BBC Radio Podcasts from Free Thinking

Trade and traffic

Jeremy Hunt, Nandini Das, Rana Mitter, Soumaya Keynes & Lauren Working join Anne McElvoy

The Child's Eye View

Shahidha Bari asks how we can learn from children's perspectives. With Katherine Rundell

Eccentrics & Outsiders

Matthew Sweet looks at figures including Sylvia Townsend Warner

Satire and Gulliver's Travels

Matthew Sweet and guests discuss satire past and present

Wealth

Can the accumulation of wealth be ethical and what can we learn from Adam Smith's work?

Free Thinking at the Hay Festival: Responsibility

Baroness Hale, Philippa Perry, Guto Harri and Simon Critchley join Shahidha Bari at Hay

Thinking with Food

Felicity Cloake, John Lanchester, Prof Barry Smith, Suki Finn and Samantha Ellis

Technologies of the Self

From journaling to prayer: Shahidha Bari on the history and politics of self creation

The Middle

Middle - England, ground, child, age, pig in ... Anne McElvoy hosts a middling discussion

Weapons, real and symbolic

Matthew Sweet and guests discuss tanks, guns, gaming, drones and what weaponisation means

Purity

David Aaronovitch, Catherine Coldstream, Linda Woodhead and others join Matthew Sweet

Humility

From Spinoza's thinking to the "humble brag" - Matthew Sweet and guests explore humility.

Oral tradition and oracy

Anne McElvoy and guests discuss look at fluently in politics, the classroom & society

Taste

Matthew Sweet and guests explore what it means to have "good taste".

Women, language & experience

Shahidha Bari's guests include Karen McCarthy Woolf, Lauren Elkin and Sara Ahmed

Authority

Anne McElvoy and guests discuss authority in politics, business and education.

Crime and punishment medieval to modern

Matthew Sweet's guests include Lord Sumption and criminal barrister Joanna Hardy-Susskind

Working Class Creativity

Depictions of working class life on TV and in culture and how they've changed

Is Might Right?

The history of an idea that's shaped political philosophy, from Plato to Carl Schmitt

Labour, work and productivity

Anne McElvoy and guests discuss labour in terms of both work and childbirth

Double Lives

From spying behind enemy lines in WWII France to lives lived online

Victorian Values

Gisela Stuart, AN Wilson, Fern Riddell, Sarah Williams, Matthew Stallard, Matthew Sweet

Innovation

Matthew Sweet explores the cultures of novelty

Travel

Travel past and present and broadening the mind? Travel journalists and historians debate

Idleness

Is idleness ever a virtue? Matthew Sweet investigates

Influencing History

Matthew Sweet and guests ask who makes history and debate arguments in the Reith lectures

Marriage

Shahidha Bari joined by guests including Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch and Zoe Strimpel

Rocks

How can earth sciences like geology transform our understanding of history and society?

Revenge and reconciliation

In the week we mark the Armistice of World War I, Anne McElvoy and guests discuss revenge

The end of civilisations and societies

Peter Hitchens, Rhiannon Firth, Neville Morley, Phil Tinline, Luke Kemp join Shahidha Bari

Rational and Irrational decision making

Anne McElvoy considers the value of irrationality with Lionel Barber and Bronwen Maddox.

Traditions, roots and local pride

Ex MP Penny Mordaunt's new book asks Why Britain's Traditions Matter. Matthew Sweet hosts

The status of Science

Shahidha Bari and guests discuss the status of science in society and culture

The Good Life

Michael Rosen,Fergus Butler-Gallie Sophie Scott-Brown, Rachel Wiseman, Sudhir Hazareesingh

Finding my tribe

Anne McElvoy and guests discuss connections, divisions and creating new political parties

Friendship

Matthew Sweet discusses the mythology, psychology and politics getting along with people

Censorship, editing and self-censorship

Shahidha Bari's guests in frank topical discussion include Rana Mitter and Nicola Wilson

Christian faith, politics and culture

Anne McElvoy explores the visibility of Catholic & Christian faith in politics & culture

Language

Matthew Sweet and guests explore the way language unites and divides us

Failure

From business to sport, politics to the writing of Samuel Beckett: how do we view failure

Podcasting difficult histories

Matthew Sweet discusses difficult histories with 3 BBC podcast hosts at the Hay Festival

Common Sense

Ann Widdecombe, Rachael Wiseman, Sarah Jilani and Tiffany Watt Smith with Matthew Sweet

Power: A User's Guide

From the Hay Festival, Matthew Sweet discusses the many forms of political power

WOLVES

How wolves shape our modern world.

Political Visions

Anne McElvoy sets off in search of the sunlit uplands

Peace

In the week of VE Day, Matthew Sweet discusses what peace has meant since 1945

Community

Post local elections and pre VE day events, Shahidha Bari explores ideas about community

Decadence

Matthew Sweet assesses the state of contemporary culture

The Middle Classes

Muriel Zagha, Prof. Sam Friedman, Lord Willetts, Lisa Holdsworth & Prof. Melinda Mills

Isolation

Matthew Sweet explores ideas about being on your own

Evidence

Lord Sumption, Danny Robins, Dr Sarah Dillon Dr Jonathan Egid and Dr Anthony Milligan

Uncertainty

Chris Lintott, Margaret Heffernan, Liam Halligan, Tim Garton Ash, Victoria Donovan

A pinch of salt

A key preservative, the subject of taxes, a danger to plant-life - how much salt is good?

Malcolm X, life changes and flexible thinking

Timandra Harkness, Ekow Eshun, Sophie Grace Chappell, Richard Bett and Stephen Bush

All we need is love

Susie Orbach, Armand D'Angour, Vittoria Fallanca, Mary Harrod and Catherine Wheatley.

Repetition

Matthew Sweet and guests discuss routine, repetition and our sense of time

Decision Making

From think tanks & tallies to tarot, what tools do we use to help us choose our actions?

Diaries

Michael Crick, Irving Finkel, Sophie Coulombeau and Oliver Burkeman join Matthew Sweet

Knowing When To Stop

From art to activism, campaigning to cabaret, Shahidha Bari asks when is enough enough?

Beer, Crisps and the British pub

Tim Martin, Natalie Whittle, Prof Philip Howell, Dr Marianne Hem Eriksen, Ben Wright.

Luck, predictability and superstition

Dr Christian Busch, Bobby Seagull, Sharron Davies, Dr Kate Tomas and Timandra Harkness.

How we think about evil

Matthew Sweet and guests pick up from this year's Reith lectures and look at ideas of evil

Gifts and Gratitude

Following Thanksgiving, and as Christmas approaches, Shahidha Bari on giving and receiving

Diplomacy from Ancient Greece to Trump

Sir Nigel Sheinwald,Clare Jackson, Holly Furneaux and Bronwen Maddox discuss diplomacy

Cosy comfort reading or Nietzsche?

Alexander McCall Smith, Susannah Clapp, Tom Shakespeare, Deborah Sugg Ryan & Hugo Drochon

Milton and our modern world

It's 350 years since the death of Milton - we discuss ideas of Puritanism and divorce

Ghosts, death and ecstatic states

Shahidha Bari with Irving Finkel, Simon Critchley, Chris Harding & Hetta Howes

Are we all American now?

3Short Freddy Gray, Dr Katie McGettigan, Amanda Taub, Kit Davis, Rana Mitter

Insiders & Outsiders

Matthew Sweet and guests explore the secret languages of the internet and beyond

Childhood and innocence

Katherine Rundell, Emily Baughan, Grace Lockrobin, Miriam Cates, Andrew Cooper

Reading & Empathy

With Shahidha Bari and guests

The eternal dynamic of Rivalry, Fredric Jameson, the newly reopened Warburg Institute

Michael Crick, Helen Castor, David Edmonds, Kate Maltby and Roger Luckhurst

Crisis & Decision

Do we live in a time of crisis? Matthew Sweet gets to grips with the present moment

Carl Schmitt, democracy and dictatorship

Anne McElvoy with guests including David Runciman and Gisela Stuart

Carl Schmitt, democracy and dictatorship

Anne McElvoy with guests including David Runciman and Gisela Stuart

Escapism

Matthew Sweet and guests question whether you can ever really escape

The illusion of time, the summer solstice & the philosophy of comedy

Mark Miodownik, Emily Herring, Rob Newman & Fay Dowker consider Time with Matthew Sweet

History - the long and short of it

Peter Frankopan, Alison Light, Bronwen Maddox & Zeinab Badawi join Matthew Sweet

Generations - D-Day - Global Instability

Eliza Filby, Rana Mitter, Jo Hamya, Tom Simpson, plus Gaby Hinsliff

The Insurrectionists' Guide to the Movies

Stephen Bush, Dr Sarah Jilani , Kate Maltby and Keith Shiri join Matthew Sweet

Left and Right - still relevant in British and Global Politics?

Margaret MacMillan, David Aaronovitch, Phillip Blond and Gisela Stuart join Matthew Sweet

Positive & negative politics, "intellectual vices" and the face you bring to work.

Sir Richard Evans, Margaret Heffernan, Isabel Oakeshott, Quassim Cassam join Anne McElvoy

Life expectations, philosophy in the world, protest

Matthew Sweet with David Willetts, Elizabeth Oldfield, Will Davies, Tiffany Watt Smith

Winning & Losing, Plato Scroll, the Decline of Nightlife

Winning and losing with Lea Ypi, Peter Hitchens, Michael Mansfield KC and Cath Bishop.

Kant today, Spice Girls Reunited, Impersonating an Animal

Girl power past and present, the wisdom of goats and seagulls and Kant's ideas on reason

Tacitus, Byron's fanmail and Bluey

Mary Beard, Konnie Huq, Helen Carr and Tom Peck join Shahidha Bari

Change, scrabble and cultural christianity

Matthew Sweet and guests look at ideas about change: political, climate, personal

Hobbes, Abba, Waterloo and margarine

Matthew Sweet and guests look back at the week exploring the ideas shaping our lives today

Pranks

Matthew Sweet and guests assess the value of pranks and what purpose they may serve.

Approaches to death

Archaeologists Marianne Hem Eriksen, Pauline Harding: historians Cat Byers, Harriet Soper

Writing Place

Sylvia Townsend Warner's move to Dorset, Heidegger's Heimat and the Arun river in Sussex.

Scottish Kingship

Medieval myth-making, the kings of Scotland and the Stone of Destiny

Free speech, censorship and modern China

The writings of Chinese women, from Ding Ling to coming of age in the 1990s

Edward Bond

Matthew Sweet and guests discuss the playwright Edward Bond (18 July 1934 – 3 March 2024)

Sleep justice and sleeplessness

Laurence Scott talks to researchers exploring how we sleep and the idea of sleep justice

Images of Persia

Poetry by Hafez, Nowruz (New Year) and the Haft Sin table, the Mongol invasion, music

Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation

Matthew Sweet and guests look at the 1974 Gene Hackman film about surveillance and murder

Muses and women's creativity

From Pre-Raphaelite models to the daughter of Maud Gonne: Naomi Paxton with new research

Sarah Maldoror, Storm Jameson, the Hague Congress

Ahead of International Women's Day Shahidha Bari hears stories linking women with war

The Dutch Connection

John Gallagher hears about new research into Anglo-Dutch trade and early publishing

Hitchhiking

Matthew Sweet considers examples from Texas Chainsaw Massacre to a system of Polish tokens

New Thinking: Stitching Stories

Shahidha Bari visits a textile art show + research on embroidery, stage outfits, vintage

Can - Future Days

Matthew Sweet and guests take a deep dive into the influential German group's 1973 album.

Myths, ships and history

Anna McKay, Lloyd Belton and Oliver Finnegan delve in the deep for seafaring histories

The Condom and V.D.

Matthew Sweet and guests talk about sexual health, VD clinics, sex work and condoms

Chocolate

Shahidha Bari discusses the confection that has conquered the world

Chocolate

Shahidha Bari discusses the confection that has conquered the world

The Greenwich Outrage

The attempt by an anarchist to blow up the Royal Observatory in 1894 and its consequences

Picnics

From Picnic at Hanging Rock to an Iron Curtain Pan European picnic

Iris Murdoch's The Sovereignty of Good

Matthew Sweet and guests on Iris Murdoch's thought and writing (15 July 1919-8 Feb 1999)

On The Silver Globe

Take a mind-bending trip to a distant planet with Andrzej Zulawski's cult 1987 SF film

East West religious connections

Authors Rowan Williams & Christopher Harding and artist Gayle Chong Kwan join Rana Mitter

Secrets, Lies & Irish History

Clair Wills, Martin Doyle, Scott McKendry & Louise Brangan discuss secrets and conflict

Holocaust history

Ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day (Jan 27) Anne McElvoy hears testimony and new research

The Kyoto School

Chris Harding investigates the flourishing of Japanese philosophy in the 1930s and beyond

Heidegger & Antisemitism

Matthew Sweet discusses the influential German philosopher's relationship with Nazism

What is normal?

Sarah Chaney, Louise Creechan and Robert Chapman on neurodiversity, with Matthew Sweet

Shakespeare's Women

The women who crop up in Shakespeare's life, his plays and who helped conserve his legacy

Dust, dirt and domesticity

From mould to desertification Naomi Paxton and guests on the impact of dirt,heat and damp

Octavia Butler's Kindred

A novel from 1979 which uses time travel to explore race, slavery and trauma

Essay writing

From Montaigne to modern Scottish writing - Rana Mitter discusses what makes a good Essay

Aztecs and Otherness

Caroline Dodds Pennock discusses how Aztecs, Inuit, Mayans and others discovered Europe.

Travel, pleasure and peril

From preventing strangulation on the railways to guide maps and the art of travel posters

Dickens, Disney and copyright

Matthew Sweet looks at copyright rules for Mickey Mouse & Dickens in C19th America

Greek myth, goddesses and art

From classic myths rewritten by Natalie Haynes to the art of John Craxton in Crete

Prize Winners 2023

Nandini Das, Tania Branigan, Halik Kochanski, Ed Yong, John Vallaint talk to Rana Mitter

Harry Belafonte

The long career of the American singer, film star & activist with Matthew Sweet & guests

Margaret Cavendish

Nandini Das and guests discuss the Duchess of Newcastle - philosopher, poet and scientist

Narnia and CS Lewis

Exploring the literary and theological terrain of C.S. Lewis's Narnia

Humboldt, soil, gardens and Frank Walter

For World Soil Day, a celebration of art, research and ideas to revive the earth

Kadare, Gospodinov, Kafka and Dickens

Bureaucracies of the soul satirised in novels. Matthew Sweet's guests include Lea Ypi.

Libraries

From Alexandria to Mid Wales, Laurence Scott and guests look at library history.

Lorca

As the National Theatre stages The House of Bernarda Alba, Rana Mitter discusses Lorca

AS Byatt and The Children's Book

AS Byatt discussed her writing life with Matthew Sweet as she published a novel in 2009

Post-War Germany

Forging the modern German nation from the moral and material ruins of WW2

Sam Selvon and The Lonely Londoners

Selvon's evocative 1956 novel discussed at the British Library by Shahidha Bari & guests.

Ursula Le Guin and The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

Naomi Alderman, Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson and others discuss the politics of this 1973 fable

Women, art and activism

Naomi Paxton and guests on exhibitions at Tate Britain, the Barbican and Modern Art Oxford

Shakespeare as inspiration

From Bollywood films and Pre-Raphaelite art to productions of Shakespeare in places at war

The Imperial War Museum Remembrance discussion 2023

As the IWM unveils its new art galleries, Anne McElvoy & guests discuss photographing war

African identity via China and photography

Teju Cole, Noo Saro-Wiwa and Tate curator Osei Bonsu talk to Laurence Scott.

Robert Aickman

For Halloween, Matthew Sweet & guests discuss supernatural fiction, bad teeth & canals

Eliza Flower and non-conformist thinking

Matthew Sweet hears about research into the singer & friend of JS Mill feat. live songs!

Sleep

John Gallagher gets sleeping tips from research pioneers and early modern history

Sankofa and Afrofuturism

Curator Ekow Eshun, academic Sarah Jilani, sculptor Zak Ové with Shahihda Bari

Valis and Philip K Dick

A weirdly autobiographical science fiction novel from 1981 inspired by hallucinations.

Humours and The Body

From mitochondrial medicine to 17th century cancer treatments, via Bach's Cantatas

Victorian colour, jewellery and metalwork

Nandini Das visits Colour Revolution at the Ashmolean in Oxford and talks to a jeweller

Being Blonde

Matthew Sweet discusses the genealogy of blondeness

The Frieze/Radio 3 Museum Directors Debate 2023

The art museum as community space, immersive art experiences & other hot topics.

Art, Kew, a symphony and nature

Artist Mat Collishaw, composer Jimmy López Bellido, academics Vid Simoniti & Sarah Casey

Faith, consciousness and creating meaning in life

Philosophers Daniel Dennett, Philip Goff, podcaster Liz Oldfield & a faith museum curator

Refuge and National Poetry Day

Poets Momtaza Mehri, Julianknxx and historian Jesús Sanjurjo join Matthew Sweet

Slavic culture and myth

Matthew Sweet looks at the origins of creatures like Baba Yaga, Banniks and Rusalkas.

Hobbes and New Leviathans

John Gray on why re-reading Hobbes can help us understand contemporary politics

Childbirth and parenthood: Contains Strong Language Festival

Testament, Hannah Silva, historian Jessica Cox and Thackray museum curator Laura Sellers

Betty Miller and Marghanita Laski

Howard Jacobson, Lara Feigel and Lisa Mullen with Matthew Sweet

Notebooks and new technology

Authors Jonathan Coe, Roland Allen, Lesley Smith and art book maker Gill Partington

Why go into space?

Christopher Harding investigates the history, culture and science of space exploration

Black Atlantic

Artist Jaqueline Bishop and curator of an exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge

The Red Shoes

Ahead of a BFI festival, Matthew Sweet and guests discuss Powell and Pressburger's film

Queer history, new narrative in San Fransisco

Diarmuid Hester & Dodie Bellamy on a '70s US writing group. Lauren Elkin on art monsters

Wolfson Prize 2023

Rana Mitter talks to the six authors shortlisted for the UK's main history writing prize

The Black Country past and present

Matthew Sweet and guests with an audience at the 2022 Contains Strong Language Festival

Landladies

Historical accounts and fictional depictions of the women who ran boarding houses.

Depicting AIDS in Drama

Russell T Davies, Jill Nalder, Sabina Dosani and Matthew Sweet recorded with an audience

Late works

Dame Sheila Hancock , viola player Rachel Stott and writer Geoff Dyer discuss endings

Dark Places

A poet, crime writer, theologian, marine biologist and Matthew Sweet explore darkness

ETA Hoffmann

Anne McElvoy and guests look at the writing of the German Romantic writer and musician

My Neighbour Totoro

Japanese ideas about childhood innocence and the influence of a 1988 Studio Ghibli film.

Oliver Postgate

Matthew Sweet & Daniel Postgate, musicians Sandra Kerr & Neil Brand, critic Samira Ahmed

The Wife of Bath

Shahidha Bari is joined by Professor Marion Turner, poet Patience Agbabi and Hetta Howes

The Wife of Bath

Shahidha Bari is joined by Professor Marion Turner, poet Patience Agbabi and Hetta Howes

Glenda Jackson on filming Sunday Bloody Sunday

Matthew Sweet & guests including Glenda Jackson on John Schlesinger's love triangle film

Rock Follies

The groundbreaking 1970s TV drama reassessed with guests including actor Rula Lenska.

Oxford Philosophy

The influence of J.L. Austin, Gilbert Ryle, Elizabeth Anscombe and later Derek Parfit

Childhood and play

The V&A has re-opened its museum of childhood as Young V&A plus how kids learn to speak

South Asia: poverty and princes

Historians Joya Chatterji and Tripurdaman Singh, plus the novels of Kamala Markandaya

Liverpool Biennial + art at MIF

Catherine Fletcher and 3 Biennial artists. Vid Simoniti visits Economics the Blockbuster

A lively Tudor world

From needlework to marriage portraits to depicting music on the page

Dystopian thinking

As Kay Dick's They opens at MIF, Matthew Sweet and guests trace the history of dystopias.

Julian the Apostate

We examine Rome's last pagan ruler via Ibsen's drama to apostasy in contemporary politics

Boyhood to manhood

Chris Harding with Luke Turner, Jeffrey Boakye and Lisa Sugiura discuss growing up now

Gut instinct

From gut feelings in your stomach to the language of disgust: Matthew Sweet hosts

Diva

As the V&A opens an exhibition about performers, Naomi Paxton discusses what makes a diva

The Sorrows of Young Werther

The book of the Sturm und Drang generation: Anne McElvoy explores the ideas behind it

Life, art and drama in the kitchen

Sarah Kent, Marianne Hem Eriksen, Melanie Williams and Angela Hui join Matthew Sweet

Glenda Jackson and Filming Sunday Bloody Sunday

With the death of Glenda Jackson announced here's a conversation she recorded last year

Portraits

As the NPG re-opens we look at portraiture in art, photography, documentary & oral history

Ideas about health

Gavin Francis on Thomas Browne, Polly Morland on John Berger, Matt Smith on mental health

Adam Smith

From the East India Company to Silicon Valley: the big ideas in his tercentennial year

Yellowface, AI and Asian stereotypes

Novelist R F Kuang, Dr Kerry McInerney, Ghislaine Boddington and MIT's Daron Acemoglu

Michel Piccoli

Matthew Sweet on the French actor who worked with Buñuel, Varda, Ferreri and Godard.

Nature Memoirs

Rana Mitter looks at fens, flatlands, wild swimming and a little-changed Bulgarian valley

Europe

Ece Temelkuran, Ben Judah, Misha Glenny and Timothy Garton Ash with Rana Mitter at Hay

The Troubles in Northern Ireland

As an Imperial War Museum show opens, Anne McElvoy and guests discuss art and the Troubles

Sneezing, smells and noses

From Montaigne on sneezing to losing the sense of smell & historians using their noses.

Linda Grant and Jewish history

Julia Pascal, Rachel Lichtenstein, Linda Grant and curator Alex Cropper + John Gallagher

Mermaids, Caribbean tales and copyright

Shahidha Bari looks at sea creatures and a Caribbean re-telling of The Little Mermaid.

Martin Amis talking with Philip Dodd in 2014

Martin Amis (1949-2023) talks to Philip Dodd about Jewish history and ideas about evil.

Essex

Looking beyond the stereotypes of the county that's often described as 'much maligned'.

Rocky Horror and camp

Shahidha Bari is joined by Louise Creechan, Joan Passey and Paul Baker

Zimbabwean writing

NoViolet Bulwayo's We Need New Names on stage plus "enfant terrible" Dambudzo Marechera

Agoraphobia

More than just a fear of going out - the history & lived experience of a phobia explored.

Mountaineering, Lizzie Le Blond, sport and science

Rachel Hewitt has been researching the pioneering Irish climber Mrs Aubrey Le Blond.

Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe

Shahidha Bari hears about two inspirational medieval women mystics who wrote about faith

Kingship and ceremony

Anne McElvoy looks at royalty, pomp and glory in opera, ancient Persia and Tudor England.

Sidney Poitier

Matthew Sweet and guests consider the career of the Bahamian-American actor (1927-2022)

Sound, conflict and central heating

Matthew Sweet finds out how extreme temperatures changed Erland Cooper's music

Lady Antonia Fraser

Rana Mitter talks to the author about her life & the art of writing historical biography.

Queen Charlotte, fashion and music

Shahidha Bari and guests on a Royal Collection exhibition and the new Bridgerton spin off

Hilma af Klint

The spiritual paintings of the Swedish artist are discussed by Matthew Sweet and guests

Tartan, Kidnapped and Highland writing

Tartan at V&A Dundee, RL Stevenson's Kidnapped on stage, the Highland Book prize 2022

Galatea and Shakespeare

Trans narratives in pre-Shakespearian drama plus Twelfth Night and the First Folio.

Caruso, Elsie Houston, Peter Brathwaite

Exploring the flow of cultural influences in both directions across the Atlantic.

