Pakistan, Politics and Water Supplies

Samira Shackle , Ejaz Haider and Majed Akhter talk about Karachi, power, crime and energy

• 44 mins

Turkey: Adnan Menderes, populism, and history

Having survived a plane crash, the Turkish Prime Minister 1950-60 died in an execution

• 45 mins

Adoption, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Renée Vivien & Violette Leduc

Fiona Sampson, Peggy Reynolds and Anne McElvoy talk poetry and writing personal stories

• 45 mins

Humans, Animals, Ecologies

Matthew Sweet in conversation with two radical thinkers: Joanna Bourke and Anna Tsing

• 56 mins

Foucault: The History of Sexuality 4

Shahidha Bari reads Robert Hurley's new English translation

• 44 mins

Saint John Henry Newman

Newman's thought: Kate Kennedy, Tim Stanley, Catherine Pepinster and Dafydd Mills Daniel

• 45 mins

New Thinking: Girls

New research into ideas about girlhood and growing up - in film, fiction, art and society

• 43 mins

Breakdown: Horatio Clare, Stevie Smith

Horatio Clare talks to Laurence Scott about mania and healing + Stevie's Smith's writing

• 44 mins

Speech, Voice, Accents and AI Free Thinking

Lynda Clark, Allison Koenecke and Sadie Ryan discuss their research with Matthew Sweet

• 44 mins

New Thinking: From life on Mars to space junk

Seb Falk talks to researchers about our attitude to Mars,seeing colour and Skylab's crash

• 44 mins

The Vietnam Paris connection

Author Viet Thanh Nguyen, film critic Phuong Le and Peter Salmon join Matthew Sweet

• 44 mins

Edward Said's thinking

Rana Mitter reads the first biography of the Palestinian academic, pianist and negotiator

• 45 mins

Books to Make Space For on the Bookshelf: The Black Lizard

New Generation Thinker Christopher Harding reads the Japanese equivalent of Conan Doyle

• 14 mins

New Thinking: what do we learn from census stats?

John Gallagher talks to four researchers uncovering lives from past census records

• 44 mins

Books To Make Space For On The Bookshelf: John Halifax, Gentleman

2/5 Clare Walker Gore explores how Dinah Mulock Craik subverted Victorian expectations

• 13 mins

Books to Make Space For on the Bookshelf: Sindhubala

Preti Taneja on the writing and politics of Bengali author and activist Mahasweta Devi

• 13 mins

Introducing New Generation Thinkers 2021

Ten researchers look at colonial history, alphabets, punctuation, poetry, art terminology

• 44 mins

Books to Make Space For On The Bookshelf: Closer

New Generation Thinker Diarmuid Hester on the transgressive writing of Dennis Cooper

• 14 mins

Syria: hope and poetry

An architect who lived in Homs during the war, a translator of Adonis and a media analyst

• 45 mins

Books to Make Space For on the Bookshelf: There's No Story There

Lisa Mullen looks at depictions of war-time factory workers in this novel by Inez Holden

• 13 mins

Frantz Fanon

Re-reading the major 20th century theorist of decolonisation

• 44 mins

Pleasure

Cooking, nature, music, colour - what's your lockdown pleasure?

• 46 mins

Churchill's reputation

Anne McElvoy and guests on attitudes to the politician, his rhetoric and foreign policies

• 44 mins

Writing About Faith

Stand-up Frank Skinner and novelists Jeet Thayil and Yaa Gyasi talk to Laurence Scott

• 45 mins

From Blackface to Beyoncé

From the theatre stage to the Superbowl, in praise of Black performance

• 44 mins

Spy talk

From a secret Iraqi spy cell to new revelations of cold war exploits. Rana Mitter hosts.

• 45 mins

The Liverpool Biennial debate

How to reflect Liverpool's history in new artworks: Anne McElvoy hosts a discussion.

• 44 mins

John Milton's Samson Agonistes

Rana Mitter looks at how politics, blindness and the Bible fed into this dramatic poem

• 44 mins

Milton: Samson Agonistes

How do we look at blindness in poetic writing, classics, in Milton's and Handel's life?

• 44 mins

Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalism and Schizophrenia

Matthew Sweet re-reads a classic of French postmodern theory

• 44 mins

Octavia Butler's Kindred

A novel from 1979 that uses time travel to explore race, slavery and trauma

• 44 mins

Jacques Tati's Trafic

Matthew Sweet, Adam Scovell, Muriel Zagha and Phuong Le on the 1971 French comedy.

