Free Thinking

Helen Macdonald, author of H Is For Hawk and Tim Birkhead, Professor of Behaviour and Evolution at the University of Sheffield and author of Bird Sense, share their experiences of observing birds closely and their pick of writing inspired by real and fictional birds. Professor Birkhead’s recent research has been into the adaptive significance of egg shape in birds and Helen Macdonald won the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize and Costa Book Award for her writing about the year she spent training a goshawk. Presenter: Lucy Powell

Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Lauren Elkin, author of 'Flaneuse' and BBC Radio 3 New Generation Thinker Seán Williams talk to Rana Mitter about the joys of a wandering life and the inspiration that walking brought to writers from the 18th century to the present day.

Producer: Zahid Warley

Sarah Dillon and novelist Richard Beard on narrative voices in literature

Longus’s charming pastoral novel Daphnis and Chloe about teenage love and pirates was written in the second century AD. Tim Whitmarsh, AG Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at Cambridge, discusses his work, alongside that of other early Greek writers and Judith Mackrell, dance critic for The Guardian talks about how the text was used by Diaghilev to create the iconic ballet for the Ballet Russes. Presenter: Shahidha Bari.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Why We Need the Novel Now. Man Booker Prize winner Howard Jacobson delivers a keynote lecture and talks to presenter Shahidha Bari and an audience at the Southbank Centre in London as part of the Man Booker 50 Festival. In the age of Twitter and no-platforming, Jacobson argues that the novel has never been more necessary.

Howard Jacobson won the Man Booker Prize in 2010 for The Finkler Question and was shortlisted for J in 2014

Producer: Zahid Warley

Helaine Blumenfeld is a sculptor who divides her time between her family in England and her work-family in Italy. As an exhibition featuring much new work opens in Ely Cathedral, she talks to Anne McElvoy about expressing her thoughts in marble, the importance of risk to the artist and why total immersion without distraction produces her best work. As the Liverpool Biennial gets under way Dale Harding, an Australian artist and descendant of the Bidjara, Ghungalu and Garingbal peoples of Central Queensland, explains his own education in the medium of wood and why his art is part of the making and story-telling traditions and brutal recent history of his cultural family. Back to the 17th century and Stella Tillyard tells Anne about the inspiration behind her new novel: the immense human effort (and human sacrifice) it took to reclaim land from the sea in East Anglia, Holland and the islands of what is now New York. And pirates...New Generation Thinker and Ottoman historian, Michael Talbot, looks to change their image. Helaine Blumenfeld 'Tree of Life' at Ely Cathedral 13 JULY - 26 OCTOBER 2018 Dale Harding See his work at Tate Liverpool as part of Liverpool Biennial 2018: Beautiful world, where are you? from 14 July – 28 October. Stella Tillyard 'The Great Level' is out now. Michael Talbot is a lecturer in the History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Middle East at the University of Greenwich . New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio. Presenter: Anne McElvoy Producer: Jacqueline Smith

At the height of summer, Matthew Sweet and guests turn their minds to tennis, beaches and walking.

As Wimbledon continues, Benjamin Markovits and William Skidelsky consider the philosophy of tennis; New Generation Thinker Des Fitzgerald explores the geography of a little known beach in Cardiff city centre; Rachel Holmes goes on a walking tour of Eleanor Marx's Sydenham in south London.

A Weekend in New York is by Benjamin Markovits

Des Fitzgerald is a lecturer in sociology at Cardiff University who studies the history of medicine, science and neuroscience and city life.

Producer: Craig Templeton Smith.

Playwright Charlotte Jones, author Laurence Scott, New Generation Thinkers Lisa Mullen and Iain Smith join Matthew Sweet.

Charlotte Jones discusses her new play set in a Quaker community during the Napoleonic Wars. Matthew Sweet visits Compton Verney Art Gallery with Lisa Mullen to see the exhibition, 'Marvellous Mechanical Museum' which re-imagines the spectacular automata exhibitions of the 18th century. Laurence Scott talks about the ideas in his book, 'Picnic Comma Lightning' which explores the way digital advances are changing the way we live and what we reveal about ourselves. And, from the Indian Superman to Batman in the Philippines, film historian and New Generation Thinker Iain Smith looks at the hidden history of unlicensed superhero films produced around the world.

Iain Robert Smith is a Lecturer in Film Studies at King's College, London.

Laurence Scott is a New Generation Thinker Lecturer in Writing at New York University in London and the author of 'Picnic Comma Lightning' which is to be broadcast as the Radio 4 Book of the Week from July 16-20th.

The Marvellous Mechanical Museum is at Compton Verney until September 20th 2018.

Charlotte Jones's drama The Meeting runs at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester from 13 July – 11 August

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio.

Producer Fiona McLean

The Italian architect and engineer, Renzo Piano, talks to Philip Dodd about his career from the Pompidou in Paris (with Richard Rogers) to the Shard in London and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

50 years of his work are being marked in an exhibition at London's Royal Academy of Arts from the 15th of September to the 20th of January 2019.

Producer: Craig Templeton Smith.

Nandini Das and John Gallagher look at words for strangers in Tudor and Stuart England and ideas about civility. Plus Shahidha Bari talks to Makena Onjerika the winner of the 2018 Caine Prize for African Writing.

Nandini Das is working on the Tide Project http://www.tideproject.uk/ exploring travel and identity in England 1550 - 1700

Producer: Luke Mulhall.