Arts & Ideas

Why do the legendary walls of a Bronze Age city in Asia still cast such a long shadow? Novelist and classics expert Natalie Haynes, Alev Scott author of Ottoman Odyssey, archaeologist Naoíse Mac Sweeney and medievalist Hetta Howes join Rana Mitter to share new perspectives on the conflict immortalised in Homer's Iliad as the British Museum opens an exhibition dedicated to Troy.Troy: Myth and Reality runs at the British Museum in London from November 21st to 8th March 2020. Natalie Haynes is the author of novels which retell Greek myths including The Amber Fury, the Children of Jocasta and A Thousand Ships: This is the Woman's War. Hetta Howes teaches medieval literature at City University and is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and the AHRC to put research on radio. Alev Scott is the author of Ottoman Odyssey and Turkish Awakening. Naoíse Mac Sweeney is Associate Professor of Ancient History at the University of Leicester.Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Hetta Howes is on the red carpet at this year's AHRC Research in Film Awards at the British Film Institute on London's South Bank, where she talks to the winners: Laura Hammond of SOAS, Benjamin Dix of PositiveNegatives, and director Osbert Parker, who won Best Social Media Short for their film Life On The Move Shreepali Patel of StoryLab, Anglia Ruskin University, who won in theMental Health & Wellbeing category for The Golden Window Ed Owles of the University of Leeds and his producer Kasia Mika for Intranquilities, which won in the Best Doctoral or Early Career Film category. And Paul Basu whose film FACES/VOICES won the awards for Best Research Film. There are more details and links to the films at the RIFA website https://ahrc.ukri.org/innovation/research-in-film-awards/previous-winners/ 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. Producer: Luke Mulhall

Naomi Paxton assembles a squad of researchers to talk about dating, relationships, and what how we fall in love says about us from the National Archives to London's gay bars.Dr Cordelia Beattie from the University of Edinburgh has unearthed two new manuscripts by the 17th-century woman Mrs Alice Thornton, which put her life, loves and relationship with God in a new light. Now they’re becoming a play in collaboration with writer and performer Debbie Cannon.Dr João Florêncio is from the University of Exeter and his research on pornography, sex and dating in post-AIDS crisis gay culture is being transformed into a performance at The Glory in London.Another queer performance space, London's Royal Vauxhall Tavern, is the venue for a drag show based on research into LGBTQ+ personal ads from a 1920s magazine done by Victoria Iglikowski-Broad as part of her work at the National Archives.Professor Lucy Bland of Anglia Ruskin University has created Being Mixed Race: Stories of Britain’s Black GI Babies, an exhibition in partnership with the Black Cultural Archives, which features photography and oral histories from the children, now in their 70s.Dr Erin Maglaque of the University of Sheffield explores the meanings of dreams in the Renaissance, and the strange erotic dreamscapes of a 1499 book written by a Dominican Friar.A list of all the events at universities across the UK for the 2019 Being Human Festival can be found at their website: https://beinghumanfestival.org/The festival runs from Nov 14th – 23rd but if you like hearing new ideas you can find our New Research playlist on the Free Thinking website, from death cafes to ghosts in Portsmouth to the London Transport lost luggage office: https://bbc.in/2n5dakTProducer: Caitlin Benedict

"Man Up". "He's Safe" "No Homo" How do men talk and write about masculinity? Laurence Scott talks to authors Ben Lerner, Derek Owusu and JJ Bola about crying, competitiveness, anger - and the pressure to perform.Ben Lerner is the author of Leaving the Atocha Station, 10:04 and his latest novel is called The Topeka School. He holds a prize commonly called the "genius grant" as a MacArthur Fellow. Derek Owusu's latest novel is called That Reminds Me. He has also presented the podcast Mostly Lit and edited Safe: On Black British Men Reclaiming Space a collection of Essays which includes an Essay by JJ Bola. JJ Bola has also written a novel No Place to Call Home, a poetry collection Refuge, and non-fiction book on masculinity, Mask Off: Masculinity Redefined.You can find more Identity Discussions in a playlist on the Free Thinking website including Caryl Philips and Johny Pitts on Afropean identities https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0005sjw Emma Frankland, June Sarpong on a panel asking Can There Be Multiple Versions of Me? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p061zr74Producer: Robyn Read

Matthew Sweet, performers Lucy McCormick and Gateau Chocolat, curator Florence Ostende, New Generation Thinker Lisa Mullen and Gaylene Gould with an audience at London's Barbican CentreFrom 1919 when the Weimar constitution said all were equal and had the right to freedom of expression, through to the Mbari Writers and Artists club in Nigeria, to the UK today, clubs and cabarets have always been spaces of creativity. The panel consider a series of moments in history to ask when and how club culture started to influence our wider society.Florence Ostende is the curator of Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art which runs at the Barbican Art Gallery until January 19th 2020 curated and organised by Barbican Centre, London, in collaboration with the Belvedere, Vienna.Le Gateau Chocolat and Lucy McCormick both performed in Effigies of Wickedness – a show from ENO and the Gate Theatre which was based on songs banned by the Nazis.Le Gateau Chocolat is a drag artist and contemporary opera performer who has performed internationally from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe to the Beyreuth Festival opera house.Lucy McCormick's hit shows include Triple Threat and Post Popular. She’s been an Artist in Residence for the Royal Vauxhall Tavern’s DUCKIE nights, and a Research Fellow at Queen Mary University London.Gaylene Gould is a cultural director and curator who has spearheaded a series of projects involving film, writing and art for Tate, the V&A and h club.Dr Lisa Mullen teaches film and literature at the University of Cambridge and is the author of Mid Century Gothic. She is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to put research on the radio.Producer: Caitlin Benedict.

