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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Proms Plus: Ecstatic States
Tue 14 Aug 2018
Christopher Harding, philosopher Mark Vernon & Hetta Howes discuss ecstatic states.
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Proms Plus: The Weeping Prophet and Visions of Chaos
Mon 13 Aug 2018
With the novelist Salley Vickers and literary historian Joe Moshenska
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Proms Plus: Re-working a Classic in Poetry
Mon 6 Aug 2018
Faithful but dull or unfaithful and interesting that is the question
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Proms Plus: Folklore of Britain and Ireland
Mon 6 Aug 2018
Poets Gillian Clarke and Peter Mackay discuss the folktales of the islands of the UK
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Proms Plus: London in Fact & Fiction
Tue 31 Jul 2018
Novelists John Lanchester & Diana Evans discuss depicting London in their fiction.
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Proms Plus: Mountains
Mon 30 Jul 2018
Abbie Garrington, Dan Richards discuss how mountains & wild landscapes inspire creativity
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Proms Plus: Funny Fiction
Sat 28 Jul 2018
Inspired by Beethoven's musical jokes, Meg Rosoff selects an array of comic fiction
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Proms Plus: British Countryside real & imagined
Fri 27 Jul 2018
Writer Melissa Harrison, archaeologist Francis Pryor on British countryside & rural life
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Proms Plus: Birds and Humans
Fri 27 Jul 2018
Tim Birkhead and Helen Macdonald on humanity's long relationship with birds
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Proms Plus: The Wanderer
Wed 25 Jul 2018
Lauren Elkin & Seán Williams discuss why walking is an inspiration for writers.
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Proms Plus – exploring the narrative voice in literature
Sat 21 Jul 2018
Sarah Dillon and novelist Richard Beard on narrative voices in literature
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Proms Plus: Daphnis & Chloe
Tue 17 Jul 2018
Prof. Tim Whitmarsh & dance critic Judith Mackrell discuss Longus's Daphnis & Chloe.
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Howard Jacobson
Thu 12 Jul 2018
Writer Howard Jacobson with a keynote lecture on why we need the novel.
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Helaine Blumenfeld, Dale Harding; Stella Tillyard
Thu 12 Jul 2018
Anne McElvoy and sculptor Helaine Blumenfeld, artist Dale Harding, writer Stella Tillyard
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Philosophical tennis, hidden beaches and Eleanor Marx.
Tue 10 Jul 2018
Matthew Sweet takes a walk around Eleanor Marx's old neighborhood.
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From C18 automata to Superheroes and Digital Living
Fri 6 Jul 2018
Matthew Sweet visits The Marvellous Mechanical Museum at Compton Verney.
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Renzo Piano
Wed 4 Jul 2018
The Italian architect talks to Philip Dodd about his career from the Pompidou to the Shard
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What do you call a stranger? The Caine Prize. NHS ideals.
Wed 4 Jul 2018
Nandini Das and John Gallagher look at words for strangers in Tudor and Stuart England.
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Fun Home, Olivia Laing, Oscar Wilde, The Deer Hunter
Thu 28 Jun 2018
Alison Bechdel's memoir on stage, a novel inspired by Kathy Acker, Oscar Wilde in the USA
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The body, past and present
Thu 28 Jun 2018
Beauty - Renaissance to the present. Chantal Joffe & Heather Widdows with Anne McElvoy
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The Working Lunch and Food in History
Wed 27 Jun 2018
How the Victorians changed lunch, Elsa Richardson and Chris Kissane join Rana Mitter.
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Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Woman’s Rights
Fri 22 Jun 2018
Joanna Cohen looks back at the manifesto which remodelled the Declaration of Independence
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John Gower, the Forgotten Medieval Poet
Fri 22 Jun 2018
Curing lovesickness or learning alchemy's secrets. Seb Falk on Chaucer's friend John Gower
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Sarah Scott and the Dream of a Female Utopia
Fri 22 Jun 2018
Lucy Powell tells the story of a radical community of women set up in 1760s rural England
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The Forgotten German Princess
Fri 22 Jun 2018
The tale of Mary Moders, a C17 bigamist and media sensation, is retold by John Gallagher.
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Rehabilitating the Rev John Trusler
Fri 22 Jun 2018
Sophie Coulombeau on the life of a C18 cleric and entrepreneur & the idea of failure
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Oliver Rackham and Wildwood Ideas
Thu 21 Jun 2018
The man who loved our trees and woods and new ideas of what they were and might become
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Windrush. Forests in Art. South African Jazz
Thu 21 Jun 2018
Colin Grant Hannah Lowe and Jay Bernard discuss writing about Windrush with Shahidha Bari
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The Word For World Is Forest
Tue 19 Jun 2018
Matthew Sweet reads Ursula Le Guin's novel + Paul Foot Award.
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The Piano and Love
Thu 14 Jun 2018
Debbie Wiseman, Fern Riddell, Frank Tallis and Tiffany Watt Smith join Matthew Sweet.
