Free Thinking

Original version

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

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

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: Humours and the body

Humours and the body

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, Humours and the body

From mitochondria and 16th-century cancer treatments to breath, blood and Bach cantatas.

Shower songs in Lutheran Germany were used to prepare congregants for Eucharist to cleanse their bodies. Naomi Paxton and guests move from medical beliefs to the music of Bach.

Bach's view of the body and how that comes through in his cantatas is being studied by violinist and contributor to Radio 3's Early Music Show, Mark Seow.  He joins presenter Naomi Paxton and historians of medicine Alanna Skuse and Michelle Pfeffer, alongside evolutionary biochemist Nick Lane. Together they look at music, metaphors and the idea that vital bodily fluids (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile) and links with five elements (earth, water, fire, air, and space) could regulate our health. 

Producer: Luke Mulhall 

Alanna Skuse is an Associate Professor at the University of Reading. She has researched representations of self-wounding in plays, ballads, moral writings and medical texts from 1580-1740. Her first book is called Constructions of Cancer in Early Modern England: Ravenous Natures and her second Surgery and Selfhood in Early Modern England. 

Michelle Pfeffer is an early modern historian at Oxford with research interests in the history of science, religion, and scholarship in Europe.
Nick Lane is Professor of Evolutionary Biochemistry at University College London. 

Mark Seow is a violinist and academic who teaches at the University of Cambridge  https://markseow.co.uk/about 

Radio 3's Early Music Show is broadcast each Sunday afternoon at 2pm and available on BBC Sounds.

You can hear former Radio 3 controller Nicholas Kenyon exploring The Early Music Revolution in the Sunday Feature broadcasting on October 22nd.

Radio 3's weekly selection of Words and Music has a recent episode called Blow winds, blow.

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.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Free Thinking

Humours and the body

Genres

Brand

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3