Being Blonde

Matthew Sweet discusses the genealogy of blondeness

• 44 mins

New Thinking: Work and protest

From Luddite protests in 1811 in textile mills to school strikes in 1911

• 35 mins

Victorian colour, jewellery and metalwork

Nandini Das visits Colour Revolution at the Ashmolean in Oxford and talks to a jeweller

• 44 mins

Humours and The Body

From mitochondrial medicine to 17th century cancer treatments, via Bach's Cantatas

• 44 mins

Valis and Philip K Dick

A weirdly autobiographical science fiction novel from 1981 inspired by hallucinations.

• 45 mins

Sankofa and Afrofuturism

Curator Ekow Eshun, academic Sarah Jilani, sculptor Zak Ové with Shahihda Bari

• 44 mins

Sleep

John Gallagher gets sleeping tips from research pioneers and early modern history

• 44 mins

Eliza Flower and non-conformist thinking

Matthew Sweet hears about research into the singer & friend of JS Mill feat. live songs!

• 45 mins

Robert Aickman

For Halloween, Matthew Sweet & guests discuss supernatural fiction, bad teeth & canals

• 45 mins

African identity via China and photography

Teju Cole, Noo Saro-Wiwa and Tate curator Osei Bonsu talk to Laurence Scott.

• 45 mins

New Thinking: Writing exile and overcoming statelessness

The lives of Bengalis in Pakistan/a novel about a Lebanese boy wanting to be an astronaut

• 31 mins

New Thinking: Food

Lisa Mullen hears about new research into eating habits and ideas about hospitality

• 44 mins

New Thinking: Playhouses and opera-going

What spectacles did Elizabethan playhouses stage other than plays? Is opera really posh?

• 37 mins

The Imperial War Museum Remembrance discussion 2023

As the IWM unveils its new art galleries, Anne McElvoy & guests discuss photographing war

• 44 mins

New Thinking: How and why we talk

John Gallagher hears about tongue shapes, accent prejudice and the importance of gossip

• 44 mins

New Thinking: The Box Office Bears project

From digging for bones to the connection between bear baiting and Elizabethan theatre

• 31 mins

Shakespeare as inspiration

From Bollywood films and Pre-Raphaelite art to productions of Shakespeare in places at war

• 44 mins

Women, art and activism

Naomi Paxton and guests on exhibitions at Tate Britain, the Barbican and Modern Art Oxford

• 44 mins

Ursula Le Guin and The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

Naomi Alderman, Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson and others discuss the politics of this 1973 fable

• 45 mins

New Thinking: Rediscovering women making film and sculpture

Kathleen Collins’ film scripts and women sculptors working in wax

• 40 mins

Sam Selvon and The Lonely Londoners

Selvon's evocative 1956 novel discussed at the British Library by Shahidha Bari & guests.

• 44 mins

Post-War Germany

Forging the modern German nation from the moral and material ruins of WW2

• 44 mins

AS Byatt and The Children's Book

AS Byatt discussed her writing life with Matthew Sweet as she published a novel in 2009

• 43 mins

Lorca

As the National Theatre stages The House of Bernarda Alba, Rana Mitter discusses Lorca

• 45 mins

Libraries

From Alexandria to Mid Wales, Laurence Scott and guests look at library history.

• 44 mins

Kadare, Gospodinov, Kafka and Dickens

Bureaucracies of the soul satirised in novels. Matthew Sweet's guests include Lea Ypi.

• 45 mins

New Thinking: Disability in Music and Theatre

Dr Louise Creechan and guests discuss adaptive music technology & musical theatre roles

• 39 mins

Humboldt, soil, gardens and Frank Walter

For World Soil Day, a celebration of art, research and ideas to revive the earth

• 44 mins

Narnia and CS Lewis

Exploring the literary and theological terrain of C.S. Lewis's Narnia

• 54 mins

Margaret Cavendish

Nandini Das and guests discuss the Duchess of Newcastle - philosopher, poet and scientist

• 44 mins

Harry Belafonte

The long career of the American singer, film star & activist with Matthew Sweet & guests

• 45 mins

Prize Winners 2023

Nandini Das, Tania Branigan, Halik Kochanski, Ed Yong, John Vallaint talk to Rana Mitter

• 44 mins

Greek myth, goddesses and art

From classic myths rewritten by Natalie Haynes to the art of John Craxton in Crete

• 44 mins

New Thinking: Carols and Convents

English Nuns abroad, and are carols just for Christmas?

• 27 mins

Dickens, Disney and copyright

Matthew Sweet looks at copyright rules for Mickey Mouse & Dickens in C19th America

• 44 mins

Travel, pleasure and peril

From preventing strangulation on the railways to guide maps and the art of travel posters

• 45 mins

Essay writing

From Montaigne to modern Scottish writing - Rana Mitter discusses what makes a good Essay

• 45 mins

Octavia Butler's Kindred

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

• 43 mins

Dust, dirt and domesticity

From mould to desertification Naomi Paxton and guests on the impact of dirt,heat and damp

• 44 mins

Shakespeare's Women

The women who crop up in Shakespeare's life, his plays and who helped conserve his legacy

• 45 mins

What is normal?