Ginger Rogers

Matthew Sweet and guests discuss the Hollywood star's dancing, comic timing and "sass".

Pirates

From Treasure Island to Kynance Cove, Anne Bonney to Captain Pugwash: Anne McElvoy hosts

Religion and Science

Is the idea that religion and science are at odds a myth?

The Rossettis and Walter Pater

Matthew Sweet and guests visit a Tate Britain show and look at Pater's Renaissance ideas

Introducing New Generation Thinkers 2023

Chris Harding meets the 10 academics who will make programmes from their research in 2023

Translating Cultures

Composer Alex Ho, novelist Xiaolu Guo, curator George Young and director Anthony Lau

East Germany

Katja Hoyer on East Germany, behind the Berlin Wall and the Cold War caricature

The culture of Albania

Matthew Sweet is joined by Lea Ypi, Adela Demetja, Ani Kokobobo and Aurel Qirjo

Busking and Billy Waters

The early 19th century street performer Billy Waters, Streetwise Opera and street ballads

The wicked? stepmother

Ahead of Mother's Day Matthew Sweet and guests discuss new ways of looking at stepmothers

Decadent Art

New research into ideas about decadence and connections with France, England and Iran.

Debt

As Budget day approaches, Anne McElvoy looks at debt from the South Sea Bubble to Sunak

Making Your Voice Heard

Shahidha Bari is joined by Dina Nayeri, Kirsty Sedgman, Michelle Assay and Alberta Whittle

Anarchism and David Graeber

Matthew Sweet and guests look at the ideas of American anthropologist (1961-2020).

Dom Sylvester Houédard

Matthew Sweet and guests on the career of the C20th concrete poet and Catholic mystic

Sesame Street and Soviet culture

Anne McElvoy looks at Russian punk protest + a version of US TV's Big Bird, Bert and Ernie

Tin cans, cutlery and sewing

New research into the history of stainless steel cutlery, tinned food and sewing machines

Ghosts of Caribbean History

New writing by Colin Grant and Kevin Jared Hosein; art by Mary Evans and Michael Elliott

Climate change and empire building

The long history of climate change and empire: historians Nandini Das and Peter Frankopan

Phaedra, Cretan palaces and the minotaur

Knossos - birthplace of myths and tragedies - explored by Rana Mitter and Natalie Haynes

Idrissa Ouédraogo

The work of the Burkinabé filmmaker explored by Matthew Sweet and guests.

Stories of Love

Romeo and Juliet reworked, Proust and Rita Mae Brown's coming of age tale Rubyfruit Jungle

Donkeys

From Aesop and the bible to the film EO which looks at a donkey born in a Polish circus.

Lady Macbeth

From Kurosawa and Shostakovich to Zinnie Harris. New takes on the Scottish play.

Gwendolyn Brooks

Shahidha Bari looks at the writing of the Pulitzer prize winning American poet 1917-2000

The mermaid-like Mélusine

The fish-tailed woman of medieval folklore is discussed by Shahidha Bari and guests.

Crossroads and TV soaps

Russell T Davies and Paula Milne on the power of soap operas

The English Civil War

Rana Mitter talks about politics, religion and divisions in 17th-century England.

Holocaust Memorial Day 2023

Matthew Sweet looks at the experiences of Portuguese Jewish and Roma communities.

William Stukeley

Rana Mitter considers the life and legacy of the first person to survey Stonehenge

Audrey Hepburn

Matthew Sweet marks the 30th anniversary of the death of this icon of film and fashion.

Higher Education for women and working class students

Anne McElvoy hosts a conversation about higher education and the history of its expansion

The Wife of Bath

Marion Turner talks to Shahidha Bari about different versions of Chaucer's heroine

Anna Kavan

Matthew Sweet reads Ice and other works of this experimental writer who died in 1968

Phillis Wheatley

The enslaved African American woman, Phillis Wheatley who became a celebrated poet.

Katherine Mansfield & Mavis Gallant

Claire Harman, Kirsty Gunn, Laurence Scott and Shahidha Bari discuss short story writing

Amílcar Cabral

Rana Mitter and guests discuss the pan-Africanist poet and anti-colonial leader.

Wilkie Collins & disability

How the Victorian author’s own pain and drug dependency fed into his sensational novels.

Landladies

Historical accounts and fictional depictions of the women who ran boarding houses.

Bestiaries and Beyond

Shahidha Bari investigates the human invention of animals

Lists

Are lists a good way of organising chaos? Lisa Mullen and guests discuss

Depicting AIDS in Drama

Russell T Davies, Jill Nalder, Sabina Dosani and Matthew Sweet recorded with an audience

Trapeze acts and circus celebrities

Shahidha Bari hears about the aerialists Lillian Leitzel and Pablo Fanque.

New Thinking: Language, the Victorians and Us

From Lancashire dialect protest poetry to Hardy's Dorset vowels. John Gallagher hosts.

How do we look at Art?

Catherine Fletcher with Vid Simoniti; Cleo Hanaway-Oakley; Lamin Fofana and Sally Booth

Soil, Chickens and City Farms

Ahead of world soil day, Anne McElvoy looks at changes to both rural and urban farming.

Star Trek

Matthew Sweet with George Takei, Naomi Alderman, Una McCormack and José-Antonio Orosco

Morgan - A Suitable Case for Treatment

Stephen Frears, Matthew Reisz & Lucy Bolton join Matthew Sweet to look at this 1966 film.

Arabian queens, Bangladeshi mothers and women's tales

From the Arabian nights to refugee stories - female voices fictional and real

St Teresa/Vivekananda/Nietzsche

Rana Mitter discusses three major theorists of religion and self-development

Going Underground

Shahidha Bari and guests discuss caves: from Nottingham to Borneo, in art and stories.

Experimental writing

Shahidha Bari, Matthew Herbert, the Goldsmith Prize winners and poet Stephen Sexton

New Thinking: Breakthroughs at Being Human 2022

Benjamin Franklin in the Lakes, the former slave who invented light bulbs, ganzflicker

Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu

Jane Smiley, Christopher Prendergast, Jayne Haynes, Marie Darrieussecq with Matthew Sweet

George Bernard Shaw

Anne McElvoy and guests look at the arguments explored in the plays of Shaw (1856-1950)

Plastic and Clay

The extraordinary uses of two contrasting materials.

The Imperial War Museum Remembrance Discussion 2022

How video games interpret stories about war and conflict and help to train troops.

John Knox

A life of great drama and religious controversy explored by Matthew Sweet and guests.

Goethe, Schiller and the first Romantics

Andrea Wulf, author of a new group biography set in 1790s Jena joins Anne McElvoy

Alexander the Great

Military leader, city founder, underwater explorer?! Rana Mitter on images of Alexander

Ghostwatch

Matthew Sweet on the 1992 TV horror

Orhan Pamuk and the Ottoman Empire

The Nobel Prize winning novelist is joined by academics Michael Talbot and Keya Anjaria

New Thinking: Dead Languages

John Gallagher says hello in Oscan, the language of Ancient Pompeii

Oliver Postgate

Matthew Sweet and guests on the creator of children's TV classics including The Clangers.

British Academy Book Prize 2022

Rana Mitter meets six authors shortlisted for the prize for Global Cultural Understanding.

Romanticism Revisited

Coleridge, Fuseli and Emily Bronte under the spotlight as a new film and exhibition open

The Frieze/Radio 3 Museum Directors Debate 2022

Anne McElvoy is joined by the directors of three institutions from around the world.

Miles Davis and On The Corner

Matthew Sweet and guests explore this genre-stretching album released on 11th Oct 1972

How We Read

Our surprisingly complex and mysterious relationship with text explored by Matthew Sweet.

Female power and influence past and present

Anne McElvoy talks to novelist Kamila Shamsie and playwright Rona Munro

My Neighbour Totoro

Christopher Harding looks at the background and influence of Studio Ghibli's 1988 film

John Cowper Powys

John Gray, Iain Sinclair, Margaret Drabble and Kevan Manwaring on 'the Dorset Proust'

Claude McKay and the Harlem Renaissance

Authors Nadifa Mohamed, Johny Pitts and Pearl Cleage join Shahidha Bari.

Ibsen

New interpretations of the Norwegian dramatist's plays from Lucinda Coxon & Steve Waters.

The Black Country - past and present

Matthew Sweet and guests explore the roots and resonance of "the Black Country" region

The Black Country - past and present

Matthew Sweet and guests explore the roots and resonance of "The Black Country" region

The Normans

Rana Mitter and guests look at Norman history, misconceptions and echoes heard today

Cuba, cold war and RAF Fylingdales

Novelist Ian McEwan and researchers into early warning system archives join Anne McElvoy

Immortality

Matthew Sweet & guests explore ideas about never ending life in literature, film and myth

The Lindisfarne Gospels and new discoveries

An archaeologist, a historian and a poet join Shahidha Bari as the gospels return North.

New Thinking: What language did Columbus speak?

John Gallagher and guests explore language in the 15th century age of exploration

Touki Bouki

The Journey of the Hyena mixes West African oral tradition with New Wave and Soviet style

Filming Sunday Bloody Sunday

Glenda Jackson talks to Matthew Sweet about John Schlesinger's 1971 love triangle drama

Futurism

Matthew Sweet and guests look at the manifesto celebrating youth, technology and violence

Modernism around the world

Rana Mitter looks at Bauhaus in Delhi, Japanese and South African novels and Mexican art

The Daleks

Matthew Sweet's guests include the voice of the Daleks, and the Doctor's granddaughter

Satyajit Ray's films

Tariq Ali, Sarah Jilani, Sangeeta Datta, Chandak Sengoopta discuss Ray with Rana Mitter

France, music hall and history

An outdoor history of France and a look inside popular French theatre's view on Britain

Women warriors and power brokers

Shobana Jeyasingh, Cat Jarman and Janina Ramirez with Shahidha Bari

The Black Fantastic

How the speculative and the mythical have shaped and continue to shape Black art.

Writing about money

Orwell Prize finalist Kojo Koram plus poetry interested in economics

Vampires and the Penny Dreadful

Matthew Sweet, Joan Passey, Roger Luckhurst and Sam George look at Varney the Vampire

David Chalmers & Iain McGilchrist

Two leading thinkers investigating the nature of mind and its place in the world

Belief, Habit & Religion

Rana Mitter discusses religion, evolution, neuroscience and history

Late works

Geoff Dyer and Dame Sheila Hancock discuss endings and lateness with Matthew Sweet.

ETA Hoffmann

Anne McElvoy and guests look at the life of the German Romantic who died 25 June 1822.

Sheffield reinvented

New words, music and film from the "City of Steel", presented by John Gallagher.

Slow Film and Ecology

Matthew Sweet discusses environmental thinking and a film made about rice over 18 years

Bloomsday, Dalloway Day and 1922

Shahidha Bari looks at the writing of Woolf and Joyce and what was really popular in 1922

South African writing

Damon Galgut discusses his Booker winning novel, The Promise, with Anne McElvoy

John McGrath's Scottish Drama

Anne McElvoy revisits the 1973 play The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil

Victorian streets

Is that strong inescapable image of 19th century city streets in our heads the right one?

The Wolfson Prize 2022

Rana Mitter interviews the shortlisted authors for this prize for history writing.

Get Carter

Digging beneath the surface of the classic Brit noir film with director Mike Hodges.

Amia Srinivasan and Philosophical Genealogy

The Right to Sex is the title of Amia Srinivasan's new book. Christopher Harding hosts.

Oceans and the Sea

Abdulrazak Gurnah, Emily Shuckburgh and Joan Passey join Rana Mitter at Hay Festival

Tudor families

Tangled bloodlines, executions and a big, gold inflatable thing belonging to Henry VIII

The Tudor Mind

Donne, Hamlet, 16th century psychology and mathematics, Tudor portraits

Tattoos

Shahidha Bari traces the move from markings on convicts and aristos to today's body art.

Goddesses

Christopher Harding explores the feminine divine with Ronald Hutton and others

Gandhi, Indian Architecture

Rana Mitter looks at a new play at the National Theatre about the man who murdered Gandhi

Soil

John Gallagher and guests dig deep into the significance of soil

Speaking Welsh

Catherine Fletcher with Richard King, Caryl Lewis, Elen Ifan and Seiriol Davies

Soho

130 acres of central London synonymous with sex and shadiness immortalised in film

Mental Health

Anne McElvoy looks at ASMR, clean air, loneliness and a memoir exploring mental health.

Odessa Stories

Matthew Sweet explores the work of Soviet Ukrainian writer Isaac Babel

Windows

From Rear Window to stained glass, TB to paintings at Dulwich: Shahidha Bari hosts.

Kawanabe Kyōsai and Yukio Mishima

Japanese cultural experimentation: painter, Kyōsai 1831-1889 & writer, Mishima 1925-1970

May Day rituals

Matthew Sweet and guests explore ideas about community, collective action and May revels.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Anne McElvoy looks at the life and legacy of the intriguing poet

Teaching and Inspiration

Novelist Julian Barnes, historian Daisy Hay and New Generation Thinker Louise Creechan.

Shakespeare, history, pathology and dissonant sound

Shahidha Bari on a new staging of Shakespeare's Henry VI. Why is Warwick a key figure?

New Thinking: Preserving Our Heritage

From knitting patterns to greetings cards: Naomi Paxton looks at a series of UK archives

Housework

Gender, class & domestic tasks-Matthew Sweet pulls on his rubber gloves and gets stuck in

Ships and History

Artist Hew Locke plus historians Sarah Caputo, Jake Subryan Richards, and Tom Nancollas

Grief

Matthew Sweet and guests look at the role of ritual, laments and how we express grief.

China: world politics, ink art & insomnia

Kevin Rudd talks about avoiding catastrophic conflict between China and the USA

Bridgerton and Georgian Entertainment

Shahidha Bari with Ian Kelly, Sophie Coulombeau, Brianna Robertson-Kirkland, Hannah Greig

New Generation Thinkers 2022

Laurence Scott introduces the ten academics chosen to share their research on radio

Leopoldo Torre Nilsson's Hand in the Trap

Confronting the man who jilted you is the plot of this 1960s Argentine expressionist film

Bruce Lee and Enter The Dragon

Matthew Sweet watches the 1973 film that made Bruce Lee an international star

After Dark Festival: Dark Places

A poet, crime writer, theologian & marine biologist join Matthew Sweet to explore darkness

After Dark Festival: Equinox

Matthew Sweet looks for meaning in the moment when the length of day and night is equal.

John Maynard Keynes

From HM Treasury to Versailles and Bloomsbury: a look at the life and legacy of JM Keynes

Vikings

Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough talks to scholars with new insights on the Viking period

The Stasi poetry circle, Nazi schools and German culture

How an East German creative writing class fought the cold war: was their poetry any good?

Blackmail & Shame

Mark Ravenhill talks about staging the play on which Hitchcock based his film

New Thinking: Women’s history

The Clean Break theatre company, sex strikes, East European feminism: Naomi Paxton hosts

New Thinking: Women’s history

The Clean Break theatre company, sex strikes, East European feminism: Naomi Paxton hosts

Sisters

The Unthank sisters, Sally Alexander, Oyinkan Braithwaite, Lucy Holland and Shahidha Bari

The Generation Gap

Writer Howard Jacobson, photographer Ruth Sutoyé talk family histories with Matthew Sweet

The Barbican, art and writing in 50s Britain

Leading artists, writers, thinkers discuss the ideas shaping our lives.

Climate change, nature and art

Leading artists, writers, thinkers discuss the ideas shaping our lives.

Perfecting The Body

Eugenics to cyborgs: Adam Rutherford, Clare Chambers, Harry Parker & Xine Yao discuss

Pankaj Mishra, Research into Indian history

Pankaj Mishra discusses his new novel about four friends in an age of upheaval.

Pankaj Mishra, research into Indian history

Pankaj Mishra discusses his new novel about friends in an age of upheaval

Artists' models and fame

Egon Schiele's women, Whistler's woman in white, new radio ballads : Shahidha Bari hosts.

Hitchhiking

Matthew Sweet and guests consider hitchiking in culture and around the globe.

China, Freud, war and sci fi

From AI & fan fiction to 1930s replica antiquities: new ways of thinking about China.

Stonehenge history

Anne McElvoy is joined by Neil Wilkin, Mike Pitts, Susan Greaney and Seren Griffiths

Existential Risk

Planning and creating in the shadow of the doomsday clock with Shahidha Bari and guests

Whale watching

Rana Mitter dives into the world of whales and examines our relationship to marine life.

Whale-watching

Philip Hoare, Rachel Murray, Peter Riley and Edward Sugden explore marine life.

Diverse Classical Music II

Christienna Fryar speaks to four researchers whose work is expanding the musical canon

Futurism

Matthew Sweet explores into the movement that celebrated technology, vitality, violence

Modernism Around The World

The Bauhaus in Deli, Japanese and South African novels, and poetry and art in Mexico

Paper

From the Chinese Han Dynasty in 105 AD to the 20th-century workplace, art and rubbish.

How To Make A Modernist Masterpiece

Will Self, Alexandra Harris, Kevin LeGendre & Owen Hatherley build up a Manifesto

Asta Nielsen

Matthew Sweet on the life of Danish film star Asta Nielsen, one of cinema's first icons.

Yishai Sarid; marking Holocaust Memorial Day 2022

Anne McElvoy talks to Israeli novelist Yishai Sarid & hears about new historical research

New Thinking: Diverse Classical Music

Digging into the music of composers Joseph Bologne, Kikuko Kanai and Julia Perry.

Touki Bouki

A close look at Djibril Diop Mambéty's classic 1973 film with Matthew Sweet and guests

Writing Love: Sarah Hall, Monica Ali, Adam Mars-Jones

Shahidha Bari is joined by three writers to discuss love and the contemporary novel.

Altered States

Matthew Sweet and guests knock on the doors of perception

Mélusine

The mermaid-like figure from medieval folklore is discussed by Shahidha Bari and guests.

Adapting Molière

Liz Lochead is one of Anne McElvoy's guests discussing how to update the French dramatist

Appeasement

How does Neville Chamberlain's capitulation to Hitler in 1938 affect politics in 2022?

Gloves

From python skin to digital worlds, PPE to vegan materials: how gloves are evolving.

Jean-Paul Belmondo and the French New Wave

The French film star who burst onto the scene in 1960 in Godard's Breathless

Fungi: An Alien Encounter

Are fungi out to get us or here to help? A look at mushrooms in art, food and psychology.

Colm Toibin; Dullness as a virtue

Is it a good thing to stand out? Anne McElvoy and guests explore the virtue of being dull

Early Buddhism; Sheila Rowbotham

Two Buddhist scholars and the socialist feminist historian join Rana Mitter

Witchcraft and Margaret Murray

Matthew Sweet and guests look at The Witch Cult in Western Europe (1921) and witches now

The TV Debate

Gore Vidal v William F Buckley Jr, Germaine Greer v Norman Mailer: Have debates changed?

Ground-breaking history books

Rana Mitter talks to historians making waves with the books they have published.

The Day of the Triffids

The end of the world as we know it. Matthew Sweet and guests re-read John Wyndham's novel

Caribbean art

As a Tate Britain show opens, Shahidha Bari looks at Caribbean post war writing and art

Dürer, Rhinos and Whales

Writer Philip Hoare, curator Robert Wenley, historian Helen Cowie talk celebrity animals.

Toys

How toys are shaped by politics and why they have a spooky side.

Christopher Logue's War Music

Shahidha Bari and guests read this version of Homer's Illiad and look at Logue's language

Romanian history and literature

Novelists Mircea Cărtărescu, Georgina Harding & Philippe Sands join Anne McElvoy

Faking It and Trompe-l'oeil

From fake flowers carved by Grinling Gibbons to modern craft and internet images.

Marvin Gaye's What's Going On

Ahead of a performance at the London Jazz Festival, what history underpins the album?

Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex

One of the key French Existentialists of the 1950s, how does de Beauvoir read today?

New Thinking: Being Human 2021

Research into covid comics, codes in Dickens, projecting books onto hospital ceilings.

The Imperial War Museum Remembrance Discussion 2021

How do we define a war? Anne McElvoy and guests look at how language changes attitudes.

God's Body

Matthew Sweet is joined by Francesca Stavrakopoulou, Mark Vernon and Hetta Howes

Caesar, Hogarth and images of power

Rana Mitter talks to Professor Mary Beard, artist Ali Cherri and looks at Hogarth's art.

Oceans, art and pacific poetry

From coral reef sculptures to creation sagas of Australia and attitudes to land and sea.

Time

As the clocks go back, Matthew Sweet and guests host a party for time travellers

Twilight

Poet Pascale Petit, photographer Jasper Goodall, Alexandra Harris, composer Sally Beamish

Celebrating Buchi Emecheta

Shahidha Bari leads a discussion of Nigerian-born novelist Buchi Emecheta (1944-2017).

The Language of Flowers

Rebecca Solnit's book Orwell's Roses explores his interest in gardening

Rationality & Tradition

Steven Pinker on Rationality and Tim Stanley on Tradition - Anne McElvoy hosts

New Thinking: Black British Theatre. An Afro-Cuban star

From a Black Juliet in the 18th century to Ira Aldridge’s daughter Amanda + Rita Montaner

Sugar

Matthew Sweet examines how sugar built the modern world

Colour

Laurence Scott and guests on the history and meaning of colour

Frieze: Museums in the 21st century

Anne McElvoy talks to the directors at London's National Gallery, Yale and New York's Met

Choice

Do poets choose their words or are they predetermined?

The British Academy Book Prize 2021

New ways of thinking about global problems - Rana Mitter reads this year's shortlist.

Breakfast

Literally "breaking the fast" - Matthew Sweet moves from the Full English to Tiffany's.

Order & Chaos

Clutter, indexes, and jazz improvisation. Ruth Ozeki and others join Shahidha Bari

Thomas Mann

Novelist Colm Toibin joins Anne McElvoy to discuss the German author's life and struggles

The continuing appeal of Tudor history

Philippa Gregory tells Matthew Sweet why the Tudors are still so hot.

Punk

Shahidha Bari digs into the filth and the fury to see what resonates today

Hannah Arendt's exploration of Totalitarianism

Why do Hannah Arendt's ideas continue to fire the imaginations of artists and thinkers?

Belonging

A teacher's view, a Frankenstein-inspired ballet, outside status and circus paintings

Glitches

Novelist Tom McCarthy joins Matthew Sweet to explore glitches and what they tell us

Dante's visions

Art historian Martin Kemp, painter Emma Safe, parallels with Proust and a Dante website

Saint John Henry Newman

Kate Kennedy, Tim Stanley, Catherine Pepinster, Dafydd Mills Daniel on Newman's thought

Revisit Shoes

From Roman sandals to trainers and stilettos, Shahidha Bari looks at the shoe trade

Revisit The influence of the British black arts movement

Sonia Boyce, Harold Offeh, Isaac Julien and Eddie Chambers talk to Anne McElvoy

Revisit: Tokyo Idols and Urban Life

The weird world of teenage girls seeking fame, plus the city in fiction and photography.

Revisit Rashōmon

David Peace, Natasha Pulley, Jasper Sharp & Yuna Tasaka on the film + the book behind it

Bette Davis

As the BFI prepares a season of films, Matthew Sweet and guests discuss the Hollywood star

Connecting with nature

Music from thunder, art inspired by a dog walk,essays about a rural wood and a city field

Alain Robbe-Grillet

Tom McCarthy and others join Matthew Sweet to discuss the French 'new novel'

Breathe

Soweto Kinch, James Nestor, and Imani Jacqueline Brown of Forensic Architecture

Mining, Coal and DH Lawrence

Matthew Sweet excavates the culture and arts of mining

Mining, Coal and DH Lawrence

Matthew Sweet looks at the connections between mining, the arts, and culture

Epic Iran, lost cities and Proust

Rana Mitter and guests explore the art and culture of Iran + why people abandon cities.

The English country house party

Why does the grand country house party hold such power over the English imagination?

