Arts & Ideas

Joanna Bourke is an historian whose previous work has looked at fear, pain, sexual violence and dismemberment. Her new book is a history and examination of bestiality and zoophilia, tracing our changing understandings from Leviticus, to modern psychiatry, the animal rights movement, and beyond.Anna Tsing's book The Mushroom at the End of the World was an examination of human interactions with fungi and their environments, and vice versa, in post-industrial landscapes. Her new online project Feral Atlas charts the complex and shifting relationships between humans, animals, plants, bacteria and other natural phenomena.Loving Animals: On Bestiality, Zoophilia and Post-Human Love by Joanna Bourke is out now. Her lecture series Exploring the Body for Gresham College is available online https://www.gresham.ac.uk/series/exploring-the-body/Anna Tsing's book The Mushroom at the End of the World is out now. You can find her online project at https://feralatlas.org/ It is made in conjunction with Stanford University curated and edited by Anna L. Tsing, Jennifer Deger, Alder Keleman Saxena and Feifei ZhouMatthew Sweet hosts a Free Thinking discussion Fungi: An Alien Encounter https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000dr46 and looks at the ideas in Darwin's Descent of Man 1871 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000s31z Other discussions about animals include Should We Keep Pets? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09hzj3y Does My Pet Love Me? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0004dr9 Animals: Watching Us Watching Them Watching Each Other https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04nqv0nProducer: Luke Mulhall

Overcoming long term illness, controlling her money and eloping to revolutionary Italy: Fiona Sampson's new biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning focuses on her as someone interested in inventing herself - not as an ailing romantic heroine. Peggy Reynolds began her academic career studying Browning's long poem Aurora Leigh. She's been reading about motherhood in literature and psychology books as preparation for adopting a child and her new book traces the pain and pitfalls involved in navigating the adoption process. They talk to Anne McElvoy and they're joined by Jane Aitken who's publishing new English language translations of books by Renée Vivien & Violette Leduc.Two Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning by Fiona Sampson is out now. You can also find her presenting series of the Essay for Radio 3 exploring her favourite fictional character Mother Courage https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p068jrch and her biography of Mary Shelley in this episode of Free Thinking https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09m1dvhThe Wild Track by Margaret Reynolds is out now. She is also the editor of The Sappho Companion In the Free Thinking archives you can find her discussing Mill on the Floss https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000bf70 and the poetry of Sappho https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0586k6n You can find a Free Thinking discussion about motherhood hearing from Jessie Greengrass, Sheila Heti and Jacqueline Rose Motherhood in fiction, memoir and on the analyst's couch https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b3fjvg Sylvan Baker discusses children in care and the Verbatim Formula in this Free Thinking exploration of Kindness https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000j9cdThe Woman of the Wolf and Other Stories by Renée Vivien translated by Karla Jay and Yvonne M Klein and Violette Leduc's Asphyxia translated by Derek Coltman are out now in English from Editions Gallic.Producer: Robyn Read

Turkey and 50s Prime Minister Menderes, Erdogan today, and how history is used for political power. Matthew Sweet is joined by Jeremy Seal, Ece Temelkuran, Michael Talbot & Nilay Ozlu.Before his execution in 1961, the Turkish prime minister Adnan Menderes saw Turkey admitted to NATO, investment in agriculture, education and health care, but also conflict with the Greek community. On 17 February 1959 he was involved in a plane crash near Gatwick on his way to a conference about Cyprus. Jeremy Seal traces his story and looks at the parallels with President Erdogan's Turkey now in a new book. He talks with journalist and author Ece Temelkuran and presenter Matthew Sweet. Plus new research on the Ottoman Empire from Michael Talbot and Nilay Ozlu.Jeremy Seal's book A Coup in Turkey: A Tale Of Democracy, Despotism & Vengeance In A Divided Land is out now.Ece Temelkuran is the author of How To Lose A Country: The 7 Steps From Democracy To Dictatorship; Turkey - The Insane & The Melancholy; novel The Time Of Mute Swans; and a forthcoming book, Together: 10 Choices For A Better Now.Michael Talbot is an historian at the University of Greenwich and a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker.Nilay Ozlu is an architectural historian and Chevening Postdoctoral Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies.Matthew Sweet's journey on London's 29 bus route with researchers looking at the history of the Greek Cypriot Community in London: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00014qkEce Temelkuran on Dictators, alongside Francesca Santoro L'hoir who acted alongside Chaplin as a child, Peter Pomerantsev and Frank Dikotter: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0009bf3Interviews with Turkish author Elif Shafak: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00066qd; and at the Free Thinking Festival https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04nqtrtAlev Scott and Michael Talbot on the Ottoman Empire: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0000qj7Producer: Emma Wallace

