Arts & Ideas

Masha Gessen has traced the lives of 4 Russians born as the Soviet Union crumbled. Daniel Beer won the Cundill History Prize for his history of punishment in Tsarist times. Mary Dejevsky writes and reports on Russian politics now. Philip Dodd presents. Masha Gessen's book is called The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia. Daniel Beer's prize winning book is The House of the Dea...

Matthew Sweet discusses the Vietnam War with the film maker Ken Burns who has spent the last decade making a monumental documentary about America's ill fated war in South East Asia. The award winninng poet, Sasha Dugdale, reads from her latest collection, Joy; and Kate Flint traces the history of flash photography from its origins in the nineteenth century to Weegee and Gordon Parks in the twentie...

New Yorker essayist Adam Gopnik talks to Shahidha Bari about city living. Plus artist Lucinda Rogers on depicting changes to a London market, a new report into prosperity and New Generation Thinker Alastair Fraser from the University of Glasgow shares his research . At the Stranger's Gate by Adam Gopnik, a staff writer for the New Yorker, is a memoir recalling 1980s New York and the early years of...

The Rt Hon Lord David Willetts talks to Philip Dodd about universities. The UK Minister for Universities and Science from 2010 to 2014, his new book considers both the history and the global role they now play. Plus a discussion about scandal old and new - is it a driving force for social change or once the outrage has passed does everything revert to the status quo. Historian and New Generation T...

Philip Dodd looks at 2000 years of Arab Christians, at the modern rise of Pentecostalism and a novel depicting a man who decides to build a new church. Laura Premack from Lancaster University researches pentecostalism in Brazil, Nigeria and the USA. Neil Griffiths is author of a novel called As a God Might Be. Aurélie Clemente-Ruiz is Director of Exhibitions Department at the Institut du monde ara...

Kelly and Zach Weinersmith share visions of the future with Rana Mitter. Plus former Australian PM Kevin Rudd on power and what images does Finland conjure 100 years after independence? We hear from Pauliina Stahlberg, Director of the Finnish Institute and Anne Robbins, curator of Lake Keitele: A Vision of Finland which runs at the National Gallery in London until 4 February 2018. Soonish: Ten Eme...

New Generation Thinkers Shahidha Bari & Laurence Scott consider how archives come to life with events from the Being Human Festival including klezmer music, stories from conflict in Northern Ireland and voices from marginalised communities.

Stories of objects, ghosts and histories lost and found recorded on location in Portsmouth's most haunted house, the site of a sacrifice in Canterbury and at the TfL Lost Luggage Office. Presenter Matthew Sweet meets academics taking part in Being Human which showcases research from universities around the UK. How can the reflections of a warrior-poet from the distant past and the adventures of an...

BBC Head of News, James Harding, offers his verdict of a new stage version of Network, starring Bryan Cranston. Philosopher, Gloria Origgi, considers the importance of reputation in the digital age. Plus, presenter Rana Mitter meets with the 'father of Virtual Reality', Jaron Lanier. Jaron Lanier's books include You Are Not a Gadget, Who Owns the Future, and Dawn of the New Everything. Network scr...

‘There are three urgent and indeed great problems that we face today… that is the problem of racism, the problem of poverty and the problem of war.’ The words of Martin Luther King in 1967 when he visited Newcastle upon Tyne to receive an honorary degree. Words that underlie a discussion about poetry and protest which features in the festival marking the 50th anniversary of that visit. The poets J...

Author Boris Akunin and broadcaster and writer Zinovy Zinik in conversation with Anne McElvoy, recorded with an audience at Pushkin House. Pushkin House has commissioned a pavilion on Bloomsbury Square in London from the architect and artist Alexander Brodsky, titled '101st km - Further and Everywhere', as part of the Bloomsbury Festival. Anne visits this with Pushkin House Director Clem Cecil. Bo...

"The greatest documentary of all time"? Michael Nyman, Alexei Popogrebsky, Ian Christie and Larushka Ivan-Zadeh join Matthew Sweet to discuss Dziga Vertov's 1929 film, Man with a Movie Camera, which was voted top of a poll conducted by Sight and Sound Magazine. Vertov's film is a kind of cinematic symphony of urban life in the Soviet Union. It fizzes with ideas and is the embodiment of the notion...

Nobel prize winner Svetlana Alexeivich on the Soviet Woman's Stories of World War II and why they did not want them published; Stephen Kotkin with Volume II of his biograph of Joseph Stalin explores the bloody creation of a Soviet State capable of standing up to hostile global countries. Ran Mitter talks to them about their top down/bottom up histories of Soviet Culture and also hears from Juliane...

