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From paper bullets to Tibetan rituals, early printing presses to present day recycling: Laurence Scott explores the cultural and social history of paper, from the Chinese Han Dynasty in 105 AD to the 20th-century workplace. His guests are:Adam Smyth, a Professor of English Literature and the History of the Book at the University of Oxford. His books include Material Texts in Early Modern England; Book Destruction from the Medieval to the Contemporary (co-edited with Dennis Duncan) and Book Parts: A collection of essays on the history of parts of a book; Therese Weber, an artist who has made paintings out of pulp, paper tearing and dipping and is the author of The Language of Paper: A History of 2000 Years; Nicholas Basbanes, a writer and journalist, whose books include On Paper: The Everything of its Two Thousand Year History and Emily Cockayne, an Associate Professor in Early Modern History at the University of East Anglia and author of Rummage: A History of the Things We Have Reused, Recycled and Refused to Let Go. Laurence Scott is the author of books about digital life including The Four-Dimensional Human and Picnic Comma Lightning.How did such a mundane substance revolutionise modern warfare, enable Imperialism and transform art? Can there ever be a blank page? Is recycling the answer to waste?The conversation ranges across the relationship between paper and religious history in the printing of the Quran and Tibetan rituals for the dead; to C17 Swedish paper bullets; Dickens’ Bleak House - in which a pile of paper leads to a fatal fire; the Bristol company who specialised in papier-mâché – a material used for elaborate decorations in C18 homes – and then used by artists like Jean Dubuffet in the 1940s and 50s and a scrap of paper, which survived 9/11 and told a widow, about her husband's final moments.Producer: Jayne Egerton

A "house on chicken legs” in Moscow designed by Viktor Andreyev, Virginia Woolf’s novel Jacob’s Room first published on 26 October 1922, Coal Cart Blues sung by Louis Armstrong drawing on his own experiences of pulling one round the streets of New Orleans where he started his teenage years living in a Home for Waifs; Duchamp’s 1912 painting Nude Descending a Staircase, No 2 are picked out as novelist Will Self, art historian and literary critic Alexandra Harris, jazz and music expert Kevin Le Gendre and architecture writer Owen Hatherley try to nail down the elements that make something modernist; looking at the importance of rhythm, the depiction of everyday life and new inventions, psychology and how you describe the self and utopian ideas about communal living. The presenter is New Generation Thinker and essayist Laurence Scott.Producer: Luke MulhallImage: Will Self in BBC Broadcasting House, LondonPart of the modernism season running across BBC Radio 3 and 4 with programmes marking the publication in 1922 of Ulysses by James Joyce, a reading of Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, a Words and Music playlist of readings from key works published in 1922 and a Sunday Feature on Radio 3 looking at the "all in a day" artwork.

Censored by the US, Europe's greatest early film star played leading roles in love triangle melodramas, comedies, stories of women trapped by tragic circumstances, and she took the role of Hamlet: Asta Nielsen (11 September 1881 – 24 May 1972) is the focus of a BFI season in February and March. To discuss the life and work of the silent movie pioneer, Matthew Sweet is joined by:Historian and film critic Pamela Hutchinson, curator of the BFI season; Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Oxford; Dr Erica Carter, Professor of German and Film at King's College London, who looks at Nielsen’s time in Germany in the 20s and 30s; and Lone Britt Christensen, Denmark’s Cultural Attaché.In the Eyes of a Silent Star: The Films of Asta Nielsen runs at the BFI Southbank, London from 03 February to 15 March 2022: www.bfi.org.uk/whatsonEmma Smith is the author of This is Shakespeare: How to Read the World's Greatest PlaywrightErica Carter is co-editor of The German Cinema BookIn the Free Thinking archives you can find a series of programmes exploring silent film, star actors including Jean-Paul Belmondo, Marlene Dietrich, Dirk Bogarde, and classics of cinema around the world.Producer: Tim BanoImage: Asta Nielsen in Black Dreams. Image credit: BFI Southbank.