New Generation Thinkers

Episode

Title

First
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20181028

Two Radio 3 New Generation Thinkers with stories from medieval and Victorian Britain.

Sean Williams introduces tonight's Sunday Feature that offers twin presentations by two of this year's crop of Radio 3's New Generation Thinkers.

`Spreading her arms abroad, she cried with a loud voice as though her heart should have burst asunder, for in the city of her soul she saw verily and freshly how our Lord was crucifie

20181104

Sean Williams introduces tonight's Sunday Feature that offers twin presentations by two of this year's crop of Radio 3's New Generation Thinkers.

Is it wrong to have children?

I really love my children but are they the biggest moral mistake I ever made? This is the question posed by moral philosopher Dr Simon Beard. In this Sunday Feature, Simon sets out to explore the moral ramifications of his decision to have two children.

Meeting academics, campaigners and ordinary parents, Simon asks whether having a child is ever the right or wrong thing to do. And, in a world of overpoulation and climate change, do we need to change the way we think about family life?

Simon Beard is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge's Centre for the Study of Existential Risk

Producer: Georgia Catt

Do terrorists have a problem with Shakespeare?

Terrorists across the globe have cited Shakespeare as a motivation for their actions, but why do some extremists hate the Bard - and why are others inspired by him?

From Osama bin Laden, whose diaries revealed he visited - and hated - Shakespeare's birthplace, to Guy Fawkes who held links to Shakespeare and his family, the world's most famous playwright has been a strange fascination for terrorists over the centuries.

What is it that draws audiences to Shakespeare's bloodiest plays, in the same way that staged beheadings of Isis draw millions of views on YouTube? And what has led terrorists to attack theatres and actors, like the bombing of a 2005 Qatari performance of Twelfth Night?

Dr Islam Issa begins by attempting to understand the mindset of a terrorist, talking to criminologist Imran Awan. They also explore the human attraction to violent displays in such productions as Titus Andronicus:

20210321

New Generation Thinker Alun Withey with a short feature on the history of men's personal grooming, showing that both the practices and the arguments about men's use of 'product' have a longer history than we might think.

The market for male cosmetic products is on the rise, especially in the Zoom age as blemishes are revealed in close-up. But men's cosmetics are not new: the 18th century saw the birth of a whole range of shaving soaps, pastes, powders and lotions. And just like today, their use sparked debates about manliness and over-attention to appearance.

Producer: Eliane Glaser

New Generation Thinkers test their theories in the real world.

20210523

New Generation Thinker TOM SMITH reflects on the effect the pandemic has had on the creativity of nightclubs. Club culture has had to improvise during the lockdown as it moved from the dance floor to the living room. But the haven that the night club provides for different communities has been badly missed. How will it have changed when the doors finally reopen and clubbers come back together?

Producer Neil McCarthy

New Generation Thinker TOM SMITH explores post-lockdown club culture and what's changed.

20220918

A short feature by one of this year's New Generation Thinkers

20250608

One of the latest crop of New Generation Thinkers stretches their broadcasting wings.

[LISTEN NOW]

20260125

One of the latest crop of New Generation Thinkers stretches their broadcasting wings.

[LISTEN NOW]

A Passion For Annotations

20201227

When Dr Kylie Murray started annotating her school textbooks, it was done with the zeal and enthusiasm of a young scholar getting to grips with the wisdom of the ages. But since then she's come to treasure the annotations of others, particularly the ones that appear in the medieval manuscripts she studies. In this short feature Kylie introduces us to some of them, including Johnny Hamyll whose tough existence as a minster of the Protestant church might have faded from history were it not for his annotations of his copy of Boethius' Consolations of Philosophy. Johnny was once the victim of a summons from his local community in Auchterarder in Perthshire for 'dinging and crewall hurting' but he survives unscathed in the notes and comments of what was clearly a favourite book.

Kyle meets more textual ghosts in the virtual company of Julie Gardham and Robert MaClean of the Library of the University of Glasgow, and she talks to Dr April Pierce of the Oxford Marginalia Facebook Page who celebrates the fact that annotating is alive and well in the digital age. And not only that, because of the wonders of technology it can be done without harming original texts or manuscripts. April is a teacher and she recognises annotations as a sure fire way to identify that her students are engaging with texts rather than absorbing them uncritically.

Producer: Tom Alban

Dr Kylie Murray explains her fascination for annotation.

Covid And The Black Death, The Imperfect Fit

20201018

It's understandable that, with the onset of a global pandemic, commentators have looked to the past for comparisons. But Dr Seb Falk is concerned that with the easy headlines about the mortality rate or the economic damage, or even the positive transformations inspired by plagues of the past and particularly in his field, the Black Death of the medieval period, more subtle comparisons emerging from exciting new Plague research are being overlooked. He hears from Dr Monica Green, a leading authority on the true origins and journey of the Black Death and finds, in her use of palaeogenetic research, refinements about the plague and its impact on those who lived with it. And he talks to Dr Zo뀀 Fritz, consultant physician and Wellcome Fellow in Society and Ethics at the University of Cambridge, about the human responses beyond the science today that echo the experiences of our ancestors centuries ago. Rather than mortality rates and economic trauma, the more profound links might be the twin challenges of uncertainty and impotence and the human desire to overcome or deny both.

Producer: Tom Alban

Dr Seb Falk challenges the repeated pandemic comparison of Covid-19 with the Black Death.

Edmund Richardson And Sarah Jackson

20171203

In search of the Tomb of Alexander the Great, and The Voice and the Machine.

Euphemism And Eroticism In Scottish Gaelic Songs

20161113

Part of Radio 3's focus on fresh ideas this week and our partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council helping academics turn their research into radio, two New Generation Thinkers present documentaries on their special area of interest.

Dr Peter Mackay takes us on a romp through the titillating, bawdy and sometimes downright filthy Scottish Gaelic songs. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a tendency to clean up Gaelic poetry and censor the undesirable elements, often with religious motivation. But even the most celebrated Gaelic poets wrote verse that was exuberantly and excessively rude and there is an oral tradition of obscene and euphemistic songs. Peter teases out the suggestive references taking us from the Isle of Skye through the rabble-rousing ceilidh house to the work of Scotland's most famous poet, ROBERT BURNS.

