Free Thinking Folgen

Long Joanne Harris, the multi-million selling author of Chocolat, discusses her new novel, The Gospel of Loki, inspired by the Norse god of trickery, mischief and deception, a shape-shifter whose cultural manifestations range from 13th-century legends to Marvel comics and video games. She’s joined by Radio 3 New Generation Thinker Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough. They debate the enduring power of Norse mythology in conversation with Free Thinking presenter Anne McElvoy recorded in front of an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead and broadcast as part of The Northern Lights season.

Anne McElvoy discusses Mein Kampf coming out of copyright with Ben Barkow of the Wiener Library in London, Heinrich von Berenberg – a publisher based in Berlin and Nicholas Stargardt, author of The German War and a professor of Modern European History at Oxford. Photographer Anna Fox and painter Chantal Joffe discuss an exhibition of Julia Margaret Cameron photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum. New Yorker journalist Larissa MacFarquhar talks to Anne McElvoy about altruism.

Philip Dodd and New Generation Thinker Christopher Harding review the newly translated novel from Nobel prize winner Kenzaburo Oe; historian Naoko Shimazu and curator Mizuki Takahashi discuss the chequered history of the concept of Cool Japan; British Bangladeshi writer Tahmima Anam reviews the new exhibition Artist and Empire at Tate Britain. Artist Hew Locke and curator and art historian Sarah Thomas investigate how Empire creates complexity and difficulty around the question of what is British Art. Artist and Empire: Facing Britain's Imperial Past runs at Tate Britain from 25 November 2015 – 10 April 2016 Death By Water written by Kenzaburo Oe is translated by Deborah Boliver Boehm.Producer: Jacqueline Smith