Arts & Ideas Folgen

Film director Todd Solondz discusses his new suburban satire, Dark Horse. Marina Warner and Richard Cork explore man’s desire for flight as a new exhibition, Flight and the Artistic Imagination, opens at Compton Verney. Susannah Clapp reviews Joe Penhall’s new play, Birthday. And Josh Hall, the next of this year’s New Generation Thinkers, examines the relationship between astronomers and the red planet.

To mark the 300th anniversary of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's birth and discuss why Rousseau still matters today Philip Dodd is joined by the novelist Lawrence Norfolk, philosopher Susan James, Professor of Intellectual History Richard Whatmore and specialist in 18th Century Literature Lucy Powell. The actor Samuel West reads from Rousseau's work.

With Rana Mitter. Night Waves has a first night review of The Royal Opera's production of Berlioz's Les Troyens - complete with over 100 singers. Rana is also joined by Dambisa Moyo, Steve Tsang and Isobel Hilton for an examination of China's race for resources. Emma Griffin, one of the next of this year's New Generation Thinkers reexamines the impact of the Industrial Revolution on the working class. Frances Ashcroft shows how electrical signals in our cells are essential to everything we think and do and with James Malpas, Rana takes a look at Tate Modern's latest exhibition Edvard Munch: The Modern Eye.