Podcasts by Arts

Margaret Cavendish from 2023-12-13T12:00

Scientist, novelist, poet, philosopher, feminist, it's 400 years since the birth of Margaret Cavendish. An extraordinary character in many ways - she lived in a tumultuous time, when ideas aroun...

Narnia and CS Lewis from 2023-12-06T20:00

Sixty years after the death of C. S. Lewis's, his best known work, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, is still for many a childhood favourite and it's also the subject of a new literary study...

Humboldt, soil, gardens and Frank Walter from 2023-12-05T16:22

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

New Thinking: Disability in Music and Theatre from 2023-12-01T19:38

When Hugh Jackman starred in the 2022 revival of ‘The Music Man’, he was taking on a classic Broadway musical with a little known connection to disability. Professor Dominic Broomfield-McHugh at...

Kadare, Gospodinov, Kafka and Dickens from 2023-12-01T13:25

The Palace of Dreams is a novel from 1981 that is ostensibly set in the 19th century Ottoman empire, but the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare cleverly smuggles in thinly veiled criticism of the tot...

Libraries from 2023-11-29T12:00

The Great Library of Alexandria had a mission to collect every book in the world. In attempting to do so it created the foundations for the systems and structures of public libraries that we kno...

Lorca from 2023-11-28T13:27

Women in the villages of Spain and the repression and passions of five daughters are at the heart of Lorca's last play the House of Bernarda Alba, completed two months before he was assassinated...

AS Byatt and The Children's Book from 2023-11-24T17:40

The perfect childhood and the failure of utopian experiments in living in Edwardian England were explored by AS Byatt in her 2009 novel The Children's Book. In this conversation with Matthew Swe...

Post-War Germany from 2023-11-22T16:00

Re-invention and moral struggles are at the heart of the story of post-war Germany traced by Frank Trentmann in his new book Out of the Darkness. Anne McElvoy talks to him, to Thomas Meaney the ...

Sam Selvon and The Lonely Londoners from 2023-11-21T10:28

Caribbean migrants striving to make their lives in London are the focus of this 1956 novel by Samuel Selvon. Written in creolized English, it established him as an important Caribbean voice. In ...

New Thinking: Rediscovering women making film and sculpture from 2023-11-17T16:35

Over 200 women sculptors have been uncovered in the research of Sophie Johnson from Bristol University. She describes some of their creations and discusses the challenges of working with the inc...

Ursula Le Guin and The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas from 2023-11-16T23:16

A miserable child and a summer festival are at the heart of the short work of philosophical fiction first published by Ursula Le Guin in 1973. The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas was sparked by "...

Women, art and activism from 2023-11-15T14:25

The first women’s liberation conference in the UK, Miss World protests, the formation of the Brixton Black Women’s Group and the politics of who cleans the house are all explored in a new exhibi...

Shakespeare as inspiration from 2023-11-08T23:19

Matthew Sweet is joined by Professor Preti Taneja – author of a novel We That Are Young which sets the King Lear in Delhi, by Dr Iain Robert Smith who studies films from around the world, and by...

New Thinking: The Box Office Bears project from 2023-11-08T17:38

Goldilocks, Robin Hood, Little Bess of Bromley, Moll Frith were star performers on the bear baiting circuit in Elizabethan England. New evidence of bear bones uncovered in archaeological digs a...

New Thinking: How and why we talk from 2023-11-08T17:30

Ultrasound tests in Burnley market hall will help the phonetics lab at Lancaster University explore tongue positions and accents as part of this year's Being Human Festival. Claire Nance joins J...

The Imperial War Museum Remembrance discussion 2023 from 2023-11-07T12:37

From Iraq and Afghanistan and news headlines today back to earlier battles in the Spanish Civil War and World War Two, the relationship between war, photography and the press has affected attitu...

New Thinking: Playhouses and opera-going from 2023-11-06T18:06

From Lyons’ Corner House opera performances in the 1920s to 1980s productions staged in fish and chip shops in Scotland – Alexandra Wilson has been studying the history of opera going and presen...

New Thinking: Food from 2023-11-05T16:26

Lady Fanshawe’s ‘Receipt Book’ (c.1651-1707) provides the inspiration for a public cooking event at Tamworth castle hosted by the academic Sara Read which includes preserving vegetables and a lo...

New Thinking: Writing exile and overcoming statelessness from 2023-11-02T16:36

Around 3 million Bengali Pakistanis now live in Pakistan it is estimated and a research project has been exploring their experiences, mixing oral testimony and art projects with analysis of rece...

African identity via China and photography from 2023-11-02T12:00

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

The exhibition A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography at Tate Modern has a mission stat...

Robert Aickman from 2023-11-02T09:49

"Strange stories" is the way Robert Aickman (1914-1981) described his fiction and to be honest that's putting it mildly. When he wasn't writing fiction that leaves both his protagonists and his...

Eliza Flower and non-conformist thinking from 2023-10-27T13:37

The first live concert in 175 years of songs and music written by Eliza Flower (1803-1846) takes place tomorrow. A friend of JS Mill, Harriet Martineau and Robert Browning, Flower set to music s...

Sleep from 2023-10-24T11:48

Sleep science pioneer Nathaniel Kleitman descended into a cave in 1938 to investigate the nature of our sleep cycle. The experiment was not a success. And while it may not have yielded much evid...

Sankofa and Afrofuturism from 2023-10-23T15:08

Ekow Eshun is curating an exhibition exploring the idea of Sankofa, taking from the past what is good and bringing it into the present. Sarah Jilani teaches novels written by Ama Ata Aidoo (1942...

Valis and Philip K Dick from 2023-10-20T13:02

A series of revelatory hallucinations that Philip K Dick experienced in 1974, radically altering his view of belief, time and history, were the inspiration for his quasi-autobiographical novel V...

Humours and The Body from 2023-10-18T07:19

Bach's view of the body and how that comes through in his cantatas is being studied by violinist and contributor to Radio 3's Early Music Show, Mark Seow. He joins presenter Naomi Paxton and his...

Victorian colour, jewellery and metalwork from 2023-10-17T07:00

Man-made gems are the subject of research being undertaken by jeweller Sofie Boons. She joins presenter Nandini Das alongside Matthew Winterbottom, the curator of an exhibition at the Ashmolean ...

New Thinking: Work and protest from 2023-10-13T15:47

Jane Eyre and Shirley by Charlotte Bronte both refer to the unrest in Yorkshire which took place in the early years of the nineteenth century as new technology threatened jobs in the mills. Lite...

Being Blonde from 2023-10-12T22:00

What links “the British Marilyn” Diana Dors, the last women to be hanged in Britain Ruth Ellis, the artist Pauline Boty and the soap and film star Barbara Windsor? Professor Lynda Nead is giving...

The Frieze/Radio 3 Museum Directors Debate 2023 from 2023-10-11T09:13

Nicholas Cullinan from the National Portrait Gallery, London (NPG) and Elvira Dyangani Ose from the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Barcelona (MACBA) join Anne McElvoy to discuss the challenges o...

Art, Kew, a symphony and nature from 2023-10-10T16:28

An accidental invention which revolutionised plant collecting has inspired an artwork from Mat Collishaw, created in collaboration with video artists based in Ukraine, which is being premiered i...

New Thinking: Modernism, exile and homelessness from 2023-10-09T16:45

DH Lawrence described outcasts living by the Thames, Mina Loy made art from trash, calling her pieces “refusées", Wyndham Lewis moved from England to North America in search of fame and stabilit...

Faith, consciousness and creating meaning in life from 2023-10-05T08:00

I've been Thinking is the title of a memoir from philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett. Philip Goff is a Professor at Durham University who's written Why ? The Purpose of the Univer...

Refuge and National Poetry Day from 2023-10-04T11:00

Loss and belonging are explored in an installation at the Barbican Centre in London from Sierra Leonian poet and artist/filmmaker Julianknxx which hears choirs and musicians from cities across t...

Slavic culture and myth from 2023-10-03T08:25

Tales of adventure and magic connect the Slavic lands: East Slavs (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus), West Slavs (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland) and South Slavs (the countries of former Yugoslavia pl...

Hobbes and New Leviathans from 2023-09-28T17:00

"Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" is the way Thomas Hobbes described the life of man in a state of nature in his 1651 book The Leviathan. The seventeenth century philosopher reasoned th...

Childbirth and parenthood: Contains Strong Language Festival from 2023-09-26T18:35

From the forceps inventor Peter Chamberlen to letters written by Queen Victoria about giving birth saying ‘Dearest Albert hardly left me at all, & was the greatest support & comfort’: Jo...

Betty Miller and Marghanita Laski from 2023-09-26T14:01

Rejected by her usual publisher, Farewell Leicester Square is a novel by Betty Miller, written in 1935, exploring antisemitism, Jewishness and "marrying out". Marghanita Laski may now be best kn...

Notebooks and new technology from 2023-09-21T17:30

Novelist Jonathan Coe joins book historians Roland Allen, Prof Lesley Smith and Dr Gill Partington and presenter Lisa Mullen. As Radio 3’s Late Junction devotes episodes this September to the ca...

Why go into space? from 2023-09-20T16:12

From Cold War triumphalism to wanting to secure the future of humanity, people have given many reasons for wanting to go into space. Christopher Harding is joined by an historian, a science fict...

Black Atlantic from 2023-09-19T06:00

In 1816, Richard Fitzwilliam donated money, literature and art to the University of Cambridge, and the museum which bears his name began. A research project led by New Generation Thinker Jake Su...

The Red Shoes from 2023-09-14T22:11

The dancer Moira Shearer starred in the 1948 film written, directed, and produced by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger which reworks a Hans Christian Andersen story, mixed with elements of b...

Queer history, new narrative in San Fransisco from 2023-09-13T06:00

New narrative was a way of mixing philosophical and literary theory with writing about the body and pop culture. It was promoted by a group of writers in 1970s San Francisco. One of the chapters...

Wolfson Prize 2023 from 2023-09-05T09:53

Six historians have been shortlisted for the 2023 history writing prize which has been awarded for over fifty years. Rana Mitter has been talking to the authors about the books in contention: Af...

Writing and Place: The Cairngorms from 2023-09-04T19:00

The Cairngorms National Park has inspired writing by Merryn Glover, whose books include The Hidden Fires: A Cairngorms Journey with Nan Shepherd. Writer and artist Amanda Thomson's book Belongin...

Writing and Place: Cornwall from 2023-08-27T21:44

The coastline of Cornwall and its communities are the subject of a non fiction book called The Draw of the Sea by Wyl Menmuir. He joins writer Natasha Carthew in a conversation about the importa...

The Black Country past and present from 2023-08-25T08:45

In The Old Curiosity Shop, Charles Dickens portrayed The Black Country as a polluted hellscape where little Nell sickens and dies. So popular was the book that this idea of the region was rivett...

Landladies from 2023-08-23T08:00

Louise Jameson joins Matthew Sweet to recall the women who ran the digs she stayed in as a touring actor and the landladies that she's played (including a homicidal one!). Historian Gillian Will...

Depicting AIDS in Drama from 2023-08-23T08:00

Russell T. Davies is joined by his friend and author of Love from the Pink Palace, Jill Nalder to discuss their importance in one another’s lives, the importance of literature in their lives, an...

Late works from 2023-08-22T08:16

Dame Sheila Hancock, Geoff Dyer and Rachel Stott join Matthew Sweet to discuss the work and performance of writers, artists, athletes and musicians near the end of their careers.

Old Rage ...

Dark Places from 2023-08-21T08:25

Crime writer Ann Cleeves, theologian Mona Siddiqui, deep sea fish expert and podcast host Thomas Linley and poet Jake Morris-Campbell join Matthew Sweet to explore areas beyond the reach of ligh...

ETA Hoffmann from 2023-08-04T08:30

The German Romantic author of horror and fantasy published stories which form the basis of Jacques Offenbach's opera The Tales of Hoffmann, the ballet Coppélia and the Nutcracker. In the theatre...

My Neighbour Totoro from 2023-08-03T08:30

A world of sprites and spirits encountered by childhood sisters in the 1988 animated feature film by Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away) and Studio Ghibli has become a hit stage adaptation for the Ro...

Oliver Postgate from 2023-08-02T08:34

The creator of much-loved children's TV classics including The Clangers, Bagpuss and Pogles' Wood is discussed by Matthew Sweet and his guests: Daniel Postgate who took over Smallfilms from his ...

The Wife of Bath from 2023-08-01T08:30

Chaucer's widow and clothmaker is one of three characters given a longer confessional voice than other pilgrims in his Canterbury Tales and she uses her narrative to ask who has had the advantag...

Teaching and Inspiration from 2022-04-21T08:00

Anna Barbauld's Lessons for Children (1778-79) set off a new conversational style in books aimed at teaching children. She was just one of the female authors championed by Joseph Johnson, who was a...

Shakespeare, history, pathology and dissonant sound from 2022-04-20T15:00

The first pathologist in English writing? Andrea Smith looks at the figure of Warwick in Shakespeare's Henry VI. Owen Horsley is directing a new production for the RSC which involves a large commun...

New Thinking: Preserving Our Heritage from 2022-04-19T16:54

A collection of knitting patterns held in Southampton, an archive of Victorian greeting cards in Manchester, information about music hall and pantomime pulled together in Kent and the National Arch...

Housework from 2022-04-15T08:41

Who's doing the cleaning and looking after the kids? Are we all shouldering an equal share of the domestic burden and if not, why not? Matthew Sweet and guests on housework, gender&class from earl...

Grief from 2022-04-08T10:53

Archaeological remains, Jewish rituals, music, memento mori and the construction of elaborately carved tombs: Matthew Sweet discusses grief and the expression of mourning with guests: Lindsey Bust...

China: world politics, ink art&insomnia from 2022-04-06T17:00

Former Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd is a long time scholar of China. In his new book, The Avoidable War, he argues that it is cultural misunderstanding and historical grievance which make ...

Bridgerton and Georgian Entertainment from 2022-04-06T15:50

Venanzio Rauzzini, Fanny Burney, and Mr Foote are figures who come up in today's Free Thinking discussion as the hit period drama Bridgerton returns to Netflix for a second series and Shahidha Bari...

New Generation Thinkers 2022 from 2022-03-31T21:00

From Shakespearian writing and Tudor sound to the power of song, ideas about stupidity to sea monsters and the soil - the ten academics working at UK universities who have been chosen to share thei...

Leopoldo Torre Nilsson's Hand in the Trap from 2022-03-30T17:00

Born to a film-making family, Leopoldo Torre Nilsson was the first Argentine film director to be critically acclaimed outside the country. Before he died in 1978 from cancer, aged 54, Torre Nilsson...

Bruce Lee and Enter The Dragon from 2022-03-29T21:44

Jeet Kune Do, the martial arts philosophy founded by Bruce Lee has influenced the creation of modern mixed martial arts. He started as a child actor in the Hong Kong film industry and his five feat...

After Dark Festival: Dark Places from 2022-03-25T11:12

Crime writer Ann Cleeves, theologian Mona Siddiqui, deep sea fish expert and podcast host Thomas Linley and poet Jake Morris-Campbell join Matthew Sweet to explore areas beyond the reach of light, ...

After Dark Festival: Equinox from 2022-03-25T10:57

Matthew Sweet and his guests begin coverage of the After Dark Festival - an overnight extravaganza recorded at Sage Gateshead for the equinox weekend. What meanings and interpretations has humanity...

John Maynard Keynes from 2022-03-22T16:00

JM Keynes and his theory, Keynesianism, is central to the financial history of twentieth century. However, he is also central to its cultural history. Keynes was not only an economist, but a man eq...

Vikings from 2022-03-17T22:45

June 793 when Scandinavian raiders attacked the monastery of Lindisfarne in Northumbria, used to be the date given for the beginning of the Viking age but research by Neil Price shows that it began...

The Stasi poetry circle, Nazi schools and German culture from 2022-03-16T17:00

In 1982, the East German security force was deeply concerned with subversive literature and decided to train soldiers and border guards to write lyrical verse. Decades earlier in 1933, a group of e...

Fashion Stories: Boy with a Pearl Earring from 2022-03-14T12:20

"Delight in disorder" was celebrated in a poem by Robert Herrick (1591-1674) and the long hair, flamboyant dress and embrace of earrings that made up Cavalier style has continued to exert influence...

Fashion Stories: Uniforms - an alternative history from 2022-03-14T12:04

From school to work to the military – uniforms can signal authority and belonging. But what happens when uniforms are worn by those whom institutions normally exclude? Or when they’re used out of c...

Fashion Stories:Drama, Dressing Up and Droopy&Browns from 2022-03-14T11:50

Fashion from the 1990s to the 1790s and back again: Jade Halbert traces the history of Droopy&Browns, a fashion business renowned for the flamboyant and elegant work of its designer, Angela Holmes....

Fashion Stories: In a handbag from 2022-03-14T11:18

Oscar Wilde's famous line from The Importance of Being Earnest focuses on what we might not expect to find - Shahidha Bari's essay considers the range of objects we do carry around with us and why ...

Fashion Stories: Body Armour from 2022-03-14T10:56

"My lady's corselet" was developed by a pioneer of free verse on the frontlines of feminism, the poet Mina Loy. Celebrated in the 1910s as the quintessential New Woman, her love of freedom was shad...

Blackmail&Shame from 2022-03-10T22:44

An artist murdered in his studio - the blackmailer thinks he knows who removed vital clues. This plot from Charles Bennett premiered in London's West End in 1928 and was subsequently turned into an...

New Thinking: Women’s history from 2022-03-08T15:00

Sex strikes suggested by Suffragettes, a theatre company devoted to exploring the experiences of women in the UK prison system and the campaign to make women's rights at the heart of human rights a...

