Arts & Ideas

As two major archaeological exhibitions open in the UK featuring discoveries from underwater excavations off Egypt and Sicily, Rana Mitter hears from historian and archaeologist, Alexandra Sofroniew, exhibition curator of Storms, War and Shipwrecks at Oxford's Ashmolean Museum about a British pioneer of underwater excavations, Honor Frost, and discusses why underwater sites make the difficulties a...

Moral philosopher Peter Singer is in conversation with Philip Dodd. His essay Famine, Affluence and Morality was first printed in 1972 in the journal Philosophy and Public Affairs. It has now been republished with a foreword by Bill and Melinda Gates. Peter Singer's book is called Famine, Affluence and Morality Producer: Ruth Watts

Icelandic writer Sjón talks to Matthew Sweet about fiction, poetry and making music with Björk. Curator Sacha Llewellyn explores the art of Winifred Knights, Katie Roiphe looks at writers dying and in the first of our commissioned columns from 2016 New Generation Thinkers - Sarah Jackson from Nottingham Trent University explores touch and frostbite. Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was by Sjón was nam...

Philip Dodd is joined by art historian Devika Singh to consider the art of Bhupen Khakhar and the subjects he explored including class difference; desire and homosexuality; and his personal battle with cancer. Also, Saskia Sassen, Jane Morris, David Anderson and Pat Kane discuss the emergence of London as a global city and what the economic and cultural ramifications might be for the rest of the U...

Lionel Shriver, Marlon James and Steve Jones join Rana Mitter for a Free Thinking discussion about inheritance recorded at this week's Hay Festival. The discussion ranges from family relationships to the planet we are leaving for future generations, from money to morality, genius to ideas about goodness and evil. Lionel Shriver's latest novel called The Mandibles depicts a family living in a near...

Find out who have been named as the 10 New Generation Thinkers for 2016 as they join Rana Mitter to share interesting facts from their research with the audience at this week's Hay Festival. Topics include the history of the hairdresser to the search for Alexander the Great's missing tomb; why Sigmund Freud detested the telephone to the complex relationship between the USSR and its historic church...

Rana Mitter rereads The Tale of Genji. Sometimes called the world's first novel it was written in the early years of the 11th century and has been credited to the noblewoman and lady-in-waiting Murasaki Shikibu. This year's Bradford Literature Festival is focusing on the modern translation from Dennis Washburn, Professor at Dartmouth College (USA). Dennis Washburn joins Rana along with Jennifer Gu...

Prize winning Colombian author Juan Gabriel Vasquez, Argentinian playwright, journalist and leading crime writer Claudia Pineiro join Philip Dodd for a programme exploring fiction and fact in Latin America. There's also journalist Alex Cuadros who chronicles his years covering the rise and fall of Brazil's plutocrats. And a consideration of Eric Hobsbawm's Viva La Revolucion from Dr Oscar Guardiol...

Matthew Sweet joins curator Katy Barron and three photographers, Wolfgang Suschitzky, Dorothy Bohm and Neil Libbert, all now over 75, to explore a show that offers an account of the twentieth century seen through their eyes. Still image then gives way to the moving image as Matthew considers what the much heralded new Carry On film may have to offer and what the original films tell us about the hi...

Anne McElvoy talks to Dame Fiona Reynolds about a career spent defending the beauty of the British landscape, and considers an exhibition of English beauties at the Bowes Museum. She is also joined by former minister The Rt Hon David Willetts, media executive Charles Brand and Marc Stears head of the New Economics Foundation to discuss the role of the state in the 21st century, and ahead of Sunday...

Recorded before an audience at the Welsh National Opera in Cardiff before the premiere of Iain Bell's opera inspired by the poem Philip Dodd presents a Landmark edition of Free Thinking devoted to David Jones' epic In Parenthesis. The discussion hears from the composer Iain Bell, the writer, Iain Sinclair, one of the librettists Emma Jenkins and Paul Hills, curator of a touring exhibition of Jones...

Neil Bartlett discusses Victorian cross-dressing performer Ernest Boulton with Matthew Sweet. Thomas Thwaites explains why he decided to try to live as a goat to explore the difference between humans and animals. Colin Gale from the Bethlem Museum of the Mind and historian Sarah Wise talk about perceptions of mental illness in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Poet Fiona Sampson on the relationshi...

