Arts & Ideas

Rana Mitter looks forward to an Age of the Happy City with innovative urban scholar, Richard Burdett, and journalist and urban experimentalist, Charles Montgomery. One of India's leading historians Ra...

28 Nov 201345min

As Scotland and England consider the future of the United Kingdom, Philip Dodd discusses what Orwell and his version of Englishness might have to offer the debate, with Robert Colls, author of 'George...

27 Nov 201344min

Veteran politician Tony Benn talks to Matthew Sweet about his final volume of diaries, A Blaze of Autumn Sunshine. Historian Eliza Filby and journalist David Aaronovitch examine how much political tra...

26 Nov 201345min

With the return of the Young Vic's Theatre Uncut season, Anne McElvoy is joined by Neil LaBute, Hannah Price and Tiffany Jenkins to discuss the role and nature of political theatre. Writer Scott Turow...

22 Nov 201344min

Penny Woolcock talks to Samira Ahmed about directing a film version of John Adams's opera The Death of Klinghoffer. For the Free Thinking Festival, she returned to the city where she began her career....

20 Nov 201343min

50 years of Dr Who is celebrated this weekend by the BBC. Matthew Sweet discusses the TV series with historian Dominic Sandbrook, philosopher Ray Monk and New Generation Thinker and cultural historian...

20 Nov 201344min

Whose Strife Is It Anyway? Amit Chaudhuri, Gaiutra Bahadur and Aamer Ahmed Khan discuss depictions of the powerless in fiction and factual reporting with Rana Mitter. Chaudhuri has explored life in Ca...

14 Nov 201341min

In a bid to reach new audiences, theatre is increasingly moving off the stage and the visual arts are coming out of the gallery, but is this a welcome trend? Matthew Sweet chairs the Free Thinking pan...

12 Nov 201342min