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 蜜芽传媒 Radio 4. Presented by Matthew Sweet, Shahidha Bari and Anne McElvoy.
Episodes to download
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Novelist Tahmima Anam plus was Nero a ruthless tyrant?
Tue 25 May 2021
Was Nero really a victim of plots? Bulgaria's hidden past. Plus a novel about startups.
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Who needs critics?
Thu 20 May 2021
Matthew Sweet questions the critic's role while Vid Simoniti looks at algorithms and art.
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Ghosts of the Spanish civil war
Wed 19 May 2021
Breaking the silence: filmmakers, a novelist and historian on the recent Spanish past.
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The Wolfson History Prize 2021
Tue 18 May 2021
Rana Mitter meets the six authors shortlisted for the UK's most prestigious history prize
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Lost cities, 20s divas and 2011 uprisings
Thu 13 May 2021
Anne McElvoy explores the past and present of the transcontinental nation of Egypt
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New Thinking: Archiving, curating and digging for data
Wed 12 May 2021
Lisa Mullen explores the way data can change our view of history & looks at conservation.
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Marlon James and Neil Gaiman
Tue 11 May 2021
The two weavers of fantastical fiction sift through myths with Matthew Sweet.
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Alison Bechdel
Thu 6 May 2021
American graphic novelist Alison Bechdel talks mushrooms, therapy and Adrienne Rich
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Napoleon the gardener and art thief
Wed 5 May 2021
Ruth Scurr, Emma Rothschild and Natasha Pulley look at French history with Rana Mitter
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Samuel Johnson's circle
Tue 4 May 2021
Patience Agbabi's novel time travels back to eighteenth century London - so do we
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Northern Ireland
Thu 29 Apr 2021
Anne McElvoy marks the 1921 creation of Northern Ireland with historians and writers
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New Generation Thinkers: A Norwegian Morality Tale
Thu 29 Apr 2021
Lucy Weir learns dark lessons from newspaper coverage of Black Metal and satanic rituals
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New Generation Thinkers: Beyond the betting shop
Wed 28 Apr 2021
Darragh McGee considers the history of gambling from 18th century card games to apps
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Links between Judaism and Christianity
Wed 28 Apr 2021
Rector Giles Fraser tells Matthew Sweet how a crisis led to discovering his Jewish roots
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Epistemic Injustice
Tue 27 Apr 2021
Shahidha Bari investigates how theory of knowledge can address real world problems
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New Generation Thinkers: Colonial Papers
Tue 27 Apr 2021
Alexandra Reza's Essay considers the Gilet Noirs, Ousmane Semb猫ne, and Nathalie Quintane
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New Generation Thinkers: Battlefield Finds
Mon 26 Apr 2021
Seren Griffiths tells the story of the soldier turned archaeologist Francis Buckley.
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New Generation Thinkers: The Inscrutable Writing of Sui Sin Far
Sun 25 Apr 2021
Xine Yao suggests that a poker Chinese face can be a good way of fighting back
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New Generation Thinkers: Hoarding or Collecting?
Fri 23 Apr 2021
Diarmuid Hester muses on the thin line between inspiration and a compulsive disorder.
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Bombing and morals, Flooding and the future
Thu 22 Apr 2021
Malcolm Gladwell, Satyajit Ray's film Jalsaghar, Jessie Greengrass. Rana Mitter hosts.
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New Generation Thinkers: A social history of soup
Wed 21 Apr 2021
Tom Scott-Smith uses four recipes to track social reforms and changes in what we value.
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New Thinking: Shakespeare's Life Lessons
Wed 21 Apr 2021
Scholars Emma Smith, Patrick Gray, and Emma Whipday find examples in different dramas
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The Essay New Generation Thinkers Jean Rhys's Dress
Tue 20 Apr 2021
Sophie Oliver on motherhood, a old dress and rereading Wide Sargasso Sea
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Maryse Cond茅's writing plus Suzanne O'Sullivan
Tue 20 Apr 2021
Shahida Bari reads I Tituba, the story of the West Indian slave accused in Salem.
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New Generation Thinkers: The Feurtado's Fire
Mon 19 Apr 2021
Christienna Fryar looks at Caribbean fires and earthquakes and lessons for rebuilding now
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The Battle of Culloden, Outlander, Peter Watkins
Thu 15 Apr 2021
Matthew Sweet with Outlander creator Diana Gabaldon, historian Tom Devine and John Cook
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Jacques Tati's Trafic
Wed 14 Apr 2021
Matthew Sweet, Adam Scovell, Muriel Zagha and Phuong Le on the 1971 French comedy.
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Octavia Butler's Kindred
Tue 13 Apr 2021
A novel from 1979 that uses time travel to explore race, slavery and trauma
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Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalism and Schizophrenia
Thu 8 Apr 2021
Matthew Sweet re-reads a classic of French postmodern theory
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Milton: Samson Agonistes
Thu 8 Apr 2021
How do we look at blindness in poetic writing, classics, in Milton's and Handel's life?