Filming Sunday Bloody Sunday

Glenda Jackson talks to Matthew Sweet about John Schlesinger's 1971 love triangle drama

New Thinking:The Innovative Shape of Poems

Sandeep Parmar talks to poets Kayo Chingonyi, Paisley Rekdal and Nasser Hussain

Cornwall and the Coastal Gothic

Laurence Scott investigates what's lurking in the rock pools

World's Fairs and the future

Visions of the future shaped by empire, politics and unfaltering faith in progress

Mid Century Modern

Shahidha Bari look at labour saving devices and ideas of home

Building London

Eric Parry & Alison Brooks; writers Fiona Mozley & SI Martin; pianist Belle Chen

Masks

The role of masks in African traditions, Greek tragedy and Covid conspiracies

Displacement

Edmund de Waal and Frances Stonor Saunders discuss uncovering Jewish family stories.

Nadifa Mohamed, Gentle/Radical, Dylan Thomas

The work of Turner Prize nominees, a Tiger Bay murder story, Under Milk Wood on stage

How anthropology helps us understand the world

Economist Gillian Tett is one of Anne McElvoy's guests.

How anthropology helps us understand the world

Economist Gillian Tett is one of Anne McElvoy's guests.

Beryl Vertue

Matthew Sweet meets the Sherlock producer and ex agent of Tony Hancock who has turned 90

Women's Art

Jennifer Higgie, Adjoa Osei, Veronica Ryan, and Lydia Yee talk to Shahidha Bari

Green Thinking: Can artists help save the planet?

From ice photos by Wayne Binitie to 140 ideas from artists collated by Hans Ulrich Obrist

Alice and Dreaming

Alice is asked in Wonderland, Why is a raven like a writing desk? Salman Rushdie explains

New Thinking: The Botanical Past

From still life paintings to Kew Gardens, a new history of horticulture is being written

Wittgenstein's Tractatus at 100

Can one book solve all the problems of philosophy?

Fashion, Art, and the Body

Olivia Laing, Charlie Porter, and Ekow Eshun join Shahidha Bari

Novelist Tahmima Anam plus was Nero a ruthless tyrant?

Was Nero really a victim of plots? Bulgaria's hidden past. Plus a novel about startups.

Who needs critics?

Matthew Sweet questions the critic's role while Vid Simoniti looks at algorithms and art.

Ghosts of the Spanish civil war

Breaking the silence: filmmakers, a novelist and historian on the recent Spanish past.

The Wolfson History Prize 2021

Rana Mitter meets the six authors shortlisted for the UK's most prestigious history prize

Lost cities, 20s divas and 2011 uprisings

Anne McElvoy explores the past and present of the transcontinental nation of Egypt

New Thinking: Archiving, curating and digging for data

Lisa Mullen explores the way data can change our view of history & looks at conservation.

Marlon James and Neil Gaiman

The two weavers of fantastical fiction sift through myths with Matthew Sweet.

Alison Bechdel

American graphic novelist Alison Bechdel talks mushrooms, therapy and Adrienne Rich

Napoleon the gardener and art thief

Ruth Scurr, Emma Rothschild and Natasha Pulley look at French history with Rana Mitter

Samuel Johnson's circle

Patience Agbabi's novel time travels back to eighteenth century London - so do we

Northern Ireland

Anne McElvoy marks the 1921 creation of Northern Ireland with historians and writers

Links between Judaism and Christianity

Rector Giles Fraser tells Matthew Sweet how a crisis led to discovering his Jewish roots

Epistemic Injustice

Shahidha Bari investigates how theory of knowledge can address real world problems

Bombing and morals, Flooding and the future

Malcolm Gladwell, Satyajit Ray's film Jalsaghar, Jessie Greengrass. Rana Mitter hosts.

New Thinking: Shakespeare's Life Lessons

Scholars Emma Smith, Patrick Gray, and Emma Whipday find examples in different dramas

Maryse Condé's writing plus Suzanne O'Sullivan

Shahida Bari reads I Tituba, the story of the West Indian slave accused in Salem.

The Battle of Culloden, Outlander, Peter Watkins

Matthew Sweet with Outlander creator Diana Gabaldon, historian Tom Devine and John Cook

Jacques Tati's Trafic

Matthew Sweet, Adam Scovell, Muriel Zagha and Phuong Le on the 1971 French comedy.

Octavia Butler's Kindred

A novel from 1979 that uses time travel to explore race, slavery and trauma

Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalism and Schizophrenia

Matthew Sweet re-reads a classic of French postmodern theory

Milton: Samson Agonistes

How do we look at blindness in poetic writing, classics, in Milton's and Handel's life?

John Milton's Samson Agonistes

Rana Mitter looks at how politics, blindness and the Bible fed into this dramatic poem

The Liverpool Biennial debate

How to reflect Liverpool's history in new artworks: Anne McElvoy hosts a discussion.

Spy talk

From a secret Iraqi spy cell to new revelations of cold war exploits. Rana Mitter hosts.

From Blackface to Beyoncé

From the theatre stage to the Superbowl, in praise of Black performance

Writing About Faith

Stand-up Frank Skinner and novelists Jeet Thayil and Yaa Gyasi talk to Laurence Scott

Churchill's reputation

Anne McElvoy and guests on attitudes to the politician, his rhetoric and foreign policies

Pleasure

Cooking, nature, music, colour - what's your lockdown pleasure?

Frantz Fanon

Re-reading the major 20th century theorist of decolonisation

Syria: hope and poetry

An architect who lived in Homs during the war, a translator of Adonis and a media analyst

Introducing New Generation Thinkers 2021

Ten researchers look at colonial history, alphabets, punctuation, poetry, art terminology

New Thinking: what do we learn from census stats?

John Gallagher talks to four researchers uncovering lives from past census records

Edward Said's thinking

Rana Mitter reads the first biography of the Palestinian academic, pianist and negotiator

The Vietnam Paris connection

Author Viet Thanh Nguyen, film critic Phuong Le and Peter Salmon join Matthew Sweet

New Thinking: From life on Mars to space junk

Seb Falk talks to researchers about our attitude to Mars,seeing colour and Skylab's crash

Speech, Voice, Accents and AI Free Thinking

Lynda Clark, Allison Koenecke and Sadie Ryan discuss their research with Matthew Sweet

Breakdown: Horatio Clare, Stevie Smith

Horatio Clare talks to Laurence Scott about mania and healing + Stevie's Smith's writing

New Thinking: Girls

New research into ideas about girlhood and growing up - in film, fiction, art and society

Saint John Henry Newman

Newman's thought: Kate Kennedy, Tim Stanley, Catherine Pepinster and Dafydd Mills Daniel

Foucault: The History of Sexuality 4

Shahidha Bari reads Robert Hurley's new English translation

Humans, Animals, Ecologies

Matthew Sweet in conversation with two radical thinkers: Joanna Bourke and Anna Tsing

Adoption, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Renée Vivien & Violette Leduc

Fiona Sampson, Peggy Reynolds and Anne McElvoy talk poetry and writing personal stories

Turkey: Adnan Menderes, populism, and history

Having survived a plane crash, the Turkish Prime Minister 1950-60 died in an execution

Pakistan, Politics and Water Supplies

Samira Shackle , Ejaz Haider and Majed Akhter talk about Karachi, power, crime and energy

Coins, the magic money tree and a cashless world

In February 1971 the UK went decimal. Anne McElvoy and guests look at money old and new.

Darwin's The Descent of Man (1871)

Matthew Sweet and guests assess Darwin's arguments about the human species, sex, and race

New Thinking: Fashion Stories in Museums

Shahidha Bari & V&A fashion curator Claire Wilcox on costumes, couture, and wardrobes

Class and social mobility

Selina Todd, David Goodhart, Timandra Harkness and Sadie Ryan talk with Matthew Sweet.

Patricia Lockwood and André Aciman

Two American authors talk to Laurence Scott about their sense of time, place and self

New Thinking: Eco-Criticism

Exploring the points where literature and ecological thinking meet

What Makes a Good Lecture?

From Aristotle to TED talks: Mary Beard, Homi Bhabha and Seán Williams with Shahidha Bari

Yiddish and Rotwelsch, Nazi France

Michael Rosen and Martin Puchner talk to Matthew Sweet about a lost language of the road

Food, The Environment & Richard Flanagan

How food impacts on the environment; Richard Flanagan on his novel about a dying planet

John Rawls's A Theory of Justice

The lasting impact of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice on philosophy and politics.

James Baldwin and race in USA

Rana Mitter & guests re-read James Baldwin's writing as a new US President is inaugurated

Harlots & 18th Century Working Women

History & Harlots: Hallie Rubenhold & Moira Buffini on the C18th sex worker TV drama

Witchcraft, Werewolves, and Writing The Devil

Conjuring fear, discussed by historians and by novelists Jenni Fagan and Salena Godden

New Thinking: Women and Slavery

Research on women owners, women on plantations, and the daughter of a slave trader

Autism, film and patterns

From Rain Man to Atypical - Matthew Sweet looks at autism on screen and in everyday life

New Thinking: Aphra Behn

John Gallagher's guests decode changes in Behn's loyalties from her plays and dedications

Dostoevsky

Rana Mitter explores Dostoevsky as a thriller writer and comedian

Mildred Pierce

James M Cain's classic novel and its film adaptation discussed by Matthew Sweet & guests

Marlene Dietrich

Tracing the sensual and radical Marlene Dietrich from Europe to Hollywood.

Winter Light

From paintings and folk tales to Brian Cox on the stars & Susan Greaney on Stonehenge.

Hegel's Philosophy of Right

Anne McElvoy listens for echoes of Beethoven in Hegel

Ancient wisdom & remote living

From medieval science to the ingenuity of Arctic peoples & the resilience of island life

New Thinking: Hey Presto!

Magic in medicine, surgery & business; panto cross-dressing; and panto & magic history

New Thinking: Ways of Talking about Health

The winners of the AHRC and Wellcome Trust Medical Humanities Awards 2020

The 1920s - Philosophy's Golden Age

Matthew Sweet on Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Benjamin, Carnap and other philosophical greats

Times of Change

Can the Industrial Revolution and the end of the Aztecs help us shape a post COVID world

Mould-Breaking Writing

Max Porter, Chloe Aridjis, Will Harris and Xine Yao on writing the breaks the mould

Leadership & authority

From Tudor courts to plantations to the Arab Spring: a Bristol Festival of Ideas Debate.

Bedrooms

How have our bedrooms changed from sleeping space to work space?

Democracy, Hong Kong and USA

Democracy and dissent in Hong Kong & USA. Is confrontational politics is here to stay?

Helen Mort and Blake Morrison, Oulipo

Helen Mort and Blake Morrison talk mentoring. Oulipo: rules for writing in 1960s Paris.

New Thinking: Face Transplants and Researching Nose Injuries

Would you change your nose if you could? What about an entire face transplant?

Postcolonial Derby: Privateers, Pieces of Eight and the Postwar Playhouse

What connects a "double elephant" sized map, an academy of dissenters and Daniel Defoe?

The Imperial War Museum BBC Radio 3 Remembrance Debate 2020

What is the role of artists in shaping our understanding of history by commemorating war?

Charity shop history, our relationship with 'stuff', and musical typewriters

Matthew Sweet on charity shops, 'stuff', musical typewriters and the Being Human Festival

Billy Wilder

Novelist Jonathan Coe and others discuss the director of Some Like It Hot

New Thinking: Depicting disability in history and culture

A history of disability: court fools, political activism, and the 19th century novel.

War in fact and fiction

Historians and authors discuss their own work and reflections on conflict and violence.

Thinking about audiences in a time of pandemic

Shahidha Bari discuss the audience in the arts with Kwame Kwei Armah and guests

Individualism and Community

From Enlightenment conscience to New Deal USA, carers and refugees. Anne McElvoy hosts.

The post-Covid city

How the pandemic has transformed our use and experience of urban space

The Writing of Aime Cesaire

Cesaire's poetry, politics, and ideas on anti-colonialism and black consciousness

Polari Prize winners

Pleasure & responsibility in LGBTQ+ art with the Polari Prize & photographer Sunil Gupta

Seances, Science and Art - A Haunting, A Telepathy Experiment, and an Exhibition of Supernormal Art.

A haunting & artists as mediums - Kate Summerscale, Richard Wiseman & Matthew Sweet

Post Truth & Derrida

What is Derrida's influence in the 'post-truth' age?

Poet Daljit Nagra and crime writer Val McDermid

Daljit Nagra and Val McDermid talk about their writing, as part of Durham Book Festival

New Thinking about Museums

From VR Vikings & military museums to bakelite - new research into a range of collections

The Frieze BBC Radio 3 Debate: Museums in the 21st Century

Gallery directors from Russia, USA and Singapore compare notes, hosted by Anne McElvoy

Writing a Life: Hermione Lee, Daniel Lee and Rachel Holmes

Biographers of Tom Stoppard, Sylvia Pankhurst and a little known SS soldier compare notes

New Thinking: African Europeans; Fidel Castro & African leaders; WEB Du Bois

Professors Olivette Otele and Simon Hall on understanding connections in black history

Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Seamus Heaney. Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

How knowledge of poets’ lives shapes how we view their work; Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

Cows in culture and soil

Are cows the answer to depleted soil or the problem? With farmer and author James Rebanks

Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize 2020

Tales of indigenous people battling for their land; colonialism & anthropology pioneers

Conservatism, Philanthropy, Liberal and socialist futures

Anne McElvoy surveys current thinking on big political ideas and ideology.

New Thinking: The impact of being multilingual

John Gallagher looks at creating in multiple tongues and the slipperiness of metaphor

Get Carter

Digging beneath the surface of the classic Brit noir film with director Mike Hodges

Family ties and reshaping history

From Neanderthals to Sikh warriors to the idea of ‘WEIRD’ people, 3 authors look at kin

New Thinking: The Mayflower and Native American History

Eleanor Barraclough explores the significance of the much mythologised Pilgrim voyage.

Piranesi and disturbing archecture

Susanna Clarke, author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is one of Matthew Sweet's guests

The Radiophonic Workshop

Matthew Sweet meets members of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

Wole Soyinka's writing

Ben Okri, Louisa Egbunike & Oladipo Agboluaje discuss the Nigerian author's life and work

Bernard-Henri Lévy, Stella Sandford, Homi K Bhabha

Shahidha Bari talks to Bernard-Henri Lévy, Stella Sandford, Homi K Bhabha

Anne Applebaum, Ingrid Bergman, Herland

Politics and friendship and the lives of Ingrid Bergman and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

Dada and the power of Nonsense

A project to re-imagine the Dada arts movement now, and reflections on satire and nonsense

Anne Applebaum, Ingrid Bergman, Herland

Anne Applebaum, and the lives of Ingrid Bergman and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

New Thinking:Nature Writing

From Gilbert White to lockdown blogs - why we need to spend more time in nature.

Magic

Matthew Sweet and guests conjure a conversation about the importance and appeal of magic

How do we build a new masculinity ?

Sunil Gupta, CN Lester, Tom Shakespeare & Alona Pardo with Matthew Sweet

The consolation of philosophy and stories

Matthew Sweet talks to Kylie Murray, Prof Seth Lerer and former Bishop Richard Holloway

What does a black history curriculum look like?

Whose life stories are missing from the British history we write and teach?

Gambling, good leadership and economic history

Anne McElvoy looks at betting, economics and the leadership of US presidents

Frank Cottrell-Boyce

The screenwriter and novelist talks to Matthew Sweet about depicting Britain in his work.

Ian Rankin and Tahmima Anam

A pair of authors due to be at the Bradford Literature Festival compare notes on writing.

Revisit: Arundhati Roy

The Man Booker prize winning author and campaigner is in conversation with Philip Dodd.

Rethinking the Curriculum

Sandeep Parmar, Jade Cuttle, Edith Hall, Seb Falk talk to Rana Mitter about what we teach

Irenosen Okojie and Nadifa Mohamed. Midsummer archaeology

A virtual Bare Lit Festival talk, Nadifa Mohammed & Irenosen Okojie with Shahidha Bari

Queer Bloomsbury and stillness in art and dance

Paul Mendez and Francesca Wade on Virginia Woolf, walking, identity and Dalloway Day

Revisit: Antarctica - testing ground for the human species

An author, scientist, architect and explorer compare notes on this polar region.

New Thinking: Refugees

What are the best shelters? the right language? what do we learn from self help in camps?

The future of theatre debate

Bertie Carvel, Amit Lahav, Eleanor Loyd, Roy Alexander Weise, Caroline Dinenage MP & more

Failure and female friendship

Lara Feigel, Michèle Roberts & New Generation Thinker Alexandra Reza with Shahidha Bari

Dickens

Mathew Sweet, Linda Grant, Laurence Scott & Lucy Whitehead 150 years since Dickens' death

New Thinking: Tackling Modern Slavery

Naomi Paxton looks at new research into the effectiveness of the UK Act passed in 2015

Robin Askwith

The actor talks to Matthew Sweet about a childhood affected by polio and his career.

Revisit: Tokyo Story

Actor Richard Wilson & Prof Naoko Shimazu discuss Yasujiro Ozu's 1953 film of family life

Revisit: Rowan Williams and Simon Armitage

Landscape in poetry discussed by Rowan Williams and Simon Armitage at Hay.

Sarah Perry

In a conversation with Mathew Sweet, the gothic author explores writing past and present.

Revisit: My Body Clock is Broken

Jay Griffiths, Vincent Deary, Louise Robinson and Matthew Smith discuss our mental health

Anne Fine and Romesh Gunesekera. Jarman's Garden

Shahidha Bari talks to a pair of writers about routines & knowing how to start and stop.

Kindness

Rutger Bregman tells Anne McElvoy why survival of the fittest needs rethinking as an idea

The 2020 Wolfson History Prize: David Abulafia, Hallie Rubenhold, Prashant Kidambi

From Indian cricket, a survey of the oceans to Jack the Ripper: 3 shortlisted historians.

Revisit: 2019 Wolfson History Prize Discussion

Rana Mitter with the 6 shortlisted historians and an audience at the British Academy

The 2020 Wolfson History Prize: Toby Green, Marion Turner, John Barton

New takes on Chaucer, the Bible and African trading from 3 of the historians shortlisted.

WW II radio propaganda & French relations

From a gratitude train to the sinister broadcasts to US soldiers. Matthew Sweet presents.

Revisit: Encylopedias and Knowledge from Diderot to Wikipedia

Jimmy Wales talks Diderot & collecting knowledge + Tariq Godard on Mark Fisher aka k-punk

Revisit: Mark Haddon

As it comes out in paperback, Mark Haddon talks to Anne McElvoy about The Porpoise.

Cary Grant

Matthew Sweet talks to Pamela Hutchinson, Charlotte Crofts & Mark Glancy.

Revisit: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring

Tony Juniper, Emily Shuckburgh, Dieter Helm and Kapka Kassabova join Rana Mitter at Hay

Alternative Realities

Shahidha Bari explores the impact of life changing experiences & the fourth dimension

Deep Time and the Earth

Lewis Dartnell, Gaia Vince and David Farrier join Rana Mitter to look at deep ecology.

Belonging

Philip Dodd talks to actor Christopher Eccleston and historian Ruth Dudley Edwards

New Thinking: Religion and ordinary lives

Tom Charlton looks for evidence of belief from samplers to children's scribbles in bibles

Revisit: What does game playing teach us

From a Mesopotamian game to Scrabble, Shahidha Bari discusses competition and gaming.

Knees

From dance to prayer, knees ups to kneeling

New Thinking: Wordsworth

Professors Sally Bushell & Simon Bainbridge talk to New Generation Thinker Sarah Jackson

The Declaration Of Arbroath

Anne McElvoy and guests discuss the early medieval document and Scottish politics today

How do we build a new masculinity ?

Sunil Gupta, CN Lester, Tom Shakespeare & Alona Pardo with Matthew Sweet

What's so great about EM Forster

Deborah Levy and Laurence Scott talk to Shahidha Bari about the English novelist's work.

Future Thinking

Mark Honigsbaum, Lisa Mullen, Riel Miller, Sarah Dillon & Rupert Read with Matthew Sweet

Contagion and Viruses

Matthew Sweet talks to John Dupré , Mark Honigsbaum, Lisa Mullen & Matt Adams

Shoes

From Roman sandals to trainers and stilettos - Shahidha Bari looks at the shoe trade

New Thinking: Science Fiction

Hetta Howes, Caroline Edwards & Amy Butt ask is science fiction the new realism?

Does Growth Matter?

Is the economic future all about growth? Danny Dorling discusses Slowdown.

Slebs: Warhol, Beaton and celebrity culture

Lisa Mullen, Caroline Frost and historian & podcast host Greg Jenner join Matthew Sweet

Advertising & Artemisia

Considering how women have shaped art and advertising and new feminist writing in Korea.

Fighting Women

How women have fought on the frontline from antiquity to the present day

Jewish Identity in 2020

Howard Jacobson, Bari Weiss, Hadley Freeman, and Jonathan Freedland join Matthew Sweet.

Frank Ramsey

Shahidha Bari looks at the life and legacy of the 20th century polymath

Anne Enright + the value of gossip

Anne Enright discusses acting with Daisy Black, Emily Butterworth and Marie Le Conte.

How archictecture shapes society

Ricky Burdett, Liza Fior, Des Fitzgerald, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg Edwin Heathcote at LSE

New Thinking: Everything to Everybody - Shakespeare for the people

Islam Issa hears how Adrian Lester and Ewan Fernie are taking Shakespeare to the people

Japan Now 2020

Philip Dodd talks to Hiromi Ito, Tomoko Sawada, Yukiko Motoya, and Motoyuki Shibata

Genes, racism, ageing and evidence

Daniel Levitin on ageing & Adam Rutherford on race and genetics.

African Empire Stories

Petina Gappah & Sarah LeFanu on Livingstone, Kipling and Mary Kingsley in Africa

The Surreal World of Alejandro Jodorowsky

Matthew Sweet talks to the Chilean French director Alejandro Jodorowsky and to critics

Queer histories

How do we apply modern LGBT+ language and identities to historical figures?

The History of Sex

Fern Riddell, Kate Lister and Robin Mitchell discuss their research with Matthew

The shadow of slavery

From sugar and spice, to reparations and memorials: slavery and how we acknowledge it

Early cinema: why are we obsessed with firsts?

Matthew Sweet looks back at the early history of cinema

Samuel Beckett & the purpose of culture

If we want the arts to be a comfort blanket, where does Beckett fit in?

Mocking power past and present.

The German joker Tyll Ulenspiegel. Anne McElvoy, Daniel Kehlmann & Karen Leeder discuss.

New Thinking: It all begins here? Understanding the Industrial Revolution

John Gallagher discusses the Industrial Revolution with Emma Griffin and William Ashworth

Fungi: An Alien Encounter

Are fungi out to get us or here to help? A look at mushrooms in art, food and psychology.

How we see pregnancy past and present

Anne McElvoy hears the story of a woman who gave birth to rabbits and the news from Davos

Remembering Auschwitz

Rana Mitter marks the anniversary of the 1945 liberation & talks to author Anne Michaels

What is good listening?

Matthew Sweet with NYT journalist Kate Murphy, Anne Karpf, David Toop.

Poetry and Science: A 19th century metre on the (uni)verse

Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Greg Tate, Sam Illingworth & Sunayana Bhargava join Anne McElvoy.

Goddesses of academia

Nikita Gill, Francesca Wade, Sandeep Parmar & Victoria Leonard talk goddesses & classics

New Thinking: About Face

Would you change your nose if you could? What about an entire face transplant?

Psychohistory: Isaac Asimov and guiding the future

Matthew Sweet asks if the fictional science of psychohistory changed the future of humans

Why we read and the idea of the "woman writer"

From Elizabethan Anne Dowriche, Victorian Anne Bronte to why women say they read now.

Simplify your life

Nudism, camping, and vegetarianism: the Life Reform movement explained.

Philosophy and Film

Rana Mitter, Sally Potter and philosophers discuss whether you can philosophise with film

Could there be a private language?

Shahidha Bari investigates Wittgenstein's response to scepticism

Panpsychism - Is matter conscious?