Dr Peter Mackay is Lecturer in English at the University of St Andrews

Producer: Clare Walker

2. Reappraising Nollekens

Joseph Nollekens was one of the most revered and prolific sculptors of the eighteenth century. His monuments, portraits busts and sculptures capture the leading politicians and celebrities of his age, inlcuding Dr Johnson, William Pitt the Younger and Charles James Fox and he died enormously rich. But when a disgruntled assistant wrote a malicious biography claiming he was a miser, an eccentric and a fool, Nollekens' reputation was badly tarnished. Dr Danielle Thom sets out to rescue Nollekens from relative obscurity and restore him to his rightful place in the history of English sculpture.

Dr Danielle Thom is curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, specialising in 18th century art.

Producer: Julia Johnson.

As part of Radio Three's partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council helping young academics turn their research into radio, two New Generation Thinkers present documentaries on their special area of interest.

Euphemism and eroticism in Gaelic songs and reappraising sculptor Joseph Nollekens.

1. Euphemism and Eroticism in Scottish Gaelic Songs

Glitter And Villainy

20191229

In a seasonal offering from Radio 3's New Generation Thinkers, Sheffield-based theatre director, storyteller and medievalist, Daisy Black, dons the most glittery of all the costumes in the wardrobe to tell the story of camp villains from, she says, King Herod, down through the Bayeux tapestry, to this year's latest oh-no-he-isn't pantomime baddies, on stage this Christmas.

Producer: Simon Elmes

Glitter and Villainy: Camp performance and dressing to kill.

Hope Mirlees In Paris

20161120

Part of Radio 3's partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council working with academics to turn their research into radio, two New Generation Thinkers present documentaries on their special area of interest.

The name Hope Mirlees is largely forgotten, but her long poem about Paris is increasingly considered a lost Modernist masterpiece.

Set within a single day in post-World War One Paris, the poem features a collage of overheard snatches of conversation on the newly-opened Metro, children's games, ancient Greek jokes, French double entendres, musical notation, advertising jingles, memorials carved into gravestones, the cries of street vendors and much more.

Sandeep Parmar traces the poem from the house in the Rue de Beaune, which Hope Mirlees shared with the Cambridge classicist Jane Harrison, across the Seine to the Tuileries Gardens, up to seedier corners of Montmartre and back down to the doors of Notre Dame. She speaks with Lauren Elkin, the author of a recent book on women walking in Paris, Flaneuse; with Geoffrey Gilbert from the American University of Paris; and with Professor MARY BEARD, who has written a biography of Jane Harrison.

With a new reading of extracts of the poem, Sandeep makes a powerful case for Paris to enter the canon of Modernist literature.

Sandeep Parmar is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Liverpool.

Producer: BEATY RUBENS

2. The Jews of North Africa during the Second World War. The story of the vibrant Jewish communities in North Africa during the Second World War and their subsequent fates has long been overshadowed by the destruction of European Jewry in Nazi occupied Europe. Here Professor Daniel Lee reveals the rich, multi-layered worlds of faith and culture in Tunisia, Morocco and Libya and the impact of the implementation of Vichy and Italian antisemitic laws that accompanied the Nazi invasion of North Africa in 1942. Such events are entirely unknown to British audiences. The Jews of North Africa are invisible in the Imperial War Museum's permanent exhibition on the Holocaust, which describes only the experiences of 'Europe's Jews

Producer: Mark Burman

You can find more new research on BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking programmes broadcast last week as part of Radio 3's week long focus on fresh ideas and in the collection of New Generation Thinkers on the Free Thinking website and available to download as Arts and Ideas podcasts.

Features about lost modernist poet Hope Mirlees and North Africa's Jews during WWII.

1. Hope Mirlees in Paris

Sloe Time

20201004

Lockdown encourages us to keep local, but for many this has been rewarded with a new take on the close-by, the ordinary, in the natural world (even as nature is wreaking havoc) - such as the humble blackthorn.

New Generation Thinker Dr Lisa Mullen is fascinated by the beauty, cruelty and danger inherent in the blackthorn - flowers, spikes and fruit - the sloes whose alien green flesh dries the mouth, but combines with gin to make the perfect winter drink.

Not a charismatic mega - fauna', like the Giant Redwood, blackthorns dense, strong, dark wood, rippling with veins of toffee, plays an important role in holding our countryside together; dividing fields, feeding us and delighting in being one of the first to blossom in spring.

`A dense thicket, bristling with spines - you realise why blackthorn was used defensively as a dead hedge by the Saxon's, the true precursor of barbed wire.?? ROGER DEAKIN

Blackthorn's physical characteristics make it a popular baddie - folk lore depicts it as dangerous as well as useful. Robert McFarlane - a passionate advocate for nature - even describes the blackthorn as `the widow maker?? - for its easily infected wounds.

Reliving childhood adventures in the Chiltern's, pretending to be the princess in the thorny bush, Lisa recalls dangerous, warning stabs from the blackthorns cruel spikes. She talks to Samuel Robinson, coppicer and woodsman, who knows the blackthorn better than most. For Lisa he sings a beautiful song about the blackthorn winter, the false spring, his dog's violent encounter with a deer, and his own confrontation with death.

Producer: SARA JANE HALL

Music by Samuel Robinson - Blackthorn' - featuring Hannah Flynn

https://samrobinson.bandcamp.com/

And `Walking on Black Meadow?? by The Soulless Party

Nature's barbed wire - and giver of a fruit that creates a delicious warming tipple.

