Free Thinking

Deborah Levy and Laurence Scott talk to Shahidha Bari about the writer's work from his earliest novel Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) to his Essay Aspects of the Novel (1927). Recorded in partnership with the Royal Society of Literature at the British Library.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Laurence Scott is the author of The Four-Dimensional Human and Picnic, Comma, Lightning. He presented a Radio 3 Sunday Feature about Merchant Ivory which includes interviews about their film adpatations of EM Forster's work https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04003kn

Find more programmes about literature in this Free Thinking Prose and Poetry playlist on our website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p047v6vh

Mark Honigsbaum historian of epidemics, literary scholars Lisa Mullen & Sarah Dillon, UNESCO's Riel Miller & philosopher Rupert Read talk with Matthew Sweet. If uncertainty is a feature of our situation at the moment, it's the stock in trade of people who try to think about the future.

Riel Miller is an economist at UNESCO, who works on future literacy.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

In the Free Thinking archives:

Matthew Sweet investigates viruses and how they could disrupt our understanding of the nature of organisms, and looks at what history can teach us about the current pandemic. With philosopher John Dupré, historian Mark Honigsbaum, New Generation Thinker Lisa Mullen and artist Matt Adams who works with Blast Theory.

Mark Honigsbaum is the author of The Pandemic Century: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria and Hubris.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Check out our podcast episode New Thinking: Science Fiction Hetta Howes discusses how science fiction extends beyond literature with Caroline Edwards and Amy Butt https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p086zq4g

You might also like this Sunday feature looking at the idea of the grid https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08v8qn4 and this Sunday Feature about the idea of Apocalypse How https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b088j46v from the Radio 3 programme archives.

From Roman sandals to trainers and stilettos. Shahidha Bari looks at the shoe trade, with guests including Thomas Turner, who has written about sneakers in his book The Sports Shoe, A History From Field To Fashion; Tansy Hoskins, who examines global commerce in her book Footwork: What Your Shoes Are Doing To The World; Rebecca Shawcross, Shoe Curator at Northampton Museum & Art Gallery; and Roman shoe expert Owen Humphreys from Museum of London Archaeology.

Producer: Emma Wallace

It's sometimes defined as 'the literature of cognitive estrangement'. In other words, it's a genre that helps us see things in a new light. Hetta Howes discusses current academic thinking on science fiction, as a way of thinking that extends beyond writing, film and TV to architecture and beyond. With Caroline Edwards, Senior Lecturer in Modern & Contemporary Literature at Birkbeck, University of London, and Amy Butt, Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Reading.

This conversation was recorded in mid February before coronavirus hit the UK.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

The rate of social and technological change in the 20th century was unarguably frenetic. A key measure used by politicians, economists and journalists in that time has been GDP growth. But is Growth as a pointer still fit for purpose? And should all countries still aspire to achieve growth? Is the world on a longer-term slowdown? Would that be a bad thing? And as the shock of coronavirus echoes through communities and economies around the world, will our conceptions of value and cost be redefined?

Anne McElvoy discusses economic futures, with Danny Dorling, demographer, writer, professor of Geography at Oxford University, and author of forthcoming "Slowdown:The end of the Great Acceleration - and Why It's Good for the Planet, the Economy, and Our Lives", which is published in April. http://www.dannydorling.org/ and also www.worldmapper.org

Petr Barton writes and teaches economics in Prague, and is Chief Economist at Natland Investment Group. The webtool discussed in this programme can be found at https://coronavirus.clevermaps.io/

Richard Davies has been senior advisor to the UK Treasury, and the Bank of England and has been Economics Editor at The Economist. He teaches at the LSE and his recent book, "Extreme Economies", is published by Penguin.

Producer Alex Mansfield

Entertainment writer Caroline Frost, New Generation Thinker Lisa Mullen and historian & podcast host Greg Jenner join Matthew Sweet as exhibitions about Cecil Beaton and Andy Warhol open in London.

Greg Jenner presents the BBC Sounds podcast You're Dead to Me and has just published a book called Dead Famous: An Unexpected history of celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen

Producer: Alex Mansfield

You might be interested in our collection of programmes The Way We Live Now on the Free Thinking website and available to download as BBC Arts & Ideas podcasts including discussions about narcissism, the emotions of now, advertising and how they manipulate our emotions and icons

New Generation Thinker Catherine Fletcher and Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones join Rana Mitter to discuss how women's stories have shaped art and advertising from the baroque painter Artemesia Gentileschi to the suffragettes promoting boot polish in 20th-century England. And against the backdrop of the Me Too movement, Rana hears how the best-selling novel Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 became a rallying cry for young women in south Korea.

Catherine Fletcher's new book about the Italian Renaissance peels back the glittering art of the period to discover the political and military turmoil beneath while Jonathan Jones tells the story of Artemesia Gentileschi who channeled the trauma of her rape at 17 into a body of powerful and challenging work. Cho Nam-Joo's novel, translated by Jamie Chang, raises questions about misogyny and discrimination in today's Korea.

Rana visits the Art of Advertising exhibition at the Bodleian Library with curator Julie-Ann Lambert and Selina Todd, professor of modern history at Oxford University, where he explores how female buying power and social mobility transformed the consumer market.

Catherine Fletcher's book is called The Beauty and the Terror: An Alternative History of the Italian Renaissance.

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to put academic research on the radio. You can find a collection of programmes and podcasts on the Free Thinking programme website called New Research https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90

Also in the archives you can download a Free Thinking Landmark on The Prince with Catherine Fletcher with Sarah Dunant, Gisela Stuart and Erica Benner debating Machiavelli's ideas https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08h0l9j

Producer: Paula McGinley

Maaza Mengiste, Christina Lamb, Julie Wheelwright join Eleanor Barraclough to look at women's experience of fighting from Ethiopia's war with Mussolini to modern day Sudan back to Amazonians and British and French colonial troops in Canada. And academic Shawn Sobers discusses his research into the years Haile Selassie spent living in Bath after he escaped from a war-torn Ethiopia.

Our Bodies, Their Battlefields by Christina Lamb looks at rape as a weapon in war.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Howard Jacobson, Bari Weiss, Hadley Freeman, and Jonathan Freedland join Matthew Sweet.