Matthew Sweet lifts the lid on panpsychism, a radical movement in philosophy

The Strange Case of the Huge Country Pile

Why are we so obsessed by the setting of the big country house, upstairs and downstairs?

The culture wars and politics now.

Philip Dodd with Douglas Murray, David Goodhart, Beatrix Campbell & Maya Goodfellow.

Extinction Rebellion and the End of the World

Rana Mitter looks at the ideologies surrounding climate disaster

Speaking the right language.

Matthew Sweet asks how did the English language grow & what are the key election phrases?

The wealth gap, #MeToo and Edith Wharton

Rereading Edith Wharton's novel The Age of Innocence.

Pan-Africanism

Shahidha Bari discusses pan-Africanism in plays, films, literature and politics.

The shadow of empire and colonialism

The company that gave the world atrocious corporate violence and beautiful art

Feasting, fasting, hospitality, and food security

Food for thought? Eleanor Barraclough hosts Vicky Avery, Priya Basil, and Maia Elliott.

When TV & the information superhighway were new

Matthew Sweet and guests reflect on the experimental art of Nam June Paik and John Giorno

Resting And Rushing

Should we take more breaks at during the working day? With Claudia Hammond.

The future of universities

Harvard's Larry Summers & OU's Josie Fraser on the impact of technology & globalisation

Is the Shadow of Mao still hanging over China?

Rana Mitter talks to historians of China Jung Chang and Julia Lovell, & reporter Cindy Yu

The Mill on the Floss

Celebrating George Eliot with readings from Fiona Shaw

Are the arts saving Margate?

Investigating regeneration and gentrification in the new arts hub.

Why We Need New News

Research on reporting hangings, assassinations & propaganda from the Being Human Festival

The Legacy of the Trojan War

Why do the legendary walls of a Bronze Age city still cast such a long shadow?

Being Human: Love Stories

What does who we date and how we date say about us?

The Changing Image of Masculinity.

Writers Ben Lerner, JJ Bola & Derek Owusu on images of masculinity in fiction and life

Weimar and the Subversion of Cabaret Culture

Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome... Cabaret and club culture, recorded at the Barbican.

The 2019 Free Thinking Imperial War Museum Remembrance Debate

Who decides what’s worth saving and what is culturally significant to protect in wartime?

Quatermass

Matthew Sweet celebrates the classic TV sci-fi series with Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat

Halloween. Ghost Stories

Haunting stories with Kirsty Logan, Jeremy Dyson & host Shahidha Bari

Cars, Parking and Motorways

A discussion reflecting on automobiles, AI and the 60th anniversary of the M1 motorway.

Writing Real Life from Brexit to Grenfell

Ali Smith, Jay Bernard and James Graham at the British Library with Matthew Sweet

Landmark: The Yorkshire Feminist Winifred Holtby

Matthew Sweet is joined by Rachel Reeves MP, Jane Thomas and Katie Cooper in Hull.

What to Believe

Rana Mitter and guests have a look at the history of faith, doubt, economics and art.

New Thinking: First Encounters

Why we need to rethink the stories we tell of Columbus, Pocahontas & the English in India

Frieze Free Thinking Museums Debate

Museum directors from Asia and France join Anne McElvoy and an audience at RIBA.

Dictators

Matthew Sweet on Chaplin's 1941 film and rising populism today.

The Woolly Episode

From Sean the Sheep & Damien Hirst, to a knitted bikini.

2019 Booker Prize, The Power of Ancient Artefacts

Prehistory with Mike Pitts & Renee So, plus Alex Clark & Tinuke Craig

East Meets West

Orientalism now with Fatima Bhutto, Ziauddin Sardar, Tom Holland, and artist Inci Eviner.

Myth making, satire and Caryl Churchill

Monsters and myths in the art of Gerald Scarfe and Kiki Smith + Caryl Churchill's plays.

Modern Dutch Writing

Laurence Scott looks at the way Dutch writers are addressing history & contemporary life

The Frieze Masters Free Thinking Conversation about Art

Michael Govan Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art talks art with Philip Dodd

Rebecca Solnit, Truth, National Poetry Day.

Who holds the power? The US activist and author Rebecca Solnit talks to Shahidha Bari.

From The Spains to LatinX

Rana Mitter talks to Jason Webster, Ed Morales, Iain Sinclair and Iwona Blazwick.

Surveillance, Conspiracy, and Secrets from the Archives

Matthew Sweet on surveillance capitalism, The Third Man, and Stieg Larsson's obsessions

Anxiety

Comedian Sofie Hagen, Colombian novelist Héctor Abad & Isabel Hardman join Shahidha Bari.

Back to the '80s

Alexei Sayle and Adam Mars Jones join Matthew Sweet to revisit '80s film, tv and music

Landmark: Susan Sontag's Against Interpretation

Lauren Elkin, Lisa Appignanesi and Ben Moser on Susan Sontag's 1966 essay collection.

Tolerance, censorship and free speech.

Susan Neiman, Ursula Owen & Christopher Hampton join Anne McElvoy.

Revisit Anxiety, Teenagers, University and Leaving Home

Psychologist Stephen Briers, student Ceyda Uzun and Durham Univeristy's Caroline Dower

Revisit Slavery Stories, William Melvyn Kelley & Esi Edugyan

Laurence Scott meets the family of a rediscovered African American writer & 3 historians

Revisit Napoleon in Fact and Fiction

Anne McElvoy looks at Napoleon's biography, caricatures and professional impersonators.

Revisit Mike Leigh in Conversation about Peterloo, politics and his Salford upbringing.

The film-maker talks to Matthew Sweet about depicting history and politics on film.

Revisit Spike Lee in Conversation on Free Thinking

The film-maker talks to Matthew Sweet about BlacKkKlansman & his 2000 film Bamboozled

Book Parts and Difficulty

Matthew Sweet looks at frontispieces, titles and marginalia, and hard texts.

New angles on post-war Germany and Austria

Anne McElvoy with Florian Huber, Sophie Hardach, Adam Scovell, Tom Smith

New Thinking: Neolithic Revelations

A lack of Neolithic dental floss proves to be a boon for archaeologists,

Camille Paglia

Camille Paglia in conversation with Philip Dodd about free speech and feminism

An insider's view of war

Ex-Marine & journalist Elliot Ackerman on Al Qaeda and the Iraq War. Rana Mitter presents

Caine Prize. Ivo van Hove. Female Desire.

Shahidha Bari looks at staging Ayn Rand's ideas and meets the 2019 Caine Prize winner.

Landmark: Iris Murdoch's The Sovereignty of Good

Matthew Sweet discusses Iris Murdoch's philosophical essay of 1970

Reinventing the 'Mistake on the Lake'.

Philip Dodd visits the US rust belt city of Cleveland.

Russia and Fear.

Rana Mitter considers fearing Russia past & present with Mark B Smith & Tamar Koplatadze.

Free Thinking: Language and Belonging

Preti Taneja with Guy Gunaratne,Dina Nayeri, Michael Rosen, Momtaza Mehri & Deena Mohamed

Amitav Ghosh. Layla and Majnun. Islam Issa.

Amitav Ghosh on linking refugees, climate change, Venice & Bengali forests in his fiction

Cindy Sherman, Laura Cumming

The art of Cindy Sherman plus art critic Laura Cumming on the days her mother disappeared

Jane Goodall, Elif Shafak

Two campaigning women talk to Matthew Sweet.

James Ellroy

Philip Dodd is in conversation with the American author James Ellroy

Catch 22, Recycling fashion, Fred D'Aguiar, Wu Mali

Anne McElvoy watches George Clooney in Catch-22 on TV and looks at recycling fashion.

Landmark: Finnegans Wake

Matthew Sweet and guests discuss James Joyce's experimental novel.

Afropean Identities. Filming the Arab Spring.

Johny Pitts and Caryl Phillips discuss the idea of Afropean identity with Matthew Sweet.

Michael Rakowitz, Archaeology Now, Epic Journeys and Facial Disfigurement

Artist, archaeologists, a writer and a historian of the face make the invisible visible

Breaking Down the Barriers

The cultural contribution of Muslim women and Rana Mitter talks to artist John Keane

Orwell's 1984. A Landmark of Culture.

Matthew Sweet explores what fed into Orwell's future vision & how our own is shaping up.

Is the Law keeping up with our changing world?

A panel of researchers share insights into the law and warfare, gender and AI

AI and creativity: what makes us human?

A discussion hosted by Matthew Sweet at the Barbican's exhibition AI More Than Human

Simon Schama, Siri Hustvedt, Catherine Fletcher at Hay.

Rana Mitter discusses writing on art from Da Vinci and Rembrandt to Louise Bourgeois.

Landmark: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring

Rana Mitter hosts a debate at Hay Festival about the rise of the environmental movement

Stanley Spencer, Domestic Servants, Surrogacy

Authors Nicola Upson and Joanne Ramos, and researchers Gulzaar Barn & Ella Parry-Davies.

Censorship and sex

With Naomi Wolf, Sarah Parker and Luis de Miranda.

Sebald. Anti-semitism. Carolyn Forché

The walking & photographs of WG Sebald. An exhibition of money and Jewish history.

Rivers, different cultures, different values

Anthropologist, Poet, Archaeologist and Angler reflect on what a river should be

Free Thinking:Homi Bhabha: On Memory and Migration

Shahidha Bari talks to Professor Bhabha about his influence on postcolonial studies.

Rivers and geopolitics

Global Dams, Ancient Rome & the Tiber: rivers, power and scarcity

Sergio Leone, Kubrick, Magic & the Mind.

Matthew Sweet talks Spaghetti Westerns w/ Christopher Frayling + conjuring tricks & bias

Chaucer. Bernardine Evaristo.

Anne McElvoy reads a new biography of Chaucer and talks to novelist Bernardine Evaristo.

Wolfson History Prize Discussion.

Rana Mitter and the six shortlisted historians with an audience at the British Academy

Free Thinking: 1819-The American Model

Elaine Showalter, Michael Schmidt, Peter Riley and Katie McGettigan with Laurence Scott.

Learning about love from Kierkegaard & Socrates. The Wellcome Book Prize

A philosopher of love and a philosopher in love

Landmark: Audre Lorde

Jackie Kay & Selina Thompson discuss the influential US writer & civil rights activist

Introducing the 2019 New Generation Thinkers

From German techno music to the Glasgow ‘rag trade’, divisive dams and democracy's bug

20 Words for Joy ... Feelings Around the World.

Aatish Taseer, Veronica Strang and Thomas Dixon at the Free Thinking Festival.

Does My Pet Love Me?

A Free Thinking Festival discussion with Nicky Clayton, Erica Fudge & Kim Bard

The New Age of Sentimentality

Lisa Appignanesi,Rachel Hewitt & Irenosen Okojie w/ Rana Mitter at Free Thinking Festival

Why We Need Weepies

From Bambi and Titanic to EastEnders - Matthew Sweet asks what makes us cry and why?

The Spirit of a Place: A Free Thinking Royal Society of Literature Discussion

Alan Johnson, Pascale Petit, Hisham Matar & Peter Pomerantsev join Eleanor Barraclough

Should Doctors Cry?

Does emotion have any place in relationships with patients in a more open age?

The Unsaid

Some people, some times, just can’t say what they want to. But why not?

The Way We Used To Feel

From Neanderthals, via Tudor England to Chartists - 4 historians on emotion in the past

How They Manipulate Our Emotions

Ad execs, game designers and VR creatives are all toying with our feelings - is that OK?

The Emotion of Now

Which is the most pertinent emotion in 2019 UK?

'Calm Down Dear' - How Angry Should Politics Get?

Dr Fern Riddell, Kehinde Andrews, Will Davies & Jo Ann Nadler join Shahidha Bari

Being Diplomatic

How much emotion should a diplomat, a news reporter or a conciliation expert show?

Anxiety and the Teenage Brain

Stephen Briers, Caroline Dower and Ceyda Uzun join Anne McElvoy at Sage Gateshead.

Crimes of Passion: Sophie Hannah, Michael Hughes and David Wilson

A crime writer, novelist from Northern Ireland and former prison governor compare notes.

Feelings, and Feelings, and Feelings. The Free Thinking Festival Lecture

Historian of emotions Professor Thomas Dixon, Matthew Sweet & the Sage Gateshead audience

Whatever happened to Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais?

Matthew Sweet meets the TV writers of The Likely Lads, Porridge and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet.

Betrayal

Philip Dodd explores the idea of betrayal

Childhood faces and fears

A history of orphans, fears about brainwashing and portraits on show at Compton Verney

Empathy

Authors Max Porter, Samantha Harvey & AK Benjamin discuss empathy with Chris Harding.

George Szirtes, Valeria Luiselli, Jhumpa Lahiri

One poet and two writers in conversation about language, migrants and personhood

Partition, colonial power and the voices of C16th women

Artist Hew Locke and historians Suzannah Lipscomb, Aanchal Malhotra & Anindya Raychaudhuri

The Council Estate in Culture

Why are estates so often portrayed as incubators of social deprivation and criminality?

Is British Culture Getting Wierder?

Gazelle Twin, Julia Bardsley, Hannah Catherine Jones, Luke Turner & William Fowler.

Women, relationships and the law past and present

Novelists Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, Layla AlAmmar & historians Jennifer Aston + Jessica Malay

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

Lara Feigel, David Aaronovitch, Melissa Benn, Xiaolu Guo & Matthew Sweet on Doris Lessing.

David Bailey, Don McCullin

Philip Dodd goes to David Bailey's studio and talks to Don McCullin about his Tate show.

The joy of sewing, poet Fatimah Asghar, Painting in miniature.

Shahidha Bari talks poetry and the web series Brown Girls, and the history of sewing.

Skeuomorphs, Design and Modern Craft

Laurence Scott & Will Self on redundant features in design + a visit to Collect Craft Show

Jack the Ripper and women as victims

Rescuing the Ripper's victims from the shadows of history

Images of Japan

Fumio Obata and Jocelyne Allen discuss graphic art and manga.

Authority in the Era of Populism

Louise Casey, Mary Kaldor, Jamie Bartlett, Heather Rabbatts & Rupert Reid w/ Anne McElvoy

The joy of sewing, poet Fatimah Asghar, Painting in miniature

Shahidha Bari talks poetry and the web series Brown Girls, plus the history of sewing.

Patti LuPone

The musicals star on politics, performing, #Me Too and her Italian-American roots.

Love

Andrew McMillan, Lavinia Greenlaw, Elanor Dymott, Laura Mucha- the science & art of love.

Africa Babel China

Histories of West Africa, 20th c China, art of translation

Spike Lee

The film-maker talks black power, blackface and Academy Awards with Matthew Sweet.

Self Knowledge, Global Catastrophe and Simulated Worlds

Quassim Cassam & Simon Beard with Matthew Sweet + RW Fassbinder's '70s TV sci-fi series

Encylopedias and Knowledge: from Diderot to Wikipedia.

Jimmy Wales talks Diderot & collecting knowledge + Tariq Godard on Mark Fisher aka k-punk

Street Culture, Protests, Food.

Philip Dodd talks to gilet jaune and novelist Edouard Louis about streets and culture.

Sea Goings

Rana Mitter with Katie Paterson Julia Blackburn Charlotte Runcie and Cutty Sark

Slavoj Zizek, Camille Paglia, Flemming Rose

Philip Dodd and guests explore the value of causing offence

Art & Refugees from Nazi Germany.

Writing about the Holocaust + the shock of Modernism in 1930s Britain

Consent

How we deal with unwanted sexual advances and changing depictions on stage are debated.

Slow Looking at Art

Ways of Seeing with Michael Craig Martin, Aura Satz, Kelly Grovier & Daniel Glaser.

Oscars 2019

Matthew Sweet & guests look at films making waves as the Academy announces its shortlists

Icons.

Do our heroes and heroines have to be perfect? We look at ikons, film idols & politicians.

Tourism past and present

The must see sights for Post Napoleonic war tourists, cold war travellers & hot spots now

Walls

Novelist John Lanchester, historians David Frye, Kylie Murray and journalist Tim Marshall

Boredom

Time and the value of doing nothing

Free Thinking: Born in 1819: Ruskin, Clough and Bazalgette

Laurence Scott examines the eminent Victorians Ruskin, Bazalgette and Arthur Hugh Clough.

Landmark: Laurel and Hardy's The Music Box

Matthew Sweet pays tribute to Hollywood's most famous comedy duo Stan and Ollie

Landmark: Watership Down

An ecological fable about a perfect society ? Matthew Sweet reads Richard Adams' classic.

What does game playing teach us?

Bobby Seagull & Irving Finkel join Shahidha Bari to look at competitiveness and games.

Trees of Knowledge

Peter Wohlleben Emanuele Coccia Marion Sidebottom Luke Turner

Ice

Anne McElvoy & guests travel to the frozen ends of the Earth & C17 theatrical magic...

Linton Kwesi Johnson

The reggae poet and recording artist talks politics religion and writing with Philip Dodd

Writing and Frankness

Deborah Levy, Adam Phillips & Amia Srinivasan join Matthew Sweet at the British Library.

Are we being manipulated?

Who's pulling your strings - Matthew Sweet and guests track down today's hidden persuaders

Is there a great divide between the arts and science?

Sir Paul Nurse and Tristram Hunt debate with an audience at Queen Mary University London.

Natasha Gordon. Bessie Head. Rwanda Representation and Reality

Gordon's play Nine Night, the life of Botswana's most influential writer, Rwanda on TV

Mike Hodges; Dark Sweden.

The director of Get Carter talks to Matthew Sweet about writing his own crime stories.

Slavery Stories

A long lost classic now published, Esi Edugyan's Booker shortlisted novel & new research

Plagues, Urban Inequality and Restricted Books

Artist Penny Woolcock, global health researcher Thomas Bollyky and Jane Stevens Crawshaw

Leadership: lessons from US Presidents and campaigners.

POTUS, crisis management and ambition - Doris Kearns Goodwin talks to Anne McElvoy

The Left Behind

Eric Kaufmann talks to Philip Dodd about white identity, populism and immigration

What kind of history should we write?

Peter Frankopan & Maya Jasanoff, winner of richest prize for history with Rana Mitter

Buses, beer and VR - a taste of university research.

From ancient religion to London's Greek Cypriot community & the 29 bus route

Death rituals

From death cafes to bronze age burials, C19th mourning rings to the way doctors cope.

Lost Words and Language

Shahidha Bari looks at research showcased in the Being Human Festival at UK universities

Why are we silent when conflict is loud?

Is public silence still the best way to honour our war dead?

Landmark: Journey to the End of the Night

Marie Darrieussecq, Andrew Hussey , Tibor Fischer& Damian Catani on Céline's masterpiece

Wilfred Owen: Poetry and Peace.

Gillian Clarke. Sabrina Mahfouz and Michael Symmons Roberts respond to the war poet.

Re-thinking the Human Condition

Thomas Woolston Free Thinker, Isaiah Berlin philosopher plus memory and neuroscience.

Religious divisions, puppet shows and politics.

The exile of English Catholics 450 years ago and suffragette Punch and Judy.

The Memes that Make Us Laugh

Julian Baggini, Tiffany Watt Smith & Christopher Harding

The Dark and Political Messages of Kids Fiction.

Michael Rosen looks at socialist fairy tales and radicalism in books for children.

Mike Leigh

The film director talks to Matthew Sweet as his historical epic Peterloo opens in cinemas

Playing God

Patrick Barlow on his play The Messiah, Daisy Black on Stoke's new medieval mystery play

Enchantment, Witches and Woodlands

Marie Darrieussecq, Lisa Mullen, Dafydd Daniel on magic and dystopias with Matthew Sweet.

Francis Fukuyama, Olga Tokarczuk, Alev Scott, Michael Talbot.

Rana Mitter explores identity forest landscapes and the long impact of the Ottoman empire

Re-writing C20th British Philosophy

Shahidha Bari with news of the Man Booker Prize and discussion about female philosophers

Discrimination

The lawyer Helena Kennedy joins Shahidha Bari to discuss how British justice fails women.

Greed and Landownership Past, Present, Future

Historian Tom Devine, Colombian novelist, Hector Abad and economist Paul Collier

Drugs and Consciousness

Does LSD open the doors of perception or just mess with your head?

A Feminist Take on Medieval History

How does Chaucer write about rape and consent ? Shahidha Bari with new academic research.

The Frieze Debate: Museums in the 21st Century

Michael Govan, Sabine Haag & Hartwig Fischer at the Royal Institution, London.

Sarah Perry’s Melmoth, Spookiness and Fear.

The Essex Serpent's author talks to Matthew Sweet about re-imagining the Melmoth myth.

Gandhi's power, portable citizenship & Indian writing - China's missing film star

Gandhi's power, portable citizenship & Indian writing with Rana Mitter & Amit Chaudhuri.

Loss, Grief and Anger

Lisa Appignanesi; Heather O'Neill; Cherie Dimaline; Pacific Arts Adviser, Jo Walsh

Slavoj Žižek, Camille Paglia, Flemming Rose

Philip Dodd and guests explore the value of causing offence.

The Goodies

Matthew Sweet meets the trio behind the '70s and early '80s TV comedy show

What Nietzsche teaches us

Biographer Sue Prideaux and others discuss Nietzsche's relevance today

What Camus and Claude Lévi-Strauss teach us

Being an outsider and learning to think like an outsider

What St Augustine teaches us

Anne McElvoy and guests explore ideas of tyranny, martyrdom, sin and grace

Sebastian Faulks

The author of Birdsong in conversation with Anne McElvoy about his new novel Paris Echo.

Women Finding a Voice

Deborah Frances-White host of The Guilty Feminist pod, Natalie Haynes, Michèle Roberts

Design

Including a report from the London Design Biennale and film historian Peter Biskind.

Landmark Jaws: Sharks and Whales

Matthew Sweet talks Jaws with shark expert Gareth Fraser and novelist Will Self.

Howard Jacobson

Writer Howard Jacobson with a keynote lecture on why we need the novel.

Helaine Blumenfeld, Dale Harding; Stella Tillyard

Anne McElvoy and sculptor Helaine Blumenfeld, artist Dale Harding, writer Stella Tillyard

Philosophical tennis, hidden beaches and Eleanor Marx.

Matthew Sweet takes a walk around Eleanor Marx's old neighborhood.

From C18 automata to Superheroes and Digital Living

Matthew Sweet visits The Marvellous Mechanical Museum at Compton Verney.

Renzo Piano

The Italian architect talks to Philip Dodd about his career from the Pompidou to the Shard

What do you call a stranger? The Caine Prize. NHS ideals.

Nandini Das and John Gallagher look at words for strangers in Tudor and Stuart England.

Fun Home, Olivia Laing, Oscar Wilde, The Deer Hunter

Alison Bechdel's memoir on stage, a novel inspired by Kathy Acker, Oscar Wilde in the USA

The body, past and present

Beauty - Renaissance to the present. Chantal Joffe & Heather Widdows with Anne McElvoy

The Working Lunch and Food in History

How the Victorians changed lunch, Elsa Richardson and Chris Kissane join Rana Mitter.

Oliver Rackham and Wildwood Ideas

The man who loved our trees and woods and new ideas of what they were and might become

Windrush. Forests in Art. South African Jazz

Colin Grant Hannah Lowe and Jay Bernard discuss writing about Windrush with Shahidha Bari

The Word For World Is Forest

Matthew Sweet reads Ursula Le Guin's novel + Paul Foot Award.

The Piano and Love

Debbie Wiseman, Fern Riddell, Frank Tallis and Tiffany Watt Smith join Matthew Sweet.

Inside the 'Intellectual Dark Web'

Philip Dodd explores the Intellectual Dark Web with Bari Weiss, Douglas Murray + Ed Husain

Mark Lilla. Owen Hatherley. Gulzaar Barn.

Why Mark Lilla thinks the American Left needs to rethink + Gulzaar Barn on medical trials

The Man Who Convinced Jimmy Carter to Run for President

Matthew Sweet talks to Jimmy Carter's former 'drug czar', Peter Bourne.

