Free Thinking

Rula Lenska was one of the stars of this 1970s TV series about a fictional female band, playing the role of Nancy "Q" Cunard de Longchamps, alongside Julie Covington and Charlotte Cornwell. She joins Matthew Sweet along with Howard Schuman, who wrote the series, and Andy Mackay, saxophonist with Roxy Music, who co-wrote the songs with Howard. Also taking part are Chloë Moss who has written the book for a stage adaptation of the series that is opening at the Chichester Festival Theatre, and critic David Benedict.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Rock Follies based on the television series written by Howard Schuman. Book by Chloë Moss/ Songs by Howard Schuman and Andy Mackay runs at Chichester Festival Theatre from Mon 24 Jul – Sat 26 Aug

You can find other discussions about groundbreaking TV in our Free Thinking archives and available on BBC Sounds including

The influence of World War Two on philosophical thinking is the focus of today's discussion as Chris Harding explores the years when the University of Oxford hosted one of the most distinctive and influential philosophy departments in the English speaking world. Thinkers like J.L. Austin, Gilbert Ryle and Elizabeth Anscombe, although very different in their own right, developed a style of philosophising that is sometimes called 'ordinary language philosophy': rejecting grand theory or metaphysical speculation, it was driven by the earnest conviction that philosophical problems could be dissolved, rather than solved, by paying close attention to the minutiae of language and speech as they are actually used. The proponents of ordinary language philosophy were profoundly influenced by the experience of the Second World War: they were serious, modest, and working in the same spirit as the post-War reconstruction of Britain (including the foundation of the NHS) that was going on around them. And yet within a couple of decades, that style of philosophy was completely out of fashion.

Chris Harding is joined by:

Nikhil Krishnan, author of A Terribly Serious Adventure: Oxford Philosophy 1900 - 1960

Producer: Luke Mulhall

You can find a collection of episodes exploring philosophy on the Free Thinking programme website including, Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, early and later Wittgenstein, pansychism, epistemic injustice

How do children develop language and experiment with sounds? What toys help them develop? And, how they explain their games? As the Young V&A, previously the Museum of Childhood, opens in East London, Anne McElvoy hosts a discussion looking at the history of play. Does our interest in children's play tells us more about them or, the adults who care for them?

Dr Helen Charman, is the Director of the revamped Young V&A in East London

Dr Yinka Olusoga is a Lecturer in Education at the University of Sheffield. Her research interests focus on the social construction of children and childhood in the educational policy, political debate, art and popular culture, in the present and in the past. She has been leading research in the Iona and Peter Opie Archive and with the Play Observatory.

Dr Rebecca Woods is a BBC Radio 3 AHRC New Generation Thinker and a senior lecturer in language and cognition at the University of Newcastle. Her work focuses on children’s language acquisition.

Joe Moshenska is Professor of English Literature and a Fellow of University College. Another BBC Radio 3 AHRC New Generation Thinker, he has been researching Tudor toys.

Producer: Ruth Watts

You might be interested in a recent Free Thinking episode exploring boyhood to manhood which looks at teenage experiences - and you can find more about museum displays including the re-opening of the National Portrait Gallery in London and the V&A exhibition Diva in a collection on the website called art, architecture, photography and museums.

Joya Chatterji has written about the South Asian twentieth century in her new book called Shadows at Noon. Tripurdaman Singh has been researching Indian princely states. Novels by Kamala Markandaya (1924-2004) are being republished. Her daughter Kim Oliver and literary scholar Alastair Niven discuss Nectar in a Sieve. A bestseller when it first came out in 1954, it's a story about a tenant farmer, his wife and the impact of a tannery built in a neighbouring village. Rana Mitter hosts.

The books recommended by our guests are:

Producer: Julian Siddle

In 1897 women played American football in San Fransisco. Dr Katie Taylor, is a qualified coach who previously managed the Great Britain Men's Flag Football Team, supporting the team at three European Championships. She is a Lecturer in Sociology of Sport at Nottingham Trent University and has been researching the history of women playing the sport and the language used in newspaper to describe both women players and coaches working in the game.

Stacey Pope is Associate Professor in the Department of Sport and Exercise at Durham University. She is author of The Feminization of Sports Fandom and has recently published research looking at newspaper coverage of women’s football, the impact of the Lionesses and at continuing sexist attitudes amongst male fans to women playing football. She has also worked on an oral history project with women fans of Newcastle football club recording their experiences of attending games which you can find here https://womenfootballfans.org

And you can read more here https://canvas.vuelio.co.uk/5047/study-reveals-misogynistic-attitudes-towards-womens-sport/view

Christienna Fryar is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker who studies sport, and Caribbean/British history

This Arts & Ideas podcast is part of the New Thinking series of episodes which focuses on new research from UK universities. It was made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI. You can find a collection under New Research on Radio 3’s Free Thinking programme website

The Sacred Return of Lost Things is the theme of this year's Art Biennial in Liverpool. Catherine Fletcher talks to some of the artists showing work about how they have engaged with the city's history. Visual artist Melanie Manchot introduces her first full length feature film, STEPHEN, about a character recovering from gambling and alcohol addictions. Rudy Loewe describes their new large-scale installation The Reckoning, based around the Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago. And Charmaine Watkiss introduces a sacred space she has created in Liverpool’s Victoria Gallery & Museum, with life-size drawings and a sculpture representing unheard voices and stories that survived the Middle Passage.

