Free Thinking

Hiromi Ito, Tomoko Sawada, and Yukiko Motoya, look at women's roles in Japanese culture today plus the Japanese view of English-language literature with translator Motoyuki Shibata. Philip Dodd presents. Bethan Jones acted as the translator.

Japan Now 2020 is a series of events taking place in Sheffield, Norwich and London organised by Modern Culture culminating in a day of events at the British Library on Saturday February 22nd.

Hiromi Itō is one of the most prominent women writers in Japan who looks at sexuality motherhood and the body in her work which is translated by Jeffrey Angles.

You can find more programmes in the playlist Free Thinking explores Japanese culture https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0657spq

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Neuroscientist and former record producer Daniel Levitin & geneticist Adam Rutherford join Rana Mitter to discuss the latest scientific discoveries about memory and the human genome. How difficult is it to confront pseudoscience? Jillian Luke reveals how blushing in Renaissance art has been weaponised by white nationalists, while Suda Perera explains why medical aid workers in the Democratic Republic of Congo are treated with distrust.

Daniel Levitin has published The Changing Mind: A Neuroscientist's Guide to Ageing Well. You can download his BBC Proms Lecture about music and science as a podcast https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02xfqpc

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Petina Gappah on writing David Livingstone's African companions back into history. Sarah LeFanu looks at the Boer War experiences of Rudyard Kipling, Mary Kingsley & Arthur Conan Doyle and their views of Empire. Matthew Sweet presents.

Petina Gappah's novel is called Out of Darkness Shining Light - Being a Faithful Account of the Final Years and Earthly Days of Doctor David Livingstone and His Last Journey from the Interior to the Coast of Africa, as Narrated by His African Companions, in Three Volumes.

Sarah LeFanu's book is called Something of Themselves: Kipling, Kingsley, Conan Doyle and the Anglo-Boer War.

Laleh Khalilis' book, Sinews of War and Trade - Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula is published in May.

Recent programmes on The Thirty-Nine Steps is https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02twj9g

Producer: Alex Mansfield.

Matthew Sweet talks to the Chilean French director and gets a take on his occult, drug filled and violently psychedelic world from critics Larushka Ivan Zadeh and Adam Scovell.

Adam Scovell is the author of books including How Pale the Winter Has Made Us, Mothlight and Folk Horror. He writes for Sight and Sound.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Morgan M Page, Jana Funke & Senthorum Raj look at how we apply modern LGBT+ language and identities to historical figures both real and fictional and what it means to have to "prove" your identity today in today's legal world. Shahidha Bari presents.

Morgan M Page is a writer, performance + video artist, and trans historian whose podcast is called One From The Vaults

In the Free Thinking archives you can find programmes Writing Love: Jonathan Dollimore, Sappho https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08wn522

Production team Caitlin Benedict & Alex Mansfield

Kate Lister started tweeting as Whores of Yore in 2015 to kick off a conversation about how we talk about sex. She has just published A Curious History of Sex which looks at everything from slang through the ages to medieval impotence tests, the relevance of oysters, bicycling and the tart card.

An exhibition called With Love opens at the National Archives in Kew displaying letters spanning 500 years, which explore intimate expressions of love. You can hear archivist Vicky Iglikowski-Broad talking on a Free Thinking programme called Being Human: Love Stories https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b6hk

Producer: Luke Mulhall

From sugar and spice, to reparations and memorials: slavery and how we acknowledge it is debated by Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough and her panel of writers and academics: Dr Katie Donington, Dr Christienna Fryar, author Rosanna Amaka, and playwright and journalist Juliet Gilkes Romero.

Dr Katie Donington teaches history at London South Bank University. Her research focuses on the cultural, commercial, political, and familial worlds of slave owners in Jamaica and Britain. She was an historical advisor for the BAFTA award-winning BBC2 documentary, Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners (2015), and was co-curator of Slavery, Culture and Collecting at the Museum of London Docklands.

Dr Christienna Fryar is leading a new MA in Black British History at Goldsmiths, University of London, following her role as Lecturer in the History of Slavery and Unfree Labour at the University of Liverpool.

Rosanna Amaka's novel is called The Book of Echoes, and is published by Doubleday.

The Whip by Juliet Gilkes Romero runs at the RSC Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon until 21 March 2020.

You can find the Legacies of British Slave Ownership database here https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/

In the Free Thinking archives you can hear:

Steve McQueen runs at Tate Modern until 11 May 2020.

Producer: Emma Wallace

Alice Guy-Blaché the pioneering film director, a British film pioneer Robert Paul and how the Boer War led to animated film are the topics for discussion as Matthew Sweet talks to Donna Kornhaber, Ian Christie and Pamela B. Green. Ahead of this weekend's Oscars ceremony they reflect on early film innovations.

Alice Guy or Alice Guy-Blaché (July 1, 1873 – March 24, 1968) is considered a pioneer of narrative film. A new documentary Be Natural the untold story of Alice Guy-Blaché is on general release in the UK from January 2020.

Robert Paul (3 October 1869 – 28 March 1943) was also an early pioneer of British film. He also worked as an electrician and scientific instrument maker. Ian Christie has written a biography called Robert Paul and the Origins of British Cinema. An exhibition about Paul runs at Bradford's National Science and Media Museum until March 2020.

Donna Kornhaber has published Nightmares in the Dream Sanctuary: War and the Animated Film.

Producer: Caitlin Benedict

Lisa Dwan tells Philip Dodd what playing Beckett taught her about herself and feminism; playwright Mark Ravenhill, arts editor Jan Dalley & sp!ked author Alexander Adams discuss the proposition that the arts are increasingly expected to be uplifting and inspirational and to confirm identities. Where do the pessimism and shattered identities of Beckett's work fit into this view of culture?

Beckett Triple Bill is at Jermyn Street Theatre, London until 8th February starring Lisa Dwan, Niall Buggy, James Hayes and David Threlfall.

Culture War: Art, Identity Politics and Cultural Entryism by Alexander Adams is published by Societas

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

The German joker Tyll Ulenspiegel. Anne McElvoy with best selling novelist Daniel Kehlmann plus Prof Karen Leeder who has been looking at changing versions of the Dresden bombing.

Daniel Kehlmann's new book is called Tyll, translated by Ross Benjamin. A Netflix TV series has been commissioned. His book Measuring The World about mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss and German geographer Alexander von Humboldt became the world's second best-selling novel in 2006.

You can find Anne McElvoy talking to Susan Neimann about tolerance, censorship and free speech and lessons from German history

Dr Tom Smith lectures in German at the University of St Andrews. Dr Dina Rezk lectures on Middle East History at the University of Reading. They are both New Generation Thinkers on the scheme run by the BBC in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council to work with academics to share their research on radio. You can find more examples of their work on the Free Thinking programme website.

Producer: Paula McGinley