Free Thinking

Peter Frankopan, and Maya Jasanoff, winner of the world's richest prize for history.

Programme Website

Coming Up Next

Autoplay

Now playing
Free Thinking
What kind of history should we write?
Peter Frankopan, and Maya Jasanoff, winner of the world's richest prize for history.
44 mins
Free Thinking
The Left Behind
Eric Kaufmann talks to Philip Dodd about white identity, populism and immigration
44 mins
Free Thinking
Leadership: lessons from US presidents and campaigners
Doris Kearns Goodwin on what makes a good president. Plus Georgina Harding on war.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Plagues, Urban Inequality and Restricted Books
Artist Penny Woolcock, global health researcher Thomas Bollyky and Jane Stevens Crawshaw
44 mins
Free Thinking
Slavery Stories
A long-lost classic now published and Esi Edugyan's Man Booker Prize shortlisted novel.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Mike Hodges; Dark Sweden.
The director of Get Carter talks to Matthew Sweet about writing his own crime stories.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Bessie Head. Rwanda Representation and Reality
Anne McElvoy looks at the career of Botswana's most influential writer.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Is there a great divide between the arts and science?
Sir Paul Nurse and Tristram Hunt debate with an audience at Queen Mary University London.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Are we being manipulated?
Who's pulling your strings? Matthew Sweet and guests track down today's hidden persuaders.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Writing and Frankness
Deborah Levy, Adam Phillips and Amia Srinivasan join Matthew Sweet at the British Library.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Linton Kwesi Johnson
The reggae poet and recording artist talks politics, religion and writing with Philip Dodd
44 mins
Free Thinking
Ice
A journey to the frozen ends of the Earth, plus theatrical magic from the 17th century.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Trees of Knowledge
Peter Wohlleben Emanuele Coccia Marion Sidebottom Luke Turner
44 mins
Free Thinking
What does game playing teach us?
Bobby Seagull and Irving Finkel join Shahidha Bari to look at competitiveness and games.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Landmark: Watership Down
An ecological fable about a perfect society? Matthew Sweet reads Richard Adams' classic.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Landmark: Laurel and Hardy's The Music Box
Matthew Sweet pays tribute to Hollywood's most famous comedy duo, Stan and Ollie.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Born in 1819: Ruskin, Clough and Bazalgette.
Ruskin, Bazalgette and Clough: Laurence Scott examines three of Victoria's class of 1819.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Boredom
Shahidha Bari, Josh Cohen and Sam Goodman explore the value of doing nothing.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Walls
Novelist John Lanchester, historians David Frye, Kylie Murray and journalist Tim Marshall
44 mins
Free Thinking
Tourism past and present
Must-see sights for post-Napoleonic War tourists, Cold War travellers and hot spots now.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Icons
Do our heroes and heroines have to be perfect? We look at ikons, film idols & politicians.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Oscars 2019
Matthew Sweet & guests look at films making waves as the Academy announces its shortlists.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Slow Looking at Art
Ways of Seeing with Michael Craig Martin, Aura Satz, Kelly Grovier & Daniel Glaser.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Consent
How we deal with unwanted sexual advances and changing depictions on stage are debated.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Art and Refugees from Nazi Germany
Writing about the Holocaust and the shock of Modernism in 1930s Britain.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Sea Goings
Julia Blackburn, Katie Paterson, Charlotte Runcie, the Cutty Sark.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Street Culture, Protests, Food
Philip Dodd talks to gilet jaune and novelist Edouard Louis about streets and culture.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Encylopedias and Knowledge: from Diderot to Wikipedia.
Jimmy Wales on Diderot and collecting knowledge. Tariq Goddard on Mark Fisher aka k-punk.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Self Knowledge, Global Catastrophe and Simulated Worlds.
Quassim Cassam and Simon Beard with Matthew, plus RW Fassbinder's 1970s TV sci-fi series.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Spike Lee
The film-maker talks black power, blackface and Academy Awards with Matthew Sweet.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Africa, Babel, China
Histories of West Africa, 20th-century China, and the art of translation.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Love
The science and art of love. Andrew McMillan, Lavinia Greenlaw, Elanor Dymott, Laura Mucha
44 mins
Free Thinking
Patti LuPone
The musicals star on politics, performing, #Me Too and her Italian American roots.
44 mins
Free Thinking
The joy of sewing, poet Fatimah Asghar, Painting in miniature
Shahidha Bari talks poetry and the web series Brown Girls, plus the history of sewing.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Images of Japan
