Arts & Ideas

The artist Tom Phillips talks to Philip Dodd about his career as he marks his 80th birthday. His works range from sculptures, like a tennis ball with his own hair, to commissions for the Imperial War Museum and Peckham, and portraits of subjects including Sir Harrison Birtwistle and the Monty Python team. His interest in literature is seen in his version of Dante's Inferno and art made from rework...

Chris Harding discusses the work of Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai with Tim Clark, curator of a new exhibition at the British Museum and explores the relationship between Korea and Japan through the visual arts with art historian Angus Locker, Charlotte Horlyck, chair of the Centre for Korean Studies at the School of Oriental & African Studies, and Je Yun Moon, a curator at the Korean Cult...

Author and photojournalist Bella Bathurst suddenly began to lose her hearing as an adult in 1997. Twelve years later, an operation enabled her to recover it. She has written a book about her experience, insights gained about listening and the science behind deafness. 2017 New Generation Thinker Daisy Fancourt researches the effect of the arts on immune response and public health. New Generation Th...

As dramas about John Knox and Galileo open at theatres in Edinburgh and London, Philip Dodd talks to Fiona Shaw and Mark Ravenhill about performing and staging Brecht and to Edinburgh Lyceum director David Greig. He's also joined by 2017 New Generation Thinker Joanne Paul, from the University of Sussex, who researches the idea of parrhesia or 'speaking truth to power'. And satirist Nev Fountain an...

Anne McElvoy talks to the Tony award-winning playwright Richard Nelson about bringing his trilogy depicting a US family over the 2016 election year to the Brighton Festival. Novelist Rachel Seiffert was shortlisted for the Booker prize with her book The Dark Room. Her new novel is inspired by the arrival of the Nazis in a Ukrainian village. The political novelist, James Hawes, explains why a lack...

Artist Taryn Simon, Master of Photography at this year's Photo London Art Fair, speaks to Matthew Sweet about her work including her latest project Image Atlas inspired by the top image results for given search terms across local engines throughout the world. 2017 New Generation Thinker Eleanor Lybeck from the University of Oxford on the artist Edward Seago and running away to the circus. What if...

Anne McElvoy talks to the French novelist Laurent Binet about his playful novel The 7th Function of Language, inspired by the death of Roland Barthes which has won the Prix de la FNAC and Prix Interallié. Emile Chabal considers what's next for France and Europe after the election of Emmanuel Macron. Plus, why blockchains, the technology underpinning cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, have the poten...

Playwright Mark Ravenhill and critic Matt Wolf debate desire and politics with Philip Dodd as Tony Kushner's Angels in America is revived at the National Theatre in London. Writer and theatre director Yaël Farber explains her vision of the story of Salomé as one set in an occupied desert country where a radical is on hunger strike and a girl's dance is at the centre of a revolution. Peggy Reynolds...

Rana Mitter is joined by the 6 shortlisted authors and an audience at the British Academy for a discussion about writing history. This is the first year that the Wolfson History Prize has announced a shortlist. The winner will be named on May 15th. Daniel Beer, THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD: SIBERIAN EXILE UNDER THE TSARS Chris Given-Wilson, HENRY IV Christopher de Hamel, MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE MANUSCRI...

Professor John Carey joins New Generation Thinkers Islam Issa and Joe Moshenska and presenter Philip Dodd to discuss Milton's poem, the first version of which was published in 1667. The discussion explores the influence of Protestant thinking, the Reformation and the Renaissance on Milton's depiction of religious and political beliefs as part of Radio 3's Breaking Free series of programmes explori...

Rana Mitter looks at new research into the way daily life changed in Britain after the Reformation for Radio 3's series of programmes exploring Martin Luther's Revolution. His guests are: Alec Ryrie, Professor in Religion and Theology at the University of Durham and author of: Protestants: The Faith that Made the Modern World 201; Tom Charlton, New Generation Thinker is currently studying the hist...

Peter Stanford, Ulinka Rublack and Diarmaid MacCulloch join Anne McElvoy to explore the question Martin Luther - Fundamentalist, Reactionary or Enlightened Creator of the Modern World? The discussion was recorded in front of an audience at theLiterary Festival for Radio 3's Breaking Free series of programmes exploring Martin Luther's Revolution. 500 years ago Martin Luther launched the Protestant...

