Free Thinking Folgen

As Halloween fast approaches, Matthew Sweet is joined round the Free Thinking cauldron by guests including Marina Warner and Suzannah Lipscomb to consider the season of the witch. Film critic Larushka Ivan-zadeh and Claire Nally from Northumbria University review new blockbuster The Last Witch Hunter starring Vin Diesel, and consider the depictions of witches on film ahead of a screening of Vincent Price's 1968 horror classic Witchfinder General. Catherine Spooner of Lancaster University and historian Suzzanah Lipscomb offer an historical guide to the famous witch trials from Pendle to Salem. And author Marina Warner discusses her father's relationship with the ghost writer M.R. James.

The new James Bond film Spectre is reviewed by New Generation Thinker Sam Goodman. The Egyptian feminist writer Nawal El Saadawi talks to Rana Mitter about facing death threats and surviving prison - and her novels which include Memoirs of a Woman Doctor and God Dies by the Nile. Lord Browne, former CEO of BP, makes the case for business to engage with society in a discussion with Mark Littlewood from the Institute of Economic Affairs. Dr Elisabeth Kendall has been studying the way so called Islamic State use classical Arabic poetry on social media. Elisabeth Kendall is the author of Twenty-First Century Jihad Connect: How Companies Succeed by Engaging Radically with Society by John Browne with Robin Nuttall and Tommy Standlen, is out now. Sam Goodman is the author of British Spy Fiction and the End of Empire Spectre certificate 12A is out in cinemas nationwide from Monday. Nawal El Sadaawi is the author of The Hidden Face of Eve, Woman at Point Zero, The hidden face of Eve, God Dies By The Nile.

Marilynne Robinson, Thomas Harding, Imtiaz Dharker discuss ideas of home with Philip Dodd. Are we becoming increasingly rootless, or simply finding new ways to put down roots. Pulitzer Prize winning author Marilynne Robinson is the author of a novel called Home and finds her own roots in Iowa and in her Calvinist faith. In her new collection of essays The Givenness of Things, she explores the ideas that make up the religious and philosophical homeland of Europe and America – Calvinism, Humanism, the Reformation, the self. Thomas Harding’s family originate in Germany. In his new book The House by the Lake he relates the changing ownership and fortunes of his family’s summer house in eastern Berlin and with it the history of Germany from the thirties up to the present. It's his follow up to his best-selling book Hanns and Rudolph.Poet and artist Imtiaz Dharker describes herself as a "Pakistani Calvinist Scottish Muslim" and her life has taken her from Lahore, to Glasgow, to Bombay, to Wales and finally to London – "I think displacement is often a good and useful thing for a writer", she says. And as a new exhibition dedicated to The World of Charles and Ray Eames opens, Edwin Heathcote takes Philip on an imaginative tour of their iconic house, Case Study House #8, which they designed to "express man's life in the modern world."The World of Charles and Ray Eames runs at the Barbican in London from 21st October to 14th February. Marilynne Robinson's Essay collection The Givenness of Things is out now. Thomas Harding's book is called The House by the Lake Imtiaz Dharker's most recent poetry collection is called Over The Moon.