Free Thinking

Christopher Columbus spoke to lots of people: his family and kin in Genova, merchants in Venice, royalty in Madrid, the crew of his ship, not to mention the people he met on the other side of the Atlantic. Today, we would consider this a case of multilingualism. But is that how Columbus would have seen it? What language did he think he spoke himself? In the same period a pidgin language developed to allow linguistically diverse communities in the eastern Mediterranean and north Africa to carry out trade, diplomacy, and general communication. We look at the latest research on this language, known as lingua franca, and consider what it might tell us about communication amongst the linguistic communities of the same region today. New Generation Thinker John Gallagher is joined by guests Dr Joanna Nolan, Professor Nandini Das, Dr Birgül Yılmaz, and translator David Bellos.

This New Thinking episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast was made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Dr Joanna Nolan teaches at SOAS, University of London and is the author of The Elusive Case of Lingua Franca: Fact and Fiction

Created in a natural landscape feature, a conclave hillside, the Hollywood Bowl had already hosted religious services before its stage arrived. In 1922 the Los Angeles Philharmonic played its first season of open air concerts inaugurating a music venue. Lisa Mullen hears how the amphitheatre has hosted some of the greats of classical and popular music from Felix and Leonard Slatkin to Ella Fitzgerald, The Beatles and James Taylor. Michael Goldfarb and Mark Glancy discuss the emergence of a cultural landmark.

Producer: Ruth Watts

Dedicated in 1922, the Lincoln Memorial is a neoclassical temple built to honour the 16th president of the United States. Lisa Mullen discovers why America chose to mark the man who led the nation in the civil war and issued the Emancipation Proclamation that freed slaves forever. Michael Goldfarb, Professor Sarah Churchwell and Dr Joanna Cohen discuss the how the Lincoln Memorial became the backdrop for the continuing civil rights movement.

Producer: Ruth Watts

Prison breaks loom large in both literature and pop culture. But how should we evaluate them ethically? New Generation Thinker Jeffrey Howard asks what a world without prison would look like. His essay explores whether those unjustly incarcerated have the moral right to break out, whether the rest of us have an obligation to help -- and what the answers teach us about the ethics of punishment today.

Jeffrey Howard is an Associate Professor in the Political Science Department at University College London, whose work on dangerous speech has been funded by the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust. You can find him discussing hate speech in a Free Thinking Episode https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0006tnf

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics who can turn their research into radio.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Dina Rezk from the University of Reading looks at politics and the role of humour as she profiles Bassem Youssef, “the Jon Stewart of Egyptian satire”. As protests reverberate around the world, she looks back at the Arab Spring and asks what we can learn from the popular culture that took off during that uprising and asks whether those freedoms remain.

You can hear her in a Free Thinking discussion about filming the Arab Spring https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0005sjw and in a discussion about Mocking Power past and present https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000dzww

You can find of Dina's research https://egyptrevolution2011.ac.uk/

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics to turn their research into radio.

Producer: Robyn Read

New Generation Thinker Brendan McGeever traces the links between anti-Semitism now and pogroms in the former Soviet Union and the language used to describe this form of racism.

Brendan McGeever lectures at the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism at Birkbeck University of London. You can hear him discussing an exhibition at the Jewish Museum exploring racial stereotypes in a Free Thinking episode called Sebald, anti-Semitism, Carolyn Forché https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00050d2

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten early career academics each year to turn their research into radio.

Producer: Robyn Read

Earlier periods of history have seen more people with scarring to their faces from duelling injuries and infectious diseases but what stopped this leading to a greater tolerance of facial difference? Historian Emily Cock considers the case of the Puritan William Prynne and looks at a range of strategies people used to improve their looks from eye patches to buying replacement teeth from the mouths of the poor, whose low-sugar diets kept their dentures better preserved than their aristocratic neighbours. In portraits and medical histories she finds examples of the elision between beauty and morality. With techniques such as ‘Metoposcopy’, which focused on interpreting the wrinkles on your forehead and the fact that enacting the law led to deliberate cut marks being made - this Essay reflects on the difficult terrain of judging by appearance.

Emily Cock is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Cardiff working on a project looking at Disfigurement in Britain and its Colonies 1600 – 1850.

You can hear her discussing her research with Fay Alberti, who works on facial transplants, in a New Thinking podcast episode of the Arts & Ideas podcast called About Face https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p080p2bc

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year to turn their research into radio.

Producer: Alex Mansfield

New Generation Thinker Majed Akhter explores how large dam projects continue to form reservoirs of hope for a sustainable future. Despite their known drawbacks, our love affair with dams has not abated – across the world more than 3,500 dams are in various stages of construction. In Pakistan this has become entwined with nationalism, both inside the community and in the diaspora - but what are the dangers of this “dam fever” ? This Essay traces the history of river development in the region, from the early twentieth century “canal colonies” in Punjab, to Cold War mega-projects, to the contemporary drive to build large new dams. Previously an engineer and a resource economist, Majed Akhter now lectures in geography at King’s College London. you can hear him discussing the politics of rivers in a Free Thinking episode called Rivers and geopolitics https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00051hb

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten early career academics each year to turn their research into radio.

Producer: Alex Mansfield

From a way of addressing the loss of common land due to the enclosures of the 18th and 19th centuries, to a means for the urban poor gainfully employed and away from drink, allotments have meant different things to different people. The Allotments Act of 1922 was an important step in defining the allotment as we know it today, and it's a fascinating window onto the social and economic tensions of the inter-war years. John Gallagher tells the story, with help from historian Dr Elsa Richardson and philosopher Dr Sophie Scott-Brown.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Robert Flaherty’s ground-breaking documentary film Nanook of the North came out in the same year as the BBC was founded. Continuing our series explores cultural events from 1922, Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough talks to film historian Roswitha Skare and journalist Luke Dormehl about why this study of life in the Arctic has proved to be both controversial and influential.

Roswitha Skare is the author of Nanook of the North from 1922 to Today: The Famous Arctic Documentary and Its Afterlife.

Luke Dormehl has written A Journey Through Documentary Film.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod