Free Thinking

Supporting Content

• Click to listen to discussions, talks and music as the Free Thinking Festival 2019 Gets Emotional

  Angry politics, what we can’t say, being diplomatic, weeping, emotion in music, film & TV

  • Watch a selection of videos, for the story of human emotions: complex, powerful, and sometimes unexpected

  

• Find out about the emotions of the past

  Dr Chaney from the Centre for the History of the Emotions on the emotions of the past.

  • Click here to read about 7 emotions that no longer exist.
  • Visit the Emotions Lab at Queen Mary University of London's Centre for the History of the Emotions

  

• The Way We Live Now

  From moral questions to the quirks and pleasures of life.

  • Jimmy Wales on encyclopedias to Wikipedia
  • Boredom and the value of doing nothing

  

• Hear the historians shortlisted for the 2019 Wolfson History Prize

  Tuesday 7 May 2019 19:00 at The British Academy

  

• Free Thinking explores Japanese culture

  From the Tale of Genjii to Godzilla, Kenzaburo Oe to Yoko Tawada …

  • Images of Japan
  • Buddhism, Therapy, Violence and Rationality

  

• The Getting of Knowledge

  New Research from UK Unis - maths to Marxism, black History & BEING HUMAN FESTIVAL

  • Scented gloves and gossip: civility and news in the Renaissance
  • The Digital Humanities

  

• Visual Arts

  Dorothy Bohm, Edward Burtynsky, Sean Scully, Dada, Elizabeth Price, Edmund de Waal

  

• American Culture

  Free Thinking explores America. Guests Claudia Rankine, Marilynne Robinson, Peter Bourne

  

• Free Thinking on War

  Spying, peace negotiating & the power balance around the world, films, books, paintings

  

• Belonging, Home, Borders & National Identity

  Discussions/interviews: Slavoj Zizek, Xinran, Ivan Klima, Claudia Rankine, Pankaj Mishra

  

• Free Thinking explores religious belief

  Ziauddin Sardar, Richard Dawkins, Karen Armstrong, Rabbi Sacks, Marilynne Robinson

  • Haemin Sunim

  

• In Depth Conversations

  Teju Cole, Zadie Smith, Umberto Eco, Peter Singer, David Grossman, Edna O'Brien

  • Jordan B Peterson
  • Spike Lee

  

• Culture Wars and Identity Discussions

  Free Thinking explores divisions & differences & the way people define themselves...

  

• Landmarks

  Key films, books, TV, plays, art: 1001 Nights - 2001 A Space Odyssey, Jane Austen - Jaws

  • Celebrating Buchi Emecheta
  • The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

  

• Free Thinking - The Future

  Peter Singer, Cordelia Fine, Garry Kasparov, AI and Algorithmns, Tim O’Reilly.

  

• Night Waves archive

  Listen to past editions from the extensive Night Waves archive.

  • Explore the archive

  

• Free Thinking - Prose and Poetry

  Writing from around the world: fact, fiction, key authors, classics & contemporary voices

  

• Free Thinking explores Shakespeare

  Leading scholars, insights from actors and directors and new research into the Bard.

  

• CLICK to LISTEN & SEE programmes from the Free Thinking Festival 2018: The One & the Many

  We examine the fast-changing relationship between the individual & the crowd

  • Watch a selection of videos, from a better understanding of death to arts on prescription...

  

• CLICK to LISTEN & SEE all programmes, images, clips & features from 2017's festival

  Free Thinking Festival 2017: The Speed of Life

  

• New Generation Thinkers 2018: hear their ideas

  From the urge to fight and Mrs Noah to Uncanny objects and mountain photography...

  • Apply to become a 2019 New Generation Thinker

  

• Hear the New Generation Thinkers' Essays exploring forgotten figures from history

  Recorded at the York Festival of Ideas (2018)

  

• New Generation Thinkers 2016. Watch short films.

  The mariner’s astrolabe; faith in food; Sherlock Holmes; the phone & a cold war relic...

  

• Crowd psychology: six reasons why mobs don't always rule

  Stephen Reicher reveals that crowd psychology is more nuanced than people think.

  

• Should we stop having children?

  With global population on the rise, could having kids be your biggest moral mistake?

  

• Lenny Henry in Conversation at Birmingham Rep

  Lenny Henry talks to Matthew Sweet in front of an audience at Birmingham Rep.

  

  Duration: 45:00

• New Generation Thinkers 2017: hear their ideas

  From satire and the circus, to gangs and 'speaking truth to power'

  

• Listen to essays from New Generation Thinkers

  From breastfeeding to fasting, resisting tyranny to murder & dining with a nightmare...

  

• New Generation Thinkers 2016: Hear their ideas

  From aubergines to frostbite via finger-counting.

  

• Free Thinking looks at power, peace negotiations, trees, spying, poetry and memory.

  Margaret MacMillan, Jonathan Powell, Naoko Shimazu, Kamila Shamsie, William Boyd...

  

• Free Thinking at Radio 3’s Late Junction Festival

  Is British Culture Getting Weirder? Thursday 28 Feb 2019, 14:30 ,Café OTO, Barbican

  • Click to Listen to the programme & download podcast

  

• 16h-Century tips for dancing with your cow

  An old dairying manual reveals insights into our ancestors' relationships with livestock.

  Duration: 3:16

• Edouard Louis

  French writer Edouard Louis on the gilet jaunes movement & his book Who killed my father?

  Duration: 23:36

• Neil Brand about Stan and Ollie

  Playwright & composer, Neil Brand, on Laurel & Hardy & their sublime short, The Music Box

  Duration: 12:07

• Mary Midgley at Free Thinking Festival November 2010 plus Havi Carel

  First broadcast on Nightwaves, BBC Radio 3, Wednesday 19 Jan 2011

  Duration: 43:16
  See all clips

• Portrait of the Artist: Käthe Kollwitz

• Matthew Sweet Explores London Through Its Archives.

• Street Furniture Design

• Superwoman: ‘Work, build and don't whine'
  See all galleries