In Karachi Vice, journalist Samira Shackle tracks the lives of a Karachi ambulance driver, street school teacher and crime reporter amongst others - and uses their story to map a history of different political groupings across the city and the recent decades. New Generation Thinker Majed Akhter from Kings College, London researches water shortages and dam building. Ejaz Haider is a journalist based in Lahore. They share their views of Pakistan with Rana Mitter. Karachi Vice: Life and Death in a Contested City by Samira Shackle is out now from Granta and has been a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week available to listen on BBC Sounds. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p034wrq4 Majed Akhter is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council which turns research into radio. You can hear more about his work in a conversation with Dustin Garrick in an episode of Free Thinking called Rivers and Geopolitics https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00051hb Ejaz Haider is one of Pakistan’s most prominent journalists, writing for the Friday Times independent paper and presenter of a TV show.In the Free Thinking archives we hear from novelists Neel Mukherjee, Preti Taneja, Mohsin Hamid and Nadeem Aslam about their view of Partition https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b090tnyp Kamila Shamsie discusses her novel Home Fire https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b095qhsm Philip Dodd explores Islam, Mecca and the Qur'an with professor of Islamic and interreligious studies Mona Siddiqui, and scholars Ziauddin Sardar and Navid Kermani https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04tcc1lProducer: Harry Parker

From minting coins to digital currencies, Anne McElvoy is joined by Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff, British Museum coin curator Tom Hockenhull, historian of science Patricia Fara and political economist Ann Pettifor to explore the physical and virtual life of money as we approach the fiftieth anniversary of Decimal Day in the UK. The discussion ranges from the symbolism of images we find stamped on individual coins to the cashless society, and whether or not there is a magic money tree. February 15th 1971 was the date when the old British system of pounds, shilling and pence changed, following earlier unsuccessful attempts and the founding of a Decimal Association in 1841. But what is our relationship with money at the moment in a world of bitcoin, and paying by credit cards not loose change ?Patricia Fara's books include Life after Gravity: Isaac Newton's London Career; Pandora's Breeches - Women, Science and Power; Science: A Four Thousand Year History Tom Hockenhull is Curator of Modern Money in the Coins and Medals department at the British Museum which was built upon the various collections of Hans Sloane - amongst them were 20,000 coins. His books include Making Change: The decimalisation of Britain's currency and Symbols of Power : Ten Coins That Changed the World. Kenneth Rogoff is a Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Economics at Harvard University. From 2001-2003, he was Chief Economist and Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund. His books include The Curse of Cash; This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly co-authored with Carmen Reinhart Ann Pettifor is the author of books including The Green New Deal, and The Production of Money. https://www.annpettifor.com/Producer: Eliane Glaser.You might be interested in the episode of Radio 3's Words and Music broadcasting on Sunday February 21st at 5.30pm which features a series of readings and music exploring the idea of money. In the Free Thinking archives: "new money" and the wealth gap depicted in Edith Wharton's 1920 novel The Age of Innocence https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000c4ln Does Growth Matter? Anne McElvoy talks with demographer Danny Dorling and economists Richard Davies and Petr Barton https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000gbtl Economics: Anne McElvoy talks to Juliet Michaelson, Liam Byrne, John Redwood and Luke Johnson https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03qbv3q Linda Yueh gives the Free Thinking Festival Lecture on Globalisation and restoring faith in the free market https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p062m7mj