Susan Greaney And The Jomon Connection

20200419

Archeologist Susan Greaney has spent much of her life studying the Neolithic monuments of the British isles, including Stonehenge. As part of her role at English Heritage she was invited recently to travel to Japan to see what was happening there at much the same time that the massive stones were being assembled on the high ground in Wiltshire. In this programme Susan reports from three sites in northern Japan were the ancient Jomon civilisations also turned to stones, gathered and shaped in circular formations, for what appear to have been ritual ceremonies. That, half a world away, two peoples should have sought to reflect and respond to nature in this way is astonishing and Susan's knowledge of the ancient past here inspires a new fascination for the sophistication of Japan's ancient history and the relative wealth of material, in the form of pottery and traces of domestic life, that are to be found in these old Jomon sites.

Susan Greaney draws parallels and makes connections between the Neolithic peoples of Britain and the ancient Jomon civilisation of Japan, both of whom used circles of stone in ritual celebrations.

New Generation Thinkers test their theories in the real world.

The Air That I Breathe

20200315

Dr Alun Withey became interested in our attitudes to clean air through his study of the beard. A curious piece of Victorian wisdom caught his eye. In extolling the wisdom of the full beard a particularly keen enthusiast suggested that the beard was 'nature's respirator'. Further research lead him to the inventor of the respirator, one Julius Jeffreys, and the subsequent use of it. Following on from that was a growing understanding of how the Victorians responded to the air that they were forced to breathe in increasingly smog-bound cities.

He talks to experts today about our city air and why our thinking remains somewhat confused when it comes to our attitudes to clean air when the pea souper smogs have gone, and - without any reference to face masks used for Coronavirus protection - he explores the extent to which respirators then and now have proved either popular or effective as a response to the fundamental desire for clean air.

Producer: Tom Alban

New Generation Thinker Alun Withey reflects on our desire for clean air.

The Crankiness Of Cw Daniel

20200426

Dr Elsa Richardson explores the impact and legacy of radical publisher CW Daniel.

Dr Elsa Richardson studies the history of life reform in Britain, tracking subjects which today are of mainstream importance but were, back in the early years of the 20th century seen to be the territory of eccentrics and cranks. In the process of reading about vegetarianism, herbal medicine, nudism, sunbathing and alternative forms of spirituality as conceived by writers in the early 1900s, she began to notice the significance of the publisher CW Daniel.

In this programme Elsa explores the Daniel publishing story, its roots in Tolstoyan Christianity and the way it became a hub for radical thinkers far removed from the political activism of the women's suffrage and rising Labour movement. CW Daniel's story, his arrests during the First World War for publishing pacifist material and his relationship and meeting with LEO TOLSTOY towards the end of the great Russian novelists life, are extraordinary. At the heart of his publishing efforts was a periodical The Crank, which celebrated the spirit of change and progress that he and his wife to be Florence Worland, believed in so passionately.

Elsa also asks how the breadth of the Daniel's interests has fared over time. There was a renewed interest in the 70s but many of the lifestyle ideas, which seemed so radical in the 20th century are now accepted as something close to mainstream in the 21st.

Producer: Tom Alban

New Generation Thinkers test their theories in the real world.

The Endless Demise Of The High Street

20200329

With the rise of internet shopping, high rental rates and declining footfall, it appears that the end is nigh for our high streets. But the end has been nigh for at least the last 50 years and yet still it keeps re-inventing itself. Dr Jade Halbert goes back to her native Glasgow to speak to people who fear that this time there may well be a wolf at the door and others who believe that a revolution is coming which will mean a re-think, but not necessarily the death, of the high street as we've come to know it.

Producer: Tom Alban

Dr Jade Halbert ponders the veracity of the long-running warnings of high street demise.

New Generation Thinkers

20141102

Documentaries presented by two of Radio 3's New Generation Thinkers.

KITTY MARION: SINGER, SUFFRAGETTE, FIRESTARTER

Fern Riddell uncovers the astonishing life of Kitty Marion - a German child who fled her brutal father for a new life in Victorian England, where she built a career as a singer and actress in theatres and music halls.

But why would a woman like this, in a precarious profession, neither young nor wealthy, become a Suffragette?

As Riddell discovers, Marion was driven to protest by a culture endemic in the backstage world: sexual assault.

But once she became a Suffragette, Marion soon found herself in prison. Her hunger strikes were dealt with by warders forcing a feeding-pipe up her nose. In one stint in gaol she endured this 232 times.

Along the way, Marion had graduated from marching and breaking windows to far more violent activity. She was convicted of burning down a racecourse - but Riddell examines evidence that she was involved in many more fires, from country houses to railway stations.

Finally, after war came in 1914, this extraordinary woman was denounced as a German spy. Pressured to leave the country, she faded into obscurity. But, asks Riddell, do the likes of Kitty Marion deserve a more prominent place in our history of the campaign to win women the vote?

Producer: Phil Tinline

THE POETRY OF SCIENCE

Gregory Tate explores why so many scientists have been inspired to write poetry and the relationship between their artistic work and their science.

The Cornishman Humphry Davy was a pioneer of modern science, whose lectures drew huge crowds. But, inspired by his friendship with the poets Wordsworth and Coleridge, throughout his life he wrote poems - including one about breathing nitrous oxide.

Physician Eramus Darwin; mathematician William Rowan Hamilton; astronomer William Herschel; - all wrote poetry. More recently, the 'father' of the atom bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Erwin Schrodinger, and Miroslav Holub interrogated their scientific work in verse.

Gregory Tate visits the Royal Institution in London which, as well as a laboratory, houses a large archive of poetry by scientists, and the lab in Trinity College, Dublin, where Physics professor, Iggy McGovern, develops ideas for synchrotron radiation techniques, and poems. McGovern has written a sonnet sequence on mathematician Hamilton.

Using scientific investigative techniques Gregory enquires how has poetry offer scientists a fresh perspective on their research, talking to Sharon Ruston, co-editor of Humphry Davy's letters, Daniel Brown, author of 'The Poetry of Victorian Scientists', and the poets Mario Petrucci, who has a PhD in Optoelectronics, and Ruth Padel, a descendant of Erasmus Darwin. We hear their poetry, and verse by Humphry Davy, John Tyndall, John Herschel and Rowan William Hamilton.

Producer: Julian May.

