Free Thinking

From exile in Siberia to the novels which set a template - Rana Mitter and his guests Alex Christofi, Muireann Maguire, Claire Whiteheadand Viv Groskop look at the life and writing of Fyodor Dostoevsky (11 November 1821 – 27 January 1881).

Crime and Punishment published in 1886 was the second novel following Dostoevsky's return from ten years of exile in Siberia. It examined ideas about rationality, morality and individualism which Dostoevsky also examined in Notes from the Underground in 1864 - sometimes called the first existentialist novel. In his career he published 12 novels, four novellas, 16 short stories, and numerous other pieces of writing.

Alex Christofi's new biography out at the end of January is called Dostoevsky in Love: An Intimate Life

In the Free Thinking archives you can find conversations about

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Mildred Pierce, James M Cain's 1941 novel was turned into a noir film starring Joan Crawford which earnt her an Academy Award. Matthew Sweet and his guests crime writers Denise Mina & Laura Lippman + academics Sarah Churchwell & Lizzie Mackarel have been re-watching the film and comparing it with the novel as they consider how the social realism and depiction of suburban female life differs from his other books which became hit films The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity.

Laura Lippman's novels include the PI Tess Monaghan series and stand alone titles such as Lady in the Lake, Sunburn and After I'm Gone.

You can find other Free Thinking discussions of film and the relationship between novels and film on the programme website including

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Marlene Dietrich: sensual screen siren, political radical, 20th-century sex symbol, and - eventually - septuagenarian cabaret star. Cabraret legend Le Gateau Chocolat, film historian Pamela Hutchinson, writer Phuong Le, and academic Lucy Bolton join Matthew Sweet to delve into a life fully lived.

From her formative collaborations with Josef von Sternberg, to entertaining the troops throughout World War II, to a late blossoming live performance career and touring as a cabaret artist into her seventies, Dietrich's life traces the line of western history throughout almost the whole twentieth century. What did she mean, and what did she become? Matthew and his guests follow the story through films including The Blue Angel, Shanghai Express, and Touch of Evil.

Pamela Hutchinson is the curator of The BFI's Marlene Dietrich: Falling in Love Again, which runs at BFI Southbank throughout December.

Le Gateau Chocolat’s work spans drag, cabaret, opera, musical theatre, children’s theatre and live art.

Lucy Bolton is the editor of Lasting Stars: Images that Fade and Personas that Endure and Reader in Film Studies at Queen Mary University London.

Phuong Le is a Paris-based film writer. She writes for publications including Music Mezzanine, Vague Visages and Film Comment magazine.

You can find Le Gateau Chocolat discussing Weimar the subversion of cabaret culture in an episode recorded at the Barbican centre https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b7r7

And you might be interested in other discussions of film stars and directors including Billy Wilder, Cary Grant, Betty Balfour and Early Cinema and director Alice Guy-Blaché which are all available to download as Arts & Ideas podcasts from the Free Thinking programme website.

Producer: Caitlin Benedict

Brian Cox on the stars and planets. Archaelogist Susan Greaney on Stonehenge and Maes Howe at solstice, the shadowy paintings of Wright of Derby and Artemisia Gentileschi and the candlelight of Hanukkah in art and literature picked out by Alexandra Harris and the philosophy of Plato and light giving ideas from Sophie-Grace Chappell: Shahidha Bari and guests look at light as BBC Radio 3 broadcasts a series of music programmes, concerts, walks and features looking at Light in Darkness.

Physicist Professor Brian Cox joins the BBC SO and Principal Guest Conductor Dalia Stasevska to explore the questions raised by music and the Cosmos concerning eternity, death, rebirth and meaning in a concert being broadcast by BBC Radio 3 on the afternoon of December 23rd. In Autumn 2021 he will be embarking on another Horizons Arena Tour around the UK making the latest thinking about the Cosmos accessible to the wider public.

Professor Alexandra Harris is the author of books including Weatherland and Romantic Moderns and was one of the first BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinkers.

Professor Sophie-Grace Chappell is the author of many philosophy books and is currently considering the idea of epiphanies.

Susan Greaney works with English Heritage at Stonehenge, is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker.

Producer: Ruth Watts

You might also be interested in Free Thinking conversations about

What links Beethoven & Hegel's philosophy of freedom? Anne McElvoy talks to New Generation Thinker Seán Williams, Christoph Schuringa, Gary Browning, and Alison Stone about Hegel's discussion of freedom, law, family, markets and the state in his Principles of the Philosophy of Right 1820.

Dr Christoph Schuringa is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the New College of the Humanities in London

You can find a playlist of programmes examining various philosophical themes on the Free Thinking website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07x0twx

Producer: Luke Mulhall

The solitude of remote lands and medieval monks; mapping and navigating by the stars and the survival strategies of Indigenous Peoples living around the Arctic circle as the ice melts are all part of today's conversation as Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough is joined by British Museum curator Amber Lincoln, author and GP Gavin Francis and historian and New Generation Thinker Seb Falk.

Gavin Francis is the author of Island Dreams: Mapping an Obsession; Shapeshifters: On Medicine and Human Change Adventures in Human Being which won the Saltire Prize for non-fiction and was a BMA book of the year and True North: Travels in Arctic Europe.