Matthew Sweet is joined by Xine Yao, Joe Cain, and Ruth Mace, who've been re-reading Charles Darwin's 1871 book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. The book offered a radical reinterpretation of what it means to be human by situating us completely within the natural world as a product of natural selection. But it is also a book of its times, as reflected in the language Darwin uses to talk about race and gender. University College, London where our speakers are based - holds the papers of Francis Galton, the Victorian polymath and eugenicist who was Darwin's half cousin and the conversation considers both the positive and the negative ways of interpreting Darwin's book.You will hear a discussion about some of the racial language used in the 19th and 20th centuries.Dr Xine Yao is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker whose main research at University College London focuses on nineteenth century American literature and histories of science and law at Professor Joe Cain is UCL Professor of History and Philosophy of Biology. Ruth Mace is Professor of Evolutionary AnthropologyOn the Free Thinking website you can find a playlist exploring works which are Landmarks of Culture - these include discussions about Karl Marx, George Orwell, Machiavelli, Rachel Carson, Lorraine Hansberry https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01jwn44 And there are discussions about animals including Should We Keep Pets? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09hzj3y Does My Pet Love Me? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0004dr9Producer: Luke Mulhall

What we learn from the tattered costumes of actress Ellen Terry, the couture created by Alexander McQueen, and the everyday wardrobe of American women at the turn of the 20th century.V&A fashion curator Claire Wilcox has curated exhibitions on Frida Kahlo and Alexander McQueen, and has written a memoir, called Patch Work. She talks to Shahidha Bari about the pleasures and the challenges of conserving fashion and using it to tell bigger stories in museum displays. They're joined by Veronica Isaac from the University of Brighton, who researches theatre costumes of the 19th and early 20th century, including those of Ellen Terry, and by Cassandra Davies-Strodder from the University of the Arts London, who curated the V&A’s Balenciaga exhibition in 2018 and researches the wardrobes of two American women from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.This episode was made in partnership with the AHRC, part of UKRI. You can find more about New Research in a playlist on the Free Thinking programme website - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90 - where you’ll find other episodes in the New Thinking strand showcasing academic research.You can find other conversations about New Research in a playlist on the Free Thinking website - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90. This includes researchers from the University of Leeds and Huddersfield involved in the Future Fashion project -https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07nhbrd, and a discussion about the display of history in Museums - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08v3fl5You can see TV programmes going behind the scenes at the V&A on BBC iPlayer https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m000f1xt/secrets-of-the-museum And in this episode of Free Thinking Shahidha Bari looks at the Politics of Fashion and Drag; Scrumbly Koldewyn remembers the '60s San Francisco theatre scene; drag at The Royal Vauxhall Tavern in London; and Jenny Gilbert and Shahidha look at environmentalism and fashion at the V&A - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09zcjchProducer: Emma Wallace

How easy is it to climb out of the working class in Britain? Have attitudes to social mobility changed at all? Matthew Sweet talks to Professor Selina Todd about her latest book, Snakes and Ladders, which explores the myths and realities of the past century. They're joined by an accents specialist, a policy thinker and journalist, and a data analyst.Professor Selina Todd is author of Snakes and Ladders: The Great British Social Mobility Myth; The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class 1910-2010; Tastes of Honey The Making of Shelagh Delaney and a Cultural RevolutionDavid Goodhart is the author of Head, Hand, Heart: The Struggle for Dignity and Status in the 21st Century (2020). He is Head of Policy Exchange's Demography, Immigration, and Integration Unit; and, he is also one of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) board commissioners. Timandra Harkness is the author of Big Data: Does Size Matter and presents Radio 4 series including Divided Nation and Future ProofingDr Sadie Ryan is part of the Manchester Voices project https://www.manchestervoices.org/project-team/ and presents a podcast https://www.accentricity-podcast.com/ You can hear more about the Manchester project in this episode of New Thinking https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07h30hmYou might also be interested in Free Thinking programmes exploring The council estate in culture with artists George Shaw and Kader Attia , drama specialist Katie Beswick and writer Dreda Say Mitchell https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0003596 City Life, estate living and lockdown with poet Caleb Femi, Katie Beswick, and urban researchers Julia King and Irit Katz https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000nvk2 Class in Britain - a review of Shelagh Delaney's play; Lindsay Johns, Douglas Murray and the former headmaster of Eton Tony Little https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02twczj Philip Dodd with Douglas Murray, author of The Madness of Crowds, the commentator David Goodhart, the writer and campaigner Beatrix Campbell, and the academic Maya Goodfellow, author of Hostile Environment - How Immigrants Became Scapegoats, reflect on the role of culture and identity in politics in Europe and post election Britain https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000cb2fProducer: Ruth Watts

