Arts & Ideas26 Jan 2017

Free Thinking: Yaa Gyasi. Daniel Levitin. Peter Bazalgette, James Bartholomew on Clarity, Civility and Strong States.

Peter Bazalgette, former Arts Council England chair and TV executive, discusses why we need to become more empathetic. Neuroscientist Daniel Levitin has given the Proms Lecture exploring the mind and music. He talks about lies and statistics and how we can make better decisions. James Bartholomew believes the Welfare State may be holding us back. Together they explore with Philip Dodd, how to build a better stronger Civil State. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi is a novel ranging across 250 years and two branches and seven generations of a Ghanaian family shadowed by the experiences of slavery and slaving. Gyasi follows two different branches of one Fante family obsessed by notions of home whilst swept along by different but equally challenging histories on either side of the Atlantic. She talks to Philip Dodd about the importance of home for Africans and African-Americans and the still low representation of writers from modern Africa and the need for more.

Peter Bazalgette has written The Empathy Instinct: A Blueprint for a Civil Society

Daniel Levitin has written The Organized Mind and his new book is called a Field Guide to Lies and Statistics - a Neuroscientist on How to Make Sense of a Complex World.

James Bartholomew, follows up his The Welfare State We're In, with The Welfare of Nations

Yaa Gyasi's novel is called Homegoing.

Producer: Jacqueline Smith.

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