Arts & Ideas

British politics has long been defined by the labels of left and right but the terms are now often seen as defunct with research showing voters increasingly struggle to identify policies as being from...

25 Maj 202457min

Sir Richard Evans, Margaret Heffernan, Isabel Oakeshott, Quassim Cassam join Anne McElvoy to look at the ideas shaping our lives today. Are they optimists or pessimists ? How negative should we be in ...

21 Maj 202456min

Does reading really encourage empathy? Are we asked to perform a role when we walk into the workplace? How was early film and technicolour embraced for political ends? Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough fi...

16 Maj 202444min

Can we still expect a meaningful job, stable income, a chance of owning property? How have expectations changed and what is the place of protest? Matthew Sweet's guests this week are: David Willetts i...

10 Maj 202456min

Matthew Sweet talks about the philosophy of winning and losing with Professor Lea Ypi a political scientist at the London School of Economics and the journalist and author Peter Hitchens. They'll be j...

4 Maj 202457min

Marshmallows and Kant, ideas about girl power from Mary Wollstonecraft (born April 27th 1759) to the Spice girls; and galloping horses, sea-gull sounds and life as a goat. On today's Free Thinking Sha...

26 Apr 202457min

Women made up 10-15% of the workforce in the early days of the post office. Looking at a series of different records from the 17th century onwards, Sarah Ward Clavier has discovered stories about spyi...

26 Apr 202443min

Classicist Mary Beard picks Tacitus as a figure who still has relevance if we're thinking about satire, power and celebrity. Shahidha Bari is joined by Mary, historian Helen Carr, who co-edited What i...

19 Apr 202457min