Arts & Ideas Podcast
Leading thinkers discuss the ideas shaping our lives – looking back at the news and making links between past and present. Broadcast as Free Thinking, Fridays at 9pm on BBC Radio 4. Presented by Matthew Sweet, Shahidha Bari and Anne McElvoy.
Episodes to download
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Kant today, Spice Girls Reunited, Impersonating an Animal
Friday
Girl power past and present, the wisdom of goats and seagulls and Kant's ideas on reason
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New Thinking: Exploring the local
Friday
New research into local politics, newspapers and the history of the post office
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Tacitus, Byron's fanmail and Bluey
Fri 19 Apr 2024
Mary Beard, Konnie Huq, Helen Carr and Tom Peck join Shahidha Bari
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Change, scrabble and cultural christianity
Fri 12 Apr 2024
Matthew Sweet and guests look at ideas about change: political, climate, personal
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Hobbes, Abba, Waterloo and margarine
Fri 5 Apr 2024
Matthew Sweet and guests look back at the week exploring the ideas shaping our lives today
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Unravelling plainness
Fri 29 Mar 2024
Isabella Rosner explains why needlework challenges our idea of Quaker simplicity
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Pranks
Fri 29 Mar 2024
Matthew Sweet and guests assess the value of pranks and what purpose they may serve.
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What does feminist art mean?
Thu 28 Mar 2024
Ana Baeza Ruiz shares reflections from artists in the '70s women's liberation movement
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New Thinking: Light and Darkness
Thu 28 Mar 2024
Darkness and how it affects those with dementia, to light in modernist literature
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Approaches to death
Wed 27 Mar 2024
Archaeologists Marianne Hem Eriksen, Pauline Harding: historians Cat Byers, Harriet Soper
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New Thinking: East West artistic connections
Wed 27 Mar 2024
A war captive turned musician in the Ottoman court and Islamic influences in Rubens' art
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Rock, Paper, Saints and Sinners
Wed 27 Mar 2024
Gemma Tidman describes a game created by a Jesuit missionary seeking Mohawk converts.
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Writing Place
Wed 27 Mar 2024
Sylvia Townsend Warner's move to Dorset, Heidegger's Heimat and the Arun river in Sussex.
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Arteries of tomorrow
Tue 26 Mar 2024
Dan Taylor considers the way communities along the A13 are looking to the future
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New Thinking: How water shapes our history and environment
Fri 22 Mar 2024
From the aqueducts of ancient Rome to 19th century river Nile and today's running water
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The Legacy of the Laundries
Fri 22 Mar 2024
Louise Brangan reflects on the uncovering of the secret lives lived in Irish laundries
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Gas, oil and the Essex blues
Fri 22 Mar 2024
Sam Johnson-Schlee draws links between Dr Feelgood, Canvey Island and energy policies
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Weird Viking Bodies
Thu 21 Mar 2024
Marianne Hem Eriksen on the meaning of a skull bone carved with "pain" thrown onto a tip
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From algorithms to oceans
Thu 21 Mar 2024
Kerry McInerney explores the promise of the ‘sustainable AI’ movement and how AI develops
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Germany’s Mary Wollstonecraft
Wed 20 Mar 2024
Andrew Cooper on the school teacher who tried to ignite a feminist revolution in Germany
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Scottish Kingship
Wed 20 Mar 2024
Medieval myth-making, the kings of Scotland and the Stone of Destiny
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Free speech, censorship and modern China
Tue 19 Mar 2024
The writings of Chinese women, from Ding Ling to coming of age in the 1990s
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Call Me Mother
Mon 18 Mar 2024
How the shape of words for mother helps babies eat their food. Rebecca Woods explains
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Edward Bond
Fri 15 Mar 2024
Matthew Sweet and guests discuss the playwright Edward Bond (18 July 1934 – 3 March 2024)
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Sleep justice and sleeplessness
Wed 13 Mar 2024
Laurence Scott talks to researchers exploring how we sleep and the idea of sleep justice
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Images of Persia
Tue 12 Mar 2024
Poetry by Hafez, Nowruz (New Year) and the Haft Sin table, the Mongol invasion, music
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Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation
Thu 7 Mar 2024
Matthew Sweet and guests look at the 1974 Gene Hackman film about surveillance and murder
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Muses and women's creativity
Wed 6 Mar 2024
From Pre-Raphaelite models to the daughter of Maud Gonne: Naomi Paxton with new research
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Sarah Maldoror, Storm Jameson, the Hague Congress
Tue 5 Mar 2024
Ahead of International Women's Day Shahidha Bari hears stories linking women with war
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The Dutch Connection
Thu 29 Feb 2024
John Gallagher hears about new research into Anglo-Dutch trade and early publishing
