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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New Generation Thinkers: Battlefield Finds
Mon 26 Apr 2021
Seren Griffiths tells the story of the soldier turned archaeologist Francis Buckley.
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New Generation Thinkers: The Inscrutable Writing of Sui Sin Far
Sun 25 Apr 2021
Xine Yao suggests that a poker Chinese face can be a good way of fighting back
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New Generation Thinkers: Hoarding or Collecting?
Fri 23 Apr 2021
Diarmuid Hester muses on the thin line between inspiration and a compulsive disorder.
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Bombing and morals, Flooding and the future
Thu 22 Apr 2021
Malcolm Gladwell, Satyajit Ray's film Jalsaghar, Jessie Greengrass. Rana Mitter hosts.
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New Generation Thinkers: A social history of soup
Wed 21 Apr 2021
Tom Scott-Smith uses four recipes to track social reforms and changes in what we value.
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New Thinking: Shakespeare's Life Lessons
Wed 21 Apr 2021
Scholars Emma Smith, Patrick Gray, and Emma Whipday find examples in different dramas
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The Essay New Generation Thinkers Jean Rhys's Dress
Tue 20 Apr 2021
Sophie Oliver on motherhood, a old dress and rereading Wide Sargasso Sea
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Maryse Condé's writing plus Suzanne O'Sullivan
Tue 20 Apr 2021
Shahida Bari reads I Tituba, the story of the West Indian slave accused in Salem.
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New Generation Thinkers: The Feurtado's Fire
Mon 19 Apr 2021
Christienna Fryar looks at Caribbean fires and earthquakes and lessons for rebuilding now
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The Battle of Culloden, Outlander, Peter Watkins
Thu 15 Apr 2021
Matthew Sweet with Outlander creator Diana Gabaldon, historian Tom Devine and John Cook
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Jacques Tati's Trafic
Wed 14 Apr 2021
Matthew Sweet, Adam Scovell, Muriel Zagha and Phuong Le on the 1971 French comedy.
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Octavia Butler's Kindred
Tue 13 Apr 2021
A novel from 1979 that uses time travel to explore race, slavery and trauma
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Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalism and Schizophrenia
Thu 8 Apr 2021
Matthew Sweet re-reads a classic of French postmodern theory
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Milton: Samson Agonistes
Thu 8 Apr 2021
How do we look at blindness in poetic writing, classics, in Milton's and Handel's life?
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John Milton's Samson Agonistes
Wed 7 Apr 2021
Rana Mitter looks at how politics, blindness and the Bible fed into this dramatic poem
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The Liverpool Biennial debate
Tue 6 Apr 2021
How to reflect Liverpool's history in new artworks: Anne McElvoy hosts a discussion.
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Spy talk
Thu 1 Apr 2021
From a secret Iraqi spy cell to new revelations of cold war exploits. Rana Mitter hosts.
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From Blackface to Beyoncé
Wed 31 Mar 2021
From the theatre stage to the Superbowl, in praise of Black performance
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Writing About Faith
Tue 30 Mar 2021
Stand-up Frank Skinner and novelists Jeet Thayil and Yaa Gyasi talk to Laurence Scott
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Churchill's reputation
Thu 25 Mar 2021
Anne McElvoy and guests on attitudes to the politician, his rhetoric and foreign policies
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Books to Make Space For on the Bookshelf: There's No Story There
Fri 19 Mar 2021
Lisa Mullen looks at depictions of war-time factory workers in this novel by Inez Holden
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Books to Make Space For On The Bookshelf: Closer
Thu 18 Mar 2021
New Generation Thinker Diarmuid Hester on the transgressive writing of Dennis Cooper
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Syria: hope and poetry
Thu 18 Mar 2021
An architect who lived in Homs during the war, a translator of Adonis and a media analyst
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Books to Make Space For on the Bookshelf: Sindhubala
Wed 17 Mar 2021
Preti Taneja on the writing and politics of Bengali author and activist Mahasweta Devi
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Introducing New Generation Thinkers 2021
Wed 17 Mar 2021
Ten researchers look at colonial history, alphabets, punctuation, poetry, art terminology
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Books To Make Space For On The Bookshelf: John Halifax, Gentleman
Tue 16 Mar 2021
2/5 Clare Walker Gore explores how Dinah Mulock Craik subverted Victorian expectations
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New Thinking: what do we learn from census stats?
Tue 16 Mar 2021
John Gallagher talks to four researchers uncovering lives from past census records
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Books to Make Space For on the Bookshelf: The Black Lizard
Mon 15 Mar 2021
New Generation Thinker Christopher Harding reads the Japanese equivalent of Conan Doyle
