Free Thinking

Pauline Dakin spent her childhood on the run. Sally Bayley grew up in a house where men were forbidden and a charismatic leader ruled. They compare notes with presenter Matthew Sweet. New Generation Thinker Iain Smith discusses his research into the history of a film known as the Turkish Star Wars. Plus Canadian poet Gary Geddes on his poem sequence The Terracotta Army. And the pioneering Hungarian photographer László Moholy-Nagy and the birds eye view images which he created. Sarah Allen, co-curator of a new exhibition at Tate Modern discusses his impact.

Girl with Dove: A Childhood Spent Graphically Reading by Sally Bayley is out now. Pauline Dakin's memoir is called Run, Hide, Repeat.

Producer: Fiona McLean

Anne Applebaum, Gregory Claeys, Jane Humprhies and Richard Seymour join Rana Mitter to assess the legacy of Marx 200 years after his birth. Do his ideas have currency and if so where is he an influence in the world? Academic Emile Chabal reports on researching Marxism in India and Brazil.

Gregory Claeys is the author of Marx and Marxism

Richard Seymour has written Corbyn - The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics

Anne Applebaum's latest book is called Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine

Jane Humphries' book is called Childhood and Child Labour

Emile Chabal is writing a biography of Eric Hobsbawm and teaches at the University of Edinburgh.

Producer: Zahid Warley

Jesmyn Ward - author of Sing, Unburied Sing talks to Christopher Harding about editing a collection of essays called The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race and about the depictions of family life and poverty and the influence of Greek drama on her prize winning novels. Sarah Churchwell traces the history of the use and meaning of the phrases 'the American Dream' and 'America First'. John Edgar Wideman explains what he was seeking to do by blurring fact and fiction in his new short story collection American Histories.

Jesmyn Ward's novels include Salvage the Bones, Where the Line Bleeds and Sing, Unburied Sing - and a memoir called Men We Reaped. She has received a MacArthur Genius Grant and won two National Book Awards for Fiction. She has edited a collection of Essays called The Fire This Time which takes its inspiration from James Baldwin's 1963 examination of race in America, The Fire Next Time.

Professor Sarah Churchwell is the author of books including Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby and Behold America: A History of America First and the American Dream

John Edgar Wideman's work includes the novels The Cattle Killing and Philadelphia Fire and the memoir Brothers and Keepers. His new collection of short stories - American Histories - weaves real characters including Frederick Douglass and Jean-Michel Basquiat into imaginary narratives.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Tokyo used to be presented as the ultimate hyper-modern city. But after years of economic recession the Tokyo of today has another side. A site of alienation and loneliness, anxiety about conformity and identity, it is a place where self-professed 'geeks' (or 'otaku'), mostly single middle-aged men, congregate in districts like Akibahara to pursue fanatical interests outside mainstream society, including cult-like followings of teenage girl singers known as Tokyo Idols.

Novelist Tomouki Hoshino, photographer Suzanne Mooney, writer/photographer Mariko Nagai and film-maker Kyoko Miyake look at life in the city for the Heisei generation. Presented by Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough.

Director Kyoko Miyake has made a film called Tokyo Idols which looks at the obsession of middle aged men with superstar teenage girls who make a living online

The translator was Bethan Jones and the speakers were all in the UK to take part in events as part of Japan Now - a festival at the British Library in London, and in Manchester, Sheffield, Norwich. Programmed by Modern Culture in partnership with the Japan Foundation and Sheffield University.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

David Peace, Natasha Pulley, Yuna Tasaka and Jasper Sharp join Rana Mitter.

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's short story 'In a Grove', published in 1922, became the basis for the 1950 film from Akira Kurosawa 'Rashōmon', one of the first Japanese films to gain worldwide critical acclaim. 'The Rashōmon Effect' has become a byword for the literary technique where the same event is presented via the different and incompatible testimonies from the characters involved. David Peace's new book 'Patient X' is a novelised response to Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's last years and his death by suicide at the age of 35. Natasha Pulley is a novelist and Japanophile with a particular interest in Japanese literature of the 1920s, and in the unreliable narrator implied by use of the Rashōmon Effect. And Jasper Sharp is a writer and curator, author of the Historical Dictionary of Japanese Cinema.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Photographer Mika Ninagawa talks to Christopher Harding about the artificiality of her images of cherry blossoms. A plane crash in the mountains is explored in the new novel Seventeen from Hideo Yokoyama, translated by Louise Heal Kawai. And presenter Anne McElvoy is also joined by Eiko Honda from the University of Oxford and Professor Stephen Dodd from SOAS, the University of London for an exploration of the way nature has been depicted across the decades in Japanese writing and political thought.

Seventeen by Hideo Yokoyama translated by Louise Heal Kawai is out in English now.

Producer: Robyn Read

What do meatballs, The Square and Henning Mankell have in common? The answer is Sweden as you’ve no doubt guessed. As ABBA’s Cold War musical, Chess, is poised to return to the British stage Matthew Sweet considers what Sweden’s taught us – whether in films such as I am Curious Yellow or in the aisles at IKEA - and what the Swedes might have gained from their brushes with Britain. His guests include Anders Sandberg from the Future of Humanity Institute in Oxford, the Swedish cultural attache, Pia Lundberg, Lars Blomgren, one of the people behind The Bridge, the social scientist, Tom Hoctor and Kieran Long - once of the V&A but now the director of the Swedish centre for Architecture and Design.

Chess runs at English National Opera from 26 Apr - 02 Jun 2018

Producer: Zahid Warley

The real Cleopatra examined by New Generation Thinker Islam Issa plus Ros Barber on Warwickshire words in Shakespeare's verse, two leading neurologists, Suzanne O'Sullivan and Jules Montague explore the intricacies of the brain and the infinite capacity for experience and imagination, the playwright Ella Hickson on her new production in which she explores the personal cost of creative gain and Philip Horne on the notebooks left behind when the novelist Henry James died. Anne McElvoy presents.

Brainstorm by Suzanne O'Sullivan published by Chatto and Windus

Producer: Fiona McLean

Scrumbly Koldewyn remembers the '60s San Francisco theatre scene; Jenny Gilbert & Shahdiha Bari debate environmentalism and fashion at the V&A and Clare Lilley Director of Programmes at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park looks at the use of thread and textiles in art. Plus drag at The Royal Vauxhall Tavern in London with performers Lavinia Co-op and Rhys Hollis, plus Ben Walters who is researching this history.

The environmental impact of fashion over more than 400 years is examined in the first UK exhibition to look at this topic. That's how the V&A is billing its new show Fashioned From Nature. Jenny Gilbert from De Montfort University visits the display and talks to Shahidha Bari about her research into textiles.

Fashioned from Nature runs at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London from April 21st to January 27th 2019.

Scrumbly Koldewyn is one of the founding members of the Cockettes, the legendary psychedelic hippie theatre troupe based in San Francisco in the 60s

The tenth season of RuPaul's Drag Race has just started to air on Netflix. The Royal Vauxhall Tavern is South London's oldest surviving gay venue and is the UK's first building to be Grade II listed in recognition of its importance to LGBTQ community history.

Producer: Debbie Kilbride

When President Obama met the American essayist and fiction writer Marilynne Robinson they discussed shared values, citiizenship and Christianity. She talks to Rana Mitter about her definition of Puritanism, the radical history of the mid west states, the use of religion in current American political rhetoric and the biblical cadences of her fiction.

Marilynne Robinson is the author of novels including Gilead, Lila, Home and her new collection of Essays is called What Are We Doing Here ?

Producer: Fiona McLean