Free Thinking

Daisy Hay from Exeter University explores the way in which Disraeli invented the modern politician as a man or woman of feeling, and asks whether the image he projected as an emotionally in-touch everyman stemmed from fact or fiction? Recorded in front of an audience at BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival of Ideas at Sage, Gateshead. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the AHRC to find the brightest academic minds with the potential to turn their ideas into broadcasts.

Which historical 'facts' should be burned on the fire? How do you comb ancient and recent times for evidence?

Sophie Coulombeau on the origins of the custom for women to take their husband's name. Recorded in front of an audience at BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival of Ideas at Sage Gateshead. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the AHRC to find the brightest academic minds with the potential to turn their ideas into broadcasts.

David Willetts MP and the writer and philosopher Roger Scruton discuss the best way to foster knowledge in schools and universities and whether politicians have become too professionalised. In an age when many politicians have never had other jobs, are we better off with representatives who have specialist knowledge from careers forged outside Westminster? The conversation is chaired by Anne McElvoy and was recorded in front of an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage, Gateshead.

New Generation Thinker Tom Charlton on what 17th-century ideas about censorship share with the Leveson report. Recorded in front of an audience at BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival of Ideas at Sage Gateshead. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the AHRC to find the brightest academic minds with the potential to turn their ideas into broadcasts.

Matthew Sweet explores the way digital media have transformed our cultural tastes with poet Kei Miller, author and online games creator Naomi Alderman, music journalist Dave Hepworth and Prospect Magazine's Digital Editor, Serena Kutchinsky. Recorded in front of an audience at BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival of Ideas at Sage Gateshead.

New Generation Thinker Tiffany Watt-Smith explores mirroring and a nineteenth-century fascination with imitation. Recorded in front of an audience at BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival of Ideas at Sage Gateshead. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the AHRC to find the brightest academic minds with the potential to turn their ideas into broadcasts.

Anne McElvoy chairs a discussion about conciliation in an age of uprisings recorded in front of an audience at the BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking Festival of Ideas at Sage Gateshead. Best-selling Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov joins journalist John Kampfner and conflict resolution expert Gabrielle Rifkind.

Karen Armstrong, one of the world's leading thinkers about religion, gives the Free Thinking Lecture, arguing that, in the current global situation, a recognition of how little we know is the only way to peace. She talks to Rana Mitter and takes questions from the audience. Recorded on 31.10.14 in front of an audience at BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival of Ideas 2014 from Sage Gateshead.

Choreographer Akram Khan talks to Anne McElvoy about curating a festival at the Lowry, the relationship between dance and visual art and his interest in flamenco. Professor Diane Purkiss reviews Eileen Atkins performance at the RSC in The Witch of Edmonton. Deanna Petherbridge discusses an exhibition of prints showing witches that she's curated at the British Museum.