Fern Riddell discusses suffragette Kitty Marion. Plus Gregory Tate on science and poetry.

New Generation Thinkers: Hardy And The Animals

20151108

Alasdair Cochrane, Political Philosopher and New Generation Thinker, visits Whirlow Hall Farm Trust to mix it with sheep and pigs as he follows the twists and turns of Thomas Hardy's interest in animals. He explores with John Miller, who teaches English Literature at Sheffield University, the ways in which Thomas Hardy's animals have their own internal realities and far from being the backdrop to Hardy's Wessex, drive the plots and play important parts in the lives of the human characters from Tess to Jude. And he talks to Elisha Cohn at Cornell University about her explorations of the writer's philosophical development. For Hardy, Darwin's Theory of Evolution had profound ethical implications for the way humans interact with their fellow creatures.

Reader: Sam Dale

Producer: Jacqueline Smith.

Alasdair Cochrane explores the ethical implications of evolution in Thomas Hardy's writing

Christopher Harding, John Gallagher

20141116

Documentaries presented by two of Radio 3's New Generation Thinkers.

FREUD IN ASIA

Christopher Harding explores the influence of Freud on psychotherapy in Japan and India. Freud's travels around Europe and the USA a century ago catapulted psychotherapy to fame.

The invitations to Japan and India came too late for him to travel but he found his work debated throughout Asia. In India he was discussed by British colonial officers, who penned amateur tracts about Indian nationalism as mere sexual trauma.

Thousands of miles further east in Tokyo, Freud was partnered with a medieval Buddhist saint in the hybrid psychoanalytic technique of Heisaku Kosawa. Mishima read and was influenced by his work. Christopher Harding explores the spread of Freud's influence and its significance.

A JOURNEY INTO THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE PHRASE BOOK

John Gallagher focuses on the history of a long-overlooked form of literature: the foreign language phrase book. The British often assume that most people we meet abroad will speak English - and many of them do.

This was not the case three or four centuries ago, when the Grand Tour became a rite of passage and an increasing number of entrepreneurs forged trade links across Europe and beyond. At that time English was a minority language.

Phrase books and travel guides of the time reveal the preoccupations of the day and, in the varied dialogues and phrases they offered, reflect the needs of a variety of travellers, be they tourists keen to visit the art of Italy or the salons of Paris, merchants seeking to make deals in Dutch marketplaces, or spies intent on learning the secrets of continental powers.

Producers Fiona McLean and Mohini Patel

Image: John Gallagher & Christopher Harding (Credit: Mark Allan).

Radio 3 New Generation Thinkers on Freud in Asia and the foreign language phrase book.

Image: John Gallagher and Christopher Harding (Credit: Mark Allan).

New Generation Thinkers: Who's Afraid Of Anthropomorphism?

20151108

New Generation Thinker Will Abberley reflects on evolutionary psychology via the stories we've told ourselves about animal minds. Anthropomorphism was a word flung at the early primate ethologists like Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey but their work is transforming our attitudes towards the existence of culture in animals other than humans. Katie Slocombe, who studies chimps both in the wild and a captive population at Edinburgh Zoo, discusses the ever-present danger of taking anthropomorphism too far but argues that observation, intuition, and anecdote are intrinsic starting points for much of her scientific work. And the nature writer Sy Morgan, whose latest book is called The Soul of an Octopus, explores how we might use our different senses to approach minds configured quite differently to ours.

Reader: Brian Protheroe

Producer: Jacqueline Smith.

New Generation Thinker Will Abberley reflects on how we imagine the animal mind.

The Science Of Baby Laughs

20151115

Tiffany Watt-Smith, historian of human emotions, follows the long history of scientific inquiry into the understanding of laughter in infants and what it tells us about ourselves.

Babies can be a tough crowd. You blow raspberries. You pull faces. And then your hat accidentally falls off, and you get rewarded with a joyful peal of raspy chuckles. So imagine if trying to make babies laugh was your job? Meet Dr Caspar Addyman, a psychologist investigating infant laughter at Goldsmith's University. With his electric blue hair and wide grin, he's not your typical scientist. But when he takes his tiny experimental subjects (accompanied by their parents) into a dark booth and tries to make them giggle and guffaw, he is entering into a long scientific tradition seeking to uncover the secrets of that most alluring pleasure - the sound of an infant's laughter.

Why do babies laugh? What happens to their brains and bodies when they do? And what can a baby's sense of humour tell us about life in the adult world? These questions are not new. Victorian scientists, usually thought rather stern, were fascinated by laughter of all kinds. Charles Darwin and later James Sully who set up the UK's first psychological laboratory at UCL in the 1890s, believed childhood laughter held the key to the evolution of our species' emotions. Today, scientific interest in laughter is once more on the rise. Neuroscientist Sophie Scott, of UCL, argues laughter is less about finding things amusing than it is about trying to build relationships. If she's right, then our preoccupation with trying to make babies laugh may be more than a simple pleasure. It might be that we're trying to teach them - and they're trying to learn - a crucial human skill: how to join in.

Producer: Mark Burman.

What makes a baby laugh? From Darwin to state-of-the-art neurology, the search continues.

The Life And Life Of Richard Baxter

20151115

Professor Tom Charlton explores the thoughts and life of Richard Baxter. Pamphleteer, preacher and troublemaker at the heart of England's upheaval amidst Civil War and Restoration. Tried for subverting the government in 1685, Baxter's life had been turned upside down by Civil War, Regicide and the topsy turvy Restoration. His own exhaustive but partial account of his life is a key source for anyone trying to understand the religious and political dilemmas facing the generation who challenged the idea of monarchy and argued for many of the freedoms enshrined in the new democracy to come. Baxter was the essence of non-conformity. At odds with Cromwell yet supporter of his son Richard, precisely at the moment when the monarchy was about to be restored. His dreams of a Holy Commonwealth set him at odds with those forces returned to power by the Restoration. Tom Charlton is one of a new generation of scholars seeking to interpret the life and deeds of one of the 17th century's most important figures.

