Free Thinking

Shahidha Bari and Laurence Scott look at images of Canada from First Nations art through Anne of Green Gables on TV to poems and art posted on Instagram and Twitter by Rupi Kaur. Their studio guests are author Alison MacLeod, Robbie Richardson and Deborah Pearson. Plus film maker Kevan Funk.

Rupi Kaur has published a book called Milk and Honey and you can find images of her art via her website https://www.rupikaur.com/

Robbie Richardson from the University of Kent is writing a book about the connections between representations of First Nations people in 18th-century British literature and the rise of modern British identity.

Kevan Funk's film Hello Destroyer is on a tour of UK cinemas along with other films from the Canada Now Festival and it is also available from Curzon Home Cinema.

Alison MacLeod has published a short story collection all the beloved ghosts.

Deborah Pearson's documentary History History History is screening as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival from August 5th to 10th.

Anne of Green Gables, the 1908 novel by Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery, has recently been remade for TV in a CBC-Netflix adaptation

Part of Canada 150: a week of programmes marking the 150th anniversary of the founding of the nation. You can find links to concerts and other broadcasts on the Radio 3 website.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Philip Dodd explores the influence of Canadian history and the difference between stand up and performing a one man show. Katherine Ryan is based in the UK and about to perform at summer festivals and in an autumn tour. The French Canadian playwright, performer and opera director Robert Lepage recently staged his autobiographical "memory play", 887, at the Barbican in London. He has directed a ring cycle for the Metropolitan Opera which was featured in a 2012 documentary Wagner's Dream and productions of Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust and Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress and has also worked on shows for Cirque Du Soleil.

http://www.katherineryan.co.uk/http://lacaserne.net/index2.php/robertlepage/

Part of Radio 3's Canada 150: a week of programmes marking the 150th anniversary of the founding of the nation. You can find links to concerts and other broadcasts on the Radio 3 website.

Producer: Robyn Read

Garry Kasparov talks to Philip Dodd about being defeated by a supercomputer in the chess match he played in 1997 and how this affected his view of AI. 100 years ago, Wyndham Lewis was first commissioned as a war artist; Richard Slocombe, curator of a new exhibition and art historian Anna Grueztner Robins discuss his art with John Keane who was a war artist in the Gulf War. 2017 New Generation Thinker Simon Beard outlines his research into overpopulation and our attitude towards death.

Garry Kasparov's book is called Deep Thinking: Where Artificial Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins.

Wyndham Lewis: Life, Art, War is a display of 160 artworks, books, journals and pamphlets which runs at the Imperial War Museum North in Salford from 23 June 2017 – 1 January 2018

Simon Beard is based at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Cambridge researching existential risk. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio and television.

Rana Mitter goes to a drama which asks the audience to play jury in a trial following the hijacking of a plane. He's joined by Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, whose book 'The Enemy Within' looks at attitudes towards the Islamic community in Britain, Richard English author of 'Does Terrorism Work?: A History', Faisal Devji, author of several studies of political Islam and the ideology of Jihad, and 2017 New Generation Thinker Thomas Simpson.

'Terror' by Ferdinand von Schirach in a translation by David Tushingham is directed at the Lyric Hammersmith by Sean Holmes running from 14 Jun ‐ 15 Jul 2017

Baroness Sayeeda Warsi's book is called 'The Enemy Within'.

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio and television. You can find more on the Free Thinking website.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Essayist Tom McCarthy joins presenter Anne McElvoy, academics Dennis Duncan + Peter Mackay and the curator of A Museum of Modern Nature.

As a new exhibition opens in Edinburgh, 'Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobites', poet and New Generation Thinker Peter Mackay explores the hundreds of artefacts gathered from home and abroad and gives us his reflections on the old old story of the Kings over the Water.

Dennis Duncan from The Bodleian Centre for the Study of the Book brings a tale of how indexes were used to expose British Jacobite sympathisers in the decades following the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

Plus a new exhibition called 'A Museum of Modern Nature' features objects offered by members of the public who were asked to reflect on what connected them to the natural world and their sense of the presence of nature in their own lives with Rosie Stanbury and Rebekah Shaman

Tom McCarthy's Essay Collection is called Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish.

Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Anne McElvoy is joined by screenwriter Alex von Tunzelmann who discusses her new film, Churchill. New Generation Thinker Christopher Bannister, an expert on the propaganda unit The Ministry of Information, reveals the influence it still wields today. Academic Nandini Das and Stephanie Pratt, an art historian with Native American heritage, consider the complicated legacy of Pocahontas 400 years after her death. Plus, writer Elif Batuman offers a linguistic guide to the nuisances of the Turkish language and explains why she's so in love with the book titles of Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Elif Batuman's The Idiot is out now.

You can find information about Pocahontas events from Gravesend Council http://www.visitgravesend.co.uk/events/pocahontas-400/ and http://www.bigideascompany.org/project/pocahontas-2017/

Churchill is on general release from Friday.

Christopher Bannister is based at the School of Advanced Study at University College London.

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3, BBC Arts and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio and television. You can find more on the Free Thinking website.

Producer: Craig Templeton Smith

Shahidha Bari and Laurence Scott explore our obsession with the self. Take a look in the mirror with author and photographer Will Storr, the novelist, Olivia Sudjic, Tom Jackson, creator of Postcard from the Past and the neuroscientist, Sophie Scott.

Will Self joins Matthew Sweet to discuss the mind, consciousness, ADHD, Alzheimer’s and PTSD - all woven together in his new novel Phone. Mad to be Normal director, Robert Mullan, talks about the man at the centre of his film, controversial psychiatrist R. D. Laing. Critic Melanie Williams considers Mandy, Alexander Mackendrick's 1952 film about a deaf child learning to find her way in post-war Britain. Mandy was played by the child actress Mandy Miller who recalls her starring role from sixty five years ago.

Will Self's new novel, Phone is out now.

Mad to be Normal is in selected cinemas, certificate 15.

A new restoration of Mandy is out now on Blu-Ray and DVD.

Producer: Craig Templeton Smith

Anne McElvoy looks at the style of the election campaign and how it's been reflected by political sketch writers with John Crace and Quentin Letts. As Common by DC Moore opens at London's National Theatre, Simon Jenkins and Jonathan Healey discuss the impact of the Enclosure Acts. New Generation Thinker Emma Butcher from the University of Hull marks 200 years since Branwell Brontë was born. The winner of this year's Pushkin House Russian Book Prize - Rosalind Blakesley - talks to Anne along with one of the judges, writer Charlotte Hobson.

Rosalind Blakesley's prize-winning book is The Russian Canvas: Painting in Imperial Russia 1757-1881

You can find more information about events including talks and guided walks for the Branwell Brontë anniversary at the Bronte Parsonage Museum and as part of the Bradford Lit Fest where a statue is being unveiled.

https://www.bronte.org.uk/https://www.bradfordlitfest.co.uk/

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their ideas into radio and television. You can find more on the Free Thinking website.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Matthew Sweet sees a film version of Daphne Du Maurier's novel directed by Roger Michell and looks at revenge in Shakespeare and Greek drama with 2017 New Generation Thinker Islam Issa and classicist and author Natalie Haynes. Andrew O'Hagan discusses his new book of essays exploring his relationship with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and the Australian web developer who may or not be the inventor of the Bitcoin.

Natalie Haynes new novel is called The Children of Jocasta.

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC with the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio and television. You can find more on the Free Thinking website.

Producer: Fiona McLean