Arts & Ideas Folgen

The director and writer of Ghostwatch Lesley Manning and Stephen Volk join Matthew Sweet and academic Lucy Arnold to look back at the reality–horror/pseudo-documentary TV, which aired on British tv screens on Halloween night 1992. The BBC switchboard received an estimated 1,000,000 phone calls on the night of the broadcast and it has never been repeated on British tv although it is now part of a BFI season exploring horror.Producer: Luke MulhallA BFI Horror season In Dreams are Monsters is running at venues across the UK until 31 December 2022 with screenings and events themed around the vampire, the ghost, the zombie, the witch and the beast.

A pandemic, crumbling empire and new nationhood are the backdrop for Orhan Pamuk's latest novel Nights of the Plague. He talks to Rana Mitter about the historical basis for his novel. They're joined by historian and BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker Michael Talbot and literary scholar Keya Anjaria.Some of the books they recommend at the end of the conversation are Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar (1901 – 1962) whose The Time Regulation Institute and A Mind at Peace have been published in English by Penguin Halide Edib Adıvar (1884 – 1964) whose memoirs have been published in English Yasher Kemal (1923 – 2015) author of Mehmet My Hawk Orhan Kemal - the pen name of Turkish novelist Mehmet Raşit Öğütçü (1914 - 1970) whose books describe the life of the poor in Turkey Oğuz Atay (1934 - 1977) a pioneer of the modern novel whose The Disconnected has become a best-seller Latife Tekin (1957 - ) and the film-maker Yılmaz Güney (1937 - 1984)Producer Luke MulhallYou can find more conversations about Turkish history via the Free Thinking website

John Gallagher discusses the latest research on the languages of the ancient world that weren't Latin and Greek. We associate places like Italy and Cyprus with those two best known ancient languages. But both were linguistically diverse. What informed people's choice of language in these places? How were alphabets developed and used? Plus, an exhibition at the British Museum explores the world opened up when Egyptian hieroglyphics were deciphered 200 years ago, and how the invention of the Cyrillic alphabet, developed in the Balkans over 1,000 years ago, still has political repercussions today.With Dr Katherine McDonald, Assistant Professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Durham, Dr Mirela Ivanova, Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Sheffield, and a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker, Dr Philippa Steele is Senior Research Associate in the Faculty of Classics at the University of Cambridge, and Dr Ilona Regulski, an Egyptologist based at the British Museum.The British Museum exhibition Hieroglyphs: Unlocking Ancient Egypt runs until Feb 189th 2023.This New Thinking episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast was made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI.Producer: Luke MulhallYou can find other episodes exploring language in the New Research playlist on the Free Thinking programme website