Arts & Ideas

From sugar and spice, to reparations and memorials: slavery and how we acknowledge it is debated by Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough and her panel of writers and academics: Dr Katie Donington, Dr Christienna Fryar, author Rosanna Amaka, and playwright and journalist Juliet Gilkes Romero.Dr Katie Donington teaches history at London South Bank University. Her research focuses on the cultural, commercial, political, and familial worlds of slave owners in Jamaica and Britain. She was an historical advisor for the BAFTA award-winning BBC2 documentary, Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners (2015), and was co-curator of Slavery, Culture and Collecting at the Museum of London Docklands.Dr Christienna Fryar is leading a new MA in Black British History at Goldsmiths, University of London, following her role as Lecturer in the History of Slavery and Unfree Labour at the University of Liverpool.Rosanna Amaka's novel is called The Book of Echoes, and is published by Doubleday.The Whip by Juliet Gilkes Romero runs at the RSC Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon until 21 March 2020.You can find the Legacies of British Slave Ownership database here https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/In the Free Thinking archives you can hear: Author Esi Edugyen in Slavery Stories https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001bch Artist and film director Steve McQueen and a debate about Slavery narratives https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03pdf14Steve McQueen runs at Tate Modern until 11 May 2020. The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates is out nowProducer: Emma Wallace

Alice Guy-Blaché the pioneering film director, a British film pioneer Robert Paul and how the Boer War led to animated film are the topics for discussion as Matthew Sweet talks to Donna Kornhaber, Ian Christie and Pamela B. Green. Ahead of this weekend's Oscars ceremony they reflect on early film innovations.Alice Guy or Alice Guy-Blaché (July 1, 1873 – March 24, 1968) is considered a pioneer of narrative film. A new documentary Be Natural the untold story of Alice Guy-Blaché is on general release in the UK from January 2020.Robert Paul (3 October 1869 – 28 March 1943) was also an early pioneer of British film. He also worked as an electrician and scientific instrument maker. Ian Christie has written a biography called Robert Paul and the Origins of British Cinema. An exhibition about Paul runs at Bradford's National Science and Media Museum until March 2020.Donna Kornhaber has published Nightmares in the Dream Sanctuary: War and the Animated Film.Producer: Caitlin Benedict

Lisa Dwan tells Philip Dodd what playing Beckett taught her about herself and feminism; playwright Mark Ravenhill, arts editor Jan Dalley & sp!ked author Alexander Adams discuss the proposition that the arts are increasingly expected to be uplifting and inspirational and to confirm identities. Where do the pessimism and shattered identities of Beckett's work fit into this view of culture?Beckett Triple Bill is at Jermyn Street Theatre, London until 8th February starring Lisa Dwan, Niall Buggy, James Hayes and David Threlfall. Endgame runs at the Old Vic in London until March 28th starring Daniel Radcliffe, Alan Cummings, with Rough for the Theatre II with Jane Horrocks and Karl Johnson.Culture War: Art, Identity Politics and Cultural Entryism by Alexander Adams is published by SocietasProducer: Torquil MacLeod

The German joker Tyll Ulenspiegel. Anne McElvoy with best selling novelist Daniel Kehlmann plus Prof Karen Leeder who has been looking at changing versions of the Dresden bombing.Daniel Kehlmann's new book is called Tyll, translated by Ross Benjamin. A Netflix TV series has been commissioned. His book Measuring The World about mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss and German geographer Alexander von Humboldt became the world's second best-selling novel in 2006. Professor Karen Leeder teaches at the University of Oxford. She has translated Porzellan: Poem vom Untergang meiner Stadt by Durs Grünbein, coming out as Durs Grünbein, Porcelain: Poem on the Downfall of my City and has been reading a new history of Dresden by Sinclair Mackay called Dresden: The Fire and the Darkness. You can hear her contributing to a discussion on Radio 3's The Verb about German poetry after the Fall of the Berlin Wall https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b7x0You can find Anne McElvoy talking to Susan Neimann about tolerance, censorship and free speech and lessons from German history https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0008hvz to novelists Florian Huber and Sophie Hardach about New angles on post war German history https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0006sjx to Neil McGregor about Germany https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b079mcgfDr Tom Smith lectures in German at the University of St Andrews. Dr Dina Rezk lectures on Middle East History at the University of Reading. They are both New Generation Thinkers on the scheme run by the BBC in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council to work with academics to share their research on radio. You can find more examples of their work on the Free Thinking programme website.Producer: Paula McGinley