Bernard-Henri Lévy, Edith Hall and Simon Critchley

Shahidha Bari talks to three philosophers about how their work applies outside university

The rise of translation and the death of foreign language learning

Arundhati Roy, Meena Kandasamy and Preti Taneja on translation. With Anne McElvoy

American slavery, the occult and modern politics, jobs for psychopaths.

Iraq vet and novelist Kevin Powers, Gary Lachman plus the careers picked by psychopaths.

Rowan Williams and Simon Armitage

Landscape in poetry discussed by Rowan Williams and Simon Armitage at Hay.

Elif Shafak, Juan Gabriel Vásquez and Javier Cercas

Shahidha Bari chairs a discussion recorded with an audience at the Hay Festival.

Tacita Dean; Mountains, John Tyndall

The landscape of an artist’s imagination plus how mountaineering inspired a physicist

The 2018 Wolfson History Prize Debate

Rana Mitter and the 6 shortlisted historians in conversation at the British Academy

Motherhood in fiction, memoir and on the analyst's couch

Writers Sheila Heti, Jessie Greengrass and Jacqueline Rose compare notes on motherhood.

Jordan B Peterson

Self help and identity politics are on the agenda as Philip Dodd meets the YouTube star.

Designing the future

Shahidha Bari looks at Enid Marx, Rennie Mackintosh and Edward Bawden and visits the V&A.

John Gray, Atheism and Post-structuralism

Matthew Sweet looks at French philosophy and spies and explores belief with John Gray.

What is Speech?

Matthew Sweet and guests discuss talking and speech, including Trevor Cox

Charms: Madeline Miller; Zoe Gilbert; Kirsty Logan

Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough and renewal of myth, folk and fairy in modern writing

Out of Control?

Anne McElvoy looks at why we fight with former army officer Dr Mike Martin.

Disrupted Childhood. Turkish Star Wars

Pauline Dakin compares notes with Sally Bayley about a childhood on the run and reading.

Marxism

Anne Applebaum, Gregory Claeys, Jane Humphries and Richard Seymour discuss Marxism now.

America: Inequality & Race

Jesmyn Ward, John Edgar Wideman and Sarah Churchwell talk to Christopher Harding.

Tokyo Idols and Urban life.

Tomouki Hoshino, Suzanne Mooney, Mariko Nagai and Kyoko Miyake on representing city life.

Landmark: Rashōmon

David Peace & Natasha Pulley look at the writing of Akutagawa and the film by Kurosawa.

Japan and Nature

The photographs of Mika Ninagawa and the new novel from Hideo Yokoyama, with Anne McElvoy

Learning from Sweden

From IKEA to Bergman and ABBA - Matthew Sweet looks at Sweden's impact on Britain.

Shakespeare, Creativity and the Role of the Writer

Warwickshire words in the Bard's verse + the real Cleopatra. And playwright Ella Hickson.

The Politics of Fashion and Drag

Shahidha Bari talks fashion with Jenny Gilbert & to Scrumbly Koldewyn about the Cockettes

Marilynne Robinson

The American novelist and essayist talks religion, fiction & US politics with Rana Mitter

Macbeth and Things Fall Apart

Jo Nesbø and Mark Ravenhill on the Scottish Play; Chinua Achebe's novel about leadership.

British New Wave Films of the '60s

Matthew Sweet on the legacy of the film company behind A Taste of Honey and The Knack.

Death Comes to Us All

Richard Holloway, Kathryn Mannix and Kevin Toolis debate the end of life with Philip Dodd

What Do We Mean by "Working Class Writing"?

Kit de Waal, Darren McGarvey, Adelle Stripe and Michael Chaplin with Shahidha Bari.

Introducing the New Generation Thinkers 2018

From piracy to vegetarianism, George Orwell to surrogacy, Newton's alchemy to C18 fitness

Building Bridges and Other Megastructures

Writer Erica Wagner, engineer Sean Wilkinson & architect Simon Roberts with Rana Mitter.

#Speaking Up

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown,Afua Hirsch & Tarjinder Gill debate identity with Philip Dodd.

Mass Hysterics

Comedians Alexei Sayle, Jen Brister & Sanjeev Kohli join Matthew Sweet at Sage Gateshead

Can There Be Multiple Versions of Me?

June Sarpong, Emma Frankland, Gavin Francis and Julian Baggini chaired by Anne McElvoy.

Rethinking Civilisations

David Olusoga, Kit Davies and Kenan Malik debate what civilisation means with Philip Dodd

Gangs, the Usual Suspects

Symeon Brown, James Docherty, Alistair Fraser chaired by Matthew Sweet.

Power to the People?

David Runciman, Rod Liddle, Caroline MacFarland Danny Dorling & Anne McElvoy in Gateshead

Are We Afraid of Being Alone?

Sara Maitland, Lionel Shriver, and John-Henry Clay explore solitude.

Has Social Media Cracked the Code to the Crowd?

Julia Hobsbawm, Jamie Bartlett, Laurence Scott and Abeba Birhane with Anne McElvoy.

Podcast: There Is No I in Team

MP Johnny Mercer, Theatre Director Elizabeth Newman and former footballer Paul Fletcher.

The Dance of Nature

Jim Al-Khalili, Melissa Bateson, Andrew McBain and Richard Bevan explore group behaviour

The Population Bomb

Danny Dorling, Lionel Shriver and Stephen Emmott debate with Matthew Sweet.

The Free Thinking Lecture: Linda Yueh on Globalisation

Economist Linda Yueh delivers her vision for restoring faith in the free market.

New Research into the UK Women's Suffrage Movement.

With Helen Pankhurst, Jane Robinson, Shahida Rahman, Fern Riddell and Miranda Garrett

The Golden Notebook

Lara Feigel, Xiaolu Guo, Melissa Benn + David Aaronovitch on Doris Lessing's 1962 novel.

A Sentimental Journey

Seán Williams rereads Laurence Sterne's subjective travel book & talks to Philip Hensher

What Lies Beneath; Neanderthal Cave Art to Fatbergs

Poetic and archaeological trip round our fascination with what comes up when we dig down.

The Joy of Bureaucracy

Matthew Sweet with guests including Lord Butler, André Spicer and Eliane Glaser

Steven Pinker on Progress

Steven Pinker explains to Philip Dodd why we should ignore headlines & be more optimistic

Napoleon in Fact & Fiction

Napoleon impersonators, ballads and what if he didn't die in exile?

Reflecting Rural Life

Film maker Clio Barnard and novelist Amanda Craig on rural life. Matthew Sweet presents.

Free Thinking: Mark Dion; Colour, Insects, Virginia Woolf

Human Beings are part of Natural History discuss: via art, science and the Bloosmbury set

How Big Should the State Be?

David Willetts, Polly Toynbee, Simone Finn, Julia Black & Adrian Wooldridge at LSE.

Michael Ignatieff and Central Europe

Philip Dodd talks to Michael Ignatieff about the political landscape of central Europe.

Tariq Ali

Rana Mitter talks to Tariq Ali, novelist, historian & political activist about 1968.

Celebrating Buchi Emecheta

Single motherhood, child slavery & parallels w/ Grenfell in the books of Buchi Emecheta

Trade, Davos, Ocean travel and Mermaids

Anne McElvoy on Davos discussions, Ocean liner style at the V&A and mermaids in fiction.

The Working Class in Culture

Philip Dodd and guests ask has culture forgotten the working class?

Landmark: Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries

Colm Toibin, critic Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and Ellen Wettmark join Matthew Sweet.

Burns the Radical; Exploration

Humboldt as Ecuadorian explorer, plus the territory between Scotland and England.

Royalty, art and patronage.

Craig Brown, Afua Hirsch, Robert Jobson, Joe Moshenska, AN Wilson, Philip Dodd on royalty

Oscar Contenders, Movie Moguls and Silent Film Stars

Lucy Porter & Steve Massa on women of the silent era, Vanda Krefft on William Fox's life

Frankenstein and AI now.

Fiona Sampson, Daisy Hay, Christopher Frayling and David H. Guston with Matthew Sweet.

French writing and politics

Leïla Slimani, President Macron's champion of French culture and language, is interviewed

Australian novelist Peter Carey.

A car race around Australia is fictionalised in Peter Carey's latest novel + Ovid's tales

Counterculture and Protest

Matthew Sweet with Paul Hartnoll, Tony White, Tessa DeCarlo & Paul Cronin on uprisings.

The In Between

Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough considers airport lounges railway stations and liminal spaces

Landmark: The Odyssey

Amit Chaudhuri, Karen McCarthy Woolf, Daniel Mendelsohn and Emily Wilson join Philip Dodd

Diving Deep

Diving as metaphor, occupation and study from Tudor times to the present

The Invention of the Circus Ring

Matthew Sweet looks at the career of impresario Philip Astley and 250 years of circus

Rethinking Tradition

Roger Scruton, Kevin Davey, Kirsty Gunn & Haroon Mirza on tradition & experiment

A Literary Salon.

Malika Booker, Neil Brand, Katherine Cooper and Jake Arnott join Matthew Sweet.

Should We Keep Pets?

John Bradshaw, Jessica Pierce, Philip Howell and Laura Purcell with Anne McElvoy.

Landmark - This Sporting Life

Philip Dodd and his guests on David Storey's 1960 novel set in the world of rugby league

Many faces of Eve?

Catherine Fletcher with Stephen Greenblatt, Islam Issa, Jennifer Evans and Sara Read.

The Joy of Bad Films

Weathermen member Jonathan Lerner on underground protest & The Disaster Artist reviewed.

Russia: Totalitarianism and Punishment

Masha Gessen talks to Philip Dodd about tracing Russian history through four lives.

Ken Burns – Flash photography - Joy

The Vietnam War, poetry and flash photography with Ken Burns, Sasha Dugdale & Kate Flint.

Gentrification

Essayist Adam Gopnik talks to Shahidha Bari about city living. + artist Lucinda Rogers

Free Thinking – David Willetts plus does scandal drive social change?

The Rt Hon Lord David Willetts talks to Philip Dodd about universities in the UK

Free Thinking – Religious Belief

Philip Dodd looks at 2000 years of Arab Christians and the modern rise of Pentecostalism.

Improving or Ruining the Future? Kevin Rudd. Finland 100.

Kelly and Zach Weinersmith share visions of the future with Rana Mitter. Plus Kevin Rudd.

Free Thinking – Being Human: Lost and Found in the Archives

New Generation Thinkers Shahidha Bari & Laurence Scott report on the Being Human Festival

Being Human: The Lost Luggage Office, Ghosts and Warrior Poets.

Matthew Sweet in Canterbury and Portsmouth uncovering stories of the lost and the found.

Network, Jaron Lanier, Reputations.

BBC Head of News James Harding reviews a stage version of Paddy Chayefsky's Network.

Free Thinking: Poetry and Protest Newcastle

Poetry and protest -Jackie Kay, Fred D'Aguiar and Major Jackson at Newcastle University.

Russian Art and Exile. Part of Breaking Free: A Century of Russian Culture

Author Boris Akunin and broadcaster and writer Zinovy Zinik talk to Anne McElvoy.

Landmark – Man with a Movie Camera

Michael Nyman, Alexei Popogrebsky, Ian Christie and Larushka Ivan-Zadeh on Dziga Vertov

Free Thinking: Soviet Histories: Part of Breaking Free: A Century of Russian Culture

Svetlana Alexeivich on Soviet oral history as literature and Stephen Kotkin on Stalin.

The pros and cons of Swearing.

Comedian Janey Godley, historian John Gallagher, author Emma Byrne, poet Bridget Minamore

Benjamin Britten and Radio

David Hendy, Glyn Maxwell, Kate Kennedy and Lucy Walker with an audience at Aldeburgh.

Jonathan Swift at 350. Black and White Art. History of British nature writing.

Anne McElvoy on art from monochrome religious painting to a yellow light filled room...

Forgotten authors, cult fiction and The Prisoner

Director Alex Cox, Christopher Fowler, Clare Walker Gore & Lynda Nead with Matthew Sweet

Free Thinking: Young Marx, Yanis Varoufakis and Ruth Lea and Tara Bergin

Yanis Varoufakis with Philip Dodd. Plus the new play from Richard Bean and Clive Coleman

Harry Potter. Tim O'Reilly. Tove Jansson.

Web guru Tim O'Reilly; the magical worlds of Harry Potter, Philip Pullman, Tove Jansson

Free Thinking: Landmark: Marnie

Matthew Sweet with an exploration of memory and Winston Graham's novel/Hitchcock's film

The Man Booker Prize. Mike Bartlett. Is Small Beautiful?

Dr Foster writer Mike Bartlett on his new play Albion plus the rise of small nations.

Pacific Rim politics; Ronan Bennett; Sjon

Rana Mitter hosts a debate on relations between Japan, US and China.

Jewish history, jokes and contemporary identity. Michael Longley

Simon Schama and Devorah Baum discuss Jewishness

Salman Rushdie. Uncertainty

Novelists Salman Rushdie and Lionel Shriver plus Marcus Chown and Rachel Hewitt.

Free Thinking - Blade Runner. Ghost Stories

Matthew Sweet watches a vision of Los Angeles 2049 & visits haunted places in Portsmouth

Free Thinking - Alan Hollinghurst

The former Booker Prize winner talks to Anne McElvoy and a Proms Extra audience.

Free Thinking: The importance of networks; the art of dance.

Niall Ferguson argues for a less hierarchical history. Degas' images of the human body.

Landmark: Andrew Marvell's To His Coy Mistress

Michael Symmons Roberts, Helen Mort and Stewart Mottram join Matthew Sweet in Hull.

Simon Heffer. Social Conservatism. Sibelius. D'Oyly Carte.

Rana Mitter and guests look back to Edwardian England and at conservative thinking now.

Kamila Shamsie: John Kasmin. Dido

Philip Dodd looks at postcards of beggars, the love and scorn of Dido and radicalisation.

Free Thinking. Bernard MacLaverty. Immigration. Christian destruction of Classical World

The Northern Irish author of Cal talks to Anne McElvoy about his new novel Midwinter Break

Testosterone. The grey zone. Indian science.

Jahnavi Phalkey, Matt Kimberley, Richard Fortey, Adrian Owen & Cordelia Fine.

Diplomacy: Sir John Jenkins, Gabrielle Rifkind, Michael Burleigh, Dr Beyza Unal.

Philip Dodd and guests explore the art of negotiation and discuss JT Rogers' play Oslo.

Free Thinking: Russian Nationalism. Scythians. Hull and Port Talbot on stage.

Anne McElvoy talks to Anne Applebaum about Russian and Ukrainian history.

Free Thinking: Social Conservatism, Kathe Kollwitz and John Ashbery

Art and irony - Philip Dodd and Joanna Kavenna on the Käthe Kollwitz show in Birmingham

Free Thinking: Washing in public. Sir Peter Hall (1930 - 2017)

Public pools, the "steamie" and the Turkish bath are explored by Matthew Sweet and guests.

Free Thinking: Landmark: Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy

Simon Heffer and Tiffany Jenkins join Matthew Sweet and an audience at Sussex University.

Free Thinking: Art in the Age of Black Power; History of Racist Ideas in US

Rana Mitter and Linton Kwesi Johnson and Ibram X Kendi

Free Thinking - Queer Icons: Plato's Symposium. Part of Gay Britannia.

Shahidha Bari discusses LGBTQ in the history of philosophy + the Caine Prize winner

Free Thinking – Writing Love: Jonathan Dollimore, Heer Ranjha. Queer Icons: Sappho. Part of Gay Britannia

The Punjabi "Romeo and Juliet"; and founding the Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence

Free Thinking – Philip Hoare and Elizabeth Jane Burnett on wild swimming. Jake Arnott on Joe Orton

Philip Hoare and Elizabeth Jane Burnett swim in the literary and poetic power of the sea

Free Thinking: Food

Matthew Sweet explores the joys of food

Free Thinking: Canada 150: Sydney Newman and British TV; Vahni Capildeo; Shubbak Festival 2017

Matthew Sweet investigates the Canadian dynamo who transformed British TV drama

Free Thinking: Canada 150: Identity Robbie Richardson, Alison MacLeod, Deborah Pearson + Rupi Kaur and Kevan Funk.

New Generation Thinkers Shahidha Bari & Laurence Scott look at Canada in TV, poems + art

Free Thinking - Canada 150: Robert Lepage, Katherine Ryan.

The French Canadian playwright/performer and the stand up comedian talk to Philip Dodd

Free Thinking - Man and Machine: Garry Kasparov, Wyndham Lewis. 2017 New Generation Thinker Simon Beard

Philip Dodd looks at AI with Garry Kasparov, Vorticism and research into overpopulation.

Free Thinking - Terrorism: Richard English, Baroness Warsi, 2017 New Generation Thinker Thomas Simpson.

Rana Mitter and guests look at fact and fiction as they explore how terrorism works.

Free Thinking: Tom McCarthy. Jacobitism; Satirical Indexes; A Museum of Modern Nature

Anne McElvoy looks at Bonnie Prince Charlie and Nature exhibitions & meets Tom McCarthy.

Free Thinking: Churchill, Pocahontas and The Idiot

Anne McElvoy considers Churchill on the big screen and the legacy of Pocahontas.

Free Thinking: Narcissism

Shahidha Bari and Laurence Scott explore our obsession with the self.

Free Thinking: Will Self, R. D. Laing and Mandy.

Matthew Sweet talks to Will Self about the mind, consciousness and R. D. Laing.

Free Thinking: Political Sketch Writing. Enclosure Acts. 2017. Branwell Bronte. Pushkin House Book Prize 2017

Anne McElvoy and guests look at the style of the election and the job of sketch writers.

Free Thinking - Revenge: My Cousin Rachel, Natalie Haynes, 2017 New Generation Thinker Islam Issa.

Matthew Sweet sees a film version of Daphne Du Maurier's novel, and revenge in Shakespeare

Free Thinking - Arundhati Roy

The Man Booker prize winning author and campaigner is in conversation with Philip Dodd.

Free Thinking - Hay 2017: Writing History with Sebastian Barry, Jake Arnott, Madeleine Thien.

New Generation Thinker Sarah Dillon chairs a discussion recorded at the Hay Festival.

Free Thinking: Ecstasy. Carpe Diem. 2017 New Generation Thinker Hetta Howes on medieval ecstasy.

Jules Evans and Roman Krznaric discuss living in the moment and trances with Rana Mitter.

Free Thinking: Hay 2017: Women's Voices in the Classical World.

Writers and historians join Catherine Fletcher for a discussion recorded at Hay.

Free Thinking: Artist Tom Phillips at 80; How do we save our plants?

Artist Tom Phillips talks to Philip Dodd about his career as he marks his 80th birthday.

Free Thinking - Japan and Korea. Hokusai

Chris Harding discusses the work of Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai

Free Thinking - Bella Bathurst. Mike Figgis. Birds in British literature. 2017 New Generation Thinker Daisy Fancourt.

Matthew Sweet explores deafness, plot twists, birds in books & how music is good for you

Free Thinking: Fiona Shaw and Mark Ravenhill on Brecht, John Knox, 2017 New Generation Thinker Joanne Paul.

Philip Dodd looks at speaking truth to power and the beliefs of John Knox and Galileo.

Free Thinking: Rachel Seiffert. James Hawes,Richard Nelson. 2017 New Gen Thinker Alistair Fraser on gangs

Anne McElvoy explores German Russian history, US electioneering and crime with her guests

Free Thinking - Artist Taryn Simon. Deglobalisation. 2017 New Generation Thinker Eleanor Lybeck on the circus.

Photo London's Master of Photography Taryn Simon on her new exhibition Image Atlas

Free Thinking: Laurent Binet; the rise of blockchain tech.

Anne McElvoy talks to the French novelist about Roland Barthes.

Free Thinking: Salomé, Angels in America, Queer British Art

Philip Dodd looks at desire & politics as Angels in America runs at the National Theatre

Free Thinking: The Wolfson Prize

Rana Mitter is joined by the 6 shortlisted authors and an audience at the British Academy

Free Thinking: Breaking Free: Landmark - Paradise Lost

John Carey, Islam Issa, Mandy Green and Joe Moshenska with Philip Dodd.

Free Thinking: Breaking Free - Martin Luther’s Revolution. New Research into the Reformation

Alec Ryrie, Tom Charlton, Elizabeth Goodwin and Tara Hamling join Rana Mitter.

Free Thinking - Breaking Free: Martin Luther's Revolution

Peter Stanford Ulinka Rublack and Diarmaid MacCulloch discuss Martin Luther.

Free Thinking - Wellcome Book Prize, Civil Wars: Susan Buck-Morss and A.C. Grayling, Louisa Egbunike and Akachi Ezeigbo.

Anne McElvoy discusses nation states and war with A.C. Grayling and Susan Buck-Morss.

Free Thinking - What now for environmentalism? With Paul Kingsnorth, James Thornton and Martin Goodman

Writer Paul Kingsnorth talks about his changing attitude to the environmental movement.

Free Thinking - Smell: Michele Roberts, A history of dentistry

Matthew Sweet is joined by writer Michele Roberts, who talks about her latest novel.

Free Thinking - Landmark: Leaves of Grass

Poets Mark Doty and Andrew McMillan and Professor Sarah Churchwell on Walt Whitman's poem

Free Thinking – John Irving

The author of The Cider House Rules on religion, Mexico and the USA. With Philip Dodd.

Free Thinking - Writers Writing about Love

Alain de Botton, Tahmima Anam and AL Kennedy talk to Anne McElvoy about love in prose.

Free Thinking - Taking the Long View with the Animal Kingdom

Tim Birkhead and Phyllis Lee on long-lived animal species and their survival strategies.

Free Thinking - My Body Clock is Broken

Jay Griffiths, Vincent Deary, Louise Robinson and Matthew Smith discuss our mental health

Free Thinking Festival: Time, Space and Science

Carlos Frenk, Eugenia Cheng, Jim Al-Khalili and Louisa Preston debate time and space.

Free Thinking Festival: Writing Life

Poet Simon Armitage and writer Alexandra Harris explore time and place in modern Britain.

Free Thinking at Uproot Festival

Author David Mark and poet Adelle Stripe join Matthew Sweet and an audience at Hull Truck.

Free Thinking: An interview with Haemin Sunim

Haemin Sunim, the Buddhist meditation teacher, on calm in a fast-paced 21st century world

Free Thinking Festival: New Generation Thinkers 2017

The 2017 New Generation Thinkers make their first public appearance together.

Free Thinking Festival: Education Slow and Fast

Tony Sewell and Mike Grenier on the challenges of education in the 21st century.

Free Thinking Festival: The Time of Your Life

Edwina Currie, Miranda Sawyer and Lola Okolosie explore the different times of our lives.

Free Thinking Festival: The Never-Ending Workday

Sathnam Sanghera, Judy Wajcman, Griselda Togobo and Robert Colvile on time and working.

Free Thinking Festival: The Speed of Revolution

Bettany Hughes, Richard J Evans and John Hall join Philip Dodd and an audience at Sage

Free Thinking Festival: Doing Time/Confinement

Terry Waite, Erwin James and Cleo Van Velsen on the experience of isolation.

Free Thinking Festival: Quick Reactions

Damon Hill,Tanni Grey-Thompson and Lincoln Jopp on pressured decision-making at top speed

Free Thinking Festival: How Short is a Short Story?

George Saunders, Kirsty Logan, Jenn Ashworth and Paul McVeigh on writing short fiction.

Free Thinking Festival: Harriet Harman - Politics Fast and Slow

Labour MP Harriet Harman on sustaining her career in a fast-changing political world.

Free Thinking Festival: Faster, Faster, Faster?

Pinky Lilani, Denise Mina, Jay Griffiths and John Gallagher debate the speed of life.

Free Thinking: Sleep - Freedom to Think

Russell Foster, leading neuroscientist, with the Free Thinking lecture, The Speed of Life

Free Thinking - Rodney Graham at BALTIC, The Amber Collective.

New Generation Thinker Shahidha Bari visits exhibitions opening in Gateshead and Newcastle

Free Thinking: Images of America

As London hosts 2 exhibitions of American art, Anne McElvoy discusses the American Dream.

Free Thinking - Michael Lewis.

The New York Times bestselling author is in conversation with Matthew Sweet.

