Arts & Ideas

Neuroscientist and former record producer Daniel Levitin & geneticist Adam Rutherford join Rana Mitter to discuss the latest scientific discoveries about memory and the human genome. How difficult is it to confront pseudoscience? Jillian Luke reveals how blushing in Renaissance art has been weaponised by white nationalists, while Suda Perera explains why medical aid workers in the Democratic Republic of Congo are treated with distrust.Daniel Levitin has published The Changing Mind: A Neuroscientist's Guide to Ageing Well. You can download his BBC Proms Lecture about music and science as a podcast https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02xfqpc Adam Rutherford's latest book is called How To Argue With a Racist. You can hear him on BBC Sounds presenting Inside Science and The Curious Cases of Rutherford & FryProducer: Torquil MacLeod

Petina Gappah on writing David Livingstone's African companions back into history. Sarah LeFanu looks at the Boer War experiences of Rudyard Kipling, Mary Kingsley & Arthur Conan Doyle and their views of Empire. Matthew Sweet presents. Petina Gappah's novel is called Out of Darkness Shining Light - Being a Faithful Account of the Final Years and Earthly Days of Doctor David Livingstone and His Last Journey from the Interior to the Coast of Africa, as Narrated by His African Companions, in Three Volumes. Sarah LeFanu's book is called Something of Themselves: Kipling, Kingsley, Conan Doyle and the Anglo-Boer War. Laleh Khalilis' book, Sinews of War and Trade - Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula is published in May. Recent programmes on The Thirty-Nine Steps is https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02twj9g And on The East India Company is https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000c0f7Producer: Alex Mansfield.

Matthew Sweet talks to the Chilean French director and gets a take on his occult, drug filled and violently psychedelic world from critics Larushka Ivan Zadeh and Adam Scovell. Jodorowksy's 1973 surrealist fantasy film The Holy Mountain certificate 18 (the rating specifies that it contains strong bloody violence) has been re-released in cinemas in a 4K restoration and is being screened around the UK including events coming up at Tyneside Cinema, the ICA in London. The Alejandro Jodorowsky Collection is released on blu-ray 30th March 2020.Adam Scovell is the author of books including How Pale the Winter Has Made Us, Mothlight and Folk Horror. He writes for Sight and Sound. Larushak Ivan-Zadeh is Chief Film Critic for the Metro newspaper.Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Morgan M Page, Jana Funke & Senthorum Raj look at how we apply modern LGBT+ language and identities to historical figures both real and fictional and what it means to have to "prove" your identity today in today's legal world. Shahidha Bari presents.Morgan M Page is a writer, performance + video artist, and trans historian whose podcast is called One From The Vaults Jana Funke teaches Medical Humanities at the University of Exeter Senthorum Raj teaches at Keele University School of Law.In the Free Thinking archives you can find programmes Writing Love: Jonathan Dollimore, Sappho https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08wn522 Queer Icons: Plato's Symposium https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08xcx1f Censorship and Sex Naomi Wolf on John Addington Symonds and Sarah Parker on Michael Field https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00057k4 HD and Bryher are discussed, alongside Jane Harrison and Hope Mirrlees in this episode Pioneering Women: academics and classics https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000dj0g Tom Smith explores the East German Military's fascination with its soldiers' sexuality https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00061m5 Weimar and the Subversion of Cabaret Culture https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b7r7Production team Caitlin Benedict & Alex Mansfield

Kate Lister started tweeting as Whores of Yore in 2015 to kick off a conversation about how we talk about sex. She has just published A Curious History of Sex which looks at everything from slang through the ages to medieval impotence tests, the relevance of oysters, bicycling and the tart card. Robin Mitchell's new book is called Venus Noire: Black Women and Colonial Fantasies in Nineteenth-Century France. In it she traces visual and literary representations of 3 black women: Sarah Baartmann, popularly known as the Hottentot Venus; Ourika, a young Senegalese girl and Jeanne Duval, long-time lover of the poet Charles Baudelaire. Fern Riddell's books include The Victorian Guide to Sex and Sex: A Brief History. She hosts the podcast series #NotWhatYouThought and is a historian on the New Generation Thinker scheme which aims to put academic research on the radio. It's a partnership between BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. You can find her talking about depictions of Eroticism in a Free Thinking conversation about The Piano and Love https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b6t06b and exploring the life of the singer and suffragette Kitty Marion in a Sunday Feature https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04n2zcpAn exhibition called With Love opens at the National Archives in Kew displaying letters spanning 500 years, which explore intimate expressions of love. You can hear archivist Vicky Iglikowski-Broad talking on a Free Thinking programme called Being Human: Love Stories https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b6hk Anne McElvoy explores who and why we love with philosopher Laura Mucha, poet and novelist Lavinia Greenlaw, novelist Elanor Dymott and poet Andrew McMillan. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002hk8Producer: Luke Mulhall