From government intervention and workshop ingenuity, to Britain's 'mind blowing historical carbon debt' and ground that's been polluted for 200 years, via the slave economies of Jamaica and the southern US states. John Gallagher discusses new lines of thinking on the Industrial Revolution with historians Emma Griffin of the University of East Anglia, and William Ashworth of the University of Liverpool.More information about Living With Machines https://livingwithmachines.ac.uk/ Living with Machines is funded by AHRC, part of UKRI. This episode is one of a series of conversations - New Thinking - produced in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UK Research & Innovation. Further podcasts are available on the BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking website under the playlist New Research https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90Producer: Luke Mulhall

Are fungi out to get us or here to help? Neither animal nor vegetable, they are both amongst us and within us, shaping or lives in ways it is difficult to imagine. They can also be very tasty. An exhibition of mushrooms at Somerset House in London prompts Matthew Sweet to look at what we can learn from them, the way they grow and depictions of them in the arts. Francesca Gavin is curator of Mushrooms: The Art, Design and Future of the Fungi, which runs at Somerset House in London from Jan 31st to April 26th 2020. It features the work of 40 artists, musicians and designers from Cy Twombly to Beatrix Potter, John Cage to Hannah Collins. Author and mycologist Merlin Sheldrake's forthcoming book Entangled Life is published 7th May 2020 by Penguin Random House. Sam Gandy is an ecologist, writer and researcher who has collaborated with the Centre for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College. And 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-hudson Producer: Alex Mansfield

From Hans Holbein sketches to Beyoncé on Instagram – Anne McElvoy looks at the changing image of pregnant women in a new exhibition at the Foundling Museum. We hear about the cultural history of breast feeding with academic Jessica Cox and marvel at the story of a rabbit breeder. In 1726, King George I sent a doctor to examine Mary Toft after it was reported that she had given birth to over a dozen rabbits. Karen Harvey retells this story in a new book called The Imposteress Rabbit Breeder: Mary Toft and 18th Century England. We also look at ideas which were the focus of attention in Davos at this year’s World Economic Forum and the tone of debate – with the WEF’s Managing Director Adrian Monck, and The Guardian’s Economics Editor, Larry Elliot. 'Portraying Pregnancy: From Holbein to Social Media' curated by Karen Hearn runs at the Foundling Museum in London until April 26th. You can hear an Essay from New Generation Thinker Corin Throsby on the Romantic period attitudes towards breast feeding here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08wn2rm We have more Free Thinking programmes looking at ideas around pregnancy, including this one which examines surrogacy and baby farming in the Philippines https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000573q

Anne Michaels, author of Fugitive Pieces, talks to Rana Mitter about her 1996 novel. Jewish Chronicle Literary Editor and author Gerald Jacobs, and historian and documentary maker Laurence Rees, join Rana for a discussion on the way fiction and history on TV and in books have represented the Holocaust. Dr Roland Clark from the University of Liverpool shares his research in the fascist past of Romania, and Rana speaks to Professor Anna Prazmowska of the London School of Economics about recent Polish history. Stephen Smith discusses the use of videos to educate children in the work he does as Director of the USC Shoah Foundation.

Matthew Sweet with NYT journalist Kate Murphy, Anne Karpf & David Toop in a conversation about paying attention and how to hear each other properly. Kate's new book You're Not Listening draws on her interviews with a range of people including priests, focus group co-ordinators and CIA interrogators. Former radio critic Anne Karpf is the author of the Human Voice and professor of Life Writing and Culture at London Metropolitan University. David Toop is a musician, composer and professor of Audio Culture and Improvisation at London College of Communication. His album Entities Inertias Faint Beings includes the track Dry Keys Echo in the Dark and Humid Early Hours which features in the programme.

Astrophysicist Dame Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, poets Sam Illingworth and Sunayana Bhargava, and C19 expert and New Generation Thinker Greg Tate from the University of St Andrews join Anne McElvoy to discuss the parallels between poetry and Victorian laboratory work. Dame Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, is perhaps most famous for first discovering Pulsars - strange spinning massively dense stars that emit powerful regular pulses of radiation. she has been President of the Royal Astronomical Society and the Institute of Physics, and more recently was recipient of the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. Alongside, she collects poetry related to Astronomy.Greg Tate's next book looks at the physical and metaphysical part of rhythm in verse by C19 physical scientists. Sam Illingworth's book "Sonnet to Science" looks at several scientists who have resorted to poetry in their work. Sunayana Bhargava works at University of Sussex studying distant galactic clusters, and is also a practising poet. Previously she was Barbican young Poet. You can hear Greg discussing the 19th-century scientist and mountaineer John Tyndall in a Free Thinking programme which also looks at mountains through the eyes of artist Tacita Dean https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b3fkt3 and a short feature about poetry and science in the 19th century https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04n2zcp Tristram Hunt, Director of the V&A Museum and Sir Paul Nurse, Director of the Francis Crick Institute, debate the divide and the links between arts and science in a Free Thinking debate recording at Queen Mary University London https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001f5f Producer: Alex Mansfield.