Arts & Ideas

At the end of a year which has seen Britain vote for Brexit, the rise of political parties claiming patriotism in other European countries and a sense of national pride being invoked by politicians in Russia and China - Free Thinking hears from some of the key thinkers exploring these current debates. Our week long focus begins in France where Philip Dodd talks to the public intellectual, Alain Fi...

Are public enquiries good government? At the end of a year where we have seen the Hillsborough and Chilcot reports are these the best way of calling to account? Margaret Hodge and Bronwen Maddox join Anne McElvoy to discuss. Plus, Matthew Parris considers the concept of scorn and those who are best at pouring it. Matthew Parris has written an updated version of Scorn: The Wittiest and Wickedest In...

John Simpson joins Philip Dodd to discuss fifty years of reporting from around the world for the BBC and what the future holds for foreign correspondents. Once our news came from three primary sources: newspapers, radio and TV. But in a digital world which offers a proliferation of 'news' how do we separate fact from opinion or even fakery? Former director general of the BBC and current CEO of The...

Classicist Professor Edith Hall, New Generation Thinker Chris Kissane, novelist Elif Shafak, and Dr Alan Mendoza from the Henry Jackson Society join Matthew Sweet to consider what might be on a reading list to prepare for a post Brexit world. Reading List: Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics Moniza Alvi, Europa Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart Voltaire, Candide Sun Tzu, The Art Of War Bryan Burrough and...

Shahidha Bari and guests look at our relationship with animals. Chris Packham discusses his 'animal symphony' composed with musician Nitin Sawhney for a new documentary exploring animal reactions to music. Darwin expert and New Generation Thinker Will Abberley reviews an exhibition considering our relationship with the rest of the living world. Science writer Helen Pilcher explains the new science...

Anne McElvoy meets David Rooney curator of the Winton Mathematics gallery at the Science Museum which has been redesigned by Zaha Hadid architects and explores the way maths skills are increasingly needed for jobs. She discusses the changing attitudes to mathematics in history and the present day with Alex Bellos, writer on maths puzzles, maths historian Serafina Cuomo and maths lecturer Vicky Nea...

Colin Grant, author of a book exploring his brother's epilepsy, joins presenter Matthew Sweet, New Generation Thinker Clare Walker Gore who writes about Wilkie Collins and Charles Fernyhough - who studies hearing voices. Plus director Josie Rourke on Joan of Arc on stage at the Donmar Warehouse and theatre critic David Benedict. St Joan by George Bernard Shaw starring Gemma Arterton is at the Donm...

What price the self in the 21st century? We may be living in the age of the "selfie" and of social media narcissism but is there anything fixed about the self? Philip Dodd and his guests, the novelist, Tom McCarthy, the sociologist, Susie Scott, the neuroscientist, Daniel Glaser and the painter, Dexter Dalwood explore the notion of identity today taking in the major Rauschenberg retrospective at T...

Matthew Sweet discusses elites and their role in contemporary politics, with Douglas Carswell, MP for Clacton;Professor David Runciman, Head of the Department of Politics & International Studies at the University of Cambridge; Eliane Glaser, writer and Senior Lecturer at Bath Spa University; and Lynsey Hanley, visiting Fellow in Cultural Studies at Liverpool John Moores University. Eliane Glas...

Wierd fiction presents the universe as an irrational place, totally indifferent to human concerns. Is 'the wierd' a more general approach that can bextended beyond fiction to encompass the other arts, or even politics and science? Rana Mitter discusses the idea of the wierd with literary scholar Nick Freeman of the University of Loughborough, cultural theorist Caroline Edwards of Birkbeck, Univers...

Juliet Stephenson and Lia Williams decide which role to play on the toss of a coin in Robert Icke's version of Schiller's Mary Stuart at the Almeida. The director explains why. Just before he died in 2015 the Nobel Prize-winning author Günter Grass completed his last book. Karen Leeder has been reading the English translation of it. And New Generation Thinker Preti Taneja has been reading a select...

Zadie Smith talks dance, depicting teenage friendships and US/UK differences with Philip Dodd as her new novel Swing Time is published in Britain and BBC TV dramatises her book NW starring Nikki Amuka-Bird and Phoebe Fox. Producer: Robyn Read

Matthew Sweet tries to separate out the clichés from the reality when it comes to male masculinity in 2016 with the director of the forthcoming Being A Man festival at London’s Southbank and Josh Appignanesi and Devorah Baum, the husband and wife team behind a new documentary that charts the emotional turmoil of childbirth on a man reluctant to grow up. Plus, Matthew travels to the Florence Nighti...