Sisters from 2022-03-06T18:10

The Unthank sisters, writers Lucy Holland and Oyinkan Braithwaite and historian and feminist activist Sally Alexander join Shahidha Bari for a conversation about what it means to be a sister on Int...

The Generation Gap from 2022-03-03T15:45

Before Them, We is a photographic project by Ruth Sutoyé and also the title of an anthology of poems in which a group of poets of African descent reflect upon the lives of their grandparents and el...

The Barbican, art and writing in 50s Britain from 2022-03-02T23:00

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

Climate change, nature and art from 2022-03-02T17:17

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

Perfecting The Body from 2022-02-24T22:45

After Iraq and Afghanistan, solider Harry Parker turned author and has written a study of the way robotics, computing and AI might be about to irrevocably alter our understanding of what it means t...

New Thinking: From Pong to VR for Vets from 2022-02-24T12:47

Project Fizzyo promotes better breathing in teenagers with cystic fibrosis by merging their daily physiotherapy exercise routine with a computer game. Emma Raywood, PHD student and Lead Investigato...

Pankaj Mishra, research into Indian history from 2022-02-24T10:26

Pankaj Mishra's Run and Hide tells a story of modern Indian times, as the hidden pasts of wealthy, Gatsby-style tech entrepreneurs must be reckoned with. And to help put this modern India in conte...

Artists' models and fame from 2022-02-23T12:00

The red-haired Joanna Hiffernan was James McNeill Whistler's Woman in White. An exhibition curated by Margaret MacDonald for the Royal Academy of Arts, London and the National Gallery of Art, Washi...

Hitchhiking from 2022-02-17T17:00

Travelling in Woody Guthrie's footsteps inspired a new history of hitchhiking written by Jonathan Purkis. He joins Matthew Sweet for a conversation which ranges across hitchhiking in the UK and in ...

China, Freud, war and sci fi from 2022-02-16T16:00

The bombing of Chongqing, Freud’s collection of ancient Chinese artefacts, the boom in science fiction amongst Chinese readers and an increasingly influential generation of educated tech-savvy mill...

Stonehenge history from 2022-02-15T12:20

The Nebra Sky Disc, a blue-green bronze dish around 30 cm in diameter, is thought to feature the oldest description of the cosmos on its surface. It's one of the exhibits in a new exhibition at the...

Existential Risk from 2022-02-10T12:02

The doomsday clock stands at less than two minutes to midnight, but how alarmed should we be and how can art respond to humanity's apparent vulnerability? Shahidha Bari is joined by author Sheila H...

Whale watching from 2022-02-09T22:45

The first underwater film, the making of Moby Dick in Fishguard, Wales, the poetry of Marianne Moore and the secret world of whale scavengers are conjured by Rana Mitter's guests: In a new book, S...

Diverse Classical Music II from 2022-02-08T22:45

New Generation Thinker Christienna Fryar is joined by four scholars whose work on composers has fed into concerts being recorded by BBC Philharmonic. Musicologist and pianist Dr Samantha Ege from ...

Futurism from 2022-02-03T22:44

"The beauty of speed. Time and Space died yesterday. We already live in the absolute, because we have created the eternal, omnipresent speed." Part of the 1909 manifesto drawn up by Italian poet Fi...

Modernism Around The World from 2022-02-02T22:45

Murals which aimed to synthesise the history and culture of Mexico, Japanese novels exploring urban alienation, an exhibition of Bauhaus paintings from Germany which inspired a generation of Indian...

Paper from 2022-02-02T13:22

From paper bullets to Tibetan rituals, early printing presses to present day recycling: Laurence Scott explores the cultural and social history of paper, from the Chinese Han Dynasty in 105 AD to t...

How To Make A Modernist Masterpiece from 2022-02-01T22:45

A "house on chicken legs” in Moscow designed by Viktor Andreyev, Virginia Woolf’s novel Jacob’s Room first published on 26 October 1922, Coal Cart Blues sung by Louis Armstrong drawing on his own e...

Asta Nielsen from 2022-01-27T22:45

Censored by the US, Europe's greatest early film star played leading roles in love triangle melodramas, comedies, stories of women trapped by tragic circumstances, and she took the role of Hamlet: ...

Yishai Sarid; marking Holocaust Memorial Day 2022 from 2022-01-26T18:00

A tour guide at Polish holocaust sites is at the centre of a new novel by Yishai Sarid. The author talks to Anne McElvoy about his own trips to Poland as a teenager and then as a father and the que...

Touki Bouki from 2022-01-21T10:45

A motorbike adorned with a zebu skull is one of the central images of Djibril Diop Mambéty's classic 1973 film, whose title translates as The Journey of the Hyena. Listed as one of the 100 greatest...

New Thinking: Mental Health Research from 2022-01-18T18:57

Drama and gaming are being used in a pair of projects exploring adolescent mental health. Dr Daisy Fancourt finds out why this meeting of the arts and science might unlock new ideas for treatments ...

Writing Love: Sarah Hall, Monica Ali, Adam Mars-Jones from 2022-01-18T17:00

Love during a lockdown is at the centre of Sarah Hall's latest book Burntcoat. Monica Ali's new novel is called Love Marriage and looks at love across two cultures and different ideas about feminis...

Altered States from 2022-01-13T22:45

From Aldous Huxley to cat pictures by Louis Wain: altered states of consciousness can be induced by taking drugs, but they also include dreams, tiredness, grief, and various states of mental illnes...

Mélusine from 2022-01-12T17:00

The legend of Mélusine emerges in French literature of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries in the texts of Jean d’Arras and Coudrette. A beautiful young woman, the progeny of the unio...

Adapting Molière from 2022-01-11T17:00

Do we underappreciate comic writing ? It’s 400 years since the birth of France’s great satirical playwright, Jean-Baptiste Pocquelin, better known by his pen-name Molière. Stendhal described him as...

Appeasement from 2022-01-06T15:44

The conventional view of Neville Chamberlain's dealings with Hitler at the 1938 Munich Conference, paints him as weak and gullible - an appeaser. But why did appeasement become such a dirty word wh...

Gloves from 2022-01-05T15:00

From duels to hygiene and medical protection to the image of the gloved aristocrat whose hands aren’t coarsened by work: Shahidha Bari dons a pair of gloves as she finds out about tranks, fourchett...

Jean-Paul Belmondo and the French New Wave from 2022-01-04T12:00

Matthew Sweet explores Belmondo's central role in the revolutionary cinema of 1960s France and how he became one of the most celebrated screen actors of his generation with Ginette Vincendeau, Lucy...

Fungi: An Alien Encounter from 2021-12-16T18:00

90% are unknown still but the species which have been studied have given us penicillin, ways of breaking down plastics, food and bio fuels but they can also be dangerous. Neither animal nor vegetab...

Colm Toibin; Dullness as a virtue from 2021-12-15T18:30

Sticking in stamps and killing animals were the main achievements of King George V - according to his biographer Harold Nicholson. Now Jane Ridley has written a new book about him subtitled "Never ...

Colm Toibin; Dullness as a virtue from 2021-12-15T18:30

Sticking in stamps and killing animals were the main achievements of King George V - according to his biographer Harold Nicholson. Now Jane Ridley has written a new book about him subtitled "Never ...

Early Buddhism; Sheila Rowbotham from 2021-12-14T22:44

Helping start the Women's Liberation Movement in Britain is just one of the key moments in Sheila Rowbotham's life. This year she published Daring to Hope: My Life in the 1970s and she compares the...

Witchcraft and Margaret Murray from 2021-12-09T22:56

From unwrapping Egyptian mummies to her theories about witch trials and the influence of her 1921 book The Witch-Cult in Western Europe on Wicca beliefs: Margaret Murray's career comes under the sp...

The TV Debate from 2021-12-08T17:57

James Graham’s play exploring the encounters between the American political commentators Gore Vidal and William F Buckley Jr, opens at the Young Vic in London this week. We also have Germaine Greer...

New Thinking: Research in Film Award Winners 2021 from 2021-12-08T16:47

Migration, autism, young Colombians escaping violence, Yorkshire farming and children born of war in Uganda are the topics highlighted in the winners of this year’s AHRC Researcher in Film Awards. ...

Ground-breaking history books from 2021-12-07T21:13

The Cundill Prize and PEN Hessell-Tiltman prizes for non-fiction writing about history are announced in early December. Rana Mitter talks to Cundill judge Henrietta Harrison about why their choice ...

The Day of the Triffids from 2021-12-02T10:32

Killer plants, a blinding meteor shower, the spread of an unknown disease: John Wyndham's 1951 novel explores ideas about the hazards of bio-engineering and what happens when society breaks down. M...

Caribbean art from 2021-12-01T17:22

Aubrey Williams, Horace Ové, Sonia Boyce, Lubaima Himid, Peter Doig, Chris Ofili, Hurvin Anderson, Grace Wales Bonner and Alberta Whittle have works on show at Tate Britain as part of an exploratio...

Dürer, Rhinos and Whales from 2021-11-30T11:16

Dürer’s whale-chasing and images of rhinos, dogs, saints and himself come into focus, as Rana Mitter talks to Philip Hoare, author of Albert and the Whale, curator Robert Wenley and historian Helen...

Toys from 2021-11-26T16:07

A stunt track and farting game are said to be this year's must have toys but what can we learn from the toys children played with in Argentina during the Cold War and from Beatrix Potter's anger at...

Christopher Logue's War Music from 2021-11-24T22:44

Left unfinished at his death in 2011, the poet worked on his version of the Illiad for over 40 years. As a new audio book of Christopher Logue reading War Music is released, Shahidha Bari and her g...

Romanian history and literature from 2021-11-23T16:26

The Fall of Ceau?escu in 1989 ended 42 years of Communist rule in Romania. How did the experience of living through that make its way into fiction? Georgina Harding published In Another Europe: A J...

New Thinking: Memorials and Commemoration from 2021-11-19T10:30

A rainbow monument in Warsaw which has now been destroyed. The response of residents in Belfast to an exhibition commemorating the Somme and the Easter Rising. Dr Martin Zebracki works on the Queer...

Faking It and Trompe-l'oeil from 2021-11-19T09:40

The dining room at Windsor Castle holds one of Grinling Gibbons's carvings, others are found at churches including St Paul's Cathedral and the sculptor developed a kind of signature including peapo...

Marvin Gaye's What's Going On from 2021-11-17T18:56

Vietnam, ecological worries and poverty and suffering inspired the lyrics in Marvin Gaye's 1971 album What's Going On. Written as a song cycle from the point of view of a war Vet returning home, it...

Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex from 2021-11-16T22:45

Kick-starting second-wave feminism with her 1949 book The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir was a key member of the Parisian circle of Existentialists alongside Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Maur...

New Thinking: Being Human 2021 from 2021-11-11T16:03

Deciphering Dickens's shorthand, how the National Health Service uses graphic art to convey messages, creating a comic strip from Greek myths: these are some of the events taking place at the annua...

Green Thinking: Climate Justice from 2021-11-10T16:21

Melting perma-frost in Alaska has led to crooked housing, an eroded air-strip and changes to the hunting and fishing diets of the inhabitants. But are their views and experiences being properly reg...

The Imperial War Museum Remembrance Discussion 2021 from 2021-11-09T12:00

Cold, civil, world, uprising, conflict, war on terror: Anne McElvoy and her guests Elif Shafak, Christina Lamb, Lincoln Jopp and Hilary Roberts explore the impact of the words we use to describe co...

Green Thinking: Future of Home from 2021-11-08T15:00

Eliminating plastic from building houses, creating a house out of construction waste – rubble, chalk, ply timber and second hand nuts and bolts – and designing for circular cities are amongst the p...

God's Body from 2021-11-05T15:27

Modern theology often treats God as an abstract principle: a mover that doesn't move. But in the Bible, Abraham walks alongside him, Jacob (arguably) spends a night wrestling with him, Moses talks ...

Green Thinking: Activism and Young People from 2021-11-05T15:00

How can zines and board games help us understand climate change? Projects in Birmingham and Glasgow are using these techniques to allow young people to express their hopes and their experiences of ...

Green Thinking: Energy from 2021-11-04T10:40

Is district heating, not boilers, the answer to lowering our energy use? How should we think of decommissioned factories? Professor Frank Trentmann and Dr Ben Anderson explain the concept of distri...

Caesar, Hogarth and images of power from 2021-11-03T17:21

Caesars with the wrong beard, faint laurels in the background of a scene from Hogarth's A Rake's Progress and the experiences of the guardian of empty tombs, part of a ruined Neolithic necropolis i...

Oceans, art and pacific poetry from 2021-11-02T12:57

A concrete diving suited figure apparently swimming into the gallery floor is one of the sculptures created by Tania Kovats for her current exhibition. Margo Neale Ngawagurrawa has curated the Song...

Green Thinking: Law from 2021-11-01T14:10

Are states policing themselves properly? How is the law helping put the CITES agreement into practice to stem the international trade of wild animals and plants? Professor Elizabeth Kirk and Profes...

Time from 2021-10-29T11:20

As the clocks go back, theoretical physicist Fay Dowker, philosopher Nikk Effingham and science fiction writer Una McCormack join Matthew Sweet get to grips with the weirdness of time travel. Fay ...

Green Thinking: Media from 2021-10-28T15:42

Would it help to see Superheroes do their recycling? Do viewers feel more invested in climate protests depending on what the protesters look like? And how does bingeing box sets contribute to emiss...

New Thinking: Diverse Classical Music from 2021-10-28T15:08

Christienna Fryar speaks to the researchers uncovering classical music that has been left out of the canon – discovering the stories of three composers whose voices and stories have been marginalis...

Green Thinking: Trees from 2021-10-26T16:55

The government plans to plant 30,000 hectares of trees each year by 2025. But how practical is it and what would the real impact be? Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough talks to Dr Julie Urquhart of the U...

Twilight from 2021-10-26T11:00

Photographing at nightfall, capturing the sense of light in classical music, the charged body of a black Jaguar in the Amazon: Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough's guests poet Pascale Petit, photographer...

Green Thinking: Sustainable Development from 2021-10-25T11:09

How can we come up with ethical and equal solutions to the climate emergency, helping rural communities to develop, and learn from the experience of indigenous communities. Alison Mohr explains ho...

Celebrating Buchi Emecheta from 2021-10-23T12:30

Child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education are amongst the topics explored in over 20 books by the author Buchi Emecheta. Born in 1944 in an Ibusa village, she los...

The Language of Flowers from 2021-10-21T21:44

Gardening and George Orwell might not be the first pairing that comes to mind but he uses gardening metaphors in his writing and made many notes about the growth of vegetables and flowers he had pl...

Green Thinking: History of climate summits from 2021-10-21T08:18

Emissions, reputation and shame: what does the history of climate conferences tell us about what to expect at COP26? Professor Paul Harris and Professor John Vogler look at whether there are differ...

Rationality&Tradition from 2021-10-20T16:00

Do we value the right ideas? Two concepts come in for close scrutiny in this edition of Free Thinking: Rationality and Tradition. So, what are they, how has our understanding of them changed over t...

Green Thinking: Landscapes from 2021-10-20T09:00

How have we shaped the landscapes around us, and how have landscapes shaped us? From flooding in Cumbria to community groups in Staffordshire, how can understanding the history of a landscape help ...

New Thinking: Black British Theatre. An Afro-Cuban star from 2021-10-19T07:45

Who complained about Olivier's Othello? Stephen Bourne has been mining the archives to find out who raised questions about Laurence Olivier's blacked up performance in 1964. It's one of the stories...

Green Thinking: how we see nature from 2021-10-15T08:16

Should we consider nature economically, socially, spiritually or culturally? What is the financial worth of bees? And do whales value each other? Dr Rupert Read and Professor Steve Waters explore h...

Sugar from 2021-10-14T21:44

Could the modern world be built on the back of our craving for an addictive substance? Matthew Sweet marshals historians Mimi Goodall and Dexnell Peters, and artist and theorist Ayesha Hameed, to s...

Colour from 2021-10-13T14:00

A novel about Matisse, hand glazed ceramic panels, red ochre to Yves Klein blue, the story of female pioneers of colour theory: Laurence Scott is joined by the artist Lubna Chowdhary, author Michèl...

Frieze: Museums in the 21st century from 2021-10-12T11:00

The National Gallery in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut were among the many arts institutions forced to close during...

Green Thinking: Health from 2021-10-08T15:00

Climate change presents new challenges to human health. As temperatures rise, tropical and sub-tropical diseases are already becoming more widespread. While climate change has consequences on human...

Choice from 2021-10-07T21:44

The theme of this year's National Poetry Day is choice. Shahidha Bari is joined by Marvin Thompson, winner of this year's Poetry Society National Poetry Competition, and poet and New Generation Thi...

New Thinking: Black British Theatre from 2021-10-06T23:01

Names to put back into the conversation about the history of British Theatre are suggested by Naomi Paxton’s guests in this New Thinking podcast. Stephen Bourne is the author of Deep Are the Roots ...

The British Academy Book Prize 2021 from 2021-10-06T17:00

Racial injustice in USA; ghost towns in post-industrial Scotland; how maritime history looks from the viewpoint of Aboriginal Australians and Parsis, Mauritians and Malays; the roots of violence th...

Breakfast from 2021-10-05T06:00

The Full English or Continental? What does our breakfast choice signify and how has it been represented in culture? 60 years on from the opening of the film Breakfast at Tiffany's - taken from Trum...

Green Thinking: Transport from 2021-10-01T11:48

Children walking to school, or cycling is the aim of a project in Manchester which one of today's guests, Dr Sarah Mander, works on. She shares her ideas about how to change our patterns of transpo...

Order&Chaos from 2021-09-30T21:44

Archiving or hoarding - the mother in Ruth Ozeki's new novel The Book of Form and Emptiness is overwhelmed by the newspaper cuttings she is supposed to categorise for her job. In his new history of...

