Arts & Ideas

Author of Fully Connected Julia Hobsbawm, Social Media director at DEMOS Jamie Bartlett, writer Laurence Scott and tech blogger Abeba Birhane switch off their phones to focus on the impact of tech on the way we behave. Social media has allowed us to express our individuality and at the same time to interact like never before. But as the forces behind our digital lives become more sophisticated and powerful, are we in danger of succumbing to mass manipulation? Presented by Anne McElvoy with an audience at Sage Gateshead. Julia Hobsbawm’s most recent book Fully Connected explores how to cope in an age of data and deadline overload by proposing new ways to develop healthy connectedness with and without technology. She writes and speaks about Social Health and about how to form satisfying interpersonal relationships with each other. Jamie Bartlett is Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at Demos with the University of Sussex. His book The Dark Net describes underground and emerging internet subcultures and his forthcoming Radicals looks at how the influence of radical groups on the political fringes is growing. Laurence Scott teaches at Arcadia University and became a Radio 3/AHRC New Generation Thinker in 2011. In his book, The Four–Dimensional Human: Ways of Being in the Digital World, Laurence explores how life is being reframed in a digital age. Abeba Birhane is pursuing a PhD in cognitive science at University College Dublin. She blogs regularly about the evolution of algorithms and the ethical considerations around such technology. Producer Craig Smith.

Army captain turned MP Johnny Mercer, Theatre Director Elizabeth Newman and former footballer Paul Fletcher compare notes on leadership and teamwork - presented by Rana Mitter with an audience at Sage Gateshead. There is no I in Team .. but there's a ME if you look hard enough”, joked David Brent in the BBC sitcom, The Office. But for individuals with a proven track record in leadership, how do you get the best from your group while handling the demands of the individual? Johnny Mercer served three tours of Afghanistan during his military career before retiring from the army to pursue a future in politics. He was elected Conservative MP for Plymouth Moor View in 2015.Elizabeth Newman is the artistic director of the Octagon Theatre in Bolton. Previously she was an associate director at Southwark Playhouse. In 2014, she was awarded the David Fraser/Andrea Wonfor Television Directors’ Bursary for experienced theatre directors to work with top UK broadcasters and production companies and has recently completed filming an episode of Doctors for the BBC. In 2017 she was named ‘Bolton’s Woman of the Year’. Paul Fletcher played as a striker playing for Bolton Wanderers, Burnley and the England Under 23 team before leg injuries put paid to his playing career. He has been Chief Executive at Huddersfield Town masterminding the building of the Alfred McAlpine Stadium, at Bolton Wanderers when the Reebok Stadium was built, and CEO of Burnley. He has just collaborated with the writer Alastair Campbell on a novel depicting a football manager called Saturday Bloody Saturday and with Ken Sharp he has written The Seven Golden Secrets of a Successful Stadium Producer: Zahid Warley

Tom Simpson looks at a study of suspicion in a 1950s Italian village and the lessons it has for community relations and social tribes now. Edward Banfield's book, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society, depicts a village where everyone is out for themselves. New Generation Thinker Tom Simpson is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. He argues that we are losing the habits of trust that have made our prosperity possible. Unless we learn how to reinvigorate our cultures of trust, we ourselves have a future that is backwards. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio. Producer: Luke Mulhall

An apple a day is said to keep the doctor away but could a poem, painting or play have the same effect? Daisy Fancourt is a Wellcome Research Fellow at University College London. In her Essay, recorded with an audience at Sage Gateshead for the Free Thinking Festival, she looks at experiments with results which which prove that going to a museum is known to enhance neuronal structure in the brain and improve its functioning and people who play a musical instrument have a lower risk of developing dementia. What does this mean for our attitudes towards the arts and what impact are arts prescriptions having ?Daisy Fancourt has published a book called Arts in Health: Designing and researching interventions .New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio.Recorded at the 2018 Free Thinking Festival and includes questions and answers from the audience at Sage Gateshead. Producer: Zahid Warley

