The Thread is a unique concept in live talk radio, bringing together accomplished thinkers from academia, the arts and the professions to consider crucial questions both pressing and obscure. From the playful to the political, from theory to theology, The Thread is a free space for the intellect, bringing challenging conversation out into the public domain.

The Thread has previously hosted speakers like former London mayor Ken Livingstone, television presenter and journalist Richard Johnson and media and technology scholar Chris Brauer.

On 1 June 2010 it launches its fourth season on Resonance 104.4fm, London’s community arts station, going deeper into the big questions with the theme of ‘Inside’. Guests for this season include novelist Jake Arnott, Guardian writer Bidisha, writer and mythographer Marina Warner, art historian Ysanne Holt and historian of medicine Ruth Richardson.

Resonance 104.4fm broadcasts from central London, with a simultaneous webcast from www.resonancefm.com

The Thread is hosted, created and produced by graduate students from the London Consortium, a unique interdisciplinary collaboration between Birkbeck College, Tate, the ICA, the Architectural Association and the Science Museum.

thethreadradio.org
resonancefm.com
www.londonconsortium.com

Email: radiothread@gmail.com

The Thread
Season four schedule (subject to change)

For the Thread team, this is the first time we have attempted to produce a set of thematic conversations. The connective tissue we devised is this idea of inside. Clearly, this term easily suggests the oppositional, but is was not the contrast to the outside that initially excited us. Rather, it is the suggestion of being, and being positioned on the inside that is the fundamental fascination. We grasped that we wanted to get inside these questions, systems of knowledge, continents, rubrics, intimacies and problems because that is where a deeper engagement with our common culture can begin. We would like you to be in the room with us throughout this series. Please join us.

1 June 2010, 18.30 – 19.30 BST – Inside Code. Encoding and decoding appear in contemporary context as a fundamental feature of technology, in our use of language and in our social interactions, from html to language coding and literary symbolism. How, and through what means, do people encode and decode?

8 June 2010, 18.30 – 19.30 BST – Inside Africa. From Live 8 to a glut of Hollywood films like Blood Diamond, images of Africa in the west are largely limited to war, poverty, crime, disease and disaster. Here we discuss the view from inside Africa, emphasising the recognition of an authentically African voice that might speak for itself.

15 June 2010 18.30 – 19.30 BST – Inside Job. Crime film and fiction both evince a consistent fascination with the inside job, criminal activity carried out with insider help or perpetuated by someone on the inside. This show considers the social causes and philosophical implications of performing crime from a privileged position.

22 June 2010 18.30 – 19.30 BST – Inside the Body. Historically the only way to look inside the human body during an autopsy. Since the late 70s, technologies such as MRI (Magenetic Resonance Imaging) allow for non-invasive imaging and even researching the workings of the living brain. How do changing ways of viewing our anatomies affect scientific research and understandings of humanity?

6 July 2010 18.30 – 19.30 BST – Outside the City. How do metropolitan centres construct the rural, and what effects does this have on the people living in non-metropolitan regions? How does the rural speak back? The history of art provides a way of thinking through these questions, from tourism to changing attitudes towards landscape and the pastoral.

13 July 2010 18.30 – 19.30 BST – Inside the Bedroom. How have both male and female sexualities and identities have been impacted by the increasing ‘pornification’ of mass culture? How has this violent entry of a specific type of sexuality into public discourse impacted on real sex?

20 July 18.30 – 19.30 BST – Borders. Popular discourse is filled with references to the borders that we live in or around: identity borders, national borders, contact zones and scientific frontiers. How do borders fundamentally structure the world, and are they the only way in which we can know how to locate ourselves?

27 July 18.30 – 19.30 BST – Inside Fear. Fear is a fundamental feature of the contemporary landscape. We live in terror of things getting inside: the enemy within, terrorists within our borders, even contagions and pathogens. How does the interiority of fear affect our relations with the world?