Arts & Ideas

Matthew Sweet on Chaplin's 1941 film and rising populism today with guests including Francesca Santoro L'hoir who acted alongside Chaplin as a child plus Ece Temelkuran, Peter Pomerantsev and Frank Dikotter.Dutch Historian Frank Dikotter, who teaches in China, has published books on The Cultural Revolution, Mao's Famine and most recently How to Be a Dictator: the Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century which looks at Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Ceausescu, “Papa Doc” Duvalier, Kim Il Sung and Mengistu Haile MariamThe Turkish journalist, novelist and poet Ece Temelkuran is the author of How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps from Democracy to DictatorshipPeter Pomerantsev's books include Nothing is True and Everything is Possible and This is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality. You can hear Peter taking part in our Free Thinking discussion about George Orwell's novel 1984 if you look up the collection of Landmarks of Culture on the Free Thinking website or use this link https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0005nrlProducer: Torquil MacLeod

From Sean the Sheep & Damien Hirst to a knitted bikini. Shahidha Bari with a woolly episode talks to writer and knitter Esther Rutter, shepherd Axel Linden, medievalist John Lee and cultural historian Alexandra Harris.Esther Rutter is the author of This Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain's Knitted History. Shepherd Axel Linden farms in Ostergotland county in the south east of Sweden and has written On Sheep - Diary of a Swedish Shepherd. Professor Alexandra Harris considers sheep in art and literature including works by Andy Goldsworthy, Damien Hirst and Holman Hunt. John Lee is the author of a book about cloth making in the late Middle Ages called The Medieval Clothier.Producer: Paula McGinley

Anne McElvoy talks prehistory with archaeologist Mike Pitts and artist Renee So plus critic Alex Clark gives her take on this year's Booker Prize winners - Bernadine Evaristo and Margaret Atwood, and director Tinuke Craig discusses putting Gorky on stage in a new version written by Mike Bartlett.Ancient and Modern by Renee So is at the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill until 12th January Digging up Britain: Ten discoveries, a million years of history by Mike Pitts is available now Vassa by Gorky in a new version by Mike Bartlett runs at the Almeida Theatre in London until November 23rd.You can hear Booker prize winner Bernadine Evaristo talking about her depiction of 12 characters aged 12 to 93 in Girl, Woman, Other on the Free Thinking we broadcast back in May when the novel was published https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0004s6n . You can find it in the Free Thinking Prose and Poetry playlist on the programme website.Also in the New Thinking archive, which focuses on new research from UK universities, an episode called Neolithic Revelations: A lack of Neolithic dental floss proves to be a boon for archaeologists. Penny Bickle and Jim Leary share some surprising findings.

As the British Museum opens an exhibition on orientalism Inspired by the East, Matthew Sweet's guests include Ziauddin Sardar, editor of Critical Muslim, artist Inci Eviner, and historian Tom Holland, whose new book explores the Making of the Western Mind. Plus cultural critic Fatima Bhutto argues that the days of US inspired culture dominating the world are over and art forms from the global south such as Bollywood films, K-Pop and Turkish telenovelas are taking over.Fatima Bhutto's book is called New Kings of the World: Dispatches from Bollywood, Dizi, and K-PopCritical Muslim is a quarterly publication of ideas and issues showcasing thinking on Islam and what it means to be a Muslim in a changing, interconnected world.Tom Holland's books include Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West; Millennium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom and latest Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind (U.S. edition subtitled 'How the Christian Revolution Remade the World')Inspired by the east: how the Islamic world influenced western art runs at the British Museum in London from 10 October 2019 – 26 January 2020 and features contemporary art work by Inci Eviner.

Caryl Churchill's C21st Bluebeard, the fragility of a glass girl and other myths reworked in 4 new short dramas. Jen Harvie discusses the storytelling on stage of one of Britain's leading dramatists. Hetta Howes looks back at American author Rachel Ingalls who died earlier this year aged 78. Her novel Mrs Caliban depicts a lonely housewife who befriends a sea monster.The German born US based artist Kiki Smith has produced sculptures, tapestries and artworks looking at pain and bodily decay and real and imaginary creatures in bronze, glass, gold and ink for her first solo UK exhibition in a public institution in 20 years. Gerald Scarfe has just published Long Drawn Out Trip: My Life moving from his early days at Punch and Private Eye to his designs for Pink Floyd’s The Wall and Disney’s Hercules. He's also putting together an illustrated coffee table book Scarfe: Sixty Years Of Being Rude which will be published in November. Glass, Kill, Bluebeard, Imp 4 short dramas by Caryl Churchill, directed by James MacDonald run at London's Royal Court Theatre from September 18th - October 12th. Kiki Smith: I Am A Wanderer runs at Modern Art Oxford from September 28th to January 19th 2020. Hetta Howes is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council which puts academic research onto the radio. She presents our podcast New Thinking which showcases new research. You can find past episodes on topics ranging from the philosophy of pregnancy to the links between dentistry and archaeology by signing up for the BBC Arts&Ideas podcast or looking on the Free Thinking website collection New Research.Producer Zahid Warley

