Arts & Ideas Podcast
Leading thinkers discuss the ideas shaping our lives – looking back at the news and making links between past and present. Broadcast as Free Thinking, Fridays at 9pm on ±«Óãtv Radio 4. Presented by Matthew Sweet, Shahidha Bari and Anne McElvoy.
Episodes to download
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Revolutionary free speech
Fri 7 Apr 2023
Clare Siviter looks at attempts to liberate and then censor expression in 1790s France.
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Fugitive slaves, Victorian justice
Thu 6 Apr 2023
Oskar Jensen tells the tall tale of a court case inspired by a best-selling novel
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A family of witches
Thu 6 Apr 2023
Emma Whipday explores the demonisation of single mothers in English witch trials.
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New Thinking: Raiding Gay’s the Word & Magnus Hirschfeld
Wed 5 Apr 2023
Diarmuid Hester hears about Operation Tiger & early 1900s queer life writing
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The Rossettis and Walter Pater
Wed 5 Apr 2023
Matthew Sweet and guests visit a Tate Britain show and look at Pater's Renaissance ideas
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Introducing New Generation Thinkers 2023
Tue 4 Apr 2023
Chris Harding meets the 10 academics who will make programmes from their research in 2023
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Charles Babbage and broadcasting the sea
Tue 4 Apr 2023
The father of modern computing thought the sea could communicate. Joan Passey explains.
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Translating Cultures
Tue 28 Mar 2023
Composer Alex Ho, novelist Xiaolu Guo, curator George Young and director Anthony Lau
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East Germany
Tue 28 Mar 2023
Katja Hoyer on East Germany, behind the Berlin Wall and the Cold War caricature
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The culture of Albania
Thu 23 Mar 2023
Matthew Sweet is joined by Lea Ypi, Adela Demetja, Ani Kokobobo and Aurel Qirjo
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New Thinking: AI, feminism, human/machines
Thu 23 Mar 2023
Kerry McInerney, Eleanor Drage and Kendra Briken share their research with Laurence Scott
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Busking and Billy Waters
Tue 21 Mar 2023
The early 19th century street performer Billy Waters, Streetwise Opera and street ballads
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The wicked? stepmother
Thu 16 Mar 2023
Ahead of Mother's Day Matthew Sweet and guests discuss new ways of looking at stepmothers
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Decadent Art
Wed 15 Mar 2023
New research into ideas about decadence and connections with France, England and Iran.
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Debt
Tue 14 Mar 2023
As Budget day approaches, Anne McElvoy looks at debt from the South Sea Bubble to Sunak
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New Thinking: British Sign Language
Mon 13 Mar 2023
Kate Rowley and Gerardo Ortega talk about new research into British Sign Language
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Making Your Voice Heard
Wed 8 Mar 2023
Shahidha Bari is joined by Dina Nayeri, Kirsty Sedgman, Michelle Assay and Alberta Whittle
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Anarchism and David Graeber
Tue 7 Mar 2023
Matthew Sweet and guests look at the ideas of American anthropologist (1961-2020).
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Dom Sylvester Houédard
Thu 2 Mar 2023
Matthew Sweet and guests on the career of the C20th concrete poet and Catholic mystic
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Sesame Street and Soviet culture
Thu 2 Mar 2023
Anne McElvoy looks at Russian punk protest + a version of US TV's Big Bird, Bert and Ernie
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Tin cans, cutlery and sewing
Tue 28 Feb 2023
New research into the history of stainless steel cutlery, tinned food and sewing machines
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Ghosts of Caribbean History
Fri 24 Feb 2023
New writing by Colin Grant and Kevin Jared Hosein; art by Mary Evans and Michael Elliott
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Climate change and empire building
Thu 23 Feb 2023
The long history of climate change and empire: historians Nandini Das and Peter Frankopan
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Phaedra, Cretan palaces and the minotaur
Tue 21 Feb 2023
Knossos - birthplace of myths and tragedies - explored by Rana Mitter and Natalie Haynes
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Idrissa Ouédraogo
Thu 16 Feb 2023
The work of the Burkinabé filmmaker explored by Matthew Sweet and guests.
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Stories of Love
Tue 14 Feb 2023
Romeo and Juliet reworked, Proust and Rita Mae Brown's coming of age tale Rubyfruit Jungle
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Donkeys
Thu 9 Feb 2023
From Aesop and the bible to the film EO which looks at a donkey born in a Polish circus.
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The Heir of Redclyffe
Thu 9 Feb 2023
Clare Walker-Gore revisits Charlotte M. Yonge's best-selling novel from 1853.
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Lady Macbeth
Wed 8 Feb 2023
From Kurosawa and Shostakovich to Zinnie Harris. New takes on the Scottish play.