Free Thinking: Neglected Women: Lady Mary Wroth, Margaret Cavendish, Charlotte Robinson.

Author Tracy Chevalier and new academic research into women forgotten from history.

Free Thinking: Landmark: Machiavelli's The Prince

Sarah Dunant, Erica Benner, MP Gisela Stuart and Catherine Fletcher with Philip Dodd.

Free Thinking - Neil Jordan, Flat Time House, Teletubbies

Author Neil Jordan in a hall of mirrors and artist Laure Prouvost on Flat Time House

Free Thinking: India/Pakistan: Mohsin Hamid. Gurinder Chadha's Viceroy's House. Preti Taneja and Sam Goodman

Anne McElvoy and guests look back at 1947, the end of empire and refugees travelling now.

Free Thinking - Japan Now Festival at the British Library.

Christopher Harding talks to writers Alex Kerr, Yoko Tawada and filmmaker Momoko Ando.

Free Thinking: 'Play' in urban design, Gillian Allnutt

Philip Dodd considers the importance of 'play' in the way our city centres are designed.

Soil Stories Old and New

Elizabeth-Jane Burnett, Jules Pretty, Andrew Scott, Philip Coupland, Matthew Kelly

Free Thinking - Shakespeare in cartoons; Jess Phillips; Sidney Nolan's Australian legends.

Anne McElvoy talks to cartoonists and curators about creating memorable images.

Free Thinking: Hull: A trip down memory lane.

Basil Kirchin's Hull, Richard Bean's Civil War play and the re-opened Ferens Art Gallery.

Free Thinking: Martin Luther- fundamentalist reactionary or enlightened creator of our modern world

Diarmaid MacCulloch, Ulinka Rublack and Peter Stanford discuss Martin Luther

Free Thinking: Paolozzi; Daniel Dennett

Philip Dodd looks at the art of Paolozzi and talks consciousness with Daniel Dennett.

Rude Valentines. Neil Gaiman, Translating China's Arts

Neil Gaiman talks Norse myths with Rana Mitter. And a look at the ugly side of Valentines

Free Thinking: Professor Paul Gilroy

Philip Dodd is in extended conversation about culture & race with Professor Paul Gilroy.

Free Thinking: Robots, and an Icelandic Dracula

Matthew Sweet meets Eric the UK's first robot, built in 1928 now at the Science Museum.

Free Thinking: Russian Art and Revolution

Dolya Gavanski, Stephen Smith, Victor Sebestyen, Charlotte Hobson and Anne McElvoy.

Borders: On the ground, on the map, in the mind

From Ireland to Turkey, from soldiering to walking to photographing - with Anne McElvoy.

Free Thinking: Anger and friendships with Pankaj Mishra and Elif Shafak.

Novelist Elif Shafak, US magazine editor Julius Krein, Douglas Murray and Pankaj Mishra.

Free Thinking - Caribbean Culture.

Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, Colin Grant and Kei Miller discuss the Caribbean with Matthew Sweet

Free Thinking: Yaa Gyasi. Daniel Levitin. Peter Bazalgette, James Bartholomew on Clarity, Civility and Strong States.

Tooling a stronger civil society plus a novel on Slavery on both sides of the Atlantic.

Davos Discussions. Shobana Jeyasingh. New Generation Thinker Seán Williams

Anne McElvoy explores topics discussed at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum

Free Thinking: Oscar Nominations; T2 Trainspotting; Denial

Matthew Sweet and guests consider film making in 2017.

Free Thinking - Victorian Bodies, Citizens of Everywhere

Rana Mitter talks Victorian bodies and looks at the Citizens of Everywhere arts project.

Free Thinking - The influence of the British Black Art movement.

Artists Sonia Boyce, Isaac Julien, Eddie Chambers and Harold Offeh talk to Anne McElvoy.

Free Thinking: The War of the Worlds sequel, Eimear McBride

Matthew Sweet talks to Stephen Baxter about his sequel to HG Wells's novel.

Free Thinking - Chibundu Onuzo; Nadeem Aslam. Lockwood Kipling's art.

Anne McElvoy reads novels set in Pakistan and Nigeria; plus Lockwood Kipling art teacher.

Free Thinking: The Arts of Running

Artists Kai Syng Tan and Angus Farquhar join Hayden Lorimer and Vybarr Cregan-Reid.

Free Thinking: La La Land and Hollywood - past and present

Matthew Sweet and guests consider Hollywood's obsession with Hollywood.

Free Thinking - Breaking Free: Karl Kraus - Jonathan Franzen.

Philip Dodd looks at the biting satire and contemporary relevance of Austrian Karl Kraus

Free Thinking: Patriotism: The Union Jack

Afua Hirsch, Graham Bartram, John Bew, Ash Sarkar & Andrew Rosindell join Anne McElvoy.

Free Thinking - Patriotism: China, Russia, Japan, Latin America.

Xiaolu Guo, Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, Michael Auslin and David Priestland join Rana Mitter

Free Thinking - Patriotism: Alain Finkielkraut, Karim Miské

Philip Dodd talks to Alain Finkielkraut and Karim Miské about French identity

Free Thinking: Calling to Account: Bronwen Maddox, Margaret Hodge, Matthew Parris.

Are public enquiries good government? Plus Matthew Parris on scorn. Anne McElvoy presents

Free Thinking: John Simpson on the death of the war correspondent.

Philip Dodd and guests consider what we mean by 'news' in 2016.

Free Thinking - A Brexit reading list.

Edith Hall, Chris Kissane + Matthew Sweet consider what might be on a Brexit reading list

Our Relationship with Animals: Will Abberley, Chris Packham, Helen Pilcher, Alan Hook

Shahidha Bari looks at computing for cats, de-extinction and an animal symphony.

Maths: Alex Bellos, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Serafina Cuomo, Vicky Neale

As a newly designed Maths gallery opens at the Science Museum,why we need better numeracy

Free Thinking - Voices in Our Ears: Colin Grant, Josie Rourke, Charles Fernyhough, Clare Walker Gore

Matthew Sweet looks at epilepsy considering Joan of Arc, Wilkie Collins & hearing voices

Free Thinking - Rauschenberg - performance, identity and the writings of Erving Goffman.

What price the self in the 21st century? with Dexter Dalwood, Susie Scott + Tom McCarthy

Elites.

Douglas Carswell, David Runciman and Eliane Glaser join Matthew Sweet to discuss elites.

The Weird. Science and Art at FACT. Japanese film Your Name.

Rana Mitter on science and art on show at Liverpool's FACT and what we mean by the weird.

Schiller's Mary Stuart; Günter Grass. Preti Taneja on translated fiction, Rachel Reeves.

Anne McElvoy on Robert Icke's version of Mary Stuart and the last novel from Günter Grass

Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith talks dance, depicting teenage friends and US/UK differences with Philip Dodd

Free Thinking - Beards. Listening. Masculinity.

Alun Withey on beards, Josh Appignanesi & Devorah Baum on fatherhood, with Matthew Sweet

Free Thinking: Being Human: What the Archives Reveal

Matthew Sweet visits the London Survey, Kew, a cemetery and a hut used by Anzac soldiers.

Free Thinking - Being Human: New Generation Thinkers explore Escape, Lying and Fear.

Shahidha Bari and Laurence Scott on Vernon Lee, Harvey Matusow and wartime Senate House

Free Thinking - Being Human Debate at FACT, Liverpool: Man and Animals

From mermaids to robots via monkeys and men and zoos for humans and animals.

Free Thinking - Art Spiegelman. Marina Abramovic. American Pastoral.

Naomi Alderman reports on a version of Maus which puts music alongside the images.

Free Thinking - Black British History.

Bernardine Evaristo, Keith Piper, Miranda Kaufmann and Kehinde Andrews on Black Britain

Free Thinking: Still Loving Victoriana Jokes and All

Matthew Sweet with novelists Sarah Perry and Carol Birch and some Victorian jokes

Free Thinking - Landmark: Sir Walter Scott's Waverley

Rana Mitter on the first historical novel, one that invented Scotland and built Britain

Free Thinking - Stephen Poliakoff and Linda Grant; Yuval Noah Harari.

Post second world war Britain is discussed by the TV dramatist, novelist and Philip Dodd.

Free Thinking - Whose Book Is It Anyway?

Anne McElvoy discusses new research into how, when and why Britons got the reading habit.

Free Thinking: Enoch Powell; US Supreme Court; War & Art

Birmingham Rep stages a play about Enoch Powell; John Keane & Jananne Al-Ani on war art.

Free Thinking- William Kentridge, Vivienne Koorland and Gavin Jantjes discuss South Africa and art.

South Africa and art with William Kentridge, Vivienne Koorland and Gavin Jantjes .

Free Thinking - Richard Hakluyt; Man Booker Prize; Chickens in the Anthropocene; Shirley Jackson.

Why chickens are man's best friend, Richard Hakluyt's voyages to America & parallels now

Free Thinking: Artes Mundi Prize. Harriet Walter. Amitav Ghosh. Edmund Richardson

Harriet Walter prepares to play Prospero, a review of the bi-ennial art prize in Cardiff.

Free Thinking - Paul Nash; George Szirtes; Hungary 1956 and now.

A graphic novel inspired by Paul Nash's dreams. Religion & revolution in Hungary debated

Free Thinking: Kevin Brownlow

Kevin Brownlow talks to Matthew Sweet about documenting and restoring silent classics.

Free Thinking: Caravaggio; Bob Dylan; Dario Fo; Lenin's train journey.

Caravaggio's art explored by Letizia Treves, Joe Moshenska and Anders Lustgarten.

Free Thinking: Sound Frontiers - Teju Cole

From Baldwin to Black Lives Matter. Philip Dodd talks to Teju Cole

Free Thinking: Outsiders and Colin Wilson. Norse sagas. The Vulgar.

Gary Lachman discusses Colin Wilson's ideas about alienation with Matthew Sweet.

Free Thinking: Sound Frontiers: Margaret Atwood and Naomi Alderman

The authors talk electric shocks, Shakespeare and the power of women with Philip Dodd.

Free Thinking: Wells' Women

As the London Literature Festival opens, HG Wells: women, politics and four dimensions.

Free Thinking - Sound Frontiers: Kamila Shamsie, Nikesh Shukla, Drugs in the German Reich. Board Games.

Rana Mitter debates refugees, what is a good immigrant? Hitler's drug addiction and games

Free Thinking - Sound Frontiers: Books of 1946

Benjamin Markovits, Lara Feigel and Kevin Jackson discuss the best fiction of 1946

Free Thinking - Sound Frontiers: Success debated by Peter Frankopan, Edith Hall, Kwame Kwei-Armah

Anne McElvoy & guests on Success, subject for debate on the Third Programme back in 1967

Free Thinking: Sound Frontiers: People Power

Philip Dodd and guests discuss Clement Attlee's legacy, people power and cultural tastes.

Free Thinking: Medieval Manuscripts. Emma Donoghue.

Author of Room talks to Matthew Sweet about starvation and sainthood in her new novel

Free Thinking: American Power? Suzan-Lori Parks. Gary Younge. Abstract Expressionism.

Pulitzer prize winning American dramatist Suzan-Lori Parks. William Boyd on American art.

Free Thinking: Shelina Janmohamed. Edward Ardizzone's Art. Jewish identity in fiction

Shelina Janmohamed explores "Generation M". Plus Edward Ardizzone's daughter on his art.

Free Thinking: Energy and Landscape: Edward Burtynsky, Ella Hickson

Photographer Edward Burtynsky, playwright Ella Hickson & experts on energy policy debate.

Free Thinking - Thames Estuary Festival, Jatinder Verma, Arne Næss

From Dickens, wartime defences to Doctor Who - Matthew Sweet explores the Thames Estuary.

Free Thinking - Aphra Behn. 1066 and the South Coast. Mark Thompson

Playwright, poet, spy. Anne McElvoy on Aphra Behn at the RSC. And a festival marking 1066

Free Thinking - Rio, addiction, and saying the unsayable

Anne McElvoy looks ahead to the Rio Olympics discussing Brazilian culture.

Free Thinking - War: Tear Gas. New Generation Thinker Anindya Raychaudhuri on the Spanish Civil War. Iraq.

Philip Dodd discusses war and modern memory.

Free Thinking - Liverpool Biennial 2016

Matthew Sweet reports from Liverpool where art has taken over the city.

Free Thinking - Scotland, Wales and the Ukraine: New Generation Thinker Victoria Donovan. The 2016 Caine Prize.

New Generation Thinker Victoria Donovan on Welsh links to Ukraine. Caine Prize winner

Free Thinking: The Desert: Geoff Dyer, Laurence Scott, Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia O'Keeffe images of New Mexico at Tate and Matthew Sweet looks at deserts

Free Thinking - Hisham Matar. Street Furniture. Easternisation. New Generation Thinker Katherine Cooper on Storm Jameson.

Hisham Matar's search for his father. Street furniture. Easternisation. Storm Jameson.

Free Thinking - Post Referendum reflections and New Generation Thinker Chris Kissane on citizenship.

The long view of the vote to leave the EU and New Generation Thinker Chris Kissane.

Free Thinking - Tony Garnett

British TV and film producer Tony Garnett is in conversation with Matthew Sweet

Free Thinking - Walter Benjamin; A cultural history of the body; Edvard Munch; Soviet Superwoman

Anne McElvoy evaluates the fiction of Walter Benjamin and the Soviet superwoman.

Free Thinking - Universities: Therapy or Learning?

Philip Dodd debates "Universities - therapy or learning?". Dr Seán Williams on Nietzsche

Free Thinking: Hands - The Anatomical Venus

Matthew Sweet discuses hands with Darian Leader plus New Generation Thinker Seb Falk.

Free Thinking - Nottingham Contemporary Art Debate: Elizabeth Price, Alice Channer.

Anne McElvoy is joined by curators and artists and an audience at Nottingham Contemporary

Free Thinking - Jane Mayer Dark Money - Money & US Politics - Flora Nwapa's Efuru - African Literature - Emma Cline The Girls

Emma Cline on cults and teenage girls, and we reread Flora Nwapa's pioneering novel Efuru

Free Thinking - Mystics and Reality: Joanna Kavenna, Dorothy Cross, Jo Dunkley, New Generation Thinker Edmund Richardson.

Matthew Sweet investigates various paths to reality with artist, writer and cosmologist

Free Thinking - Archaelogy: Alexandra Sofroniew, Damian Robinson, Raimund Karl, Susan Greaney.

Rana Mitter hears about archaeology underwater at home and abroad, at the BM & Ashmoleum

Free Thinking - Peter Singer

Moral philosopher Peter Singer is in conversation with Philip Dodd

Free Thinking - Sjón, Winifred Knights. Katie Roiphe. New Generation Thinker Sarah Jackson.

Icelandic writer Sjón, the career of Winifred Knights and New Generation Thinker on touch

Free Thinking - Bhupen Khakhar. The City State of London? Saskia Sassen, Jane Morris, David Anderson and Pat Kane.

Philip Dodd explores the art of Bhupen Khakhar as a retrospective opens at Tate Modern.

Free Thinking: Hay Festival: Inheritance - Steve Jones, Lionel Shriver, Marlon James

Lionel Shriver, Marlon James and Steve Jones join Rana Mitter to debate inheritance

Free Thinking - Hay Festival: New Generation Thinkers 2016

The 10 New Generation Thinkers 2016 join Rana Mitter to discuss their research.

Free Thinking - Tale of Genji. Algorithms.

Rana Mitter rereads The Tale of Genji sometimes called the world's first novel.

Free Thinking - Latin America: Juan Gabriel Vasquez, Claudia Pineiro, Eric Hobsbawm.

Philip Dodd looks at Latin America with writers Juan Gabriel Vasquez and Claudia Pineiro.

Free Thinking - Photographers Dorothy Bohm, Wolfgang Suschitzky, Neil Libbert. Carry On Films.

The Carry On film as social history and a photography show charting the 20th century.

Free Thinking - Beauty: Dame Fiona Reynolds. The Bowes Museum. David Willetts on The State.

Anne McElvoy talks to Dame Fiona Reynolds about preserving beauty in the countryside.

Free Thinking - Landmark: In Parenthesis, by David Jones

Writer Iain Sinclair librettist Emma Jenkins composer Paul Hills art historian Iain Bell

Free Thinking - Transformations: Becoming a Goat, Neil Bartlett

Neil Bartlett on Victorian performer Ernest Boulton. Thomas Thwaites on becoming a goat.

Free Thinking - Germany: Neil MacGregor. A.T. Williams & Philippe Sands. Threepenny Opera. Volker Kutscher.

Anne McElvoy talks to Neil MacGregor, Volker Kutscher, Hadyn Gwynne.

Free Thinking - The Cultural Revolution

Frank Dikötter, Xiaolu and Xinran join Rana Mitter to revisit the Cultural Revolution

Free Thinking - Revolutionary thinking: Paul Mason, Bryan and Mary Talbot, Dacher Keltner.

Paul Mason and Bryan and Mary Talbot discuss Louise Michel with Matthew Sweet.

Free Thinking - Writers Writing about Love

Anne McElvoy with novelists A L Kennedy, Tahmima Anam and Alain de Botton talking Love

Free Thinking - Olafur Eliasson. Andrey Kurkov. Mary Dejevsky and Zinovy Zinik on Soviet Culture.

Philip Dodd talks to the artist Olafur Eliasson and novelist Andrey Kurkov.

Free Thinking - Concrete: Marina Lewycka, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Lynsey Hanley

Matthew Sweet explores concrete homes with Marina Lewycka and looks at art at the YSP

Free Thinking - TE Lawrence on stage. Jeremy Thorpe. Privacy.

Playwright Howard Brenton and director Adrian Noble discuss dramas depicting TE Lawrence.

Free Thinking - The Winter's Tale Landmark

Samuel West, Carol Rutter, Michael Dobson and Matthew Sweet discuss The Winter's Tale.

Free Thinking - Sicily. John Hardyng's Chronicle. The London Library

Anne McElvoy on Sicily plus the London Library at 175 with Tom Stoppard.

Free Thinking - Slavoj Zizek.

Philip Dodd debates migration, global solidarity with Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek

Free Thinking - Landmark: Tarkovsky's Stalker.

Konstantin von Eggert, Sophie Fiennes and Geoff Dyer discuss Tarkovsky's 1979 film.

Free Thinking - Syrian buildings. Judging Book Prizes. Georgian Literature

Anne McElvoy talks to architect Marwa Al-Sabouni about Syria's built environment.

British Conceptual Art.

Philip Dodd talks to artist Bruce McLean about British Conceptual Art on show at Tate.

Jonathan Coe and Richard Cameron on stage at Birmingham Rep

Matthew Sweet talks to Jonathan Coe about the first stage production of The Rotter's Club

Free Thinking - Economics: Liam Byrne, John Redwood, Luke Johnson, Juliet Michaelson and Matt Wolf

Anne McElvoy considers new books from Thomas Piketty and Yanis Varoufakis.

Free Thinking - Saki. Ria Sattouf. Anders Lustgarten. ‘A Thing’

Rana Mitter talks to playwright Anders Lustgarten & rereads Saki's satirical stories.

Evelyn Waugh.

Bryony Lavery, Alexander Waugh, Philip Eade and Adam Mars-Jones celebrate Evelyn Waugh

Free Thinking: Light: Ann Wroe, Dan Flavin, Blackpool Illuminations, The Sun.

Ann Wroe joins Anne McElvoy for an exploration of light from Blackpool to the South Downs

Nationalisms: Jerry Brotton, Elif Shafak, John Breuilly

Jerry Brotton talks to Rana Mitter about Elizabethan England and the Islamic World.

Suits. Neil LaBute

Shahidha Bari explores the history of suits with Anne McElvoy. Plus dramatist Neil LaBute

Free Thinking - The Green Man. George Monbiot.

Rana Mitter considers the myth of the Green Man and our relationship with Nature.

Free Thinking – Daniel Clowes; Alan Clarke's TV career; Ken Loach tribute to Barry Hines

Phil Davis and Clio Barnard discuss the career of director Alan Clarke.

Free Thinking - Russia and the Arts: Julian Barnes, Roxana Silbert and Suhayla El-Bushra

Julian Barnes reviews portaits of Russian cultural figures on show at the NPG.

Free Thinking - Philosophy: Bryan Magee

Matthew Sweet considers the state of philosophy today

Free Thinking – Identity in Britain: Martin Parr.

Photographer Martin Parr has curated a show exploring views of the UK from outsiders.

Free Thinking – The Holy Roman Empire; Peter H Wilson, Janet Soskice, Rupert Shortt. Iranian art

Rana Mitter reads a new history of the Holy Roman Empire & discusses Christianity today.

Free Thinking – Javier Marias; Cervantes; Spanish politics today

Javier Marias talks to Philip Dodd about fiction, politics & the writing of Cervantes.

Free Thinking - International Women's Day: Hollie McNish, Emily Hall, Helen Pearson, Edwina Attlee and Ailsa Grant Ferguson

Performance poet Hollie McNish and scientist Helen Pearson join Anne McElvoy.

Free Thinking - Botticelli Reimagined, A New Biography of Hitler

How German historians view Hitler now and Anne McElvoy reviews Botticelli at the V&A

Anger.

Philip Dodd considers rage in the politics of the US and India

Free Thinking – Neil Jordan, The Lonely City

Film director Neil Jordan on writing fiction. Olivia Laing explores loneliness.

Free Thinking – Russian Culture Inwards and Outwards

Anne McElvoy and Charles Clover on the old idea shaping contemporary Russian geopolitics.

Free Thinking

Karl Ove Knausgård talks to Philip Dodd in a programme looking at Scandinavia today.

Free Thinking

Karl Ove Knausgård talks to Philip Dodd in a programme looking at Scandinavia today.

Free Thinking - Religion Without Belief: Buddhist thinker Stephen Batchelor; Kader Abdolah; Linda Woodhead

Rana Mitter discusses a translation of the Qur'an & atheism in the UK & ancient Greece

Free Thinking - Utopianism in Politics

Is politics about building a better world, or simply the art of the possible?

Free Thinking – Delacroix. Petain, De Gaulle. Jonathan Lynn

Jonathan Lynn & his play about Petain & de Gaulle; Delacroix discussed by Philip Dodd

Free Thinking – Hieronymus Bosch anniversary

Tom Shakespeare joins Matthew Sweet in Holland for an exhibition marking Bosch 1450-1516.

Free Thinking – Screaming Lord Sutch on Stage. Margaret McMillan. Artificial Neural Networks.

Playwright James Graham discusses his new comedy which puts Screaming Lord Sutch on stage

Free Thinking - Dadaism's 100th anniversary

Matthew Sweet looks at the founding of the Dada movement 100 years ago.

Free Thinking - Dadaism's 100th anniversary

Matthew Sweet looks at the founding of the Dada movement 100 years ago.

Dadaism's 100th anniversary.

Matthew Sweet looks at the founding of the Dada movement 100 years ago.

Free Thinking -Joseph Crawhall; Madame Bovary by Peepolykus; Rona Munro's The James plays; and Matthew Parris on biography.

Anne McElvoy profiles the painter Joseph Crawhall one of the lost masters of British art

Free Thinking – John Irving

Philip Dodd interviews John Irving whose latest novel is called Avenue of Mysteries.

Free Thinking - Dad's Army; States of Mind at the Wellcome Institute; Utopia in sci-fi

Marking Dad's Army on film, Matthew Sweet looks at the fifth column.

Radio 3 broadcasts Lorraine Hansberry’s 'A Raisin in the Sun' this Sunday 31 Jan 2016 as the Sunday Drama.

Hear Lorraine's life and writing career discussed on Free Thinking.

Free Thinking - Anna Pavord: Gardens in Art. University funding.

Anne McElvoy views Painting the Modern Garden at the RA and talks to Anna Pavord.

Free Thinking - Stefan Zweig, Howard Jacobson, Michael Sandle

Philip Dodd meets sculptor Michael Sandle, Howard Jacobson and discusses Stefan Zweig

Free Thinking - Con Men; John Dee; F For Fake

Matthew Sweet explores the art of the con.

