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New research on how society works

Updated: weekly
Episodes available: indefinitely

Episodes to download

  •

    Digital intimacy

    Wed 24 May 2023

    How are algorithms transforming our relationships?

  • Prison Abolition

    Wed 17 May 2023

    Laurie Taylor considers the radical case for ending imprisonment.

  • Taste and Lifestyle

    Wed 10 May 2023

    Taste and Lifestyle: how consumer culture remade taste and the West Indian front room.

  • Dance Culture

    Wed 3 May 2023

    Laurie Taylor takes a journey through the dancefloor, from the electric slide to the tango

  • Democracy

    Wed 26 Apr 2023

    Democracy - what threatens or promotes it?

  • Poverty

    Wed 19 Apr 2023

    Laurie Taylor explores the causes and consequences of poverty in the UK and US.

  • Elite Universities - Working Class Students

    Wed 12 Apr 2023

    Elite universities and the lives of working class academics.

  • Asylum and 'Home'

    Wed 5 Apr 2023

    Asylum and 'home' - the impact of asylum dispersal and Syrian refugees' quest for home.

  • Museums

    Wed 1 Feb 2023

    Museums: Then and now.

  • Religion of Work and Welfare

    Wed 25 Jan 2023

    The religion of work and welfare.

  • Parenting

    Wed 18 Jan 2023

    Parenting - a cultural history.

  • Dirty Work

    Wed 11 Jan 2023

    Dirty work - the invisible labour we choose not to see.

  • Self-improvement

    Wed 4 Jan 2023

    Self-improvement: are 'wellness' and 'confidence' cultures enhancing our lives?

  • The football pools - mass investment

    Wed 28 Dec 2022

    Betting and investment - what are the connections and the differences?

  • The Internet - how it shapes the past and the future

    Wed 21 Dec 2022

    The Internet - how it shapes our understanding of the past and the future.

  • The NHS

    Wed 26 Oct 2022

    The NHS and the 'sick note'.

  • Protests

    Wed 19 Oct 2022

    Protests: from Occupy to MeToo and Iran.

  • Gender and Alcohol

    Wed 12 Oct 2022

    Gender and alcohol - the craft drink scene and what constitutes a 'proper night out'?

  • Futilitarianism - Extreme Pessimists

    Wed 5 Oct 2022

    Laurie Taylor talks to Neil Vallelly about current feelings of futility and uselessness.

  • Rules and Order

    Wed 28 Sep 2022

    Are we are more orderly society than in the past?

  • Gentrification revisited

    Wed 21 Sep 2022

    Exploring the myth and reality six decades after the term gentrification was coined.

  • The Sea

    Wed 14 Sep 2022

    The Sea - the privatisation of our oceans and the threat of plastic pollution.

  • Survival of the city

    Wed 7 Sep 2022

    Survival of the city: how do cities manage to thrive and re-invent in the face of threats?

  • Package holidays and 'authentic' travel

    Wed 15 Jun 2022

    Package holidays and 鈥榓uthentic鈥� travel: Laurie Taylor on the origins of budget tourism.

  • Shopping

    Wed 8 Jun 2022

    The history of the high street. Also, dreams of consumption.

  • Ballroom dancing

    Wed 1 Jun 2022

    Ballroom dancing: its social history and sexual politics.

  • Wealth - Plutocratic London

    Wed 25 May 2022

    Plutocratic London and dynastic wealth.

  • Covid and change

    Wed 18 May 2022

    Covid: how has it changed our economy and home lives?

  • Workplace Misbehaviour

    Wed 11 May 2022

    Workplace misbehaviour: how has it changed over the years?

  • Psychiatry: a social history

    Wed 4 May 2022

    Psychiatry: Laurie Taylor explores the history of modern psychiatric practice.

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麻豆社 Thinking Allowed is produced in partnership with The Open University

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