Thomas Mann from 2021-09-29T16:00

Would he condemn Hitler? That's the question novelist Thomas Mann was continually asked, after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929 following novels such as Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mou...

New Thinking: Researching a House Through Time from 2021-09-28T13:23

From a "monthly nurse" registered in the census, to local newspaper reports of strikes and industrial accidents, an auction of household goods and furniture to the records of an asylum: just some o...

The continuing appeal of Tudor history from 2021-09-28T09:20

Historical novelist Philippa Gregory, historians Susan Doran and Nandini Das, and literary scholar and author Adam Roberts join Matthew Sweet at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry to discuss the enduri...

Punk from 2021-09-23T21:44

Rebellion and causing offence: Shahidha Bari looks at punk and finds that beyond the filth and the fury of the ‘70s music scene, it provided a new vocabulary for artists that’s shaped the cultural ...

Green Thinking: Soil from 2021-09-23T13:00

Soil nurtures plant, animal and human life. Industrial farming practices have depleted soil and agrochemicals have been used to revive it. In recent years some farmers have adopted regenerative met...

Hannah Arendt's exploration of Totalitarianism from 2021-09-21T16:00

Hannah Arendt tackled the big ideas behind possibly the most dangerous period of the twentieth century: Anti-Semitism, Imperialism and Totalitarianism. These phenomena and the concepts of freedom a...

Belonging from 2021-09-16T12:59

"I have no relation or friend" - words spoken by Frankenstein's monster in Mary Shelley's 1818 novel. That story, alongside Georg Büchner's expressionist classic Woyzeck, has inspired the new produ...

Green Thinking: Fashion from 2021-09-16T09:00

The fast fashion industry stands accused of depleting natural resources, creating vast carbon emissions and producing endless garments destined for landfill. So, what can be done? Researchers acros...

Glitches from 2021-09-15T21:44

One definition of a glitch is a short-lived fault in a system operating otherwise as it should. Glitches in digital systems have been used by artists for at least a decade to produce work with a ch...

Dante's visions from 2021-09-14T11:00

Descending into the nine circles of Hell is one of the key ideas set out in Dante's Inferno. Today's Free Thinking looks at the way his thinking and imagery have been taken up by other artists and ...

Revisit Shoes from 2021-07-28T08:00

From Roman sandals to trainers and stilettos. Shahidha Bari looks at the shoe trade, with guests including Thomas Turner, who has written about sneakers in his book The Sports Shoe, A History From ...

Revisit The influence of the British black arts movement from 2021-07-27T08:00

Artists Sonia Boyce, Isaac Julien, Eddie Chambers and Harold Offeh talk to Anne McElvoy about their art and the influence of the British black arts movement - which began around the time of the Fir...

Revisit: Tokyo Idols and Urban Life from 2021-07-23T08:00

Tokyo used to be presented as the ultimate hyper-modern city. But after years of economic recession the Tokyo of today has another side. A site of alienation and loneliness, anxiety about conformit...

Revisit Rash?mon from 2021-07-22T19:10

Who can you trust? That's the question posed in Rash?mon. In today's programme Rana Mitter's guests David Peace, Natasha Pulley, Yuna Tasaka and Jasper Sharp look at both the book and the film. Ry...

Bette Davis from 2021-07-20T15:00

A spinster dominated by her mother in Now Voyager (1942), a strong-willed Southern belle in Jezebel (1938) which won her an Academy award for best actress, a Broadway star in All About Eve (1950): ...

Green Thinking: Food from 2021-07-20T15:00

Climate Change is expected to continue disrupting food production and consumption. Over recent years pressures have intensified on everyone, from those growing food and selling it, to those paying ...

Connecting with nature from 2021-07-19T12:58

Music from Orkney thunderstorms, dog walks in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park that have inspired a set of tiles, essays about the seasons from a diverse collection of writers: Eleanor Rosamund Barracl...

Alain Robbe-Grillet from 2021-07-14T21:44

A "cubist" story - with a plot and timeline broken up and repetitive descriptions of objects, like a painting by Picasso, is one way in which the French nouveau romain of the 1960s has been describ...

Green Thinking: Weather from 2021-07-14T15:00

With extreme weather events expected to become more frequent in the future, are there any lessons we can learn from the past? Environmental historians have been looking at droughts, floods and hurr...

Breathe from 2021-07-13T20:34

Lisa Mullen is joined by Imani Jacqueline Brown of Forensic Architecture, whose exhibition for the Manchester International Festival explores the links between power and the air we breathe; journal...

Green Thinking: Festivals from 2021-07-09T15:00

Festivals are a key part of our culture and economy, but traditionally they’ve had a big ecological footprint. Festivals attendees have long been heavy consumers of resources from travel to food an...

Mining, Coal and DH Lawrence from 2021-07-08T21:44

Lawrence's dad was a butty - a contractor who put together a team to mine coal for an agreed price. His 1913 novel Sons and Lovers drew on this heritage. Frances Wilson's new biography focuses on t...

Epic Iran, lost cities and Proust from 2021-07-08T11:37

A horoscope from 1411, a portrait of a woman blowing bubble gum and a gold griffin-headed armlet: art collector Ina Sarikhani Sandmann, historian Ali Ansari and New Generation Thinker Julia Hartley...

The English country house party from 2021-07-06T19:00

It’s sixty years since the house party at Cliveden where Christine Keeler encountered Minister of War, John Profumo and the Soviet Naval attaché, Yevgeny Ivanov. The events of that weekend, a heady...

Filming Sunday Bloody Sunday from 2021-07-01T08:00

The Oscar winning Midnight Cowboy was followed up by this drama about an artist who has relationships with a female job consultant and a male doctor. Director John Schlesinger, writer Penelope Gill...

New Thinking:The Innovative Shape of Poems from 2021-06-30T19:40

HIV's origins and colonial history have inspired the collection of poems by Kayo Chingonyi, which has been nominated for the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2021. Paisley Rekdal is currently the ...

New Thinking:The Innovative Shape of Poems from 2021-06-30T19:40

HIV's origins and colonial history have inspired the collection of poems by Kayo Chingonyi, which has been nominated for the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2021. Paisley Rekdal is currently the ...

Green Thinking: Sustainable Cities from 2021-06-29T16:00

Cities produce more than half the world’s carbon emissions and are home to more than half the world’s population. So what role might cities play in tackling the climate emergency and how can their ...

Cornwall and the Coastal Gothic from 2021-06-29T12:44

Bait depicted Cornish second-home owners in a tense relationship with local fishermen. The 2019 film's director Mark Jenkin is one of Laurence Scott's guests along with author Wyl Menmuir, and Joan...

Green Thinking: Climate Change and Heritage from 2021-06-25T09:17

What role do museums and heritage organisations have to play in the climate emergency? How do we stop cultural and historical landmarks from falling into the sea, or is it time to learn to say good...

World's Fairs and the future from 2021-06-24T14:30

From the Great Exhibition of 1851 to Shanghai 2010, Owen Hatherley, Emily MacGregor and Paul Greenhalgh explore visions of the future offered by world's fairs and expos with Matthew Sweet. Emily Ma...

Green Thinking: Climate Change and Literature from 2021-06-24T09:30

Poets Yvonne Reddick and John Wedgewood Clarke are using poetry and creative writing to explore our, and their, relationships with the environment. John is focusing on a small polluted river in Cor...

Mid Century Modern from 2021-06-23T21:44

Peace, prosperity and formica - that's one way of describing the vision on show at the Festival of Britain in 1951. But domesticity had a radical side and in this Free Thinking conversation, Shahid...

Building London from 2021-06-22T16:36

Stew, the name for brothels in London. A townhouse set to become luxury flats in the centre of Soho is the focus of the new novel Hot Stew from Fiona Mozley, who was shortlisted for the Booker Priz...

Masks from 2021-06-17T11:00

From Greek tragedy to Covid conspiracies via LGBTQI activism in Uganda, artist Leilah Babirye, classicist Natalie Haynes and BBC correspondent Marianna Spring join Matthew Sweet to explore the many...

Displacement from 2021-06-16T17:00

Are you coming back? That is what potter Edmund de Waal was asked by readers when he published his best-selling book about his family's refugee history The Hare with Amber Eyes. It's not a question...

Nadifa Mohamed, Gentle/Radical, Dylan Thomas from 2021-06-15T19:31

A Somali man arrested for murder in 1950s Cardiff inspired the latest novel from Nadifa Mohamed. She talks to Rana Mitter about uncovering this miscarriage of justice in a newspaper cutting with th...

Green Thinking: Climate and Refugees from 2021-06-15T09:30

Does climate change force people to flee their homes and livelihoods? Does it cause wars that create refugees? Dr Helen Adams and Professor Michael Collyer explain how various factors are at play, ...

How anthropology helps us understand the world from 2021-06-11T18:40

"Tunnel vision is deadly. We need lateral vision. That is what anthropology can impart: anthro-vision." So says renowned economist GillianTett, who trained as an anthropologist. She joins Anne McEl...

Green Thinking: Hot Money from 2021-06-10T08:59

From Bitcoin mines to green investment bonds: how easy is it to change the way finance works to make it greener? Professor Yu Xiong and Professor Nick Robins share their research, knowledge and co...

Beryl Vertue from 2021-06-09T15:06

From Frankie Howerd to Sherlock: Beryl Vertue is the producer of some classic TV shows including Men Behaving Badly. She took Steptoe and Son to America, negotiated for writer Terry Nation to retai...

Women's Art from 2021-06-08T15:04

A Bouillabaisse soup inspired hat paraded by the surrealist artist Eileen Agar in 1948 caused raised eyebrows to the passers-by captured in the Pathé news footage on show in the Whitechapel Gallery...

Green Thinking: Seascapes and Blue Gold from 2021-06-08T09:12

How real are flooding dangers in Britain and Ireland? Two researchers who have been working with local communities in Wales, Norfolk and Ireland tell Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough about the impact o...

Green Thinking: Climate and Conflict from 2021-06-05T11:00

Is climate change to blame for global conflicts and disputes over resources? Or is this rush to blame water shortages just post-Colonial thinking? Dr Ayesha Siddiqi and Professor Jan Selby talk to ...

Green Thinking: Future of Work from 2021-06-04T11:30

How green is office working? Have changes since Covid helped us plan for a more environmentally friendly way of working? Philosopher Dr Alexander Douglas and Dr Jane Parry, who works on Work aft...

Green Thinking: Can artists help save the planet? from 2021-06-03T21:45

Is encouraging action still art? What does it mean to make art about the environment? Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough brings together a curator, researchers and artists to discuss these questions. She...

Alice and Dreaming from 2021-06-02T21:44

"Before there were books there were stories". Salman Rushdie's opening words in his collected Essays from 2003-2020. In one of them he reveals that Alice in Wonderland made such an impression on hi...

New Thinking: The Botanical Past from 2021-06-01T21:44

Should Kew re-label its plants? What do you see when you study a still life painting on the gallery walls? How do nineteenth century authors depict deadly plants? New Generation Thinker Christienna...

Wittgenstein's Tractatus at 100 from 2021-05-27T21:44

'What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence'. Thus ends the only book the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein published in his lifetime. But it's a book that's had people talking ever sinc...

Fashion, Art, and the Body from 2021-05-26T18:09

Wearing denim, workwear, or sharp tailoring makes a statement about how we think of ourselves. Charlie Porter has been exploring the relationship between artists and clothes. He joins writer Olivia...

Novelist Tahmima Anam plus was Nero a ruthless tyrant? from 2021-05-25T19:00

The Startup Wife is the title of Tahmima Anam's latest novel. Anne McElvoy talks to her about writing about the work/life balance and ideas about risk. New Generation Thinker Mirela Ivanova, from t...

Who needs critics? from 2021-05-20T12:09

Is Gogglebox the main place on TV where you now find criticism? What does that tell us about the role of the critic today? Suzi Feay, Arifa Akbar and Charlotte Mullins join Matthew Sweet to review ...

Ghosts of the Spanish civil war from 2021-05-19T19:00

A ghostly Franco visits an elderly man in the latest novel by Patrick McGrath. He joins historian Duncan Wheeler and the makers of a prize winning documentary Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar, a...

The Wolfson History Prize 2021 from 2021-05-18T11:00

Toussaint Louverture's revolutionary leadership in Haiti; Ravenna's place as a hub of culture and a meeting point of East and West; how motherhood and work have changed from Victorian Manchester fa...

Lost cities, 20s divas and 2011 uprisings from 2021-05-13T18:00

Singer Umm Kulthum, Mounira al-Mahdiyya, Badia Masabni. These are the names of the pioneering performers working in Cairo's dance halls and theatres in the 1020s whom Raphael Cormack has written ab...

New Thinking: Archiving, curating and digging for data from 2021-05-12T21:55

What stories are being uncovered by people working behind the scenes at museums and institutions? Lisa Mullen finds out talking to Tessa Jackson – Conservator;
David Beavan – Senior Research So...

New Thinking: Archiving, curating and digging for data from 2021-05-12T21:55

What stories are being uncovered by people working behind the scenes at museums and institutions? Lisa Mullen finds out talking to Tessa Jackson – Conservator; David Beavan – Senior Research Softwa...

Marlon James and Neil Gaiman from 2021-05-11T15:06

From the appeal of trickster gods Anansi and Loki to the joy of comics and fantasy: Booker prize winner Marlon James and Neil Gaiman, author of the book American Gods which has been turned into a T...

Alison Bechdel from 2021-05-06T08:00

The Bechdel test asks whether two women are having a conversation which doesn't relate to a man. Many films, books and plays fall foul of the measure which first appeared in the comic strip Dykes t...

Napoleon the gardener and art thief from 2021-05-05T15:00

The day before Napoleon's death on May 5th 1821, the willow tree he liked to sit under on St Helena was felled by tempestuous winds. Ruth Scurr has written Napoleon: A Life in Gardens and Shadows. ...

Samuel Johnson's circle from 2021-05-04T21:00

"We suffer from Johnson" - those words come in a poem written by his friend, the diarist Hester Thrale Piozzi (who died May 2nd 1821). Patience Agbabi's new novel time travels back to eighteenth ce...

Northern Ireland from 2021-04-29T20:30

A Northern Irish writer - what does that label mean? Lucy Caldwell compares notes with Caroline Magennis about the way authors are charting change and setting down experience - from working class m...

New Generation Thinkers: A Norwegian Morality Tale from 2021-04-29T15:00

Eight churches were set on fire, and a taste for occult rituals and satanic imagery spiralled into suicide and murder in the Norwegian Black metal scene of the 1990s. Lucy Weir looks at the lessons...

New Generation Thinkers: Beyond the betting shop from 2021-04-28T21:45

Darragh McGee takes the long view of the risk-based games we have played throughout history. He explores the experiences of their losers and the moral censure that their losses have attracted; from...

Links between Judaism and Christianity from 2021-04-28T08:00

From the Jewishness of the New Testament to attempts by 19th- and early 20th-century British Jews to blend in to Christian England, Giles Fraser shows how the two religions have a vexed history but...

Epistemic Injustice from 2021-04-27T21:44

Was Marx wrong when he said that philosophers can only interpret the world in various ways, and contrasted that with actually changing it? Epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, was once consid...

New Generation Thinkers: Colonial Papers from 2021-04-27T12:50

The First Congress of Black Writers and Artists in Paris 1956 staged debates about colonial history which are still playing out in the protests of the Gilets Noirs. New Generation Thinker Alexandra...

New Generation Thinkers: Battlefield Finds from 2021-04-26T21:45

Gold fob seals, Sheffield silver, Mesolithic stone tools - these were some of the discoveries detailed in the 28 papers, books and pamphlets published by a soldier turned archaeologist who began lo...

New Generation Thinkers: The Inscrutable Writing of Sui Sin Far from 2021-04-25T15:15

Chinatown, New York, in 1890 was described by photo-journalist Jacob Riis as "disappointing." He focused only on images of opium dens and gambling and complained about the people living there being...

New Generation Thinkers: Hoarding or Collecting? from 2021-04-23T22:00

Vivian Maier left over 150,000 negatives when she died in 2009. Her boxes and boxes of unprinted street photographs were stacked alongside shoulder-high piles of newspapers in her Chicago home. The...

Bombing and morals, Flooding and the future from 2021-04-22T21:45

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

New Generation Thinkers: A social history of soup from 2021-04-21T21:45

The potato famine saw a Dublin barracks turned into place where starving people were given six minutes to eat their soup in silence. Tom Scott-Smith researches humanitarian relief and his Essay tak...

New Thinking: Shakespeare's Life Lessons from 2021-04-21T12:37

Friendship, domestic violence, power dynamics in the home, and debates about the ethics of war - all topics we can find in the dramas of Shakespeare. Scholars Emma Smith, Patrick Gray, and Emma Whi...

The Essay New Generation Thinkers Jean Rhys's Dress from 2021-04-20T21:45

Blousy chrysanthemums pattern the cotton dress, designed for wearing indoors, that a pregnant Sophie Oliver found herself owning. It helped her come to terms with motherhood. In this Essay, the New...

Maryse Condé's writing plus Suzanne O'Sullivan from 2021-04-20T21:34

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

New Generation Thinkers: The Feurtado's Fire from 2021-04-19T22:00

Claude Mackay the Haarlem poet wrote about his experiences of an earthquake in Kingston in 1907. Twenty years earlier the city was putting itself back together following a devastating fire set off ...

The Battle of Culloden, Outlander, Peter Watkins from 2021-04-15T17:00

16 April 1746, the Jacobite rising was quelled by the Duke of Cumberland's army at the Battle of Culloden. Marking this anniversary here's a chance to hear Matthew Sweet discussing portrayals of Sc...

Jacques Tati's Trafic from 2021-04-14T11:00

Monsieur Hulot is a car designer who takes a chaotic journey to an auto-show in Amsterdam to show off his prototype in this comic film from 1971. It's the last of Jacques Tati's films to feature Hu...