The life of theologian Richard Baxter, who was at the heart of the English Civil War.

Episodes

Episode	Title	First Broadcast	Comments
		20181028	Two Radio 3 New Generation Thinkers with stories from medieval and Victorian Britain. Sean Williams introduces tonight's Sunday Feature that offers twin presentations by two of this year's crop of Radio 3's New Generation Thinkers. `Spreading her arms abroad, she cried with a loud voice as though her heart should have burst asunder, for in the city of her soul she saw verily and freshly how our Lord was crucifie
		20181104	Sean Williams introduces tonight's Sunday Feature that offers twin presentations by two of this year's crop of Radio 3's New Generation Thinkers. Is it wrong to have children? I really love my children but are they the biggest moral mistake I ever made? This is the question posed by moral philosopher Dr Simon Beard. In this Sunday Feature, Simon sets out to explore the moral ramifications of his decision to have two children. Meeting academics, campaigners and ordinary parents, Simon asks whether having a child is ever the right or wrong thing to do. And, in a world of overpoulation and climate change, do we need to change the way we think about family life? Simon Beard is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge's Centre for the Study of Existential Risk Producer: Georgia Catt Do terrorists have a problem with Shakespeare? Terrorists across the globe have cited Shakespeare as a motivation for their actions, but why do some extremists hate the Bard - and why are others inspired by him? From Osama bin Laden, whose diaries revealed he visited - and hated - Shakespeare's birthplace, to Guy Fawkes who held links to Shakespeare and his family, the world's most famous playwright has been a strange fascination for terrorists over the centuries. What is it that draws audiences to Shakespeare's bloodiest plays, in the same way that staged beheadings of Isis draw millions of views on YouTube? And what has led terrorists to attack theatres and actors, like the bombing of a 2005 Qatari performance of Twelfth Night? Dr Islam Issa begins by attempting to understand the mindset of a terrorist, talking to criminologist Imran Awan. They also explore the human attraction to violent displays in such productions as Titus Andronicus:
		20210321	New Generation Thinker Alun Withey with a short feature on the history of men's personal grooming, showing that both the practices and the arguments about men's use of 'product' have a longer history than we might think. The market for male cosmetic products is on the rise, especially in the Zoom age as blemishes are revealed in close-up. But men's cosmetics are not new: the 18th century saw the birth of a whole range of shaving soaps, pastes, powders and lotions. And just like today, their use sparked debates about manliness and over-attention to appearance. Producer: Eliane Glaser New Generation Thinkers test their theories in the real world.
		20210523	New Generation Thinker TOM SMITH reflects on the effect the pandemic has had on the creativity of nightclubs. Club culture has had to improvise during the lockdown as it moved from the dance floor to the living room. But the haven that the night club provides for different communities has been badly missed. How will it have changed when the doors finally reopen and clubbers come back together? Producer Neil McCarthy New Generation Thinker TOM SMITH explores post-lockdown club culture and what's changed.
		20220918	A short feature by one of this year's New Generation Thinkers
		20250608	One of the latest crop of New Generation Thinkers stretches their broadcasting wings. [LISTEN NOW]
		20260125	One of the latest crop of New Generation Thinkers stretches their broadcasting wings. [LISTEN NOW]
	A Passion For Annotations	20201227	When Dr Kylie Murray started annotating her school textbooks, it was done with the zeal and enthusiasm of a young scholar getting to grips with the wisdom of the ages. But since then she's come to treasure the annotations of others, particularly the ones that appear in the medieval manuscripts she studies. In this short feature Kylie introduces us to some of them, including Johnny Hamyll whose tough existence as a minster of the Protestant church might have faded from history were it not for his annotations of his copy of Boethius' Consolations of Philosophy. Johnny was once the victim of a summons from his local community in Auchterarder in Perthshire for 'dinging and crewall hurting' but he survives unscathed in the notes and comments of what was clearly a favourite book. Kyle meets more textual ghosts in the virtual company of Julie Gardham and Robert MaClean of the Library of the University of Glasgow, and she talks to Dr April Pierce of the Oxford Marginalia Facebook Page who celebrates the fact that annotating is alive and well in the digital age. And not only that, because of the wonders of technology it can be done without harming original texts or manuscripts. April is a teacher and she recognises annotations as a sure fire way to identify that her students are engaging with texts rather than absorbing them uncritically. Producer: Tom Alban Dr Kylie Murray explains her fascination for annotation.
	Covid And The Black Death, The Imperfect Fit	20201018	It's understandable that, with the onset of a global pandemic, commentators have looked to the past for comparisons. But Dr Seb Falk is concerned that with the easy headlines about the mortality rate or the economic damage, or even the positive transformations inspired by plagues of the past and particularly in his field, the Black Death of the medieval period, more subtle comparisons emerging from exciting new Plague research are being overlooked. He hears from Dr Monica Green, a leading authority on the true origins and journey of the Black Death and finds, in her use of palaeogenetic research, refinements about the plague and its impact on those who lived with it. And he talks to Dr Zo뀀 Fritz, consultant physician and Wellcome Fellow in Society and Ethics at the University of Cambridge, about the human responses beyond the science today that echo the experiences of our ancestors centuries ago. Rather than mortality rates and economic trauma, the more profound links might be the twin challenges of uncertainty and impotence and the human desire to overcome or deny both. Producer: Tom Alban Dr Seb Falk challenges the repeated pandemic comparison of Covid-19 with the Black Death.
	Edmund Richardson And Sarah Jackson	20171203	In search of the Tomb of Alexander the Great, and The Voice and the Machine.
