Arts & Ideas

Philip Dodd hosts a special programme recorded in Cleveland, Ohio. Once a booming manufacturing metropolis located on the southern shore of Lake Erie, this 'rust belt' city has for many years been synonymous with industrial decay and high unemployment. For many the city's fortunes changed in 1969 when industrial pollution on the Cuyahoga river caught fire causing an environmental catastrophe, earning the city the moniker 'the mistake on the lake', a pejorative term it still struggles to shake off today. To find out how Cleveland is reinventing itself in the 21st century, Philip is joined by banker and civic leader Justin Bibb, historian David Stradling, and Colette Jones, one of a team running Destination Cleveland, which attracts visitors to the city. Plus, Philip meets Cai Guo-Qiang, to hear how the artist has used gunpowder and water to mark the 50th anniversary of the Cuyahoga river fires. David Stradling is the author of Where the River Burned Chinese-raised New York artist Cai Guo-Qiang has been commissioned as part of Cuyahoga50. You can find a Free Thinking discussion with writer Adam Gopnik and others about gentrification here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09gyg4q Producer: Craig Templeton Smith

Rana Mitter considers fearing Russia past and present with Mark B Smith, and the way Russia controlled fears over Chernobyl. Plus Tamar Koplatadze from the University of Oxford on her research into contemporary post-Soviet/colonial women writers’ responses to the fall of the Soviet Union, Victoria Donovan from the University of St Andrews outlines her project in the Donbass region of Ukraine that attempts to reconcile an industrial, Soviet past with an uncertain future and Yu Jie, Research Fellow at Chatham House, gives an account of the Chinese view of Russia. Mark B Smith teaches at the University of Cambridge and is the author of The Russia Anxiety. Chernobyl the TV miniseries was created and written by Craig Mazin, directed by Johan Renck and produced by HBO in association with Sky UKYou can hear a Free Thinking discussion of Soviet history featuring the authors Svetlana Alexievich and Stephen Kotkin https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09d3q93 This discussion of Tarkovsky's 1979 film Stalker hears research into tourism in Chernobyl https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0775023 Cundill Prize winning historian Daniel Beer, Masha Gessen and Mary Dejevsky consider Totalitarianism and Punishment https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09h659t Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Preti Taneja talks to the winner of the 2019 Dylan Thomas Prize, Guy Gunaratne, Egyptian graphic novelist Deena Mohamed, poet and broadcaster, Michael Rosen, Iranian-American author Dina Nayeri and Somali-British poet Momtaza Mehri. Guy Gunaratne's first novel In Our Mad and Furious City imagines events over 48 hours on a London council estate evoking the voices of different residents. It was the winner of the International Dylan Thomas Prize, the Jhalak Prize as well as the Authors Club Best First Novel Award in 2019. Deena Mohamed is in the UK to take part in the Bradford Literature Festival https://www.bradfordlitfest.co.uk/ which runs until July 7th and the Shubbak Festival which runs until July 14th https://www.shubbak.co.uk/ You can find our more about her https://deenadraws.art/about Michael Rosen is a writer, broadcaster and Professor of children's literature at Goldsmith's, University of London. https://www.michaelrosen.co.uk/ Dina Nayeri's books are The Ungrateful Refugee and A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea. Momtaza Mehri has been young people's laureate for London, a former winner of the Out-Spoken Page poetry prize. Her poetry chapbook is called sugah. lump. prayer. You can find Preti Taneja talking to Arundhati Roy and a debate about books in translation here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b5hk01 A Free Thinking programme playlist looking at ideas of Belonging, Home, Borders and National Identity is here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03mb66k Producer: Zahid Warley

Amitav Ghosh on linking refugees, climate change, Venice & Bengali forests in his fiction. New Generation Thinker Islam Issa on Epstein's Lucifer sculpture. Rana Mitter presents.Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh weaves the ancient legend about the goddess of snakes, Manasa Devi into a journey between America, the Sundarbans and Venice. You can also find Amitav Ghosh talking to Free Thinking about the need for fiction to reflect climate change here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07z7bnd The emotional epic that is Layla and Majnun is the subject of events at the Bradford Literature Festival https://www.bradfordlitfest.co.uk/ which runs until July 7th and the Shubbak Festival which runs until July 14th https://www.shubbak.co.uk/ Film maker Soraya Syed and story-teller and producer Alia Alzougbi discuss the story's eternal attraction and ability to speak to contemporary issues. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the AHRC to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio. Islam Issa teaches at Birmingham City University. His books include Milton in the Arab-Muslim World.Free Thinking Landmarks on Paradise Lost https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08nf037 One Thousand and One Nights https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b052gz7g Producer: Jacqueline Smith