Patricia Lockwood and André Aciman share their sense of the way digital media, and the layers of history press in on our sense of the present moment as they talk about their new books with presenter Laurence Scott.Patricia Lockwood is a poet and author of the memoir Priestdaddy. Her new novel No One is Talking About This considers the way a world saturated by social media memes, 24/7 news and doom scrolling can become fractured by a health emergency. André Aciman, author of Call Me By Your Name and editor of the Proust Project – looks at writers including WG Sebald and Constantine Cavafy and the films of Eric Rohmer and what the present tense means to writers who can't grasp the here and now in his new Essay collection Homo Irrealis.Producer: Torquil MacLeodYou can find a playlist of Prose and Poetry on the Free Thinking programme website featuring interviews with authors including Olivia Laing https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b7mryz Umberto Eco https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06qmcqn Rebecca Solnit https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0008wc1 Ben Lerner, Derek Owusu and J J Bola https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b0mx Teju Cole https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07yb85h

From Bessie Head to Keats, Rachel Carson to Lorine Niedecker, Lisa Mullen and guests analyse links between literature and nature as an increasing number of university departments offer eco-criticism courses focusing on the way writers past and present have thought about the environment.Samuel Solnick specialises in environmental humanities at the University of Liverpool, and is particularly interested in the relationship between literature and science. His books include Poetry and the Anthropocene: Ecology, biology and technology in contemporary British and Irish poetry (Book - 2018) Samantha Walton is an academic and poet at Bath Spa University, specialising in ecological feminism and the relation between nature and mental health. Her books include The Living World: Nan Shepherd and Environmental Thought (2020), Bad Moon (poetry - 2020), and Everybody Needs Beauty: In Search of the Nature Cure (2021). Harriet Tarlo, is both a poet and a critic at Sheffield Hallam University, where she practices and preaches the importance of radical nature writing. Published work includes On Ecopoetics: Harriet Tarlo and Jonathan Skinner in Conversation and Off path, counter path: contemporary walking collaborations in landscape, art and poetry and a Shearsman Press book Poems 2004-2014.This episode was made in partnership with the AHRC, part of UKRI. You can find more about New Research in a playlist on the Free Thinking programme website - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90 - where you’ll find other episodes in the New Thinking strand showcasing academic research.You might also be interested in the Green Thinking playlist on the Free Thinking website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07zg0r2 which includes Amitav Gosh https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00066px on his most recent novel and on his arguments about the need for literature to engage with the climate https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07z7bnd Poet Elizabeth Jane Burnett sharing her Soil Stories https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08fj505 A discussion of the influential writing of Rachel Carson https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0005gwk There's more on researching Wordsworth from the directors of Lancaster University's Wordsworth Centre for the Study of Poetry https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p087kr4n Bessie Head is discussed in this Free Thinking episode https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001dt8Ian McMillan on Radio 3's The Verb has been speaking to a whole host of writers and poets about nature, the environment and our changing times https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006tnsf/episodes/downloadsRadio 3 is also part of a Soundscapes for Wellness project where you can find mixes involving natural sounds on BBC Sounds. https://canvas-story.bbcrewind.co.uk/soundscapesforwellbeing/ On this link you can find out how to take part in a Virtual Nature Experiment organised by the University of Exeter co-created by sound recordist Chris Watson and film composer, Nainita Desai.Producer: Luke Mulhall