Influencing History
Anne Applebaum, Jake Subryan Richards, Selina Todd, Clare Jackson and Rupert Read are on the panel of guests joining Matthew Sweet for a conversation about the shaping of history.
Do individuals or broader forces shape history? In the 2025 Reith lectures on 麻豆社 Radio 4, Rutger Bregman argues that small groups of individuals can have an outsize influence and he looks to examples in history from suffragism to the ending of slavery. In the Free Thinking studio for Radio 4's round-table discussion about the history of ideas, Matthew Sweet is joined by:
Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer prize winning historian and author of Autocracy Inc, which looks at the networks linking powerful people in our world
Jake Subryan Richards, New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the 麻豆社 and AHRC which puts research on radio. His new book is The Bonds of Freedom: Liberated Africans and the End of the Slave Trade
Selina Todd, historian and author of The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class
Clare Jackson, historian of seventeenth century Britain, whose latest book is Mirror of Great Britain: A Life of James VI & I
Rupert Read, philosopher, climate advocate and co author of Transformative Adaptation and The Climate Majority Project
Producer: Eliane Glaser
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Broadcast
- Friday 21:00麻豆社 Radio 4
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