Octavia Butler's Kindred from 2021-04-13T21:44

"A hermit in the middle of Los Angeles" is one way she described herself - born in 1947, Butler became a writer who wanted to "tell stories filled with facts. Make people touch and taste and know."...

Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalism and Schizophrenia from 2021-04-08T21:45

Capitalism and Schizophrenia is a major text of French poststructuralist thought by Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Made up of the two volumes Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus, it articulates...

Milton: Samson Agonistes from 2021-04-08T10:36

Blind, and with his hair cut and his strength shorn - in Milton's dramtic poem Samson has already been betrayed by Delilah. It goes on to explore ideas about violence , revenge and tragedy. Publish...

John Milton's Samson Agonistes from 2021-04-07T21:00

Blind, and with his hair cut and his strength shorn - in Milton's dramtic poem Samson has already been betrayed by Delilah. It goes on to explore ideas about violence, revenge and tragedy. Publishe...

The Liverpool Biennial debate from 2021-04-06T11:23

Slavery and empire building shaped Liverpool's development. Can art works help give a new understanding of the city's history? In a discussion organised in partnership with the Liverpool Biennial, ...

Spy talk from 2021-04-01T11:00

One Cold War spy has his story retold by journalist Simon Kuper, while the granddaughter of another - Charlotte Philby - writes novels that explore the human side and cost of espionage. Nigel Inkst...

From Blackface to Beyoncé from 2021-03-31T21:00

Hanif Abdurraqib, the American poet and essayist, has written a book in praise of black performance challenging stereotypes and recovering figures including the magician Ellen Armstrong who perform...

Writing About Faith from 2021-03-30T19:06

In Frank Skinner's A Comedian's Prayer Book the broadcaster presents a series of prayers which read like a stand-up routine exploring questions of belief. A practising Roman Catholic, Skinner's que...

Churchill's reputation from 2021-03-25T17:00

Wartime saviour or the symbol of nostalgic imperialism ? David Reynolds, Priya Satia, Richard Toye and Allen Packwood join Anne McElvoy to look at the ways Churchill's story and legacy are being wr...

Pleasure from 2021-03-24T22:00

As lockdowns have forced us to forgo the delights of the outside world, have we developed a taste for simple pleasures? Many have reported enjoying cooking and eating more than usual, or appreciati...

Frantz Fanon from 2021-03-23T22:44

Irrational feelings of dread, fear, and hate in a subject whose threat is often exaggerated or "phobogenesis" - one of the psychological terms explored in Frantz Fanon's 1952 book Black Skin, White...

Books to Make Space For on the Bookshelf: There's No Story There from 2021-03-19T22:45

The dangerous world of an explosives factory is the setting of Inez Holden’s 1944 novel There’s No Story There. A bohemian figure who went on to write film scripts for J Arthur Rank, to report on t...

Books to Make Space For On The Bookshelf: Closer from 2021-03-18T23:00

Drugs, sex, violence and thinking about death are at the core of the George Miles cycle of five novels. New Generation Thinker Diarmuid Hester draws the links between the author Dennis Cooper and t...

Syria: hope and poetry from 2021-03-18T10:14

Two years of staying inside her own home in Homs, whilst 60 per cent of her neighbourhood was turned into rubble hasn't deterred architect Marwa al-Sabouni. She talks to Anne McElvoy about rebuildi...

Books to Make Space For on the Bookshelf: Sindhubala from 2021-03-17T22:45

The rights of tribal people, the lives of ordinary workers and the depiction of female desire were amongst the themes explored by the writer Mahasweta Devi. Born in Dhaka in 1926, she attended the ...

Introducing New Generation Thinkers 2021 from 2021-03-17T22:45

From clues in paintings to colonial trade to letters sent between Australia and England; the links between a Durham based poet and India to the female singers and dancers from Latin America who wer...

Books To Make Space For On The Bookshelf: John Halifax, Gentleman from 2021-03-16T20:00

Dinah Mulock Craik achieved fame and fortune as the author of the 1856 bestselling novel John Halifax, Gentleman. New Generation Thinker Clare Walker Gore reads this rags-to-riches tale of an orpha...

New Thinking: what do we learn from census stats? from 2021-03-16T18:46

Everyday lives from the past are often hard to reconstruct. As we prepare for the Census 2021, what stories can we tell from past censuses and the records held at Kew at the National Archives? John...

New Thinking: what do we learn from census stats? from 2021-03-16T18:46

Everyday lives from the past are often hard to reconstruct. As we prepare for the Census 2021, what stories can we tell from past censuses and the records held at Kew at the National Archives? John...

Books to Make Space For on the Bookshelf: The Black Lizard from 2021-03-15T22:45

Edogawa Rampo's stories give us a Japanese version of Sherlock Holmes. New Generation Thinker Christopher Harding traces the way detective fiction chimed with the modernising of Japan, when the abi...

Edward Said's thinking from 2021-03-12T14:38

Orientalism was his book, published in 1978, which outlined Said's view that imperialism and a romanticised version of Arab Culture clouded the way the East was depicted by Western scholars. In 198...

The Vietnam Paris connection from 2021-03-11T19:39

Viet Thanh Nguyen's novel The Sympathizer won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Its follow-up takes the lead character to Parisian salons and an underworld of drug dealing so Free Thinking tracks the...

New Thinking: From life on Mars to space junk from 2021-03-09T15:04

Mars is the focus of current space exploration but how far back does this interest go? Dr Joshua Nall tells Seb Falk about the Mars globe held at the Whipple Science Museum in Cambridge. Hannah Smi...

Speech, Voice, Accents and AI Free Thinking from 2021-03-04T22:44

From prejudice against accents to early attempts to create an artificial voice - Matthew Sweet is joined by the academics Sadie Ryan, Allison Koenecke and Lynda Clark. Sadie Ryan hosts a podcast A...

Breakdown: Horatio Clare, Stevie Smith from 2021-03-03T10:01

Paranoia, the collateral damage on his family and the investigations he makes into drugs used to treat such a breakdown: Horatio Clare talks to Laurence Scott about his Journey through Madness, Man...

New Thinking: Girls from 2021-03-02T20:25

The films Cuties and Rocks present a contemporary image of girlhood. What do they tell us about what it is to be a girl and to negotiate growing up? We hear from three researchers who look at: the ...

Saint John Henry Newman from 2021-03-01T17:21

Catherine Pepinster, Kate Kennedy, Tim Stanley and New Generation Thinker Dafydd Mills Daniel join Rana Mitter to look at the poet, theologian and now Saint John Henry. The programme marks 175 year...

Foucault: The History of Sexuality 4 from 2021-02-25T22:44

Shahidha Bari is joined by Lisa Downing, Stuart Elden, and Stephen Shapiro to read volume 4 of Foucault's History of Sexuality, translated into English for the first time, which examines beliefs an...

Humans, Animals, Ecologies from 2021-02-24T22:45

Joanna Bourke is an historian whose previous work has looked at fear, pain, sexual violence and dismemberment. Her new book is a history and examination of bestiality and zoophilia, tracing our cha...

Adoption, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Renée Vivien&Violette Leduc from 2021-02-19T16:15

Overcoming long term illness, controlling her money and eloping to revolutionary Italy: Fiona Sampson's new biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning focuses on her as someone interested in inventing...

Turkey: Adnan Menderes, populism, and history from 2021-02-17T19:24

Turkey and 50s Prime Minister Menderes, Erdogan today, and how history is used for political power. Matthew Sweet is joined by Jeremy Seal, Ece Temelkuran, Michael Talbot&Nilay Ozlu. Before his ex...

Pakistan, Politics and Water Supplies from 2021-02-16T22:45

In Karachi Vice, journalist Samira Shackle tracks the lives of a Karachi ambulance driver, street school teacher and crime reporter amongst others - and uses their story to map a history of differe...

Coins, the magic money tree and a cashless world from 2021-02-12T11:30

From minting coins to digital currencies, Anne McElvoy is joined by Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff, British Museum coin curator Tom Hockenhull, historian of science Patricia Fara and political ec...

Darwin's The Descent of Man (1871) from 2021-02-10T22:45

Matthew Sweet is joined by Xine Yao, Joe Cain, and Ruth Mace, who've been re-reading Charles Darwin's 1871 book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. The book offered a radical rein...

New Thinking: Fashion Stories in Museums from 2021-02-09T19:17

What we learn from the tattered costumes of actress Ellen Terry, the couture created by Alexander McQueen, and the everyday wardrobe of American women at the turn of the 20th century. V&A fashion ...

Class and social mobility from 2021-02-04T16:00

How easy is it to climb out of the working class in Britain? Have attitudes to social mobility changed at all? Matthew Sweet talks to Professor Selina Todd about her latest book, Snakes and Ladders...

Patricia Lockwood and André Aciman from 2021-02-03T11:59

Patricia Lockwood and André Aciman share their sense of the way digital media, and the layers of history press in on our sense of the present moment as they talk about their new books with presente...

New Thinking: Eco-Criticism from 2021-02-02T22:45

From Bessie Head to Keats, Rachel Carson to Lorine Niedecker, Lisa Mullen and guests analyse links between literature and nature as an increasing number of university departments offer eco-criticis...

Healthy Eating Edwardian Style from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Elsa Richardson uncovers the early history of the wellbeing industry and introduces Eustace Hamilton Miles, a diet guru who made his name selling health to Edwardian Britons. Reformers promoted the...

'Calm Down Dear' - How Angry Should Politics Get? from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What does it mean to feel that your political position is righteous? At a time of rising tempers among electorates, should we all “calm down - or harness our rage? Kehinde Andrews is Professor of B...

Shopping Around the Baby Market from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Commercial surrogacy – the practice of paying another woman to carry a pregnancy to term – has been criticised for being exploitative, particularly when poorer women are recruited. Even if these wo...

Why Trespassing Is the Right Way To Go from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Have you ever been somewhere you shouldn't? In this essay, New Generation Thinker Ben Anderson creeps around, and explains how trespassers in the early-twentieth century helped create new attitudes...

Being Diplomatic from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How much emotion should you show if you are a diplomat, a news reporter or a conciliation expert? Anne McElvoy chairs a Free Thinking Festival debate at Sage Gateshead with Gabriel Gatehouse, Gabri...

The Essay: Cooking and Eating God in Medieval Drama from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Daisy Black looks at religious imagery, food, anti-semitism and product placement in medieval mystery plays. Eaten by characters, dotted around the stage as saliva-prompting props, or nibbled by au...

Anxiety and the Teenage Brain from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Worrying is a natural part of growing-up. And yet the incidence of serious anxiety and depression is rapidly increasing. Psychologist Stephen Briers from TV's Teen Angels, student Ceyda Uzun and Du...

A city is not a park but should it be? from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

From the story of Jonas Salk, who left the city of Pittsburgh for a medieval Italian town to create the space to think which led to the invention of the polio vaccine to the novelist JG Ballard dep...

Crimes of Passion: Sophie Hannah, Michael Hughes and David Wilson from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Many legal systems have allowed the accused the defence of a “crime of passion”: attributing their act to a sudden explosion of feeling, rather than pre-meditated violence. Prosecutors, though, hav...

Feelings, and Feelings, and Feelings. The Free Thinking Festival Lecture from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The idea of ‘emotions’ did not exist until the nineteenth century but now they are the subject of study and Professor Thomas Dixon was the first director of Queen Mary University of London's Centr...

Whatever happened to Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais? from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The writers of TV sitcoms The Likely Lads, Porridge and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet talk to Matthew Sweet. As a restoration of the film version of The Likely Lads is released, Dick Clement and Ian La Fren...

Betrayal from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

From politics to religion, gangster films to espionage, Philip Dodd considers acts of betrayal, with theologian, Elaine Storkey, columnist Peter Hitchens, author Jenny McCartney and historian Owen ...

Childhood faces and fears from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A history of orphans in Britain, fears about post war brainwashing, childrens' letters to C19 newspapers and portraits on show at Compton Verney. Anne McElvoy presents. New Generation Thinker and...

Empathy from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Authors Max Porter, Samantha Harvey and Alisdair Benjamin discuss empathy and the role it plays in writing and reading. How does it work? Is it the same in fiction and non-fiction? And how is it fa...

George Szirtes, Valeria Luiselli, Jhumpa Lahiri from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Valeria Luiselli talks to Laurence Scott about the desert border between Mexico and USA & capturing the sound, history and contemporary politics in her novel Lost Children Archive. The poet George ...

Partition, colonial power and the voices of C16th women from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Artist Hew Locke and historians Suzannah Lipscomb, Aanchal Malhotra & Anindya Raychaudhuri talk to Rana Mitter about using objects and archives to create new images of the past, from Guyana to Indi...

The Council Estate in Culture from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Painter George Shaw, crime writer Dreda Say Mitchell and drama expert Katie Beswick join Matthew Sweet to look at depictions of estate living - from the writing of Andrea Dunbar to SLICK on Sheffie...

Is British Culture Getting Wierder? from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Gazelle Twin (Elizabeth Bernholz), Julia Bardsley, Hannah Catherine Jones, Luke Turner & William Fowler join Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough and an audience at Café OTO at the Late Junction Festival f...

Women, relationships and the law past and present from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Lying about a sexual attack, resisting parental pressures to marry, using the law to fight for inheritance and divorce. Shahidha Bari talks to the fiction writers Ayelet Gundar-Goshen and Layla AlA...

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How self-revealing and frank should a writer be? Lara Feigel, David Aaronovitch, Melissa Benn and Xiaolu Guo join Matthew Sweet to look at the life of Doris Lessing and her 1962 novel in which she ...

David Bailey, Don McCullin from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The photographers, David Bailey and Don McCullin, came to prominence in the 1960s but their pictures did more than define a decade. Don McCullin's work in Vietnam, Biafra, Northern Ireland, Cyprus ...

The joy of sewing, poet Fatimah Asghar, Painting in miniature. from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Shahidha Bari talks to Fatimah Asghar about poetry and the Emmy nominated web series Brown Girls. We have a look at the miniatures of Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver – court painters to Queen El...

Skeuomorphs, Design and Modern Craft from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Laurence Scott, Will Self and New Generation Thinkers Lisa Mullen and Danielle Thom look at redundant features in design plus a visit to Collect: International Art Fair for Modern Craft and Design,...

Jack the Ripper and women as victims from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Historian Hallie Rubenhold reveals the previously untold stories of the five women killed by the Ripper and challenges the myths that have grown up around the Whitechapel Murders of 1888.

Images of Japan from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Fumio Obata and Jocelyne Allen discuss graphic art and manga.

Authority in the Era of Populism from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is required of a good leader in an age of disruption? Jamie Bartlett, Professor Mary Kaldor, Dame Louise Casey, Dame Heather Rabbatts, Rupert Reid debate at the London School of Economics. Ann...

Patti LuPone from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How loud should you be? Italian American performer Patti LuPone talks to Philip Dodd about why she doesn’t consider herself an American, her politics, unsuccessful auditions, backbiting, corporate ...

Scented gloves and gossip: civility and news in the Renaissance from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Shahidha Bari discusses new research on the the ins and outs of Renaissance culture: John Gallagher on civility, Emily Butterworth on news and gossip, Lauren Working on material culture, Sarah Knig...

Love from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Poet Andrew McMillan, philosopher and psychologist Laura Mucha, poet and novelist Lavinia Greenlaw & writer Elanor Dymott explores who and why we love. Presented by Anne McElvoy. Laura Mucha has w...

Africa Babel China from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

West Africa has a fundamental place in the shaping of the modern world and its story is told in a new history by Toby Green. He joins Rana Mitter in the Free Thinking studio alongside Xue Xinran wh...

Spike Lee from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The film-maker Spike Lee talks to Matthew Sweet about black power and prejudice, the politics of blackface, and the Oscars as his film BlacKkKlansman is nominated for six Academy Awards. Since 19...

Self Knowledge, Global Catastrophe and Simulated Worlds from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Self-knowledge, intellectual vices & conspiracy theories are debated by Professor Quassim Cassam and presenter Matthew Sweet. Plus New Generation Thinker Simon Beard discusses an exhibition of artw...

Encylopedias and Knowledge: from Diderot to Wikipedia. from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jimmy Wales talks Diderot & collecting knowledge + Tariq Goddard on Mark Fisher aka k-punk. The French writer Diderot was thrown into prison in 1749 for his atheism, worked on ideas of democracy at...

Street Culture, Protests, Food. from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Gilet jaune and novelist Edouard Louis, food expert Fabio Parasecoli, journalist, Gavin Mortimer and the historians Jerry White & Joanna Marchant with Philip Dodd. Whether it’s Berlin, Moscow or ...

Sea Goings from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Conceptual artist Katie Paterson on art which produces candles scented with planetary odours – one of Saturn's moons has a hint of cherry…and how she and co-exhibitor the Romantic painter JMW Turne...

Slavoj Zizek, Camille Paglia, Flemming Rose from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Can causing offence be a good thing? Philip Dodd explores this question with the Slovenian philosopher, the American author and the Danish journalist. On the 15th February 1989 the Ayatollah Kome...

Art & Refugees from Nazi Germany. from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Following this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day, Anne McElvoy looks at new writing which reflects on this history and at a festival marking the impact on British culture of refugees and artists who fl...

Consent from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kate Maltby, Lucy Powell, Zoe Strimpel join Shahidha Bari. Virtue Rewarded is the subtitle of Samuel Richardson's 1740 novel Pamela, which began as a conduct book before he turned it into the new l...

What Makes a Good Lecture? from 2021-01-30T14:39

Mary Beard, Homi Bhabha and Seán Williams join Shahidha Bari to look at the etiquette of talks on zoom and the history of lectures. Lecturing someone can be a negative: you’re patronising or boring...

