Arts & Ideas

Nikita Gill on goddesses, Sandeep Parmar on Hope Mirlees, Francesca Wade looks at the careers of classicist Jane Harrison and LSE's Eileen Power and Victorian Leonard looks at attempts to write more women back into the story of classics. Shahidha Bari presents.Francesa Wade has written a new book called Square Haunting which traces the experiences of five women who lived in Bloomsbury's Mecklenburgh Square: Virginia Woolf, Dorothy L Sayers, HD, Eileen Power and Jane Harrison- tracing ideas about women living independently, how academic institutions them and the way Virginia Woolf's ideas about A Room of One's Own resonate in the lives of these 5 women.Nikita Gill’s new poetry collection, Great Goddesses: Life lessons from myths and monsters, retells and re-imagines the untold stories of women characters in Greek mythology.Victoria Leonard is a founding member of the Women’s Classical Committee https://wcc-uk.blogs.sas.ac.uk/You can listen back to New Generation Thinker and poet Sandeep Parmar’s Sunday Feature on Hope Mirrlees’ Paris here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0831fpk and she also contributes to a Radio 3 series about the artistic figure Arthur Cravan here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000dj0kColm Toibin, Bettany Hughes and Paul Cartledge discuss Women's Voices in the Classical World in a Free Thinking discussion from the Hay Festival https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08rsrltClassicist Natalie Haynes discusses Women Finding a Voice with podcaster Deborah Frances White in this discussion https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0000bd6New Generation Thinker Eleanor Lybeck discusses attitudes towards Victorian women in education in this Essay https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09v64pkProducer: Karl Bos

Would you change your nose if you could? What about an entire face transplant? Des Fitzgerald speaks to two researchers investigating the past and future of facial difference and medical intervention. Emily Cock, from the University of Cardiff looks at our relationship with our noses throughout history – from duels and sexual diseases to racial prejudice. Fay Bound Alberti, from the University of York, talks about a project called AboutFace which she is running to look at the emotional impact of this complex new surgery and to investigate the moral questions it raises, looking at the impact of facial difference in the age of the selfie, and the emergence of facial transplantation as a response to severe trauma. There have been fewer than 50 face transplants globally since the first was performed in 2005 and none in the UK to date. You can find more at https://aboutfaceyork.com/ @AboutFaceYork Fay is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow from the Department of History at the University of York.Emily Cock is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, undertaking a three-year project Fragile Faces: Disfigurement in Britain and its Colonies (1600–1850). Her book is called Rhinoplasty and the nose in early modern British medicine and culture She and host Des Fitzgerald from Cardiff University are New Generation Thinkers on the scheme run by the BBC with the AHRC to work with academics to put research onto radio.Their conversation was recorded with an audience at the New home for School of Journalism, Media and Culture at Cardiff University. 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/p03zws90

100 years on from Isaac Asimov's birth, Matthew Sweet looks at one of the bigger ideas contained in some of his 500 books; Psychohistory. The idea, from Asimov's Foundation series, was that rather like the behaviour of a gas could be reduced to statistical probabilities of the behaviour of billions of molecules, so the history of billions of human beings across the fictional galactic empire could be predicted through a few laws he called 'Psychohistory'. The idea inspired many to think that social sciences and economics can really be reduced to some sort of idealized set of physics principles, making future events completely predictable. It and similar ideas are still breeding enthusiasm for such things as data science, AI, machine learning, and arguably even the recent job advert by Downing Street advisor Dominic Cummings for more 'Super-Talented Wierdos' to work for government. But how do we see what is real and what is not, what is Sci-Fi and what is hype, what is reasonable and what is desirable, in the gaps between innovation and inspiration, restraint and responsibility?Jack Stilgoe of University College London has a new book out "Who's Driving Innovation?". Science and Tech journalist Gemma Milne's forthcoming book is called "Smoke and Mirrors: How hype obscures the future and How to see past it". Una McCormack is an expert and teacher in science fiction writing and is author of numerous fiction and fan fiction novels herself, while Alexander Boxer is a data scientist who's new book "Scheme of Heaven" makes the case that we have much to learn about human efforts to deduce the future from observable events by looking at the history of Astrology, its aims and techniques. You can find more about robots in the Free Thinking the Future playlist of programmes or by looking for the episode called Robots, Makt Myrkranna https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08chbpc Matthew's conversation with the late Tony Garnett is in the Free Thinking archive here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07h6r8l Producer: Alex Mansfield

Do men and women use the same language when talking about novels they have enjoyed? How have attitudes in publishing changed towards both readers and writers if figures show that women buy 80% of all novels ? Lennie Goodings is Chair of the Virago publishing house and has now written a memoir. She joins New Generation Thinkers Emma Butcher and Joanne Paul; and Helen Taylor, author of Why Women Read Fiction. Naomi Paxton hosts the conversation about writing and reading.Why Women Read Fiction: The Stories of Our Lives by Helen Taylor is out now and is being serialised as the Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qftk Lennie Goodings' has written A Bite of the Apple, A Life with Books, Writers and Virago. It is out from OUP in February 2020.Anne Bronte was born on 17 January 1820. Her second novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was published under the pen name of Acton Bell but following Anne's death in 1849 her sister Charlotte prevented republication saying "it hardly appears to me desirable to preserve. The choice of subject in that work is a mistake, it was too little consonant with the character, tastes and ideas of the gentle, retiring inexperienced writer." Emma Butcher from the University of Leicester researches the Brontes.Anne Dowriche (before 1560– after 1613) published Verses Written by a Gentlewoman, upon the Jailor's Conversion and a 2,400-line poem The French Historie. From a prominent Cornish family, she was a fervent Protestant. Joanne Paul from the University of Sussex is working on Anne Dowriche.New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to put research on the radio. You can find more New Research on the Free Thinking programme playlist https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90

