Arts & Ideas Podcast
Leading thinkers discuss the ideas shaping our lives – looking back at the news and making links between past and present. Broadcast as Free Thinking, Fridays at 9pm on ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Radio 4. Presented by Matthew Sweet, Shahidha Bari and Anne McElvoy.
Episodes to download
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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 Sembène, 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 Condé'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?
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John Milton's Samson Agonistes
Wed 7 Apr 2021
Rana Mitter looks at how politics, blindness and the Bible fed into this dramatic poem
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The Liverpool Biennial debate
Tue 6 Apr 2021
How to reflect Liverpool's history in new artworks: Anne McElvoy hosts a discussion.
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Spy talk
Thu 1 Apr 2021
From a secret Iraqi spy cell to new revelations of cold war exploits. Rana Mitter hosts.
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From Blackface to Beyoncé
Wed 31 Mar 2021
From the theatre stage to the Superbowl, in praise of Black performance
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Writing About Faith
Tue 30 Mar 2021
Stand-up Frank Skinner and novelists Jeet Thayil and Yaa Gyasi talk to Laurence Scott
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Churchill's reputation
Thu 25 Mar 2021
Anne McElvoy and guests on attitudes to the politician, his rhetoric and foreign policies
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Books to Make Space For on the Bookshelf: There's No Story There
Fri 19 Mar 2021
Lisa Mullen looks at depictions of war-time factory workers in this novel by Inez Holden
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Books to Make Space For On The Bookshelf: Closer
Thu 18 Mar 2021
New Generation Thinker Diarmuid Hester on the transgressive writing of Dennis Cooper
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Syria: hope and poetry
Thu 18 Mar 2021
An architect who lived in Homs during the war, a translator of Adonis and a media analyst
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Books to Make Space For on the Bookshelf: Sindhubala
Wed 17 Mar 2021
Preti Taneja on the writing and politics of Bengali author and activist Mahasweta Devi