Festival oF ideas 25–27 october 2013 THIS YEAR’s FESTIVAL tHeMe IS WHo’s iN coNtrol? BBC Radio 3 brings together leading thinkers for a weekend of provocative debate, new ideas, music and performance at Sage Gateshead. tickets Free bbc.co.uk/freethinking #FreeThinking Festival of ideas Friday 25 – Sunday 27 October 2013 Samira Ahmed, 2012 Free Thinking BBC Radio 3’s festival of ideas returns to Sage Gateshead for a weekend of provocative debate, new ideas, music and performance. This year’s festival theme is “Who’s In Control?” Do workers or their bosses suffer most stress? Has Twitter given voters power over politicians? Who’s in control of our appetites and body image; of our moods and minds; of disease; of public taste; when an orchestra performs? With Lionel Shriver, Patrick Ness, Dame Ian McMillan, 2012 Free Thinking Sally Davies, Sugata Mitra, Sir Michael Marmot, Kathryn Tickell, Chris Mullin, Kevin Whately. Tickets for all events are FREE. Introducing the To book call Sage Gateshead on BBC Radio 3 presenters Anne McElvoy Rana Mitter Philip Dodd Matthew Sweet 0191 443 4661 or visit www.sagegateshead.com/freethinking Free Thinking is hosted by presenters from Radio 3’s Standby tickets will be available on the day. Night Waves Anne McElvoy, Rana Mitter, Matthew Sweet, Free Thinking is produced and broadcast by Philip Dodd and Samira Ahmed, BBC Radio 3 (see back of brochure for alongside The Verb with Ian transmission details) McMillan, In Tune with Sean Samira Ahmed Ian McMillan Tom Service Sean Rafferty Rafferty,Music Matters with Tom Contribute on Twitter at #FreeThinking Service, The Choir with Greg Beardsell, Private Passions with Michael Berkeley and Words and Music. Friday FRIDA New y the barbouR room In Tune 4.15pm–6.30pm 25 OCTOBER Generation saturday Northern Rock Foundation Hall LIVE BROADCAST 11.40am Eleanor Rosamund Sean Rafferty hosts a live broadcast of Radio 3’s drive- Thinkers time programme In Tune, with special performances and Barraclough The Power Of The Vikings. interviews with guests who are appearing over the Free Thinking Festival weekend, including novelist 1.20pm Lionel Shriver. Jazz trio Eyes Shut Tight play their own Sarah Peverley Sean Rafferty elegant compositions. The Real Game Of Thrones – Power In 15th Century England 3.15pm Sir Michael Marmot – Christopher Harding The Free Thinking Lecture Therapy vs Prayer Self Control – The Key To A Long Life? 3.50pm “speed dating” 7.15pm–8.30pm Drop into The Squires Lounge Hall Two next to the Sage café 5.05pm Sir Michael Marmot is an internationally Fern Riddell renowned medical researcher, who’s worked Respectability And Female Sexuality for the World Health Organisation, the NHS In Victorian England and the British Government, and is one of the global pioneers of research into health 6.45pm inequalities – how stress, status and diet can Join the New Generation Thinkers, the Jules Evans winners of the talent scheme run by affect our wellbeing. His ground-breaking What Does It Mean To Feel Ecstatic? Whitehall Studies followed the health and stress BBC Radio 3 and the Arts & Humanities 7.15pm levels of British civil servants over 10 years and Research Council to find the brightest Sarah Dillon Professor Marmot coined the term “status academic minds with the potential to Science Fiction And Birth Control syndrome” to describe his discovery that being turn their ideas into broadcasts. The New lower down the pecking order leads to a shorter life span. Generation Thinkers will be delivering essays Sunday on a range of topics (see list, right), and taking 12.10pm For the opening lecture of the 2013 Free Thinking John Gallagher Festival, Sir Michael Marmot explores the traits part in many events during the weekend Language Wars In Early that determine a healthy life and argues that we including “Speed Dating” with a thinker, when Modern England need to rethink the relationship between health, wealth and self-control. Sir Michael Marmot you can hear their ideas on a one-to-one 12.40pm basis and vote for the best idea. Rebecca Steinfeld Cutting Tradition – Debating Thomas Zehetmair conductor Circumcision Radio 3 Live in Concert from Sage Gateshead Werner Güra tenor 1.10pm “speed dating” Peter Francomb horn Drop into The Squires Lounge 7.30pm–9.15pm Royal Northern Sinfonia LIVE BROADCAST next to the Sage café Hall One Tickets £19-£33 (Concessions available) 3.20pm Tickets available from Alice Hall Mozart Divertimento in B flat www.sagegateshead.com Is Social Media Changing Memory ‘Salzburg Symphony No. 2’ 0191 443 4661 And Autobiographical Fiction? Britten Serenade for tenor, horn and strings 4.50pm Mozart Symphony No.40 in G minor Gregory Tate What Jane Austen Teaches us About Thought Versus Emotion 5 SAT SAT u saturday u RDA Who’s Got Hold Of Children’s Imaginations? New Generation Thinker: RDA 10.15am–11.15am Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough y y 26 