• 45 mins

The Battle of Culloden, Outlander, Peter Watkins

Matthew Sweet with Outlander creator Diana Gabaldon, historian Tom Devine and John Cook

• 44 mins

New Generation Thinkers: The Feurtado's Fire

Christienna Fryar looks at Caribbean fires and earthquakes and lessons for rebuilding now

• 13 mins

Maryse Condé's writing plus Suzanne O'Sullivan

Shahida Bari reads I Tituba, the story of the West Indian slave accused in Salem.

• 45 mins

The Essay New Generation Thinkers Jean Rhys's Dress

Sophie Oliver on motherhood, a old dress and rereading Wide Sargasso Sea

• 13 mins

New Thinking: Shakespeare's Life Lessons

Scholars Emma Smith, Patrick Gray, and Emma Whipday find examples in different dramas

• 44 mins

New Generation Thinkers: A social history of soup

Tom Scott-Smith uses four recipes to track social reforms and changes in what we value.

• 13 mins

Bombing and morals, Flooding and the future

Malcolm Gladwell, Satyajit Ray's film Jalsaghar, Jessie Greengrass. Rana Mitter hosts.

• 45 mins

New Generation Thinkers: Hoarding or Collecting?

Diarmuid Hester muses on the thin line between inspiration and a compulsive disorder.

• 14 mins

New Generation Thinkers: The Inscrutable Writing of Sui Sin Far

Xine Yao suggests that a poker Chinese face can be a good way of fighting back

• 13 mins

New Generation Thinkers: Battlefield Finds

Seren Griffiths tells the story of the soldier turned archaeologist Francis Buckley.

• 13 mins

New Generation Thinkers: Colonial Papers

Alexandra Reza's Essay considers the Gilet Noirs, Ousmane Sembène, and Nathalie Quintane

• 13 mins

Epistemic Injustice

Shahidha Bari investigates how theory of knowledge can address real world problems

• 44 mins

Links between Judaism and Christianity

Rector Giles Fraser tells Matthew Sweet how a crisis led to discovering his Jewish roots

• 46 mins

New Generation Thinkers: Beyond the betting shop

Darragh McGee considers the history of gambling from 18th century card games to apps

• 14 mins

New Generation Thinkers: A Norwegian Morality Tale

Lucy Weir learns dark lessons from newspaper coverage of Black Metal and satanic rituals

• 13 mins

Northern Ireland

Anne McElvoy marks the 1921 creation of Northern Ireland with historians and writers

• 45 mins

Samuel Johnson's circle

Patience Agbabi's novel time travels back to eighteenth century London - so do we

• 45 mins

Napoleon the gardener and art thief

Ruth Scurr, Emma Rothschild and Natasha Pulley look at French history with Rana Mitter

• 45 mins

Alison Bechdel

American graphic novelist Alison Bechdel talks mushrooms, therapy and Adrienne Rich

• 45 mins

Marlon James and Neil Gaiman

The two weavers of fantastical fiction sift through myths with Matthew Sweet.

• 45 mins

New Thinking: Archiving, curating and digging for data

Lisa Mullen explores the way data can change our view of history & looks at conservation.

• 44 mins

Lost cities, 20s divas and 2011 uprisings

Anne McElvoy explores the past and present of the transcontinental nation of Egypt

• 45 mins

The Wolfson History Prize 2021

Rana Mitter meets the six authors shortlisted for the UK's most prestigious history prize

• 45 mins

Ghosts of the Spanish civil war

Breaking the silence: filmmakers, a novelist and historian on the recent Spanish past.

• 45 mins

Who needs critics?

Matthew Sweet questions the critic's role while Vid Simoniti looks at algorithms and art.

• 45 mins

Novelist Tahmima Anam plus was Nero a ruthless tyrant?

Was Nero really a victim of plots? Bulgaria's hidden past. Plus a novel about startups.

• 45 mins

Fashion, Art, and the Body

Olivia Laing, Charlie Porter, and Ekow Eshun join Shahidha Bari

• 45 mins

Wittgenstein's Tractatus at 100

Can one book solve all the problems of philosophy?

• 62 mins

New Thinking: The Botanical Past

From still life paintings to Kew Gardens, a new history of horticulture is being written

• 44 mins

Alice and Dreaming

Alice is asked in Wonderland, Why is a raven like a writing desk? Salman Rushdie explains

• 44 mins

Green Thinking: Can artists help save the planet?

From ice photos by Wayne Binitie to 140 ideas from artists collated by Hans Ulrich Obrist

• 43 mins

Green Thinking: Future of Work

The future of work in a post-Covid-19 world and the implications for our environment.