The art of Cindy Sherman; art critic Laura Cumming on finding out the history behind the days her mother disappeared as a child on a Lincolnshire beach, New Generation Thinker Susan Greaney on local history museums. Naomi Paxton presents and joining her to talk about Cindy Sherman are Laura Cumming, the actor Adjoa Andoh, photographer Juno Calypso and New Generation Thinker Joe Moshenska from the University of Oxford. Laura Cumming's memoir is called On Chapel Sands and it is being read as the Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qftk Cindy Sherman runs at the National Portrait Gallery in London from Thu, 27 Jun 2019 – Sun, 15 Sep 2019. The retrospective will explore the development of Sherman’s work from the mid-1970s to the present day, and will feature around 150 works from international public and private collections,Susan Greaney works part-time for English Heritage and researches at Cardiff University. She is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio. You can find more about Juno Calypso here https://www.junocalypso.com/ In our archives you can hear Laura Cumming and Joe Moshenska on Velasquez https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03dx7tw Novelist Nicola Upson on imagining the life of artist Stanley Spencer https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000573q Scrumbly Koldewyn and the politics of fashion and drag https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09zcjch Producer: Fiona McLean

Jane Goodall is giving a talk at the British Academy on the work of the Jane Goodall Foundation with chimpanzees, protecting the environment with local communities and improving health and education for girls in rural Africa. Elif Shafak's latest novel is called 10 Minutes, 38 Seconds in this Strange World and looks at the death of a sex worker and the last moments of her life. Elif Shafak has been vocal in her concerns about freedom of speech in modern day Turkey.Producer: Luke Mulhall

New Generation Thinker Alistair Fraser on the fates and fortunes of Glaswegian tough guys. Recorded with an audience at the York Festival of Ideas. To hear audience questions download the Essay as an episode of the BBC Arts&Ideas podcast. The image of the hard man runs like an electric current through Glasgow's history. Unafraid, unabashed, with outlaw swagger, he stalks the pages of countless crime novels and TV dramas. The unpredictable tough guy, schooled in both fist and knife, a symbol of the city's industrial past. But what does being a hard man mean in the Glasgow of today, now call-centre capital of Europe? And what lessons can be drawn from his changing fates and fortunes to understand masculinity and violence elsewhere?Alistair Fraser is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, University of Glasgow and a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker. He has spent the last fifteen years studying youth gangs and street culture around the world, and is author of two academic books, Urban Legends: Gang Identity in the Post-Industrial City (2015, Oxford University Press), and Gangs & Crime: Critical Alternatives (2017, Sage). He makes regular contributions to public debate on gangs and youth violence, and has appeared on BBC Radio 3 and 4 on Thinking Allowed, More or Less, and Free Thinking.Alistair Fraser in a Free Thinking Festival debate about gangs https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09w7qqg Alistair Fraser looks at Doing Nothing https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09v66bh Audience questions of this Essay are found here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02nrvk3/episodes/downloads Producer; Jacqueline Smith

New Generation Thinker Sarah Goldsmith's Essay introduces an audience at York Festival of Ideasto Beau Brummel and others who have understood the mixed messages of suits through time. England football coach Gareth Southgate's pitch-side waistcoats and 007's exquisite collection of Tom Ford suits all make one thing clear: sweatpants are out and the formal man's suit, along with its tailor, has triumphantly returned. From the colourful flamboyances of the eighteenth century to the dandy dictates of Beau Brummell and into the inky black 'Great Renunciation' of the nineteenth century, join Sarah Goldsmith for a whirlwind tour of the origins of the most ubiquitous, enduring item of male sartorial fashion and the 'second skin' of the male body, the three-piece suit.Sarah Goldsmith is a historian of masculinity, the body and travel. She is a Leverhulme Research Fellow at the University of Leicester, an AHRC/BBC 2018 New Generation Thinker and a life-long rugby fan. Her first book, Masculinity and Danger on the Eighteenth-Century Grand Tour, is being published in 2019.Sarah Goldsmith on the C18 craze for weightlifting https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00040wg Sarah Golsmith discusses the body past and present on Free Thinking https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b7my7k Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Philip Dodd is in conversation with the American author James Ellroy, whose books include LA Confidential and his latest, This Storm, part of his ongoing project to write a novelistic history of the USA from 1941 to 1972. As he tells Philip Dodd, in a conversation that ranges from Calvinism to Chandler, Count Basie to late Beethoven: "As my literary sensibility becomes more patriotic, more conservatism, more religious, more sentimental, more fraternal, I find an era to write about where I can look back and live it and so This Storm is very much about alliance and friendship and belief and ideology in the early days of World War II and my good guys - who are always the cops ... and these folks are always going to one of two places, to carouse, to booze, to plot, to talk of sandbagging unfriendly politicians and to flirt and conduct their adulterous love affairs."Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Anne McElvoy, former Colonel Lincoln Jopp MC & novelist Benjamin Markovits on the new TV Catch-22. Jade Halbert on recycling fashion. Poet Fred D'Aguiar on winning the Cholmondeley Prize and Wu Mali on socially engaged art.Producer: Zahid Warley