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BBC Radio 4


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.


Arts & Ideas

Sir Nicholas Robert Hytner looks back at his time as the head of the National Theatre in London which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Professor Rosi Braidotti discusses her new book The Posthuman with Professor Joanna Bourke. And Award-winning film maker Penny Woolcock reveals her unique involvement in the attempts of two Birmingham inner city gangs to bring peace to their neighbourhoods.

Night Waves - Nicholas Hytner

Will Self joins Matthew Sweet to discuss the mind, consciousness, ADHD, Alzheimer’s and PTSD - all woven together in his new novel Phone. Mad to be Normal director, Robert Mullan, talks about the man at the centre of his film, controversial psychiatrist R. D. Laing. Critic Melanie Williams considers Mandy, Alexander Mackendrick's 1952 film about a deaf child learning to find her way in post-war Britain. Mandy was played by the child actress Mandy Miller who recalls her starring role from sixty five years ago. 

Will Self's new novel, Phone is out now. 

Mad to be Normal is in selected cinemas, certificate 15. 

A new restoration of Mandy is out now on Blu-Ray and DVD.

Producer: Craig Templeton Smith

Free Thinking: Will Self, R. D. Laing and Mandy.

From BBC Radio 3's archive, another opportunity to hear an interview with Philip Roth (1933 - 2018), author of books including Portnoy's Complaint & American Pastoral. 

Recorded in New York in 2008, Philip Roth talked to Philip Dodd about his life and work and about his 29th book Indignation. 

The Pulitzer Prize winning Roth has been called provocative, playful and angry and many of his themes remained consistent since he began writing in the late 1950’s. He and his fictional alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman, cast an often satirical eye over post World War America, notably with a string of now classic late novels such as I Married a Communist, American Pastoral, The Human Stain and The Plot against America.

The novel Indignation is set in 1951, the second year of the Korean War, and tells the story of the son of a kosher butcher who escapes a crushing New Jersey Jewish environment to attend a conservative College in Ohio. It is a tale about work and careers, about sexual discovery, anti-Semitism, families and the bizarre nature of fate and memory. 

In this interview Philip Roth talks about the role of fiction in his life and about his own impact on America. He describes the attraction of mixing fiction with elements of autobiography and about the expectations people have of the writer. He talks about sex, the male body, the ageing process and about his enduring need to write. 

Presenter: Philip Dodd

In Conversation: Philip Roth (1933 - 2018)

Why Are We Here? What is a sentient being? These are questions we don't normally explore using plants but perhaps we should. Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough hears how identifying more closely with living beings who produce our oxygen and store the Sun's energy is a good way of navigating existential angst and have much to teach us about co-operation and mutual support and the unifying principles of life. 

Peter Wohlleben The Hidden Life of Trees: The Illustrated Edition is out now
Emanuele Coccia The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture is out now
Marion Sidebottom: https://www.marionsidebottom.co.uk/ 
Luke Turner has written Out of the Woods - a memoir about the way Epping Forest helped him deal with depression and his identity which is out in New Year.

Trees of Knowledge

Shahidha Bari and guests discuss luck, fortune and superstition. How much truth is there in the idea of making your own luck and why does supersition still play such an important part in many peoples' lives. To discuss this and more are: Dr Christian Busch author of the Serendipity Mindset, Bobby Seagull the maths wizard who shot to fame on University Challenge, Timandra Harkness the author and journalist who writes about the intersection of tech and society, Dr Kate Tomas a philosopher and spritiual mentor and the Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies who shares her thoughts on the role luck plays in sport.

Producer: Lisa Jenkinson

Luck, predictability and superstition

What makes the life, character and imagery of the British pub? Anne McElvoy talks to Wetherspoons boss Tim Martin, author Natalie Whittle whose book "Crunch: An Ode to Crisps" was published in October, Professor Philip Howell who has written about the history of the pub, Dr Marianne Hem Eriksen from the
School of Archaeology & Ancient History at the University of Leicester who specialises in Viking history and BBC journalist Ben Wright who has written about the history of drinking in British politics.