• 26 mins

Green Thinking: Climate and Conflict

Is global warming increasingly to blame for conflict and disputes over land and resources?

• 26 mins

Green Thinking: Seascapes and Blue Gold

How will Climate Change impact the ocean and our relationship with it?

• 26 mins

Women's Art

Jennifer Higgie, Adjoa Osei, Veronica Ryan, and Lydia Yee talk to Shahidha Bari

• 44 mins

Beryl Vertue

Matthew Sweet meets the Sherlock producer and ex agent of Tony Hancock who has turned 90

• 45 mins

Green Thinking: Hot Money

Bitcoin, investment bonds and how to make finance greener.

• 26 mins

How anthropology helps us understand the world

Economist Gillian Tett is one of Anne McElvoy's guests.

• 44 mins

How anthropology helps us understand the world

Economist Gillian Tett is one of Anne McElvoy's guests.

• 44 mins

Nadifa Mohamed, Gentle/Radical, Dylan Thomas

The work of Turner Prize nominees, a Tiger Bay murder story, Under Milk Wood on stage

• 44 mins

Displacement

Edmund de Waal and Frances Stonor Saunders discuss uncovering Jewish family stories.

• 44 mins

Masks

The role of masks in African traditions, Greek tragedy and Covid conspiracies

• 45 mins

Building London

Eric Parry & Alison Brooks; writers Fiona Mozley & SI Martin; pianist Belle Chen

• 44 mins

Mid Century Modern

Shahidha Bari look at labour saving devices and ideas of home

• 44 mins

Green Thinking: Climate Change and Literature

What can creative writing add to the conversation about climate change?

• 26 mins

World's Fairs and the future

Visions of the future shaped by empire, politics and unfaltering faith in progress

• 45 mins

Green Thinking: Climate Change and Heritage

How do we stop climate change destroying historic landmarks or is it time to say goodbye?

• 26 mins

Green Thinking: Sustainable Cities

Earthscrapers and subterranean transport - do greener cities need to go underground?

• 26 mins

Cornwall and the Coastal Gothic

Laurence Scott investigates what's lurking in the rock pools

• 44 mins

The Innovative Shape of Poems

Sandeep Parmar talks to poets Kayo Chingonyi, Paisley Rekdal and Nasser Hussain

• 44 mins

Filming Sunday Bloody Sunday

Glenda Jackson talks to Matthew Sweet about John Schlesinger's 1971 love triangle drama

• 44 mins

The English country house party

Why does the grand country house party hold such power over the English imagination?

• 44 mins

Epic Iran, lost cities and Proust

Rana Mitter and guests explore the art and culture of Iran + why people abandon cities.

• 44 mins

Mining, Coal and DH Lawrence

Matthew Sweet looks at the connections between mining, the arts, and culture

• 44 mins

Mining, Coal and DH Lawrence

Matthew Sweet excavates the culture and arts of mining

• 44 mins

Green Thinking: Festivals

Des Fitzgerald hears how festivals can reduce their ecological footprint

• 26 mins

Breathe

Soweto Kinch, James Nestor, and Imani Jacqueline Brown of Forensic Architecture

• 44 mins

Green Thinking: Weather

What can we learn from how people responded to extreme weather events in the past?

• 26 mins

Alain Robbe-Grillet

Tom McCarthy and others join Matthew Sweet to discuss the French 'new novel'

• 44 mins

Connecting with nature

Music from thunder, art inspired by a dog walk,essays about a rural wood and a city field

• 44 mins

Bette Davis

As the BFI prepares a season of films, Matthew Sweet and guests discuss the Hollywood star

• 44 mins

Green Thinking: Food

How can we make food and farming more sustainable?

• 26 mins

Revisit Rashōmon

David Peace, Natasha Pulley, Jasper Sharp & Yuna Tasaka on the film + the book behind it

• 43 mins

Revisit: Tokyo Idols and Urban Life

The weird world of teenage girls seeking fame, plus the city in fiction and photography.

• 44 mins

Revisit The influence of the British black arts movement

Sonia Boyce, Harold Offeh, Isaac Julien and Eddie Chambers talk to Anne McElvoy

• 44 mins

Revisit Shoes

From Roman sandals to trainers and stilettos, Shahidha Bari looks at the shoe trade

• 44 mins

Saint John Henry Newman

Kate Kennedy, Tim Stanley, Catherine Pepinster, Dafydd Mills Daniel on Newman's thought

• 44 mins

Green Thinking: Climate and Refugees

Is climate change really causing people to flee their homes?

• 26 mins