	Euphemism And Eroticism In Scottish Gaelic Songs	20161113	Part of Radio 3's focus on fresh ideas this week and our partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council helping academics turn their research into radio, two New Generation Thinkers present documentaries on their special area of interest. Dr Peter Mackay takes us on a romp through the titillating, bawdy and sometimes downright filthy Scottish Gaelic songs. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a tendency to clean up Gaelic poetry and censor the undesirable elements, often with religious motivation. But even the most celebrated Gaelic poets wrote verse that was exuberantly and excessively rude and there is an oral tradition of obscene and euphemistic songs. Peter teases out the suggestive references taking us from the Isle of Skye through the rabble-rousing ceilidh house to the work of Scotland's most famous poet, ROBERT BURNS. Dr Peter Mackay is Lecturer in English at the University of St Andrews Producer: Clare Walker 2. Reappraising Nollekens Joseph Nollekens was one of the most revered and prolific sculptors of the eighteenth century. His monuments, portraits busts and sculptures capture the leading politicians and celebrities of his age, inlcuding Dr Johnson, William Pitt the Younger and Charles James Fox and he died enormously rich. But when a disgruntled assistant wrote a malicious biography claiming he was a miser, an eccentric and a fool, Nollekens' reputation was badly tarnished. Dr Danielle Thom sets out to rescue Nollekens from relative obscurity and restore him to his rightful place in the history of English sculpture. Dr Danielle Thom is curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, specialising in 18th century art. Producer: Julia Johnson. As part of Radio Three's partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council helping young academics turn their research into radio, two New Generation Thinkers present documentaries on their special area of interest. Euphemism and eroticism in Gaelic songs and reappraising sculptor Joseph Nollekens. 1. Euphemism and Eroticism in Scottish Gaelic Songs
	Glitter And Villainy	20191229	In a seasonal offering from Radio 3's New Generation Thinkers, Sheffield-based theatre director, storyteller and medievalist, Daisy Black, dons the most glittery of all the costumes in the wardrobe to tell the story of camp villains from, she says, King Herod, down through the Bayeux tapestry, to this year's latest oh-no-he-isn't pantomime baddies, on stage this Christmas. Producer: Simon Elmes Glitter and Villainy: Camp performance and dressing to kill.
	Hope Mirlees In Paris	20161120	Part of Radio 3's partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council working with academics to turn their research into radio, two New Generation Thinkers present documentaries on their special area of interest. The name Hope Mirlees is largely forgotten, but her long poem about Paris is increasingly considered a lost Modernist masterpiece. Set within a single day in post-World War One Paris, the poem features a collage of overheard snatches of conversation on the newly-opened Metro, children's games, ancient Greek jokes, French double entendres, musical notation, advertising jingles, memorials carved into gravestones, the cries of street vendors and much more. Sandeep Parmar traces the poem from the house in the Rue de Beaune, which Hope Mirlees shared with the Cambridge classicist Jane Harrison, across the Seine to the Tuileries Gardens, up to seedier corners of Montmartre and back down to the doors of Notre Dame. She speaks with Lauren Elkin, the author of a recent book on women walking in Paris, Flaneuse; with Geoffrey Gilbert from the American University of Paris; and with Professor MARY BEARD, who has written a biography of Jane Harrison. With a new reading of extracts of the poem, Sandeep makes a powerful case for Paris to enter the canon of Modernist literature. Sandeep Parmar is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Liverpool. Producer: BEATY RUBENS 2. The Jews of North Africa during the Second World War. The story of the vibrant Jewish communities in North Africa during the Second World War and their subsequent fates has long been overshadowed by the destruction of European Jewry in Nazi occupied Europe. Here Professor Daniel Lee reveals the rich, multi-layered worlds of faith and culture in Tunisia, Morocco and Libya and the impact of the implementation of Vichy and Italian antisemitic laws that accompanied the Nazi invasion of North Africa in 1942. Such events are entirely unknown to British audiences. The Jews of North Africa are invisible in the Imperial War Museum's permanent exhibition on the Holocaust, which describes only the experiences of 'Europe's Jews Producer: Mark Burman You can find more new research on BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking programmes broadcast last week as part of Radio 3's week long focus on fresh ideas and in the collection of New Generation Thinkers on the Free Thinking website and available to download as Arts and Ideas podcasts. Features about lost modernist poet Hope Mirlees and North Africa's Jews during WWII. 1. Hope Mirlees in Paris
	Sloe Time	20201004	Lockdown encourages us to keep local, but for many this has been rewarded with a new take on the close-by, the ordinary, in the natural world (even as nature is wreaking havoc) - such as the humble blackthorn. New Generation Thinker Dr Lisa Mullen is fascinated by the beauty, cruelty and danger inherent in the blackthorn - flowers, spikes and fruit - the sloes whose alien green flesh dries the mouth, but combines with gin to make the perfect winter drink. Not a charismatic mega - fauna', like the Giant Redwood, blackthorns dense, strong, dark wood, rippling with veins of toffee, plays an important role in holding our countryside together; dividing fields, feeding us and delighting in being one of the first to blossom in spring. `A dense thicket, bristling with spines - you realise why blackthorn was used defensively as a dead hedge by the Saxon's, the true precursor of barbed wire.?? ROGER DEAKIN Blackthorn's physical characteristics make it a popular baddie - folk lore depicts it as dangerous as well as useful. Robert McFarlane - a passionate advocate for nature - even describes the blackthorn as `the widow maker?? - for its easily infected wounds. Reliving childhood adventures in the Chiltern's, pretending to be the princess in the thorny bush, Lisa recalls dangerous, warning stabs from the blackthorns cruel spikes. She talks to Samuel Robinson, coppicer and woodsman, who knows the blackthorn better than most. For Lisa he sings a beautiful song about the blackthorn winter, the false spring, his dog's violent encounter with a deer, and his own confrontation with death. Producer: SARA JANE HALL Music by Samuel Robinson - Blackthorn' - featuring Hannah Flynn https://samrobinson.bandcamp.com/ And `Walking on Black Meadow?? by The Soulless Party Nature's barbed wire - and giver of a fruit that creates a delicious warming tipple.