Crime writer and former newspaper editor Volker Kutscher's Babylon Berlin is being made into a TV series by Tom Tykwer. Neil MacGregor has now left the British Museum to work with the Humboldt Forum to create a new German cultural centre in Berlin. Simon Stephens has written a new translation of Brecht's Threepenny Opera for the National Theatre. The production will star Haydn Gwynne. Philippe San...

Rana Mitter is joined by the historians Frank Dikötter, Patricia Thornton and Kerry Brown, and by the writers Xinran and Xiaolu Guo, to revisit the Cultural Revolution 50 years on. On 16th May 1966, Mao Zedong initiated a mass movement aimed at purging all "capitalist" and "traditional elements" from the Chinese Communist Party, and from Chinese society as a whole. This initiated the 10 years of s...

Journalist Paul Mason and graphic novelists Mary and Bryan Talbot discuss Louise Michel, the revolutionary feminist anarchist dubbed 'The Red Virgin of Montmartre', who fought on the barricades defending the Paris Commune in 1871. UC Berkeley psychologist Dr Dacher Keltner explores what he calls the power paradox. The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia by Bryan and Mary Talbot is out now. The Pow...

Anne McElvoy invites three novelists into the studio to discuss Love - the theme of each of their new novels. A L Kennedy's Serious Sweet examines love in later life, Tahmima Anam explores different aspects of young 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. Asi...

Philip Dodd talks to the artist Olafur Eliasson who famously created artificial sunlight in the Weather Project at Tate Modern. He's also been responsible for engineering four man-made waterfalls in New York, founded a company producing solar powered LED lights, and has just published a cook book. The Ukrainian writer Andrey Kurkov discusses his latest, The Bickford Fuse, an allegorical study of t...

Author Marina Lewycka discusses Lubetkin's social housing with Matthew Sweet in a programme which considers concrete homes past and present. Curator Helen Pheby describes transporting a former council house which has been turned into a kind of blue grotto by artist Roger Hiorns as the Yorkshire Sculpture Park hosts an exhibition on the theme of Home. Lynsey Hanley talks about the experience of gro...

Playwright Howard Brenton and director Adrian Noble discuss stage plays drawing on the life of TE Lawrence. Journalist John Preston has explored MP Jeremy Thorpe's downfall. And Philip Dodd is joined by Chris Bryant for a wider discussion about privacy in public life. And Mary Beard joins us to discuss another imperial endeavour, Rome. Howard Brenton's new play Lawrence After Arabia runs at the Ha...

“To unpathed waters, undreamed shores” Matthew Sweet discusses The Winter’s Tale, written just 6 years before Shakespeare died and still regarded as one of his most intriguing works. With actor Samuel West, and scholars Michael Dobson(University of Birmingham) and Carol Rutter( University of Warwick) joining Matthew in Stratford-upon-Avon in the Radio 3 prop up studio at the Royal Shakespeare Comp...

As Sicily: culture and conquest opens at The British Museum, Anne McElvoy gathers three experts round the Free Thinking table - the historian of Sicily, John Julius Norwich, Helena Atlee who approaches the island from the point of view of its legendary citrus fruit and Anna Sergi, a criminologist at the University of Essex who explains how Cosa Nostra reflects much of the closed culture of the mod...

Slavoj Zizek is in conversation with Philip Dodd. The title of the latest book from the Slovenian philosopher, cultural critic and Marxist scholar is 'Against the Double Blackmail: Refugees, Terror and Other Troubles with the Neighbours'. Producer: Laura Thomas

In a special Landmark edition, Matthew Sweet discusses Tarkovsky's 1979 film Stalker with the director Sophie Fiennes, the journalist Konstantin Von Eggert, whose family knew Tarkovsky, film critic Larushka Ivan-Zadeh, the writer Geoff Dyer, and the academic and former tour guide in the Chernobyl Zone Dr Nicholas Rush Cooper from Durham University. Stalker tells the story of three men - Writer, Pr...

Anne McElvoy talks to Syrian architect Marwa Al-Sabouni about her country's built environment its impact on the behaviour of the people who live there. Also the politics of judging book prizes is debated by Professor Geoffrey Hosking, emeritus professor of Russian history, School of Slavonic & East European Studies, University College London and Fleur Montanaro, Administrator of the Internatio...

Philip Dodd is joined by artist Bruce McLean and critic Sarah Kent to consider the history and politics of British Conceptual Art on show at Tate Britain. Also Richard Nisbett gives his view on how "smart thinking" can help us improve our lives. Richard Nisbett is Theodore M. Newcomb Distinguished Professor of Social Psychology and Co-director of the Culture and Cognition program at the University...