300 episodes

Leading artists, writers, thinkers discuss the ideas shaping our lives & links between past & present and new academic research. Broadcast as Free Thinking Tues – Thurs 10pm on BBC Radio 3 + Proms Plus events

Arts & Ideas BBC Radio 3

    • Society & Culture
    • 4.2 • 283 Ratings

Leading artists, writers, thinkers discuss the ideas shaping our lives & links between past & present and new academic research. Broadcast as Free Thinking Tues – Thurs 10pm on BBC Radio 3 + Proms Plus events

    Call Me Mother

    Call Me Mother

    Why do babies say "daddy" earlier and what might it mean when a baby does call for "mum" or "anne"? Dr Rebecca Woods, from Newcastle University, calls upon her training in linguistics and observations from her own home to trace the way children’s experiences shape their first words and the names they use for their parents.
    Rebecca Woods is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to put academic research on radio.
    Producer: Ruth Watts
    You can hear more from Rebecca Woods in a Free Thinking discussion about childhood and play when Young V&A opened - it's available from the programme website and as an Arts & Ideas podcast

    • 15 min
    Edward Bond

    Edward Bond

    When Saved was banned in 1965 by the Lord Chamberlain's office, the Royal Court theatre turned itself into a private club to allow performances of Edward Bond's drama to be staged. This may be the most famous incident in the career of the playwright, who has died aged 89, but he was the author of over 50 plays, including several written for young people to perform, and others designed for broadcast on BBC Radio and he also worked on film scripts, wrote poems and long prefaces to his works. Joining Matthew Sweet to discuss his life and writing are the playwright Mark Ravenhill, actor Kenneth Cranham who starred in a 1969 production of Saved, Jen Harvie who is a Professor of Contemporary Drama at Queen Mary, London, Tony Coult, a writer and teacher of drama who has run Edward Bond's website for the past five years and written introductions to his play texts, and Claudette Bryanston, who commissioned The Children for a performance in a local Cambridge school with teenagers acting alongside adults.
    Producer: Robyn Read

    • 45 min
    Sleep justice and sleeplessness

    Sleep justice and sleeplessness

    There's nothing like a good night's sleep, but Laurence Scott discovers that our ability to enjoy one may be related to other societal inequalities, giving rise to the idea of sleep justice. His guests, researchers Sally Cloke, Jonathan White, Alice Vernon and Alice Bennett, also provide insights into sleep disorders, including night terrors, and the tyranny of the alarm clock.
    Producer: Torquil MacLeod
    Jonathan White is Professor of Politics and Deputy Head of the European Institute at the London School of Economics whose books include In the Long Run: The Future as a Political Idea and an article for the Journal of Political Philosophy Circadian Justice
    Dr Sally Cloke is a designer, researcher and writer on design and care ethics based at Cardiff Metropolitan University
    Dr Alice Vernon, a creative writing lecturer at Aberystwyth University is the author of Night Terrors: Troubled Sleep and the Stories We Tell About It
    Dr Alice Bennett, who lectures at Liverpool Hope University is the author of Alarm and Contemporary Fictions of Attention
    In the Free Thinking archives and available as Arts & Ideas podcasts you can find other discussions relating to sleep hearing from Russell Foster, Sasha Handley, Diletta de Cristofaro, Kenneth Miller and Matt Berry

    • 44 min
    Images of Persia

    Images of Persia

    The medieval poet Hafez and how his work speaks to today, the impact of digs undertaken by 19th-century feminist archaeologist Jane Dieulafoy and the novels she wrote looking back to a Persian past, the role of classical singing and the impact of the Mongol invasion are discussed by the academics Julia Hartley, Lecturer in Comparative Literature at the University of Glasgow; Michelle Assay, Principal investigator of the Marie Curie/UKRI project, “Women and Western Art Music in Iran” at King’s College London; Sussan Babaie, Professor in the Arts of Iran and Islam at the Courtauld Institute and Ide Haghi, Lecturer in Modern Foreign Languages at the University of Glasgow. Chris Harding presents.
    Producer: Jayne Egerton
    Julia Hartley's book Iran and French Orientalism: Persia in the Literary Culture of Nineteenth-Century France is out now.
    You can hear more from Julia in a Free Thinking discussion about Alexander the Great and in a Radio 3 Essay called Alexander and the Persians.
    Michelle Assay contributed to a discussion about Lady Macbeth. All are available as Arts & Ideas podcasts and on BBC Sounds.

    • 44 min
    Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation

    Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation

    Gene Hackman is a brilliant but troubled surveillance expert who gets drawn unwittingly into a conspiracy to murder. Released at the height of the Watergate scandal, Coppola's 1974 film about covert surveillance and wire-tapping reflected the mood of paranoia in the USA at the time. Matthew Sweet his guests, film historians Lucy Bolton and Phuong Le, writer Michael Goldfarb and writer and filmmaker Adam Scovell discuss the film and how our attitudes to being subjected to surveillance have changed in the fifty years since it was released.
    Producer: Torquil MacLeod

    • 45 min
    Muses and women's creativity

    Muses and women's creativity

    Iseult Gonne is the daughter of the Irish suffragette, actress and republican who became a muse for WB Yeats. Novelist Helen Cullen has been researching her troubled life. Rochelle Rowe's research looks at women of colour who modelled for artists including Jacob Epstein and Dante Gabriel Rosetti, tracing the histories of women like Fanny Eaton and Sunita Devi. Tabitha Barber is curating an exhibition of women's art opening at Tate Britain in May. Naomi Paxton hosts a conversation about muses, women making art and carving out a public name for themselves.
    Victorian Radicals: From the Pre-Raphaelites to the Arts and Crafts Movement runs at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery until 31 October
    From16 May, Tate Britain opens Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520 - 1920
    Angelica Kauffman runs at the Royal Academy (1 March - 30 June 2024)
    Julia Margaret Cameron runs at the National Portrait Gallery (21 March - 16 June)
    You can find a collection of episodes exploring Women in the World on the Free Thinking programme website

    • 45 min

Customer Reviews

4.2 out of 5
283 Ratings

283 Ratings

paulsplanet ,

Great range and depth 4 our 5 times.

Anne McElvoy is a great presenter in-fact all the team are. Great source of facts.

noscitur ,

Fascinating and hugely entertaining

This is a superb podcast covering an impressive range of subjects with exemplary erudition. The presenters are all excellent but I would happily listen to Matthew Sweet even if he was talking about concrete! - his ability to articulate complex ideas with originality and clarity is enviable.

Zanyay ,

Great range

I really enjoy the breadth of topics discussed, the varied guests, and the new thinking. A refreshing diversity of ages, genders, ethnic backgrounds, and contemporary issues. Perhaps a little dry at times, and still probably a little too middle-class academic to be truly inclusive, but a better effort than many others.

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