	Susan Greaney And The Jomon Connection	20200419	Archeologist Susan Greaney has spent much of her life studying the Neolithic monuments of the British isles, including Stonehenge. As part of her role at English Heritage she was invited recently to travel to Japan to see what was happening there at much the same time that the massive stones were being assembled on the high ground in Wiltshire. In this programme Susan reports from three sites in northern Japan were the ancient Jomon civilisations also turned to stones, gathered and shaped in circular formations, for what appear to have been ritual ceremonies. That, half a world away, two peoples should have sought to reflect and respond to nature in this way is astonishing and Susan's knowledge of the ancient past here inspires a new fascination for the sophistication of Japan's ancient history and the relative wealth of material, in the form of pottery and traces of domestic life, that are to be found in these old Jomon sites. Susan Greaney draws parallels and makes connections between the Neolithic peoples of Britain and the ancient Jomon civilisation of Japan, both of whom used circles of stone in ritual celebrations. New Generation Thinkers test their theories in the real world.
	The Air That I Breathe	20200315	Dr Alun Withey became interested in our attitudes to clean air through his study of the beard. A curious piece of Victorian wisdom caught his eye. In extolling the wisdom of the full beard a particularly keen enthusiast suggested that the beard was 'nature's respirator'. Further research lead him to the inventor of the respirator, one Julius Jeffreys, and the subsequent use of it. Following on from that was a growing understanding of how the Victorians responded to the air that they were forced to breathe in increasingly smog-bound cities. He talks to experts today about our city air and why our thinking remains somewhat confused when it comes to our attitudes to clean air when the pea souper smogs have gone, and - without any reference to face masks used for Coronavirus protection - he explores the extent to which respirators then and now have proved either popular or effective as a response to the fundamental desire for clean air. Producer: Tom Alban New Generation Thinker Alun Withey reflects on our desire for clean air.
	The Crankiness Of Cw Daniel	20200426	Dr Elsa Richardson explores the impact and legacy of radical publisher CW Daniel. Dr Elsa Richardson studies the history of life reform in Britain, tracking subjects which today are of mainstream importance but were, back in the early years of the 20th century seen to be the territory of eccentrics and cranks. In the process of reading about vegetarianism, herbal medicine, nudism, sunbathing and alternative forms of spirituality as conceived by writers in the early 1900s, she began to notice the significance of the publisher CW Daniel. In this programme Elsa explores the Daniel publishing story, its roots in Tolstoyan Christianity and the way it became a hub for radical thinkers far removed from the political activism of the women's suffrage and rising Labour movement. CW Daniel's story, his arrests during the First World War for publishing pacifist material and his relationship and meeting with LEO TOLSTOY towards the end of the great Russian novelists life, are extraordinary. At the heart of his publishing efforts was a periodical The Crank, which celebrated the spirit of change and progress that he and his wife to be Florence Worland, believed in so passionately. Elsa also asks how the breadth of the Daniel's interests has fared over time. There was a renewed interest in the 70s but many of the lifestyle ideas, which seemed so radical in the 20th century are now accepted as something close to mainstream in the 21st. Producer: Tom Alban New Generation Thinkers test their theories in the real world.
	The Endless Demise Of The High Street	20200329	With the rise of internet shopping, high rental rates and declining footfall, it appears that the end is nigh for our high streets. But the end has been nigh for at least the last 50 years and yet still it keeps re-inventing itself. Dr Jade Halbert goes back to her native Glasgow to speak to people who fear that this time there may well be a wolf at the door and others who believe that a revolution is coming which will mean a re-think, but not necessarily the death, of the high street as we've come to know it. Producer: Tom Alban Dr Jade Halbert ponders the veracity of the long-running warnings of high street demise.
01	New Generation Thinkers	20141102	Documentaries presented by two of Radio 3's New Generation Thinkers. KITTY MARION: SINGER, SUFFRAGETTE, FIRESTARTER Fern Riddell uncovers the astonishing life of Kitty Marion - a German child who fled her brutal father for a new life in Victorian England, where she built a career as a singer and actress in theatres and music halls. But why would a woman like this, in a precarious profession, neither young nor wealthy, become a Suffragette? As Riddell discovers, Marion was driven to protest by a culture endemic in the backstage world: sexual assault. But once she became a Suffragette, Marion soon found herself in prison. Her hunger strikes were dealt with by warders forcing a feeding-pipe up her nose. In one stint in gaol she endured this 232 times. Along the way, Marion had graduated from marching and breaking windows to far more violent activity. She was convicted of burning down a racecourse - but Riddell examines evidence that she was involved in many more fires, from country houses to railway stations. Finally, after war came in 1914, this extraordinary woman was denounced as a German spy. Pressured to leave the country, she faded into obscurity. But, asks Riddell, do the likes of Kitty Marion deserve a more prominent place in our history of the campaign to win women the vote? Producer: Phil Tinline THE POETRY OF SCIENCE Gregory Tate explores why so many scientists have been inspired to write poetry and the relationship between their artistic work and their science. The Cornishman Humphry Davy was a pioneer of modern science, whose lectures drew huge crowds. But, inspired by his friendship with the poets Wordsworth and Coleridge, throughout his life he wrote poems - including one about breathing nitrous oxide. Physician Eramus Darwin; mathematician William Rowan Hamilton; astronomer William Herschel; - all wrote poetry. More recently, the 'father' of the atom bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Erwin Schrodinger, and Miroslav Holub interrogated their scientific work in verse. Gregory Tate visits the Royal Institution in London which, as well as a laboratory, houses a large archive of poetry by scientists, and the lab in Trinity College, Dublin, where Physics professor, Iggy McGovern, develops ideas for synchrotron radiation techniques, and poems. McGovern has written a sonnet sequence on mathematician Hamilton. Using scientific investigative techniques Gregory enquires how has poetry offer scientists a fresh perspective on their research, talking to Sharon Ruston, co-editor of Humphry Davy's letters, Daniel Brown, author of 'The Poetry of Victorian Scientists', and the poets Mario Petrucci, who has a PhD in Optoelectronics, and Ruth Padel, a descendant of Erasmus Darwin. We hear their poetry, and verse by Humphry Davy, John Tyndall, John Herschel and Rowan William Hamilton. Producer: Julian May. Fern Riddell discusses suffragette Kitty Marion. Plus Gregory Tate on science and poetry.
