Free Thinking

As Halloween fast approaches, Matthew Sweet is joined round the Free Thinking cauldron by guests including Marina Warner and Suzannah Lipscomb to consider the season of the witch.

Film critic Larushka Ivan-zadeh and Claire Nally from Northumbria University review new blockbuster The Last Witch Hunter starring Vin Diesel, and consider the depictions of witches on film ahead of a screening of Vincent Price's 1968 horror classic Witchfinder General.

Catherine Spooner of Lancaster University and historian Suzzanah Lipscomb offer an historical guide to the famous witch trials from Pendle to Salem. And author Marina Warner discusses her father's relationship with the ghost writer M.R. James.

The new James Bond film Spectre is reviewed by New Generation Thinker Sam Goodman. The Egyptian feminist writer Nawal El Saadawi talks to Rana Mitter about facing death threats and surviving prison - and her novels which include Memoirs of a Woman Doctor and God Dies by the Nile. Lord Browne, former CEO of BP, makes the case for business to engage with society in a discussion with Mark Littlewood from the Institute of Economic Affairs. Dr Elisabeth Kendall has been studying the way so called Islamic State use classical Arabic poetry on social media.

Elisabeth Kendall is the author of Twenty-First Century Jihad

Marilynne Robinson, Thomas Harding, Imtiaz Dharker discuss ideas of home with Philip Dodd. Are we becoming increasingly rootless, or simply finding new ways to put down roots.

Pulitzer Prize winning author Marilynne Robinson is the author of a novel called Home and finds her own roots in Iowa and in her Calvinist faith. In her new collection of essays The Givenness of Things, she explores the ideas that make up the religious and philosophical homeland of Europe and America – Calvinism, Humanism, the Reformation, the self.

Thomas Harding’s family originate in Germany. In his new book The House by the Lake he relates the changing ownership and fortunes of his family’s summer house in eastern Berlin and with it the history of Germany from the thirties up to the present. It's his follow up to his best-selling book Hanns and Rudolph.

Poet and artist Imtiaz Dharker describes herself as a "Pakistani Calvinist Scottish Muslim" and her life has taken her from Lahore, to Glasgow, to Bombay, to Wales and finally to London – "I think displacement is often a good and useful thing for a writer", she says.

And as a new exhibition dedicated to The World of Charles and Ray Eames opens, Edwin Heathcote takes Philip on an imaginative tour of their iconic house, Case Study House #8, which they designed to "express man's life in the modern world."

The World of Charles and Ray Eames runs at the Barbican in London from 21st October to 14th February.

Matthew Sweet talks to Richard Mabey about his new book The Cabaret of Plants: Botany and the Imagination and hears how so much of our history has been driven by our discovery and exploitation of their properties but it's time to put our own human social preoccupations aside. Joining them, Andrea Wulf presents her findings on the extraordinary scientist Alexander von Humboldt, a seminal figure in human attempts to understand nature.

Presenter: Matthew Sweet

The actress and author Meera Syal and playwright Tanika Gupta discuss adapting Syal's novel Anita and Me for the stage. Chosen as a GCSE set text, the novel Anita and Me depicts the friendship of a Punjabi teenager Meena and Anita, a white more rebellious girl living in the same West Midlands village in the 1970s. Filmed in 2002, the autobiographical novel has now been adapted for stage by Tanika Gupta, directed by the Artistic Director of Birmingham Rep Roxana Silbert.

Rana Mitter chairs a discussion about Anita and Me, growing up in 70s Britain, the surrogacy industry in India and having a rebel in the family with questions from an audience at Birmingham Rep Theatre and as part of the Birmingham Literature Festival.

Anita and Me runs at Birmingham Repertory Theatre until October 24th. It's on at Theatre Royal Stratford East from October 29th - November 21st.

Salman Rushdie talks to Philip Dodd about a sense of belonging, why we are living in strange times and how his new novel mixes 1001 Nights with comic book heroes. Also historian Niall Ferguson on Henry Kissinger and cold war politics.

Salman Rushdie's novel is called Two Years Eight Months and Twenty Eight Nights.

Niall Ferguson's biography of Henry Kissinger is called Kissinger: Volume I: The Idealist, 1923-1968

Matthew Sweet hears from Alex Clark direct from the 2015 Man Booker Award ceremony on this year's winning novel.

The American poet Mark Doty, Professor Sarah Churchwell and the young British poet Andrew McMillan join Matthew Sweet for a programme on National Poetry Day dedicated to one of the classics of American poetry, Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Readings will be performed by William Hope.

Antony Sher and the stars of next Sunday's Drama on 3: Death of a Salesman, Zoë Wanamaker and David Suchet, discuss acting Arthur Miller with Philip Dodd. Also, are university campuses becoming places where free speech and debate is difficult? To discuss Free Thinking brings together Director of Curriculum for Cohesion and university lecturer Dr Matthew Tariq Wilkinson, journalist and Deputy Editor of the New Statesman Helen Lewis, and lawyer and author Anthony Julius.

James Fenton discusses his career as a poet and journalist ahead of collecting the PEN Pinter Prize 2015 in a ceremony tonight. New Generation Thinker Naomi Paxton researches the plays performed by Suffragettes. She offers her verdict on the film Suffragette, starring Meryl Streep, Helena Bonham Carter and Carey Mulligan. And Margaret Thatcher left Downing Street 25 years ago. Anne McElvoy is at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester to discuss her legacy with her official biographer, Charles Moore, and Conservative MP, Kwasi Kwarteng.