Arts & Ideas

For over 400 years it's been claimed that the first Medici Duke of Florence was mixed race, his mother a slave of African descent. Catherine Fletcher of Swansea University asks if this extraordinary s...

9 Nov 201522min

Does Britain need more people like Russell Brand, Vivienne Westwood, Richard Branson and Boris Johnson? In business people talk of the power of the ‘disruptive influence’, but is the route to success ...

9 Nov 201542min

This year's Free Thinking Lecture is given by the American poet Claudia Rankine. Her book 'Citizen: An American Lyric' is a New York Times best seller and has become an instant classic. At one of the ...

9 Nov 201559min

Philip Dodd talks to one of the icons of what used to be called the counter-culture, Peggy Seeger. Another chance to hear a conversation recorded earlier this year before Peggy Seeger joins the line u...

5 Nov 201544min

Long Irish novelist Edna O'Brien in conversation. As she publishes her latest novel The Little Red Chairs she looks back at her literary career which has included short stories, a memoir, plays and p...

4 Nov 201544min

Matthew Sweet is joined by chess grandmaster, Garry Kasparov, and former British ambassador to Russia, Tony Brenton, to discuss Putin and Putinism. BBC 6 Music's Stuart Maconie author of The Pie at Ni...

3 Nov 201544min

New Generation Thinker, Dr Alun Withey has researched an unusual experiment in health care which took place in the 18th century in Bamburgh in Northumberland.

29 Okt 201510min

Anne McElvoy talks to New Generation Thinker and medical historian Alun Withey and former NHS executive Mark Britnell about health systems past and present. She discusses with Abigail Morris of the Je...

29 Okt 201544min