Arts & Ideas Folgen

To pay tribute to the actor Peter O’Toole, Matthew Sweet is joined by director Roger Michell, film producer Kevin Loader, actresss Annabel Leventon and theatre critic Michael Billington. Behavioural geneticist Robert Plomin presents his theory on the importance of genetic inheritance for determining academic achievement. New Generation Thinker Christopher Harding leads a tour of Japanese Christmas. New Generation Thinker Eleanor Barraclough and John Lennard, literature and fantasy scholar, explore dragons in myth and literature, from Beowulf to Smaug.

Susannah Clapp and Cleo Van Velsen join Anne McElvoy to review the musical stage adaptation of American Psycho, starring Matt Smith. Doris Kearns Goodwin discusses the turbulent politics of US President Theodore Roosevelt, the subject of her new book The Bully Pulpit. New Generation Thinker Sarah Peverley outlines Christmas traditions of the Medieval period. Charles Hind, Gavin Stamp and Tanya Sengupta discuss Britain’s colonial architecture.

The Science Museum in London is staging Mind Maps, an exhibition on the history of psychology and Philip Dodd discusses it with psychologist Keith Laws and Clare Allan. Lisa Appignanesi joins Philip to put a new volume of correspondence between Freud and his daughter Anna in context. As religion has declined, has psychotherapy come to take its place in how we think about what it is to be human? Giles Fraser joins Philip along with New Generation Thinker Christopher Harding to discuss. And playwright Howard Brenton and the poet Moniza Alvi discuss writing about Partition.