Free Thinking - The Arab Spring, Sahar Assaf, Owen Hatherley, Social Media and Language

Anne McElvoy looks at what happened to the Arab Spring five years on plus Owen Hatherley.

Free Thinking - Holes in the Ground

Rana Mitter explores Holes in the Ground and their emotional and practical uses.

Free Thinking Landmark: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Merlin Holland, Will Self and Fiona Shaw join Matthew Sweet to discuss Wilde's novel

Free Thinking - The Oscars

Matthew Sweet looks at the revival of Westerns and reports on the 2016 Oscar contenders

Free Thinking - French thought and politics.

Is France ceasing to be French - Philip Dodd and his guests investigate

Free Thinking - TS Eliot poetry prize winner. Lisa Randall on dark matter.

Anne McElvoy talks to the winner of this year's TS Eliot poetry prize Sarah Howe.

Free Thinking - Velasquez; John Bratby; Pan Haggerty

Anne McElvoy talks to Laura Cumming about a C19 court case involving a Velázquez portrait

Laura Cumming on Velazquez, John Bratby, The Pan Hag Project

Anne McElvoy and Laura Cumming on a 19th-century court case involving a Velazquez portrait

Free Thinking – Landmark: Lorraine Hansberry

With two plays by Lorraine Hansberry being staged Philip Dodd examines her achievement

Free Thinking -Teenage life: David and Ben Aaronovitch, Viv Albertine, Iroise Dumontheil, Simon Stephens

Matthew Sweet, David & Ben Aaronovitch, Viv Albertine, Iroise Dumontheil, Simon Stephens

Free Thinking - Star Wars. Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Ruth Scurr on John Aubrey. Beowulf.

Anne McElvoy talks to Christopher Hampton & Adjoa Andoh about Les Liaisons Dangereuses

Free Thinking - Cities and Safety

Philip Dodd rereads Conrad's The Secret Agent and considers what a safe city means now.

Free Thinking - Northern Lights Landmark: Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries

Colm Toibin, critic Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and Ellen Wettmark join Matthew Sweet.

Free Thinking - Must The Arts Be Relevant?

Mark Baldwin, Catherine Wood, Jennifer Walshe, Sarah Kent and Vayu Naidu debate the arts.

Free Thinking - Northern Lights: crime fiction and cold settings

Margaret Atwood, Arnaldur Indriadason and MJ McGrath talk about crime fiction and cold.

Free Thinking Festival: Northern Lights: Joanne Harris on the Norse god Loki

Joanne Harris and Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough discuss the god Loki and Norse beliefs.

Free Thinking - Mein Kampf; Larissa MacFarquhar; Julia Margaret Cameron

Anna Fox and Chantal Joffe discuss Julia Margaret Cameron plus altruism's wilder shores.

Free Thinking - Kenzaburo Oe, Artist and Empire at Tate Britain, Japan and Cool Now

Philip Dodd reviews the newly translated novel from Nobel prize winner Kenzaburo Oe.

Free Thinking - Umberto Eco

Italian author Umberto Eco talks to Matthew Sweet about conspiracy theories and war.

Rule Making and Rule Breaking for Women and Men.

Sheila Hancock, Neil Bartlett, Bim Adewunmi and head teacher Jonny Mitchell debate rules.

Free Thinking Festival - Breathalysing Britain: Free Spirits or a Drain on Society?

David Yelland, Shelina Zahra Janmohamed, Dr Sally Marlow and Prof Barry Smith on alcohol

Free Thinking Festival - Work Available: No Humans Need Apply

Paul Mason, Lucy Armstrong and Richard and Daniel Susskind debate the future of work

Free Thinking Festival - Stage Directions

A discussion of the actor/director relationship and are there rules for good theatre?

Free Thinking Festival - The Family Is Dead! Long Live the Family!

Anne Fine, Tobias Jones, Tom Shakespeare and Professor Sarah Cunningham Burley debate.

Free Thinking Festival – Landmark: Angela Carter

Joanna Kavenna, Natasha Pulley, Susannah Clapp and Christopher Frayling on Angela Carter

The Free Thinking Festival Essay : Sculpture and Seduction in the 18th Century

Danielle Thom looks at the links between bawdy prints and classical sculpture.

The Free Thinking Festival Essay : Jews in Occupied France: Coexistence with the Enemy?

Daniel Lee revisits Vichy France to uncover a different history of Jewish life there.

The Free Thinking Festival Essay - Beer and the British Empire

Sam Goodman looks at the way beer was used as both beverage and medicine in Colonial India

Free Thinking Festival - The Rules Of Good Science

Jim al-Khalili, Carlos Frenk, Katy Price and Tom Shakespeare debate scientific discovery

The Free Thinking Festival Essay - Inside a Pirate’s Cookbook: A Culinary Journey through the 17th Century

Joe Moshenska on Sir Kenelm Digby - alchemist, astrologer, diplomat and recipe collector.

The Free Thinking Festival Essay: The Medieval Scottish Dream State

Kylie Murray explores visions of Scottishness in The Wallace and The Scotichronicon.

Free Thinking Festival - Old Ways, New Directions.

"Tweeting" shepherd James Rebanks and Professor Veronica Strang on traditional thinking.

The Free Thinking Festival Essay - Kilts, Celts and Clearances in World War One

Peter Mackay on what kilt wearing meant for some soldiers fighting World War One

The Free Thinking Festival Essay - Nancy Cunard: The Rebellious Heiress

Sandeep Parmar on the life of the anti racist campaigner, modernist muse and heiress

Free Thinking Festival - Putting Competition to the Test

Margaret Heffernan, Matthew Syed, Cath Bishop and Christopher Frayling explore success.

The Free Thinking Festival Essay - Women on Their Own: Widows in Britain, Now and Then

Nadine Muller on the status of the widow in fact and fiction “

Free Thinking Festival - In Conversation With Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins explores religion, culture and science talking to Philip Dodd.

Free Thinking Festival - Breaking News - Telling Stories in Fact and Fiction

Bim Adewunmi John Yorke Emily Woof and Allan Little join Matthew Sweet at Sage Gateshead

The Free Thinking Festival Essay - The Moor of Florence A Medici Mystery

Catherine Fletcher on claims that the first Medici Duke of Florence was mixed race

Free Thinking Festival - Rule Breakers or Rule Makers?

Simon Heffer, Peter Tatchell and Joyce Quin in a Free Thinking Festival debate.

The Free Thinking Festival Lecture: Claudia Rankine

Prize-winning poet Claudia Rankine explores language and racism past and present.

Claudia Rankine

Claudia Rankine gives a lecture exploring language and racism past and present.

Free Thinking - Peggy Seeger

Peggy Seeger talks to Philip Dodd about her life. Tomorrow she performs in World on 3.

Free Thinking - Edna O'Brien

Irish novelist Edna O'Brien in conversation with Philip Dodd.

Free Thinking – Putin & Putinism. Salford Lads Club. ‘No Platforming’. Tribute to Philip French.

Matthew Sweet talks to Garry Kasparov, Stuart Maconie and Julie Bindel.

Free Thinking - Medical Surgery Past and Present

Anne McElvoy looks at healthcare past & present with New Generation Thinker Alun Withey

Free Thinking - Erica Jong. Richard Jones. Ben Bernanke

Erica Jong on her book "Fear of Dying". Richard Jones on staging The Hairy Ape

Free Thinking - Witch finding. Marina Warner.

Matthew Sweet and guests including Marina Warner consider the season of the witch.

Free Thinking - James Bond in Spectre. Nawal El Saadawi; Lord Browne.

The Egyptian feminist author Nawal El Saadawi on protest. Lord Browne on business.

Free Thinking - Home. Marilynne Robinson. Edwin Heathcote. Thomas Harding. Imtiaz Dharker

Marilynne Robinson, Edwin Heathcote, Thomas Harding, Imtiaz Dharker talk ideas of home

Free Thinking - Richard Mabey; Andrea Wulf on Humboldt; Stanley Nelson on The Black Panthers

Matthew Sweet with The Invention of Nature, The Cabaret of Plants, and The Black Panthers

Free Thinking - Meera Syal & Tanika Gupta In Conversation at Birmingham Rep

Meera Syal and Tanika Gupta discuss with Rana Mitter turning Anita and Me into a play.

Free Thinking - Salman Rushdie. Niall Ferguson on Henry Kissinger.

Salman Rushdie talks to Philip Dodd. Also historian Niall Ferguson on Henry Kissinger.

Free Thinking - Man Booker Winner. Weather and Twilight. The Kibbo Kift.

Matthew Sweet on how weather and twilight can make the world strange.

Free Thinking - Landmark: Leaves of Grass

For National Poetry Day, Matthew Sweet explores Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.

Free Thinking - Free Speech on Campus. Acting Arthur Miller

Zoë Wanamaker, Antony Sher and David Suchet discuss acting Arthur Miller with Philip Dodd

Free Thinking - Suffragette. Thatcherism and Conservatism now. James Fenton.

James Fenton on his poetic career. Suffragette reviewed. Mrs Thatcher's legacy discussed.

Free Thinking - James Shapiro, Macbeth on Film, Barrie Keeffe, East End museum

Matthew Sweet looks at Macbeth on film and talks to Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro.

Free Thinking - Populism. Romola Garai on Measure for Measure.

Philip Dodd presents a discussion about populism in politics and culture.

Free Thinking - Margaret Atwood, Yuval Harari, Celts

Rana Mitter interviews novelist Margaret Atwood, Professor Yuval Harari and reviews Celts

Free Thinking - Edmund de Waal, Orhan Pamuk

Ceramicist Edmund de Waal and author Orhan Pamuk are in conversation with Philip Dodd.

Free Thinking - Sleep and Creativity

Rana Mitter explores why we sleep with pioneering researcher into the body clock, Matt...

Free Thinking - Autism, The Financial Crisis, The Fallen Woman: 22 September 15

Steve Silberman on attitudes to autism, Gillian Tett on silos, Lynda Nead on fallen woman

Free Thinking - Everything That You Never Knew About Indian History

Rana Mitter explores new research into India in the second world war and the British Raj

Free Thinking - Emotion in Art - Frederick Forsyth: 15 September 15

Frederick Forsyth discusses spy fiction and fact and Matthew Sweet explores our emotions.

William Kentridge and William Boyd

South African artist William Kentridge and novelist William Boyd talk to Philip Dodd

Free Thinking - Chalke Valley History Festival: 16 July 15

Anne McElvoy discusses heroic triumph and failure with a trio of eminent historians

Free Thinking - Bryan Stevenson, Slunglow Camelot, Go Set A Watchman, Utopia at the Roundhouse: 15 July 15

Philip Dodd discusses Camelot: The Shining City and reviews the new Harper Lee

Free Thinking - French Thought - The prophecies of Thomas the Rhymer - French rom-com

Anne McElvoy on French intellectual traditions & rom-com; prophecies of Thomas the Rhymer

Free Thinking - Legal Aid, Law, Language and Gore Vidal v William F Buckley Jr: 8 July 15

Philip Dodd discusses Legal Aid, Law, Language and Gore Vidal v William F Buckley Jr

Free Thinking: Landmark Jaws: 7 July 15

Matthew Sweet on Jaws 40 years on with Gareth Fraser, Ian Hunter, Will Self and Fiona Tan.

Free Thinking - Pather Panchali: Sunjeev Sahota; Neil Bartlett: 6 July 15

Tariq Ali discusses Satyajit Ray's 1955 film Pather Panchali.

Free Thinking - Museum of the Year 2015: 02 July 15

Anne McElvoy at Tate Modern with the Museum of the Year finalists.

The power of dance and the meaning of 'public'.

The links between dance, art and the brain and the meaning of "the public"

Free Thinking - Worrying - Joseph Cornell - Spy Fiction - First film: 30 June 15

Matthew Sweet on worrying - Joseph Cornell - Spy Fiction and the First film.

Free Thinking - Tales of Scotland: A Nation and its Literature: 25 June 15

Anne McElvoy discusses the ways Scottish writers negotiate what it means to be Scottish.

Free Thinking - Community. The Amber Collective. Poet Claudia Rankine: 24 June 15

Philip Dodd discusses community and talks a poet Claudia Rankine.

Free Thinking - Political and Bardic Traditions in Wales: 23 June 15

Matthew Sweet examines Welsh politics and poetry with Gwyneth Lewis and Iain Sinclair.

Free Thinking - Muriel Spark, Digital Life, Diversity in British Poetry: 18 June 15

Laurence Scott talks to Rana Mitter about living in a digital world.

Free Thinking - Rabbi Jonathan Sacks: 17 June 15

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks talks to Philip Dodd about confronting religious violence

Free Thinking - John Boorman; 16 June 2015

Director John Boorman looks at his film-making career with Matthew Sweet

Free Thinking - Othello, Hans Magnus Enzensberger

Poet Hans Magnus Enzensberger reflects on his writing, and German history

Free Thinking - Saul Bellow

Martin Amis, Zachary Leader and Sarah Churchwell join Matthew Sweet

Free Thinking - Carsten Höller, freaks and fairground

Matthew Sweet has a go on Carsten Höller's slide at the Hayward Gallery

Susan Abulhawa - Gregory Tate - Eugenia Cheng

Anne McElvoy discusses maths and music with Mathematician Eugenia Cheng.

Free Thinking - Kate Grenville

Rana Mitter talks to Kate Grenville, one of Australia's leading novelists, about the...

Free Thinking - Male Friendship

'One Man, Two Guvnors' playwright Richard Bean and novelists Steve Tolz and AD Miller...

Free Thinking - Hay Festival

BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council run a scheme to find the best...

Free Thinking - Hay Festival: David Brooks, Azar Nafisi and Tom Holland

Rana Mitter and guests New York Times journalist David Brooks, the Iranian novelist of...

Free Thinking - Theodore Zeldin, Mona Mona Eltahawy

Egyptian-American journalist Mona Eltahawy argues the Middle East Needs a Sexual...

Free Thinking - Steve Hilton; Beowulf; The Beaux' Stratagem

Are work and progress making us inhuman? Anne McElvoy is joined by Steve Hilton, a to...

Free Thinking - Jospeh Stiglitz and Alain Mabanckou

Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz discusses income inequality. Novelist Alain Mabanckou...

Free Thinking - Colm Toibin; Mammoth Cloning; Fareed Zakaria

Matthew Sweet is joined by Colm Toibin to discuss the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop; Beth...

Free Thinking - High Society; Xinran; UK elections

A week on from the election, Anne McElvoy turns to three historians - Tim Bale, Krista...

Free Thinking - Dante's Divine Comedy

To mark Dante's birth 750 years ago, Philip Dodd chairs a Landmark discussion about of...

Free Thinking - Gut Instinct

Matthew Sweet is joined by former Labour strategist Alastair Campbell, epidemiologist...

Free Thinking - Anne Enright, Christopher Hampton 07May15

Anne Enright, Ireland's first Laureate for Fiction, talks to Anne McElvoy about her...

Free Thinking - Antony Sher

Philip Dodd in extended conversation with the actor Antony Sher whose recent roles and...

Free Thinking - Sir Thomas Browne

Matthew Sweet talks to Hugh Aldersey-Williams, Claire Preston and Gavin Francis about...

Free Thinking - Julian Barnes

Anne McElvoy is joined by the Booker Prize-winning writer Julian Barnes to discuss the...

Free Thinking - Everyman

Philip Dodd reports on the first night of Carol Ann Duffy's new adaptation of Everyman...

Free Thinking - Alberto Manguel

Matthew Sweet interviews Alberto Manguel about his new book, Curiosity.

Free Thinking - English Civil War

As Caryl Churchill's Light Shining in Buckinghamshire is revived at The National's how...

Free Thinking - Global Shakespeare

Philip Dodd explores what a world view of Shakespeare means. Guests include Globe from...

Free Thinking - Caryl Phillips

Caryl Phillips talks to Matthew Sweet about his new novel The Lost Child which...

Free Thinking Landmark - The Tin Drum

Anne McElvoy is joined by the German novelist Eugen Ruge, British author Lawrence the...

Free Thinking - Violence in Culture

Philip Dodd considers violence in culture with crime writer Frances Fyfield, historian...

Free Thinking - Mexico in Words

As Mexico takes centre stage at London's Book Fair Matthew Sweet speaks to two of the...

Free Thinking - Neuroscience

Rana Mitter discusses a new model for understanding the brain, with researcher and...

Free Thinking - The Way We Live Now

This evening Free Thinking is devoted to one of the pinnacles of Victorian England –...

Free Thinking - Nick Broomfield

With the publication of the widest survey of sexual behaviour since the Kinsey Report,...

Free Thinking - Patricia Duncker

Patricia Duncker talks to Anne McElvoy about her new novel which imagines George with...

Free Thinking - Public and private art

In this programme about private and public art, Philip Dodd talks to Nicholas Penny,...

Free Thinking - Blade Runner

As Ridley Scott's science fiction extravaganza, Blade Runner is re-released, Matthew...

Free Thinking - Cosmopolitanism/Nation State

Philip Dodd continues his exploration of the culture wars by investigating the tension...

Free Thinking - Peggy Seeger

Philip Dodd talks to one of the icons of what used to be called the counter-culture,...

Free Thinking - Secularism & Religion

In the first of three programmes exploring fractures and faultlines in contemporary...

Free Thinking - School Report

Anne McElvoy hears from young people involved in the BBC's School Report Day.

Free Thinking - Sociology in the 21 century

Does the discipline of Sociology still have a role to play in the 21st century?To we...

Free Thinking - Madness/Civilisation

Matthew Sweet talks to Andrew Scull, author of Madness in Civilisation and Lisa about...

Free Thinking - Tom McCarthy

Anne McElvoy looks at what we mean by the idea of fairness. She also talks to novelist...

Free Thinking - Hanif Kureishi

An extended interview in which Philip Dodd is joined by novelist, screenwriter and...

Free Thinking - Age of Earthquakes

Douglas Coupland, Shumon Basar and Hans Ulrich Obrist explain the Extreme Present to...

Free Thinking - Kazuo Ishiguro

Novelist Kazuo Ishiguro talks to Anne McElvoy about his latest book – The Buried Giant.

Free Thinking - Against Democracy

Churchill famously commented that ‘democracy is the worst form of government, except...

Free Thinking - John Gray

John Gray talks to Matthew Sweet about why the Aztecs might have had a better of than...

Free Thinking - David Cohen prize

Rana Mitter talks to Tony Harrison, the winner of the biennial David Cohen prize - one...

Free Thinking - Social Identity

Philip Dodd looks at the value of the arts with the former Chief Scientific Advisor to...

Free Thinking - Paul Foot Award

As this year's Paul Foot Awards are announced for campaigning and investigative Anne...

Free Thinking - David Grossman

Matthew Sweet talks to the Israeli novelist David Grossman about his book Falling Out...

Free Thinking - Buddhism

Rana Mitter discusses Buddhism, in Western therapy and in Eastern politics with Mark -...

Free Thinking Landmark - 1001 Nights

It's three hundred years since the death of Antoine Galland, a French orientalist and...

Free Thinking - Britain's Economy

Will Hutton joins Anne McElvoy for a programme focusing on economics and wealth in...

Free Thinking - Karim Miske; Aatish Taseer: 11 Feb15

Karim Miské and Aatish Taseer discuss their recent novels, the French tradition of of...

Free Thinking - Eroticism & Utopia

Dylan Evans tells Matthew Sweet about his experimental community in the Scottish and...

Free Thinking - Greece & Russia

Anne McElvoy assesses reports that members of the new Greek government are age-old and...

Free Thinking - Paul Muldoon, Roy Foster. Rona Munro: 4 Feb15

Poet Paul Muldoon explores the history of Ireland in his new collection, One Thousand...

Free Thinking - Eddie Marsan

Andrew O'Hagan talks to Matthew Sweet about identity, capturing memories and the of in...

Free Thinking - Race in America

Joyce Carol Oates new novel The Sacrifice depicts an act of racial violence which a...

Free Thinking - Tom Stoppard's The Hard Problem

Surgeon Henry Marsh and critic Susannah Clapp review the opening of Tom Stoppard's at...

Free Thinking - Holocaust

Rana Mitter talks to Richard J Evans' about his new book The Third Reich in History on...

Free Thinking - Cities & Resilience

New Generation Thinker Daisy Hay talks to Anne McElvoy about the relationship between...

Free Thinking Churchill & Englishness 21Jan15

Philip Dodd plus guests David Reynolds, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Simon Heffer and David...

Free Thinking - Dramatising Democracy

Author Michael Dobbs, dramatists James Graham and Paula Milne and TV producer Tierney...

Free Thinking - Russell T Davies

Matthew Sweet looks at today's announcement of this year's Oscar nominations focusing...

R3 Arts: Free Thinking - Looking at Art

Philip Dodd explores the way we look at art with documentary maker Fred Wiseman, Iwona...

Free Thinking - TS Eliot Prize

The Scottish poet Robert Crawford and fellow-TS Eliot biographer, Lyndall Gordon join...

Free Thinking - Mike Bartlett

Mike Bartlett talks to Anne McElvoy about his play Bull which takes to the stage at at...

Free Thinking - Antonia Fraser

Lady Antonia Fraser talks to Matthew Sweet about her childhood in Oxford and London in...

Free Thinking - Clive James

In an extended interview, Philip Dodd talks to Clive James whose writing and in the of...

Free Thinking - Pantomime past to present

Matthew Sweet on Pantomime past to present with writer Jeffrey Richards and Tony...

Free Thinking - Protest

Philosopher Slavoj Žižek speaks to Philip Dodd about the re-emergence of a radical a...

Free Thinking - TV Drama

TV dramatist Jed Mercurio, producer Caryn Mandabach and writer-director, Dominic talk...

Free Thinking - Wonder Woman

American author Rebecca Solnit discusses the impact of "mansplaining" which she in her...

Free Thinking - Mecca, Qur'an, Islam

Mona Siddiqui talks to Philip Dodd about her book called My Way: A Muslim Woman's Journey.

Free Thinking - British Monarchy

Philip Dodd and a panel including historians Philip Ziegler and John Guy, biographer a...

Free Thinking - Political Theatre

Philip Dodd, Roger Scruton and Janet Suzman look at theatre in South Africa - a year...

Free Thinking - Landmark: 2001

Scientist Brian Cox and Professor Chris Frayling join the actors Keir Dullea and Gary...

Free Thinking - Global Crisis

Anne McElvoy talks to the historian Geoffrey Parker about Global Crisis, his account...

Free Thinking - 3 American Authors

Matthew Sweet looks at depictions of American life and history in a special edition...

Free Thinking Festival - Fear or Wonder

Naomi Alderman, Roger Luckhurst and BALTIC curator Alessandro Vincentelli join Matthew...

Free Thinking Festival - Free Information

The Cost of Free Information. Against a backdrop of perceived excess of intellectual a...

Free Thinking Festival: Happy Talk

How much self-knowledge do you need to be happy – and what are the limits to what to...

Free Thinking Festival - Characters

Knowing Your Characters. Matthew Sweet talks to playwright David Greig and actor about...

Free Thinking Festival: Antarctica

A hundred years ago, Ernest Shackleton set out on his Trans-Antarctic expedition which...

Free Thinking Essay - The Spin Doctors

The Spin Doctors of 19th-Century America. Embracing the emerging sciences of the age,...

Free Thinking Essay - Shakespeare & India

Drawing on Shakespeare's plays and Indian translations of them from recent times - and...

Free Thinking Festival - Animals

Animals: Watching Us Watching Them Watching Each Other. Rana Mitter talks to the of at...

Free Thinking Essay - Women's Theatre

Naomi Paxton from the University of Manchester explores the international movement for...

Free Thinking - Language of Money

John Lanchester talks to Matthew Sweet about his novel Capital, our understanding of...

Free Thinking Essay - Speech Before Words

Where did language come from? It's often been described as the fundamental barrier and...

Free Thinking Festival - Elif Shafak

Turkey's best selling female writer, Elif Shafak, talks to Anne McElvoy about and as...

Free Thinking Essay - Beastly Politics

Is man the only political beast? Can other animals be regarded as members of our with...

