Lab meat and robot bees: how veganism and tech can solve the climate crisis. Anne McElvoy considers how food impacts on the environment with guests Anthony Warner, Cassandra Coburn, and Alasdair Cochrane. Plus Man Booker Prize winning novelist Richard Flanagan on his new novel, The Living Sea of Waking Dreams – about a dying planet and a dying mother.Anthony Warner is author of Ending Hunger: The Quest To Feed The World Without Destroying It.Cassandra Coburn is the author of Enough: How Your Food Choices Will Save The Planet.New Generation Thinker Alasdair Cochrane, from the University of Sheffield, is the author of Should Animals Have Political Rights?Novelist Richard Flanagan's latest book, The Living Sea of Waking Dreams, recalls the devasting fires in Australia and Tasmania, and against this dying world depicts a dying woman and her three children in a magical realist fable. In 2014 he won the Man Booker Prize for The Narrow Road To The Deep North, which considered the experiences of a Far East prisoner of war during the construction of the Burma Railway.You can find more conversations in a playlist on the Free Thinking website called Green Thinking, which includes a discussion of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring - a consideration of the soil, dams, and deserts - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07zg0r2Producer: Emma Wallace
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 26.01.2021Food, The Environment & Richard Flanagan
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Folge vom 21.01.2021John Rawls's A Theory of JusticeIn his 1971 book, A Theory of Justice, John Rawls argued that just societies should allow everyone to enjoy basic liberties while limiting inequality and improving the lives of the least well off. He argued that "the fairest rules are those to which everyone would agree if they did not know how much power they would have". Anne McElvoy discusses how his case for a liberal egalitarianism has fared since.Teresa Bejan is Associate Professor of Political Theory and Fellow of Oriel College at the University of Oxford. Her current work focuses on equality. Her first book, Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration was published in 2017.Jonathan Floyd is Senior Lecturer in Political Theory at the University of Bristol. His work focuses on he way in which we justify political principles and reflective equilibrium - the relationship between political theory and practical reason. His book include: Political Philosophy versus History? (2011); and, Is Political Philosophy Impossible? (2017); What's the point of political philosophy? (2019).Rupert Read is Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia. He has written about environmental ethics, scientism and the precautionary principle. In addition to his academic work he is an environmental activist and a former national spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion. His latest book is Parents for a Future.Producer: Ruth Watts
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Folge vom 20.01.2021James Baldwin and race in USAEddie Glaude Jr and Nadia Owusu compare notes on the relevance of James Baldwin's writing to understanding Donald Trump's America. Michael Burleigh gives his take on populism.Eddie S Glaude Jr has just published Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and its Urgent Lessons for Today. His previous books include Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul. He is the chair at the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. Nadia Owusu has published Aftershocks: Dispatches from the Frontlines of Identity. She is an associate director at Living Cities an economic racial justice organisation. Populism: Before and After the Pandemic by Michael Burleigh is published on 9th February.Producer: Torquil MacLeod
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Folge vom 19.01.2021Harlots & 18th Century Working WomenHarlots - the TV series about 18th century female sex workers - and translating historical fact into onscreen drama. Shahidha Bari is joined by Hallie Rubenhold, Moira Buffini, and Laura Lammasniemi in a conversation organised in partnership with the Royal Society of Literature.Harlots depicts the stories of working women detailed in 1757 in Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies. Historian Hallie Rubenhold has researched their history and Moira Buffini has translated that into TV scripts. They join Shahidha Bari alongside legal historian Laura Lammasniemi to look at the opportunities and pitfalls in creating historical dramas and what we know and don't know about the lives of sex workers in the 18th century.Hallie Rubenhold’s book The Covent Garden Ladies is about Harris’s List and inspired the series Harlots, to which she was historical consultant. She is author of The Five: The Untold Lives of The Women Killed By Jack The Ripper, which won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and has also been optioned as a drama series; and she is author of Lady Worsley's Whim, which became the TV drama The Scandalous Lady W.Scriptwriter Moira Buffini is writer of Harlots, new the film The Dig, which reimagines the events of the 1939 excavation of Sutton Hoo, and Jane Eyre. Her plays include wonder.land, Handbagged, and Dinner.Laura Lammasniemi is Assistant Professor at the University of Warwick Law School. She is currently a Leverhulme Fellow working on a project called Narratives Of Sexual Consent In Criminal Courts, 1870-1950, which looks at how the concept of consent has been understood historically in contexts, such as rape, age of consent, and BDSM.Producer: Emma Wallace