Matthew Sweet discusses the genealogy of blondeness Read more
now playing
Being Blonde
Matthew Sweet discusses the genealogy of blondeness
New Thinking: Work and protest
From Luddite protests in 1811 in textile mills to school strikes in 1911
Victorian colour, jewellery and metalwork
Nandini Das visits Colour Revolution at the Ashmolean in Oxford and talks to a jeweller
Humours and The Body
From mitochondrial medicine to 17th century cancer treatments, via Bach's Cantatas
Valis and Philip K Dick
A weirdly autobiographical science fiction novel from 1981 inspired by hallucinations.
Sankofa and Afrofuturism
Curator Ekow Eshun, academic Sarah Jilani, sculptor Zak Ové with Shahihda Bari
Sleep
John Gallagher gets sleeping tips from research pioneers and early modern history
Eliza Flower and non-conformist thinking
Matthew Sweet hears about research into the singer & friend of JS Mill feat. live songs!
Robert Aickman
For Halloween, Matthew Sweet & guests discuss supernatural fiction, bad teeth & canals
African identity via China and photography
Teju Cole, Noo Saro-Wiwa and Tate curator Osei Bonsu talk to Laurence Scott.
New Thinking: Writing exile and overcoming statelessness
The lives of Bengalis in Pakistan/a novel about a Lebanese boy wanting to be an astronaut
New Thinking: Food
Lisa Mullen hears about new research into eating habits and ideas about hospitality
New Thinking: Playhouses and opera-going
What spectacles did Elizabethan playhouses stage other than plays? Is opera really posh?
The Imperial War Museum Remembrance discussion 2023
As the IWM unveils its new art galleries, Anne McElvoy & guests discuss photographing war
New Thinking: How and why we talk
John Gallagher hears about tongue shapes, accent prejudice and the importance of gossip
New Thinking: The Box Office Bears project
From digging for bones to the connection between bear baiting and Elizabethan theatre
Shakespeare as inspiration
From Bollywood films and Pre-Raphaelite art to productions of Shakespeare in places at war
Women, art and activism
Naomi Paxton and guests on exhibitions at Tate Britain, the Barbican and Modern Art Oxford
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
New Thinking: Rediscovering women making film and sculpture
Kathleen Collins’ film scripts and women sculptors working in wax
Sam Selvon and The Lonely Londoners
Selvon's evocative 1956 novel discussed at the British Library by Shahidha Bari & guests.
Post-War Germany
Forging the modern German nation from the moral and material ruins of WW2
AS Byatt and The Children's Book
AS Byatt discussed her writing life with Matthew Sweet as she published a novel in 2009
Lorca
As the National Theatre stages The House of Bernarda Alba, Rana Mitter discusses Lorca
Libraries
From Alexandria to Mid Wales, Laurence Scott and guests look at library history.
Kadare, Gospodinov, Kafka and Dickens
Bureaucracies of the soul satirised in novels. Matthew Sweet's guests include Lea Ypi.
New Thinking: Disability in Music and Theatre
Dr Louise Creechan and guests discuss adaptive music technology & musical theatre roles
Humboldt, soil, gardens and Frank Walter
For World Soil Day, a celebration of art, research and ideas to revive the earth
Narnia and CS Lewis
Exploring the literary and theological terrain of C.S. Lewis's Narnia
Margaret Cavendish
Nandini Das and guests discuss the Duchess of Newcastle - philosopher, poet and scientist
Harry Belafonte
The long career of the American singer, film star & activist with Matthew Sweet & guests
Prize Winners 2023
Nandini Das, Tania Branigan, Halik Kochanski, Ed Yong, John Vallaint talk to Rana Mitter
Greek myth, goddesses and art
From classic myths rewritten by Natalie Haynes to the art of John Craxton in Crete
New Thinking: Carols and Convents
English Nuns abroad, and are carols just for Christmas?
Dickens, Disney and copyright
Matthew Sweet looks at copyright rules for Mickey Mouse & Dickens in C19th America
Travel, pleasure and peril
From preventing strangulation on the railways to guide maps and the art of travel posters
Essay writing
From Montaigne to modern Scottish writing - Rana Mitter discusses what makes a good Essay
Octavia Butler's Kindred
A novel from 1979 which uses time travel to explore race, slavery and trauma
Dust, dirt and domesticity
From mould to desertification Naomi Paxton and guests on the impact of dirt,heat and damp
Shakespeare's Women
The women who crop up in Shakespeare's life, his plays and who helped conserve his legacy
What is normal?
