Early Buddhism; Sheila Rowbotham

Two Buddhist scholars and the socialist feminist historian join Rana Mitter

• 44 mins

Colm Toibin; Dullness as a virtue

Is it a good thing to stand out? Anne McElvoy and guests explore the virtue of being dull

• 45 mins

Fungi: An Alien Encounter

Are fungi out to get us or here to help? A look at mushrooms in art, food and psychology.

• 44 mins

Jean-Paul Belmondo and the French New Wave

The French film star who burst onto the scene in 1960 in Godard's Breathless

• 44 mins

Gloves

From python skin to digital worlds, PPE to vegan materials: how gloves are evolving.

• 44 mins

Appeasement

How does Neville Chamberlain's capitulation to Hitler in 1938 affect politics in 2022?

• 44 mins

Adapting Molière

Liz Lochead is one of Anne McElvoy's guests discussing how to update the French dramatist

• 44 mins

Mélusine

The mermaid-like figure from medieval folklore is discussed by Shahidha Bari and guests.

• 44 mins

Altered States

Matthew Sweet and guests knock on the doors of perception

• 44 mins

Writing Love: Sarah Hall, Monica Ali, Adam Mars-Jones

Shahidha Bari is joined by three writers to discuss love and the contemporary novel.

• 44 mins

New Thinking: Mental Health Research

How can young people regulate their emotions and can gaming help adolescent mental health

• 40 mins

Touki Bouki

A close look at Djibril Diop Mambéty's classic 1973 film with Matthew Sweet and guests

• 44 mins

New Thinking: Diverse Classical Music

Digging into the music of composers Joseph Bologne, Kikuko Kanai and Julia Perry.

• 45 mins

Yishai Sarid; marking Holocaust Memorial Day 2022

Anne McElvoy talks to Israeli novelist Yishai Sarid & hears about new historical research

• 44 mins

Asta Nielsen

Matthew Sweet on the life of Danish film star Asta Nielsen, one of cinema's first icons.

• 44 mins

How To Make A Modernist Masterpiece

Will Self, Alexandra Harris, Kevin LeGendre & Owen Hatherley build up a Manifesto

• 44 mins

Paper

From the Chinese Han Dynasty in 105 AD to the 20th-century workplace, art and rubbish.

• 44 mins

Modernism Around The World

The Bauhaus in Deli, Japanese and South African novels, and poetry and art in Mexico

• 44 mins

Futurism

Matthew Sweet explores into the movement that celebrated technology, vitality, violence

• 44 mins

Diverse Classical Music II

Christienna Fryar speaks to four researchers whose work is expanding the musical canon

• 41 mins

Whale-watching

Philip Hoare, Rachel Murray, Peter Riley and Edward Sugden explore marine life.

• 44 mins

Whale watching

Rana Mitter dives into the world of whales and examines our relationship to marine life.

• 44 mins

Existential Risk

Planning and creating in the shadow of the doomsday clock with Shahidha Bari and guests

• 44 mins

Stonehenge history

Anne McElvoy is joined by Neil Wilkin, Mike Pitts, Susan Greaney and Seren Griffiths

• 44 mins

China, Freud, war and sci fi

From AI & fan fiction to 1930s replica antiquities: new ways of thinking about China.

• 44 mins

Hitchhiking

Matthew Sweet and guests consider hitchiking in culture and around the globe.

• 44 mins

Artists' models and fame

Egon Schiele's women, Whistler's woman in white, new radio ballads : Shahidha Bari hosts.

• 44 mins

Pankaj Mishra, research into Indian history

Pankaj Mishra discusses his new novel about friends in an age of upheaval

• 44 mins

New Thinking: From Pong to VR for Vets

A computer game for cystic fibrosis patients to improve breathing

• 19 mins

Perfecting The Body

Eugenics to cyborgs: Adam Rutherford, Clare Chambers, Harry Parker & Xine Yao discuss

• 44 mins

Climate change, nature and art

Leading artists, writers, thinkers discuss the ideas shaping our lives.

• 44 mins

The Barbican, art and writing in 50s Britain

Leading artists, writers, thinkers discuss the ideas shaping our lives.

