Arts & Ideas

Jared Diamond, Camilla Townsend, Tom Holland and Emma Griffin talk to Rana Mitter. What lessons for the pandemic are there in looking back at times of upheaval in history from the rise and fall of the Aztec Empire to the move from rural to urban living in Britain's Industrial Revolution. Tom Holland's books include Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic; Dominion: The Making of the Western...

From surrealism and science fiction to inspiration drawn from historic objects in stately homes and the painting of Francis Bacon: Shahidha Bari hosts a conversation with Will Harris, who has written long-form poems; new Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature Max Porter and Chloe Aridjis, who have written poetic novels which play with form; and academic Xine Yao, who looks at speculative ficti...

From Tudor courts to plantations to the Arab Spring and modern political philosophy: a debate in partnership with Bristol Festival of Ideas hosted by Shahidha Bari. Jeffrey Howard is an Associate Professor of Political Theory at University College London. He writes and teaches about the moral obligations of democratic citizens and political leaders, focusing on the topics of counter-extremism, cri...

From sleeping space to work space? Matthew Sweet is joined by historian of emotions Tiffany Watt Smith, expert on the suffragettes and a history of sex Fern Riddell, author of The Four-Dimensional Human: Ways of Being in the Digital World Laurence Scott and Tudor historian Joe Moshenska. Matthew Sweet's guests recording in their bedrooms are all New Generation Thinkers, which now has 100 early car...

Democracy, Hong Kong and USA Free Thinking Hong Kong has seen elections postponed, pro-democracy protesters arrested and a sweeping new national security law imposed by Beijing this year outlawing sedition and subversion. Rana Mitter asks whether Hong Kong can retain its unique identity and how the city's culture can help us make sense of these turbulent times. And, is there Trumpism without Presi...

Teaching writing - mentors Helen Mort and Blake Morrison compare notes. Plus as Georges Perec's memoir I Remember is published in English for the first time, we look at the rules of writing proposed by the Oulipo group which was founded in 1960 by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais. Georges Perec (1936 – 1982) came up with a "story-making machine" and created a novel in which the letter 'e'...

Would you change your nose if you could? What about an entire face transplant? Des Fitzgerald speaks to researchers investigating the past and future of facial difference and medical intervention and looks at videos from participants in the AboutFace project, which are being launched as part of the Being Human Festival this November. Emily Cock, from the University of Cardiff, looks at our relatio...

What connects a "double elephant" sized map, an academy of dissenters and Daniel Defoe? Shahidha Bari makes a virtual visit to the University of Derby's hub for the Being Human Festival 2020. Today the East Midlands city of Derby is often overlooked, but it was one of the powerhouses of the industrial revolution. Historians and archivists have been exploring Derby as a postcolonial city and uncove...

What does it mean to make art to commemorate histories of conflict? Anne McElvoy's guests are artists Es Devlin and Machiko Weston, Art Fund director Jenny Waldman, chair of the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group Ekow Eshun and Paris Agar from the IWM as Radio 3 joins with the Imperial War Museum for the 2020 Remembrance Debate. Es Devlin and Machiko Weston worked together on a digital artwork comm...

Matthew Sweet and guests discuss the history and ideas behind the charity shop, our relationship with 'stuff', and musical typewriters - aspects of November's Being Human Festival. Matthew talks to researchers whose work is featured in the festival, which showcases research from a series of UK universities. His guests are anthropologist and soprano Jennifer Cearns from University College London; G...

Mr Wilder & Me is the title of the new novel from Jonathan Coe, who won the Costa Prize for his book Middle England. He is one of Matthew Sweet's guests in a programme exploring the life and work of the Austrian born director behind Hollywood hits including Sunset Boulevard, Double Indemnity and Some Like it Hot. They are joined by film critics Phuong Le and Melanie Williams and Paul Diamond,...

This November sees the 25th anniversary of the UK Disability Discrimination Act. As we consider what contemporary progress has been made we'll uncover the long history of disabled people’s political activism, look back at the treatment of disabled people in Royal Courts and at fictional portrayals of disability in 19th-century novels from Dickens and George Eliot to Charlotte M Yonge and Dinah Mul...