OCTOBER Northern Rock Foundation Hall 11.40am–12.05pm 26 OCTOBER The Barbour Room Presented by Matthew Sweet How do children cope in an unstable world? What stimulates their Boneless, Bloodaxe and Hairy Breeches: imaginations and development? What Did The Vikings Ever Do For us? In his Chaos Walking trilogy, prize-winning writer Patrick Ness created It was in North east england that the curtain opened a town where privacy and secrets were impossible. His new novel, on the Viking Age. Just a few miles up the road from More Than This, depicts a teenager whose memories seem more Gateshead in 793 AD, Scandinavian raiders fell upon Lindisfarne monastery. As the monk Alcuin wrote, real than the world around him. Charles Fernyhough is a Professor of Patrick Ness Psychology at Durham University and the author of Pieces of Light, a “Never before has such terror appeared in Britain as non-fiction book about autobiographical memory, andA Box of Birds, we have now suffered from a pagan race. Behold, a literary thriller dissecting brains and the people who work with them. the church of St Cuthbert, splattered with the blood of the priests.” Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough, of In association with the Juice Festival, New Writing North’s Cuckoo Durham University, uses this moment to examine Young Writers Programme, Seven Stories the National Centre for how the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings struggled for Children’s Books and BBC’s School Report. control of england, right up to the earth-shattering Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough Under 16s need to be accompanied by someone over 18 events of 1066. Charles Fernyhough Are We At A Tipping Point? Controlling Infection And What’s eating You? Combatting Disease. 10.30am–11.30am 12.15pm–1.15pm Hall Two Hall Two Presented by Anne McElvoy Presented by Samira Ahmed We talk about making medical advances but can Lionel Shriver won the Orange we be sure that we can really beat diseases which Prize with her novel about a used to be killers? Professor Dame Sally Davies teenage murderer We Need is the Chief Scientific Advisor to the Department To Talk About kevin, which of Health and represents the Uk as a member became a film starring Tilda of the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Swinton. So Much For That Advisory Committee on Health Research. She is depicted the US health system the first woman to hold the post of Chief Medical and the effects of illness on Officer for england. relationships. Her new novel Big Brother looks at family Part of Insights, Newcastle University’s and food and she discusses Public Lecture Programme controlling our appetites In association with: and our body image with the author and President of the Uk College of Psychoanalysts, Lionel Shriver Darian Leader, whose clinical studies involve researching In association with: the place of food and diet in contemporary culture. Dame Sally Davies 6 FRee tickets www.sagegateshead.com/freethinking 0191 443 4661 7 SAT SAT Music Matters Controlling Moods And Minds: u u RDA 12.00pm–1.00pm Depression And Smart Drugs. RDA (Live recording begins 12.15pm) 2.00pm–3.00pm Northern Rock Foundation Hall y Northern Rock Foundation Hall y 26 OCTOBER 26 OCTOBER LIVE BROADCAST Presented by Rana Mitter Presented by Tom Service What does it mean to be depressed? Are we over-prescribing Tom Service hosts Radio 3’s drugs? The Mental Health Foundation says 1 in 4 people in the flagship classical music Uk will experience some kind of mental health problem in the magazine programme as it course of a year. Pyschoanalyst Darian Leader believes we are broadcasts live from Sage living in what he calls “a bipolar age”. Professor Barbara Sahakian Gateshead. He asks an invited questions the ethics of smart drugs; they help treat brain injury panel: who’s really in charge and illness but should they be available to the healthy? Guardian of today’s music world? Who columnist and author Clare Allan drew on her experiences of chooses what gets played and being a psychiatric patient in her novel Poppy Shakespeare. Free by whom? Who controls the Thinking brings them together to discuss the neuroscience of depression, how it affects decision-making and the morality of policy of our concert halls and Darian Leader opera houses? Who decides medical treatments. on the musical interpretation? Tom Service New Generation Thinker: Sarah Peverley Professor Barbara Sahakian Clare Allan 1.20pm–1.45pm The Barbour Room Teaching The Teachers - The Real Game Of Thrones – Power In 15th Century England The Future Of education In the 15th century people believed that rulers were 2.15pm–3.15pm appointed by God and that the king had absolute Hall Two supremacy. So what happened when medieval kings were unfit to rule or when the throne was contested? Presented by Philip Dodd and demonstrated that they can teach themselves.