Sarah Chaney, Louise Creechan and Robert Chapman on neurodiversity, with Matthew Sweet
Heidegger & Antisemitism
Matthew Sweet discusses the influential German philosopher's relationship with Nazism
The Kyoto School
Chris Harding investigates the flourishing of Japanese philosophy in the 1930s and beyond
Holocaust history
Ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day (Jan 27) Anne McElvoy hears testimony and new research
Secrets, Lies & Irish History
Clair Wills, Martin Doyle, Scott McKendry & Louise Brangan discuss secrets and conflict
East West religious connections
Authors Rowan Williams & Christopher Harding and artist Gayle Chong Kwan join Rana Mitter
On The Silver Globe
Take a mind-bending trip to a distant planet with Andrzej Zulawski's cult 1987 SF film
Iris Murdoch's The Sovereignty of Good
Matthew Sweet and guests on Iris Murdoch's thought and writing (15 July 1919-8 Feb 1999)
Picnics
From Picnic at Hanging Rock to an Iron Curtain Pan European picnic
The Greenwich Outrage
The attempt by an anarchist to blow up the Royal Observatory in 1894 and its consequences
Chocolate
Shahidha Bari discusses the confection that has conquered the world
The Condom and V.D.
Matthew Sweet and guests talk about sexual health, VD clinics, sex work and condoms
Myths, ships and history
Anna McKay, Lloyd Belton and Oliver Finnegan delve in the deep for seafaring histories
Can - Future Days
Matthew Sweet and guests take a deep dive into the influential German group's 1973 album.
New Thinking: Stitching Stories
Shahidha Bari visits a textile art show + research on embroidery, stage outfits, vintage
Hitchhiking
Matthew Sweet considers examples from Texas Chainsaw Massacre to a system of Polish tokens
The Dutch Connection
John Gallagher hears about new research into Anglo-Dutch trade and early publishing
Sarah Maldoror, Storm Jameson, the Hague Congress
Ahead of International Women's Day Shahidha Bari hears stories linking women with war
Muses and women's creativity
From Pre-Raphaelite models to the daughter of Maud Gonne: Naomi Paxton with new research
Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation
Matthew Sweet and guests look at the 1974 Gene Hackman film about surveillance and murder
Images of Persia
Poetry by Hafez, Nowruz (New Year) and the Haft Sin table, the Mongol invasion, music
Sleep justice and sleeplessness
Laurence Scott talks to researchers exploring how we sleep and the idea of sleep justice
Edward Bond
Matthew Sweet and guests discuss the playwright Edward Bond (18 July 1934 – 3 March 2024)
Call Me Mother
How the shape of words for mother helps babies eat their food. Rebecca Woods explains
Free speech, censorship and modern China
The writings of Chinese women, from Ding Ling to coming of age in the 1990s
Scottish Kingship
Medieval myth-making, the kings of Scotland and the Stone of Destiny
Germany’s Mary Wollstonecraft
Andrew Cooper on the school teacher who tried to ignite a feminist revolution in Germany
From algorithms to oceans
Kerry McInerney explores the promise of the ‘sustainable AI’ movement and how AI develops
Weird Viking Bodies
Marianne Hem Eriksen on the meaning of a skull bone carved with "pain" thrown onto a tip
Gas, oil and the Essex blues
Sam Johnson-Schlee draws links between Dr Feelgood, Canvey Island and energy policies
The Legacy of the Laundries
Louise Brangan reflects on the uncovering of the secret lives lived in Irish laundries
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
Arteries of tomorrow
Dan Taylor considers the way communities along the A13 are looking to the future
Writing Place
Sylvia Townsend Warner's move to Dorset, Heidegger's Heimat and the Arun river in Sussex.
Rock, Paper, Saints and Sinners
Gemma Tidman describes a game created by a Jesuit missionary seeking Mohawk converts.
New Thinking: East West artistic connections
A war captive turned musician in the Ottoman court and Islamic influences in Rubens' art
Approaches to death
Archaeologists Marianne Hem Eriksen, Pauline Harding: historians Cat Byers, Harriet Soper
New Thinking: Light and Darkness
Darkness and how it affects those with dementia, to light in modernist literature
What does feminist art mean?
Ana Baeza Ruiz shares reflections from artists in the '70s women's liberation movement
Pranks
Matthew Sweet and guests assess the value of pranks and what purpose they may serve.
Unravelling plainness
Isabella Rosner explains why needlework challenges our idea of Quaker simplicity
Hobbes, Abba, Waterloo and margarine
Matthew Sweet and guests look back at the week exploring the ideas shaping our lives today
Change, scrabble and cultural christianity
Matthew Sweet and guests look at ideas about change: political, climate, personal
Tacitus, Byron's fanmail and Bluey
Mary Beard, Konnie Huq, Helen Carr and Tom Peck join Shahidha Bari
New Thinking: Exploring the local
New research into local politics, newspapers and the history of the post office
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