Arts & Ideas

Jimmy Wales talks Diderot & collecting knowledge + Tariq Goddard on Mark Fisher aka k-punk. The French writer Diderot was thrown into prison in 1749 for his atheism, worked on ideas of democracy at the Russian court of Catherine the Great and collaborated on the creation of the first Encyclopédie. Biographer Andrew S. Curran and Jenny Mander look at Diderot's approach to editing the first encyclopedia. Plus writer and publisher Tariq Goddard on the work and legacy of his collaborator and friend, the critical theorist Mark Fisher who analysed the culture of Capitalism following the economic crash of 2008. Shahidha Bari presents.Diderot and the art of Thinking Freely by Andrew S Curran is out now. k-punk: the collected and unpublished writings of Mark Fisher (2004-2017) edited by Darren Ambrose is out now.Producer: Luke MulhallYou can find a playlist of programmes on the Free Thinking website on The Way We Live Now exploring ideas from boredom, to whether doctors should cry? the joy of sewing to ideas about consent. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p072637b

The Porpoise, Haddon's latest novel is now out in paperback. Anne McElvoy talks to him about the language of bloke, writing female characters and taking inspiration from Shakespeare and the legend of Pericles. The conversation ranges across his career in theatre, children's writing and stories for adults, the impact of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time which he published in 2003 and his recent illness.Recorded in front of an audience as part of the BBC Proms Plus series of discussions.You can find a playlist of In Depth Conversations on the Free Thinking website with guests including James Ellroy, Edna O'Brien, Sebastian Faulks, Margaret Atwood, Elif Shafak, Arundhati Roy, Zadie Smith, Hanif Kureishi and others. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04ly0c8Producer: Fiona McLean.

The double life of the Bristol born Hollywood star of films including Suspicion, The Philadelphia Story and Charade. Matthew Sweet and guests imagine an evening in the film star's company. Born Archie Leach in 1904, he starred in films by Alfred Hitchcock, played opposite actors including Doris Day and Audrey Hepburn, Deborah Kerr, Sophia Loren and Katherine Hepburn, and sat on the board of MGM films, before his death in 1986.Charlotte Crofts runs the bi-annual Cary Grant Festival and is an Associate Professor of Film-making at the University of the West of England. Pamela Hutchinson blogs about silent cinema at SilentLondon.co.uk as well as contributing regularly to Sight & Sound and the Guardian. Mark Glancy is a Reader in Film History at Queen Mary, University of LondonThe Cary Comes Home weekend in Bristol is due to take place 20-22 November 2020Producer: Craig SmithYou can find more episodes of Free Thinking in which Matthew discusses films including Laurel and Hardy's The Music Box https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06xjln9 Hitchcock's Marnie https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05k6tn7 2001 A Space Odyssey https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04sv91qThey are all in a playlist called Landmarks of Culture https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01jwn44

Presenter Rana Mitter is joined by guests Tony Juniper, Emily Shuckburgh, Dieter Helm and Kapka Kassabova to discuss Rachel Carson’s passionate book, Silent Spring, first published in 1962 and said to be the work which launched the environmental movement. Recorded at the 2019 Hay Festival. Tony Juniper is a campaigner, sustainability adviser and writer of work including Saving Planet Earth and How many lightbulbs does it take to change a planet? Emily Shuckburgh is a climate scientist and mathematician at the British Antarctic Survey and the co-author (with the Prince of Wales and Tony Juniper) of the Ladybird Book on Climate Change. Dieter Helm is an economist specialising in utilities, regulation and the environment. His recent books include Burn Out: the Endgame for Fossil Fuels, The Carbon Crunch, Nature in the Balance and Natural Capital: Valuing the Planet. Kapka Kassabova is a novelist, poet and journalist whose work includes Border,, Someone else’s life and Villa Pacifica. You can hear her talking to Free Thinking about winning the Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding here https://bbc.in/2TsFZ51You might be interested in our episode Soil Stories which hears from agroecologist Jules Pretty and geologist Andrew Scott amongst others https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08fj505You can find a collection of all the discussions of Landmarks of culture as a playlist on the Free Thinking website / and available to download as BBC Arts&Ideas podcasts https://bbc.in/2Jw9y5QProducer: Fiona McLean

