Eccentrics & Outsiders
How has the figure of the outsider or eccentric has been used to explore English culture, history, politics, and our relationship with natur...
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Arts and Ideas
The best of BBC Radio 3's flagship arts and ideas programme Free Thinking - featuring in-depth interviews and debates with artists, scientists and public figures.
Arts and Ideas Podcast Guide
Listen to Arts and Ideas, a Arts podcast by BBC. Stream 2,009 episodes in English, follow new audio stories, and play episodes online on Radio and Podcast.
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Episodes
20 of 2,009 episodesSatire and Gulliver's Travels
300 years after the publication of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Matthew Sweet looks at satire, past and present. How can satirists r...
Wealth
Anne McElvoy and guests discuss the concentration, distribution and morality of wealth now and look back at An Inquiry into the Nature and C...
Free Thinking at the Hay Festival: Responsibility
Freedom is one of the leading values of our society. But with freedom comes responsibility, which is a much more contested principle. Decidi...
Thinking with Food
The links between food and philosophy, ideas about experimentation, taste and how food and traditions become part of our identity are explor...
Technologies of the Self
‘Technologies of the self’ is a phrase from the French philosopher Michel Foucault to describe things people might do to shape the people th...
The Middle
From taking the middle ground to the mid-life crisis, Middle England to middle managers, to being a middle child - is occupying a position i...
Weapons, real and symbolic
How do weapons exert real and symbolic power, both now and in history? Joining Matthew Sweet in Radio 4's round table discussion programme a...
Weapons, real and symbolic
How do weapons exert real and symbolic power, both now and in history? Joining Matthew Sweet are: The former soldier and politician Tobias E...
Purity
From spiritual cleanliness to purity spirals: Matthew Sweet is joined by guests including David Aaronovitch; Catherine Coldstream, author of...
Humility
From Spinoza's thinking and the approach of different religions to the Dickens' character Uriah Heep and the "humble brag" - in Radio 4's la...
Oral tradition and oracy
Oracy - the ability to express oneself fluently - has been included in plans to modernise the national curriculum, with a new focus on equip...
Taste
'It's all in the best possible taste'. But what does it mean to have good taste? And does pursuing good taste lead to favouring style over s...
Women, language & experience
In a special programme looking ahead to International Women’s Day on March 8th, Shahidha Bari looks at how women express themselves in langu...
Authority
Is authority a justly unfashionable quality that we should consign to the past? Or does it still have a place in political and business lead...
Crime and punishment medieval to modern
How have attitudes to punishment changed over time, and what ideas about the rationale for punishment are circulating today? In Radio 4's ro...
Working Class Creativity
From an impoverished neighbourhood in South London, Charlie Chaplin became one of the most significant figures in the development of cinema....
Is Might Right?
'The strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must'. So claimed the powerful Athenians, according to the Ancient Greek historian...
Labour, work and productivity
What do we mean when we talk about productivity? Anne McElvoy and guests discuss labour in the context of both work and motherhood: what the...
Double Lives
From undercover field operatives to online anonymity, via lives led in the closet and large scale infidelity, Matthew Sweet discusses the wh...