Laurence Scott looks at the way Dutch writers are addressing history and contemporary life with Rodaan Al Galidi, Eva Meijer, Onno Blom, Herman Koch and Toon Tellegen.Eva Meijer is an author, artist, singer, songwriter and philosopher. Her non-fiction study on animal Communication, Animal Languages has been published this year and her first novel to be translated into English Bird Cottage, has been nominated for the BNG and Libris prizes in the Netherlands and is being translated into several languages.Rodaan Al Galidi is a trained engineer who fled his native Iraq and arrived in the Netherlands in 1998. He taught himself Dutch and now writes both prose and poetry. His novel De autist en de postduif (The autist and the carrier-pigeon) was one of the books in 2011 given the EU Prize for Literature.Onno Blom is an author, literary reviewer and freelance journalist who has appears regularly discussing books on the Dutch radio show TROS Nieuws, has worked as editor-in-chief at the publishing house Prometheus and whose biography of the Dutch artist and sculptor Jan Hendrik Wolkers won the 2018 Dutch biography prize.Herman Koch is an actor and a writer. His best-selling novelist, The Dinner, was published in 55 countries and sold more than a million copies. His new book, The Ditch, is a literary thriller.Toon Tellegen is is one of the best-known Dutch writers. In 2007 he received two major prizes for his entire oeuvre. He considers himself in the first place a poet and has published more than twenty collections of poetry to date, among them Raptors. He is also a novelist and a prolific and popular children’s author.Events put on by the Dutch Foundation for Literature, New Dutch Writing and Modern Culture take Dutch writers to Norwich, London.Producer: Zahid Warley

Michael Govan, Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art outlines the issues facing museum directors talking with Philip Dodd and an audience at the Frieze London Art Fair. They debate the "authority" of museums, the idea of "great" art and he answers critics of his rebuilding plan.Michael Govan took over running LACMA in 2006 following his work at the DIA Art Foundation in New York City. The Los Angeles museum has partnered with Chinese-Indonesian entrepreneur Budi Tek to create a new foundation, to which Tek will donate his vast Chinese art collection. Plans also include establishing a satellite museum in South Los Angeles and new Peter Zumthor designs for redisplaying the LACMA collections.You can find more interviews to download with artists, curators and museum directors in the Visual Arts playlist on the Free Thinking programme website https://bbc.in/2DpskGSYou might also be interested in the new podcast and Essay series from Radio 3 The Way I See It which sees works of art from the collection of MOMA in New York chosen and discussed by guests including Steve Martin, Steve Reich, Margaret Cho and Roxane Gay. Producer Robyn Read.

Who holds the power? The US activist and author Rebecca Solnit talks to Shahidha Bari about pros and cons of anger, US border patrols, rape cases in courts and shifts in the point of view of Hollywood films. Plus a look at the theme of National Poetry Day 2019 - Truth with the poet David Cain author of Truth Street - A Hillsborough Poem and Fiona Benson - whose collection is called Vertigo & Ghost.Rebecca Solnit's fourth Essay collection is called Whose Story Is This ? Old Conflicts, New Chapters.Producer: Torquil MacLeod

A 15,000-line epic, Poly-Olbion has inspired Professor Andrew McRae from the University of Exeter and the Places of Poetry project which asks you to pin newly written poems to a modern version of William Hole's map of England and Wales. Why did Michael Drayton leave out Scotland? And what do the modern poems tell us about Brexit Britain? Hetta Howes finds out and talks to writers Pete Kalu & Will Harris alongside Dr Corinne Fowler from the University of Leicester about the Colonial Countryside Project. This has taken 100 children, 10 National Trust properties and 10 writers whose work is being published by Peepal Tree Press and has put the spotlight on stories such as former plantation owner who lived in Speke Hall in Liverpool. Find out more information on https://www.placesofpoetry.org.uk and https://colonialcountryside.wordpress.com/ and http://poly-olbion.exeter.ac.uk/ Will Harris has also worked with the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and https://museumofcolour.org.uk/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. New Generation Thinkers is an annual scheme to showcase academic research in radio and podcasts. You can find more information on the Arts and Humanities Research Council website https://ahrc.ukri.orgProducer: Debbie Kilbride

Rana Mitter talks to Jason Webster, Ed Morales, Iain Sinclair and Iwona Blazwick, about the shifting concepts of identity in the Ibero-Latin world, from the days before Spain was a single Spain, through the indigenous and the artistic of South America, to the multiplicity of ethnic and cultural identities represented in the US by the neologism "Latinx".