New Generation Thinker Vid Simoniti gives his view and reports on an exhibition at the Whitworth in Manchester called Economics the Blockbuster – It’s not Business as Usual which looks at disrupting ideas about value, ownership, trade and economy. Liverpool Biennial runs until 17th September 2023.

Economics the Blockbuster – It’s not Business as Usual is part of Manchester International Festival MIF23 and this show runs until October 22nd. You can hear about music featured in MIF in other Radio 3 broadcasts and on BBC Sounds and on the Free Thinking programme website there is a collection of discussions about art, architecture, photography and museums.

Marrying someone based on a portrait was part of life in Renaissance Europe. An exhibition in Bath explores the politics of wedlock and painting - New Generation Thinker Christina Faraday has been to visit. Eleanor Chan has been studying the history of depicting musical notes on the page, whilst Sew What podcast host Isabella Rosner looks at needlework skills in Tudor England. John Gallagher hosts the conversation.

Producer: Nick Holmes

BBC Radio 3 is marking the anniversary of the Tudor composer William Byrd with episodes of Composer of the Week, concerts including one during the Proms season at Londonderry and other discussions - all available on BBC Sounds.

You can also find Eleanor Chan's Essay about another Tudor composer - The discordant tale of Thomas Weelkes .

Painted Love: Renaissance Marriage Portraits runs at the Holburne Museum in Bath until October 1st 2023.

Christina Faraday's book Tudor Liveliness: Vivid Art in Post-Reformation England is out now from Yale University Press.

You might also be interested in other Free Thinking conversations about Tudor history, including:

The Tudor Mind with guests including Helen Hackett

Tudor Families with guests including Joanne Paul and Emma Whipday https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0017dvc

What do you call a stranger with guests including Nandini Das and John Gallagher https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b89ssp

A collection of discussions about Shakespeare collected on the Free Thinking programme website

160 volunteers recorded over 2,400 interviews with over 1,200 people on their lived experience of the NHS - as patients, staff and members of the public in an oral history project run by the University of Manchester. Professor Stephanie Snow discusses the way these help us understand how caring for children has changed in the NHS, what it felt like to get health care and not have to pay for it and other stories which interviews with policy makers in the archives didn't reveal. The Voices of Our National Health service is held at the British Library and a book has been published Our Stories: 75 Years of the NHS from the People who Built it, Lived it and Love it

https://www.nhs70.org.uk/story/voices-our-national-health-service-nhs

Film maker Sara David talks about NHS Untold Film Stories and her documentary Khichdi which focuses on three Indian women, including the filmmaker’s mother, who trained together in India, became friends and came to work as nurses in the NHS in the 1990s

Dr Sarah Jilani is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker who is a Lecturer in English at City, University of London

This New Thinking conversation is part of a series marking NHS75 made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI. If you don’t want to miss an episode sign up for the BBC Arts & Ideas podcast from BBC Sounds.

What can we learn from children's experiences in the Pandemic at home and at school? Can children express their experiences through drawing, and how might a simple curtain help create happy family homes?

Lindsey McEwen is Professor of Environmental Management within the Department of Geography and Environmental Management at the University of the West of England, Bristol. Her research involved working with children in Bristol to understand their experiences and impact of the Pandemic on their school lives. As part of the research, she helped to create a children's book called "Learning to Live With Fog Monsters" which aims to understand and help children to cope with the impacts of invisible threats like pandemics or climate change. The book and more information on the project are available at https://www.vip-clear.org/the-primary-book/

Rosie Parnell is Professor of Architecture & Pedagogy at the University of Newcastle. Her research explored the impact on home design and sharing family spaces during the pandemic, and how families changed homes during the Covid lockdowns. As part of the research, she helped to create a "Home Hack Help Kit" to help families come up with solutions to issues around shared spaces in the home, which can be found here https://homehacktoolkit.co.uk/

Dr Daisy Fancourt is Professor of Psychobiology and Epidemiolgy at University College London and a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker.

Producer: Sofie Vilcins

This New Thinking conversation is a part of a series of 5 episodes of the Arts and Ideas podcast marking the 75th anniversary of the NHS focusing on new research in UK universities which explores links between the arts and health. It is made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI. You can find out more on their website https://www.ukri.org/councils/ahrc/

From exercise on prescription to museum visits and debt advice. Christienna Fryar hears about social prescribing projects which are trying to link up the arts with other services to improve people’s health and tackle loneliness. These include wild swimming in the waterways of Nottinghamshire, the “Arts for the Blues” project based in the North west of England, a pilot programme in Scotland called “Art at the Start”, and a community hub at the Grange in Blackpool.

Christienna Fryar is a historian of sport and the history of Britain and the Caribbean. She is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker

You can find more about the projects Helen is involved in https://culturehealthresearch.wordpress.com/health-disparities/

Producer: Jayne Egerton

This New Thinking conversation is part of a series marking NHS75 made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI. If you don’t want to miss an episode sign up for the BBC Arts & Ideas podcast from BBC Sounds.