From East Africa to Arabia, the First World War to Mozambique, Rana Mitter discusses the impact of war on society and culture. Margaret MacMillan's most recent book is called War: How Conflict Shaped Us and takes a deep dive into the history of conflict. Rob Johnson considers what we gain by exploring the overlooked side of Lawrence of Arabia - his thoughts on warfare and military strategy. And, t...

From online dance, pavement performances of plays, and the part played by audiences in Greek theatres and Shakespeare's Globe - how is performance adapting in the Covid era, and how are we rethinking what an audience is? Shahidha Bari hosts a discussion, with Kwame Kwei-Armah of the Young Vic; Kirsty Sedgman from the University of Bristol, who looks at theatre from Ancient Greece on; Lucy Weir, wh...

From carers and refugees, New Deal America in the 30s back to Enlightenment values - Anne McElvoy explores the intersections between community and the individual, care and conscience with: Robert D. Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett, authors of The Upswing, arguing for a return to the communitarian American values of the New Deal-era1920s Madeleine Bunting, whose book Labours of Love looks at the...

How has the pandemic changed our experience of urban space and what is the future for cities like London? Caleb Femi was young people's poetry laureate for London. Katie Beswick and Julia King research the way we use our streets. Irit Katz studies how the urban environment is shaped by crisis. Caleb Femi's Poor - a collection of poetry and photographs of the lives of young black men in Peckham - i...

His stinging critique of European colonial racism and hypocrisy Discours sur le Colonialisme was first published in 1950. How does it resonate today? A founder of the Négritude movement, Aimé Césaire (26 June 1913 – 17 April 2008) also wrote poetry and a biography of Haitian revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture. To discuss the influence of Césaire's writing, Rana Mitter is joined by Sudhir Ha...

Sunil Gupta says his photographs ask what does it mean to be a gay Indian man? Shahidha Bari looks at his work and talks to the winners of the 2020 Polari Prize, which usually takes place at London's Southbank Centre, and to Paul Burston, founder of the salon. https://www.polarisalon.com/ Amrou Al-Kadhi's memoir Life as a Unicorn deals with their life growing up as a queer Arab Muslim drag queen t...

How a Croydon housewife baffled a 1930s ghost hunter - the author of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, Kate Summerscale, talks to Matthew Sweet about her discovery of a dossier of interviews about a poltergeist "terrorising" Alma Fielding which made headlines in the 1938 Sunday Pictorial newspaper. 30 artists interested in seances and spirituality are on show in an exhibition co-curated by Simon Grant...

Jacques Derrida was the superstar philosopher of the 1980s and 90s. Often associated with the philosophical movement known as 'poststructualism', he made the enigmatic statement that 'There is nothing outside the text'. Today, one conspiracy theorist has commented that he studied poststructualism in college and learned from it that everything is narrative. Is Derrida and his style of thought a pat...

Poet Daljit Nagra and crime writer Val McDermid discuss capturing different forms of speech, a sense of place, and politics - in a conversation organised with the Royal Society of Literature and Durham Book Festival, and hosted by presenter Shahidha Bari. Plus, how the medieval fable of Reynard the Fox has lessons for us all today. As a new translation and retelling by Anne Louise Avery is publish...

From a VR version of Viking life and what you can learn from gaming, to describing collections in military museums, to the range of independent museums and the passions of their founders for everything from old engines to bakelite, witchcraft to shells. Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough looks at new research into a range of collections, why more are opening and what is missing. Fiona Candlin is Profess...

Directors of the Hermitage, the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the National Gallery, Singapore explain how they are dealing both with the challenge of Covid-19 and the greater accountability demanded by worldwide social justice movements. Anne McElvoy hosts a discussion organised in collaboration with Frieze Masters and Frieze London, talking to: Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky, Director...

Biographers of Tom Stoppard, Sylvia Pankhurst and a little known SS soldier compare notes. How does the process differ if your subject is alive, if their story has already been enshrined in history, if they were active in the Nazi regime? Anne McElvoy talks to three authors about researching and writing a life history and the journeys it has taken them on from a Nazi letter discovered in an armcha...

From Roman emperor Septimius Severus to Senegal's Signares to the ten days in Harlem that Fidel Castro used to link up with African leaders at the UN, through to the missed opportunity to enshrine racial equality in post war negotiations following World War I; Olivette Otele, Simon Hall and Jake Hodder share their research findings with New Generation Thinker Christienna Fryar. Olivette Otele is P...