Sarah Chaney, Louise Creechan and Robert Chapman on neurodiversity, with Matthew Sweet

• 45 mins

Heidegger & Antisemitism

Matthew Sweet discusses the influential German philosopher's relationship with Nazism

• 48 mins

The Kyoto School

Chris Harding investigates the flourishing of Japanese philosophy in the 1930s and beyond

• 45 mins

Holocaust history

Ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day (Jan 27) Anne McElvoy hears testimony and new research

• 45 mins

Secrets, Lies & Irish History

Clair Wills, Martin Doyle, Scott McKendry & Louise Brangan discuss secrets and conflict

• 45 mins

East West religious connections

Authors Rowan Williams & Christopher Harding and artist Gayle Chong Kwan join Rana Mitter

• 45 mins

On The Silver Globe

Take a mind-bending trip to a distant planet with Andrzej Zulawski's cult 1987 SF film

• 45 mins

Iris Murdoch's The Sovereignty of Good

Matthew Sweet and guests on Iris Murdoch's thought and writing (15 July 1919-8 Feb 1999)

• 44 mins

Picnics

From Picnic at Hanging Rock to an Iron Curtain Pan European picnic

• 45 mins

The Greenwich Outrage

The attempt by an anarchist to blow up the Royal Observatory in 1894 and its consequences

• 45 mins

Chocolate

Shahidha Bari discusses the confection that has conquered the world

• 45 mins

Chocolate

Shahidha Bari discusses the confection that has conquered the world

• 45 mins

The Condom and V.D.

Matthew Sweet and guests talk about sexual health, VD clinics, sex work and condoms

• 45 mins

Myths, ships and history

Anna McKay, Lloyd Belton and Oliver Finnegan delve in the deep for seafaring histories

• 44 mins

Can - Future Days

Matthew Sweet and guests take a deep dive into the influential German group's 1973 album.

• 44 mins

New Thinking: Stitching Stories

Shahidha Bari visits a textile art show + research on embroidery, stage outfits, vintage

• 43 mins

Hitchhiking

Matthew Sweet considers examples from Texas Chainsaw Massacre to a system of Polish tokens

• 45 mins

The Dutch Connection

John Gallagher hears about new research into Anglo-Dutch trade and early publishing

• 45 mins

Sarah Maldoror, Storm Jameson, the Hague Congress

Ahead of International Women's Day Shahidha Bari hears stories linking women with war

• 45 mins

Muses and women's creativity

From Pre-Raphaelite models to the daughter of Maud Gonne: Naomi Paxton with new research

• 45 mins

Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation

Matthew Sweet and guests look at the 1974 Gene Hackman film about surveillance and murder

• 45 mins

Images of Persia

Poetry by Hafez, Nowruz (New Year) and the Haft Sin table, the Mongol invasion, music

• 44 mins

Sleep justice and sleeplessness

Laurence Scott talks to researchers exploring how we sleep and the idea of sleep justice

• 44 mins

Edward Bond

Matthew Sweet and guests discuss the playwright Edward Bond (18 July 1934 – 3 March 2024)

• 45 mins

Call Me Mother

How the shape of words for mother helps babies eat their food. Rebecca Woods explains

• 15 mins

Free speech, censorship and modern China

The writings of Chinese women, from Ding Ling to coming of age in the 1990s

• 44 mins

Scottish Kingship

Medieval myth-making, the kings of Scotland and the Stone of Destiny

• 45 mins

Germany’s Mary Wollstonecraft

Andrew Cooper on the school teacher who tried to ignite a feminist revolution in Germany

• 14 mins

From algorithms to oceans

Kerry McInerney explores the promise of the ‘sustainable AI’ movement and how AI develops

• 14 mins

Weird Viking Bodies

Marianne Hem Eriksen on the meaning of a skull bone carved with "pain" thrown onto a tip

• 13 mins

Gas, oil and the Essex blues

Sam Johnson-Schlee draws links between Dr Feelgood, Canvey Island and energy policies

• 14 mins

The Legacy of the Laundries

Louise Brangan reflects on the uncovering of the secret lives lived in Irish laundries

• 14 mins

New Thinking: How water shapes our history and environment

From the aqueducts of ancient Rome to 19th century river Nile and today's running water

• 39 mins

Arteries of tomorrow

Dan Taylor considers the way communities along the A13 are looking to the future

• 14 mins

Writing Place

Sylvia Townsend Warner's move to Dorset, Heidegger's Heimat and the Arun river in Sussex.

• 44 mins

Rock, Paper, Saints and Sinners

Gemma Tidman describes a game created by a Jesuit missionary seeking Mohawk converts.

• 13 mins

New Thinking: East West artistic connections

A war captive turned musician in the Ottoman court and Islamic influences in Rubens' art

• 35 mins

Approaches to death

Archaeologists Marianne Hem Eriksen, Pauline Harding: historians Cat Byers, Harriet Soper

• 44 mins

New Thinking: Light and Darkness

Darkness and how it affects those with dementia, to light in modernist literature

• 39 mins

What does feminist art mean?

Ana Baeza Ruiz shares reflections from artists in the '70s women's liberation movement

• 14 mins

Pranks

Matthew Sweet and guests assess the value of pranks and what purpose they may serve.

• 44 mins

Unravelling plainness

Isabella Rosner explains why needlework challenges our idea of Quaker simplicity

• 14 mins

Hobbes, Abba, Waterloo and margarine

Matthew Sweet and guests look back at the week exploring the ideas shaping our lives today

• 56 mins

Change, scrabble and cultural christianity

Matthew Sweet and guests look at ideas about change: political, climate, personal

• 56 mins

Tacitus, Byron's fanmail and Bluey

Mary Beard, Konnie Huq, Helen Carr and Tom Peck join Shahidha Bari

• 57 mins

New Thinking: Exploring the local

New research into local politics, newspapers and the history of the post office

• 43 mins

Kant today, Spice Girls Reunited, Impersonating an Animal

Girl power past and present, the wisdom of goats and seagulls and Kant's ideas on reason

• 57 mins