Free Thinking

There is fascinating evidence that 5,000 years ago, people living in Britain and Ireland had a deep and meaningful relationship with the underworld seen in the carved chalk, animal bones and human skeletons found at Cranborne Chase in Dorset in a large pit, at the base of which had been sunk a 7-metre-deep shaft. Other examples considered in this Essay include Carrowkeel in County Sligo, the passage tombs in the Boyne Valley in eastern Ireland and the Priddy Circles in the Mendip Hills in Somerset. If prehistoric people regarded the earth as a powerful, animate being that needed to be placated and honoured, perhaps there are lessons here for our own attitudes to the world beneath our feet.

Susan Greaney is a New Generation Thinker who works for English Heritage at Stonehenge and who is studying for her PHD at Cardiff University.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

This Essay tells a story of political marches and everyday acts of radical care; of sledgehammers and bags of rice; of the struggles for justice waged by migrant domestic workers but it also charts the realisation of Ella Parry-Davies, that acknowledging publicly for the first time her own condition of epilepsy – or “coming out crip” – is part of the story of our blindness to inequalities in healthcare and living conditions faced by many migrant workers.

Ella Parry-Davies is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London working on an oral history project creating sound walks by interviewing migrant domestic workers in the UK and Lebanon.

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 who can turn their research into radio. You can find playlists of programmes involving New Generation Thinkers on the Free Thinking programme website

Producer: Robyn Read

When Tom Smith sets out to research allegations of racism in Berlin’s club scene, he finds himself face to face with his own past in techno’s birthplace: Detroit. Visiting the music distributor Submerge, he considers the legacy of the pioneers Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson, the influence of Afro-futurism and the work done in Berlin to popularise techno by figures including Kemal Kurum and Claudia Wahjudi. But the vibrant culture which seeks to be inclusive has been accused of whiteness and the Essay ends with a consideration of the experiences of clubbers depicted in the poetry of Michael Hyperion Küppers.

Tom Smith is a New Generation Thinker who lectures in German at the University of St Andrews.

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

Producer: Robyn Read

Advances in robotics and virtual reality are giving us ever more 'realistic' ways of representing the world, but the quest for vivid

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. You can find more programmes involving New Generation Thinkers on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0144txn

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Crime writer Ian Rankin talks with Tahmima Anam in a conversation organised in partnership with the Royal Society of Literature and the Bradford Literature Festival.

Ian Rankin's latest Inspector Rebus novel A Song For the Dark Times comes out in October. His cat-and-mouse espionage thriller Westwind was republished last September. Tahmima Anam's first novel debut novel, A Golden Age, was inspired by her grandparents' experiences of war in Bangladesh. It was followed in 2011 by The Good Muslim and the final book in the Bangladesh trilogy The Bones of Grace.

You can hear her discuss this in more detail in this Free Thinking conversation with Alain de Botton and AL Kennedy exploring writing about love https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b078xlft

Bradford Literature Festival has a series of digital events running this year https://www.bradfordlitfest.co.uk/

Xine Yao is one of the 2020 New Generation Thinkers on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council which selects academics to turn their research into radio. The book mentioned in the discussion is called Severance by Ling Ma.

Producer: Robyn Read

Arundhati Roy, the Man Booker prize winning author and campaigner, is in conversation with Philip Dodd about a life in the public eye and the novel she published 20 years after The God of Small Things. She discusses the politics of Kashmir, the influence of architecture and why she chose a graveyard setting for her novel and how writing a transgender character Anjum, who is a Hijra, helped her tell the story. Her second novel is called The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.

The virtual Women of the World Festival takes place June 27-28 2020 https://thewowfoundation.com/wow-global-24/

Producer: Zahid Warley.

From a greater focus on Black history and poetry to classics in state school classrooms and an understanding of the history of science - Rana Mitter & guests debate the syllabus.

Edith Hall is a Professor in the Classics Department at King's College London http://edithhall.co.uk/ Her latest book A People’s History of Classics co-written with Henry Stead examines the working class experience of classical culture in Britain.

Seb Falk is a historian at the University of Cambridge who previously worked as a teacher. He is a New Generation Thinker and his book about medieval science The Light Ages will be published in September. https://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/directory/dr-sebastian-falk

This conversation is part of a wider BBC Radio project Rethink which is looking at how we might change attitudes and approaches to a wide range of subjects https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08gt1ry

There is a playlist of Free Thinking discussions about maths, economics, sociology, archaeology, Black British history https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

The writing life of two authors who should have been sharing a stage at the Bare Lit Festival. Irenosen Okojie and Nadifa Mohammed talk to Shahidha Bari in a conversation organised with the Royal Society of Literature. And 2020 New Generation Thinker Seren Griffiths describes a project to use music by composer at an archaeological site to mark the summer solstice and the findings of her dig.

The Somali-British novelist Nadifa Mohamed featured on Granta magazine's list "Best of Young British Novelists" in 2013, and in 2014 on the Africa39 list of writers under 40. Her first novel Black Mamba Boy won a Betty Trask Award. Her second novel The Orchard of Lost Souls won the Somerset Maugham Award and contributed poems to the collection edited by Margaret Busby in 2019 New Daughters of Africa.

Irenosen Okojie's debut novel, Butterfly Fish, won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the Edinburgh First Book Award. Her short story collection, Speak Gigantular was shortlisted for the Edgehill Short Story Prize, the Jhalak Prize, the Saboteur Awards and nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award. Her most recent book is called Nudibranch.

You can find more information about the Bare Lit Festival http://barelitfestival.com/ and about the Royal Society of Literature https://rsliterature.org/

The music used by Seren Griffiths is by https://jonhughesmusic.com/ and you can find out about the dig https://bryncellidduarchaeology.wordpress.com/the-bryn-celli-ddu-rock-art-project/

New Generation Thinkers is the 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: Robyn Read

Francesca Wade and Paul Mendez talk to Shahidha Bari about Queer Bloomsbury in a conversation run in partnership with the Royal Society of Literature who set up events in mid-June to mark Dalloway Day, inspired by the 1925 novel from Virginia Woolf. Claudia Tobin from the University of Cambridge looks at Woolf's writing on art and the vogue for still lives and compares notes with 2020 New Generation Thinker Lucy Weir from the University of Edinburgh, who has written a postcard exploring dance, stillness and movement in lockdown.

Claudia Tobin's book is called Still Life and Modernism: Artists, Writers, Dancers. She was awarded a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship.

You can hear a discussion of the novel Mrs Dalloway featuring the writers Hermione Lee, Alison Light and Margaret Drabble with Philip Dodd https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00zt79p

Producer: Robyn Read

Two hundred years ago, Antarctica was discovered by Russian explorers and throughout this year the the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust is marking that anniversary. As we approach the date in June which is celebrated as midwinter with a special meal on the research stations - here's a chance to hear Rana Mitter and guests discussing the lure of this polar region both in our imaginations and as an aid to understanding what is happening to the planet.

Rana Mitter's guests are:

Recorded in front of an audience at BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival of Ideas at Sage Gateshead in November 2014

You might also be interested in this discussion of Ice with Kat Austen, Michael Bravo, Jean McNeil and Tom Charlton https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001jzq

Producer: Jacqueline Smith