Yiddish and Rotwelsch, Nazi France from 2021-01-27T22:45

Discovering his family's Nazi links is what happened to historian Martin Puchner when he set out to explore the use of a secret language by Jewish people and other travellers in middle Europe. He j...

Food, The Environment&Richard Flanagan from 2021-01-26T18:50

Lab meat and robot bees: how veganism and tech can solve the climate crisis. Anne McElvoy considers how food impacts on the environment with guests Anthony Warner, Cassandra Coburn, and Alasdair Co...

John Rawls's A Theory of Justice from 2021-01-21T14:00

In his 1971 book, A Theory of Justice, John Rawls argued that just societies should allow everyone to enjoy basic liberties while limiting inequality and improving the lives of the least well off. ...

James Baldwin and race in USA from 2021-01-20T14:35

Eddie Glaude Jr and Nadia Owusu compare notes on the relevance of James Baldwin's writing to understanding Donald Trump's America. Michael Burleigh gives his take on populism. Eddie S Glaude Jr ha...

Harlots&18th Century Working Women from 2021-01-19T17:54

Harlots - the TV series about 18th century female sex workers - and translating historical fact into onscreen drama. Shahidha Bari is joined by Hallie Rubenhold, Moira Buffini, and Laura Lammasniem...

Witchcraft, Werewolves, and Writing The Devil from 2021-01-14T13:30

The devil's daughter features in a new novel from Jenni Fagan; Salena Godden's debut novel imagines Mrs Death. To discuss conjuring fear, they join Shahidha Bari alongside a pair of historians - Ta...

New Thinking: Women and Slavery from 2021-01-13T13:00

New research on female slave owners in Britain, women on Caribbean plantations, and the daughter of a prominent slave trader. Christienna Fryar talks to researchers Katie Donnington, Meleisa Ono-Ge...

Autism, film and patterns from 2021-01-12T12:03

If, and, then are the 3 words which underpin Simon Baron-Cohen's exploration of how humans reason and develop solutions to problems in his latest book The Pattern Seekers. He joins author Michelle ...

New Thinking: Aphra Behn from 2021-01-08T19:29

From spy to one of the first professional woman writers in Britain - Aphra Behn was a prolific playwright, poet, translator and fiction writer in the Restoration period. Claire Bowditch has spent y...

Dostoevsky from 2021-01-06T11:41

From exile in Siberia to the novels which set a template - Rana Mitter and his guests Alex Christofi, Muireann Maguire, Claire Whiteheadand Viv Groskop look at the life and writing of Fyodor Dostoe...

Mildred Pierce from 2021-01-05T14:26

Mildred Pierce, James M Cain's 1941 novel was turned into a noir film starring Joan Crawford which earnt her an Academy Award. Matthew Sweet and his guests crime writers Denise Mina&Laura Lippman +...

Marlene Dietrich from 2020-12-17T22:00

Marlene Dietrich: sensual screen siren, political radical, 20th-century sex symbol, and - eventually - septuagenarian cabaret star. Cabraret legend Le Gateau Chocolat, film historian Pamela Hutchin...

Winter Light from 2020-12-16T17:34

Brian Cox on the stars and planets. Archaelogist Susan Greaney on Stonehenge and Maes Howe at solstice, the shadowy paintings of Wright of Derby and Artemisia Gentileschi and the candlelight of Han...

Hegel's Philosophy of Right from 2020-12-15T22:45

What links Beethoven&Hegel's philosophy of freedom? Anne McElvoy talks to New Generation Thinker Seán Williams, Christoph Schuringa, Gary Browning, and Alison Stone about Hegel's discussion of free...

Ancient wisdom&remote living from 2020-12-10T12:19

The solitude of remote lands and medieval monks; mapping and navigating by the stars and the survival strategies of Indigenous Peoples living around the Arctic circle as the ice melts are all part ...

New Thinking: Hey Presto! from 2020-12-09T18:51

Magic in medicine, surgery, and business; cross-dressing on the panto stage; and the history of pantomime and magic. Lisa Mullen is joined by Kate Newey, Will Houston, and Naomi Paxton. Naomi Paxt...

New Thinking: Ways of Talking about Health from 2020-12-09T16:58

Des Fitzgerald talks to the winners of the AHRC and Wellcome Trust Medical Humanities Awards 2020. Each has looked at how the arts can help our understanding of health and wellbeing - and, includes...

The 1920s - Philosophy's Golden Age from 2020-12-08T22:43

Wittgenstein changed his mind, Heidegger revolutionised philosophy (and the German language), and both the Frankfurt School and the Vienna Circle were in full swing. Matthew Sweet is joined by Wolf...

Times of Change from 2020-12-03T13:53

Jared Diamond, Camilla Townsend, Tom Holland and Emma Griffin talk to Rana Mitter. What lessons for the pandemic are there in looking back at times of upheaval in history from the rise and fall of ...

Mould-Breaking Writing from 2020-12-01T16:44

From surrealism and science fiction to inspiration drawn from historic objects in stately homes and the painting of Francis Bacon: Shahidha Bari hosts a conversation with Will Harris, who has writt...

When Shakespeare Travelled with Me from 2020-11-27T08:00

April 1916. By the Nile, the foremost poets of the Middle East are arguing about Shakespeare. In 2004, Egyptian singer Essam Karika released his urban song Oh Romeo. Reflecting on his travels and ...

Leadership&authority from 2020-11-26T12:00

From Tudor courts to plantations to the Arab Spring and modern political philosophy: a debate in partnership with Bristol Festival of Ideas hosted by Shahidha Bari. Jeffrey Howard is an Associate ...

Politician and Pioneer from 2020-11-26T08:00

The colourful life of Arthur MacMurrough Kavanagh overturns everything we think we know about disabled people’s lives in the 19th century. Born without hands and feet, he was an adventurous travell...

Beastly Politics from 2020-11-25T08:00

From pension schemes for police force dogs to political rights - can other animals be regarded as members of our democratic communities, with rights to political consideration, representation or ev...

Bedrooms from 2020-11-24T22:45

From sleeping space to work space? Matthew Sweet is joined by historian of emotions Tiffany Watt Smith, expert on the suffragettes and a history of sex Fern Riddell, author of The Four-Dimensional ...

Byron, celebrity and fan mail from 2020-11-24T08:00

Corin Throsby looks at the extraordinary fan mail received by the poet Lord Byron. The New Generation Thinkers scheme is ten years old in 2020. Jointly run by BBC and the Arts and Humanities Resear...

Should biographers imitate their subjects? from 2020-11-23T08:00

Would you don a diving suit or take a drug in a quest to understand the life of someone else? "Following in the footsteps" is an obsession for biographers as they travel the world to bring their su...

Democracy, Hong Kong and USA from 2020-11-19T14:12

Democracy, Hong Kong and USA Free ThinkingHong Kong has seen elections postponed, pro-democracy protesters arrested and a sweeping new national security law imposed by Beijing this year outlawing s...

Helen Mort and Blake Morrison, Oulipo from 2020-11-18T14:00

Teaching writing - mentors Helen Mort and Blake Morrison compare notes. Plus as Georges Perec's memoir I Remember is published in English for the first time, we look at the rules of writing propose...

New Thinking: Films and Research from 2020-11-18T13:04

Melting glaciers, cacophonous refugee camps, voices in heads, bathroom altercations and indigenous communities in crisis are the subjects of this year's AHRC Research In Film Awards. Eleanor Rosam...

New Thinking: Face Transplants and Researching Nose Injuries from 2020-11-13T15:33

Would you change your nose if you could? What about an entire face transplant? Des Fitzgerald speaks to researchers investigating the past and future of facial difference and medical intervention a...

Postcolonial Derby: Privateers, Pieces of Eight and the Postwar Playhouse from 2020-11-12T14:00

What connects a "double elephant" sized map, an academy of dissenters and Daniel Defoe? Shahidha Bari makes a virtual visit to the University of Derby's hub for the Being Human Festival 2020. Today...

The Imperial War Museum BBC Radio 3 Remembrance Debate 2020 from 2020-11-11T15:07

What does it mean to make art to commemorate histories of conflict? Anne McElvoy's guests are artists Es Devlin and Machiko Weston, Art Fund director Jenny Waldman, chair of the Fourth Plinth Commi...

Charity shop history, our relationship with 'stuff', and musical typewriters from 2020-11-10T17:29

Matthew Sweet and guests discuss the history and ideas behind the charity shop, our relationship with 'stuff', and musical typewriters - aspects of November's Being Human Festival. Matthew talks t...

Billy Wilder from 2020-11-05T12:00

Mr Wilder&Me is the title of the new novel from Jonathan Coe, who won the Costa Prize for his book Middle England. He is one of Matthew Sweet's guests in a programme exploring the life and work of ...

New Thinking: Depicting disability in history and culture from 2020-11-04T10:00

This November sees the 25th anniversary of the UK Disability Discrimination Act. As we consider what contemporary progress has been made we'll uncover the long history of disabled people’s politica...

War in fact and fiction from 2020-11-03T14:31

From East Africa to Arabia, the First World War to Mozambique, Rana Mitter discusses the impact of war on society and culture. Margaret MacMillan's most recent book is called War: How Conflict Shap...

Thinking about audiences in a time of pandemic from 2020-10-29T19:04

From online dance, pavement performances of plays, and the part played by audiences in Greek theatres and Shakespeare's Globe - how is performance adapting in the Covid era, and how are we rethinki...

Individualism and Community from 2020-10-29T09:41

From carers and refugees, New Deal America in the 30s back to Enlightenment values - Anne McElvoy explores the intersections between community and the individual, care and conscience with: Robert D...

The post-Covid city from 2020-10-27T12:00

How has the pandemic changed our experience of urban space and what is the future for cities like London? Caleb Femi was young people's poetry laureate for London. Katie Beswick and Julia King res...

The Writing of Aime Cesaire from 2020-10-22T17:02

His stinging critique of European colonial racism and hypocrisy Discours sur le Colonialisme was first published in 1950. How does it resonate today? A founder of the Négritude movement, Aimé Césai...

Polari Prize winners from 2020-10-21T14:47

Sunil Gupta says his photographs ask what does it mean to be a gay Indian man? Shahidha Bari looks at his work and talks to the winners of the 2020 Polari Prize, which usually takes place at London...

Seances, Science and Art - A Haunting, A Telepathy Experiment, and an Exhibition of Supernormal Art. from 2020-10-20T18:00

How a Croydon housewife baffled a 1930s ghost hunter - the author of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, Kate Summerscale, talks to Matthew Sweet about her discovery of a dossier of interviews about a po...

Post Truth&Derrida from 2020-10-15T12:36

Jacques Derrida was the superstar philosopher of the 1980s and 90s. Often associated with the philosophical movement known as 'poststructualism', he made the enigmatic statement that 'There is noth...

Poet Daljit Nagra and crime writer Val McDermid from 2020-10-14T13:00

Poet Daljit Nagra and crime writer Val McDermid discuss capturing different forms of speech, a sense of place, and politics - in a conversation organised with the Royal Society of Literature and Du...

New Thinking about Museums from 2020-10-13T09:00

From a VR version of Viking life and what you can learn from gaming, to describing collections in military museums, to the range of independent museums and the passions of their founders for everyt...

The Frieze BBC Radio 3 Debate: Museums in the 21st Century from 2020-10-08T11:21

Directors of the Hermitage, the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the National Gallery, Singapore explain how they are dealing both with the challenge of Covid-19 and the greater accountabi...

Writing a Life: Hermione Lee, Daniel Lee and Rachel Holmes from 2020-10-06T21:45

Biographers of Tom Stoppard, Sylvia Pankhurst and a little known SS soldier compare notes. How does the process differ if your subject is alive, if their story has already been enshrined in history...

New Thinking: African Europeans; Fidel Castro&African leaders; WEB Du Bois from 2020-10-02T08:00

From Roman emperor Septimius Severus to Senegal's Signares to the ten days in Harlem that Fidel Castro used to link up with African leaders at the UN, through to the missed opportunity to enshrine ...

Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Seamus Heaney. Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi from 2020-10-01T15:39

New critical biographies of Sylvia Plath and Seamus Heaney and a reissue of Anne Sexton's poems prompt a conversation for National Poetry Day about our image of a poet. Is it possible to separate a...

Cows in culture and soil from 2020-09-30T21:00

From Cuyp's paintings, to Wordsworth's wanderings to modern dairy management and soil fertility via Victorian Industrial farming and talking Swiss satirical cows - Cumbrian farmer James Rebanks joi...

Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize 2020 from 2020-09-29T15:45

The tribe of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, having a Jamaican Welsh identity, the idea of freedom and anti-colonial resistance, the alarming rise of youth suicide among Indigenous people in Canada a...

Conservatism, Philanthropy, Liberal and socialist futures from 2020-09-24T21:45

Edmund Fawcett's latest book focuses on the historic and contemporary conflicts in Conservatism. He describes how the constant tensions within the Conservative political thought have been exposed a...

New Thinking: The impact of being multilingual from 2020-09-23T11:00

How German argument differs from English, the links between Arabic and Chinese and different versions of The 1001 Nights to the use of slang and multiple languages in the work of young performers a...

Get Carter from 2020-09-22T11:00

The film starring Michael Caine was adapted from a 1970 Ted Lewis novel set in an underworld of gangsters and teenage pornography. Mike Hodges, Nick Triplow, Pamela Hutchinson and John Gray talk wi...

Family ties and reshaping history from 2020-09-17T11:38

From the influential part played by Sikh queens, through the ties of marriage and religion which helped shape the Western world, back to the links between Neanderthals and early man: Rana Mitter ta...

New Thinking: The Mayflower and Native American History from 2020-09-16T08:00

From fancy dress parties using native American head-dresses to the continuing significance of Wampum belts made of shells - how do particular objects help us tell the story of the colonisation of A...

Piranesi and disturbing archecture from 2020-09-15T11:00

Susanna Clarke, Adam Scovell, Lucy Arnold and Anton Bakker are Matthew Sweet's guests. Susanna Clarke talks about the inspiration behind the follow up to her best-selling first novel, Jonathan Stra...

The Radiophonic Workshop from 2020-08-06T09:00

The BBC Radiophonic workshop was founded in 1958 by Desmond Briscoe and Daphne Oram. This group of experimental composers, sound engineers and musical innovators provided music for programmes inclu...

Greek classics and the sea plus a pair of novels byTolstoy and Dostoevsky from 2020-07-29T17:28

Classicists Edith Hall and Barry Cunliffe explore the importance of the sea in the classical world in a discussion hosted by Rana Mitter. Pat Barker and Giles Fraser look at Tolstoy's War and Peac...

Wole Soyinka's writing from 2020-07-29T17:00

Novelist Ben Okri, playwright Oladipo Agboluaje and academic Louisa Egbunike join Matthew Sweet to look at the influential writing of Nigerian playwright and author Wole Soyinka - and specifically ...

Bernard-Henri Lévy, Stella Sandford, Homi K Bhabha from 2020-07-28T21:45

The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy has written a philosophical take on the current pandemic and what it tells us about society. He talks with Stella Sandford, Director of the Society for Eur...

Anne Applebaum, Ingrid Bergman, Herland from 2020-07-23T10:07

Anne Applebaum's new book The Twilight of Democracy has the subtitle The failure of democracy and the parting of friends. She talks to Anne McElvoy about what happened when she tried to connect up ...

Dada and the power of Nonsense from 2020-07-22T23:58

Subversion in art and writing and a project to re-imagine Dada. Curator Jade French, artist Jade Montserrat, writer Lottie Whalen and 2020 New Generation Thinker Noreen Masud are in conversation wi...

Proms Lecture - Daniel Levitin: Music and Our Brains from 2020-07-22T23:16

Former musician and record producer Daniel Levitin is now a leading neuroscientist and best selling author. In this year marking the anniversary of the birth of Beethoven, Rana Mitter introduces a ...

New Thinking:Nature Writing from 2020-07-15T09:00

Gilbert White was born on July 19th 1720 at his grandfather's vicarage in Hampshire. His Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789) influenced a young Charles Darwin and he's been called En...

Magic from 2020-07-14T11:42

Matthew Sweet delves into the deep history of magic, its evolution into religion and science and its continuing relevance in the 21st century. Joining his coven are novelist and historian Kate Lait...

How do we build a new masculinity ? from 2020-07-13T09:00

Artist and photographer Sunil Gupta, authors CN Lester (Trans Like Me) and Tom Shakespeare (The Sexual Politics of Disability), and Barbican curator Alona Pardo join Matthew Sweet in a discussion i...

Egyptian Satire from 2020-07-09T20:46

Dina Rezk from the University of Reading looks at politics and the role of humour as she profiles Bassem Youssef “the Jon Stewart of Egyptian satire”. As protests reverberate around the world she l...

Pogroms and prejudice from 2020-07-09T20:35

New Generation Thinker Brendan McGeever traces the links between anti-semitism now and pogroms in the former Soviet Union and the language used to describe this form of racism. Brendan McGeeve...

The consolation of philosophy and stories from 2020-07-09T19:41

The Roman statesman Boethius wrote The Consolation of Philosophy around the year 524 when he was incarcerated. It advises that fame and wealth are transitory and explores the nature of happiness an...

What does a black history curriculum look like? from 2020-07-08T08:55

Whose life stories are missing from the British history we write and teach? How do we widen the way we look at episodes which are on the syllabus? Rana Mitter's panel comprises Kimberly McIntosh S...

Prison Break from 2020-07-03T17:00

Prison breaks loom large in both literature and pop culture. But how should we evaluate them ethically? New Generation Thinker Jeffrey Howard asks what a world without prison would look like. His e...

Facing Facts from 2020-07-03T09:00

Earlier periods of history have seen more people with scarring to their faces from duelling injuries and infectious diseases but what stopped this leading to a greater tolerance of facial differenc...

