginette Vincendeau is Professor of Film Studies at King's College London. Lucy Bolton is Reader in Film Studies at Queen Mary University of London. Phuong Le is a film critic based in Paris.A BFI season focused on the films of Francois Truffaut runs across January and February and includes a BFI Player collection and a batch of Blu-rays being released in Spring 2022 and partner seasons at cinemas around the UK including Edinburgh Filmhouse and Ciné Lumière.Producer: Torquil MacLeod

90% are unknown still but the species which have been studied have given us penicillin, ways of breaking down plastics, food and bio fuels but they can also be dangerous. Neither animal nor vegetable, they are both amongst us and within us, shaping our lives in ways it is difficult to imagine. Merlin Sheldrake's book about fungi, Entangled Life, has won the Royal Society Science book of the year and the Wainwright Conservation prize so here's Matthew Sweet with him and others discussing the amazing life of mushrooms.Francesca Gavin curated an exhibition Mushrooms: The Art, Design and Future of the Fungi, which ran at Somerset House in London and is now available to view as an online tour. It features the work of 40 artists, musicians and designers from Cy Twombly to Beatrix Potter, John Cage to Hannah Collins. Sam Gandy is an ecologist, writer and researcher who has collaborated with the Centre for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College. https://www.imperial.ac.uk/psychedelic-research-centre/ Begoña Aguirre-Hudson is Curator and Mycologist at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. She helps look after the Kew Fungarium - the largest collection of fungi in the world. https://www.kew.org/science/our-science/people/begona-aguirre-hudsonProducer: Alex Mansfield You can find other discussions in the Free Thinking archives about food https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08wn51y Cows, farming and our view of nature https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000n0g8 Humans, animals, ecologies: conversations with Anna Tsing and Joanna Bourke https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000sjmj