Free Thinking Festival - From Flat Caps

Anne McElvoy explores whether it is worth getting hot under the collar about blue with...

Free Thinking Essay: Beards and Whiskers

Historian Alun Withey says beards can shed light on a whole range of things from to...

Free Thinking Essay - Disraeli the Romantic

Daisy Hay from Exeter University explores the way in which Disraeli invented the as a...

Free Thinking Festival: Burning the Facts

Which historical 'facts' should be burned on the fire? How do you comb ancient and for...

Free Thinking Festival: The Essay

Sophie Coulombeau on the origins of the custom for women to take their husband's name.

Free Thinking Festival 2014: Right Thinking People

David Willetts MP and the writer and philosopher Roger Scruton discuss the best way to...

Free Thinking Essay: Scold The Front Page

New Generation Thinker Tom Charlton on what 17th-century ideas about censorship share...

Free Thinking Festival 2014: You Must See This

Matthew Sweet explores the way digital media have transformed our cultural tastes with...

Free Thinking Essay: The Human Copying Machine

New Generation Thinker Tiffany Watt-Smith explores mirroring and a nineteenth-century...

Free Thinking Festival 2014: Knowing Your Enemy

Anne McElvoy chairs a discussion about conciliation in an age of uprisings recorded in...

Free Thinking Festival - Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong, one of the world's leading thinkers about religion, gives the Free in...

Free Thinking - Akram Khan

Choreographer Akram Khan talks to Anne McElvoy about curating a festival at the Lowry,...

Free Thinking - Orhan Pamuk

Orhan Pamuk talks to Philip Dodd about his writing career and his views of modern Turkey.

Free Thinking - Orhan Pamuk

Orhan Pamuk talks, in an extended conversation with Philip Dodd, about his writing and...

Free Thinking - Mike Leigh

Mike Leigh discusses his film about Turner. Steve Connor and Matthew Sweet discuss an...

Free Thinking - Margaret Atwood

Anne McElvoy talks to celebrated Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood whose most recent a...

Free Thinking - Australian writer Peter Carey

How history can help to shape policy making? Rana Mitter is joined by The History MP...

Free Thinking - Marcel Proust

This Free Thinking is devoted to one of the landmarks of European literature -- Marcel...

Free Thinking - William Morris

Jeremy Deller and Fiona McCarthy have each curated an exhibition looking at the art of...

Free Thinking - The notion of Jewish identity

Rana Mitter talks to three people who have been exploring their own relationship with...

Free Thinking - Man Booker Prize

Sherlock Holmes is investigated by Mark Gatiss and Matthew Sweet as the Museum of an...

Free Thinking - Henry IV

Anne McElvoy talks to Phyllida Lloyd about playing Shakespeare in a female prison in...

Free Thinking - Tim Minchin, David Cronenberg

Canadian filmmaker and originator of the body horror genre, David Cronenberg covers as...

Free Thinking Festival - Colm Toibin

Colm Toibin is one of Ireland's finest writers, whose books explore issues such as and...

Free Thinking - Matthew Barzun

At a time when the special relationship between the UK and the US is under particular...

Free Thinking - Ai Weiwei at Blenheim

Rana Mitter has a first-night review of Electra with Kristin Scott Thomas from Edith...

Free Thinking - Neel Mukherjee

Matthew Sweet examines our contradictory attitudes to China and it's culture with the...

Free Thinking - Thomas Ostermeier

As the Schaubühne Berlin's production of Henrik Ibsen's 'An Enemy of the People' at...

Free Thinking - Francis Fukuyama

Fukuyama and Howard Jacobson are interviewed by Philip Dodd. In 1989, Francis Fukuyama...

Free Thinking - Language

Steven Pinker's research at Harvard is into language and cognition. His new book The...

Free Thinking - Figuring Out Abstract Art

Scientist Susan Greenfield, painter Fiona Rae, poet Paul Farley and artist and TV Matt...

Free Thinking - Martin Amis

Martin Amis talks to Philip Dodd about his reputation for courting controversy and his...

Free Thinking - Lenny Henry

Rudy's Rare Records stars Lenny Henry as the son who works alongside his father in a...

Free Thinking - Culloden

Peter Watkins' film Culloden is 50, and in front of an audience at the Edinburgh Sweet...

Free Thinking 2013 - Wombs on Legs?

From HG Wells and Margaret Atwood to Battlestar Galactica, science fiction texts and a...

Free Thinking 2013 - Ecstatic

The audience at a rock concert adoring the star; a Pentecostalist congregation God; an...

Free Thinking 2013 - Language Wars

Defenders of traditional English language and grammar often present themselves as but...

Free Thinking 2013 - Cutting Tradition

What do recent debates among medical ethicists and lawyers over male infant reveal the...

Free Thinking 2013 - False Conception

Annie Besant promoted contraceptive advice to the Victorian working classes.

Free Thinking 2013 - What's Eating You?

What is the place of food and body image in contemporary culture? Lionel Shriver is of...

Free Thinking 2013 - Sugata Mitra

Professor Sugata Mitra's pioneering experiments gave children in India access to to...

Free Thinking 2013 - Why Are Maps Still So Powerful?

Can a map reveal too much? How do they direct our thinking? From ancient atlases to to...

Free Thinking 2013 - Are We at a Tipping Point? Controlling Infection and Combatting Disea

Increasing resistance to antibiotics is a threat to Britain which could be as as...

Free Thinking - Decision Making in the Money Markets

Does emotion or reason dictate the financial markets? Anne McElvoy is joined by Global...

Free Thinking - Politics and writing in Kenya

Billy Kahora, one of the writers nominated for this year's Caine Prize for African to...

Free Thinking - Prisons & Anthropomorphism

Matthew Sweet interviews Karen Joy Fowler author of a novel which looks at the of a a...

Free Thinking - Virginia Woolf & Richard Flanagan

With Anne McElvoy. Curator Frances Spalding and Dr Alexandra Harris discuss what of of...

Free Thinking - History of Pain, Richard III, Animal Rights

Philip Dodd is joined by political commentator Steve Richards to discuss the new of is...

Free Thinking - The Digital Age & Boyhood

Richard Linklater filmed the actor who stars in Boyhood over 12 years from a 6 year to...

Free Thinking - Oh What a Lovely Savas

'€˜Oh what a lovely Savas' begins Rana Mitter in this edition of Free Thinking, the...

Free Thinking - Yael Farber & Liberalism

Yael Farber directs Richard Armitage in the Crucible at the Old Vic. She talks to Dodd...

Free Thinking - Woods in War and Peace

From Paul Nash paintings of blasted tree stumps in the first world war to today's Paul...

Free Thinking - Balancing Power in World War One

Jonathan Powell and historians Margaret MacMillan, Orlando Figes and Adam Tooze the...

Free Thinking - Barbara Kruger & Laurie Penny

Samira Ahmed discusses feminism with American artist Barbara Kruger and journalist the...

Free Thinking - The Thirty-Nine Steps

The Thirty-Nine Steps first appeared in Blackwoods Magazine in August and September on...

Free Thinking - Libertarianism & Trevor Paglen

A new collection of Ranter writings from the English Civil War sheds light on their...

Free Thinking - Sean Scully & Colour

Philip Dodd talks to the artist, Sean Scully, about his latest show and explores our...

Free Thinking - Radical Bookshops

Matthew Sweet talks to Philip Hensher, who's novel The Emperor Waltz draws together a...

Free Thinking - Eimear McBride & Nathan Filer

Prize-winning first novelists Eimear McBride and Nathan Filer join Anne McElvoy to...

Free Thinking - Community & The Human Figure

The director of the Hayward Ralph Rugoff, former principal Royal Ballet dancer Deborah...

Free Thinking - Belle & Turgenev's Fathers and Sons

Amma Asante's film Belle depicts an illegitimate mixed-race girl brought up in London...

Free Thinking - Kenneth Clark & Arts Broadcasting

Philip Dodd discusses Kenneth Clark's Civilisation and arts broadcasting with Janina...

Free Thinking - Tiananmen Square

Rana Mitter remembers what happened in Tiananmen Square on June 4th 1989 with people...

Free Thinking - London's Skyline & Joshua Ferris

Matthew Sweet discusses online identity theft and religious belief with American as he...

Free Thinking - Arianna Huffington & Richard Hytner

Arianna Huffington talks to Anne McElvoy about measuring success using The Third Metric.

Free Thinking - PJ O'Rourke, Stephen Dubner, Steven Levitt

Presenter Rana Mitter, is joined on the BBC stage at the Hay Festival by writer and PJ...

Free Thinking - Export of Empire & India's New Story

Rana Mitter talks to historian and MP Tristram Hunt about how Britain's experience of...

Free Thinking - Essay Writing & Tim Winton

Anne McElvoy looks at the resurgence of non-fiction writing and the essay as a form...

Free Thinking - Writers and Their Notebooks

As the British Library launches a website devoted to writers' notebooks and novelist a...

Free Thinking - John Clare & Jimmy Wales

Matthew Sweet talks to Iain Sinclair and New Generation Thinker Dr Greg Tate about a...

Free Thinking - Nick Payne & Penny Dreadful

Nick Payne talks to Anne McElvoy about his play Incognito and the man who stole brain...

Free Thinking - Does Europe need an East?

Interview with the prominent Czech writer who has just published memoir, My Crazy by a...

Free Thinking - Godzilla and Hayao Miyazaki

MJ Hyland reviews Simon Armitage's The Last Days of Troy at the Royal Exchange Lily...

Free Thinking - Representing Cities

Anne McElvoy looks at the benefits and challenges of cities pooling resources.

Free Thinking - David H Hwang & Eleanor Marx

David Henry Hwang tells Philip about his 2007 drama Yellow Face, reflecting life of in...

Free Thinking - Charles Kingsley's Water Babies

As a musical version of The Water Babies opens Simon Heffer and New Generation Thinker...

Free Thinking - Thom Gunn & Michael Cunningham

Samira Ahmed is joined by poets Paul Farley, Fiona Sampson and Clive Wilmer to discuss...

Free Thinking, BBC Radiophonic Workshop

The BBC Radiophonic workshop,opened in 1958 with an aim to experiment and produce for...

Free Thinking - 18th Century Sexual Politics

Philip Dodd explores the sexual mores of eighteenth-century England talking to of of...

Free Thinking - Banksy + Chris Marker

Samira Ahmed discusses the ownership of street art with Mary McCarthy, Director of MM...

Free Thinking - Dame Janet Suzman

In extended conversation with Philip Dodd, Dame Janet Suzman talks about her acting in...

Free Thinking - 18th Century Crime and Punishment

Philip Dodd explores 18th century attitudes to the law, crime and punishment with S QC...

Free Thinking - 18th Century Economics - Bernard de Mandeville

In 1714 Bernard de Mandeville published his provocative Fable of the Bees, in which he...

Free Thinking - 18th Century Power Politics

Anne McElvoy talks to Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures Desmond Shawe-Taylor and Amanda...

Free Thinking - 18th Century

If Mrs Thatcher thought she was living again through Victorian England, we are now the...

Free Thinking - Originality

Naomi Alderman, Geoff Mulgan and Lionel Bently join Philip Dodd to explore the meaning...

Free Thinking - Betty Balfour

Matthew Sweet discusses the silent film star Betty Balfour with BFI curator Byony and...

Free Thinking - Is War Good for Us?

Anne McElvoy looks at the impact of war, the Afghan elections and childhood violence.

Free Thinking - Policing

Matthew Sweet explores the idea of the police with the playwright Roy Williams, the of...

Free Thinking - Contemporary Curating

Design Museum director Deyan Sudjic and curators Hans-Ulrich Obrist and Victoria Walsh...

Free Thinking - EM Forster

Damon Galgut's new book Arctic Summer evokes EM Forster's experiences in India and the...

Free Thinking - Landmarks: Seven Samurai

Akira Kurosawa's 1954 film Seven Samurai traces the story of a group of Samurai who to...

Free Thinking - Charm

Author and design consultant Stephen Bayley has written an e-book called Charm: A...

Free Thinking - Childhood

Frank Field MP, child psychiarist Dickon Bevington and authors Meg Rosoff and Philip a...

Free Thinking - Leadership and Military Intervention

Historian Archie Brown and military expert Frank Ledwidge join Samira Ahmed to discuss...

Free Thinking - Jonathan Lethem & Gary Shteyngart

American authors Jonathan Lethem and Gary Shteyngart discuss radicalism, belonging and...

Free Thinking - The Brits Who Built the Modern World

Philip Dodd chairs a discussion between Terry Farrell, Norman Foster, Nicholas Michael...

Free Thinking - David Grossman

David Grossman's new book Falling Out of Time mixes poetry, drama and fiction to grief...

Free Thinking - Flora Thompson & Ruins

Richard Mabey discusses his biography of Flora Thompson, author of Lark Rise to and on...

Free Thinking - Julian Schnabel

Philip Dodd in conversation with artist and film-maker Julian Schnabel, best known for...

Free Thinking - Vikings

Matthew Sweet visits the British Museum's Vikings exhibition with the curator Gareth 3...

Free Thinking - Spitting Image

Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld talk about the impact of education and religion on success...

Free Thinking - Wim Wenders on Peace

Film director Wim Wenders and Australian philosopher Mary Zournazi explain why they we...

Free Thinking - Paul Foot Award

As Dirty Rotten Scoundrels becomes a musical, Samira Ahmed considers the scoundrel of...

Free Thinking - France & Algeria

Anne McElvoy looks at the relationship between France and its former colonies, talking...

Free Thinking - Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin's City Lights is ranked by The American Film Institute as one of the...

Free Thinking - Class in Britain

Shelagh Delaney wrote A Taste of Honey when she was 18. First performed in 1958, a new...

Free Thinking - Stuart Hall

To mark the death of cultural historian Stuart Hall, another chance to hear his with...

Free Thinking - Literary Heroines

Ofsted chair Sally Morgan and Tim Montgomerie debate Ed Miliband's speech about parent...

Free Thinking - Atheism and Belief

Two books published this month include the idea of "the death of God" in their titles:...

Free Thinking - Spike Jonze's Her

Spike Jonze's new film Her depicts a writer developing a relationship with his system...

Free Thinking - Hanif Kureishi

Hanif Kureishi's career has included screenplays My Beautiful Launderette, Venus, Me...

Free Thinking - First World War, Empathy

Matthew Sweet revisits Alan Bleasdale's 1986 World War One TV series The Monocled by...

Free Thinking - Christine Lagarde

As International Monetary Fund Director Christine Lagarde gives this year’s Anne...

Free Thinking - Ukraine and Russia

Anne McElvoy on unrest in Ukraine and the state of dissent in Russia today with Boris...

Free Thinking - Australia

Christos Tsiolkas, Germaine Greer and the Aboriginal leader Pat Dodson talk about the...

Free Thinking - Feminism in Theatre

American novelist Jonathan Lethem discusses the singer Pete Seeger, whose death has...

Free Thinking - Derek Jarman

The actor Simon Russell Beale discusses playing the role of King Lear.

Free Thinking: Japanese History, Chinese Democarcy

Zhang Weiwei, one of China's foremost public intellectuals, talks to Rana Mitter about...

Free Thinking - Suicide discussion

Matthew Sweet discusses the way we talk about suicide with Jennifer Michael Hecht, of...

Free Thinking - Steve McQueen

Matthew Sweet talks to director Steve McQueen about his new film '12 Years A Slave' of...

Free Thinking - Girls & Constitution

Samira Ahmed looks at the appeal of Lena Dunham's US TV series Girls with comedian and...

Free Thinking - T S Eliot prize

Sinead Morrissey is the winner of this year's T S Eliot Prize for her anthology Parallax.

Free Thinking - Liberal England

As part of BBC Radio 3's Music on the Brink season Professor Roy Foster, the and Nick...

Free Thinking - Robert Musil

Joining Matthew Sweet for a Landmark discussion about Robert Musil's book, The Man its...

Free Thinking - Brink of War

As part of Radio 3's Music on the Brink, Free Thinking takes the cultural temperature...

Free Thinking 2013 - Penny Woolcock

Penny Woolcock talks to Samira Ahmed about directing a film version of John Adams's of...

Free Thinking 2013 - Whose Strife

Whose Strife Is It Anyway? Amit Chaudhuri, Gaiutra Bahadur and Aamer Ahmed Khan of the...

Free Thinking 2013 - Audiences

In a bid to reach new audiences, theatre is increasingly moving off the stage and the...

Free Thinking 2013 - Therapy Versus Prayer

Is the idea of counselling as non-judgmental listening flawed? New Generation Thinker...

Free Thinking 2013 - Who's Got Hold of Children's Imaginations?

As we strive to protect our children’s imaginations from negative influences, are we...

Free Thinking 2013 - The Countryside

Are our policy makers too urban in their outlook? Have we lost touch with nature? On...

Free Thinking 2013 - Science and Sensibility

Today many scientists are engaged in exploring the interaction between logical and of...

Free Thinking - John Waters

John Waters' film Hairspray became a hit musical. His "Trash Trilogy" involved with...

Free Thinking 2013 - Alice Hall

Blogs, YouTube, Facebook and phone apps have changed the way we share our lives, to an...

Free Thinking 2013 - Controlling Moods and Minds

What is the neuroscience of depression, how does it affect decision-making, and what a...

Free Thinking 2013 - How on Earth

In a world of diminishing natural resources, global economic crisis and constant on we...

Free Thinking 2013 - Power to the People

Social media allows us to make our views known quickly but where does this public and...

Free Thinking 2013 - Sarah Peverley

A 15th-century English monarch was appointed by God and had absolute supremacy but how...

Free Thinking 2013 - Zamyatin's We

Yevgeny Zamyatin's experiences in the Tyne shipyards fed into his dystopian fable was...

Free Thinking 2013 - Boneless, Bloodaxe and Hairy Breeches: What Did the Vikings Ever Do f

When Lindisfarne monastery was attacked in 793AD the monk Alcuin described the church...

R3 Arts: Free Thinking 2013 - Michael Marmot

Sir Michael Marmot delivers the opening lecture of the BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking 2013,...

Free Thinking - Michael Grigsby

In the second of 2 programmes from Derry Londonderry Radio 3's Matthew Sweet examines...

Free Thinking in the Summer - Derry-Londonderry

BBC Radio 3's annual Free Thinking festival of ideas continues its summer of activity...

Free Thinking in the Summer

Rana Mitter chairs a debate from the York Festival of Ideas on whether we can afford...

Free Thinking in the Summer - Chalke

BBC Radio 3's annual Free Thinking festival of ideas continues its summer of activity...

Free Thinking in the Summer - Hay

Philip Dodd discusses the Problem with Love with behavioural scientist Dylan Evans, AL...

Free Thinking in the Summer

Rana Mitter chairs a Free Thinking debate from the annual 12-hour My Night With at the...

Free Thinking in the Summer

BBC Radio 3's annual Free Thinking festival of ideas hits the road this summer as it...

Night Waves - Peter Brook

Matthew Sweet talks to Peter Brook. The theatre director has had a lifelong with which...

Free Thinking 2012 - Aliens

Matthew Sweet debates how the discovery of alien life might change the way we think it...

Free Thinking - Philippa Gregory

Best-selling novelist Philippa Gregory talks to Rana Mitter about writing historical...

Free Thinking 2012 - Lindsay Johns

Columnist and youth worker Lindsay Johns argues that we should stop listening to the a...

Free Thinking 2012 - Colm Tóibín

Colm Toibin is one of Ireland's finest writers, whose books explore issues such as and...

Free Thinking 2012 - Ian Goldin

Economist Ian Goldin gives a talk on Globalisation and the Future at Radio 3's Free...

Free Thinking 2012 - Revolution and Democracy

What kind of societies will the Arab Spring give birth to? Democratic, Capitalist, or...

Free Thinking 2012 - Aliens

Matthew Sweet debates how the discovery of alien life might change the way we think it...

Free Thinking 2012 - Julie Bindel

Julie Bindel gives a talk arguing that sexuality is a choice at the Radio 3 Free...

Free Thinking 2012 - Matthew Smith

Matthew Smith, one of Radio 3’s New Generation Thinkers, explores why the simple has...

Free Thinking 2012 - Mark Pagel

Why have humans evolved to speak so many incomprehensible languages? Why do we work by...

Free Thinking 2012 - Sue-Ann Harding

Sue-Ann Harding, one of Radio 3's New Generation Thinkers, gives a talk in which she...

Free Thinking 2012 - Immigration and the Challenge to Belonging

What does it mean to belong? Multiculturalism, integration and social division are of...

Free Thinking 2012 - Joshua Nall

Joshua Nall, one of Radio 3's New Generation Thinkers, gives a talk on the Victorian 3...

Free Thinking 2012 - Vicky Featherstone

As Scotland heads towards a referendum on independence, Vicky Featherstone discusses a...

Free Thinking 2012 - Nandini Das

Nandini Das, one of Radio 3's New Generation Thinkers, gives a talk on the 16th craze...

Free Thinking 2012 - Rewriting World History

Does World History still mean Western History, or do we need a radical new of the To...

Free Thinking 2012 - Amos Oz

Amos Oz, one of Israel's most influential thinkers, gives a talk on the Middle East of...

Free Thinking 2012 - Timothy Secret

Timothy Secret, one of Radio 3's New Generation Thinkers , gives a talk during Free we...

Free Thinking 2012 - Emma Griffin

Emma Griffin, one of Radio 3's New Generation Thinkers, gives a talk on what makes a 3...

Free Thinking 2012 - Lee Hall

An audience with Lee Hall, writer of Billy Elliot and The Pitmen Painters, recorded at...

Free Thinking 2012 - Jonathan Healey

Jonathan Healey, one of Radio 3’s New Generation Thinkers, gives a talk questioning...

Free Thinking 2012 - Islam and Christianity

Theologian Mona Siddiqui and historian Tom Holland join Radio 3’s Free Thinking to...

Free Thinking 2012 - Adriana Sinclair

Adriana Sinclair, one of Radio 3's New Generation Thinkers, gives a talk on the exert...

Free Thinking 2012 - Social Mobility

Is Social Mobility Overrated? Anne McElvoy chairs a debate from the Radio 3 Free this...

Free Thinking 2012 - Charlotte Blease

Charlotte Blease, one of Radio 3's New Generation Thinkers, gives a talk that the and...

Free Thinking 2012 - Michael Ignatieff

On the eve of the US election, Michael Ignatieff gives a talk at Radio 3's Free on in...

Free Thinking 2012 - Mary Robinson

Mary Robinson delivers the opening lecture of the BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking Festival...

Were the Luddites Right?

Updated corrected audio: Rana Mitter chairs a debate about the Luddites to mark their...

Charles Jencks

Landscape architect Charles Jencks calls for a new cosmic art, in a talk entitled the...

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

Neuro-scientist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore gives a talk on changes in the teenage brain.

Susie Orbach

Psychotherapist Susie Orbach challenges the obsession with personal change.

The impact of a future energy crisis on our way of life

How will our world change as traditional energy supplies shrink and climate change us...

Aditya Chakrabortty

Economist Aditya Chakrabortty examines the impact of economic change on society.

Can We Stop the Mania for Change?

Philip Dodd chairs a debate on the obsession with change, at the BBC Radio 3 Free 2011...

Julian Savulescu - The Moral Obligation to Improve

Julian Savulescu, Oxford Professor of Ethics, makes the case for human enhancement and...

Linda Colley

Leading historian Linda Colley gives a talk on how we have dealt with periods of in us...

Germaine Greer

Germaine Greer delivers a talk questioning the pursuit of freedom at the BBC Radio 3...

Kevin Fong

Kevin Fong, who presents BBC2's Horizon and is a leading expert on space medicine, a 3...

The Foreign Secretary William Hague

William Hague discusses the dramatic changes taking throughout the globe and Britain's...

Rev Dr Giles Fraser

Rev Dr Giles Fraser, the former Canon Chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral, gives a talk...

Francis Wells

One of the world's top heart surgeons, Francis Wells, discusses the future of the his...

Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales launches this year's BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking Festival...