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 Thinking: Women in Virtual Reality
Thu 5 Mar 2020
Hetta Howes learns how Sylvia Xueni Pan and Sarah Ellis are pushing the VR envelope
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Anne Enright + the value of gossip
Wed 4 Mar 2020
Anne Enright discusses acting with Daisy Black, Emily Butterworth and Marie Le Conte.
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Lady Mary Wroth - women writer to put back on the bookshelf
Fri 28 Feb 2020
The English Renaissance poet whose reputation at court was ruined by her writing.
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Charlotte Smith - women writers to put back on the bookshelf
Fri 28 Feb 2020
The Romantic poet who inspired Wordsworth is profiled by Sophie Coulombeau.
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Margaret Oliphant - women writers to put back on the bookshelf
Fri 28 Feb 2020
The Scottish writer whose comic heroine Miss Marjoribanks bucks 19th-century conventions
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Yolande Mukagasana - women writers to put back on the bookshelf
Fri 28 Feb 2020
Zoe Norridge describes translating the testimony of a Rwandan survivor
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How archictecture shapes society
Thu 27 Feb 2020
Ricky Burdett, Liza Fior, Des Fitzgerald, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg Edwin Heathcote at LSE
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New Thinking: Everything to Everybody - Shakespeare for the people
Thu 27 Feb 2020
Islam Issa hears how Adrian Lester and Ewan Fernie are taking Shakespeare to the people
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Japan Now 2020
Thu 27 Feb 2020
Philip Dodd talks to Hiromi Ito, Tomoko Sawada, Yukiko Motoya, and Motoyuki Shibata
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Genes, racism, ageing and evidence
Tue 25 Feb 2020
Daniel Levitin on ageing & Adam Rutherford on race and genetics.
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African Empire Stories
Thu 20 Feb 2020
Petina Gappah & Sarah LeFanu on Livingstone, Kipling and Mary Kingsley in Africa
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The Surreal World of Alejandro Jodorowsky
Wed 19 Feb 2020
Matthew Sweet talks to the Chilean French director Alejandro Jodorowsky and to critics
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Queer histories
Thu 13 Feb 2020
How do we apply modern LGBT+ language and identities to historical figures?
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The History of Sex
Thu 13 Feb 2020
Fern Riddell, Kate Lister and Robin Mitchell discuss their research with Matthew
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The shadow of slavery
Wed 12 Feb 2020
From sugar and spice, to reparations and memorials: slavery and how we acknowledge it
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Early cinema: why are we obsessed with firsts?
Fri 7 Feb 2020
Matthew Sweet looks back at the early history of cinema
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Samuel Beckett & the purpose of culture
Wed 5 Feb 2020
If we want the arts to be a comfort blanket, where does Beckett fit in?
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Mocking power past and present.
Wed 5 Feb 2020
The German joker Tyll Ulenspiegel. Anne McElvoy, Daniel Kehlmann & Karen Leeder discuss.
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New Thinking: It all begins here? Understanding the Industrial Revolution
Fri 31 Jan 2020
John Gallagher discusses the Industrial Revolution with Emma Griffin and William Ashworth
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Fungi: An Alien Encounter
Thu 30 Jan 2020
Are fungi out to get us or here to help? A look at mushrooms in art, food and psychology.
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How we see pregnancy past and present
Thu 30 Jan 2020
Anne McElvoy hears the story of a woman who gave birth to rabbits and the news from Davos
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Remembering Auschwitz
Tue 28 Jan 2020
Rana Mitter marks the anniversary of the 1945 liberation & talks to author Anne Michaels
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What is good listening?
Fri 24 Jan 2020
Matthew Sweet with NYT journalist Kate Murphy, Anne Karpf, David Toop.
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Poetry and Science: A 19th century metre on the (uni)verse
Wed 22 Jan 2020
Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Greg Tate, Sam Illingworth & Sunayana Bhargava join Anne McElvoy.
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Goddesses of academia
Tue 21 Jan 2020
Nikita Gill, Francesca Wade, Sandeep Parmar & Victoria Leonard talk goddesses & classics
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New Thinking: About Face
Fri 17 Jan 2020
Would you change your nose if you could? What about an entire face transplant?
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Psychohistory: Isaac Asimov and guiding the future
Thu 16 Jan 2020
Matthew Sweet asks if the fictional science of psychohistory changed the future of humans
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Why we read and the idea of the "woman writer"
Thu 16 Jan 2020
From Elizabethan Anne Dowriche, Victorian Anne Bronte to why women say they read now.
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Simplify your life
Wed 15 Jan 2020
Nudism, camping, and vegetarianism: the Life Reform movement explained.
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Philosophy and Film
Fri 10 Jan 2020
Rana Mitter, Sally Potter and philosophers discuss whether you can philosophise with film