01	New Generation Thinkers: Hardy And The Animals	20151108	Alasdair Cochrane, Political Philosopher and New Generation Thinker, visits Whirlow Hall Farm Trust to mix it with sheep and pigs as he follows the twists and turns of Thomas Hardy's interest in animals. He explores with John Miller, who teaches English Literature at Sheffield University, the ways in which Thomas Hardy's animals have their own internal realities and far from being the backdrop to Hardy's Wessex, drive the plots and play important parts in the lives of the human characters from Tess to Jude. And he talks to Elisha Cohn at Cornell University about her explorations of the writer's philosophical development. For Hardy, Darwin's Theory of Evolution had profound ethical implications for the way humans interact with their fellow creatures. Reader: Sam Dale Producer: Jacqueline Smith. Alasdair Cochrane explores the ethical implications of evolution in Thomas Hardy's writing
02	Christopher Harding, John Gallagher	20141116	Documentaries presented by two of Radio 3's New Generation Thinkers. FREUD IN ASIA Christopher Harding explores the influence of Freud on psychotherapy in Japan and India. Freud's travels around Europe and the USA a century ago catapulted psychotherapy to fame. The invitations to Japan and India came too late for him to travel but he found his work debated throughout Asia. In India he was discussed by British colonial officers, who penned amateur tracts about Indian nationalism as mere sexual trauma. Thousands of miles further east in Tokyo, Freud was partnered with a medieval Buddhist saint in the hybrid psychoanalytic technique of Heisaku Kosawa. Mishima read and was influenced by his work. Christopher Harding explores the spread of Freud's influence and its significance. A JOURNEY INTO THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE PHRASE BOOK John Gallagher focuses on the history of a long-overlooked form of literature: the foreign language phrase book. The British often assume that most people we meet abroad will speak English - and many of them do. This was not the case three or four centuries ago, when the Grand Tour became a rite of passage and an increasing number of entrepreneurs forged trade links across Europe and beyond. At that time English was a minority language. Phrase books and travel guides of the time reveal the preoccupations of the day and, in the varied dialogues and phrases they offered, reflect the needs of a variety of travellers, be they tourists keen to visit the art of Italy or the salons of Paris, merchants seeking to make deals in Dutch marketplaces, or spies intent on learning the secrets of continental powers. Producers Fiona McLean and Mohini Patel Image: John Gallagher & Christopher Harding (Credit: Mark Allan). Radio 3 New Generation Thinkers on Freud in Asia and the foreign language phrase book. Image: John Gallagher and Christopher Harding (Credit: Mark Allan).
02	New Generation Thinkers: Who's Afraid Of Anthropomorphism?	20151108	New Generation Thinker Will Abberley reflects on evolutionary psychology via the stories we've told ourselves about animal minds. Anthropomorphism was a word flung at the early primate ethologists like Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey but their work is transforming our attitudes towards the existence of culture in animals other than humans. Katie Slocombe, who studies chimps both in the wild and a captive population at Edinburgh Zoo, discusses the ever-present danger of taking anthropomorphism too far but argues that observation, intuition, and anecdote are intrinsic starting points for much of her scientific work. And the nature writer Sy Morgan, whose latest book is called The Soul of an Octopus, explores how we might use our different senses to approach minds configured quite differently to ours. Reader: Brian Protheroe Producer: Jacqueline Smith. New Generation Thinker Will Abberley reflects on how we imagine the animal mind.
03	The Science Of Baby Laughs	20151115	Tiffany Watt-Smith, historian of human emotions, follows the long history of scientific inquiry into the understanding of laughter in infants and what it tells us about ourselves. Babies can be a tough crowd. You blow raspberries. You pull faces. And then your hat accidentally falls off, and you get rewarded with a joyful peal of raspy chuckles. So imagine if trying to make babies laugh was your job? Meet Dr Caspar Addyman, a psychologist investigating infant laughter at Goldsmith's University. With his electric blue hair and wide grin, he's not your typical scientist. But when he takes his tiny experimental subjects (accompanied by their parents) into a dark booth and tries to make them giggle and guffaw, he is entering into a long scientific tradition seeking to uncover the secrets of that most alluring pleasure - the sound of an infant's laughter. Why do babies laugh? What happens to their brains and bodies when they do? And what can a baby's sense of humour tell us about life in the adult world? These questions are not new. Victorian scientists, usually thought rather stern, were fascinated by laughter of all kinds. Charles Darwin and later James Sully who set up the UK's first psychological laboratory at UCL in the 1890s, believed childhood laughter held the key to the evolution of our species' emotions. Today, scientific interest in laughter is once more on the rise. Neuroscientist Sophie Scott, of UCL, argues laughter is less about finding things amusing than it is about trying to build relationships. If she's right, then our preoccupation with trying to make babies laugh may be more than a simple pleasure. It might be that we're trying to teach them - and they're trying to learn - a crucial human skill: how to join in. Producer: Mark Burman. What makes a baby laugh? From Darwin to state-of-the-art neurology, the search continues.
04	The Life And Life Of Richard Baxter	20151115	Professor Tom Charlton explores the thoughts and life of Richard Baxter. Pamphleteer, preacher and troublemaker at the heart of England's upheaval amidst Civil War and Restoration. Tried for subverting the government in 1685, Baxter's life had been turned upside down by Civil War, Regicide and the topsy turvy Restoration. His own exhaustive but partial account of his life is a key source for anyone trying to understand the religious and political dilemmas facing the generation who challenged the idea of monarchy and argued for many of the freedoms enshrined in the new democracy to come. Baxter was the essence of non-conformity. At odds with Cromwell yet supporter of his son Richard, precisely at the moment when the monarchy was about to be restored. His dreams of a Holy Commonwealth set him at odds with those forces returned to power by the Restoration. Tom Charlton is one of a new generation of scholars seeking to interpret the life and deeds of one of the 17th century's most important figures. The life of theologian Richard Baxter, who was at the heart of the English Civil War.