Arts & Ideas Folgen

BBC Radio 3's annual Free Thinking festival of ideas hits the road this summer as it takes up residency at leading summer events across the country. Rana Mitter chairs a debate from the York Festival of Ideas on the legacy of the War of the Roses with Helen Castor, Sandy Grant and Mark Ormrod reflecting on how the Wars of the Roses shaped the country from the 15th century right up to the present day. In the year that Richard III's remains were identified beneath a Leicester Car Park, why does the Wars of the Roses continue to exert such a hold over our imaginations, from Game of Thrones to new BBC series The White Queen?

Matthew Sweet talks to Conor McPherson about his new play The Night Alive, working with his own material as writer and director, violence on stage and his muses. On the 700th anniversary of Boccaccio's birth, Matthew is joined by Massimo Riva, Guyda Armstrong and Lindsay Johns to discuss the relevance of the Florentine author today. David Kynaston has been 'Opening the Box' on the years 1957 - 59, the third in his series of books looking across the history of post-war Britain. But are we just too sentimental about the 1950s? New Generation Thinker Chris Harding explains how religions and scientific psychology and psychiatry are drawing ever closer together in our modern consciousness.

Anne McElvoy talks to Neil Gaiman, prolific award-winning author of novels for adults and children alike and writer for radio and television about new novel, The Ocean At The End Of The Lane. Historian, Selina Todd, writer and novelist Bidisha, and Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley tiptoe round a debate raging across social media, 'check your privilege’. Universe Cosmologist consultant, Marcus Chown reports back from Visions of the Universe exhibition at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.