Matthew Sweet visits little known locations in London to meet researchers drawing on archives of the past to cast new light on the present. The Cross Bones Graveyard in Southwark was used in the Middle Ages to bury sex workers and others living on the fringes of respectable society. We visit the site with Sondra Hausner, an anthropologist of religion who's studied modern practices for memorializin...

New Generation Thinkers Shahidha Bari and Laurence Scott present a programme looking at new research into supernatural fiction writer Vernon Lee with Francesco Ventrella. Lee used the phrase "iron curtain" and declared herself a "cosmopolitan from her birth, without any single national tie or sympathy". They also debate what it means to lie, examine the life of communist informer Harvey Matusow wi...

French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss famously said that ‘animals are good to think with’. Rana Mitter with Sarah Peverley, Charles Forsdick, Alasdair Cochrane, Eveline de Wolf, Michael Szollosy and an audience at FACT, Liverpool debate robots, humans and animals. The broadcast will preview upcoming events organised by the University of Liverpool as part of their Being Human festival programme...

Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer prize-winning Maus - a father-son memoir about the Holocaust drawn with cats and mice - is one of the classics of graphic novels. He's now collaborating with the Jazz composer Phillip Johnston on a show that puts music alongside the images. Naomi Alderman talks to them and to the performance artist Marina Abramovic who's written a memoir. Plus Sarah Churchwell watches a f...

Bernardine Evaristo, Keith Piper, Miranda Kaufmann and Kehinde Andrews consider the question what it means to be Black British and how should a wider history be taught and reflected in literature. New Generation Thinker Nandini Das presents. Kehinde Andrews is at Birmingham City University where his research includes looking at black activism. He is series editor of Blackness in Britain with Rowma...

Matthew Sweet talks to 21st-century novelists Sarah Perry and Carol Birch about why the 19th century illuminates their writing. And can the Victorians still make us laugh? Cultural historians Fern Riddell and Bob Nicholson, consider the question raised by a new exhibition. Plus neo-Victorians - historian Mark Llewellyn on the curiously enduring presence of the 19th century in contemporary culture....

Today perhaps, Brand Britain is showing its age, but once upon a time it was nothing less than one of the most dynamic political projects in the world. In a Free Thinking Landmark on Walter Scott's Waverley, Rana Mitter reflects on the writer and the books which helped the British like the idea of Britain. Joining Rana in discussion: the writer, Jenni Calder who has recently adapted 'Waverley' for...

A TB clinic in the countryside is the location of Linda Grant's new novel which follows a Jewish brother and sister from the East End who are sent to recover in an institution where the class divide persists even as the new National Health Service challenges this. Stephen Poliakoff's new BBC drama series follows an intelligence officer whose final Army role is to ensure that cutting edge technolog...

Anne McElvoy explores some historic tussles over who read what, when, how and why. Bodleian scholar Dennis Duncan reveals how disputatious monks took the book out of the monastery; the novelist and New Generation Thinker Sophie Coulombeau uncovers public frothing over political pamphlet reading in pubs in the 18th century; 19th century literature expert Katie McGettigan celebrates a loophole in co...

New Generation Thinker Chris Harding presents a discussion with writer Chris Hannan and director Roxana Silbert about a new Birmingham Rep play about Enoch Powell. Also James Zirin describes what he calls the partisan nature of the Supreme Court in America and artists Jananne Al-Ani and John Keane and curator Vivienne Jabri talk about providing an alternative to the visual language of war employed...

Does art have to reflect politics and history in South Africa? Is it harder to make art now than it was in the past? As major exhibitions of South African art open in London and Edinburgh Philip Dodd discusses the challenges of creating a visual language for a country with the artists William Kentridge, Vivienne Koorland and Gavin Jantjes. Joining them is Professor Stephen Chan from London Univers...

Richard Hakluyt who died on 23 November 1616 was an English writer whose writings promoted the British colonisation of North America by the English. Nandini Das talks to Matthew Sweet about Hakluyt's travels and his legacy. Alex Clark reports live from the prize ceremony for this year's Man Booker Prize. We discuss new research into the signficance of chickens in the Anthropocene and ahead of Hall...