Free Thinking

From a Victorian Maths Professor to Aldous Huxley, AJ Ayer and Barbara Ehrenreich - Shahidha Bari explores the impact of life changing experiences & the fourth dimension talking to Mark Blacklock, Jeffrey Kripal and Lisa Mullen.

Mark Blacklock has written a novel called Hinton which traces the life and ideas of Charles Howard Hinton (1853 – 1907) who wrote an article in 1880 called What is the Fourth Dimension.

Producer: Robyn Read and Craig Templeton Smith

You might also be interested in the Free Thinking playlist on philosophy on the website which includes programmes about pansychism https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0144txn

Rana Mitter is joined by Edith Hall, Nandini Das and Beatrice Groves to explore the books which inspired Shakespeare from the Bible and classical stories to the writing of some of Shakespeare's contemporaries.

Edith Hall is Professor in the Classics Department and Centre for Hellenic Studies at King's College London. Her books include Introducing The Ancient Greeks and has co-written A People's History of Classics with Henry Stead.

Nandini Das is Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. She is also a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Beatrice Groves is Research Lecturer in Renaissance Literature at the University of Oxford and her books include Texts and Traditions: Religion in Shakespeare 1592-1604

The programme was recorded in front of an audience in BBC Radio 3's pop-up studio as part of Radio 3's Stratford residency at the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

You can find a playlist of programmes exploring different aspects of Shakespeare on the Free Thinking programme website including interviews with the actors Antony Sher & Janet Suzman, writers including Jo Nesbo & Mark Ravenhill and detailed explorations of The Tempest and the Winter's Tale

Lewis Dartnell, Gaia Vince and David Farrier join Rana Mitter to look at deep ecology.

Gaia Vince is the author of Transendence: How Humans Evolved Through Fire, Language, Beauty And Time

You can find a Free Thinking programme exploring rivers and geopolitics https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00051hb

Producers: Luke Mulhall and Alex Mansfield

Philip Dodd talks to actor Christopher Eccleston and historian Ruth Dudley Edwards and asks them for their views on the way identity and a sense of belonging are shifting.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

You can hear Christopher Eccleston in BBC Radio 3's Drama Schreber, see him in the RSC Macbeth production as part of the BBC Culture in Quarantine season and in the latest series of the TV drama the A Word.

From the experiences of Quaker wives in the seventeenth century to the samplers and bibles in the homes of workers in the Industrial Revolution - Dr Naomi Pullin from the University of Warwick, and Professor Hannah Barker of the University of Manchester join historian and New Generation Thinker Tom Charlton to compare notes on the way their research marks a shift in the way religious beliefs of past times are being studied.

Naomi Pullin is the author of Female Friends and the Making of Transatlantic Quakerism, 1650-1750

This episode is one of a series of conversations, produced in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation. You can find more on the website of the AHRC, and on the website for the Free Thinking discussion programme where there’s a playlist called New Research.

You might be interested in this Free Thinking discussion about religious divisions, puppet shows and politics in the middle of this programme https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0000xvn

Producer: Luke Mulhall

University Challenge star Bobby Seagull, writer and critic Jordan Erica Webber, games consultant and researcher Dr Laura Mitchell, and British Museum curator Irving Finkel join Shahidha Bari in the Free Thinking studio to get out the playing cards and the board games and consider the value of play, competitiveness and game theory.

Bobby Seagull has published The Life-Changing Magic of Numbers.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

You might be interested in other discussions about The Way We Live Now in this playlist on the Free Thinking programme website which includes discussions about boredom, drugs and consiousness, what is speech and What Nietzche teaches us https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p072637b

From dance to prayer, servants to scientists, knees ups to being on our knees - Matthew Sweet talks to art critic Louisa Buck, historian and New Generation Thinker Joe Moshenska, author Tracy Chevalier and dancer and choreographer Russell Maliphant.

Tracy Chevalier's novels include A Single Thread - a novel depicting the work of "broderers" creating cushions and kneelers for Winchester Cathedral in the 1930s.

Russell Maliphant formed Russell Maliphant Company in 1996 and has worked with companies and artists including Sylvie Guillem, Robert Lepage, Isaac Julian, Balletboyz and Lyon Opera Ballet. He created Broken Fall for Sylvie Guillem and Balletboyz which premiered at the Royal Opera House and received an Olivier award for best new dance production.

Producer: Paula McGinley

If you are interested in craft you might like our discussion on the joy of sewing with Clare Hunter and Jade Halbert https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002mk2 or The Woolly episode https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0009bw4 with Esther Rutter & Alex Harris

or Darian Leader and Seb Falk join Lisa Le Feuvre and Thrishantha Nanayakkara to look at Hands with Matthew Sweet https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03z2nbj

April 7th 1770 was the day William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, Cumbria. As we prepare to mark this anniversary, poet and New Generation Thinker Sarah Jackson is joined by Sally Bushell, Professor of Romantic and Victorian Literature, and Simon Bainbridge, Professor of Romantic Studies – Co-Directors of The Wordsworth Centre for the Study of Poetry at the University of Lancaster to discuss new insights into Wordsworth's writing.

Sally Bushell has edited The Cambridge Companion to ‘Lyrical Ballads’ . You can find more about her research project here https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/chronotopic-cartographies/

The conversation was recorded with an audience at the Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama at the University of Manchester. It's part of a series of discussions focusing on new academic research in UK universities produced in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation.

Producer: Karl Bos

You may also like to check out BBC Radio 3's Sunday Feature exploring Wordsworth https://www.bbc.com/programmes/m000h020

Anne McElvoy and guests discuss the 700th anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath and Scottish politics today. She is joined by Kylie Murray, New Generation Thinker and Fellow in Early Scottish Literature at Cambridge University; Robert Crawford, poet and Professor of Modern Scottish Literature at the University of St Andrews; John Lloyd, journalist and author of new book, Should Auld Aquaintance Be Forgot -The Great Mistake of Scottish Independence; and by Richard Finlay, Professor of Scottish History at the University of Strathclyde.

Producer: Emma Wallace

Artist and photographer Sunil Gupta, authors CN Lester (Trans Like Me) and Tom Shakespeare (The Sexual Politics of Disability), and Barbican curator Alona Pardo join Matthew Sweet in a discussion prompted by the Barbican exhibition called Masculinities: Liberation Through Photography to debate whether the old construct of masculinity in our culture is broken? As new ideas and thinking enter the debate, what is essential and what we can do away with as we look to build a new masculinity?

Producer: Caitlin Benedict

You can find other Free Thinking discussions looking at identity