Arts & Ideas

Vietnam, ecological worries and poverty and suffering inspired the lyrics in Marvin Gaye's 1971 album What's Going On. Written as a song cycle from the point of view of a war Vet returning home, it wa...

17 Nov 202144min

Kick-starting second-wave feminism with her 1949 book The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir was a key member of the Parisian circle of Existentialists alongside Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Maurice...

16 Nov 202144min

Deciphering Dickens's shorthand, how the National Health Service uses graphic art to convey messages, creating a comic strip from Greek myths: these are some of the events taking place at the annual B...

11 Nov 202144min

Melting perma-frost in Alaska has led to crooked housing, an eroded air-strip and changes to the hunting and fishing diets of the inhabitants. But are their views and experiences being properly regist...

10 Nov 202125min

Cold, civil, world, uprising, conflict, war on terror: Anne McElvoy and her guests Elif Shafak, Christina Lamb, Lincoln Jopp and Hilary Roberts explore the impact of the words we use to describe confl...

9 Nov 202144min

Eliminating plastic from building houses, creating a house out of construction waste – rubble, chalk, ply timber and second hand nuts and bolts – and designing for circular cities are amongst the proj...

8 Nov 202126min

Modern theology often treats God as an abstract principle: a mover that doesn't move. But in the Bible, Abraham walks alongside him, Jacob (arguably) spends a night wrestling with him, Moses talks wit...

5 Nov 202144min

How can zines and board games help us understand climate change? Projects in Birmingham and Glasgow are using these techniques to allow young people to express their hopes and their experiences of act...

5 Nov 202126min