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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Free Thinking: Social Conservatism, Kathe Kollwitz and John Ashbery
Thu 14 Sep 2017
Art and irony - Philip Dodd and Joanna Kavenna on the Käthe Kollwitz show in Birmingham
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Free Thinking: Washing in public. Sir Peter Hall (1930 - 2017)
Tue 12 Sep 2017
Public pools, the "steamie" and the Turkish bath are explored by Matthew Sweet and guests.
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Proms Extra: Alan Hollinghurst
Mon 4 Sep 2017
Booker Prize winner, Alan Hollinghurst, discusses his new book, The Sparsholt Affair.
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Proms Extra: Lenin
Fri 1 Sep 2017
Anne McElvoy discusses Lenin with historians Helen Rappaport and Victor Sebestyen.
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Proms Extra: Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address
Tue 29 Aug 2017
Rana Mitter is joined by Kathleen Burk & Joanna Cohen to discuss the Gettysburg Address.
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Proms Extra: Ancient Rome
Tue 29 Aug 2017
Matthew Sweet talks to Natalie Haynes about the glory that was Rome.
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Proms Extra: Unfinished Art and Literature
Wed 23 Aug 2017
Ian McMillan on the appeal and arts of the Unfinished
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Proms Extra: Djinn
Fri 18 Aug 2017
Elif Shafak and Shahidha Bari tell Ian McMillan why humans need the genie
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Proms Extra: Sleep and Insomnia
Wed 16 Aug 2017
Sports sleep coach Nick Littlehales & novelist A. L. Kennedy discuss sleep & insomnia.
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Proms Extra: Cuneiform 07082017
Tue 8 Aug 2017
Irving Finkel and Shahidha Bari on Mesopotamian writing, jokes and boat building specs
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Proms Extra: Ella Fitzgerald
Mon 7 Aug 2017
Kevin LeGendre and Claire Martin discuss Ella Fitzgerald
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Proms Extra: Sentimentality
Thu 3 Aug 2017
Anne McElvoy, Dr. Seán Williams & writer Rachel Hewitt discuss sentimentality.
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Proms Extra: Happiness
Wed 2 Aug 2017
Literature & unhappy people with Will Abberley, Charlotte Mendelson & Claudia Hammond.
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Proms Extra: Sea Journeys and Voyages
Tue 1 Aug 2017
Rana Mitter considers epic sea journeys in history with Barry Cunliffe & Edith Hall.
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Proms Extra: Europe in Writing
Tue 1 Aug 2017
Nandini Das & novelist Lawrence Norfolk discuss European writers & the idea of ‘Europe’.
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Proms Extra: Opium and Creativity in the 19th c.
Mon 24 Jul 2017
Matthew Sweet, Daisy Hay, Richard Davenport-Hines at Imperial College, London
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Proms Extra: Music and Moods
Tue 18 Jul 2017
Thomas Dixon and musicologist Wiebke Thormählen discuss music, literature and emotion.
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Proms Extra - Deep Time
Mon 17 Jul 2017
Geologist Iain Stewart and geographer Nicholas Crane consider the concept of "Deep Time"
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Free Thinking: Landmark: Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy
Thu 13 Jul 2017
Simon Heffer and Tiffany Jenkins join Matthew Sweet and an audience at Sussex University.
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Free Thinking: Art in the Age of Black Power; History of Racist Ideas in US
Wed 12 Jul 2017
Rana Mitter and Linton Kwesi Johnson and Ibram X Kendi
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Free Thinking - Queer Icons: Plato's Symposium. Part of Gay Britannia.
Tue 11 Jul 2017
Shahidha Bari discusses LGBTQ in the history of philosophy + the Caine Prize winner
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Free Thinking – Writing Love: Jonathan Dollimore, Heer Ranjha. Queer Icons: Sappho. Part of Gay Britannia
Thu 6 Jul 2017
The Punjabi "Romeo and Juliet"; and founding the Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence
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Free Thinking – Philip Hoare and Elizabeth Jane Burnett on wild swimming. Jake Arnott on Joe Orton
Wed 5 Jul 2017
Philip Hoare and Elizabeth Jane Burnett swim in the literary and poetic power of the sea
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Free Thinking: Canada 150: Sydney Newman and British TV; Vahni Capildeo; Shubbak Festival 2017
Thu 29 Jun 2017
Matthew Sweet investigates the Canadian dynamo who transformed British TV drama
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Free Thinking: Canada 150: Identity Robbie Richardson, Alison MacLeod, Deborah Pearson + Rupi Kaur and Kevan Funk.
Thu 29 Jun 2017
New Generation Thinkers Shahidha Bari & Laurence Scott look at Canada in TV, poems + art
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Free Thinking - Canada 150: Robert Lepage, Katherine Ryan.
Tue 27 Jun 2017
The French Canadian playwright/performer and the stand up comedian talk to Philip Dodd
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Free Thinking - Man and Machine: Garry Kasparov, Wyndham Lewis. 2017 New Generation Thinker Simon Beard
Thu 22 Jun 2017
Philip Dodd looks at AI with Garry Kasparov, Vorticism and research into overpopulation.
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Free Thinking - Terrorism: Richard English, Baroness Warsi, 2017 New Generation Thinker Thomas Simpson.
Thu 22 Jun 2017
Rana Mitter and guests look at fact and fiction as they explore how terrorism works.
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Free Thinking: Tom McCarthy. Jacobitism; Satirical Indexes; A Museum of Modern Nature
Tue 20 Jun 2017
Anne McElvoy looks at Bonnie Prince Charlie and Nature exhibitions & meets Tom McCarthy.