Loss and belonging are explored in an installation at the Barbican Centre in London from Sierra Leonian poet and artist/filmmaker Julianknxx which hears choirs and musicians from cities across the world voice a single refrain: ‘We are what’s left of us’. Momtaza Mehri has been Young People's Poet Laureate for London. A poem from her collection Bad Diaspora Poems is picked out in a selection for this year's National Poetry Day on October 5th, which has the theme of refuge. Matthew Sweet explores with them where we find refuge and hears from the academic Dr Jesús Sanjurjo about refugees from Spain who arrived in Somers Town in Camden in 1823 .

Producer: Julian Siddle

Chorus in Rememory of Flight by Julianknxx runs until 11 Feb 2024 at The Curve in the Barbican Centre London.

Tales of adventure and magic connect the Slavic lands: East Slavs (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus), West Slavs (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland) and South Slavs (the countries of former Yugoslavia plus Bulgaria). Matthew Sweet has been reading a new collection of Slavic myths. The authors Noah Charney and Svetlana Slapšak join academic Mirela Ivanova to talk about the way Slavic tales connect with stories from Greece, Rome, Egypt and Scandinavia and how they were used to bolster power in new Slavic nations.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

The Slavic Myths by Noah Charney and Svetlana Slapšak and illustrated by Joe McLaren is out now.

You might also be interested in a Free Thinking discussion of Albanian culture and history, and in a Radio 3 New Generation Thinker Essay from Mirela Ivanova called Contesting an Alphabet about the competing claims over the invention of Cyrillic.

"Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" is the way Thomas Hobbes described the life of man in a state of nature in his 1651 book The Leviathan. The seventeenth century philosopher reasoned that what men needed was a "common power to keep them in awe". It was a conclusion that has not endeared him to the enlightenment and liberal thinkers of the centuries that followed. The philosopher John Gray thinks that Hobbes' bleak vision of the human condition might help us understand the recent disappointments of progressive politics and the failures of liberal democracies. Anne McElvoy talks to him about this theory and to journalist and author of Politics: A Survivors Guide, Rafael Behr and Teresa Bejan, Professor of Political Theory at the University of Oxford and author of Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration.

Producer: Ruth Watts

You can find other episodes exploring ideas about politics and history in the Free Thinking archives and available to download as Arts & Ideas podcasts. They include -

From the forceps inventor Peter Chamberlen to letters written by Queen Victoria about giving birth saying ‘Dearest Albert hardly left me at all, & was the greatest support & comfort’: John Gallagher and his guests discuss childbirth and parenting. Dr Jessica Cox is the author of In Confinement: The Hidden History of Maternal Bodies in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Dr Laura Sellers is programmes curator at the medical history museum in Leeds The Thackray. We also hear from the dramatist Testament, whose play Daughter was nominated for the Prix Europa and Hannah Silva, whose book My Child The Algorithm is a memoir of queer parenting which started out as a radio play written using text generated by a machine-learning algorithm.

Testament's play Daughter is available on BBC Sounds here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0011545

Producer based in Salford: Nick Holmes

You can find a whole series of BBC programmes recorded at the 2023 Contains Strong Language Festival on the festival website and available on BBC Sounds. They include Radio 3's new writing programme The Verb, a Drama on 3, the music magazine programme Music Matters, Radio 4's discussion programme Start the Week and a special episode of Radio 3's The Early Music Show coming later this month.

Rejected by her usual publisher, Farewell Leicester Square is a novel by Betty Miller, written in 1935, exploring antisemitism, Jewishness and "marrying out". Marghanita Laski may now be best known for her contributions to broadcasting on programmes like The Brains Trust but was also a published author of many stories including The Victorian Chaise-Longue and Little Boy Lost. Both writers have now been republished by Persephone Books. Matthew Sweet's guests are the novelist Howard Jacobson, the academic Lisa Mullen and the author Lara Feigel. They explore the writers' lives and why they both abandoned writing fiction to focus on literary biographies. At the end of the discussion Howard Jacobson tells listeners “I very rarely hear people describing a novel that makes me want to read it - in fact if there is any listener out there who now does not want to read Marghanita Laski they are heartless.”

