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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

Free Thinking

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

BBC Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

The ideas shaping our lives today - with artists and thinkers in debates and interviews.

The ideas shaping our lives today - with leading artists and thinkers in extended interview and debate.

Free Thinking: 2014 Festival: The Free Thinking Essay

Free Thinking: 2014 Festival: The Free Thinking Essay: Part 1: The Human Copying Machine

The Human Copying Machine

Part 1 Part 1: The Human Copying Machine

2014 Festival

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, 2014 Festival, The Free Thinking Essay, The Human Copying Machine

Tiffany Watt-Smith explores the interest of Victorian scientists in our urge to imitate.

Tiffany Watt-Smith explores the interest of Victorian scientists in our urge to imitate. She explains why scientists turned to theatre to understand this strange phenomenon.

Do you yawn when someone else does? Or inadvertently mimic other people's accents? 
Today's neuroscientists say 'mirror neurons' are to blame. But long before MRI scanners, Victorian psychologists also believed we were hard-wired to imitate. Tiffany Watt-Smith from Queen Mary, University of London unearths the 19th-century fascination with the 'Human Copying Machine', and discovers why men of science turned to the world of Victorian theatre to understand this strange phenomenon.

Recorded in front of an audience at BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival of Ideas at Sage, Gateshead. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the AHRC to find the brightest academic minds with the potential to turn their ideas into broadcasts. 

Producer: Zahid Warley.

Free Thinking: 2014 Festival

The Free Thinking Essay

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Events from the 2014 Free Thinking festival. The theme is 'the limits of knowledge'

Series of events from the 2014 Free Thinking festival. The theme is 'the limits of knowledge'

Radio 3 New Generation Thinkers give talks in front of an audience at Free Thinking 2014

Series in which Radio 3 New Generation Thinkers give talks in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead for the 2014 Free Thinking festival of ideas. The theme is 'the limits of knowledge'

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Free Thinking

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Part 1: The Human Copying Machine

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