Free Thinking

Johny Pitts, Caryl Phillips and Nat Illumine discuss the idea of Afropean identity with Matthew Sweet. Plus New Generation Thinker Dina Rezk on Jehane Noujaim's Oscar nominated documentary The Square and Egyptian politics. Georgia Parris discusses her first film Mari - a family drama of birth, death and contemporary dance.

Johny Pitts is one of the team behind https://afropean.com/ an online multimedia, multidisciplinary journal exploring the social, cultural and aesthetic interplay of black and European cultures. He runs this with Nat Illumine. Johny Pitts has just published a book Afropean: Notes from Black Europe

Caryl Phillips' most recent novel A View of the Empire at Sunset is inspired by the travels of the writer Jean Rhys who moved from Dominica to Edwardian England and 1920s Paris and his first play Strange Fruit (1980) is being re-staged at the Bush Theatre in London until July 27th 2019.

Mari by Georgia Parris is at selected cinemas from June 21st 2019.

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the AHRC to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio. You can hear more from the 2019 Thinkers in this launch programme https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0004dsv

Dina Rezk teaches at the University of Reading.

You can find extended conversations with Claudia Rankine, Teju Cole, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Spike Lee and Paul Gilroy included in our playlist on the Free Thinking website and available as BBC Arts&Ideas podcasts https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04ly0c8

Producer: Fiona McLean

The American sculptor Michael Rakowitz on how his own Iraqi heritage drove him to make art about the disappearance of artefacts and people. From shame to sympathy - New Generation Thinker Emily Cock looks at the way the British State used facial disfigurement to mark criminals for life. Nicholas Jubber has travelled Europe from Iceland to Turkey exploring the popularity of ancient epic tales - and ahead of the British Academy's summer showcase, we hear from Turkey about new ways of involving local villages in the cultural heritage around them.....and how a conversation between primatologists and archaeologists are refining the story of how stone tool use developed.

Michael Radowitz Whitechapel Gallery London 4 June 2019 – 25 August 2019

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the AHRC to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio.

You can hear a discussion of The Odyssey with Amit Chaudhuri, Karen McCarthy Woolf, Daniel Mendelsohn and Emily Wilson https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09kqjc0

Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Rana Mitter hears about a project that assesses the experiences of Muslim women in the UK cultural industries and talks to political artist John Keane. Author Katherine Rundell explains why adults should be reading children's books. Plus New Generation Thinker Majed Akhter on the sailor and activist Dada Amir Haider Khan and why his global approach to workers' rights has lessons for us now.

Beyond Faith: Muslim Women Artists Today which includes work by Usarae Gul is at the Whitworth, Manchester from Friday 14th June until October 2019

John Keane's exhibition If you knew me. If you knew yourself. You would not kill me. is at Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh as part of the Aldeburgh Festival until Sunday 23rd June.

Why You Should Read Children's Books, Even Though You Are Old And Wise by Katherine Rundell is published on 13th June.

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the AHRC to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio. You can hear more from the 2019 Thinkers in this launch programme https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0004dsv

Majed Akhter teaches at King's College London.

You find hear the discussion about representations of Rwanda on TV and how the country has moved on from the conflict here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001dt8

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Peter Pomerantsev, Joanna Kavenna, New Generation Thinker Lisa Mullen and Dorian Lynskey join Matthew Sweet to debate George Orwell's vision of a world of surveillance, war and propaganda published in June 1949. How far does his vision of the future chime with our times and what predictions might we make of our own future ?

Dorian Lynskey has written The Ministry of Truth

Part of a week long focus Free Thinking the Future. You can find more interviews and discussions to download and catch up with on the playlist on our website

You can find more Landmarks of Culture from 2001 Space Odyssey to Zamyatin's We in our playlist https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01jwn44

Producer: Zahid Warley

A panel of researchers share insights into the law and warfare, gender and AI & Anne McElvoy talks to David Brooks and Hilary Cottam about compassion and creating communities.

Part of a week long focus Free Thinking the Future. You can find more interviews and discussions to download and catch up with on the playlist on our website

Best selling US author and columnist David Brooks has just published The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life. You can hear him talking to Rana Mitter about his book The Road to Character https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05w8131

Ryan Abbott is Professor of Law and Health Sciences at the University of Surrey.

A BBC Ideas playlist of films Are You Robot Ready is here https://www.bbc.com/ideas/playlists/are-you-robot-ready

Producer: Chris Wilson

Joy Buolamwini founder of the Algorithmic Justice League and MIT media lab researcher, Anders Sandberg of the Future of the Human Institute at Oxford, artist Anna Ridler & Sheffield Robotics' Michael Szollosy join Matthew Sweet and an audience at the Barbican to debate whether creativity is something uniquely human.

AI: More Than Human runs at the Barbican Gallery until August 26th 2019.

Part of a week long focus Free Thinking the Future. You can find more interviews and discussions to download and catch up with on the playlist on our website

Producer: Luke Mulhall

A playlist of videos on BBC Ideas Are You Robot Ready is here https://www.bbc.com/ideas/playlists/are-you-robot-ready

How does writing about art help us embrace a new way of seeing the work ? Rana Mitter is joined at the Hay Festival by the novelist and art essayist Siri Hustvedt , the writer and broadcaster Simon Schama and, marking the 500th anniversary of the Italian Renaissance painter Leonardo da Vinci, the Radio 3/AHRC New Generation Thinker and historian of Renaissance and early modern Europe Catherine Fletcher.

Siri Hustvedt’s books include her novels What I Loved, The Summer without Men and The Blazing World and her essays on paintings, Mysteries of the Rectangle and Living, Thinking, Looking.

Producer: Fiona McLean

Rachel Carson’s passionate book, Silent Spring, first published in 1962 is said to be the work which launched the environmental movement. But how does it speak to us now?

For a recording of Free Thinking’s Cultural Landmark series at the Hay Festival, presenter Rana Mitter is joined by guests Tony Juniper, Emily Shuckburgh, Dieter Helm and Kapka Kassabova.

Tony Juniper is a campaigner, sustainability adviser and writer of work including Saving Planet Earth and How many lightbulbs does it take to change a planet?

You can find a collection of all the discussions of Landmarks of culture as a playlist on the Free Thinking website / and available to download as BBC Arts&Ideas podcasts https://bbc.in/2Jw9y5Q

Producer: Fiona McLean

Author Nicola Upson has imagined the life of Stanley Spencer from the viewpoint of his maidservant. Ella Parry-Davies researches the lives of women from the Philippines who work as domestic and care workers. The novel The Farm by Joanne Ramos imagines a surrogacy service provided by Filippina women for wealthy American clients. Gulzaar Barn researches the ethics of surrogacy. Naomi Paxton presents.

Nicola Upson has turned from novels featuring Josephine Tey as a detective to write a potrait of the British artist Stanley Spencer, his relationships with his wives Hilda Carline and Patricia Preece and her partner Dorothy Hepworth in her novel called Stanley and Elsie.

Hear more from the 2019 New Generation Thinkers in this broadcast from the Free Thinking Festival https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p036y2hb/members/all

Producer: Robyn Read

Matthew Sweet hears from Naomi Wolf about ways in which the state interfered in the private lives of its citizens in the 19th century, resulting in a penal codification of homosexuality with long-reaching consequences. They're joined by literary scholar Sarah Parker who tells the story of Michael Field, the pseudonym of two female poets and dramatists who sought literary fame in the late 19th century, and by philosopher Luis de Miranda who explains why neon is good to think with as a metaphor for the present and a better future.

Naomi Wolf's Outrages: Sex, Censorship and the Criminalisation of Love is out now