Arts & Ideas Podcast
Leading thinkers discuss the ideas shaping our lives – looking back at the news and making links between past and present. Broadcast as Free Thinking, Fridays at 9pm on BBC Radio 4. Presented by Matthew Sweet, Shahidha Bari and Anne McElvoy.
Episodes to download
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1922:Food fads
Thu 22 Dec 2022
John Gallagher talks to Annie Gray and Elsa Richardson about iguana soup and protein bars
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1922: Reader's Digest
Thu 22 Dec 2022
The "agreggator" of stories - we look at how it launched and revolutionised reading
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Landladies
Fri 16 Dec 2022
Historical accounts and fictional depictions of the women who ran boarding houses.
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Depicting AIDS in Drama
Thu 8 Dec 2022
Russell T Davies, Jill Nalder, Sabina Dosani and Matthew Sweet recorded with an audience
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Trapeze acts and circus celebrities
Wed 7 Dec 2022
Shahidha Bari hears about the aerialists Lillian Leitzel and Pablo Fanque.
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New Thinking: Language, the Victorians and Us
Tue 6 Dec 2022
From Lancashire dialect protest poetry to Hardy's Dorset vowels. John Gallagher hosts.
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How do we look at Art?
Wed 30 Nov 2022
Catherine Fletcher with Vid Simoniti; Cleo Hanaway-Oakley; Lamin Fofana and Sally Booth
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Soil, Chickens and City Farms
Tue 29 Nov 2022
Ahead of world soil day, Anne McElvoy looks at changes to both rural and urban farming.
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Star Trek
Fri 25 Nov 2022
Matthew Sweet with George Takei, Naomi Alderman, Una McCormack and José-Antonio Orosco
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Morgan - A Suitable Case for Treatment
Thu 24 Nov 2022
Stephen Frears, Matthew Reisz & Lucy Bolton join Matthew Sweet to look at this 1966 film.
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Arabian queens, Bangladeshi mothers and women's tales
Wed 23 Nov 2022
From the Arabian nights to refugee stories - female voices fictional and real
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New Thinking: Game of Thrones and history
Wed 23 Nov 2022
Sarah Peverley talks to Carolyne Larrington and Danielle Park about tv and history
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New Thinking: Game of Thrones and history
Wed 23 Nov 2022
Sarah Peverley talks to Carolyne Larrington and Danielle Park about tv depicting history
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St Teresa/Vivekananda/Nietzsche
Tue 22 Nov 2022
Rana Mitter discusses three major theorists of religion and self-development
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Going Underground
Tue 22 Nov 2022
Shahidha Bari and guests discuss caves: from Nottingham to Borneo, in art and stories.
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Experimental writing
Tue 22 Nov 2022
Shahidha Bari, Matthew Herbert, the Goldsmith Prize winners and poet Stephen Sexton
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New Thinking: Breakthroughs at Being Human 2022
Tue 22 Nov 2022
Benjamin Franklin in the Lakes, the former slave who invented light bulbs, ganzflicker
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New Thinking: Net Zero Design
Fri 18 Nov 2022
How can local communities play a role in cutting carbon emissions?
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Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu
Fri 18 Nov 2022
Jane Smiley, Christopher Prendergast, Jayne Haynes, Marie Darrieussecq with Matthew Sweet
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George Bernard Shaw
Wed 16 Nov 2022
Anne McElvoy and guests look at the arguments explored in the plays of Shaw (1856-1950)
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The Imperial War Museum Remembrance Discussion 2022
Tue 8 Nov 2022
How video games interpret stories about war and conflict and help to train troops.
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John Knox
Thu 3 Nov 2022
A life of great drama and religious controversy explored by Matthew Sweet and guests.
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Goethe, Schiller and the first Romantics
Wed 2 Nov 2022
Andrea Wulf, author of a new group biography set in 1790s Jena joins Anne McElvoy
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Alexander the Great
Tue 1 Nov 2022
Military leader, city founder, underwater explorer?! Rana Mitter on images of Alexander
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New Thinking: Beowulf
Fri 28 Oct 2022
Short: How studying grammar and computer games can explain Old English poetry
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Orhan Pamuk and the Ottoman Empire
Wed 26 Oct 2022
The Nobel Prize winning novelist is joined by academics Michael Talbot and Keya Anjaria
