A world of sprites and spirits encountered by childhood sisters in the 1988 animated feature film by Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away) and Studio Ghibli has become a hit stage adaptation for the Royal Shakespeare Company. The original composer Joe Hisaishi worked with playwright Tom Morton-Smith and Director Phelim McDermott and the production returns to the Barbican this autumn. Chris Harding and guests look at how this story of Totoro relates to Japanese beliefs about ghosts and nature, and how Miyazaki used ideas of childhood innocence to critique post-War Japanese society.
Chris Harding is joined by the playwright Tom Morton-Smith, Michael Leader from the podcast Ghiblioteque, Dr Shiro Yoshioka, Lecturer in Japanese Studies at the University of Newcastle, and Dr Xine Yao, co-director of qUCL at University College London, and a Radio 3/AHRC New Generation Thinker. My Neighbour Totoro from the Royal Shakespeare Company in collaboration with Improbable and Nippon TV runs at the Barbican Theatre in London from 23 November Music from Studio Ghibli films is included in a BBC Prom concert being performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra on Monday August 28th and then available on BBC Sounds. You can find a collection of programmes exploring different facets of Japanese culture on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0657spq Producer: Luke Mulhall

My Neighbour Totoro

Leading thinkers discuss the ideas shaping our lives – looking back at the news and making links between past and present. Broadcast as Free Thinking, Fridays at 9pm on BBC Radio 4. Presented by Matthew Sweet, Shahidha Bari and Anne McElvoy.

Society & Culture

Personal Journals

History

Philosophy

Places & Travel

With D-day commemorations giving us images of "the finest generation" and discussion about how parties are targeting different age groups in the UK election, Anne McElvoy hosts a discussion looking at what divides and unites us in a fracturing world.
Dr Eliza Filby - a historian of generational evolution and contemporary values and author of Inheritocracy and Generation Shift gives us the low down on boomers to Gen Alpha.
Professor Rana Mitter is ST Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School and author of books including China's Good War: How World War II is Shaping A New Nationalism and China's War with Japan, 1937-1945: The Struggle for Survival. A presenter of Free Thinking on BBC Radio 3 before he joined Harvard, you can find him hosting plenty of Free Thinking discussions.
Jo Hamya's debut novel was called Three Rooms. The Hypocrite explores what happens when we become frightened of the generations below us
Tom Simpson is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford and a Senior Research Fellow at Wadham College.
And joining the conversation to talk about how the political parties are trying to woo voters of different ages is Gaby Hinsliff, columnist for The Guardian Producer: Luke Mulhall

Generations - D-Day - Global Instability

The Insurrectionists' Guide to the Movies looking at some of the latest releases at the cinema and what they say about our culture society and democracy today.
Matthew Sweet speaks to Financial Times columnist Stephen Bush, Critic and historian Kate Maltby, film curator Keith Shiri who has advised on a new Pan-African season at the British Film Institute called Tigritudes and Dr Sarah Jilani - an expert in Anglophone postcolonial literature and world film. Producer: Lisa Jenkinson
Studio Manager: Tim Heffer

The Insurrectionists' Guide to the Movies

Sir Richard Evans, Margaret Heffernan, Isabel Oakeshott, Quassim Cassam join Anne McElvoy to look at the ideas shaping our lives today. Are they optimists or pessimists ? How negative should we be in political campaigning, doomscrolling, parenting, writing reviews or giving academic feedback. What are intellectual vices and how might they help us think about truth and conspiracy theories? And "Have a nice day" - we look at the demand to perform a role in the workplace. Professor Sir Richard J Evans is an historian of modern Germany and modern Europe, and has published over 20 books in the field, most recently The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815-1915 and Eric Hobsbawm: A Life in History. In August his new book comes out called Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich
Margaret Heffernan is an entrepreneur, CEO and author of books including Uncharted: How to Map the Future Together and Beyond Measure: The Impact of Small Changes
Quassim Cassam is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick. His books include Ekstremisme, The Epistemology of Democracy and
Vice Epistemology.
Isabel Oakeshott is an award winning British political journalist. Her books include The Pandemic Diaries written with Matt Hancock, Life Support: Farmaggedon written with Michael Ashcroft.
Dr Jaswinder Blackwell-Pal is a Lecturer in Theatre and Performance Studies at Queen Mary University of London. She's been announced this week as one of 10 early career academics who’ve been chosen as the 2024 New Generation Thinkers – that’s a scheme to share academic research on the radio which the BBC runs with the Arts and Humanities Research Council. You can hear from all ten in a special New Thinking episode of our Arts & Ideas podcast where you will also find episodes of Free Thinking. Producer: Lisa Jenkinson
Studio Manager: Steve Greenwood

Positive & negative politics, "intellectual vices" and the face you bring to work.

