Free Thinking

What exactly is a portrait? As the National Portrait Gallery re-opens and Sheffield Documentary Festival begins, Shahidha Bari talks to the gallery's Chief Curator Alison Smith, film-makers Kim Longinotto and Franky Murray Brown about their film Dalton's Dream, photographer Johny Pitts, whose project Home is Not a Place moves to the Photographers’ Gallery in London and New Generation Thinker Ana Baeza Ruiz about an oral history project with 1970s feminist artists.

Producer: Sofie Vilcins

You can hear music relating to an image held in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery every day on BBC Radio 3's Breakfast programme next week and an episode of the weekly curation of Words and Music inspired by portraits is broadcast on Sunday June 18th and then available on BBC Sounds for a month.

Johny Pitts' work has been on show in Sheffield, Edinburgh and is now opening at the Photographers Gallery London this June.

Edinburgh GP Gavin Francis has been reading the writings of Thomas Browne (1605 -1682), who travelled to Padua and Leiden to qualify in medicine and then wrote on topics including religion, burial and examples of false understanding of science at the time. A Fortunate Woman - a depiction of a country doctor working now - takes inspiration from A Fortunate Man published in 1967 by John Berger and photographer Jean Mohr. Author Polly Morland joins Gavin Francis and New Generation Thinker Matt Smith from Strathclyde University, who is working on a history of health and medicine and who researches mental health, to discuss with Rana Mitter how our ideas have changed.

Producer: Julian Siddle

You can hear Gavin Francis discussing Ancient Wisdom and Remote Living in a previous Free Thinking episode available on BBC Sounds and as the Arts & Ideas podcast https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000q3by

The father of capitalism or a sensitive moral philosopher? Adam Smith has been claimed as the defender of self-interest and advocate of free market economics, but his reputation has undergone a recent reappraisal. With his tercentenary in 2023, Anne McElvoy hears about the unexpected side of Adam Smith and his enduring presence in modern political economy.

Glory Liu is a Lecturer on Social Studies at Harvard University. Her first book, Adam Smith's America: How a Scottish Philosopher became an Icon of American Capitalism, is a history of of the reception of Adam Smith's ideas in America.

Maha Rafi Atal is a lecturer in Global Economy at the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow.

Dafydd Mills Daniel is a lecturer in Divinity at the University of St Andrews who looks at the history of philosophy and religious thought. He is a BBC Radio 3 AHRC New Generation Thinker.

Roos Slegers is Assistant Professor in the School of Humanities and Digital Sciences at Tilburg University. Her research focuses on the intersection of philosophy, literature and economics in the late 18th Century authors.

Producer: Ruth Watts

Adam Smith 300 sees events taking place at universities in Scotland including Adam Smith 300 at the University Glasgow.

Previous Free Thinking episodes exploring economic ideas include an episode about John Rawls's A Theory of Justice (1971) and Mandeville's view of 18th century economics in his Fable of the Bees (1714)

Is it ever okay to pass off someone else’s work as your own? What if it’s a computer programme faking it? And how are our perceptions of ownership and Identity influenced by the apparent power of digital technology?

These are some of the big questions Chris Harding discusses with :

Rebecca Kuang, author of a new novel, ‘Yellowface’, which is largely a story about plagiarism and publishing, but also touches on identity, social media and use of digital technology in perpetuating misinformation.

New Generation Thinker Kerry McInerny, who researches the impact of AI. Amongst other aspects she’s looking at how it can get things wrong, and its misuse in racial profiling.

And, MIT economist Daron Acemoglu, whose new book ‘Power and Progress’ says advances in technology don’t always equate with positive outcomes. He discusses the way AI algorithms have been used in social media to make money and spread hate, but also outlines how we can harness tech for good

Ghislaine Boddington is a curator and director, specialising in the future human, body responsive technologies and digital intimacy. She is a Reader in Digital Immersion at the University of Greenwich. https://ghislaineboddington.com/

You can find more from Kerry on the Arts and Ideas podcast as part of our strand New Thinking – made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council which focuses specifically on research being done in UK universities –