Laurence Scott hears about a pioneer of vegetarianism and advocates for nudism and camping as the academics Elsa Richardson, Annebella Pollen, Ben Anderson and Tiffany Boyle discuss the Life Reform Movement. Ideas included arguments for a basic income, healthy eating, gymnastics, world peace and what a perfect body looked like. The movement emerged in the second half of the 19th century and was a loose collection of groups and individuals who pursued social reform of all kinds and their ideas were mainly Utopian, but had a darker side. Annebella Pollen teaches at Brighton University and is the author of The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift: Intellectual BarbariansElsa Richardson teaches at the University of Strathclyde and is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and AHRC to promote research on radioBen Anderson teaches at Keele University and is also a New Generation ThinkerTiffany Boyle is a curator, researcher and writer at The Glasgow School of Art and her interdisciplinary doctoral research examines the visual representations of artistic gymnastics

Sally Potter joins Rana Mitter to discuss the relationship between philosophy and film. Also in the studio are philosophers Helen Beebee, Max de Gaynesford, and Lucy Bolton.You can find more discussions on the Free Thinking programme website Philosophy playlist https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07x0twxProducer: Luke Mulhall

How do I know that anybody else experiences the world in the way I do? Or even if other people experience anything at all? In the 20th century the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein responded to this challenge by thinking about whether we can make sense of the idea of a private language, a language understood only by the speaker. His so-called 'private language argument' has the potential to transform both the way philosophy is done, and the way we understand ourselves and our relationship with others.Shahidha Bari is joined by the philosophers Stephen Mulhall and Denis McManus, and the historian and New Generation Thinker Tiffany Watt Smith.You can find more discussions about philosophy on the Free Thinking website Philosophy playlist: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07x0twxProducer: Luke Mulhall

Panpsychism is the view that all matter is conscious. It's a view that's gaining ground in contemporary philosophy, with proponents arguing that it can solve age-old problems about the relationship between mind and body, and also fill in gaps in other areas of our understanding of nature. But is it true? And if it is, how could it change our understanding of ourselves?Matthew Sweet is joined by panpsychists Philip Goff and Hedda Hassel Morch, the neuroscientist Daniel Glaser, who is sceptical of panpsychism, and Eccy de Jonge, artist, philosopher and deep ecologist, who has written about the 17th-century philosopher and possible precursor of panpsychism, Spinoza.The first of three programmes looking at philosophy and ideas making waves in our contemporary world. You can find a playlist Philosophy on the Free Thinking website: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07x0twxPhilip Goff's book Galileo's Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness is out now.Producer: Luke Mulhall

Nosing around Osterley House, currently owned and run by the National Trust, Matthew Sweet and guests discuss our enduring fascination with the grand country estate.Countless stories, films and plays are set in the rarefied and actually very rare setting of the country estate, a world of valets and scullery maids, viscounts and self-mades, Kind Hearts and Coronets. This year has seen the TV series Downtown Abbey become a film. Every weekend hundreds of thousands of us visit the former homes of the 1% to gawp at the gardens and taste the tea. Have they become a place of reflection, of societal introspection where history was conceived and carved into the plaster? Or is it more about the lovely chutney and special scones? And what might visitors a hundred years from now expect to see about the current period of these houses' history?Alison Light is a historian and author who has written about the realities of life in service. Her latest book, A Radical Romance, is out now by Penguin Random House. Will Harris is a poet who has worked on several projects exploring heritage and empire. https://willjharris.com/about/ John Chu has curated an exhibition, Treasures of Osterley: Rise of a Banking Family which runs at Osterley House in West London until 23rd Feb 2020. https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/features/treasures-of-osterley-exhibition-at-osterley-park Annie Reilly is Head of Producing at the National Trust, Ffion George is the incumbent housekeeper at Osterley House.Producer: Alex Mansfield

Philip Dodd is joined by Douglas Murray, author of The Madness of Crowds, the commentator David Goodhart, the writer and campaigner Beatrix Campbell, and the academic Maya Goodfellow, author of Hostile Environment - How Immigrants Became Scapegoats, to reflect on the role of culture and identity in politics in Europe and post election Britain.Have the so-called culture wars consumed traditional politics? Are debates about race, nation, values and belonging injecting a much-needed dimension to traditional left-right democracy, or are they distracting from essential socio-economic concerns? Are the culture wars a feature of the left, the right, or both? You can find other discussions on the culture wars and identity on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06jngzt.Producer: Eliane Glaser.