Gambling, good leadership and economic history from 2020-07-03T07:22

Anne McElvoy looks at leadership lessons from past US presidents, the parallels between the betting industry and fears over gambling in 1945 and now and she asks who are the key economic thinkers. ...

Frank Cottrell-Boyce from 2020-07-01T09:00

The screenwriter and novelist talks to Matthew Sweet about teaching creative writing to children in lockdown, attending mass on zoom, the changing meaning of community and the importance of family ...

Dam Fever and The Diaspora from 2020-06-28T18:33

New Generation Thinker Majed Akhter explores how large dam projects continue to form reservoirs of hope for a sustainable future. Despite their known drawbacks, our love affair with dams has not ab...

Not Quite Jean Muir from 2020-06-28T18:12

Jade Halbert lectures in fashion but has never done any sewing. She swaps pen and paper for needle and thread to create a dress from a Jean Muir pattern. In a diary charting her progress, she refle...

Digging Deep from 2020-06-28T17:50

There is fascinating evidence that 5,000 years ago, people living in Britain and Ireland had a deep and meaningful relationship with the underworld seen in the carved chalk, animal bones and human ...

Berlin, Detroit, Race and Techno Music from 2020-06-28T08:00

When Tom Smith sets out to research allegations of racism in Berlin’s club scene, he finds himself face to face with his own past in techno’s birthplace: Detroit. Visiting the music distributor Sub...

Coming out Crip and Acts of Care from 2020-06-28T08:00

This Essay tells a story of political marches and everyday acts of radical care; of sledgehammers and bags of rice; of the struggles for justice waged by migrant domestic workers but it also charts...

Tudor Virtual Reality from 2020-06-28T08:00

Advances in robotics and virtual reality are giving us ever more 'realistic' ways of representing the world, but the quest for vivid visualisation is thousands of years old. This essay takes the gu...

Ian Rankin and Tahmima Anam from 2020-06-26T13:00

Crime writer Ian Rankin talks with Tahmima Anam in a conversation organised in partnership with the Royal Society of Literature and the Bradford Literature Festival. Plus New Generation Thinker Xin...

Revisit: Arundhati Roy from 2020-06-25T08:00

Arundhati Roy, the Man Booker prize winning author and campaigner, is in conversation with Philip Dodd about a life in the public eye and the novel she published 20 years after The God of Small Thi...

Rethinking the Curriculum from 2020-06-22T16:17

From a greater focus on Black history and poetry to classics in state school classrooms and an understanding of the history of science - Rana Mitter&guests debate the syllabus. Jade Cuttle is Arts...

Irenosen Okojie and Nadifa Mohamed. Midsummer archaeology from 2020-06-22T08:00

The writing life of two authors who should have been sharing a stage at the Bare Lit Festival. Irenosen Okojie and Nadifa Mohammed talk to Shahidha Bari in a conversation organised with the Royal S...

Queer Bloomsbury and stillness in art and dance from 2020-06-17T08:00

Francesca Wade and Paul Mendez talk to Shahidha Bari about Queer Bloomsbury in a conversation run in partnership with the Royal Society of Literature who set up events in mid-June to mark Dalloway ...

Revisit: Antarctica - testing ground for the human species from 2020-06-16T08:00

Two hundred years ago, Antarctica was discovered by Russian explorers and throughout this year the the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust is marking that anniversary. As we approach the date in June which...

New Thinking: Refugees from 2020-06-16T00:28

What are the best shelters? the right language? how does our view of hosting families change if we look at refugee self help schemes and experiences in camps in Palestine and Syria ? A trio of rese...

The future of theatre debate from 2020-06-12T14:47

Can our theatrical landscape survive financially, and how might it need to creatively adapt to survive post pandemic? As part of the Lockdown Theatre Festival, Anne McElvoy's panel features: Bertie...

Failure and female friendship from 2020-06-10T08:00

How do you cope with a sense of failure? Michèle Roberts has been Booker shortlisted and has 12 novels under her belt but her latest book is a clear eyed account of a year spent rewriting after hav...

Dickens from 2020-06-09T08:00

Mathew Sweet with Linda Grant, Laurence Scott&Lucy Whitehead. Dickens died on June 9th 1870. In 1948, the critic FR Leavis published the Great Tradition and included only one Dickens novel but that...

New Thinking: Tackling Modern Slavery from 2020-06-07T11:28

Naomi Paxton looks at the impact of the 2015 Modern Slavery Act, talking to researchers Katarina Schwarz and Alicia Kidd who are trying to measure and improve its effectiveness. Katarina Schwarz ...

Robin Askwith from 2020-06-03T08:30

Robin Askwith experienced isolation as a child with polio. In a conversation with Matthew Sweet, he reflects on a career running from the Confessions sex comedies to arthouse cinema working with di...

Revisit: Tokyo Story from 2020-06-02T21:39

Actor Richard Wilson, Professor Naoko Shimazu and film critic Larushka Ivan-Zadeh join Rana Mitter to look at this cinematic classic which was one of the 53 films made by Yasujiro Ozu before his de...

Revisit: Rowan Williams and Simon Armitage from 2020-05-28T08:00

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has written about Auden, Dostoevsky and tragedy. At Hay Festival he talks to poet Simon Armitage about the imprint of landscapes in Yorkshire, West Wa...

Sarah Perry from 2020-05-27T08:00

Matthew Sweet talks to author Sarah Perry about her gothic imagination, writing about religion, rationalism and disease in novels including The Essex Serpent, After Me Comes The Flood and Melmoth. ...

Revisit: My Body Clock is Broken from 2020-05-21T08:26

Jay Griffiths, Vincent Deary, Louise Robinson and Matthew Smith discuss our mental health. How does depression affect our sense of time and the rhythms of daily life? Our body clocks have long bee...

Anne Fine and Romesh Gunesekera. Jarman's Garden from 2020-05-21T08:00

Authors Anne Fine and Romesh Gunesekera are Fellows of the Royal Literature Society who signed the Register on the same day. In the first of a series of conversations with writers who would have be...

Kindness from 2020-05-20T08:00

Rutger Bregman challenges ideas about the selfish gene, and survival of the fittest with stories of human co-operation and kindness as he publishes a book called Human Kind - A Hopeful History. Plu...

The 2020 Wolfson History Prize: David Abulafia, Hallie Rubenhold, Prashant Kidambi from 2020-05-18T23:00

From Indian cricket, a survey of the oceans to the women killed by Jack the Ripper: Rana Mitter with the second set of shortlisted authors for the history writing prize. David Abulafia The Boundle...

Revisit: 2019 Wolfson History Prize Discussion from 2020-05-14T07:30

From classical birds to Nazi legacies, Oscar Wilde to Queen Victoria in India, early building to maritime trading: Rana Mitter and an audience at the British Academy debate history writing and hear...

The 2020 Wolfson History Prize: Toby Green, Marion Turner, John Barton from 2020-05-13T07:00

New takes on Chaucer, the Bible and African trading - Rana Mitter presents the first of 2 prograrmmes featuring 3 of the historians shortlisted for this year's history writing prize. Marion Turner...

WW II radio propaganda&French relations from 2020-05-06T08:00

Matthew Sweet looks at new research from Ludivine Broch, Daniel Lee, Hannah Elias and Cathy Mahoney into religion&propaganda on the radio + French soldiers in Yorkshire&a post WWII gratitude train ...

Revisit: Encylopedias and Knowledge from Diderot to Wikipedia from 2020-05-04T23:10

Jimmy Wales talks Diderot & collecting knowledge + Tariq Goddard on Mark Fisher aka k-punk. The French writer Diderot was thrown into prison in 1749 for his atheism, worked on ideas of democracy at...

Revisit: Mark Haddon from 2020-04-29T14:30

The Porpoise, Haddon's latest novel is now out in paperback. Anne McElvoy talks to him about the language of bloke, writing female characters and taking inspiration from Shakespeare and the legend ...

Cary Grant from 2020-04-29T09:00

The double life of the Bristol born Hollywood star of films including Suspicion, The Philadelphia Story and Charade. Matthew Sweet and guests imagine an evening in the film star's company. Born Arc...

Revisit: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring from 2020-04-22T08:00

Presenter Rana Mitter is joined by guests Tony Juniper, Emily Shuckburgh, Dieter Helm and Kapka Kassabova to discuss Rachel Carson’s passionate book, Silent Spring, first published in 1962 and said...

Alternative Realities from 2020-04-21T01:03

From a Victorian Maths Professor to Aldous Huxley, AJ Ayer and Barbara Ehrenreich - Shahidha Bari explores the impact of life changing experiences & the fourth dimension talking to Mark Blacklock, ...

Revisit: Shakespeare's Bookshelf from 2020-04-16T08:00

Rana Mitter is joined by Edith Hall, Nandini Das and Beatrice Groves to explore the books which inspired Shakespeare from the Bible and classical stories to the writing of some of Shakespeare's con...

Deep Time and the Earth from 2020-04-09T08:00

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

Gaia Vince is the author of Transendence: How Humans Evolved Through Fire, Language, Beauty And Time<...

New Thinking: Religion and ordinary lives from 2020-04-07T07:00

From the experiences of Quaker wives in the seventeenth century to the samplers and bibles in the homes of workers in the Industrial Revolution - Dr Naomi Pullin from the University of Warwick, and...

Revisit: What does game playing teach us from 2020-04-04T17:56

University Challenge star Bobby Seagull, writer and critic Jordan Erica Webber, games consultant and researcher Dr Laura Mitchell, and British Museum curator Irving Finkel join Shahidha Bari in the...

Knees from 2020-04-02T21:00

From dance to prayer, servants to scientists, knees ups to being on our knees - Matthew Sweet talks to art critic Louisa Buck, historian and New Generation Thinker Joe Moshenska, author Tracy Cheva...

New Thinking: Wordsworth from 2020-03-31T07:00

April 7th 1770 was the day William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, Cumbria. As we prepare to mark this anniversary, poet and New Generation Thinker Sarah Jackson is joined by Sally Bushell, Pro...

The Declaration Of Arbroath from 2020-03-25T09:00

Anne McElvoy and guests discuss the 700th anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath and Scottish politics today. She is joined by Kylie Murray, New Generation Thinker and Fellow in Early Scottish ...

What's so great about EM Forster from 2020-03-23T08:00

Deborah Levy and Laurence Scott talk to Shahidha Bari about the writer's work from his earliest novel Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) to his Essay Aspects of the Novel (1927). Recorded in partner...

Future Thinking from 2020-03-20T08:00

Mark Honigsbaum historian of epidemics, literary scholars Lisa Mullen & Sarah Dillon, UNESCO's Riel Miller & philosopher Rupert Read talk with Matthew Sweet. If uncertainty is a feature of our situ...

Contagion and Viruses from 2020-03-19T20:48

Matthew Sweet investigates viruses and how they could disrupt our understanding of the nature of organisms, and looks at what history can teach us about the current pandemic. With philosopher John ...

Shoes from 2020-03-19T15:28

From Roman sandals to trainers and stilettos. Shahidha Bari looks at the shoe trade, with guests including Thomas Turner, who has written about sneakers in his book The Sports Shoe, A History From ...

New Thinking: Science Fiction from 2020-03-18T17:20

It's sometimes defined as 'the literature of cognitive estrangement'. In other words, it's a genre that helps us see things in a new light. Hetta Howes discusses current academic thinking on scien...

Does Growth Matter? from 2020-03-17T22:00

The rate of social and technological change in the 20th century was unarguably frenetic. A key measure used by politicians, economists and journalists in that time has been GDP growth. But is Growt...

Slebs: Warhol, Beaton and celebrity culture from 2020-03-12T23:20

Entertainment writer Caroline Frost, New Generation Thinker Lisa Mullen and historian & podcast host Greg Jenner join Matthew Sweet as exhibitions about Cecil Beaton and Andy Warhol open in London....

Advertising & Artemisia from 2020-03-11T22:00

New Generation Thinker Catherine Fletcher and Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones join Rana Mitter to discuss how women's stories have shaped art and advertising from the baroque painter Artemesia G...

Fighting Women from 2020-03-10T22:00

Maaza Mengiste, Christina Lamb, Julie Wheelwright join Eleanor Barraclough to look at women's experience of fighting from Ethiopia's war with Mussolini to modern day Sudan back to Amazonians and Br...

Jewish Identity in 2020 from 2020-03-06T13:46

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

Storm Jameson - women writers to put back on the bookshelf from 2020-03-05T22:45

What is a writer's duty? Katie Cooper considers Storm Jameson's campaigning for refugees, her 1940 appeal To the Conscience of the World and why her fiction fell out of favour but is now seeing a r...

Frank Ramsey from 2020-03-05T11:54

Shahidha Bari looks at the legacy of Frank Ramsey who died in 1930 aged 27, but not before doing work that changed the course of philosophy, logic, mathematics and economics. Shahidha is joined by ...

New Thinking: Women in Virtual Reality from 2020-03-05T03:00

Hetta Howes learns how Sylvia Xueni Pan from Goldsmiths, University of London is using VR to do everything from training GPs not to overprescribe antibiotics to creating a groundbreaking Peaky Blin...

Anne Enright + the value of gossip from 2020-03-04T12:39

The Irish novelist Anne Enright talks to Laurence Scott about her new book Actress and being the inaugural Irish laureate, plus a discussion of gossip past and present with Emily Butterworth, Daisy...

Lady Mary Wroth - women writer to put back on the bookshelf from 2020-02-28T16:16

Author of the first prose romance published in England in 1621, her reputation at court was ruined by her thinly veiled autobiographical writing. Visit the family home, Penshurst Place in Kent, and...

Charlotte Smith - women writers to put back on the bookshelf from 2020-02-28T16:06

New Generation Thinker Sophie Coulombeau argues that we should salute this woman who supported her family through her writing, who perfected sonnets about solitude before Wordsworth began writing h...

Margaret Oliphant - women writers to put back on the bookshelf from 2020-02-28T16:05

The novel Miss Marjoribanks (1866) brought to life a large comic heroine who bucked 19th-century conventions. New Generation Thinker Clare Walker Gore's essay outlines the prolific writing career o...

Yolande Mukagasana - women writers to put back on the bookshelf from 2020-02-28T15:40

New Generation Thinker Zoe Norridge describes translating the testimony of a nurse who survived the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.

In Rwanda, Yolande Mukagasana is a well-know...

How archictecture shapes society from 2020-02-27T22:00

Ricky Burdett, Liza Fior, Des Fitzgerald, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg & Edwin Heathcote discuss ideals made concrete in an event chaired by Anne McElvoy with an audience recorded as part of the LSE Sh...

New Thinking: Everything to Everybody - Shakespeare for the people from 2020-02-27T14:30

Islam Issa hears from actor Adrian Lester and Professor Ewan Fernie about a project that will revive the Birmingham Shakespeare Memorial Library. Founded with the help of George Dawson - a man who ...

Japan Now 2020 from 2020-02-27T13:48

Hiromi Ito, Tomoko Sawada, and Yukiko Motoya, look at women's roles in Japanese culture today plus the Japanese view of English-language literature with translator Motoyuki Shibata. Philip Dodd pre...

Genes, racism, ageing and evidence from 2020-02-25T22:00

Neuroscientist and former record producer Daniel Levitin & geneticist Adam Rutherford join Rana Mitter to discuss the latest scientific discoveries about memory and the human genome. How difficult ...

African Empire Stories from 2020-02-20T22:00

Petina Gappah on writing David Livingstone's African companions back into history. Sarah LeFanu looks at the Boer War experiences of Rudyard Kipling, Mary Kingsley & Arthur Conan Doyle and their vi...

The Surreal World of Alejandro Jodorowsky from 2020-02-19T13:21

Matthew Sweet talks to the Chilean French director and gets a take on his occult, drug filled and violently psychedelic world from critics Larushka Ivan Zadeh and Adam Scovell.
Jodorowksy's 197...

Queer histories from 2020-02-13T22:00

Morgan M Page, Jana Funke & Senthorum Raj look at how we apply modern LGBT+ language and identities to historical figures both real and fictional and what it means to have to "prove" your identity ...

The History of Sex from 2020-02-13T12:08

Kate Lister started tweeting as Whores of Yore in 2015 to kick off a conversation about how we talk about sex. She has just published A Curious History of Sex which looks at everything from slang t...

The shadow of slavery from 2020-02-12T14:39

From sugar and spice, to reparations and memorials: slavery and how we acknowledge it is debated by Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough and her panel of writers and academics: Dr Katie Donington, Dr Chris...

Early cinema: why are we obsessed with firsts? from 2020-02-07T17:05

Alice Guy-Blaché the pioneering film director, a British film pioneer Robert Paul and how the Boer War led to animated film are the topics for discussion as Matthew Sweet talks to Donna Kornhaber, ...

Samuel Beckett & the purpose of culture from 2020-02-05T22:00

Lisa Dwan tells Philip Dodd what playing Beckett taught her about herself and feminism; playwright Mark Ravenhill, arts editor Jan Dalley & sp!ked author Alexander Adams discuss the proposition tha...

Mocking power past and present. from 2020-02-05T10:37

The German joker Tyll Ulenspiegel. Anne McElvoy with best selling novelist Daniel Kehlmann plus Prof Karen Leeder who has been looking at changing versions of the Dresden bombing.

Daniel K...

New Thinking: It all begins here? Understanding the Industrial Revolution from 2020-01-31T14:45

From government intervention and workshop ingenuity, to Britain's 'mind blowing historical carbon debt' and ground that's been polluted for 200 years, via the slave economies of Jamaica and the sou...

How we see pregnancy past and present from 2020-01-30T11:21

From Hans Holbein sketches to Beyoncé on Instagram – Anne McElvoy looks at the changing image of pregnant women in a new exhibition at the Foundling Museum. We hear about the cultural history of br...

