Bread
The 'bread of life', your 'bread and butter', bread riots and 'let them eat cake', gentrification and bakeries: Shahidha Bari hosts the roun...
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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.
Episodes
20 of 2,016 episodesReading Against the Grain
What is left unsaid and who is missing from historical archives? Reading against the grain is a way of thinking about these questions and in...
The Example of St Francis
He renounced his fortune and lived amongst animals so does the example of St Francis help us think about issues like the wealth gap and our...
Intellectuals
What is the role of intellectuals in public life? Matthew Sweet hosts Radio 4's Friday night round table discussion programme about ideas. H...
The Ethics of Knowledge
Do we have a responsibility to inform ourselves about the state of the world? Is the experience of some people valued more highly than that...
Trade and traffic
What does trade set in motion beyond the exchange of goods? Anne McElvoy explores the movement of commerce across time as a carrier of habit...
The Child's Eye View
Shahidha Bari investigates the child’s-eye view of the world. From navigating AI, to living through war, to the joys of reading, what makes...
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...
Satire 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...