Arts & Ideas Podcast
Leading thinkers discuss the ideas shaping our lives 鈥� looking back at the news and making links between past and present. Broadcast as Free Thinking, Fridays at 9pm on 麻豆社 Radio 4. Presented by Matthew Sweet, Shahidha Bari and Anne McElvoy.
Episodes to download
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Sheffield reinvented
Tue 21 Jun 2022
New words, music and film from the "City of Steel", presented by John Gallagher.
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Slow Film and Ecology
Thu 16 Jun 2022
Matthew Sweet discusses environmental thinking and a film made about rice over 18 years
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Bloomsday, Dalloway Day and 1922
Wed 15 Jun 2022
Shahidha Bari looks at the writing of Woolf and Joyce and what was really popular in 1922
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South African writing
Tue 14 Jun 2022
Damon Galgut discusses his Booker winning novel, The Promise, with Anne McElvoy
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John McGrath's Scottish Drama
Fri 10 Jun 2022
Anne McElvoy revisits the 1973 play The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil
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Victorian streets
Thu 9 Jun 2022
Is that strong inescapable image of 19th century city streets in our heads the right one?
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The Wolfson Prize 2022
Tue 7 Jun 2022
Rana Mitter interviews the shortlisted authors for this prize for history writing.
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New Thinking: Uncovering Queer Communities
Tue 7 Jun 2022
Hidden LGBTQ+ histories in Northern Ireland and queer cinema in contemporary China
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Get Carter
Thu 2 Jun 2022
Digging beneath the surface of the classic Brit noir film with director Mike Hodges.
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Amia Srinivasan and Philosophical Genealogy
Wed 1 Jun 2022
The Right to Sex is the title of Amia Srinivasan's new book. Christopher Harding hosts.
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Oceans and the Sea
Wed 1 Jun 2022
Abdulrazak Gurnah, Emily Shuckburgh and Joan Passey join Rana Mitter at Hay Festival
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New Generation Thinkers: Contesting an Alphabet
Fri 27 May 2022
Mirela Ivanova on the countries claiming to be the birthplace of the Cyrillic alphabet
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New Generation Thinkers: The Paradox of Ecological Art
Fri 27 May 2022
Vid Simoniti considers eco-art, from Olafur Eliasson to videos by Bo Zheng
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New Generation Thinkers: Ruffs in Jamestown
Fri 27 May 2022
Lauren Working on what fashion reveals about C16th English settlers in America
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Tudor families
Thu 26 May 2022
Tangled bloodlines, executions and a big, gold inflatable thing belonging to Henry VIII
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The Tudor Mind
Wed 25 May 2022
Donne, Hamlet, 16th century psychology and mathematics, Tudor portraits
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Tattoos
Thu 19 May 2022
Shahidha Bari traces the move from markings on convicts and aristos to today's body art.
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Goddesses
Wed 18 May 2022
Christopher Harding explores the feminine divine with Ronald Hutton and others
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Gandhi, Indian Architecture
Wed 18 May 2022
Rana Mitter looks at a new play at the National Theatre about the man who murdered Gandhi
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Speaking Welsh
Mon 16 May 2022
Catherine Fletcher with Richard King, Caryl Lewis, Elen Ifan and Seiriol Davies
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New Thinking: Flooding and Energy
Mon 16 May 2022
Can old field names and labelling energy sources help us cope better with climate change?
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Soho
Fri 13 May 2022
130 acres of central London synonymous with sex and shadiness immortalised in film
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Mental Health
Fri 6 May 2022
Anne McElvoy looks at ASMR, clean air, loneliness and a memoir exploring mental health.
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Odessa Stories
Thu 5 May 2022
Matthew Sweet explores the work of Soviet Ukrainian writer Isaac Babel
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Pause for Thought
Thu 5 May 2022
From the bracket & exclamation mark to emojis - Florence Hazrat's history of punctuation
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Opium Tales
Thu 5 May 2022
Ways of seeing the trade triangle from Confessions of an Opium Eater to modern novels.
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New Generation Thinkers: Alexander and the Persians
Wed 4 May 2022
Julia Hartley asks why we call Alexander "the Great".
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Windows
Wed 4 May 2022
From Rear Window to stained glass, TB to paintings at Dulwich: Shahidha Bari hosts.