Fumio Obata and Jocelyne Allen discuss graphic art and manga.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Jack the Ripper and women as victims
Hallie Rubenhold, Emma Jenkins, Dr Kate Lister and Ruth Ware join Matthew Sweet.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Authority in the Era of Populism
Louise Casey, Mary Kaldor, Jamie Bartlett, Heather Rabbatts, Rupert Reid and Anne McElvoy.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Skeuomorphs, Design and Modern Craft
Laurence Scott and Will Self talk about redundant features in design.
44 mins
Free Thinking
David Bailey, Don McCullin
Philip Dodd goes to David Bailey's studio and talks to Don McCullin about his Tate show.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Women, relationships and the law past and present
Novelists Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, Layla AlAmmar & historians Jennifer Aston + Jessica Malay.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Is British Culture Getting Weirder? Free Thinking at the Late Junction Festival
Gazelle Twin, Julia Bardsley, Hannah Catherine Jones, Luke Turner and William Fowler.
44 mins
Free Thinking
The Council Estate in Culture
With George Shaw, Kader Attia, Dreda Say Mitchell, Katie Beswick and Matthew Sweet.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Partition, colonial power and the voices of 16th-century women
With Hew Locke, Suzannah Lipscomb, Aanchal Malhotra and Anindya Raychaudhuri.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Jhumpa Lahiri, Valeria Luiselli, George Szirtes
Two writers and a poet in conversation about language, migrants and personhood.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Empathy
Authors Max Porter, Samantha Harvey and AK Benjamin discuss empathy with Chris Harding.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Childhood faces and fears
A history of orphans, fears about brainwashing and portraits on show at Compton Verney.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Betrayal
Philip Dodd explores the idea of betrayal.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Whatever happened to Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais?
Matthew Sweet meets the TV writers of The Likely Lads, Porridge and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Feelings, and feelings, and feelings
Thomas Dixon, first director of the Queen Mary Centre for the History of the Emotions.
59 mins
Free Thinking
Crimes of Passion
David Wilson, Sophie Hannah and Michael Hughes with Matthew Sweet at Sage.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Anxiety and the Teenage Brain
Stephen Briers, Caroline Dower and Ceyda Uzun join Anne McElvoy at Sage Gateshead.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Being Diplomatic
Anne McElvoy talks to Gabrielle Rifkind, William J Burns and Gabriel Gatehouse.
44 mins
Free Thinking
'Calm Down Dear' - How Angry Should Politics Get.
Suffragism, black activism & Brexit. Shahidha Bari chairs a Free Thinking Festival debate.
44 mins
Free Thinking
The Emotions of Now
What's the most pertinent emotion in 2019 UK: Joy, anger, anxiety, schadenfreude or shame?
44 mins
Free Thinking
How They Manipulate Our Emotions
An adman, VR creator, gamer, psychologist and Shahidha Bari at the Free Thinking Festival.
44 mins
Free Thinking
The Way We Used To Feel
From Neanderthals via Tudor England to Chartists - four historians on emotion in the past.
44 mins
Free Thinking
The Unsaid
Sarah Moss, Una, Michael Richardson and Harriet Shawcross at the Free Thinking Festival.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Should Doctors Cry?
Does emotion have any place in relationships with patients in a more open age?
44 mins
Free Thinking
Why We Need Weepies
From Bambi and Titanic to EastEnders - Matthew Sweet asks what makes us cry and why?
44 mins
Free Thinking
The New Age of Sentimentality
Lisa Appignanesi, Rachel Hewitt and Irenosen Okojie at the Free Thinking Festival.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Does My Pet Love Me?
A Free Thinking Festival discussion with Nicky Clayton, Erica Fudge and Kim Bard.
44 mins
Free Thinking
20 Words for Joy ... Feelings Around the World
Aatish Taseer, Veronica Strang and Thomas Dixon at the Free Thinking Festival.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Introducing the 2019 New Generation Thinkers
From techno music in Berlin to the Glasgow ‘rag trade’, and divisive dams to fake news.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Landmark: Audre Lorde
Jackie Kay and Selina Thompson on the influential US writer and civil rights activist.
44 mins
Free Thinking
The Spirit of a Place: A Free Thinking Royal Society of Literature Discussion.
Alan Johnson, Pascale Petit, Hisham Matar and Peter Pomerantsev join Eleanor Barraclough.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Learning about love from Kierkegaard and Socrates, The Wellcome Book Prize
A philosopher of love and a philosopher in love.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Born in 1819: Whitman, Melville and Ward Howe
Elaine Showalter, Michael Schmidt, Peter Riley and Katie McGettigan with Laurence Scott.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Chaucer, Bernardine Evaristo
Anne McElvoy reads a new biography of Chaucer and talks to novelist Bernardine Evaristo.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Sergio Leone, Kubrick, Magic and the Mind.
Matthew Sweet talks Spaghetti Westerns with Christopher Frayling + conjuring tricks & bias
44 mins
Free Thinking
Rivers and geopolitics
