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
Tue 16 Aug 2022
John Gallagher explores eating fads in the 1920s with Annie Gray and Elsa Richardson
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Not Quite Jean Muir
Fri 12 Aug 2022
How does sewing a dress add to Jade Halbert's understanding of disappearing skills?
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Tudor Virtual Reality
Thu 11 Aug 2022
The link between VR dinosaurs and a Tudor wall painting of the Judgment of Solomon
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Coming Out Crip and Acts of Care
Wed 10 Aug 2022
Ella Parry-Davies draws on experiences of migrant domestic workers in Lebanon and the UK
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Digging Deep
Tue 9 Aug 2022
Susan Greaney asks whether Neolithic attitudes to the earth could shape our thinking
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Berlin, Detroit, Race and Techno Music
Tue 9 Aug 2022
Tom Smith's essay on early pioneers of Berlin's music scene and arguments about whiteness
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Yolande Mukagasana - women writers to put back on the bookshelf
Fri 5 Aug 2022
Zoe Norridge describes translating the testimony of a Rwandan survivor of the civil war.
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Margaret Oliphant - women writers to put back on the bookshelf
Wed 3 Aug 2022
The Scottish writers whose comic heroine Miss Marjoribanks bucks 19th century conventions
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Lady Mary Wroth - women writer to put back on the bookshelf
Tue 2 Aug 2022
The English Renaissance poet whose reputation at court was ruined by her writing
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1922: Wimbledon
Tue 2 Aug 2022
Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough finds out about the All England Club's move to a new home.
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Charlotte Smith - women writers to put back on the bookshelf
Mon 1 Aug 2022
The Romantic poet who inspired Wordsworth is profiled by Sophie Coulombeau
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1922: Reader's Digest
Mon 1 Aug 2022
The "agreggator" of trending stories of its day - how a magazine revolutionised reading.
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Touki Bouki
Tue 26 Jul 2022
The Journey of the Hyena mixes West African oral tradition with New Wave and Soviet style
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Filming Sunday Bloody Sunday
Mon 25 Jul 2022
Glenda Jackson talks to Matthew Sweet about John Schlesinger's 1971 love triangle drama
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New Thinking: Archiving the Commonwealth Games and Commonwealth ties
Mon 25 Jul 2022
What Birmingham can learn from Scotland + commonwealth commercial connections in the past
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Futurism
Fri 22 Jul 2022
Matthew Sweet and guests look at the manifesto celebrating youth, technology and violence
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Modernism around the world
Thu 21 Jul 2022
Rana Mitter looks at Bauhaus in Delhi, Japanese and South African novels and Mexican art
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New Thinking: Citizen researchers and the history of record keeping
Thu 21 Jul 2022
Dr William Butler and Jenny Bunn from the National Archives discuss record keeping.
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The Daleks
Thu 14 Jul 2022
Matthew Sweet's guests include the voice of the Daleks, and the Doctor's granddaughter
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Satyajit Ray's films
Thu 14 Jul 2022
Tariq Ali, Sarah Jilani, Sangeeta Datta, Chandak Sengoopta discuss Ray with Rana Mitter
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France, music hall and history
Wed 13 Jul 2022
An outdoor history of France and a look inside popular French theatre's view on Britain
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Women warriors and power brokers
Wed 13 Jul 2022
Shobana Jeyasingh, Cat Jarman and Janina Ramirez with Shahidha Bari
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The Black Fantastic
Thu 7 Jul 2022
How the speculative and the mythical have shaped and continue to shape Black art.
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Writing about money
Wed 6 Jul 2022
Orwell Prize finalist Kojo Koram plus poetry interested in economics
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New Thinking: India in the archives
Wed 6 Jul 2022
Dr Naomi Paxton explores archives for stories of Indian culture and history.
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Vampires and the Penny Dreadful
Thu 30 Jun 2022
Matthew Sweet, Joan Passey, Roger Luckhurst and Sam George look at Varney the Vampire
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David Chalmers & Iain McGilchrist
Wed 29 Jun 2022
Two leading thinkers investigating the nature of mind and its place in the world
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Belief, Habit & Religion
Tue 28 Jun 2022
Rana Mitter discusses religion, evolution, neuroscience and history
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Late works
Thu 23 Jun 2022
Geoff Dyer and Dame Sheila Hancock discuss endings and lateness with Matthew Sweet.
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ETA Hoffmann
Wed 22 Jun 2022
Anne McElvoy and guests look at the life of the German Romantic who died 25 June 1822.
