Free Thinking

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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: Dogs

Dogs

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, Dogs

Labradors Olive and Mabel became a Covid internet hit - can we know what a dog thinks?

Rana Mitter looks at a novel written from a dog's point of view, hears about the latest research into how much dogs know and discusses how we behave as pet owners.

New York best-selling author of "Inside of a Dog" Alexandra Horowitz gives us the dog's eye view of life, alongside sports broadcaster and dog owner Andrew Cotter, poet Dr Jason Allen-Paisant and literary expert Dr Joseph Anderton. The conversation chaired by Rana Mitter (not yet a dog owner), covers the lockdown fame of labradors Olive and Mabel, canine narrators in fiction, and the legal status of dogs. Whilst Jason Allen-Paisant's poetry collection Thinking with Trees questions the assumptions dog owners make about their place in the landscape.

Andrew Cotter has published Olive, Mabel and Me, and Dog Days: A Year with Olive and Mabel.  https://www.oliveandmabelbook.com

Alexandra Horowtiz has published Inside of a Dog, Being a Dog, and Our Dogs Ourselves. https://alexandrahorowitz.net/ 

Dr Joseph Anderton teaches at Birmingham City University and has written Beckett's Creatures: Art of Failure after the Holocaust. His current project is a book called Writing Homelessness: Rough Sleeping in Contemporary British Fiction.

Dr Jason Allen-Paisant lectures at the University of Leeds and, in addition to his poetry collection Thinking with Trees, he is working on a book called Thinking with Spirits: Engaging Art and the Political through Aimé Césaire. 

You might be interested in a previous Free Thinking discussion Should we keep pets hearing from John Bradshaw, Jessica Pierce, Laura Purcell and Philip Howell. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09hzj3y 

Producer: Ruth Thomson

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