From schools of fish to starlings to atomic particles. what does group behaviour look like in nature? Rana Mitter is joined by BBC Radio 4’s presenter of The Life Scientific Jim Al-Khalili, Melissa Bateson, Andrew McBain and Richard Bevan. Recorded with an audience at Sage Gateshead for the 2018 Free Thinking Festival. Jim Al-Khalili is Professor of Physics at the University of Surrey and presenter of BBC Radio 4’s The Life Scientific and TV documentaries including Gravity and Me: The Force that Shapes Our Lives and The Beginning and End of the Universe. His books include Paradox: the Nine Greatest Enigmas in Science, Black Holes, Wormholes and Time Machines, Quantum: a Guide for the Perplexed and he’s edited What’s Next ? What Science Can Tell Us About Our Future.Melissa Bateson is Professor of Ethology at Newcastle University, an expert in behavioural biology who has studied the behaviour of starlings, hummingbirds and humans.Andrew McBain is a Professor of Microbiology at the University of Manchester. His research focuses on the responses of biofilms to antimicrobial treatments and the interaction of microorganisms colonising the skin, nasopharynx, oral cavity and intestine with the human host in health and disease Richard Bevan is a lecturer in the School of Natural and Environmental Sciences at Newcastle University. His research interests are in animal ecophysiology; the way that animals interact with their environment both physiologically and behaviourally and how this is vital in understanding and interpreting their biology.Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Hetta Howes looks at male fears and why Margery Kempe was criticised for crying and bleedingMedieval mystic Margery Kempe's excessive, noisy crying made her travelling companions so irritated that they wanted to throw her overboard, while others accused her of being possessed by the devil. But Kempe believed she was using her tears as a way to connect with God, turning the medieval connection between women and water into a form of bodily empowerment and a holy sign. New Generation Thinker Hetta Howes, from City, University of London, explores the connections between medieval women and water.New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio.Recorded at the 2018 Free Thinking Festival and includes questions and answers from the audience at Sage GatesheadProducer: Luke Mulhall.

The geographer Danny Dorling; Lionel Shriver, the author and patron of Population Matters; and Stephen Emmott, author of 10 Billion, join Matthew Sweet and an audience at Sage Gateshead to debate whether we should have fewer children. In 1968 a Stanford university professor, Dr Paul E. Ehrlich, published The Population Bomb. This call to arms became a global bestseller, influenced public policy and made its author a celebrity. It predicted mass starvation in the US and an England underwater by the year 2000. It also suggested adding ‘temporary sterilants’ to the water supply as a way to stem the ensuing crisis. For decades it has come under fire for its alarmist tone and laughable foresight but with global population set to hit ten billion by 2050, will Ehrlich eventually be proved right? Danny Dorling is Professor of Geography at Oxford University and the author of Population 10 Billion. His research focuses on housing, health, employment, education and poverty. His recent books include Do We Need Economic Inequality? The Equality Effect, and he co-wrote Why Demography Matters.Lionel Shriver’s novels include The Standing Chandelier, The Mandibles, and the award-winning We Need to Talk About Kevin. Lionel is a regular columnist at The Spectator and has written for numerous other publications including for The Wall Street Journal, New Statesman, and The Economist. She is a patron of Population Matters.Stephen Emmott is the author of Ten Billion, which he performed as a drama at the Royal Court Theatre. He is a Professor at Cambridge. His work develops new computational methods and ways of thinking about complex living systems. Producer: Craig Templeton Smith.

Leading economic expert, Linda Yueh, delivers her vision for restoring faith in the free market to an audience at Sage Gateshead. Chaired by Philip Dodd. We live in a world where experts of all stripes are struggling to win over the confidence of the general population. Last year, the Bank of England said it was stepping up its efforts to minimise a ‘twin deficit’ of public understanding and trust in an area that has come under particular fire recently: economics. In a timely defence of her profession, and by drawing on ideas put forward by several titans of economic theory, Linda Yueh, the former Chief Business Correspondent for BBC News, opens the Free Thinking festival 2018 with a unique take on how we fix the globalised free market to benefit the one and the many. Linda Yueh is Adjunct Professor of Economics at London Business School and Fellow in Economics at St Edmund Hall, Oxford University as well Visiting Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics IDEAS research centre. She is the author of The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today.Recorded with an audience at Sage Gateshead as part of BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival.Producer: Craig Templeton Smith

How did interior design help gain women the vote? Were arson attacks justified? Who took part in a six-week march? What role did an Indian princess play? Helen Pankhurst, Jane Robinson, Fern Ridell, Shahida Rahman and Miranda Garrett discuss the history of women's suffrage with Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough in this centenary year of the Bill which gave some women the right to vote.Fern Riddell is the author of Death in 10 Minutes - Kitty Marion: Activist, Arsonist, Suffragette Helen Pankhurst is the author of Deeds Not Words: The Story of Women’s Rights, Then and Now. Jane Robinson has written Hearts and Minds: The Untold Story of the Great Pilgrimage and How Women Won the Vote. Miranda Garrett is co-editor with Zoë Thomas of Suffrage and the Arts: Visual Culture, Politics and Enterprise

How self-revealing and frank should a writer be? Lara Feigel, David Aaronovitch, Melissa Benn and Xiaolu Guo join Matthew Sweet to look at the life of Doris Lessing and her 1962 novel in which she explores difficult love, life, war, politics and dreams. Inspired by her re-reading of Doris Lessing, Lara Feigel has written a revealing book which is part memoir part biography called "Free Woman: Life, Liberation and Doris Lessing". Melissa Benn's books include Mother and Child, One of Us and School Wars David Aaronovitch is the author of Party Animals: My Family and Other Communists and a former winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Journalism. Xiaolu Guo has written a memoir Once Upon a Time in the East, and novels including UFO in Her Eyes, and Lovers In the Age of Indifference. Producer: Fiona McLean