Free Thinking

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Free Thinking: Seances and Science

Seances

Seances and Science

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, Seances and Science

A Croydon poltergeist and artists as mediums - Kate Summerscale and Simon Grant.

Flying eggs and tin openers were investigated by 1930s ghost club member Nando Fodor. Kate Summerscale shares her research with Matthew Sweet, plus an exhibition inspired by seances.

How a Croydon housewife baffled a 1930s ghost hunter - the author of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, Kate Summerscale, talks to Matthew Sweet about her discovery of a dossier of interviews about a poltergeist "terrorising" Alma Fielding which made headlines in the 1938 Sunday Pictorial newspaper.  

30 artists interested in seances and spirituality are on show in an exhibition co-curated by Simon Grant and the Drawing Room Gallery in partnership with Hayward Touring. 

Plus we return to a radio experiment in telepathy and a 1920s on air seance with psychologist Richard Wiseman, author of Paranormality amongst many other books. Can you sense what card he is holding?

Kate Summerscale's latest book The Haunting of Alma Fielding is out now and is being read as Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 from October 24th.

The Hayward Gallery Touring exhibition Not Without My Ghosts: The Artist as Medium developed in partnership with Drawing Room, London runs there until Nov 1st, then it is at Millennium Gallery, Museums Sheffield 19th Nov - 7 March 2021, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea 20 March - June 13 2021, Grundy Art Gallery Blackpool.

The 1927 BBC telepathy experiment with Sir Oliver Lodge described by Richard Wiseman was listed in the Radio Times and you can read about it here: https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/1a8b7f91de874debaa392671d7542ea3# 


This episode is part of BBC Radio 3's residency at the Southbank Centre and the BBC Culture in Quarantine initiative https://www.bbc.co.uk/arts

In the Free Thinking archives and available as Arts & Ideas podcasts are episodes  in which Matthew Sweet goes ghost hunting in Portsmouth https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09dynj0
Shahidha Bari discusses ghost stories and Halloween with curator Irving Finkel, writers Jeremy Dyson, Kirsty Logan, Nisha Ramayya and Adam Scovell https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0009t19 
Matthew Sweet looks at the history of magic https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000kvss  
and at Piranesi and disturbing architecture hearing from guests including Susanna Clarke and Lucy Arnold https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000mlgh 
and at mystics and reality hearing about spiritualist Daniel Dunglas Home from New Generation Thinker Edmund Richardson  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07f6r54 

Producer: Alex Mansfield

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