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 - Peggy Seeger
Wed 25 Mar 2015
Philip Dodd talks to one of the icons of what used to be called the counter-culture,...
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Free Thinking - Secularism & Religion
Tue 24 Mar 2015
In the first of three programmes exploring fractures and faultlines in contemporary...
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Free Thinking - School Report
Thu 19 Mar 2015
Anne McElvoy hears from young people involved in the BBC's School Report Day.
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Free Thinking - Sociology in the 21 century
Wed 18 Mar 2015
Does the discipline of Sociology still have a role to play in the 21st century?To we...
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Free Thinking - Madness/Civilisation
Tue 17 Mar 2015
Matthew Sweet talks to Andrew Scull, author of Madness in Civilisation and Lisa about...
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Free Thinking - Tom McCarthy
Thu 12 Mar 2015
Anne McElvoy looks at what we mean by the idea of fairness. She also talks to novelist...
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Free Thinking - Hanif Kureishi
Wed 11 Mar 2015
An extended interview in which Philip Dodd is joined by novelist, screenwriter and...
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Free Thinking - Age of Earthquakes
Tue 10 Mar 2015
Douglas Coupland, Shumon Basar and Hans Ulrich Obrist explain the Extreme Present to...
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Free Thinking - Kazuo Ishiguro
Thu 5 Mar 2015
Novelist Kazuo Ishiguro talks to Anne McElvoy about his latest book – The Buried Giant.
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Free Thinking - Against Democracy
Wed 4 Mar 2015
Churchill famously commented that ‘democracy is the worst form of government, except...
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Free Thinking - John Gray
Tue 3 Mar 2015
John Gray talks to Matthew Sweet about why the Aztecs might have had a better of than...
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Free Thinking - David Cohen prize
Thu 26 Feb 2015
Rana Mitter talks to Tony Harrison, the winner of the biennial David Cohen prize - one...
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Free Thinking - Social Identity
Wed 25 Feb 2015
Philip Dodd looks at the value of the arts with the former Chief Scientific Advisor to...
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Free Thinking - Paul Foot Award
Tue 24 Feb 2015
As this year's Paul Foot Awards are announced for campaigning and investigative Anne...
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Free Thinking - David Grossman
Thu 19 Feb 2015
Matthew Sweet talks to the Israeli novelist David Grossman about his book Falling Out...
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Free Thinking - Buddhism
Wed 18 Feb 2015
Rana Mitter discusses Buddhism, in Western therapy and in Eastern politics with Mark -...
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Free Thinking Landmark - 1001 Nights
Tue 17 Feb 2015
It's three hundred years since the death of Antoine Galland, a French orientalist and...
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Free Thinking - Britain's Economy
Thu 12 Feb 2015
Will Hutton joins Anne McElvoy for a programme focusing on economics and wealth in...
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Free Thinking - Karim Miske; Aatish Taseer: 11 Feb15
Wed 11 Feb 2015
Karim Miské and Aatish Taseer discuss their recent novels, the French tradition of of...
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Free Thinking - Eroticism & Utopia
Tue 10 Feb 2015
Dylan Evans tells Matthew Sweet about his experimental community in the Scottish and...
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Free Thinking - Greece & Russia
Thu 5 Feb 2015
Anne McElvoy assesses reports that members of the new Greek government are age-old and...
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Free Thinking - Paul Muldoon, Roy Foster. Rona Munro: 4 Feb15
Wed 4 Feb 2015
Poet Paul Muldoon explores the history of Ireland in his new collection, One Thousand...
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Free Thinking - Eddie Marsan
Tue 3 Feb 2015
Andrew O'Hagan talks to Matthew Sweet about identity, capturing memories and the of in...
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Free Thinking - Race in America
Thu 29 Jan 2015
Joyce Carol Oates new novel The Sacrifice depicts an act of racial violence which a...
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Free Thinking - Tom Stoppard's The Hard Problem
Wed 28 Jan 2015
Surgeon Henry Marsh and critic Susannah Clapp review the opening of Tom Stoppard's at...
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Free Thinking - Holocaust
Tue 27 Jan 2015
Rana Mitter talks to Richard J Evans' about his new book The Third Reich in History on...
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Free Thinking - Cities & Resilience
Thu 22 Jan 2015
New Generation Thinker Daisy Hay talks to Anne McElvoy about the relationship between...
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Free Thinking Churchill & Englishness 21Jan15
Wed 21 Jan 2015
Philip Dodd plus guests David Reynolds, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Simon Heffer and David...
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Free Thinking - Dramatising Democracy
Tue 20 Jan 2015
Author Michael Dobbs, dramatists James Graham and Paula Milne and TV producer Tierney...
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Free Thinking - Russell T Davies
Thu 15 Jan 2015
Matthew Sweet looks at today's announcement of this year's Oscar nominations focusing...
