Free Thinking

Naomi Paxton from the University of Manchester explores the international movement for a Women's Theatre from the 1890s to the start of the First World War, and considers how their ideas may have chan...

13 Nov 201413min

John Lanchester talks to Matthew Sweet about his novel Capital, our understanding of the economy and whether the language of money creates barriers between bankers and borrowers. This event was record...

12 Nov 201444min

Where did language come from? It's often been described as the fundamental barrier between humans and animals. However, many scientists now believe speech evolved gradually from animal communication. ...

11 Nov 201413min

Turkey's best selling female writer, Elif Shafak, talks to Anne McElvoy about imagination and storytelling as she publishes her new novel The Architect's Apprentice. Her cosmopolitan voice is of parti...

11 Nov 201443min

Is man the only political beast? Can other animals be regarded as members of our democratic communities, with rights to political consideration, representation or even participation? Alasdair Cochrane...

10 Nov 201413min

Anne McElvoy explores whether it is worth getting hot under the collar about blue collar history with historian Alison Light, David Almond and Eliza Carthy. Once upon a time the working class were her...

10 Nov 201443min

Historian Alun Withey says beards can shed light on a whole range of things from medicine to the military. Pogonotomy - or the art of shaving - is about more than fashion. Recorded in front of an audi...

7 Nov 201413min

Daisy Hay from Exeter University explores the way in which Disraeli invented the modern politician as a man or woman of feeling, and asks whether the image he projected as an emotionally in-touch ever...

6 Nov 201413min