From a Victorian Maths Professor to Aldous Huxley, AJ Ayer and Barbara Ehrenreich - Shahidha Bari explores the impact of life changing experiences & the fourth dimension talking to Mark Blacklock, Jeffrey Kripal and Lisa Mullen.Mark Blacklock has written a novel called Hinton which traces the life and ideas of Charles Howard Hinton (1853 – 1907) who wrote an article in 1880 called What is the Fourth Dimension. Jeffrey Kripal holds the J Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University and his book The Flip: Who You Really Are and Why It Matters has just been published in the UK. It includes the experiences of figures including AJ Ayer,, Hans Berger, Huxley, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Michael Shermer. Lisa Mullen is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker and author of a book called Mid-century gothic: The uncanny objects of modernity in British literature and culture after the Second World War. Lisa recommends Powell and Pressburger's Second World War film A Matter of Life and Death. Mark recommends Edwin Abbott Abbott's satirical novella Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions published in 1884. Producer: Robyn Read and Craig Templeton Smith You might also be interested in the Free Thinking playlist on philosophy on the website which includes programmes about pansychism https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0144txn or in Shahidha's discussion about the new biography of Maths Professor Frank Ramsey https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000fws2

Rana Mitter is joined by Edith Hall, Nandini Das and Beatrice Groves to explore the books which inspired Shakespeare from the Bible and classical stories to the writing of some of Shakespeare's contemporaries.Edith Hall is Professor in the Classics Department and Centre for Hellenic Studies at King's College London. Her books include Introducing The Ancient Greeks and has co-written A People's History of Classics with Henry Stead.Nandini Das is Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. She is also a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.Beatrice Groves is Research Lecturer in Renaissance Literature at the University of Oxford and her books include Texts and Traditions: Religion in Shakespeare 1592-1604The programme was recorded in front of an audience in BBC Radio 3's pop-up studio as part of Radio 3's Stratford residency at the Royal Shakespeare Company.Producer: Torquil MacLeodYou can find a playlist of programmes exploring different aspects of Shakespeare on the Free Thinking programme website including interviews with the actors Antony Sher & Janet Suzman, writers including Jo Nesbo & Mark Ravenhill and detailed explorations of The Tempest and the Winter's Tale https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06406hm

Lewis Dartnell, Gaia Vince and David Farrier join Rana Mitter to look at deep ecology.Gaia Vince is the author of Transendence: How Humans Evolved Through Fire, Language, Beauty And Time Lewis Dartnell's book is called Origins: How the earth shaped history David Farrier has written a book called In Search of Future Fossils.You can find a Free Thinking programme exploring rivers and geopolitics https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00051hb Matthew Sweet talks to animal expert Jane Goodall https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00066qd The influential writing of Arne Naess is discussed at in the middle of this programme after a conversation about the Thames estuary https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07tzydtProducers: Luke Mulhall and Alex Mansfield

Philip Dodd talks to actor Christopher Eccleston and historian Ruth Dudley Edwards and asks them for their views on the way identity and a sense of belonging are shifting. Producer: Torquil MacLeodYou can hear Christopher Eccleston in BBC Radio 3's Drama Schreber, see him in the RSC Macbeth production as part of the BBC Culture in Quarantine season and in the latest series of the TV drama the A Word. Ruth Dudley Edwards' books include The Seven — The Lives and Legacies of the Founding Fathers of the Irish Republic and her latest crime fiction title Killing The Emperors

From the experiences of Quaker wives in the seventeenth century to the samplers and bibles in the homes of workers in the Industrial Revolution - Dr Naomi Pullin from the University of Warwick, and Professor Hannah Barker of the University of Manchester join historian and New Generation Thinker Tom Charlton to compare notes on the way their research marks a shift in the way religious beliefs of past times are being studied.Naomi Pullin is the author of Female Friends and the Making of Transatlantic Quakerism, 1650-1750 Hannah Barker is Director of the John Rylands Research Institute and Historical Advisor for the National Trust at Quarry Bank Mill and has written on family, gender and business in the Industrial Revolution.This episode is one of a series of conversations, produced in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation. You can find more on the website of the AHRC, and on the website for the Free Thinking discussion programme where there’s a playlist called New Research.You might be interested in this Free Thinking discussion about religious divisions, puppet shows and politics in the middle of this programme https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0000xvn There is a playlist Free Thinking explores religious belief on the programme website featuring Richard Dawkins, Simon Schama, Karen Armstrong, Shelina Janmohamed and others https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03mwxlpProducer: Luke Mulhall

University Challenge star Bobby Seagull, writer and critic Jordan Erica Webber, games consultant and researcher Dr Laura Mitchell, and British Museum curator Irving Finkel join Shahidha Bari in the Free Thinking studio to get out the playing cards and the board games and consider the value of play, competitiveness and game theory.Bobby Seagull has published The Life-Changing Magic of Numbers. Irving Finkel has written Ancient Board Games, the Lewis Chessmen, Cuneiform, The Writing in Stone. He is on the Editorial Board of Board Games Studies and discovered the rules for the royal game of Ur.Producer: Luke MulhallYou might be interested in other discussions about The Way We Live Now in this playlist on the Free Thinking programme website which includes discussions about boredom, drugs and consiousness, what is speech and What Nietzche teaches us https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p072637b