• 44 mins

The Generation Gap

Writer Howard Jacobson, photographer Ruth Sutoyé talk family histories with Matthew Sweet

• 44 mins

Sisters

The Unthank sisters, Sally Alexander, Oyinkan Braithwaite, Lucy Holland and Shahidha Bari

• 44 mins

New Thinking: Women’s history

The Clean Break theatre company, sex strikes, East European feminism: Naomi Paxton hosts

• 41 mins

New Thinking: Women’s history

The Clean Break theatre company, sex strikes, East European feminism: Naomi Paxton hosts

• 41 mins

Blackmail & Shame

Mark Ravenhill talks about staging the play on which Hitchcock based his film

• 44 mins

Fashion Stories: Body Armour

Sophie Oliver looks at a Mina Loy corselet and the history of reshaping bodies

• 12 mins

Fashion Stories: In a handbag

Shahidha Bari looks at what the contents of a handbag can tell us

• 14 mins

Fashion Stories:Drama, Dressing Up and Droopy & Browns

Jade Halbert looks at the designs inspired by English history created by Angela Holmes

• 13 mins

Fashion Stories: Uniforms - an alternative history

Tom Smith links school blazers and clothes worn by East German soldiers to clubbing

• 13 mins

Fashion Stories: Boy with a Pearl Earring

Lauren Working explores the Cavalier look from Charles I to Harry Styles

• 13 mins

The Stasi poetry circle, Nazi schools and German culture

How an East German creative writing class fought the cold war: was their poetry any good?

• 44 mins

Vikings

Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough talks to scholars with new insights on the Viking period

• 44 mins

John Maynard Keynes

From HM Treasury to Versailles and Bloomsbury: a look at the life and legacy of JM Keynes

• 44 mins

After Dark Festival: Equinox

Matthew Sweet looks for meaning in the moment when the length of day and night is equal.

• 44 mins

After Dark Festival: Dark Places

A poet, crime writer, theologian & marine biologist join Matthew Sweet to explore darkness

• 44 mins

Bruce Lee and Enter The Dragon

Matthew Sweet watches the 1973 film that made Bruce Lee an international star

• 44 mins

Leopoldo Torre Nilsson's Hand in the Trap

Confronting the man who jilted you is the plot of this 1960s Argentine expressionist film

• 44 mins

New Generation Thinkers 2022

Laurence Scott introduces the ten academics chosen to share their research on radio

• 45 mins

Bridgerton and Georgian Entertainment

Shahidha Bari with Ian Kelly, Sophie Coulombeau, Brianna Robertson-Kirkland, Hannah Greig

• 44 mins

China: world politics, ink art & insomnia

Kevin Rudd talks about avoiding catastrophic conflict between China and the USA

• 44 mins

Grief

Matthew Sweet and guests look at the role of ritual, laments and how we express grief.

• 44 mins

Ships and History

Artist Hew Locke plus historians Sarah Caputo, Jake Subryan Richards, and Tom Nancollas

• 45 mins

Housework

Gender, class & domestic tasks-Matthew Sweet pulls on his rubber gloves and gets stuck in

• 44 mins

New Thinking: Preserving Our Heritage

From knitting patterns to greetings cards: Naomi Paxton looks at a series of UK archives

• 44 mins

Shakespeare, history, pathology and dissonant sound

Shahidha Bari on a new staging of Shakespeare's Henry VI. Why is Warwick a key figure?

• 44 mins

Teaching and Inspiration

Novelist Julian Barnes, historian Daisy Hay and New Generation Thinker Louise Creechan.

• 44 mins

New Generation Thinkers: Walking with the ghosts of the Durham coalfield

Jake Morris-Campbell carries the ashes of the poet Bill Martin from Sunderland to Durham.

• 14 mins

Rainer Maria Rilke

Anne McElvoy looks at the life and legacy of the intriguing poet

• 44 mins

New Generation Thinkers: African cinema, nationhood, and liberation

Sarah Jilani on the lessons about power in films by Ousmane Sembene and Souleymane Cissé

• 13 mins

May Day rituals

Matthew Sweet and guests explore ideas about community, collective action and May revels.

• 44 mins

John Baptist Dasalu and fighting for freedom

Jake Subryan Richards reads the letter sent by a captured man who arrived in Cuba in 1854

• 15 mins

A Brazilian soprano in jazz-age Paris

Adjoa Osei celebrates Elsie Houston, who mixed Afro-Brazilian folk with European opera.

• 15 mins

Kawanabe Kyōsai and Yukio Mishima

Japanese cultural experimentation: painter, Kyōsai 1831-1889 & writer, Mishima 1925-1970

• 45 mins

New Generation Thinkers: Alexander and the Persians

Julia Hartley asks why we call Alexander "the Great".

