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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Free Thinking - Kate Grenville
Wed 3 Jun 2015
Rana Mitter talks to Kate Grenville, one of Australia's leading novelists, about the...
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Free Thinking - Male Friendship
Tue 2 Jun 2015
'One Man, Two Guvnors' playwright Richard Bean and novelists Steve Tolz and AD Miller...
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Free Thinking - Hay Festival
Thu 28 May 2015
BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council run a scheme to find the best...
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Free Thinking - Hay Festival: David Brooks, Azar Nafisi and Tom Holland
Wed 27 May 2015
Rana Mitter and guests New York Times journalist David Brooks, the Iranian novelist of...
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Free Thinking - Theodore Zeldin, Mona Mona Eltahawy
Tue 26 May 2015
Egyptian-American journalist Mona Eltahawy argues the Middle East Needs a Sexual...
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Free Thinking - Steve Hilton; Beowulf; The Beaux' Stratagem
Thu 21 May 2015
Are work and progress making us inhuman? Anne McElvoy is joined by Steve Hilton, a to...
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Free Thinking - Jospeh Stiglitz and Alain Mabanckou
Wed 20 May 2015
Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz discusses income inequality. Novelist Alain Mabanckou...
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Free Thinking - Colm Toibin; Mammoth Cloning; Fareed Zakaria
Tue 19 May 2015
Matthew Sweet is joined by Colm Toibin to discuss the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop; Beth...
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Free Thinking - High Society; Xinran; UK elections
Thu 14 May 2015
A week on from the election, Anne McElvoy turns to three historians - Tim Bale, Krista...
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Free Thinking - Dante's Divine Comedy
Wed 13 May 2015
To mark Dante's birth 750 years ago, Philip Dodd chairs a Landmark discussion about of...
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Free Thinking - Gut Instinct
Tue 12 May 2015
Matthew Sweet is joined by former Labour strategist Alastair Campbell, epidemiologist...
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Free Thinking - Anne Enright, Christopher Hampton 07May15
Thu 7 May 2015
Anne Enright, Ireland's first Laureate for Fiction, talks to Anne McElvoy about her...
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Free Thinking - Antony Sher
Wed 6 May 2015
Philip Dodd in extended conversation with the actor Antony Sher whose recent roles and...
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Free Thinking - Sir Thomas Browne
Tue 5 May 2015
Matthew Sweet talks to Hugh Aldersey-Williams, Claire Preston and Gavin Francis about...
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Free Thinking - Julian Barnes
Thu 30 Apr 2015
Anne McElvoy is joined by the Booker Prize-winning writer Julian Barnes to discuss the...
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Free Thinking - Everyman
Wed 29 Apr 2015
Philip Dodd reports on the first night of Carol Ann Duffy's new adaptation of Everyman...
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Free Thinking - Alberto Manguel
Tue 28 Apr 2015
Matthew Sweet interviews Alberto Manguel about his new book, Curiosity.
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Free Thinking - English Civil War
Thu 23 Apr 2015
As Caryl Churchill's Light Shining in Buckinghamshire is revived at The National's how...
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Free Thinking - Global Shakespeare
Wed 22 Apr 2015
Philip Dodd explores what a world view of Shakespeare means. Guests include Globe from...
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Free Thinking - Caryl Phillips
Tue 21 Apr 2015
Caryl Phillips talks to Matthew Sweet about his new novel The Lost Child which...
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Free Thinking Landmark - The Tin Drum
Thu 16 Apr 2015
Anne McElvoy is joined by the German novelist Eugen Ruge, British author Lawrence the...
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Free Thinking - Violence in Culture
Wed 15 Apr 2015
Philip Dodd considers violence in culture with crime writer Frances Fyfield, historian...
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Free Thinking - Mexico in Words
Tue 14 Apr 2015
As Mexico takes centre stage at London's Book Fair Matthew Sweet speaks to two of the...
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Free Thinking - Neuroscience
Thu 9 Apr 2015
Rana Mitter discusses a new model for understanding the brain, with researcher and...
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Free Thinking - The Way We Live Now
Wed 8 Apr 2015
This evening Free Thinking is devoted to one of the pinnacles of Victorian England –...
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Free Thinking - Nick Broomfield
Tue 7 Apr 2015
With the publication of the widest survey of sexual behaviour since the Kinsey Report,...
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Free Thinking - Patricia Duncker
Thu 2 Apr 2015
Patricia Duncker talks to Anne McElvoy about her new novel which imagines George with...
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Free Thinking - Public and private art
Wed 1 Apr 2015
In this programme about private and public art, Philip Dodd talks to Nicholas Penny,...
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Free Thinking - Blade Runner
Tue 31 Mar 2015
As Ridley Scott's science fiction extravaganza, Blade Runner is re-released, Matthew...
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Free Thinking - Cosmopolitanism/Nation State
Thu 26 Mar 2015
Philip Dodd continues his exploration of the culture wars by investigating the tension...