You can find Gavin Francis in conversation about his book ShapeShifters in a Free Thinking Festival discussion Can There be Multiple Versions of Me https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09wvlxs and in a discussion about Thomas Browne https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05sy6qv

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Magic in medicine, surgery, and business; cross-dressing on the panto stage; and the history of pantomime and magic. Lisa Mullen is joined by Kate Newey, Will Houston, and Naomi Paxton.

Naomi Paxton is a researcher at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, a magician and performer as Ada Campe, and is a member of the Magic Circle and their first Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Officer. Her research includes popular entertainment and the suffragettes, and she has performed as a magician's assistant. Her recent book is Stage rights! The Actresses’ Franchise League, activism and politics 1908–58, and she is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker - http://www.naomipaxton.co.uk/

Will Houston of Imperial College London is a magician and historian of magic, who looks at how magic can be used in medicine, surgery, business and accountancy. He is Honorary Research Associate in the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London, and is the Imperial College London/Royal College of Music Centre for Performance Science's Magician in Residence. He is also a member of the Magic Circle - http://drhoustoun.co.uk/

Kate Newey is Professor in Drama at the University of Exeter who has been researching pantomime and is also involved in a project looking at theatre and visual culture in the nineteenth century - https://theatreandvisualculture19.wordpress.com/

You can find more conversations about New Research in this playlist - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90

And this playlist, focused on discussions, essays, and features involving New Generation Thinkers, including Naomi Paxton's exploration of Suffragette Punch and Judy - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08zhs35

A Free Thinking discussion about Playing God in medieval drama - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0000v24

A Free Thinking discussion about Ice, including the use of stage effects in seventeenth century drama - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001jzq

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

Producer: Emma Wallace

Des Fitzgerald talks to the winners of the AHRC and Wellcome Trust Medical Humanities Awards 2020. Each has looked at how the arts can help our understanding of health and wellbeing - and, includes research into how the stigma surrounding obesity contributes to the obesity crisis and innovative art therapy techniques with long term mental health benefits for patients.

AHRC and Wellcome Trust Medical Humanities Awards 2020

Angela Woods is Associate Professor of Medical Humanities at Durham University. Over the last eight years, her Hearing the Voice team has looked to help those who are distressed by their voices, to find out what those voices are like and why they happen, and to explore how hearing voices is an important and meaningful part of human experience.

Oli Williams is a postdoctoral fellow based at King’s College London. His doctoral research joins the dots between inequality, health, and everyday life. It demonstrates how the ‘war on obesity’ promotes stigma among people living in one of the most deprived areas in England.

Victoria Bates is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at Bristol University. Her research expertise ranges from nineteenth-century forensic medicine to current-day sensory studies. She has recently focused on developing partnerships with creative professionals in healthcare settings.

Laura Drysdale is Director of the Restoration Trust. Since 2015 The Restoration Trust has partnered Norfolk Record Office and local mental health providers to run Change Minds, an archives and mental health programme. Over 15 three-hour sessions, a facilitated group of around 10 people investigate case records of patients in local 19th century asylums. They use this research as the basis for creative writing, art and theatre, leading to a shared public event.

And, Dora Vargha is Senior Lecturer in Medical Humanities at the University of Exeter. Her research on the Cold War politics of polio epidemics in the 1950s places a crucial moment in global health history in its geopolitical context.

This episode was put together in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI as part of our series New Thinking focusing on new research at UK universities.

Wittgenstein changed his mind, Heidegger revolutionised philosophy (and the German language), and both the Frankfurt School and the Vienna Circle were in full swing. Matthew Sweet is joined by Wolfram Eilenberger, David Edmonds and Esther Leslie. Plus, a report on the plight of the Lukacs Archive in Budapest.

Wolfram Eilenberger's book Time of the Magicians, translated by Shaun Whiteside, is a group portrait of four young philosophers in the aftermath of World War I. He is the founding editor of Philosophie Magazin and broadcasts regularly in Germany.

David Edmonds is co-author with John Eidinow of Wittgenstein's Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers. He produces the podcast series Philosophy Bites with Nigel Warburton

Esther Leslie is the author of Walter Benjamin: Overpowering Conformism. Her translations include Georg Lukacs, A Defence of History and Class Consciousness. She is Professor in Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck University of London.

You can find conversations about Mary Midgely, Boethius, French philosophy and spies and Kierkegaard if you delve into our playlist of Free Thinking on Philosophy:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07x0twx

Producer: Luke Mulhall

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Jared Diamond, Camilla Townsend, Tom Holland and Emma Griffin talk to Rana Mitter. What lessons for the pandemic are there in looking back at times of upheaval in history from the rise and fall of the Aztec Empire to the move from rural to urban living in Britain's Industrial Revolution.

Tom Holland's books include Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic; Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind; Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West.

Camilla Townsend is the author of the book Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs, which is one of the books shortlisted for the 2020 Cundill History prize.

Emma Griffin is the author of books including Liberty's Dawn: A People's History of the Industrial Revolution and Bread Winner: An Intimate History of the Victorian Economy. She was chosen as a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker in 2012.

Jared Diamond is the author of books including The World until Yesterday, Upheaval: How Nations Cope with Crisis and Change and Natural Experiments of History

Producer: Luke Mulhall