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Podcast: Arts & Ideas
Episode: Isolation
Description: As Radio 4 marks the 5th anniversary of the first COVID lockdown, Free Thinking investigates one of the defining experiences of that period for many people: isolation. It's a word that entered the English language in the 18th century, and arguably its emergence as a concept marked a change in the way people saw their relationships with other people and the wider community, towards a more individualistic society. And yet there's a long history of religious mystics seeking solitude. From Robinson Crusoe to the crew of the International Space Station, via monasticism and Romanticism, Matthew Sweet investigates the histories of...