A horoscope from 1411, a portrait of a woman blowing bubble gum and a gold griffin-headed armlet: art collector Ina Sarikhani Sandmann, historian Ali Ansari and New Generation Thinker Julia Hartley join Rana Mitter to look at Epic Iran, an exhibition exploring 5,000 years of art, design and culture at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Author Annalee Newitz discusses the rise and fall of four 'lost' cities and we have a postcard exploring the author Marcel Proust's fascination with Iran ahead of the 150th anniversary of his birth on July 10th 1871.Epic Iran exploring 5,000 years of art, design and culture runs at the Victoria and Albert Museum until September 12th 2021.
Four Lost Cities by Annalee Newitz is out now. It explores the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, the Roman vacation town of Pompeii on Italy’s southern coast, the medieval megacity of Angkor in Cambodia, and the indigenous metropolis Cahokia, which stood beside the Mississippi River where East St. Louis is today.
Annalee is also founder of the popular io9 science and science fiction blog.Dr Julia Hartley is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Warwick, where her project is called ‘West-Eastern Encounters: Iran in French Literature (1829-1908)’. She is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year to turn their research into radio. You can find more discussions in a playlist on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08zhs35Marcel Proust (10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was the author of novels including À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time). A Free Thinking discussion about Proust brought together Jane Smiley, Jane Haynes and Christopher Prendergast and insights from French author Marie Darrieussecq
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04lpxj2Producer: Torquil MacLeod
Kultur & GesellschaftTalk
Free Thinking Folgen
Leading thinkers discuss the ideas shaping our lives - looking back at the news and making links between past and present. Fridays at 9pm on BBC Radio 4. Presented by Matthew Sweet, Shahidha Bari and Anne McElvoy.
Folgen von Free Thinking
1526 Folgen
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Folge vom 08.07.2021Epic Iran, lost cities and Proust
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Folge vom 06.07.2021The English country house partyIt’s sixty years since the house party at Cliveden where Christine Keeler encountered Minister of War, John Profumo and the Soviet Naval attaché, Yevgeny Ivanov. The events of that weekend, a heady mix of sex, politics and espionage have filled newspapers, books, films and TV dramas. But that weekend was just one in a long line of intrigue and scandal at Cliveden. In fiction and reality, a weekend in the country has often involved far more than a simple retreat - from the appeasement talks imagined in Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day to a formal invitation from the Prime Minister to Chequers. Anne McElvoy explores the social history of the grand country house gathering and its hold on the English imagination.Julie Gottlieb is Professor of Modern History at the University of Sheffield and the author of ‘Guilty Women’, Foreign Policy, and Appeasement in Inter-War Britain and Feminine Fascism: Women in Britain's Fascist Movement, 1923-1945Natalie Livingstone is a journalist and historian and the author of The Mistresses of Cliveden: Three Centuries of Scandal, Power and Intrigue.Kate Williams is a broadcaster, historian and Professor of Public Engagement with History at the University of Reading. She is the author of Rival Queens and her trilogy of novels about the De Witt family.Producer: Ruth Watts
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Folge vom 01.07.2021Filming Sunday Bloody SundayThe Oscar winning Midnight Cowboy was followed up by this drama about an artist who has relationships with a female job consultant and a male doctor. Director John Schlesinger, writer Penelope Gilliatt, actors Glenda Jackson and Peter Finch were all nominated for Academy Awards but it performed poorly at the box office. Was the film - released on July 1st 1971, ahead of its times? Matthew Sweet re-watches it with guests including Glenda Jackson, playwright Mark Ravenhill, film historian Melanie Williams and BFI archivist Simon McCallum. They discuss the different elements of the film, including the score, which features the trio Soave sia il vento from Mozart's opera Così fan tutte, the very precise decor and evocation of late '60s London and filming inside a Jewish synagogue.Producer: Fiona McLeanSunday Bloody Sunday is available on Blu-rayYou can find Matthew Sweet discussing other classics of British Cinema in the Free Thinking archives including British New Wave Films of the 60s - Joely Richardson and Melanie Williams evaluate the impact and legacy of Woodfall Films, the company behind Look Back in Anger, A Taste of Honey and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09ysnl2 An extended interview with Mike Leigh, recorded as he released his historical drama Peterloo, but also looks back at his film from 1984 Four Days in July https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0000tqw Early Cinema looks back at a pioneer of British film Robert Paul and at the work of Alice Guy https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000dy2b Philip Dodd explores the novel and film of David Storey's This Sporting Life with social historian Juliet Gardiner, journalist Rod Liddle, writer Anthony Clavane and the author's daughter Kate Storey https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09j0rt6 Samira Ahmed convenes a discussion about British Social Realism in Film https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01pz16k
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Folge vom 30.06.2021New Thinking:The Innovative Shape of PoemsHIV's origins and colonial history have inspired the collection of poems by Kayo Chingonyi, which has been nominated for the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2021. Paisley Rekdal is currently the Poet Laureate of Utah. Her latest collection of poems was inspired by Ovid. She's been thinking about where stories come from and what we mean by appropriation. Dr Nasser Hussain is interested in ‘lost’ fragments of language and in what we notice and what we ignore. New Generation Thinker Florence Hazrat studies punctuation. They join host Sandeep Parmar for a conversation about experimentation ahead of the Ledbury Poetry Festival.Sandeep Parmar is a poet and Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool and a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker. She has been running the Ledbury Poetry Critics scheme alongside Sarah Howe. This project encourages diversity in poetry reviewing culture, aimed at new critical voices. Ledbury Poetry Festival runs from 2 - 11 July 2021.Kayo Chingonyi's book is called A Blood Condition. You can find the full list of poets shortlisted for the Forward Prize at https://www.forwardartsfoundation.org/Paisley Rekdal's collection of poems, Nightingale, re-writes many of the myths in Ovid's The Metamorphoses. She has published an Essay Appropriate: A Provocation https://www.paisleyrekdal.com/Dr Nasser Hussain teaches poetry at Leeds Beckett University. He published ‘SKY WRI TEI NGS’, a book of conceptual writing that composes poetry from IATA airport codes, and is working on an autobiographical poetic project Playing with Playing with Fire and The Life of Form.Dr Florence Hazrat is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Sheffield studying rhetoric, punctuation and Shakespeare's use of music. She is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select academics to turn their research into radio.This episode was made in partnership with the AHRC, part of UKRI. You can find a playlist exploring New Research on the Free Thinking website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90You can find more discussions in playlists on the Free Thinking programme website, featuring Prose and Poetry, and Ten Years of the New Generation Thinker Scheme.Producer: Emma Wallace