A novel by Maylis de Kerangal which traces a heart transplant is the winner of this year's Wellcome Book Prize and the inspiration for a film out in the UK this week. Also, Anne McElvoy discusses nation states and war with US Professor of Political Philosophy Susan Buck-Morss and Professor AC Grayling. The 50th anniversary of the Biafran war and fictional representations of it are explored with Ne...

Paul Kingsnorth, former deputy-editor of The Ecologist, co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project and author of novels including The Wake and Beast, talks about his changing attitude to the environmental movement. Environmental lawyer James Thornton and writer Martin Goodman recount their travels from Poland to Ghana, Alaska to China, to see how citizens are using public interest law to protect thei...

Michèle Roberts' latest novel evokes Victorian London. Matthew Sweet asks how it smelt and what do museums do to create past smells. Plus a cultural history of dentistry with the medical historian Richard Barnett. The Walworth Beauty by Michèle Roberts is out now. The Smile Stealers: The Fine and Foul Art of Dentistry by Richard Barnett is out now. Producer: Fiona McLean.

The American poet Mark Doty, Professor Sarah Churchwell and the young British poet Andrew McMillan join Matthew Sweet for a programme dedicated to one of the classics of American poetry, Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Readings performed by William Hope. Producer: Fiona McLean. Originally broadcast on Thu 8 Oct 2015.

Philip Dodd interviews John Irving - author of novels including The World According to Garp, The Cider House Rules, A Prayer for Owen Meany. His new book is called Avenue of Mysteries and imagines the life of a crippled street-child from Mexico, Juan Diego, and his sister Lupe, who can read minds. The action cuts between Diego's present as a globe trotting, best selling writer visiting the Philipp...

Anne McElvoy invites three novelists into the studio to discuss Love - the theme of each of their latest novels. A L Kennedy's Serious Sweet examines love in later life, Tahmima Anam explores different aspects ofyoung love in The Bones of Grace and Alain de Botton says no-one lives happy ever after, we should talk a lot more about what comes next - hence the title of his book The Course of Love. A...

Tim Birkhead and Phyllis Lee explore long-lived animal species and their survival strategies. If the modern world is obsessed with short term success, could animals offer a better understanding of the long term state of our planet? Want to sample the health of our oceans? Ask a migratory bird. Or the advantage of becoming a mother later in life? Ask an elephant. Free Thinking presenter Rana Mitter...

Jay Griffiths, Vincent Deary, Louise Robinson and Matthew Smith discuss our mental health. How do depression and dementia affect our sense of time and the rhythms of daily life? Our body clocks have long been seen by scientists as integral to our physical and mental health – but what happens when mental illness disrupts or even stops that clock? Presenter Anne McElvoy is joined by those who have s...

Carlos Frenk, Eugenia Cheng, Jim Al-Khalili and Louisa Preston debate time and space with presenter Rana Mitter and an audience at Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead. We can measure time passing but what actually is it? What do scientists mean when they suggest that time is an illusion. Can time exist in a black hole? Is everyone’s experience of time subjective? What is the connect...

Poet Simon Armitage and writer Alexandra Harris explore time and place in modern Britain. Presented by Philip Dodd and recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead. Simon Armitage, Professor of Poetry at Oxford University, has been described as ‘the best poet of his generation’. His latest collection The Unaccompanied explores life against a backdr...

Island city mentality or gateway to the world? Hull-based crime writer and former journalist David Mark, poet Adelle Stripe and Slung Low artistic director Alan Lane join Matthew Sweet to debate Hull's links with the wider world, while playwright Esther Wilson suggest what residents can learn from another port city which has been City of Culture - Liverpool. Recorded with an audience at Hull Truck...

‘Is it the world that’s busy, or is it my mind?’ Haemin Sunim, the multi-million selling author of The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down, discusses East and West and calm in a fast-paced world with New Generation Thinker Christopher Harding and presenter Rana Mitter. Born to Korean-American parents and educated at Harvard, Haemin Sunim is known for books, podcasts and a popular YouTube se...

An introduction to the academics whose ideas will be making radio waves across 2017. The New Generation Thinkers is an annual competition run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 researchers at the start of their careers who can turn their fascinating research into stimulating programmes. In this event, the 2017 selection make their first public appearance toget...