Comedian Janey Godley, historian John Gallagher, poet and journalist Bridget Minamore and author and science writer Dr Emma Byrne discuss with Matthew Sweet swearing on stage, in pain and protest and when new terms entered our language. Swearing Is Good For You by Emma Byrne is out now. Please note this programme may contain strong language. Producer: Debbie Kilbride

David Hendy, Glyn Maxwell, Kate Kennedy and Lucy Walker with Philip Dodd and an audience at Aldeburgh in a discussion exploring Britten’s relationship with radio in Britain and in America, with his subjects as varied as mountaineering (with words from Christopher Isherwood), a dramatisation of Homer’s Odyssey and short stories by D.H. Lawrence (with a young W.H. Auden). But why was Britten so relu...

What does Gulliver's Travels say to us now? Satirical cartoonist Martin Rowson and Daniel Cook from the University of Dundee assess the legacy of Swift's best-known work. And Monochrome exhibition co-curator Jennifer Sliwka and photographer Sarah Pickering discuss exhibits ranging from black and white art on glass, vellum, ceramic, silk, wood, and canvas from Leonardo da Vinci to Gerhard Richter t...

Alex Cox discusses surveillance, mind bending and the power of the individual versus the collective in the 1967 cult TV series The Prisoner. Plus Christopher Fowler, Clare Walker Gore and Lynda Nead look back at bestsellers from the past which deserve re-reading and the way movies and fiction of the 1950s reflected both the smog and fashions of post-war British culture. Christopher Fowler's The Bo...

Yanis Varoufakis discusses economics and Marxist analysis with Philip Dodd and Ruth Lea. Plus the new play from Richard Bean and Clive Coleman - the team behind One Man, Two Guvnors. which stars Rory Kinnear stars as the 32-year-old Karl Marx hiding out in Dean Street, Soho. And poet Tara Bergin on her version of Eleanor Marx. Young Marx by Richard Bean and Clive Coleman opens Nicholas Hytner's ne...

Web guru Tim O'Reilly on algorithm regulation and the magical worlds of Harry Potter, Philip Pullman and Tove Jansson with guests Aisha Bushby, young adult author, and New Generation Thinkers Hetta Howes and Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough.

Matthew Sweet discusses memory and Marnie with novelist and Freud scholar Lisa Appignanesi, Andrew Graham - son of the novelist Winston Graham who wrote the 1961 novel which Alfred Hitchcock turned into a film in 1964, Gwyneth Hughes - who wrote the screenplay of 'The Girl', an exploration of Hitchcock’s relationship with Tippi Hedren, and Hitchcock and Marnie scholar Murray Pomerance. plus the au...

Dr Foster writer Mike Bartlett on his new play Albion. Alex Clark reports from the Man Booker prize ceremony. And former SNP MP George Kerevan, David Goodhart and Marián Arribas-Tomé from UEA discuss whether the 21st century is set to be a century of small nations. The Man Booker Prize shortlist 2017 is : 4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund Exit West by Mohsin Hamid Elmet by...

The Gunpowder Plot in a new tv dramatisation by Ronan Bennett plus presenter Rana Mitter explores anti-Catholic prejudice in Britain today with Catherine Pepinster and Tim Stanley, and historians Richard McGregor and Hans van de Ven discuss relations between Japan, US and China. And the Icelandic poet and songwriter Sjón on hisrole in Poetry International as it celebrates its 50th anniversary sinc...

Simon Schama and Devorah Baum join Philip Dodd for a conversation ranging from the expulsion of Jewish people from Spain in 1492 to Jewish jokes today. Plus, poet Michael Longley considers his preoccupations with The Great War, The Troubles and the natural world. Belonging: The Story of the Jews 1492-1900 is the title of Simon Schama's latest book. Devorah Baum teaches at the University of Southam...

Novelists Salman Rushdie and Lionel Shriver join science writer Marcus Chown and historian Rachel Hewitt to discuss fiction, US politics, living in uncertain times and the new West End play from Simon Stephens Heisenberg: The Uncertainty Principle. Presented Shahidha Bari.

Matthew Sweet goes on a ghost hunt in Portsmouth with Karl Bell and is joined by Susan Owens and Stuart Evers to look at hauntings and what they tell us about our fears through the ages. James Burton from Goldsmiths and New Generation Thinker Sarah Dillon watch a vision of Los Angeles in 2049 in the Blade Runner sequel.