Producer: Fiona McLean

Betty Miller published 7 novels including Farewell Leicester Square and On the Side of the Angels (1945) and a biography of Robert Browning (1952).

On the Free Thinking programme website you can find a collection of episodes exploring prose, poetry and drama including previous discussions featuring Howard Jacobson, Lara Feigel and Lisa Mullen

Novelist Jonathan Coe joins book historians Roland Allen, Prof Lesley Smith and Dr Gill Partington and presenter Lisa Mullen. As Radio 3’s Late Junction devotes episodes this September to the cassette tape and the particular sound and way of recording and assembling music which that technology provided, we look at writing. At a time when there’s a lot of chat about AI and chatbots creating writing, what does it mean to write on a page of paper which is then printed and assembled into a book.

Producer: Ruth Watts

From Cold War triumphalism to wanting to secure the future of humanity, people have given many reasons for wanting to go into space. Christopher Harding is joined by an historian, a science fiction writer, a scientist and a visionary to unpick some of those reasons, and ask what they tell us about technology, society and utopia.

With Dr Ghina M. Halabi, Timothy Peacock, Una McCormack and Avi Loeb.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

You can hear more from Timothy Peacock, who teaches at the University of Glagow, in an episode of the Arts & Ideas podcast called New Thinking: From life on Mars to space junk

In 1816, Richard Fitzwilliam donated money, literature and art to the University of Cambridge, and the museum which bears his name began. A research project led by New Generation Thinker Jake Subryan Richards has been exploring Cambridge’s role in the transatlantic slave trade and he has curated an exhibition at the Fitzwilliam. Artist and writer Jacqueline Bishop who features in this show, joins Jake and April-Louise Pennant, who has been researching the history of Penrhyn Castle in Wales. Plus, Sherry Davis discusses the rediscovery of Black professionals in East African archaeology.

Producer: Ruth Watts

Black Atlantic: Power, people, resistance runs at the Fitzwilliam until Jan 7th 2024 and a catalogue accompanies the show.

A BBC Proms concert featuring spirituals sung by Reginald Mobley is available on BBC Sounds until October 9th.

The dancer Moira Shearer starred in the 1948 film written, directed, and produced by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger which reworks a Hans Christian Andersen story, mixed with elements of ballet history and the founding of the Ballet Russes by Diaghilev. The film, about the tangled relationships between a dancer, composer and ballet impresario, had a cast involving many professional dancers, and gained five Academy Award nominations including best score for Brian Easdale. As the BFI prepares a UK-wide season of Powell and Pressburger films running from 16th October to 31st December (including a re-release of The Red Shoes), Matthew Sweet is joined by film critics Lillian Crawford, Pamela Hutchinson, dance reviewer Sarah Crompton and New Generation Thinker and film lecturer Lisa Mullen.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

You can find Matthew Sweet presenting Radio 3's regular strand devoted to film and TV music Sound of Cinema on Saturday afternoons at 3pm and available on BBC Sounds and a whole host of Free Thinking episodes devoted to classics of cinema are in a collection on the programme website labelled Landmarks including: Jean Paul Belmondo and the French New Wave, Marlene Dietrich, Dirk Bogarde and the Servant, Bette Davis, Sidney Poitier, Asta Nielsen.

New narrative was a way of mixing philosophical and literary theory with writing about the body and pop culture. It was promoted by a group of writers in 1970s San Francisco. One of the chapters in New Generation Thinker Diarmuid Hester's new book Nothing Ever Just Disappears explores their work. He joins Dodie Bellamy in a programme exploring different aspects of the gay imagination and the re-inventing of tradition presented by Naomi Paxton. Alongside them is Lauren Elkin, author of a study of unruly bodies in feminist art called Art Monsters which explores artists including Carolee Schneemann, and the influence of writers like Kathy Acker. And James Corley has adapted a play, opening at Wilton's in London, which takes an influential essay by Merle Miller as its starting point.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

You can find a collection called Identity Discussion on the Free Thinking programme website which includes episodes about including Rocky Horror and camp, the V&A exhibition Diva, punk, tattoos, and perfecting the body.

Check out Forever Blue - Radio 3's broadcast on Sunday and then on BBC Sounds of a programme inspired by Derek Jarman's Blue, the film released 30 years ago which was also broadcast on Radio 3.