Who decides what’s worth saving and what is culturally significant to protect in wartimes and war zones? The panel, hosted by Anne McElvoy, are:Sir Peter Bazalgette - Chairman of ITV and former Chairman of Arts Council England Carrie Reichardt - International Artist and grassroots activist Zahed Tajeddin - Syrian-born Artist and Archaeologist Rebecca Newell - IWM’s Head of ArtRecorded with an audience at the Imperial War Museum, London on Weds November 6th. What Remains, an exhibition with over 50 photographs, oral histories, objects and artworks, created in partnership with Historic England, explores why cultural heritage is attacked during war and the ways we save, protect and restore what is targeted. It runs until 5 Jan 2020. As does Art in Exile which puts on display for the first time documents revealing IWM’s plan for evacuating our art collection during the Second World War.The 2018 Imperial War Museum Free Thinking Lecture looked at how we remember war and asked Why are we silent when conflict is loud? Peter Hitchens; Rector Lucy Winkett; Neil Bartlett and Professor Steve Brown joined Anne McElvoy and an audience. https://bbc.in/2odyOUM and on our website you can find a collection of Free Thinking on War https://bbc.in/32EK0bI which includes discussions about Trees, Catch 22, a conversation between an ex marine and a Gulf war government advisor and analysis of writing by Wilfred Owen, Celine, David Jones, Robert Musil and John Buchan.Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

Dr Who collaborators Mark Gatiss & Stephen Moffat, academics Una McCormack & Claire Langhamer and Matthew Kneale join Matthew Sweet to celebrate Nigel Kneale's groundbreaking 1953 BBC TV sci-fi serial The Quatermass Experiment, which spawned two late 1950s sequels and an ITV final run in autumn 1979.Producer Torquil MacLeod.

As the 30th anniversary of the Berlin wall falling is marked on November 9th we rummage for stories amid the rubble. What were school teachers in Berlin pre-occupied with when the checkpoints were overrun? What would happen to the dogs of British forces families if the Cold War kicked off? Why was the poet Stephen Spender tasked with the ‘de-Nazification’ of German universities? And how does any of this relate to a 90s techno club in an air raid shelter?Our host, New Generation Thinker Dr Tom Charlton, weaves together new research on different aspects of post-war and post-wall Germany.Professor Lara Feigel from Kings College London is the Principal Investigator of Beyond Enemy Lines – a project looking at British and American writers and filmmakers involved in the reconstruction of Germany, 1945-49. The project is supported by the European Research Council http://beyondenemylines.co.uk/Dr Grace Huxford from the University of Bristol is leading an oral history project on British military communities in Germany (1945-2000), exploring the experiences of service personnel, families and support workers living in bases. In 2019-20, Grace is leading the project as an AHRC Leadership Fellow (early career) https://britishbasesingermany.blog/Dr Tom Smith from the University of St Andrews is currently exploring experiences of marginalisation in Germany’s techno scene. The first stage of the project is entitled Afrogermanic? Cultural Exchange and Racial Difference in the Aesthetic Products of the Early Techno Scenes in Detroit and Berlin. The first stage of the project has been funded by a Research Incentive Grant from the Carnegie Trust. Tom is also a New Generation Thinker https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/modlangs/people/german/smith/ 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.New Generation Thinkers is an annual scheme to showcase academic research in radio and podcasts. You can find more information on the Arts and Humanities Research Council website https://ahrc.ukri.orgProducer: Karl Bos

Shahidha Bari's guests include author Kirsty Logan and former League of Gentlemen writer and performer Jeremy Dyson, whose play Ghost Stories is back in the West End. Joining them is the film critic and author of a novella called Mothlight, Adam Scovell, poet Nisha Ramayya whose work States of the Body produced by Love speaks of goddesses who symbolise all the attributes of women and British Museum curator and expert on ancient Mesopotamian medicine and magic Irving Finkel.

Where are we? How did we get here, and where are we going?Our relationship with the self-propelled small metal boxes in which we spend so much of our time is not as simple as it feels.Why did we learn to need them? How did they shape our cities, our typewriters and our bacon slicers? Should we now redesign our roads, streets and even our skies for AI driven cars? What do we learn by looking at suburban car parks? A discussion reflecting on speed, automobiles, AI and the 60th anniversary of the M1 motorway. Anne McElvoy presents. Brendan Cormier is curator of the forthcoming exhibition Cars: Accelerating the Modern World, which opens in November. Nicole Badstuber of the University of Westminster studies our commuting habit and the trends in journeying that modern life inflicts on all of us. Jack Stilgoe is a senior lecturer at UCL who studies governance and oversight of emerging technologies, looking in particular at driverless futures. Gareth E Rees is author of Car Park Life, a journal of empty spaces and discarded moment, described as "A Retail Park Heart of Darkness".M1 Symphony, a soundscape documentary telling the story of Britain’s first motorway, featuring a specially-commissioned composition from former BBC Proms Inspire composer Alex Woolf, performed by the BBC Philharmonic is available to hear if you search for BBC Radio 3's Sunday Feature. On BBC.com/Ideas you can find a short film exploring the history of motorway service stations Producer: Alex Mansfield.