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Free Thinking Episodes

  1.

    AI and creativity: what makes us human?

    A discussion hosted by Matthew Sweet at the Barbican's exhibition AI More Than Human.

  2. Simon Schama, Siri Hustvedt, Catherine Fletcher at Hay

    Rana Mitter discusses writing on art from da Vinci and Rembrandt to Louise Bourgeois.

  3. Landmark: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring

    Rana Mitter hosts a debate at Hay Festival about the rise of the environmental movement.

  4. Homi K Bhabha: On Memory and Migration

    Shahidha Bari talks to Professor Bhabha about his influence on postcolonial studies.

  5. 2019 Wolfson History Prize Discussion

    Rana Mitter and the six shortlisted historians with an audience at the British Academy.

  6. Stanley Spencer, Domestic Servants, Surrogacy

    Authors Nicola Upson and Joanne Ramos, and researchers Gulzaar Barn and Ella Parry-Davies.

  7. Censorship and sex

    Naomi Wolf discusses the criminalisation of love with presenter Matthew Sweet.

  8. Sebald, Anti-semitism, Carolyn Forche

    The walking and photographs of WG Sebald and an exhibition of money and Jewish history.

  9. Rivers, poetry and ecology

    An anthropologist, a poet, an archaeologist and an angler reflect on the culture of rivers

  10. Rivers and geopolitics

    Global Dams, ancient Rome and the Tiber: rivers, power and scarcity.

  11. Sergio Leone, Kubrick, Magic and the Mind.

    Matthew Sweet talks Spaghetti Westerns with Christopher Frayling + conjuring tricks & bias

  12. Chaucer, Bernardine Evaristo

    Anne McElvoy reads a new biography of Chaucer and talks to novelist Bernardine Evaristo.

  13. Born in 1819: Whitman, Melville and Ward Howe

    Elaine Showalter, Michael Schmidt, Peter Riley and Katie McGettigan with Laurence Scott.

  14. Learning about love from Kierkegaard and Socrates, The Wellcome Book Prize

    A philosopher of love and a philosopher in love.

  15. The Spirit of a Place: A Free Thinking Royal Society of Literature Discussion.

    Alan Johnson, Pascale Petit, Hisham Matar and Peter Pomerantsev join Eleanor Barraclough.

  16. Landmark: Audre Lorde

    Jackie Kay and Selina Thompson on the influential US writer and civil rights activist.

  17. Introducing the 2019 New Generation Thinkers

    From techno music in Berlin to the Glasgow 鈥榬ag trade鈥�, and divisive dams to fake news.

  18. 20 Words for Joy ... Feelings Around the World

    Aatish Taseer, Veronica Strang and Thomas Dixon at the Free Thinking Festival.

  19. Does My Pet Love Me?

    A Free Thinking Festival discussion with Nicky Clayton, Erica Fudge and Kim Bard.

  20. The New Age of Sentimentality

    Lisa Appignanesi, Rachel Hewitt and Irenosen Okojie at the Free Thinking Festival.

  21. Why We Need Weepies

    From Bambi and Titanic to EastEnders - Matthew Sweet asks what makes us cry and why?

  22. Should Doctors Cry?

    Does emotion have any place in relationships with patients in a more open age?

  23. The Unsaid

    Sarah Moss, Una, Michael Richardson and Harriet Shawcross at the Free Thinking Festival.

  24. The Way We Used To Feel

    From Neanderthals via Tudor England to Chartists - four historians on emotion in the past.

  25. How They Manipulate Our Emotions

    An adman, VR creator, gamer, psychologist and Shahidha Bari at the Free Thinking Festival.

  26. The Emotions of Now

    What's the most pertinent emotion in 2019 UK: Joy, anger, anxiety, schadenfreude or shame?

  27. 'Calm Down Dear' - How Angry Should Politics Get.

    Suffragism, black activism & Brexit. Shahidha Bari chairs a Free Thinking Festival debate.

  28. Being Diplomatic

    Anne McElvoy talks to Gabrielle Rifkind, William J Burns and Gabriel Gatehouse.

  29. Anxiety and the Teenage Brain

    Stephen Briers, Caroline Dower and Ceyda Uzun join Anne McElvoy at Sage Gateshead.

  30. Crimes of Passion

    David Wilson, Sophie Hannah and Michael Hughes with Matthew Sweet at Sage.

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