Remembering Auschwitz from 2020-01-28T18:50

Anne Michaels, author of Fugitive Pieces, talks to Rana Mitter about her 1996 novel. Jewish Chronicle Literary Editor and author Gerald Jacobs, and historian and documentary maker Laurence Rees, jo...

What is good listening? from 2020-01-24T17:39

Matthew Sweet with NYT journalist Kate Murphy, Anne Karpf & David Toop in a conversation about paying attention and how to hear each other properly. Kate's new book You're Not Listening draws on he...

Poetry and Science: A 19th century metre on the (uni)verse from 2020-01-22T22:00

Astrophysicist Dame Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, poets Sam Illingworth and Sunayana Bhargava, and C19 expert and New Generation Thinker Greg Tate from the University of St Andrews join Anne McElvoy to dis...

Goddesses of academia from 2020-01-21T22:00

Nikita Gill on goddesses, Sandeep Parmar on Hope Mirlees, Francesca Wade looks at the careers of classicist Jane Harrison and LSE's Eileen Power and Victorian Leonard looks at attempts to write mor...

New Thinking: About Face from 2020-01-17T14:59

Would you change your nose if you could? What about an entire face transplant? Des Fitzgerald speaks to two researchers investigating the past and future of facial difference and medical interventi...

Psychohistory: Isaac Asimov and guiding the future from 2020-01-16T23:00

100 years on from Isaac Asimov's birth, Matthew Sweet looks at one of the bigger ideas contained in some of his 500 books; Psychohistory.

The idea, from Asimov's Foundation series, was th...

Why we read and the idea of the "woman writer" from 2020-01-16T13:39

Do men and women use the same language when talking about novels they have enjoyed? How have attitudes in publishing changed towards both readers and writers if figures show that women buy 80% of a...

Simplify your life from 2020-01-15T22:00

Laurence Scott hears about a pioneer of vegetarianism and advocates for nudism and camping as the academics Elsa Richardson, Annebella Pollen, Ben Anderson and Tiffany Boyle discuss the Life Reform...

Philosophy and Film from 2020-01-10T13:05

Sally Potter joins Rana Mitter to discuss the relationship between philosophy and film. Also in the studio are philosophers Helen Beebee, Max de Gaynesford, and Lucy Bolton.

You can find m...

Could there be a private language? from 2020-01-09T15:18

How do I know that anybody else experiences the world in the way I do? Or even if other people experience anything at all? In the 20th century the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein responded to this ...

Panpsychism - Is matter conscious? from 2020-01-09T12:01

Panpsychism is the view that all matter is conscious. It's a view that's gaining ground in contemporary philosophy, with proponents arguing that it can solve age-old problems about the relationship...

The Strange Case of the Huge Country Pile from 2019-12-19T22:00

Nosing around Osterley House, currently owned and run by the National Trust, Matthew Sweet and guests discuss our enduring fascination with the grand country estate.

Countless stories, fil...

The culture wars and politics now. from 2019-12-18T19:11

Philip Dodd is joined by Douglas Murray, author of The Madness of Crowds, the commentator David Goodhart, the writer and campaigner Beatrix Campbell, and the academic Maya Goodfellow, author of Hos...

Extinction Rebellion and the End of the World from 2019-12-18T15:57

Rana Mitter looks at the ideologies surrounding climate disaster with guests including Rupert Read of Extinction Rebellion, investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed, professor of psychosocial theory L...

New Thinking: Telling new sporting stories from 2019-12-13T19:50

The annual BBC Sports Personality of the Year competition with its different categories presents a very different picture from the newspaper reports studied by Dr Fiona Skillen, which congratulated...

Speaking the right language. from 2019-12-13T12:17

Matthew Sweet asks how did the English language grow & what are the key election phrases? He's joined by historian John Gallagher who's written about language in Shakespeare's time and how refugees...

The wealth gap, #MeToo and Edith Wharton from 2019-12-12T12:28

Laurence Scott, Sarah Churchwell, Francesca Segal and Alice Kelly re-read Wharton's novel The Age of Innocence. First published in 1920, it depicts new money in 1870s New York and limited choices f...

Pan-Africanism from 2019-12-10T18:34

Nana Oforiatta Ayim is creating an encyclopedia of online images of Africa to challenge the way it is seen, has curated Ghana's first art pavilion at the Venice Biennale, toured a mobile museum rou...

The shadow of empire and colonialism from 2019-12-05T22:45

Historian William Dalrymple, Wasafiri editor Susheila Nasta and novelist Romesh Gunesekera join Rana Mitter for a conversation looking at the East India company, the socialist economic policies and...

Feasting, fasting, hospitality, and food security from 2019-12-04T22:00

Author Priya Basil and curator Victoria Avery look at food, fasting and feeding guests. Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough is their host as the FitzWilliam Museum in Cambridge opens an exhibition and Pri...

When TV & the information superhighway were new from 2019-12-03T18:43

Nam June Paik made art with TV sets and imagined an information superhighway before the internet was invented. John Giorno organised multi-media and dial-a-poem events. Poet and New Generation Thin...

Resting And Rushing from 2019-11-28T22:00

Should we take more breaks at during the working day? Claudia Hammond, Matthew Smith, Sarah Cook and Ayesha Nathoo discuss the art of rest and concentration with Anne McElvoy.

The future of universities from 2019-11-27T18:15

Economist Larry Summers, former President of Harvard lays out his view of a university and Philip Dodd debates with the OU's Josie Fraser, classicist Justin Stover and NESTA's Geoff Mulgan. Has ne...

Is the Shadow of Mao still hanging over China? from 2019-11-26T18:45

Rana Mitter talks to historians of China - Jung Chang and Julia Lovell. Jung Chang's latest book Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister looks at the lives of the first Chinese girls to attend univer...

New Thinking: George Eliot from 2019-11-22T15:29

Shahidha Bari discusses the state of scholarship on George Eliot at her bicentenary with Ruth Livesey and Helen O'Neill, both at Royal Holloway, University of London, and Gail Marshall at the Unive...

The Mill on the Floss from 2019-11-22T12:24

Writer Rebecca Mead, actor Fiona Shaw + academics Dafydd Mills Daniel, Philip Davis & Peggy Reynolds read George Eliot's 1860 novel portraying sibling relationships. Shahidha Bari hosts.

G...

Are the arts saving Margate? from 2019-11-22T12:14

Investigating regeneration and gentrification, the Turner Contemporary, the 2019 Turner Prize exhibition, writer Maggie Gee on her novel Blood, & the town in literature.

The seaside town o...

Why We Need New News from 2019-11-22T12:05

New research looking at at reporting secret assassinations, countering propaganda & how we could update TV news bulletins, from the Being Human Festival, an annual event which involves public event...

The Legacy of the Trojan War from 2019-11-21T22:00

Why do the legendary walls of a Bronze Age city in Asia still cast such a long shadow? Novelist and classics expert Natalie Haynes, Alev Scott author of Ottoman Odyssey, archaeologist Naoíse Mac Sw...

New Thinking: AHRC Research in Film Awards 2019 from 2019-11-16T12:22

Hetta Howes is on the red carpet at this year's AHRC Research in Film Awards at the British Film Institute on London's South Bank, where she talks to the winners:
Laura Hammond of SOAS, Benjami...

Being Human: Love Stories from 2019-11-14T22:00

Naomi Paxton assembles a squad of researchers to talk about dating, relationships, and what how we fall in love says about us from the National Archives to London's gay bars.

Dr Cordelia B...

The Changing Image of Masculinity. from 2019-11-14T16:58

"Man Up". "He's Safe" "No Homo" How do men talk and write about masculinity? Laurence Scott talks to authors Ben Lerner, Derek Owusu and JJ Bola about crying, competitiveness, anger - and the press...

Weimar and the Subversion of Cabaret Culture from 2019-11-12T22:00

Matthew Sweet, performers Lucy McCormick and Gateau Chocolat, curator Florence Ostende, New Generation Thinker Lisa Mullen and Gaylene Gould with an audience at London's Barbican Centre

Fr...

The 2019 Free Thinking Imperial War Museum Remembrance Debate from 2019-11-07T22:00

Who decides what’s worth saving and what is culturally significant to protect in wartimes and war zones? The panel, hosted by Anne McElvoy, are:

Sir Peter Bazalgette - Chairman of ITV and ...

Quatermass from 2019-11-05T22:45

Dr Who collaborators Mark Gatiss & Stephen Moffat, academics Una McCormack & Claire Langhamer and Matthew Kneale join Matthew Sweet to celebrate Nigel Kneale's groundbreaking 1953 BBC TV sci-fi ser...

New Thinking: Rubble culture to techno in post-war Germany from 2019-11-01T17:46

As the 30th anniversary of the Berlin wall falling is marked on November 9th we rummage for stories amid the rubble. What were school teachers in Berlin pre-occupied with when the checkpoints were ...

Halloween. Ghost Stories from 2019-11-01T14:40

Shahidha Bari's guests include author Kirsty Logan and former League of Gentlemen writer and performer Jeremy Dyson, whose play Ghost Stories is back in the West End. Joining them is the film criti...

Cars, Parking and Motorways from 2019-10-30T22:00

Where are we? How did we get here, and where are we going?

Our relationship with the self-propelled small metal boxes in which we spend so much of our time is not as simple as it feels. Listen

Writing Real Life from Brexit to Grenfell from 2019-10-30T17:07

Ali Smith, Jay Bernard and James Graham join Matthew Sweet at the British Library in a discussion organised with the Royal Society of Literature.

Making art from real events is as old to w...

Landmark: The Yorkshire Feminist Winifred Holtby from 2019-10-24T21:00

Rachel Reeves MP, Hull academic Jane Thomas and New Generation Thinker Katie Cooper discuss the novel South Riding and the writing and politics of Winifred Holtby with Matthew Sweet and an audience...

What to Believe from 2019-10-23T21:00

Rana Mitter and guests look at the history of atheism and morality. Alec Ryrie's new book 'Unbelievers: an emotional history of doubt' argues that the rationality arguments for non-belief developed...

New Thinking: First Encounters from 2019-10-23T15:18

Should we really be celebrating the 500th anniversary of the arrival of Cortés and European settlers in Mexico? Is this a "first encounter" - and how do you decipher history when there isn't anythi...

Frieze Free Thinking Museums Debate from 2019-10-22T21:00

How welcome are selfies in modern art galleries and museums? What kind of labelling should be on display and should more objects be repatriated?
Laurence des Cars from the Musée d'Orsay, Kennie...

Dictators from 2019-10-18T12:20

Matthew Sweet on Chaplin's 1941 film and rising populism today with guests including Francesca Santoro L'hoir who acted alongside Chaplin as a child plus Ece Temelkuran, Peter Pomerantsev and Frank...

The Woolly Episode from 2019-10-17T12:45

From Sean the Sheep & Damien Hirst to a knitted bikini. Shahidha Bari with a woolly episode talks to writer and knitter Esther Rutter, shepherd Axel Linden, medievalist John Lee and cultural histor...

2019 Booker Prize, The Power of Ancient Artefacts from 2019-10-16T11:25

Anne McElvoy talks prehistory with archaeologist Mike Pitts and artist Renee So plus critic Alex Clark gives her take on this year's Booker Prize winners - Bernadine Evaristo and Margaret Atwood, a...

East Meets West from 2019-10-10T22:18

As the British Museum opens an exhibition on orientalism Inspired by the East, Matthew Sweet's guests include Ziauddin Sardar, editor of Critical Muslim, artist Inci Eviner, and historian Tom Holla...

Myth making, satire and Caryl Churchill from 2019-10-10T19:23

Caryl Churchill's C21st Bluebeard, the fragility of a glass girl and other myths reworked in 4 new short dramas. Jen Harvie discusses the storytelling on stage of one of Britain's leading dramatist...

Modern Dutch Writing from 2019-10-09T21:00

Laurence Scott looks at the way Dutch writers are addressing history and contemporary life with Rodaan Al Galidi, Eva Meijer, Onno Blom, Herman Koch and Toon Tellegen.

Eva Meijer is an aut...

The Frieze Masters Free Thinking Conversation about Art from 2019-10-08T15:24

Michael Govan, Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art outlines the issues facing museum directors talking with Philip Dodd and an audience at the Frieze London Art Fair. They debate the "...

Rebecca Solnit, Truth, National Poetry Day. from 2019-10-03T21:00

Who holds the power? The US activist and author Rebecca Solnit talks to Shahidha Bari about pros and cons of anger, US border patrols, rape cases in courts and shifts in the point of view of Hollyw...

New Thinking: Places of Poetry & The Colonial Countryside Project from 2019-10-03T18:25

A 15,000-line epic, Poly-Olbion has inspired Professor Andrew McRae from the University of Exeter and the Places of Poetry project which asks you to pin newly written poems to a modern version of W...

From The Spains to LatinX from 2019-10-02T21:00

Rana Mitter talks to Jason Webster, Ed Morales, Iain Sinclair and Iwona Blazwick, about the shifting concepts of identity in the Ibero-Latin world, from the days before Spain was a single Spain, th...

Surveillance, Conspiracy, and Secrets from the Archives from 2019-09-29T14:20

"They do not come into our house in jackboots... This is not totalitarianism. This is a new kind of power." Shoshana Zuboff discusses surveillance capitalism, the links between Pokémon Go and BF Sk...

Anxiety from 2019-09-26T12:41

Comedian Sofie Hagen, Colombian novelist Héctor Abad, political journalist Isabel Hardman, artistic director John O'Shea & psychologist Dr Colette Hirsch, who are behind a new exhibition about anxi...

Back to the '80s from 2019-09-20T11:58

Matthew Sweet is joined by guests including comedian Alexei Sayle, TV presenter Janet Ellis and film critics Adam Mars Jones and New Generation Thinker Iain Smith to look at remakes and new interpr...

Landmark: Susan Sontag's Against Interpretation from 2019-09-18T21:45

Lauren Elkin, Lisa Appignanesi and biographer Ben Moser debate Susan Sontag's life and ideas with presenter Laurence Scott, focusing in on her 1966 essay collection, which argued for a new way of a...

Tolerance, censorship and free speech. from 2019-09-17T21:45

Moral philosopher Susan Neiman studies lessons from German & US history. Ursula Owen went from Virago to Index on Censorship. Christopher Hampton has translated an Ödön von Horváth novel about the ...

New Thinking: Fashion, AI and Sustainability from 2019-09-16T14:33

Should we be renting our clothes instead of buying new ? Plus how robots are influencing the colour of our fashions. Mark Sumner and Stephen Westland both teach in the School of Design at the Univ...

Proms Plus: Witches & Witchcraft from 2019-09-13T12:40

Witchcraft, witch-trials and the image of the witch are explored by historian Professor Suzannah Lipscomb and Dr Thomas Waters. Hosted by New Generation Thinker Fern Riddell. Dr Thomas Waters is th...

Revisit Anxiety, Teenagers, University and Leaving Home from 2019-09-12T18:19

Caroline Dower is a psychotherapist and currently Head of the Counselling Service at Durham University. She has a special interest in the experience of psychological distress, and the experience of...

Proms Plus: Letters from 2019-09-11T13:24

The best selling thriller writer, Ruth Ware and the editor of the popular Letters of Note anthologies, Shaun Usher, join Sophie Coulombeau to discuss letter writing in the 21st century.

P...

Proms Plus: Sacrifice from 2019-09-02T14:34

Why the bible story of Jephtha caused more controversy than your average burnt offering. Reverend Richard Coles and Old Testament scholar Dr Deborah Rooke explain it all. Presented by John Gallagh...

Proms Plus: Landscape from 2019-08-27T10:06

Writer and broadcaster, Horatio Clare and the rapper and playwright, Testament join Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough to explore the ways in which the British landscape - urban and rural -- inspires wri...

Proms Plus: Nina Simone's life and legacy from 2019-08-22T12:18

Nina Simone - singer, pianist, civil rights activist and black feminist icon -- Kevin Legendre, Ayanna Witter-Johnson and Zena Edwards discuss her achievements and legacy. Producer: Zahid Warley

Proms Plus: Beethoven's 9th Symphony from 2019-08-21T16:15

Presenter Seán Williams discusses Beethoven the man and. Through a series of readings we learn what inspired the composer’s work.

Proms Plus: Kipling's Jungle Books from 2019-08-21T12:53

Anindya Raychaudhuri discusses Kipling's Jungle Books with children's novelist Frances Hardinge and academic Sue Walsh, recorded in front of an audience at Imperial College Union. How does Kipling ...

Proms Plus: Russian Folktales from 2019-08-21T11:48

Enter a world where huts walk on chicken legs, fish grant wishes and Baba Yaga sharpens her iron tooth with writers Marina Warner and Sophie Anderson. Presented by Victoria Donovan.

Produ...

Revisit Slavery Stories, William Melvyn Kelley & Esi Edugyan from 2019-08-18T17:50

New research on slavery with historians Christienna Fryar, Kevin Waite, and Andrea Livesey. A Different Drummer was the debut novel of Kelley - first published when he was 24. Compared to William ...

Prom Plus: What Victorians Did For Fun from 2019-08-16T21:45

Historians Lee Jackson and Kathryn Hughes discuss what kept Queen Victoria's subjects amused indoors and outdoors. Presenter: Rana Mitter


Kathryn Hughes, historian and author of Victo...

Proms Plus: Literary Hoaxes from 2019-08-16T12:51

Berlioz originally presented an early version of The Shepherd's Farewell - part of The Childhood of Christ, at this year's Proms - as the work of ‘Ducré’. It soon emerged that Ducré was not a forgo...

Revisit Napoleon in Fact and Fiction from 2019-08-15T09:00

From Napoleon impersonators, caricature and ballads, to a play which asks what if he didn't die in exile - presenter Anne McElvoy is joined by actor and director Kathryn Hunter, biographer Michael ...

