ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½

The Invention of the Circus Ring

Matthew Sweet looks at the career of impresario Philip Astley and 250 years of circus

• 44 mins

Diving Deep

Diving as metaphor, occupation and study from Tudor times to the present

• 44 mins

Landmark: The Odyssey

Amit Chaudhuri, Karen McCarthy Woolf, Daniel Mendelsohn and Emily Wilson join Philip Dodd

• 44 mins

The In Between

Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough considers airport lounges railway stations and liminal spaces

• 44 mins

Counterculture and Protest

Matthew Sweet with Paul Hartnoll, Tony White, Tessa DeCarlo & Paul Cronin on uprisings.

• 44 mins

Australian novelist Peter Carey.

A car race around Australia is fictionalised in Peter Carey's latest novel + Ovid's tales

• 44 mins

French writing and politics

Leïla Slimani, President Macron's champion of French culture and language, is interviewed

• 44 mins

Frankenstein and AI now.

Fiona Sampson, Daisy Hay, Christopher Frayling and David H. Guston with Matthew Sweet.

• 45 mins

Oscar Contenders, Movie Moguls and Silent Film Stars

Lucy Porter & Steve Massa on women of the silent era, Vanda Krefft on William Fox's life

• 45 mins

Royalty, art and patronage.

Craig Brown, Afua Hirsch, Robert Jobson, Joe Moshenska, AN Wilson, Philip Dodd on royalty

• 44 mins

Burns the Radical; Exploration

Humboldt as Ecuadorian explorer, plus the territory between Scotland and England.

• 44 mins

Landmark: Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries

Colm Toibin, critic Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and Ellen Wettmark join Matthew Sweet.

• 45 mins

The Working Class in Culture

Philip Dodd and guests ask has culture forgotten the working class?

• 44 mins

Trade, Davos, Ocean travel and Mermaids

Anne McElvoy on Davos discussions, Ocean liner style at the V&A and mermaids in fiction.

• 44 mins

Celebrating Buchi Emecheta

Single motherhood, child slavery & parallels w/ Grenfell in the books of Buchi Emecheta

• 44 mins

Tariq Ali

Rana Mitter talks to Tariq Ali, novelist, historian & political activist about 1968.

• 53 mins

Michael Ignatieff and Central Europe

Philip Dodd talks to Michael Ignatieff about the political landscape of central Europe.

• 44 mins

How Big Should the State Be?

David Willetts, Polly Toynbee, Simone Finn, Julia Black & Adrian Wooldridge at LSE.

• 71 mins

Free Thinking: Mark Dion; Colour, Insects, Virginia Woolf

Human Beings are part of Natural History discuss: via art, science and the Bloosmbury set

• 44 mins

Reflecting Rural Life

Film maker Clio Barnard and novelist Amanda Craig on rural life. Matthew Sweet presents.

• 44 mins

Napoleon in Fact & Fiction

Napoleon impersonators, ballads and what if he didn't die in exile?

• 44 mins

Steven Pinker on Progress

Steven Pinker explains to Philip Dodd why we should ignore headlines & be more optimistic

• 44 mins

The Joy of Bureaucracy

Matthew Sweet with guests including Lord Butler, André Spicer and Eliane Glaser

• 45 mins

What Lies Beneath; Neanderthal Cave Art to Fatbergs

Poetic and archaeological trip round our fascination with what comes up when we dig down.

• 44 mins

A Sentimental Journey

Seán Williams rereads Laurence Sterne's subjective travel book & talks to Philip Hensher

• 43 mins

The Golden Notebook

Lara Feigel, Xiaolu Guo, Melissa Benn + David Aaronovitch on Doris Lessing's 1962 novel.

• 44 mins

New Research into the UK Women's Suffrage Movement.

With Helen Pankhurst, Jane Robinson, Shahida Rahman, Fern Riddell and Miranda Garrett

• 44 mins

The Free Thinking Lecture: Linda Yueh on Globalisation

Economist Linda Yueh delivers her vision for restoring faith in the free market.

• 59 mins

The Population Bomb

Danny Dorling, Lionel Shriver and Stephen Emmott debate with Matthew Sweet.

• 44 mins

Free Thinking Essay: Welling Up: Women & Water in the Middle Ages

Hetta Howes looks at male fears + why Margery Kempe was criticised for crying & bleeding.

• 18 mins