Arts & Ideas

Can a map reveal too much? How do they direct our thinking? From ancient atlases to satnav and Google, maps continue to be a key planning tool, but how much are they now instruments of control? To discuss what the very word ‘mapping’ now means Rana Mitter is joined by Vanessa Lawrence CB, head of the Ordnance Survey and Professor Jerry Brotton, Professor of Renaissance Studies in the Department of...

Increasing resistance to antibiotics is a threat to Britain which could be as dangerous as terrorism. That's the argument put by Professor Dame Sally Davies in her Free Thinking lecture at Sage Gateshead. She is joined on stage by Professor Hugh Pennnington and Dr Andrew Sails to talk about strategies for combatting infection and improving the nation’s health. Recorded on Saturday 26th October 201...

Does emotion or reason dictate the financial markets? Anne McElvoy is joined by Frances Hudson, Global Thematic Strategist at Standard Life Investments; Daniel Ben Ami, financial journalist, author of 'Cowardly Capitalism' Greg Davis, Head of Behavioural and Quantitative Investment Philosophy, Barclays and Adrian Wooldridge of the Economist whose book 'The Fourth Revolution - The Global Race to Re...

Billy Kahora, one of the writers nominated for this year's Caine Prize for African writing joins Philip Dodd to reflect on the way artists in Kenya respond to the political and religious unrest in the country.

Matthew Sweet interviews Karen Joy Fowler author of a novel which looks at the consequences of introducing a primate into a family and the human fascination with anthropomorphism with animal studies experts Susan McHugh and Giovanni Aloi. From Cape Town the South African man of the theatre Athol Fugard pays tribute to his late friend and fellow activist the author Nadine Gordimer. After today’s...

With Anne McElvoy. Curator Frances Spalding and Dr Alexandra Harris discuss what portaits of Virginia Woolf convey of her character as a new exhibition opens at the National Portrait Gallery. Richard Flanagan's father was a Japanese POW on the "Death Railway". The Australian novelist's new book The Narrow Road to the Deep North was inspired by this. New Generation Thinker Alun Withey looks back at...

Philip Dodd is joined by political commentator Steve Richards to discuss the new production of Richard III which stars Martin Freeman and is set in the 1970s. Historian Joanna Bourke considers changing medical attitudes to pain. She's joined by Marion Coutts, who has written about her husband's death in The Iceberg, and by the comedian Arthur Smith. Should we equate animals with humans when talkin...

Richard Linklater filmed the actor who stars in Boyhood over 12 years from a 6 year old to a college youth. Matthew Sweet and author Toby Litt review the project and discuss growing up. Artist Cory Arcangel talks about his book composed from tweets and working in digital media. He also explores the themes explored in Digital Revolution at the Barbican Centre, which brings together film-makers, art...

'€˜Oh what a lovely Savas' begins Rana Mitter in this edition of Free Thinking, using the Turkish word for War. Along with Sean McMeekin of the Koc University in Istanbul, the novelist Kamila Shamsie, Naoko Shimazu of Birkbeck College and Erez Manela of Harvard University Rana puts Japan, China, India, the Ottomans, Koreans and others centre stage in the years 1914 to 1918. If you weren’t from o...

Yael Farber directs Richard Armitage in the Crucible at the Old Vic. She talks to Philip Dodd about fear, conspiracy and her South African roots. Also Liberalism past and present. Edmund Fawcett author of Liberalism: The History of an Idea is in the studio alongside historian and Telegraph writer Tim Stanley and Alex Callinicos, Professor at King's College, London. Plus another column from one of...

From Paul Nash paintings of blasted tree stumps in the first world war to today's commemorative planting: Paul Gough, Gabriel Hemery and Gail Ritchie join Samira Ahmed to explore woods and trees in war and peacetime.

Jonathan Powell and historians Margaret MacMillan, Orlando Figes and Adam Tooze explore the Great Powers with Anne McElvoy. The First World War shattered the power balance in Europe. As we confront an uncertain world order, who are the great powers today, how has their role changed and where do they now stand in determining geo-politics?

