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Free Thinking Episodes

  1.

    Novelist Tahmima Anam, plus was Nero a ruthless tyrant?

    Was Nero really a victim of plots? Bulgaria's hidden past. And a novel about startups.

  2. Who Needs Critics?

    Matthew Sweet questions the critic's role while Vid Simoniti looks at algorithms and art.

  3. Ghosts of the Spanish Civil War

    Rana Mitter talks to documentary makers, a novelist and historian about breaking silences.

  4. The Wolfson History Prize 2021

    Rana Mitter meets the six authors shortlisted for the UK's most prestigious history prize.

  5. Lost cities, 20s divas and 2011 uprisings

    Anne McElvoy explores the past and present of the transcontinental nation of Egypt.

  6. Archiving, curating and digging for data

    Behind the scenes at the Hepworth Wakefield, the Barbican and the Alan Turing Institute.

  7. Marlon James and Neil Gaiman

    Two weavers of fantastical fiction sift through myths with Matthew Sweet.

  8. Alison Bechdel

    American graphic novelist Alison Bechdel talks mushrooms, therapy and Adrienne Rich.

  9. Napoleon the Gardener and Art Thief

    Ruth Scurr, Emma Rothschild and Natasha Pulley look at French history with Rana Mitter.

  10. Samuel Johnson's circle

    Patience Agbabi's novel time-travels back to 18th-century London. So do we.

  11. Northern Ireland

    Anne McElvoy marks the 1921 creation of Northern Ireland with historians and writers.

  12. Links between Judaism and Christianity

    Rector Giles Fraser tells Matthew Sweet how a crisis led to discovering his Jewish roots.

  13. Epistemic Injustice

    Shahidha Bari finds out how to use the theory of knowledge to address real-world problems.

  14. Bombing and morals, Flooding and the future

    Malcolm Gladwell, Satyajit Ray's film Jalsaghar and Jessie Greengrass. Rana Mitter hosts.

  15. Shakespeare's life lessons

    Scholars Emma Smith, Patrick Gray and Emma Whipday find examples in different dramas.

  16. Maryse Cond茅's writing plus Suzanne O'Sullivan

    Shahidha Bari reads I Tituba, the story of the West Indian slave accused in Salem.

  17. Jacques Tati's Trafic

    Matthew Sweet, Adam Scovell, Muriel Zagha and Phuong Le on the 1971 French comedy.

  18. Octavia Butler's Kindred

    A novel from 1979 which uses time travel to explore race, slavery and trauma.

  19. Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalism and Schizophrenia

    Matthew Sweet re-reads a classic of French postmodernism.

  20. Milton: Samson Agonistes

    Rana Mitter looks at the way politics, blindness and the Bible fed into this dramatic poem

  21. The Liverpool Biennial Debate

    How to reflect Liverpool's history in new artworks: Anne McElvoy hosts a discussion.

  22. Spy Talk

    From a secret Iraqi cell to new revelations of Cold War exploits. Rana Mitter hosts.

  23. From Blackface to Beyonc茅

    Hanif Abdurraqib, Dawn Walton, Adjoa Osei on black performers from jazz to the Super Bowl

  24. Writing about Faith

    Stand-up Frank Skinner and novelists Jeet Thayil and Yaa Gyasi talk to Laurence Scott.

  25. Churchill's Reputation

    Anne McElvoy and guests on attitudes to the politician, his rhetoric and foreign policies.

  26. Pleasure

    Matthew Sweet's guests share some secrets as they ask: Is pleasure ever simple or guilty?

  27. Frantz Fanon

    Re-reading the major 20th century theorist of decolonisation

  28. Syria: Hope and Poetry

    An architect who lived in Homs during the war, a translator of Adonis and a media analyst.

  29. Introducing New Generation Thinkers 2021

    Ten researchers look at colonial history, alphabets, punctuation, poetry, art terminology.

  30. What do we learn from census stats?

    John Gallagher talks to four researchers uncovering lives from past census records.

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