From sugar and spice, to reparations and memorials: slavery and how we acknowledge it is debated by Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough and her panel of writers and academics: Dr Katie Donington, Dr Christienna Fryar, author Rosanna Amaka, and playwright and journalist Juliet Gilkes Romero.Dr Katie Donington teaches history at London South Bank University. Her research focuses on the cultural, commercial, political, and familial worlds of slave owners in Jamaica and Britain. She was an historical advisor for the BAFTA award-winning BBC2 documentary, Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners (2015), and was co-curator of Slavery, Culture and Collecting at the Museum of London Docklands.Dr Christienna Fryar is leading a new MA in Black British History at Goldsmiths, University of London, following her role as Lecturer in the History of Slavery and Unfree Labour at the University of Liverpool.Rosanna Amaka's novel is called The Book of Echoes, and is published by Doubleday.The Whip by Juliet Gilkes Romero runs at the RSC Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon until 21 March 2020.You can find the Legacies of British Slave Ownership database here https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/In the Free Thinking archives you can hear: Author Esi Edugyen in Slavery Stories https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001bch Artist and film director Steve McQueen and a debate about Slavery narratives https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03pdf14Steve McQueen runs at Tate Modern until 11 May 2020. The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates is out nowProducer: Emma Wallace

Alice Guy-Blaché the pioneering film director, a British film pioneer Robert Paul and how the Boer War led to animated film are the topics for discussion as Matthew Sweet talks to Donna Kornhaber, Ian Christie and Pamela B. Green. Ahead of this weekend's Oscars ceremony they reflect on early film innovations.Alice Guy or Alice Guy-Blaché (July 1, 1873 – March 24, 1968) is considered a pioneer of narrative film. A new documentary Be Natural the untold story of Alice Guy-Blaché is on general release in the UK from January 2020.Robert Paul (3 October 1869 – 28 March 1943) was also an early pioneer of British film. He also worked as an electrician and scientific instrument maker. Ian Christie has written a biography called Robert Paul and the Origins of British Cinema. An exhibition about Paul runs at Bradford's National Science and Media Museum until March 2020.Donna Kornhaber has published Nightmares in the Dream Sanctuary: War and the Animated Film.Producer: Caitlin Benedict

Lisa Dwan tells Philip Dodd what playing Beckett taught her about herself and feminism; playwright Mark Ravenhill, arts editor Jan Dalley & sp!ked author Alexander Adams discuss the proposition that the arts are increasingly expected to be uplifting and inspirational and to confirm identities. Where do the pessimism and shattered identities of Beckett's work fit into this view of culture?Beckett Triple Bill is at Jermyn Street Theatre, London until 8th February starring Lisa Dwan, Niall Buggy, James Hayes and David Threlfall. Endgame runs at the Old Vic in London until March 28th starring Daniel Radcliffe, Alan Cummings, with Rough for the Theatre II with Jane Horrocks and Karl Johnson.Culture War: Art, Identity Politics and Cultural Entryism by Alexander Adams is published by SocietasProducer: Torquil MacLeod

The German joker Tyll Ulenspiegel. Anne McElvoy with best selling novelist Daniel Kehlmann plus Prof Karen Leeder who has been looking at changing versions of the Dresden bombing.Daniel Kehlmann's new book is called Tyll, translated by Ross Benjamin. A Netflix TV series has been commissioned. His book Measuring The World about mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss and German geographer Alexander von Humboldt became the world's second best-selling novel in 2006. Professor Karen Leeder teaches at the University of Oxford. She has translated Porzellan: Poem vom Untergang meiner Stadt by Durs Grünbein, coming out as Durs Grünbein, Porcelain: Poem on the Downfall of my City and has been reading a new history of Dresden by Sinclair Mackay called Dresden: The Fire and the Darkness. You can hear her contributing to a discussion on Radio 3's The Verb about German poetry after the Fall of the Berlin Wall https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b7x0You can find Anne McElvoy talking to Susan Neimann about tolerance, censorship and free speech and lessons from German history https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0008hvz to novelists Florian Huber and Sophie Hardach about New angles on post war German history https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0006sjx to Neil McGregor about Germany https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b079mcgfDr Tom Smith lectures in German at the University of St Andrews. Dr Dina Rezk lectures on Middle East History at the University of Reading. They are both New Generation Thinkers on the scheme run by the BBC in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council to work with academics to share their research on radio. You can find more examples of their work on the Free Thinking programme website.Producer: Paula McGinley

From government intervention and workshop ingenuity, to Britain's 'mind blowing historical carbon debt' and ground that's been polluted for 200 years, via the slave economies of Jamaica and the southern US states. John Gallagher discusses new lines of thinking on the Industrial Revolution with historians Emma Griffin of the University of East Anglia, and William Ashworth of the University of Liverpool.More information about Living With Machines https://livingwithmachines.ac.uk/ Living with Machines is funded by AHRC, part of UKRI. This episode is one of a series of conversations - New Thinking - produced in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UK Research & Innovation. Further podcasts are available on the BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking website under the playlist New Research https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90Producer: Luke Mulhall