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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Gloves
Wed 5 Jan 2022
From python skin to digital worlds, PPE to vegan materials: how gloves are evolving.
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Jean-Paul Belmondo and the French New Wave
Tue 4 Jan 2022
The French film star who burst onto the scene in 1960 in Godard's Breathless
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Fungi: An Alien Encounter
Thu 16 Dec 2021
Are fungi out to get us or here to help? A look at mushrooms in art, food and psychology.
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Colm Toibin; Dullness as a virtue
Wed 15 Dec 2021
Is it a good thing to stand out? Anne McElvoy and guests explore the virtue of being dull
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Early Buddhism; Sheila Rowbotham
Tue 14 Dec 2021
Two Buddhist scholars and the socialist feminist historian join Rana Mitter
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Witchcraft and Margaret Murray
Thu 9 Dec 2021
Matthew Sweet and guests look at The Witch Cult in Western Europe (1921) and witches now
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The TV Debate
Wed 8 Dec 2021
Gore Vidal v William F Buckley Jr, Germaine Greer v Norman Mailer: Have debates changed?
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New Thinking: Research in Film Award Winners 2021
Wed 8 Dec 2021
Prize winning films about migration, autism, Colombians, farming and children born of war
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Ground-breaking history books
Tue 7 Dec 2021
Rana Mitter talks to historians making waves with the books they have published.
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The Day of the Triffids
Thu 2 Dec 2021
The end of the world as we know it. Matthew Sweet and guests re-read John Wyndham's novel
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Caribbean art
Wed 1 Dec 2021
As a Tate Britain show opens, Shahidha Bari looks at Caribbean post war writing and art
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Dürer, Rhinos and Whales
Tue 30 Nov 2021
Writer Philip Hoare, curator Robert Wenley, historian Helen Cowie talk celebrity animals.
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Christopher Logue's War Music
Wed 24 Nov 2021
Shahidha Bari and guests read this version of Homer's Illiad and look at Logue's language
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Romanian history and literature
Tue 23 Nov 2021
Novelists Mircea Cărtărescu, Georgina Harding & Philippe Sands join Anne McElvoy
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New Thinking: Memorials and Commemoration
Fri 19 Nov 2021
From World War One soldiers in Belfast to the LGBTQ+ monument in Amsterdam.
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Faking It and Trompe-l'oeil
Fri 19 Nov 2021
From fake flowers carved by Grinling Gibbons to modern craft and internet images.
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Marvin Gaye's What's Going On
Wed 17 Nov 2021
Ahead of a performance at the London Jazz Festival, what history underpins the album?
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Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex
Tue 16 Nov 2021
One of the key French Existentialists of the 1950s, how does de Beauvoir read today?
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New Thinking: Being Human 2021
Thu 11 Nov 2021
Research into covid comics, codes in Dickens, projecting books onto hospital ceilings.
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Green Thinking: Climate Justice
Wed 10 Nov 2021
What we learn from involving communities experiencing the sharp end of climate change.
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Green Thinking: Climate and Refugees
Wed 10 Nov 2021
Is climate change really causing people to flee their homes?
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The Imperial War Museum Remembrance Discussion 2021
Tue 9 Nov 2021
How do we define a war? Anne McElvoy and guests look at how language changes attitudes.
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Green Thinking: Future of Home
Mon 8 Nov 2021
Around 60% of UK waste comes from the construction sector. How can we tackle this?
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God's Body
Fri 5 Nov 2021
Matthew Sweet is joined by Francesca Stavrakopoulou, Mark Vernon and Hetta Howes
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Green Thinking: Activism and Young People
Thu 4 Nov 2021
Glasgow and Birmingham projects to help young people express their experiences.
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Caesar, Hogarth and images of power
Wed 3 Nov 2021
Rana Mitter talks to Professor Mary Beard, artist Ali Cherri and looks at Hogarth's art.
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Oceans, art and pacific poetry
Tue 2 Nov 2021
From coral reef sculptures to creation sagas of Australia and attitudes to land and sea.
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