From moral questions to the quirks and pleasures of life.
All available episodes (1008 total)
Upcoming episodes (8 new)
Discussions/interviews: Slavoj Zizek, Xinran, Ivan Klima, Claudia Rankine, Pankaj Mishra
Free Thinking explores divisions & differences & the way people define themselves...
New thinking on the environment
New Thinking from UK Unis/Being Human Festival: history, books, language, philosophy.
Writing from around the world: fact, fiction, key authors, classics, contemporary voices.
Free Thinking ponders.
Key films, books, TV, plays, art: 1001 Nights - 2001 A Space Odyssey, Jane Austen - Jaws
From C20 fiction to new insights from research into political activism + colonial history
From Tudor art to animal rights: insights from the AHRC & BBC's scheme for academics.
Peter Singer, Cordelia Fine, Garry Kasparov, AI and Algorithmns, Tim O’Reilly.
Ziauddin Sardar, Richard Dawkins, Karen Armstrong, Rabbi Sacks, Marilynne Robinson
Free thinking explores women's lives and issues.
Teju Cole, Zadie Smith, Umberto Eco, Peter Singer, David Grossman, Edna O'Brien
Spying, peace negotiating & the power balance around the world, films, books, paintings
Dorothy Bohm, Edward Burtynsky, Sean Scully, Dada, Elizabeth Price, Edmund de Waal
From the Tale of Genjii to Godzilla, Kenzaburo Oe to Yoko Tawada …
Free Thinking explores America. Guests Claudia Rankine, Marilynne Robinson, Peter Bourne
You can download all the past episodes of Radio 3's Free Thinking
Free Thinking explores the BBC's 100 novels that shaped our world.
Leading scholars, insights from actors and directors and new research into the Bard.
Hear the 2020 winning historian David Abulafia in this episode
Books on Africa, religion, East European borders, world philosophy, indigenous peoples
Angry politics, what we can’t say, being diplomatic, weeping, emotion in music, film & TV
Dr Chaney from the Centre for the History of the Emotions on the emotions of the past.
Congratulations to 2019 winner Mary Fulbrook.
The Essays will be broadcast on Radio 3 17-21 June
We examine the fast-changing relationship between the individual & the crowd
Recorded at the York Festival of Ideas (2018)
From the urge to fight and Mrs Noah to Uncanny objects and mountain photography...
From breastfeeding to fasting, resisting tyranny to murder & dining with a nightmare...
From satire and the circus, to gangs and 'speaking truth to power'
From aubergines to frostbite via finger-counting.
The mariner’s astrolabe; faith in food; Sherlock Holmes; the phone & a cold war relic...
Free Thinking Festival 2017: The Speed of Life
Listen to past editions from the extensive Night Waves archive.
Stephen Reicher reveals that crowd psychology is more nuanced than people think.
With global population on the rise, could having kids be your biggest moral mistake?
The screen legend talking in 2009 about notorious co-star Errol Flynn with Matthew Sweet
Seren Griffiths with an audio postcard of the sights & sounds of Bryn Celli Ddu in Wales
Paul Mendez reads a short extract from his novel Rainbow Milk and reflects on its message
George Steiner in conversation with Philip Dodd, 2008.