Revisit Mike Leigh in Conversation about Peterloo, politics and his Salford upbringing. from 2019-08-14T17:28

Recorded as his film Peterloo opened in cinemas and repeated now to mark this week's 200th anniversary of the Manchester massacre

Proms Plus: Childhood, innocence and experience from 2019-08-13T16:00

The award-winning author of young adult novels, Patrice Lawrence and historian Emma Butcher - who specialises in 19th century child soldiers - discuss the construction of childhood past and presen...

Proms Plus: 'Queering' Tchaikovsky from 2019-08-12T17:21

Tchaikovsky’s letters to his brothers and to his nephew - to whom his final Symphony, the Pathétique, is dedicated - are fascinating insights into the composer’s turbulent life and work. Though his...

Proms Plus: Edgar Allan Poe from 2019-08-08T19:00

Novelist and Gothic literature specialist Elizabeth Lowry joins the writer, documentarist, film-maker and psycho-geographer Iain Sinclair to discuss the dark glitter of the Gothic and the work of t...

Proms Plus: Tragedy from 2019-08-08T11:45

One way that people deal with grief and suffering is to turn to tragic stories for example and catharsis. Rana Mitter discusses tragedy, ancient and modern with the award-winning poet Clare Pollar...

Proms Plus: Swans from 2019-08-05T19:00

In 2017, Sacha Dench, founder of Conservation Without Borders, flew the 4,000 mile migration route of Bewick swans from Arctic Russia to the UK in a paraglider. Drawing on her experience, the ‘Huma...

Revisit Spike Lee in Conversation on Free Thinking from 2019-08-05T17:30

Since 1983, Spike Lee's production company has produced over 35 films. His 1989 film Do The Right Thing was nominated for Best Original Screenplay in the Academy Awards. Best Picture that year wen...

Proms Plus: Nordic Summers Light and Dark from 2019-08-04T20:00

Taking their inspiration from the Russian and Finnish composers of 2019 Prom 22, Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough and an audience at Imperial College London hear from Mythos Podcaster Nicole Schmidt an...

Proms Plus: 1969 The Sound of a Summer from 2019-07-26T16:45

1996 was the summer of Woodstock, the moon landing, the Beatles’ Abbey Road and a gathering of beat poets at the Royal Albert Hall. Author and New Generation Thinker Preti Taneja is joined by poet...

Proms Plus: Music and Health from 2019-07-24T11:17

Naomi Paxton discusses the latest science and clinical practice with psychologist Dr Daisy Fancourt, a psychologist and epidemiologist who studies the relationship between music and health, and Dr ...

Proms Plus: Moon Landing from 2019-07-22T11:48

As the Proms marks the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landings, Professor Richard Wiseman, author of ‘Shoot For The Moon’ and Melanie Vandenbrouck the lead curator of the Moon exhibition at the...

Book Parts and Difficulty from 2019-07-19T03:30

Matthew Sweet looks at book frontispieces, dust jackets, footnotes, indexes and marginalia with Dennis Duncan, and explores a research project investigating difficulty in culture, with Professor Sa...

New angles on post-war Germany and Austria from 2019-07-17T21:46

Anne McElvoy and new ways of understanding post-war Germany and Austria through history, film and literature with Florian Huber, Sophie Hardach, Adam Scovell and Tom Smith.

Florian Huber ...

New Thinking: City Talk from 2019-07-17T13:25

Greater Manchester was created in the 1970s, bringing together areas that had previously been parts of Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Cheshire, as well as the City of Manchester itself. These areas all...

New Thinking: Neolithic Revelations from 2019-07-17T11:41

Hetta Howes learns that the absence of dental floss in the Neolithic era has left archaeologists with invaluable information about how our ancestors lived and where they travelled to. While piles o...

New Thinking: Shakespeare's Language from 2019-07-17T11:40

Encyclopedia of Shakespeare's Language uses corpus linguistics, a statistical method that collates data on how frequently words are used and how often particular words appear alongside each other, ...

New Thinking: Pregnancy Puzzles from 2019-07-17T11:35

What is the metaphysical status of an unborn fetus in relation to its mother? Is it possible to know what pregnancy will mean for you before you become pregnant? How can the distinction between hav...

Camille Paglia from 2019-07-16T23:46

Writer, feminist and author of such books as Sexual Personae and Provocations, Camille Paglia joins Philip Dodd to talk about feminism and free speech in the 21st century, and how her Italian herit...

An insider's view of war from 2019-07-11T23:46

Ex marine and journalist Elliot Ackerman talks with Iraq war political advisor Emma Sky. A novel by Shiromi Pinto tracing the life of Sri Lankan architect Minnette de Silva. New Generation Thinker ...

Caine Prize. Ivo van Hove. Female Desire. from 2019-07-10T23:45

The Belgian theatre director Ivo van Hove on staging Ayn Rand's ideas in The Fountainhead. 'The theme of my novel', said Ayn Rand, 'is the struggle between individualism and collectivism, not in th...

Landmark: Iris Murdoch's The Sovereignty of Good from 2019-07-10T18:02

Matthew Sweet and guests look at the thought and writing of Iris Murdoch 100 years on from her birth, re-reading her work of moral philosophy she published in 1970, drawing on lectures she had give...

Reinventing the 'Mistake on the Lake'. from 2019-07-04T23:45

Philip Dodd hosts a special programme recorded in Cleveland, Ohio. Once a booming manufacturing metropolis located on the southern shore of Lake Erie, this 'rust belt' city has for many years been ...

Russia and Fear. from 2019-07-04T05:30

Rana Mitter considers fearing Russia past and present with Mark B Smith, and the way Russia controlled fears over Chernobyl. Plus Tamar Koplatadze from the University of Oxford on her research into...

Free Thinking: Language and Belonging from 2019-07-03T11:39

Preti Taneja talks to the winner of the 2019 Dylan Thomas Prize, Guy Gunaratne, Egyptian graphic novelist Deena Mohamed, poet and broadcaster, Michael Rosen, Iranian-American author Dina Nayeri and...

Amitav Ghosh. Layla and Majnun. Islam Issa. from 2019-06-28T06:00

Amitav Ghosh on linking refugees, climate change, Venice & Bengali forests in his fiction. New Generation Thinker Islam Issa on Epstein's Lucifer sculpture. Rana Mitter presents.

Gun Islan...

Cindy Sherman, Laura Cumming from 2019-06-26T23:46

The art of Cindy Sherman; art critic Laura Cumming on finding out the history behind the days her mother disappeared as a child on a Lincolnshire beach, New Generation Thinker Susan Greaney on loca...

Jane Goodall, Elif Shafak from 2019-06-26T12:25

Jane Goodall is giving a talk at the British Academy on the work of the Jane Goodall Foundation with chimpanzees, protecting the environment with local communities and improving health and educatio...

The Hard Man in the Call-Centre from 2019-06-21T23:45

New Generation Thinker Alistair Fraser on the fates and fortunes of Glaswegian tough guys. Recorded with an audience at the York Festival of Ideas. To hear audience questions download the Essay as ...

'Bedford, do you call this thing a coat?' The history of the three-piece suit from 2019-06-20T23:45

New Generation Thinker Sarah Goldsmith's Essay introduces an audience at York Festival of Ideasto Beau Brummel and others who have understood the mixed messages of suits through time.

Eng...

James Ellroy from 2019-06-20T23:45

Philip Dodd is in conversation with the American author James Ellroy, whose books include LA Confidential and his latest, This Storm, part of his ongoing project to write a novelistic history of th...

Catch 22, Recycling fashion, Fred D'Aguiar, Wu Mali from 2019-06-20T12:35

Anne McElvoy, former Colonel Lincoln Jopp MC & novelist Benjamin Markovits on the new TV Catch-22. Jade Halbert on recycling fashion. Poet Fred D'Aguiar on winning the Cholmondeley Prize and Wu Mal...

Comrades in Arms from 2019-06-20T00:00

New Generation Thinker Tom Smith's Essay argues that the East German army had a reputation for unbending masculinity so it's surprising how central queerness was to the enterprise. Recorded with an...

Landmark: Finnegans Wake from 2019-06-19T16:11

Eimear McBride is the author of A Girl is a Half-formed Thing and The Lesser Bohemians
Professor Finn Fordham from Royal Holloway, University of London is the author of Lots of Fun at Finnegans...

Sword to Pen. Redcoat and the rise of the military memoir from 2019-06-19T00:00

New Generation Thinker Emma Butcher on the first soldier memoirs to talk about pain, terror and trauma.
The Napoleonic Wars, like all wars, had their celebrities. Chief among them, Wellington a...

The well-groomed Georgian from 2019-06-18T00:00

New Generation Thinker Alun Withey on what made 18th-century men shave off centuries of manly growth. Recorded before an audience at the York Festival of Ideas.
You can hear audience questions ...

Afropean Identities. Filming the Arab Spring. from 2019-06-14T05:30

Johny Pitts, Caryl Phillips and Nat Illumine discuss the idea of Afropean identity with Matthew Sweet. Plus New Generation Thinker Dina Rezk on Jehane Noujaim's Oscar nominated documentary The Squa...

Michael Rakowitz, Archaeology Now, Epic Journeys and Facial Disfigurement from 2019-06-12T23:45

The American sculptor Michael Rakowitz on how his own Iraqi heritage drove him to make art about the disappearance of artefacts and people. From shame to sympathy - New Generation Thinker Emily Coc...

Breaking Down the Barriers from 2019-06-11T23:45

Rana Mitter hears about a project that assesses the experiences of Muslim women in the UK cultural industries and talks to political artist John Keane. Author Katherine Rundell explains why adults ...

Orwell's 1984. A Landmark of Culture. from 2019-06-06T23:45

Peter Pomerantsev, Joanna Kavenna, New Generation Thinker Lisa Mullen and Dorian Lynskey join Matthew Sweet to debate George Orwell's vision of a world of surveillance, war and propaganda published...

Is the Law keeping up with our changing world? from 2019-06-05T23:46

A panel of researchers share insights into the law and warfare, gender and AI & Anne McElvoy talks to David Brooks and Hilary Cottam about compassion and creating communities.

Part of a we...

AI and creativity: what makes us human? from 2019-06-04T23:46

Joy Buolamwini founder of the Algorithmic Justice League and MIT media lab researcher, Anders Sandberg of the Future of the Human Institute at Oxford, artist Anna Ridler & Sheffield Robotics' Micha...

Simon Schama, Siri Hustvedt, Catherine Fletcher at Hay. from 2019-05-30T23:45

How does writing about art help us embrace a new way of seeing the work ? Rana Mitter is joined at the Hay Festival by the novelist and art essayist Siri Hustvedt , the writer and broadcaster Simon...

Landmark: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring from 2019-05-29T23:45

Rachel Carson’s passionate book, Silent Spring, first published in 1962 is said to be the work which launched the environmental movement. But how does it speak to us now?

For a recording ...

Stanley Spencer, Domestic Servants, Surrogacy from 2019-05-22T23:45

Author Nicola Upson has imagined the life of Stanley Spencer from the viewpoint of his maidservant. Ella Parry-Davies researches the lives of women from the Philippines who work as domestic and car...

Censorship and sex from 2019-05-22T05:00

Matthew Sweet hears from Naomi Wolf about ways in which the state interfered in the private lives of its citizens in the 19th century, resulting in a penal codification of homosexuality with long-r...

Sebald. Anti-semitism. Carolyn Forché from 2019-05-16T23:00

The walking & photographs of WG Sebald on show in Norwich, American poet Carolyn Forché on the stranger who gave her an insider's view of politics in El Salvador whilst she was in her '20s. Plus an...

Rivers, different cultures, different values from 2019-05-15T18:00

Should we widen the net of who has a say over river management and would this be better for our rivers and ultimately ourselves. What are rivers themselves trying to tell us. Shahidha Bari meets f...

Free Thinking:Homi Bhabha: On Memory and Migration from 2019-05-15T05:30

With an audience at the British Library, Professor Bhabha gives a short talk and discusses ideas about nations and a postcolonial approach to politics, literature and history. Shahidha Bari hosts i...

Rivers and geopolitics from 2019-05-14T18:00

The worlds large water infrastructure projects often result in geo-political flashpoints - Rana Mitter hears from Majed Akhter about problems from the US to Pakistan while Dustin Garrick outlines a...

Sergio Leone, Kubrick, Magic & the Mind. from 2019-05-10T05:30

Matthew Sweet talks Spaghetti Westerns and Sergio Leone with Christopher Frayling and Samira Ahmed. They also look at the film worlds of Stanley Kubrick as an exhibition runs at London's Design Mus...

Chaucer. Bernardine Evaristo. from 2019-05-08T23:45

Anne McElvoy reads a new biography of Chaucer by Marion Turner called Chaucer: A European Life and talks to writer Bernardine Evaristo about her depiction of 12 characters aged 12 to 93 in her nove...

Wolfson History Prize Discussion. from 2019-05-08T19:00

Rana Mitter and an audience at the British Academy hear from the six historians on this year's shortlist. The books are:

Building Anglo-Saxon England by John Blair
Reckonings: Legacie...

Free Thinking: 1819-The American Model from 2019-05-07T23:45

Elaine Showalter, Michael Schmidt, Peter Riley and Katie McGettigan with Laurence Scott on the 19th century writers who shaped the idea of America.

1819 was the year that Herman Melville,...

Learning about love from Kierkegaard & Socrates. The Wellcome Book Prize from 2019-05-02T23:45

Kierkegaard humiliated the woman he was due to marry by publicly breaking the engagement - yet one of his most important books is a detailed analysis of the meaning of love. Socrates loved asking t...

Landmark: Audre Lorde from 2019-04-30T23:45

Poet Jackie Kay & performer Selina Thompson plus Jonathan Rollins and Elizabeth Lorde-Rollins the children of Audre Lorde discuss the influence of the US writer & civil rights activist whose work c...

Introducing the 2019 New Generation Thinkers from 2019-04-25T23:00

From Berlin techno music to the Glasgow ‘rag trade’, divisive dams to fake news - hear the research topics of 10 early career academics introduced by New Generation Thinker Eleanor Rosamund Barracl...

20 Words for Joy ... Feelings Around the World. from 2019-04-24T23:00

We talk about “human emotion” as if all people, everywhere, feel the same. But three thinkers with an international perspective discuss how the expression and interpretation of emotions differs aro...

Does My Pet Love Me? from 2019-04-23T23:00

Two animal psychologists and a historian of animal studies join Eleanor Rosamund Barraclought to discuss whether it's possible to recognise similar traits in humans, chimps, crows, hawks, dogs and ...

The New Age of Sentimentality from 2019-04-18T23:00

Charles Dickens. Walt Disney. The Romantic poets..These renowned artists and entertainers were all accused of being “over-sentimental”. But is our own age topping them all – with its culture of gri...

Why We Need Weepies from 2019-04-17T23:00

Poet and critic Bridget Minamore, TV drama expert John Yorke and film expert Melanie Williams join Matthew Sweet for a Brief Encounter at the Free Thinking Festival to look at the devices – music, ...

The Spirit of a Place: A Free Thinking Royal Society of Literature Discussion from 2019-04-17T18:39

Pascale Petit’s collection of poetry, Mama Amazonica, which explores motherhood, illness and pain through the foliage and creatures of the Amazon rainforest, won the 2018 Prize.
Peter Pomerant...

Should Doctors Cry? from 2019-04-16T23:00

Anne McElvoy debates at the Free Thinking Festival with intensive care doctor Aoife Abbey, GP & Prof Louise Robinson, Naeem Soomro expert in using robotic surgery and Michael Brown medical historia...

Where Do Human Rights Come From? from 2019-04-12T23:45

You don't have to be religious to believe that, as the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, "all human beings have the right to be free and treated equally." However, drawi...

The Essay: The Ottoman Empire, Power and the Sea from 2019-04-12T00:00

Michael Talbot asks how can power be exerted over water? What do borders mean in the featureless desert of the ocean? These were questions faced by the Ottoman Empire in the 17th and 18th centuries...

The Unsaid from 2019-04-11T23:45

Sarah Moss is a novelist and Professor at the University of Warwick. Her most recent book Ghost Wall articulates the tangled space of love, abuse and resistance. Her previous novels include Cold Ea...

Should Salman Rushdie Live and Let Die ? from 2019-04-10T23:45

You are a liberal who opposes art being banned. But would a movie that calls for you to be killed change your view of censorship? This was the quandary facing Salman Rushdie when filmmakers in Paki...

The Way We Used To Feel from 2019-04-10T23:00

Can we ever really know the feelings of byegone generations? Author and TV historian Tracy Borman shares the clues we have to the emotional lives of Tudor royalty and archaeologist Penny Spikins ex...

Who Wrote Animal Farm? from 2019-04-09T23:45

Was George Orwell’s wife his forgotten collaborator on one of the most famous books in the world? Lisa Mullen takes a new look at Animal Farm from the perspective of the smart and resourceful Eilee...

How They Manipulate Our Emotions from 2019-04-09T23:00

According to Madmen’s ad executive Don Draper, “what you call love was invented by guys like me… to sell nylons.” So how does advertising and gaming grab us by our emotions? Can we know when we’re ...

Start the Week gets emotional at the Free Thinking Festival from 2019-04-09T14:40

Harriet Shawcross is a film-maker whose first book Unspeakable reflects on how, as a teenager, she stopped speaking at school for almost a year, communicating only when absolutely necessary. It mix...

The Emotion of Now from 2019-04-08T23:45

Matthew Sweet and a panel of experts stand-up for their emotion of choice in a debate about the most pertinent emotion for understanding Britain today. Is it Joy? Anger? Anxiety? Schadenfruede or s...

Marble, Muscle and Manly Bodies in the 18th Century from 2019-04-08T23:45

What was more important in the construction of an eighteenth-century man’s body: the dumbbell or the dumbwaiter? Who had the most enviable body shape: the svelte Apollo Belvedere or the rotund John...