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.
Simplify your life
53 mins; January 15, 2020
Philosophy and Film
53 mins; January 10, 2020
Could there be a private language?
67 hours 51 mins; January 09, 2020
Panpsychism - Is matter conscious?
48 mins; January 09, 2020
The Strange Case of the Huge Country Pile
67 hours 15 mins; December 19, 2019
The culture wars and politics now.
44 mins; December 18, 2019
Extinction Rebellion and the End of the World
49 mins; December 18, 2019
New Thinking: Telling new sporting stories
29 mins; December 13, 2019
Speaking the right language.
45 mins; December 13, 2019
The wealth gap, #MeToo and Edith Wharton
44 mins; December 12, 2019
Pan-Africanism
44 mins; December 10, 2019
The shadow of empire and colonialism
49 mins; December 05, 2019
Feasting, fasting, hospitality, and food security
56 mins; December 04, 2019
When TV & the information superhighway were new
44 mins; December 03, 2019
Resting And Rushing
48 mins; November 28, 2019
The future of universities
45 mins; November 27, 2019
Is the Shadow of Mao still hanging over China?
45 mins; November 26, 2019
New Thinking: George Eliot
57 mins; November 22, 2019
The Mill on the Floss
45 mins; November 22, 2019
Are the arts saving Margate?
45 mins; November 22, 2019
Why We Need New News
44 mins; November 22, 2019
The Legacy of the Trojan War
45 mins; November 21, 2019
New Thinking: AHRC Research in Film Awards 2019
25 mins; November 16, 2019
Being Human: Love Stories
44 mins; November 14, 2019
The Changing Image of Masculinity.
53 mins; November 14, 2019
Weimar and the Subversion of Cabaret Culture
57 mins; November 12, 2019
The 2019 Free Thinking Imperial War Museum Remembrance Debate
44 mins; November 07, 2019
Quatermass
55 mins; November 05, 2019
New Thinking: Rubble culture to techno in post-war Germany
43 mins; November 01, 2019
Halloween. Ghost Stories
45 mins; November 01, 2019
Cars, Parking and Motorways
45 mins; October 30, 2019
Writing Real Life from Brexit to Grenfell
44 mins; October 30, 2019
Landmark: The Yorkshire Feminist Winifred Holtby
53 mins; October 24, 2019
What to Believe
61 hours 59 mins; October 23, 2019
New Thinking: First Encounters
60 hours 11 mins; October 23, 2019
Frieze Free Thinking Museums Debate
44 mins; October 22, 2019
Dictators
44 mins; October 18, 2019
The Woolly Episode
44 mins; October 17, 2019
2019 Booker Prize, The Power of Ancient Artefacts
44 mins; October 16, 2019
East Meets West
48 mins; October 10, 2019
Myth making, satire and Caryl Churchill
43 mins; October 10, 2019
Modern Dutch Writing
45 mins; October 09, 2019
The Frieze Masters Free Thinking Conversation about Art
43 mins; October 08, 2019
Rebecca Solnit, Truth, National Poetry Day.
45 mins; October 03, 2019
New Thinking: Places of Poetry & The Colonial Countryside Project
40 mins; October 03, 2019
From The Spains to LatinX
54 mins; October 02, 2019
Surveillance, Conspiracy, and Secrets from the Archives
45 mins; September 29, 2019
Anxiety
45 mins; September 26, 2019
Back to the '80s
44 mins; September 20, 2019
Landmark: Susan Sontag's Against Interpretation
51 mins; September 18, 2019
Tolerance, censorship and free speech.
45 mins; September 17, 2019
New Thinking: Fashion, AI and Sustainability
51 mins; September 16, 2019
Proms Plus: Witches & Witchcraft
21 mins; September 13, 2019
Revisit Anxiety, Teenagers, University and Leaving Home
44 mins; September 12, 2019
Proms Plus: Letters
37 mins; September 11, 2019
Proms Plus: Sacrifice
20 mins; September 02, 2019
Proms Plus: Landscape
34 mins; August 27, 2019
Proms Plus: Nina Simone's life and legacy
34 mins; August 22, 2019
Proms Plus: Beethoven's 9th Symphony
25 mins; August 21, 2019
Proms Plus: Kipling's Jungle Books
34 mins; August 21, 2019
Proms Plus: Russian Folktales
21 mins; August 21, 2019
Revisit Slavery Stories, William Melvyn Kelley & Esi Edugyan
43 mins; August 18, 2019
Prom Plus: What Victorians Did For Fun
21 mins; August 16, 2019
Proms Plus: Literary Hoaxes
28 mins; August 16, 2019
Revisit Napoleon in Fact and Fiction
42 mins; August 15, 2019
Revisit Mike Leigh in Conversation about Peterloo, politics and his Salford upbringing.
45 mins; August 14, 2019
Proms Plus: Childhood, innocence and experience
36 mins; August 13, 2019
Proms Plus: 'Queering' Tchaikovsky
25 mins; August 12, 2019
Proms Plus: Edgar Allan Poe
21 mins; August 08, 2019
Proms Plus: Tragedy
33 mins; August 08, 2019
Proms Plus: Swans
21 mins; August 05, 2019
Revisit Spike Lee in Conversation on Free Thinking
45 mins; August 05, 2019
Proms Plus: Nordic Summers Light and Dark
25 mins; August 04, 2019
Proms Plus: 1969 The Sound of a Summer
32 mins; July 26, 2019
Proms Plus: Music and Health
34 mins; July 24, 2019
Proms Plus: Moon Landing
37 mins; July 22, 2019
Book Parts and Difficulty
46 mins; July 18, 2019
New angles on post-war Germany and Austria
45 mins; July 17, 2019
New Thinking: Neolithic Revelations
40 mins; July 17, 2019
New Thinking: Shakespeare's Language
45 mins; July 17, 2019
New Thinking: Pregnancy Puzzles
48 mins; July 17, 2019
New Thinking: City Talk
39 mins; July 17, 2019
Camille Paglia
45 mins; July 16, 2019
An insider's view of war
58 mins; July 11, 2019
Caine Prize. Ivo van Hove. Female Desire.
45 mins; July 10, 2019
Landmark: Iris Murdoch's The Sovereignty of Good
44 mins; July 10, 2019
Reinventing the 'Mistake on the Lake'.
45 mins; July 04, 2019
Russia and Fear.
44 mins; July 03, 2019
Free Thinking: Language and Belonging
45 mins; July 03, 2019
Amitav Ghosh. Layla and Majnun. Islam Issa.
46 mins; June 27, 2019
Cindy Sherman, Laura Cumming
45 mins; June 26, 2019
Jane Goodall, Elif Shafak
45 mins; June 26, 2019
The Hard Man in the Call-Centre
19 mins; June 21, 2019
'Bedford, do you call this thing a coat?' The history of the three-piece suit
20 mins; June 20, 2019
James Ellroy
45 mins; June 20, 2019
Catch 22, Recycling fashion, Fred D'Aguiar, Wu Mali
45 mins; June 20, 2019
Comrades in Arms
21 mins; June 19, 2019
Landmark: Finnegans Wake
50 mins; June 19, 2019
Sword to Pen. Redcoat and the rise of the military memoir
