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
-
![]()
Prom Plus: What Victorians Did For Fun
Fri 16 Aug 2019
Historians Kathryn Hughes & Lee Jackson discuss 19th century entertainment.
-
![]()
Proms Plus: Literary Hoaxes
Fri 16 Aug 2019
Shahidha Bari and Nick Groom on invented monks, fake Shakespeare and a "discovered" diary
-
![]()
Revisit Napoleon in Fact and Fiction
Thu 15 Aug 2019
Anne McElvoy looks at Napoleon's biography, caricatures and professional impersonators.
-
![]()
Revisit Mike Leigh in Conversation about Peterloo, politics and his Salford upbringing.
Wed 14 Aug 2019
The film-maker talks to Matthew Sweet about depicting history and politics on film.
-
![]()
Proms Plus: Childhood, innocence and experience
Tue 13 Aug 2019
Books for children and children in books from Romanticism via the Victorians to now.
-
![]()
Proms Plus: 'Queering' Tchaikovsky
Mon 12 Aug 2019
Shahidha Bari and Rolf Hind discuss Tchaikovsky’s letters, with readings from Tom Stuart
-
![]()
-
![]()
Proms Plus: Tragedy
Thu 8 Aug 2019
Tragedy ancient and modern with Clare Pollard and Jennifer Wallace
-
![]()
Proms Plus: Swans
Mon 5 Aug 2019
Sacha Dench & Sarah Crompton discuss swans in the natural world & on the ballet stage.
-
![]()
Revisit Spike Lee in Conversation on Free Thinking
Mon 5 Aug 2019
The film-maker talks to Matthew Sweet about BlacKkKlansman & his 2000 film Bamboozled
-
![]()
Proms Plus: Nordic Summers Light and Dark
Sun 4 Aug 2019
The legends and landscapes that inspire composers from Finland and Russia
-
![]()
Proms Plus: 1969 The Sound of a Summer
Fri 26 Jul 2019
Poets Rachael Allen & Jacob Polley join Preti Taneja to reflect on the summer of 1969.
-
![]()
Proms Plus: Music and Health
Wed 24 Jul 2019
Naomi Paxton discusses the latest science and clinical practice
-
![]()
Proms Plus: Moon Landing
Mon 22 Jul 2019
Richard Wiseman and Melanie Vandenbrouck discuss the impact of the first Moon landing
-
![]()
Book Parts and Difficulty
Fri 19 Jul 2019
Matthew Sweet looks at frontispieces, titles and marginalia, and hard texts.
-
![]()
New angles on post-war Germany and Austria
Wed 17 Jul 2019
Anne McElvoy with Florian Huber, Sophie Hardach, Adam Scovell, Tom Smith
-
![]()
New Thinking: Neolithic Revelations
Wed 17 Jul 2019
A lack of Neolithic dental floss proves to be a boon for archaeologists,
-
![]()
New Thinking: Shakespeare's Language
Wed 17 Jul 2019
From Juliet's uncertainty, to finding a phrase for descending the stairs
-
![]()
-
![]()
New Thinking: City Talk
Wed 17 Jul 2019
Mapping the accents of Greater Manchester with a camper van and a laptop
-
![]()
Camille Paglia
Tue 16 Jul 2019
Camille Paglia in conversation with Philip Dodd about free speech and feminism
-
![]()
An insider's view of war
Thu 11 Jul 2019
Ex-Marine & journalist Elliot Ackerman on Al Qaeda and the Iraq War. Rana Mitter presents
-
![]()
Caine Prize. Ivo van Hove. Female Desire.
Wed 10 Jul 2019
Shahidha Bari looks at staging Ayn Rand's ideas and meets the 2019 Caine Prize winner.
-
![]()
Landmark: Iris Murdoch's The Sovereignty of Good
Wed 10 Jul 2019
Matthew Sweet discusses Iris Murdoch's philosophical essay of 1970
-
![]()
Reinventing the 'Mistake on the Lake'.
Thu 4 Jul 2019
Philip Dodd visits the US rust belt city of Cleveland.
-
![]()
Russia and Fear.
Thu 4 Jul 2019
Rana Mitter considers fearing Russia past & present with Mark B Smith & Tamar Koplatadze.
-
![]()
Free Thinking: Language and Belonging
Wed 3 Jul 2019
Preti Taneja with Guy Gunaratne,Dina Nayeri, Michael Rosen, Momtaza Mehri & Deena Mohamed
-
![]()
Amitav Ghosh. Layla and Majnun. Islam Issa.
Fri 28 Jun 2019
Amitav Ghosh on linking refugees, climate change, Venice & Bengali forests in his fiction
-
![]()
Cindy Sherman, Laura Cumming
Wed 26 Jun 2019
The art of Cindy Sherman plus art critic Laura Cumming on the days her mother disappeared
-
![]()
