Free Thinking

Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough meets the British artist Tacita Dean. ‘Tacita Dean: Landscape’ has just opened at the Royal Academy in London and features vast chalk mountains and cloudscapes and a film made in Cornwall, Yellowstone and Wyoming. And what does an artist do when she travels hundreds of miles to film a total eclipse of the sun… and finds there’s no film in the camera.

Tacita Dean Landscape is at the Royal Academy until August 12th. Last chance to see Tacita Dean: Portrait is at the National Portrait Gallery, 15 March-28 May; Still Life is at the National Gallery, 15 March-28 May

Roland Jackson, Visiting Fellow at the Royal Institution THE ASCENT OF JOHN TYNDALL: Victorian Scientist, Mountaineer and Public Intellectual is out now.

Ben Anderson is a 2018 New Generation Thinker from Keele University who is writing a book Modern Natures: Mountain Leisure and Urban Culture in England and Germany, c. 1885-1918.

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio.

Presenter: Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough

This year's authors are:

Robert Bickers for Out of China: How the Chinese Ended the Era of Western Domination

From BBC Radio 3's archive, another opportunity to hear an interview with Philip Roth (1933 - 2018), author of books including Portnoy's Complaint & American Pastoral.

Recorded in New York in 2008, Philip Roth talked to Philip Dodd about his life and work and about his 29th book Indignation.

The Pulitzer Prize winning Roth has been called provocative, playful and angry and many of his themes remained consistent since he began writing in the late 1950’s. He and his fictional alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman, cast an often satirical eye over post World War America, notably with a string of now classic late novels such as I Married a Communist, American Pastoral, The Human Stain and The Plot against America.

The novel Indignation is set in 1951, the second year of the Korean War, and tells the story of the son of a kosher butcher who escapes a crushing New Jersey Jewish environment to attend a conservative College in Ohio. It is a tale about work and careers, about sexual discovery, anti-Semitism, families and the bizarre nature of fate and memory.

In this interview Philip Roth talks about the role of fiction in his life and about his own impact on America. He describes the attraction of mixing fiction with elements of autobiography and about the expectations people have of the writer. He talks about sex, the male body, the ageing process and about his enduring need to write.

Presenter: Philip Dodd

Writers Sheila Heti, Jessie Greengrass and Jacqueline Rose compare notes on motherhood & presenter Anne McElvoy looks at depictions of Mrs Noah with New Generation Thinker Daisy Black.

Jacqueline Rose has written Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty. Her previous books include Women in Dark Times

Sheila Heti's latest book is called Motherhood. Her previous books include How Should a Person Be? and Women in Clothes.

Jessie Greengrass' novel, Sight, has been shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2018.

Daisy Black, Lecturer in English at the University of Wolverhampton, is one of the ten academics selected as New Generation Thinkers for 2018 in the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to help academics turn their research into radio programmes.

Producer: Fiona McLean

Self help, identity politics and the influence of postmodernists are on the agenda as Philip Dodd meets the YouTube star and Canadian clinical psychologist, Jordan B. Peterson.

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson is out now.

Producer: Craig Templeton Smith

Shahidha Bari looks at British design pioneers Enid Marx, Edward Bawden and Charles Rennie Mackintosh with curators Alan Powers and James Russell and design historian Eleanor Herring. 2018 New Generation Thinker Lisa Mullen visits The Future Starts Here at the V&A.

Alan Powers is the author of a new book Enid Marx:The Pleasures of Pattern and is curating an exhibition at the House of Illustration in London Print, Pattern and Popular Art which runs from May 25th to September 23rd 2018

James Russell has curated Edward Bawden which runs at the Dulwich Picture Gallery from May 23rd to September 9th 2018 and he is the author of The Lost Watercolours of Edward Bawden.

Eleanor Herring is interested in making, writing, teaching and talking about design with as broad an audience as possible. She is the author of Street Furniture Design: Contesting Modernism in Post-War Britain.

The Future Starts Here runs at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London until 4th November.

Mackintosh 150 marks the anniversary of the birth of Glaswegian architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Exhibitions include Making the Glasgow Style at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum until August 14th. His Oak Room will go on display when the V&A Dundee opens in September. Plus a new Mackintosh interpretation centre opens at The Mackintosh House, a series of film screenings is at The Lighthouse and exhibitions at Glasgow School of Art and other venues.

Lisa Mullen is the Steven Isenberg Junior Research Fellow at Worcester College, Oxford and one of the 2018 New Generation Thinkers in the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year to turn their research into radio.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

The relationship between intellectuals, nations and spies debated by Agnes Poirier, Maria Dimitrova, and Jefferson Morley. Plus philosopher John Gray explores atheism and doubt with Matthew Sweet.

Seven Types of Atheism by John Gray is out now.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Matthew Sweet discusses talking, speech and having a voice, with Trevor Cox, Professor of Acoustic Engineering at the University of Salford; Rebecca Roache, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London; actress and impressionist Jessica Martin; and Maurice McLeod, social commentator, director of Media Diversified, and Labour councillor for Queenstown Battersea.

Trevor Cox has written Now You're Talking: The Story of Human Conversation from Neanderthals to Artificial Intelligence.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Each generation creates its own myths and in Free Thinking, Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough talks to three writers whose novels and stories spring bright and fresh from a compost of classical legend and British folk stories. Madeline Miller, the American writer who re-created Achilles for the 21st century, now turns her attention to Circe, nymph, lowest-of-the-low goddess or witch, who possesses a unique sympathy for humanity. Zoe Gilbert's obsession with folk stories where strange things happen and no-one asks why has led her to create a new island replete with a population of selkies and hares, water bulls and human happiness and tragedy. Kirsty Logan's novel of The Gloaming, takes us to an island somewhere-sometime-never off the West Coast of Scotland where turning to stone and the mermaid life are all part and parcel of daily existence. Together they discuss the enduring nature of certain kinds of stories, why they still matter and so often enjoy a surge in popularity at times of social stress and confusion. Madeline Miller: Circe is out now Zoe Gilbert: Folk is out now Kirsty Logan: The Gloaming is out now Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Former army officer Dr Mike Martin on Why We Fight. Historian Priya Satia argues that guns were the drivers behind the industrial revolution. The mob as a political entity and the Massacre of St George's Fields of 10 May 1768 is considered in an opinion piece from 2018 New Generation Thinker Dafydd Mills Daniel. We also look at night time - curator Anna Sparham selects some nocturnal views of the capital from a photography exhibition at the Museum of London, while Dr Gavin Francis explains how being up all night affects the human body and mind. Anne McElvoy presents.

Mike Martin is a visiting research fellow at the Department of War Studies, King's College London, having previously studied biology at Oxford. Between these experiences, he served as a British Army officer in Afghanistan. His book Why We Fight is out now.

Priya Satia is a Prof. of History at Stanford University. She is the author of Spies in Arabia: The Great War & the Cultural Foundations of Britain’s Covert Empire in the Middle East. Her latest book Empire of Guns is out now.

Dr Dafydd Mills Daniel, Lecturer in Theology, Jesus College at the Uni. of Oxford, is one of the ten academics selected as New Generation Thinkers for 2018 in the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to help academics turn their research into radio programmes.

Anna Sparham is Curator of Photographs at the Museum of London. London Nights runs from 11th May to 11th November.

Gavin Francis is a GP, and the author of True North and Empire Antarctica: Ice, Silence & Emperor Penguins, which won the Scottish Book of the Year Award and was shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize and Costa Prize. His new book Shapeshifters: Medicine and Human Change is out now.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod