Free Thinking Podcast
Leading thinkers discuss the ideas shaping our lives - looking back at the news and making links between past and present. Fridays at 9pm on BBC Radio 4. Presented by Matthew Sweet, Shahidha Bari and Anne McElvoy.
Episodes to download
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Free Thinking - Australian writer Peter Carey
Wed 22 Oct 2014
How history can help to shape policy making? Rana Mitter is joined by The History MP...
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Free Thinking - Marcel Proust
Tue 21 Oct 2014
This Free Thinking is devoted to one of the landmarks of European literature -- Marcel...
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Free Thinking - William Morris
Thu 16 Oct 2014
Jeremy Deller and Fiona McCarthy have each curated an exhibition looking at the art of...
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Free Thinking - The notion of Jewish identity
Wed 15 Oct 2014
Rana Mitter talks to three people who have been exploring their own relationship with...
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Free Thinking - Man Booker Prize
Tue 14 Oct 2014
Sherlock Holmes is investigated by Mark Gatiss and Matthew Sweet as the Museum of an...
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Free Thinking - Henry IV
Thu 9 Oct 2014
Anne McElvoy talks to Phyllida Lloyd about playing Shakespeare in a female prison in...
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Free Thinking - Tim Minchin, David Cronenberg
Wed 8 Oct 2014
Canadian filmmaker and originator of the body horror genre, David Cronenberg covers as...
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Free Thinking Festival - Colm Toibin
Tue 7 Oct 2014
Colm Toibin is one of Ireland's finest writers, whose books explore issues such as and...
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Free Thinking - Matthew Barzun
Thu 2 Oct 2014
At a time when the special relationship between the UK and the US is under particular...
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Free Thinking - Ai Weiwei at Blenheim
Wed 1 Oct 2014
Rana Mitter has a first-night review of Electra with Kristin Scott Thomas from Edith...
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Free Thinking - Neel Mukherjee
Tue 30 Sep 2014
Matthew Sweet examines our contradictory attitudes to China and it's culture with the...
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Free Thinking - Thomas Ostermeier
Thu 25 Sep 2014
As the Schaubühne Berlin's production of Henrik Ibsen's 'An Enemy of the People' at...
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Free Thinking - Francis Fukuyama
Wed 24 Sep 2014
Fukuyama and Howard Jacobson are interviewed by Philip Dodd. In 1989, Francis Fukuyama...
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Free Thinking - Language
Tue 23 Sep 2014
Steven Pinker's research at Harvard is into language and cognition. His new book The...
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Free Thinking - Figuring Out Abstract Art
Thu 18 Sep 2014
Scientist Susan Greenfield, painter Fiona Rae, poet Paul Farley and artist and TV Matt...
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Free Thinking - Martin Amis
Wed 17 Sep 2014
Martin Amis talks to Philip Dodd about his reputation for courting controversy and his...
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Free Thinking - Lenny Henry
Tue 16 Sep 2014
Rudy's Rare Records stars Lenny Henry as the son who works alongside his father in a...
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Free Thinking - Culloden
Mon 15 Sep 2014
Peter Watkins' film Culloden is 50, and in front of an audience at the Edinburgh Sweet...
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Free Thinking 2013 - Wombs on Legs?
Fri 29 Aug 2014
From HG Wells and Margaret Atwood to Battlestar Galactica, science fiction texts and a...
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Free Thinking 2013 - Ecstatic
Thu 28 Aug 2014
The audience at a rock concert adoring the star; a Pentecostalist congregation God; an...
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Free Thinking 2013 - Language Wars
Wed 27 Aug 2014
Defenders of traditional English language and grammar often present themselves as but...
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Free Thinking 2013 - Cutting Tradition
Tue 26 Aug 2014
What do recent debates among medical ethicists and lawyers over male infant reveal the...
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Free Thinking 2013 - False Conception
Tue 26 Aug 2014
Annie Besant promoted contraceptive advice to the Victorian working classes.
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Free Thinking 2013 - What's Eating You?
Sat 23 Aug 2014
What is the place of food and body image in contemporary culture? Lionel Shriver is of...
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Free Thinking 2013 - Sugata Mitra
Thu 21 Aug 2014
Professor Sugata Mitra's pioneering experiments gave children in India access to to...
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Free Thinking 2013 - Why Are Maps Still So Powerful?
Tue 19 Aug 2014
Can a map reveal too much? How do they direct our thinking? From ancient atlases to to...
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Free Thinking - Decision Making in the Money Markets
Thu 17 Jul 2014
Does emotion or reason dictate the financial markets? Anne McElvoy is joined by Global...
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Free Thinking - Politics and writing in Kenya
Wed 16 Jul 2014
Billy Kahora, one of the writers nominated for this year's Caine Prize for African to...
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Free Thinking - Prisons & Anthropomorphism
Tue 15 Jul 2014
Matthew Sweet interviews Karen Joy Fowler author of a novel which looks at the of a a...
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Free Thinking - Virginia Woolf & Richard Flanagan
Thu 10 Jul 2014
With Anne McElvoy. Curator Frances Spalding and Dr Alexandra Harris discuss what of of...
Discussions and talks from the Free Thinking Festival 2019
Angry politics, what we can’t say, being diplomatic, weeping, emotion in music, film & TV
Click to listen to discussions, talks and music as the Free Thinking Festival 2019 Gets Emotional
Angry politics, what we can’t say, being diplomatic, weeping, emotion in music, film & TV
CLICK to LISTEN & SEE programmes from the Free Thinking Festival 2018: The One & the Many
We examine the fast-changing relationship between the individual & the crowd
CLICK to LISTEN & SEE all programmes, images, clips & features from 2017's festival
Free Thinking Festival 2017: The Speed of Life