Le Mépris in 1963 brought fame to Michel Piccoli. Jean-Luc Godard's new wave film was based on an Italian novel about a love triangle and power dynamics involving a playwright asked to work on a film script. Piccoli (1925-2020) went on to work with many other directors, including Buñuel, Chabrol, Varda, Rivette, Demy and Sautet in roles which run from a weak priest to a confused pope, with a host of rebels, cynics, lovers and losers mixed in. Matthew Sweet is joined by Geoff Andrew, Muriel Zagha, Phuong Le and Adam Scovell to look at this remarkable career that spanned seven decades.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Michel Piccoli: A Fearless Talent, is running at BFI Southbank from 1-29 June

From Pakistan to Bulgaria to swimming the waterways of Britain: Rana Mitter is joined by a panel of writers to look at our relationship with particular landscapes and the natural world. Kapka Kassabova’s latest book Elixir: In the Valley at the End of Time details her stay in a remote valley by the River Mesa in Bulgaria and the knowledge of herbalism she finds there. Patrick Barham's latest book is about Roger Deakin, the environmentalist who co-founded Common Ground and was passionate about wild swimming. New Generation Thinker Noreen Masud from the University of Bristol has written a memoir called A Flat Place which details the impact of displacement from her Pakistani roots and her pilgrimage to the low lying landscapes of Orkney, Morecambe Bay and Orford Ness. The programme is part of Radio 3's broadcasts from the 2023 Hay Festival and was recorded in front of an audience there earlier this week.

You can find a collection of discussions about Green Thinking all available to download or on BBC Sounds on the Free Thinking programme website of BBC Radio 3. Radio 3 is also broadcasting a series of lunchtime concerts from this year's Hay Festival and you can find past Hay festival discussions about Prose, Poetry and Drama in a collection on the Free Thinking programme website

Producer: Luke Mulhall.

From dockworkers in Poland to meetings with European prime ministers and presidents and witnessing the fall of the Berlin Wall - the latest book by Timothy Garton Ash is a memoir called Homelands: A Personal History of Europe. He is joined by the Turkish writer now in exile from her home country Ece Temelkuran, by journalist Ben Judah who has been interviewing citizens across different European countries and by Misha Glenny, who has written on the former Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe and presents for BBC Radio 4 a history series about different countries called The Invention of …. Rana Mitter chairs the discussion which is recorded in front of an audience as part of BBC Radio 3's programming from the Hay Festival.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

You can find a series of concerts from Hay, an episode of the Verb and other BBC discussions all available on BBC Sounds.

Ece Temelkuran was born into a political family and after her work as an investigative journalist and author of a series of books exploring Turkey’s history and politics, including How to Lose a Country and Ten Choices for a Better Now. She now lives outside the country.

The Imperial War Museum in London is putting on display recently collected objects and new first-hand testimony describing life in Northern Ireland during The Troubles in its first show to look at this topic. Anne McElvoy explores what it means to explore this history in writing, music and museum displays. The author Louise Kennedy's novel Trespasses is a 1970s love story. Poet Maria McManus and composer Keith Acheson have collaborated on a piece called Ellipses which they describe as being about "doubling back and reclaiming the sense of wonder, awe and timelessness that came before all the grimness". And Maria Fusco has worked on a new opera film which highlights the experiences of working class women in Belfast.

Producer: Robyn Read

The profound effects of losing our sense of smell, why historians should think more about the smells of the past and some thoughts on sneezing from Montaigne and La Condamine. Rana Mitter is joined by philosopher and wine-taster Barry Smith, Chrissi Kelly who founded the charity AbScent following her own experience of anosmia (the loss of smell), sensory historian William Tullett and New Generation Thinker Gemma Tidman.

William Tullett's book Smell and the Past: Noses, Archives, Narratives is out now.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

You can find previous Free Thinking discussions about other body parts available on BBC Sounds and as the Arts & Ideas podcast. We have looked at

A Baltic forest in 1913, Soho and the suburbs of Liverpool and the Jewish community that grows up there are the settings for Linda Grant's new novel The Story of the Forest. She joins presenter John Gallagher, Rachel Lichtenstein and Julia Pascal for a conversation about writing and Jewish identity in the North West as we also hear about Julia Pascal's play Manchester Girlhood and look at the re-opening of the Manchester Jewish Museum with curator Alex Cropper .

Producer in Salford: Nick Holmes

https://www.manchesterjewishmuseum.com/ has re-opened after a £6 million redevelopment

You can find other Free Thinking discussions about Jewish history and identity including