Free Thinking

New Generation Thinker Victoria Donovan from the University of St Andrews explores the dilemmas of post-war reconstruction in Soviet Russia and asks why the atheist Communist regime was prepared to spend millions on the restoration of religious architecture.

Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

New Generation Thinker Katherine Cooper looks at literary refugees in the Second World War and tells the untold story of the work done by British writers to save their European colleagues. She shows how HG Wells, Rebecca West and JB Priestley became intertwined with the lives of writers fleeing persecution on the continent. Katherine peeps into drawing rooms, visits the archives of PEN, scrutinises the correspondence and draws on the fiction of key literary figures to explore crucial allegiances formed in wartime London. Why did these British writers believe that by saving Europe’s literary voices they were saving Europe itself?

Katherine Cooper is Senior Research Associate at the University of East Anglia, School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing.

Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead.

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year and then work with them to turn their research into radio.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Damon Hill, Tanni Grey-Thompson and former Colonel Lincoln Jopp consider whether the rush of adrenaline makes us think better? It brings us an increase in our strength, heightened senses, a lack of pain and a burst of energy. How is it connected to our expertise in handling crises and what is the aftermath?

Joining Radio 3 presenter Rana Mitter and an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead are guests who have lived and observed decision-making under pressure, at top speed:

Damon Hill is a former Formula One racing driver, broadcaster and author of Watching the Wheels: the Autobiography.

Tanni Grey-Thompson picked up 16 Paralympic medals during her career (including 11 golds) and won the London Marathon six times.

Colonel Lincoln Jopp MC served in the army for 27 years, commanding in conflict zones around the world including Northern Ireland, Iraq, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

New Generation Thinker Louisa Egbunike from Manchester Metropolitan University considers images of war and ghosts of the past.

Within Igbo culture specific rites and rituals need to be performed when a person dies. To die and be buried ‘abroad’, away from one’s ancestral home or to not be buried properly, impedes the transition to the realm of the ancestors. Louisa Egbunike explores the legacy of the Biafran war and considers the image of those spirits unable to journey to the next realm, and left to roam the earth.

Recorded in front of an audience as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead.

Producer: Zahid Warley

George Saunders, Kirsty Logan, Jenn Asworth and Paul McVeigh discuss writing fiction short and long with presenter Matthew Sweet.

Kirsty Logan is the author of books including The Gracekeepers and The Rental Heart & Other Fairytales and a range of short stories.

Jenn Ashworth’s books include Fell, The Friday Gospels, A Kind of Intimacy and Cold Light and a selection of short stories.

Paul McVeigh has won prizes including the Polari prize for his debut novel The Good Son. Born in Belfast he is co-founder of the London Short Story Festival, writes a blog and has represented the UK at events in Mexico and Turkey.

Recorded in front of an audience as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead.

Producer: Zahid Warley

New Generation Thinker Edmund Richardson with the story of Alexander the Great’s lost city, buried beneath Bagram airbase, a CIA detention site and wrecked Soviet tanks. For centuries, it was a meeting point of East and West. Then it vanished. In 1832, it was discovered by the unlikeliest person imaginable: a ragged British con-man called Charles Masson, on the run from a death sentence. Today, Alexander’s lost civilization is lost again. And Masson? For his next trick, he accidentally started the most disastrous war of the nineteenth century.

Edmund Richardson’s Essay tells the story of the liar and the lost city, of how the unlikeliest people can change history.

Recorded in front of an audience as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead.

Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Harriet Harman, who has just written her autobiography A Woman’s Work, was first elected a Labour MP in 1982 and has served as the acting leader of her party twice in her career. She talks to Free Thinking presenter Philip Dodd about championing women’s rights and sustaining a political career in a fast-changing political landscape.

In his final year of office, President Obama talked about how difficult it is today to keep the public focused on the long term when the short term response has taken over. “The 24-hour news cycle”, he said,” is just so lightning fast and the attention span I think is so short that sometimes it's difficult to keep everybody focused on the long term.”

Are UK politicians now better at campaigning than producing policies that look to the future?

Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

The ruined priory of Tynemouth nestles on a Northumbrian cliff top, staring out at the fog and foam of the North Sea. In the 14th century it was a proving ground – and occasional prison camp – for monks from the wealthy mother monastery of St Albans. But the monks here didn’t just isolate themselves, pray and complain about the food (though they did do those things). They also studied astronomy. Writing treatises, computing tables and designing new instruments, they contemplated the nature of a divinely-wound clockwork universe.

New Generation Thinker Seb Falk from the University of Cambridge brings to life a world where science and religion went hand-in-hand, where monks loved their gadgets, and where a wooden disc, a brass ring and some silk threads were all you needed to model the motions of the stars.

Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead.

Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Can the steady tortoise still beat the rapid hare in today’s world? Our panel, chaired by Free Thinking presenter Anne McElvoy, compare experiences of life in the fast lane with taking the slow route – in business, writing, leisure time.

Pinky Lilani is an author, motivational speaker, food expert and women’s advocate, and nominated in the Woman’s Hour Power List. She was appointed a CBE in 2015 for services to women in business.

Denise Mina wrote her first crime novel, Garnethill, while studying for her PhD at Strathclyde University. Now the award-winning writer of twelve novels, plays and graphic fiction she has presented radio and television programmes including a film about her own family. Her most recent novel featuring detective Alex Morrow is Blood Salt Water and her new novel The Long Drop was inspired by real historical events in Glasgow in 1957.

Jay Griffiths is the author of Pip Pip which explores attitudes to time across the world. Other books include Tristimania: a Diary of Manic Depression and Wild: an Elemental Journey.

John Gallagher is a Radio 3 New Generation Thinker who teaches history at the University of Cambridge.

Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead.

Producer: Craig Smith

“Take control of your sleep,” says Professor Russell Foster CBE, leading neuroscientist and this year’s opening lecturer on the festival theme of the Speed of Life. Sleeping consumes a third of our lifetimes, but Professor Foster believes our sleeping hours are still not properly appreciated. His research shows how our bodies, honed by three million years of evolution, follow a natural clock and not the man-made one in daily use. He believes that all life on the planet has developed a 24-hour timing system which humans now use to fine-tune our rhythms.

And yet Britain’s sleep problems have never been more acute: three separate surveys over the past decade indicate insomnia has increased across the population – and it’s becoming a source of public debate and private misery.

Russell Foster is Head of the Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology and Senior Fellow at Brasenose College Oxford.

Producer: Fiona McLean