Free Thinking21 Maalis 2025

Isolation

As Radio 4 marks the 5th anniversary of the first COVID lockdown, Free Thinking investigates one of the defining experiences of that period for many people: isolation. It's a word that entered the English language in the 18th century, and arguably its emergence as a concept marked a change in the way people saw their relationships with other people and the wider community, towards a more individualistic society. And yet there's a long history of religious mystics seeking solitude. From Robinson Crusoe to the crew of the International Space Station, via monasticism and Romanticism, Matthew Sweet investigates the histories of isolation and solitude.

With: Mark Vernon, psychotherapist with a deep interest in the role of solitude in the Western spiritual tradition. His book Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination will be published in June. Lucy Powell, Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Oxford Kathleen Burk, Professor Emerita of Modern and Contemporary History at University College London, who will talk about isolationism as an aspect of the American political psyche Jim Hoare, diplomat who opened the first British embassy in North Korea in the 1990s. Catherine Coldstream, writer and former Carmelite nun, her memoir is Cloistered: My Years As A Nun

Producer: Luke Mulhall

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Jaksot(1526)

The Ethics of Knowledge

Do we have a responsibility to inform ourselves about the state of the world? Is the experience of some people valued more highly than that of others? Matthew Sweet investigates the ethics of knowledg...

10 Heinä 56min

Trade and Traffic

What does trade set in motion beyond the exchange of goods? Anne McElvoy explores the movement of commerce across time as a carrier of habits, ideas, ambitions and influence, as well as of material th...

3 Heinä 56min

The Child's Eye View

Shahidha Bari investigates the child’s-eye view of the world. From navigating AI to living through war and the joys of reading, what makes children’s perspectives so distinctive? With writer Katherine...

26 Kesä 56min

Eccentrics & Outsiders

How has the figure of the outsider or eccentric been used to explore English culture, history, politics, and our relationship with nature and the countryside? Matthew Sweet discusses, including a re-r...

19 Kesä 56min

Satire and Gulliver's Travels

300 years after the publication of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Matthew Sweet looks at satire, past and present. How can satirists reflect critically and humorously on political events in an a...

12 Kesä 56min

Wealth

Anne McElvoy and guests discuss the concentration, distribution and morality of wealth now and look back at An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, published by the Scottish ec...

5 Kesä 56min

Free Thinking at the Hay Festival: Responsibility

Freedom is one of the leading values of our society. But with freedom comes responsibility, which is a much more contested principle. Deciding where responsibility lies, and what it means to take it, ...

29 Touko 56min

Thinking with Food

The links between food and philosophy, ideas about experimentation, taste and how food and traditions become part of our identity are explored by Matthew Sweet in Radio 4's round-table discussion prog...

22 Touko 56min