Producer: Lisa Jenkinson

Beer, Crisps and the British pub

What tactics are justified in political campaigning from suffragettes to climate action? When is an art work finished? Do the moderation of Aristotle and Epicurus offer us a way of navigating life? Christmas - a time for panto, over-eating and gaudy decorations - was your festive season overwhelming or excessive? 
The writer and broadcaster Andrew Doyle, the classicist Edith Hall, comedian Rob Newman, environmentalist Rupert Read, and performer and suffrage historian Naomi Paxton join Shahidha Bari to discuss when enough is enough, knowing when to stop and how far should free speech go.

Producer: Lisa Jenkinson

Knowing When To Stop

“A diary is not only a text: it is a behaviour, a way of life, of which the text is a by-product", says the French theorist Philipe Lejeune. From ancient Babylon to journalling today, politicians' jottings and the notes made by eighteenth century writers like Mary Hamilton and Fanny Burney. Matthew Sweet discusses diaries with curator Irving Finkel, literary historian Sophie Coulombeau, political commentator Michael Crick and writer Oliver Burkeman, whose latest book is Meditation For Mortals, plus the philosopher Maximillian De Gaynesford.
And, as Radio 4 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Russell Hoban with a reading of his novel Turtle Diary as Book At Bedtime, writer Sonia Overall discusses his work.
Producer: Luke Mulhall

Diaries

Matthew Sweet and guests talk about about the tools and processes of decision making today and through history.
Justine Greening is a former Secretary of State for Education who is now working on social mobility and levelling up. Professor Bill Sherman heads the Warburg Institute, which has just opened an exhibition about tarot which the filmmaker and magik scholar K A Laity has visited. Gary Stevenson is a former financial trader and the author of The Trading Game, and the philosopher Constantine Sandis is the author of The Things We Do and Why We Do Them.

Producer: Lisa Jenkinson

Decision Making

Matthew Sweet with art critic TJ Clark, who has written about the importance of repeated viewing for appreciating a work of art; philosopher and film historian Lucy Bolton, who's seen a re-issue of Chantel Akerman's film Jeanne Dielman, which documents the crushing routine of a Belgian housewife; philosopher and theologian Clare Carlisle, who has written on the philosopher Kierkegaard, who discussed repetition as a major feature structuring human life, and historian and educationalist Anthony Seldon. Plus composer, dramatist and regular silent film accompanist Neil Brand will be at the piano.

TJ Clark's new collection of Essays is called Those Passions: On Art and Politics.
The BFI is hosting a season of films by Chantal Akerman which runs for 2 months in London with further screenings at selected cinemas - and the 2k restoration of the film Jeanne Dielmann is in cinemas across the UK
Anthony Seldon's books include Truss At 10: 49 Days That Changed Britain; Johnson at 10: The Inside Story and The Fourth Education Revolution
Book by Anthony Seldon
Clare Carlisle's book is called Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Soren Kierkegaard

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Repetition

Singer Umm Kulthum, Mounira al-Mahdiyya, Badia Masabni. These are the names of the pioneering performers working in Cairo's dance halls and theatres in the 1020s whom Raphael Cormack has written about in his new book. From that period of cosmopolitan culture to the uprising in 2011 - how has Egypt shifted ? New Generation Thinker Dina Rezk lectures at the University of Reading and she's been reading the new novel by Alaa Al Aswany - The Republic of False Truths. Edmund Richardson researches Alexander the Great and he's written about a Victorian pilgrim, spy, doctor, archaeologist Charles Masson who found a lost city in Afghanistan. Anne McElvoy presents.

Raphael Cormack's book is called Midnight in Cairo: The Female Stars of Egypt's Roaring '20s

Dina Rezk is a New Generation Thinker and Associate Professor of History at the University of Reading. Her recent research has focused on the upheavals of the 'Arab Spring' across the Middle East.

Edmund Richardson is a New Generation Thinker and Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Durham. His book is called Alexandria: The Quest for the Lost City

Producer: Ruth Watts

Image: People celebrate at Tahrir Square, Cairo on 3rd July 2013
Credit: BBC (Abdel Khalik Salah)

Lost cities, 20s divas and 2011 uprisings

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