Does reading really encourage empathy?  Are we asked to perform a role when we walk into the workplace? How was early film and technicolour embraced for political ends? Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough finds out about the latest research being undertaken by ten academics chosen to work with the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council as the 2024 New Generation Thinkers.  They'll be sharing their research on a series of BBC Radio 4 programmes across the coming year and here's a taster from the 2024 New Generation Thinkers.  Dr Emily Baughan, a historian at the University of Sheffield, is researching childcare. She is the author of Saving the Children: Humanitarianism, Internationalism, and Empire.
Dr Jaswinder Blackwell-Pal, lectures in drama at Queen Mary, University of London. Her research looks at the way workplaces, from serving coffee to providing care, ask people to perform a role.
Dr Janine Bradbury is an award-winning poet and critic who is interested in exploring reading, empathy and sentimentality. A lecturer at the University of York, she has recently published a poetry pamphlet “Sometimes Real Love Comes Quick & Easy”.
Jade Cuttle is writing a book called Silthood and studying for a PhD at the University of Cambridge, looking at the language used by British nature poets of colour and their new word coinings. She has released an album of songs and written poems and articles including for The Times, The TLS, The Guardian, Poetry Review, Ledbury Poetry Festival and the BBC Proms. 
Dr Jacob Downs is departmental lecturer in music at the University of Oxford. He has written on AI-generated music, Beyoncé, how people use headphones for listening and is also an active musician and arranger, and recently worked on Erland Cooper’s Folded Landscapes. 
Jonathan Egid has spent the past few years digging through the archives on the trail of a brilliant and neglected thinker from 17th century Ethiopia, and the question of whether or not Zera Jacob existed. Based at King’s College, London, he also hosts the podcast and interview series ‘Philosophising In…’ on philosophy in lesser-studied languages.
Dr Shona Minson is a criminologist at the University of Oxford. Originally from Belfast, her work on mothers in prison has helped changed legal professional practice in the UK and overseas. 
Dr Kirsty Sinclair Dootson is interested in the politics of making images in colour. Based at University College London, she has published a book exploring this called The Rainbow’s Gravity.
Dr Jack Symes is a public philosopher and researcher at Durham University. He hosts The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast, and edits Bloomsbury’s Talking about Philosophy book series. His most recent book was called Defeating the Evil-God Challenge: In Defence of God’s Goodness
Dr Becca Voelcker's research explores artistic and filmic responses to the environmental crisis. Based at Goldsmiths, University of London, she writes for Sight & Sound and Frieze magazines, introduces films at the BFI, and serves on film festival juries. Dr Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough has made a series of programmes for the BBC about Norse sagas, forest bathing, the history of runes, the far north, Roman bathing since being chosen as a New Generation Thinker in 2013. 
This New Thinking podcast and the New Generation Thinkers scheme are run as a partnership between the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI.  You can hear more insights from academics based at a host of UK universities in a New Research playlist on BBC Radio 4's Free Thinking programme website.

New Thinking: 2024’s New Generation Thinkers

Can we still expect a meaningful job, stable income, a chance of owning property? How have expectations changed and what is the place of protest? Matthew Sweet's guests this week are:
David Willetts is a former Universities Minister and now a life peer. The Rt Hon Lord Willetts FRS is also current President of the Resolution Foundation, Chair of the UK Space Agency and a visiting Professor at King’s College London. His books include The Pinch: How the Baby Boomers Took Their Children's Future – And Why They Should Give It Back
Dr Tiffany Watt Smith is Director for the Centre for the History of Emotions at Queen Mary, London. Her books include Schadenfreude: The Joy of Another’s Misfortune, and The Book of Human Emotions. She was chosen as a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker in 2014 and you can hear her in Free Thinking discussions about happiness, schadenfreude and she presented a short feature about the science of baby laughs.
Professor Will Davies is a sociologist and political economist teaching at Goldsmiths University of London. His books include Nervous States: How feeling took over the world, The Happiness Industry: How the government and big business sold us wellbeing and This is Not Normal: The collapse of liberal Britain.
Elizabeth Oldfield's latest book is called Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times. She hosts The Sacred podcast and is a former director of Theos, a religion and society think tank. Plus a report from an event this week in which the Royal Institute of Philosophy was paying tribute to its outgoing president, the political philosopher and ethicist Onora O’Neill, and welcoming her successor, the political philosopher Jonathan Wolff. We hear from Angie Hobbs, Paul, Tom Shakespeare, Grace Lockrobin, Onora O’Neill and Jo Wolff. Producer: Luke Mulhall

My Neighbour Totoro

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