Free Thinking Folgen

Hannah Arendt tackled the big ideas behind possibly the most dangerous period of the twentieth century: Anti-Semitism, Imperialism and Totalitarianism. These phenomena and the concepts of freedom and evil were all the more immediate to her, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany. In recent years there has been a renewed interest in her writing which has often focused on mass propaganda, the differences between fact and fiction and the rise of the strong man leader. It's 70 years since Hannah Arendt published The Origins of Totalitarianism in 1951, so what does a re-reading of it tell us about our own world?Anne McElvoy is joined by the guests: Author and journalist Paul Mason, who has just published a book called How to Stop Fascism; Samantha Rose Hill is a senior research fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and the Humanities and her latest book is a biography, Hannah Arendt (2021). Her edition of Hannah Arendt's Poems will be published in 2022. Daniel Johnson is a journalist and the editor of The Article And, Gavin Delahunty is the curator of On Hannah Arendt: Eight Proposals for Exhibition running at the Richard Saltoun Gallery throughout 2021.Producer: Ruth WattsIn the Free Thinking archives and available to download as an Arts & Ideas podcast: Anne McElvoy talks to Susan Neimann, Christopher Hampton and Ursula Owen about tolerance, censorship and free speech and lessons from German history https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0008hvz Matthew Sweet looks at What Nietszche Teaches Us with biographer Sue Prideaux and philosophers Hugo Drochon and Katrina Mitcheson https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0000d8k Orwell's 1984: A Landmark of Culture brings together Peter Pomerantsev, Joanna Kavenna, Dorian Lynskey and Lisa Mullen to explore Orwell's ideas about surveillance and propaganda. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0005nrl

"I have no relation or friend" - words spoken by Frankenstein's monster in Mary Shelley's 1818 novel. That story, alongside Georg Büchner's expressionist classic Woyzeck, has inspired the new production for English National Ballet put together by Akram Khan.He joins poet Hannah Lowe, who's been reflecting on her experiences of teaching London teenagers; Tash Aw, who explores his Chinese and Malaysian heritage, and his status as insider and outsider in memoir Strangers on a Pier; and New Generation Thinker Eleanor Lybeck, who's been looking at the images of music hall performance and circus life in the paintings of Walter Sickert (1860 - 1942) and Laura Knight (1877-1970) for a conversation exploring different ideas about belonging.Shahidha Bari hosts.Creature: a co-production between English National Ballet, Sadler's Wells and Opera Ballet Vlaanderen opens at Sadler's Wells on 23rd Sept and then tours internationally. Hannah Lowe's new collection from Bloodaxe is called The Kids. Strangers on a Pier by Tash Aw is published by Fourth Estate. Sickert: A Life in Art is on show at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool from 18 Sep 2021—27 Feb 2022. It's the largest retrospective in the UK for 30 years. Laura Knight: A Panoramic View is on show at the Milton Keynes Gallery from 9 Oct 2021 - 20 Feb 2022. Eleanor Lybeck is an academic on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council called New Generation Thinkers which turns research into radio. She is a lecturer in Irish Literature at the University of Liverpool and explored her own family history and her great grandfather's links with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in a short Sunday Feature for Radio 3 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06pqsqrProducer: Tim BanoImage: Akram Khan Credit: Jean-Louis FernandezYou might also be interested in our exploration of language and belonging in which the writers Preti Taneja, Michael Rosen, Guy Gunaratne, Deena Mohamed, Dina Nayeri and Momtaza Mehri compare notes https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0006fh9

One definition of a glitch is a short-lived fault in a system operating otherwise as it should. Glitches in digital systems have been used by artists for at least a decade to produce work with a characteristic aesthetic, that invite reflection on the computer systems that play an ever bigger part in our lives. Matthew Sweet is joined by the artists and theorist of glitches Rosa Menkman and Antonio Roberts to discuss the glitch as a meeting point between technology and aesthetics, along with the novelist Tom McCarthy whose new novel The Making of Incarnation features the work of the psychologist and industrial engineer Lilian Gilbreth (1878-1972), who developed a series of time-and-motion studies which aimed to improve the organisation of factory production lines, and ultimately arrive at the one most efficient way of doing everything. And they're joined by the philosopher Hugo Drochon, who's investigated conspiracy theories and the role glitches play for people who follow them.The Making of Incarnation by Tom McCarthy is published in September 2021. Antonio Roberts' website is https://www.hellocatfood.com/ Rosa Menkman's is http://rosa-menkman.blogspot.com/Producer: Luke MulhallYou can find Tom McCarthy in a Free Thinking conversation about the "experimentalism" of Alain Robbe Grillet https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000xr4m and he discusses a previous novel Satin Island in this episode with Anne McElvoy https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b054t24q