• 13 mins

Windows

From Rear Window to stained glass, TB to paintings at Dulwich: Shahidha Bari hosts.

• 44 mins

Opium Tales

Ways of seeing the trade triangle from Confessions of an Opium Eater to modern novels.

• 12 mins

Pause for Thought

From the bracket & exclamation mark to emojis - Florence Hazrat's history of punctuation

• 14 mins

Odessa Stories

Matthew Sweet explores the work of Soviet Ukrainian writer Isaac Babel

• 45 mins

Mental Health

Anne McElvoy looks at ASMR, clean air, loneliness and a memoir exploring mental health.

• 45 mins

Soho

130 acres of central London synonymous with sex and shadiness immortalised in film

• 44 mins

New Thinking: Flooding and Energy

Can old field names and labelling energy sources help us cope better with climate change?

• 34 mins

Speaking Welsh

Catherine Fletcher with Richard King, Caryl Lewis, Elen Ifan and Seiriol Davies

• 45 mins

Soil

John Gallagher and guests dig deep into the significance of soil

• 45 mins

Gandhi, Indian Architecture

Rana Mitter looks at a new play at the National Theatre about the man who murdered Gandhi

• 45 mins

Goddesses

Christopher Harding explores the feminine divine with Ronald Hutton and others

• 43 mins

Tattoos

Shahidha Bari traces the move from markings on convicts and aristos to today's body art.

• 44 mins

The Tudor Mind

Donne, Hamlet, 16th century psychology and mathematics, Tudor portraits

• 44 mins

Tudor families

Tangled bloodlines, executions and a big, gold inflatable thing belonging to Henry VIII

• 44 mins

New Generation Thinkers: Ruffs in Jamestown

Lauren Working on what fashion reveals about C16th English settlers in America

• 14 mins

New Generation Thinkers: The Paradox of Ecological Art

Vid Simoniti considers eco-art, from Olafur Eliasson to videos by Bo Zheng

• 14 mins

New Generation Thinkers: Contesting an Alphabet

Mirela Ivanova on the countries claiming to be the birthplace of the Cyrillic alphabet

• 14 mins

Oceans and the Sea

Abdulrazak Gurnah, Emily Shuckburgh and Joan Passey join Rana Mitter at Hay Festival

• 45 mins

Amia Srinivasan and Philosophical Genealogy

The Right to Sex is the title of Amia Srinivasan's new book. Christopher Harding hosts.

• 45 mins

Get Carter

Digging beneath the surface of the classic Brit noir film with director Mike Hodges.

• 45 mins

New Thinking: Uncovering Queer Communities

Hidden LGBTQ+ histories in Northern Ireland and queer cinema in contemporary China

• 39 mins

The Wolfson Prize 2022

Rana Mitter interviews the shortlisted authors for this prize for history writing.

• 45 mins

Victorian streets

Is that strong inescapable image of 19th century city streets in our heads the right one?

• 44 mins

John McGrath's Scottish Drama

Anne McElvoy revisits the 1973 play The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil

• 44 mins

South African writing

Damon Galgut discusses his Booker winning novel, The Promise, with Anne McElvoy

• 45 mins

Bloomsday, Dalloway Day and 1922

Shahidha Bari looks at the writing of Woolf and Joyce and what was really popular in 1922

• 45 mins

Slow Film and Ecology

Matthew Sweet discusses environmental thinking and a film made about rice over 18 years

• 45 mins

Sheffield reinvented

New words, music and film from the "City of Steel", presented by John Gallagher.

• 45 mins

New Thinking: Waiting

What does it mean to wait and how has that changed over time?

• 36 mins

ETA Hoffmann

Anne McElvoy and guests look at the life of the German Romantic who died 25 June 1822.

• 45 mins

Late works

Geoff Dyer and Dame Sheila Hancock discuss endings and lateness with Matthew Sweet.

• 45 mins

Belief, Habit & Religion

Rana Mitter discusses religion, evolution, neuroscience and history

• 44 mins

David Chalmers & Iain McGilchrist

Two leading thinkers investigating the nature of mind and its place in the world

• 45 mins

Vampires and the Penny Dreadful

Matthew Sweet, Joan Passey, Roger Luckhurst and Sam George look at Varney the Vampire

• 45 mins