Free Thinking

What price the self in the 21st century? We may be living in the age of the "selfie" and of social media narcissism but is there anything fixed about the self? Philip Dodd and his guests, the novelist, Tom McCarthy, the sociologist, Susie Scott, the neuroscientist, Daniel Glaser and the painter, Dexter Dalwood explore the notion of identity today taking in the major Rauschenberg retrospective at Tate Modern, Erving Goffman's seminal work of sociology, The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life and the way we all use words to constantly make and remake our selves.

Robert Rauschenberg runs at Tate Modern from December 1st until April 2nd 2017.

Producer: Zahid Warley.

Matthew Sweet discusses elites and their role in contemporary politics, with Douglas Carswell, MP for Clacton;Professor David Runciman, Head of the Department of Politics & International Studies at the University of Cambridge; Eliane Glaser, writer and Senior Lecturer at Bath Spa University; and Lynsey Hanley, visiting Fellow in Cultural Studies at Liverpool John Moores University.

Producer: Luke Mulhall.

Wierd fiction presents the universe as an irrational place, totally indifferent to human concerns. Is 'the wierd' a more general approach that can bextended beyond fiction to encompass the other arts, or even politics and science? Rana Mitter discusses the idea of the wierd with literary scholar Nick Freeman of the University of Loughborough, cultural theorist Caroline Edwards of Birkbeck, University of London, and astronomer Marek Kukula of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Juliet Stephenson and Lia Williams decide which role to play on the toss of a coin in Robert Icke's version of Schiller's Mary Stuart at the Almeida. The director explains why. Just before he died in 2015 the Nobel Prize-winning author Günter Grass completed his last book. Karen Leeder has been reading the English translation of it. And New Generation Thinker Preti Taneja has been reading a selection of other newly translated fiction. Plus MP Rachel Reeves has written a history of a campaigning MP who played a crucial role in the de-criminalisation of homosexuality, the legalisation of abortion and the abolition of the death penalty and who was also a driving force in the roll-out of comprehensive education. She talks to presenter Anne McElvoy about why the work of Alice Bacon interests her.

Of All That Ends by Günter Grass is out now.

Preti Taneja's pick of literature in translation includes:

Istanbul, Istanbul - Burhan Sonmez (Saqi Books)

Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

Zadie Smith talks dance, depicting teenage friendships and US/UK differences with Philip Dodd as her new novel Swing Time is published in Britain and BBC TV dramatises her book NW starring Nikki Amuka-Bird and Phoebe Fox.

Producer: Robyn Read

Matthew Sweet tries to separate out the clichés from the reality when it comes to male masculinity in 2016 with the director of the forthcoming Being A Man festival at London’s Southbank and Josh Appignanesi and Devorah Baum, the husband and wife team behind a new documentary that charts the emotional turmoil of childbirth on a man reluctant to grow up.

Plus, Matthew travels to the Florence Nightingale Museum in London to meet New Generation Thinker and historian of beards, Alun Withey, who reveals why the current craze for male facial hair is not a patch on the Victorian age.

And do you think you’re a good listener? Do you think you’re being listened to? In a year of political upheaval that’s rapidly reshaping a new world order, the head of the Government’s 'nudge unit’ David Halpern, and communications professor Jim Macnamara, consider the importance of listening when it comes to a functioning democracy.

The New Man by Josh Appignanesi and Devorah Baum is in selected cinemas.

Producer: Craig Templeton Smith

Matthew Sweet visits little known locations in London to meet researchers drawing on archives of the past to cast new light on the present.

New Generation Thinkers Shahidha Bari and Laurence Scott present a programme looking at new research into supernatural fiction writer Vernon Lee with Francesco Ventrella. Lee used the phrase "iron curtain" and declared herself a "cosmopolitan from her birth, without any single national tie or sympathy". They also debate what it means to lie, examine the life of communist informer Harvey Matusow with Doug Haynes, and look at new scientific research into the way consistent lying can change behaviour. Plus, Jenny Kitzinger on the gulf between popular ideas of ‘coma’ and the realities of such states.

Part of a week of programmes on BBC Radio 3 exploring new academic research.

Being Human festival of the humanities runs from 17–25 Nov 2016 at universities across the UK. It is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) which works with Radio 3 on the New Generation Thinkers scheme to find academics who can turn their research into radio.

Producer: Craig Smith

French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss famously said that ‘animals are good to think with’. Rana Mitter with Sarah Peverley, Charles Forsdick, Alasdair Cochrane, Eveline de Wolf, Michael Szollosy and an audience at FACT, Liverpool debate robots, humans and animals.

The broadcast will preview upcoming events organised by the University of Liverpool as part of their Being Human festival programme and is part of a week of programmes on Radio 3 focusing on new research and the UK wide festival supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

From a best friend to a tasty snack or something we must carefully husband to a threat we must eradicate, we humans think about animals in lots of ways. But how has our thinking about animals changed over time, and what does that tell us about our shifting attitudes toward the natural world and our place in it? Hear the views of a medievalist who studies bestiaries and mermaids, a French scholar who explores the history of the ‘human zoo’, and a political theorist who argues that we should extend human rights to animals, a zookeeper, and an expert on human-robot relations.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer prize-winning Maus - a father-son memoir about the Holocaust drawn with cats and mice - is one of the classics of graphic novels. He's now collaborating with the Jazz composer Phillip Johnston on a show that puts music alongside the images. Naomi Alderman talks to them and to the performance artist Marina Abramovic who's written a memoir. Plus Sarah Churchwell watches a film version of Philip Roth's American Pastoral which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998. Ewan McGregor directs and stars as a man whose life starts to fall apart as his daughter commits an act of political terrorism.

Wordless! Art Spiegelman + Phillip Johnston is at the Barbican in London on 11 November 2016 / 19:30

Marina Abramovic's memoir is called Walk Through Walls.

Producer: Zahid Warley.