Samira Ahmed discusses feminism with American artist Barbara Kruger and journalist Laurie Penny;and cartoonist Posy Simmonds talks about the role of cartoonists responding to politics and international affairs

The Thirty-Nine Steps first appeared in Blackwoods Magazine in August and September 1915 and depicts Europe on the edge of war in May and June 1914. It quickly became popular reading in the trenches and on the home front, and nearly a hundred years and three film adaptations later, its popularity is enduring. In a special edition of Free Thinking, as part of Radio 3's focus on World War One, Matth...

A new collection of Ranter writings from the English Civil War sheds light on their extreme libertarian views. Anne McElvoy is joined by the book's editor Nigel Smith. Plus journalist Rod Liddle and Conservative Party politician Douglas Carswell discuss libertarianism today. New Generation Thinker Naomi Paxton reflects on the Actresses' Franchise League. And a 62 metre photographic installation un...

Philip Dodd talks to the artist, Sean Scully, about his latest show and explores our perception of colour with neuroscientist Jamie Ward and fashion expert, Caroline Cox.

Matthew Sweet talks to Philip Hensher, who's novel The Emperor Waltz draws together stories about a man who founds the first gay bookshop in London, a young painter who joins the Bauhaus and a woman fascinated by a Roman cult. We also discuss John La Rose's New Beacon project which was was the focal point of a black radical publishing industry that emerged in the UK in the late sixties, with the p...

Prize-winning first novelists Eimear McBride and Nathan Filer join Anne McElvoy to discuss literary experimentation. Matt Thorne gives us a first night review of the European premiere of Anne Washburn's play Mr Burns which is set in a world without electricity. New Generation Thinker Sophie Coulombeau examines British philosopher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham€'s €'Universal Tattoo'€™. And as...

The director of the Hayward Ralph Rugoff, former principal Royal Ballet dancer Deborah Bull and neuroscientist Professor Patrick Haggard explore presentations of and research into the human body. And what is the meaning of 'community' with philosopher and writer Julian Baggini, journalist and historian Tim Stanley and writer Ziauddin Sardar. Plus Preti Taneja, one of the 2014 Radio 3 New Generatio...

Amma Asante's film Belle depicts an illegitimate mixed-race girl brought up in eighteenth-century London in Kenwood House, the household of Lord Mansfield. Director Amma Asante and Dr Kit Davies talk to Matthew Sweet about the issues raised in the film. Writer Rosamund Bartlett has a first night review of Brian Friel's stage version of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons which opens at London's Donmar War...

Philip Dodd discusses Kenneth Clark's Civilisation and arts broadcasting with Janina Ramirez, Kim Evans, Gus Casely-Hayford and Charles Uzzell-Edwards, aka artist Pure Evil.

Rana Mitter remembers what happened in Tiananmen Square on June 4th 1989 with people who were there. He also asks what the sociological background to events on that day was. And how has the memory or even the truth of that day and what lay behind it faired in the 25 years that have followed?

Matthew Sweet discusses online identity theft and religious belief with American novelist Joshua Ferris, as he publishes his new novel To Rise Again at a Decent Hour. As the London Festival of Architecture opens with a debate on whether London needs more tall towers, Matthew talks to Sir Terry Farrell, Owen Hatherley, Nicholas Boys Smith, Angela Brady, about how London should look in the future. A...

Arianna Huffington talks to Anne McElvoy about measuring success using The Third Metric. Richard Hytner and Kerrie Fleming look at stress in business and the nature of leadership. Zia Haider Rahman on his debut novel In the Light of What We Know which contains elements of his own Bangladeshi background, a scholarship to Oxford and time spent as an investment banker on Wall Street. Plus Anne pays t...

Presenter Rana Mitter, is joined on the BBC stage at the Hay Festival by writer and provocateur, PJ O'Rourke and the Freakonomics authors, the economist Steven D Levitt and journalist Stephen J Dubner to discuss decision-making, how emotional and economic stability leads to self-absorbtion, how difficult it is to stop and think about anything and why there is such a gulf between the economic and p...