Global Dams, ancient Rome and the Tiber: rivers, power and scarcity.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Rivers, poetry and ecology
An anthropologist, a poet, an archaeologist and an angler reflect on the culture of rivers
44 mins
Free Thinking
Sebald, Anti-semitism, Carolyn Forche
The walking and photographs of WG Sebald and an exhibition of money and Jewish history.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Censorship and sex
Naomi Wolf discusses the criminalisation of love with presenter Matthew Sweet.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Stanley Spencer, Domestic Servants, Surrogacy
Authors Nicola Upson and Joanne Ramos, and researchers Gulzaar Barn and Ella Parry-Davies.
44 mins
Free Thinking
2019 Wolfson History Prize Discussion
Rana Mitter and the six shortlisted historians with an audience at the British Academy.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Homi K Bhabha: On Memory and Migration
Shahidha Bari talks to Professor Bhabha about his influence on postcolonial studies.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Landmark: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring
Rana Mitter hosts a debate at Hay Festival about the rise of the environmental movement.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Simon Schama, Siri Hustvedt, Catherine Fletcher at Hay
Rana Mitter discusses writing on art from da Vinci and Rembrandt to Louise Bourgeois.
44 mins
Free Thinking
AI and creativity: what makes us human?
A discussion hosted by Matthew Sweet at the Barbican's exhibition AI More Than Human.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Is the Law keeping up with our changing world?
A panel of researchers share insights into the law and warfare, gender and AI.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Orwell's 1984 - a Landmark of Culture
Matthew Sweet explores what fed into Orwell's future vision and how our own is shaping up.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Breaking Down the Barriers
The cultural contribution of Muslim women, and Rana Mitter talks to artist John Keane.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Michael Rakowitz, Archaeology Now, Epic Journeys and Facial Disfigurement
Artist, archaeologists, a writer and a historian of the face make the invisible visible.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Afropean identities, Filming the Arab spring
Johny Pitts and Caryl Phillips discuss the idea of Afropean identity with Matthew Sweet.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Landmark: Finnegans Wake
Matthew Sweet discusses James Joyce's groundbreaking novel of 1939.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Catch 22, Recycling fashion, Fred D'Aguiar, Wu Mali
Anne McElvoy watches George Clooney in Catch-22 on TV and looks at recycling fashion.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Jane Goodall, Elif Shafak
Matthew Sweet talks to two campaigning women: a writer from Turkey and an animal expert.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Cindy Sherman, Laura Cumming
The art of Cindy Sherman plus art critic Laura Cumming on the days her mother disappeared.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Amitav Ghosh. Layla and Majnun. Islam Issa.
Amitav Ghosh on linking refugees, climate change, Venice & Bengali forests in his fiction
44 mins
Free Thinking
Language and Belonging
With Guy Gunaratne, Dina Nayeri, Michael Rosen, Momtaza Mehri and Deena Mohamed.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Russia and Fear.
Rana Mitter considers fearing Russia past and present with Mark B Smith & Tamar Koplatadze
44 mins
Free Thinking
Reinventing the 'Mistake on the Lake'.
Philip Dodd visits the US rust-belt city of Cleveland.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Landmark: Iris Murdoch's The Sovereignty of Good
Matthew Sweet and guests on Iris Murdoch's thought and writing 100 years on from her birth
44 mins
Free Thinking
Caine Prize, Ivo van Hove, Female desire
Shahidha Bari looks at staging Ayn Rand's ideas and meets the 2019 Caine Prize winner.
44 mins
Free Thinking
An insider's view of war
Ex-marine and journalist Elliot Ackerman on al-Qaeda and the Iraq War.
44 mins
Free Thinking
Camille Paglia
Camille Paglia in conversation with Philip Dodd about free speech and feminism.
44 mins
Free Thinking
New angles on post-war Germany and Austria
Anne McElvoy with Florian Huber, Sophie Hardach, Adam Scovell and Tom Smith
44 mins
Free Thinking
Book Parts and Difficulty
Matthew Sweet looks at frontispieces, titles and marginalia, and hard texts.
44 mins
Free Thinking
James Ellroy
Philip Dodd is in conversation with American author James Ellroy.
44 mins
Arts & Ideas
Proms Plus: Kipling's Jungle Books
Anindya Raychaudhuri discusses Kipling's Jungle Books with Frances Hardinge and Sue Walsh
34 mins
Wynne Evans
21/08/2019
Wynne chats to Jake Henry and Karen Carswell, the founders of Vibe Youth in Swansea.
176 mins
The Mark Patterson Show
21/08/2019
40th Anniversary Special.
90 mins
The Afternoon Show
From the Edinburgh Festival: Ian Rankin, Colin Cloud, Symphonic Ibiza and Catherine Cohen
Janice Forsyth and Grant Stott host a packed show with guests including writer Ian Rankin.
115 mins
Arts & Ideas
Proms Plus: Beethoven's 9th Symphony
Seán Williams explores Beethoven’s 9th and Schiller’s accompanying text, An Ode to Joy.
25 mins

What kind of history should we write?What kind of history should we write?

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

What kind of history should we write?