LanguaTalk

Arts & Ideas

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 BBC Radio 4. Presented by Matthew Sweet, Shahidha Bari and Anne McElvoy.

Afropean Identities. Filming the Arab Spring.

45 mins; June 13, 2019

Michael Rakowitz, Archaeology Now, Epic Journeys and Facial Disfigurement

44 mins; June 12, 2019

Breaking Down the Barriers

44 mins; June 11, 2019

Orwell's 1984. A Landmark of Culture.

53 mins; June 06, 2019

Is the Law keeping up with our changing world?

46 mins; June 05, 2019

AI and creativity: what makes us human?

45 mins; June 04, 2019

Simon Schama, Siri Hustvedt, Catherine Fletcher at Hay.

45 mins; May 30, 2019

Landmark: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring

46 mins; May 29, 2019

Stanley Spencer, Domestic Servants, Surrogacy

42 mins; May 22, 2019

Censorship and sex

54 mins; May 21, 2019

Sebald. Anti-semitism. Carolyn Forché

44 mins; May 16, 2019

Rivers, different cultures, different values

48 mins; May 15, 2019

Free Thinking:Homi Bhabha: On Memory and Migration

74 hours 32 mins; May 14, 2019

Rivers and geopolitics

45 mins; May 14, 2019

Sergio Leone, Kubrick, Magic & the Mind.

45 mins; May 09, 2019

Chaucer. Bernardine Evaristo.

48 mins; May 08, 2019

Wolfson History Prize Discussion.

71 hours 56 mins; May 08, 2019

Free Thinking: 1819-The American Model

50 mins; May 07, 2019

Learning about love from Kierkegaard & Socrates. The Wellcome Book Prize

44 mins; May 02, 2019

Landmark: Audre Lorde

53 mins; April 30, 2019

Introducing the 2019 New Generation Thinkers

53 mins; April 25, 2019

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

51 mins; April 24, 2019

Does My Pet Love Me?

49 mins; April 23, 2019

The New Age of Sentimentality

54 mins; April 18, 2019

Why We Need Weepies

48 mins; April 17, 2019

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

72 hours 10 mins; April 17, 2019

Should Doctors Cry?

58 mins; April 16, 2019

Where Do Human Rights Come From?

14 mins; April 12, 2019

The Essay: The Ottoman Empire, Power and the Sea

20 mins; April 11, 2019

The Unsaid

53 mins; April 11, 2019

Should Salman Rushdie Live and Let Die ?

22 mins; April 10, 2019

The Way We Used To Feel

44 mins; April 10, 2019

Who Wrote Animal Farm?

20 mins; April 09, 2019

How They Manipulate Our Emotions

45 mins; April 09, 2019

Start the Week gets emotional at the Free Thinking Festival

50 mins; April 09, 2019

The Emotion of Now

46 mins; April 08, 2019

Marble, Muscle and Manly Bodies in the 18th Century

19 mins; April 08, 2019

Healthy Eating Edwardian Style

20 mins; April 05, 2019

'Calm Down Dear' - How Angry Should Politics Get?

54 mins; April 05, 2019

Shopping Around the Baby Market

17 mins; April 04, 2019

Why Trespassing Is the Right Way To Go

19 mins; April 03, 2019

Being Diplomatic

54 mins; April 03, 2019

The Essay: Cooking and Eating God in Medieval Drama

22 mins; April 02, 2019

Anxiety and the Teenage Brain

47 mins; April 02, 2019

A city is not a park but should it be?

21 mins; April 02, 2019

Crimes of Passion: Sophie Hannah, Michael Hughes and David Wilson

46 mins; April 01, 2019

Feelings, and Feelings, and Feelings. The Free Thinking Festival Lecture

59 mins; April 01, 2019

Whatever happened to Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais?

46 mins; March 27, 2019

Betrayal

45 mins; March 26, 2019

Childhood faces and fears

44 mins; March 21, 2019

Empathy

45 mins; March 20, 2019

George Szirtes, Valeria Luiselli, Jhumpa Lahiri

44 mins; March 19, 2019

Partition, colonial power and the voices of C16th women

53 mins; March 14, 2019

The Council Estate in Culture

45 mins; March 13, 2019

Is British Culture Getting Wierder?

58 mins; March 12, 2019

Women, relationships and the law past and present

45 mins; March 07, 2019

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

45 mins; March 06, 2019

David Bailey, Don McCullin

49 mins; March 05, 2019

The joy of sewing, poet Fatimah Asghar, Painting in miniature.

44 mins; March 04, 2019

Skeuomorphs, Design and Modern Craft

44 mins; February 28, 2019

Jack the Ripper and women as victims

45 mins; February 26, 2019

Images of Japan

44 mins; February 21, 2019

Authority in the Era of Populism

73 hours 54 mins; February 21, 2019

The joy of sewing, poet Fatimah Asghar, Painting in miniature

44 mins; February 20, 2019

Patti LuPone

44 mins; February 19, 2019

Scented gloves and gossip: civility and news in the Renaissance

58 mins; February 14, 2019

Love

46 mins; February 14, 2019

Africa Babel China

44 mins; February 13, 2019

Spike Lee

46 mins; February 12, 2019

Self Knowledge, Global Catastrophe and Simulated Worlds

46 mins; February 07, 2019

Encylopedias and Knowledge: from Diderot to Wikipedia.

46 mins; February 06, 2019

Street Culture, Protests, Food.

45 mins; February 05, 2019

Sea Goings

51 mins; January 31, 2019

Slavoj Zizek, Camille Paglia, Flemming Rose

45 mins; January 30, 2019

Art & Refugees from Nazi Germany.

45 mins; January 29, 2019

Consent

46 mins; January 24, 2019

Slow Looking at Art

45 mins; January 23, 2019

Oscars 2019

46 mins; January 22, 2019

Icons.

46 mins; January 17, 2019

Tourism past and present

45 mins; January 16, 2019

Walls

45 mins; January 15, 2019

Boredom

45 mins; January 10, 2019

Free Thinking: Born in 1819: Ruskin, Clough and Bazalgette

45 mins; January 09, 2019

Landmark: Laurel and Hardy's The Music Box

46 mins; January 08, 2019

The Digital Humanities

57 mins; December 21, 2018

Landmark: Watership Down

45 mins; December 20, 2018

What does game playing teach us?

49 mins; December 19, 2018

Trees of Knowledge

44 mins; December 18, 2018

Ice

45 mins; December 13, 2018

Linton Kwesi Johnson

45 mins; December 12, 2018

Writing and Frankness

66 hours 15 mins; December 11, 2018

Are we being manipulated?

44 mins; December 06, 2018

Is there a great divide between the arts and science?

46 mins; December 05, 2018

Natasha Gordon. Bessie Head. Rwanda Representation and Reality

45 mins; December 05, 2018

Mike Hodges; Dark Sweden.

45 mins; November 29, 2018

Slavery Stories

58 mins; November 28, 2018

Plagues, Urban Inequality and Restricted Books

45 mins; November 27, 2018

Leadership: lessons from US Presidents and campaigners.

45 mins; November 23, 2018

The Left Behind

44 mins; November 21, 2018

What kind of history should we write?

44 mins; November 21, 2018

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