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Free Thinking Episodes

  1.

    Going Underground

    Shahidha Bari and guests explore life and leisure underground.

  2. British Academy Book Prize 2022

    Rana Mitter meets six authors shortlisted for the prize for Global Cultural Understanding.

  3. Romanticism revisited

    Coleridge, Fuseli and Emily Bront毛 under the spotlight as new films and exhibitions open.

  4. The Frieze/Radio 3 Museum Directors Debate 2022

    Anne McElvoy is joined by the directors of three institutions from around the world.

  5. Miles Davis and On The Corner

    Matthew Sweet and guests explore Davis's genre-stretching album, released on 11 Oct 1972.

  6. How We Read

    Matthew Sweet explores our surprisingly complex and mysterious relationship with text.

  7. Female power and influence past and present

    Anne McElvoy talks to novelist Kamila Shamsie and playwright Rona Munro.

  8. My Neighbour Totoro

    Japanese ideas about childhood innocence and the influence of a 1988 Studio Ghibli film.

  9. John Cowper Powys

    John Gray, Margaret Drabble, Iain Sinclair and Kevan Manwaring discuss Powys's writing.

  10. Claude McKay and the Harlem Renaissance

    Authors Nadifa Mohamed, Johny Pitts and Pearl Cleage join Shahidha Bari.

  11. Ibsen

    New interpretations of the Norwegian dramatist's plays by Lucinda Coxon and Steve Waters.

  12. The Black Country, past and present

    Matthew Sweet and guests record with an audience at the Contains Strong Language Festival.

  13. The Normans

    Rana Mitter and guests look at Norman history, misconceptions and echoes heard today.

  14. Cuba, cold war and RAF Fylingdales

    Novelist Ian McEwan and researchers into early warning system archives join Anne McElvoy

  15. Immortality

    Matthew Sweet and guests explore ideas about never ending life in literature film and myth

  16. The Lindisfarne Gospels and new discoveries

    An archaeologist, a historian and a poet join Shahidha Bari as the gospels return North.

  17. What language did Columbus speak?

    John Gallagher and guests explore language in the 15th-century Age of Exploration.

  18. Satyajit Ray's films

    Tariq Ali, Sarah Jilani, Sangeeta Datta and Chandak Sengoopta and Rana Mitter discuss Ray.

  19. The Daleks

    Matthew Sweet's guests include the voice of the Daleks and the Doctor's granddaughter.

  20. France, music hall and history

    An outdoor history of France and a look inside popular French theatre's view on Britain.

  21. Women Warriors and Power Brokers

    Shobana Jeyasingh, Cat Jarman and Janina Ramirez share new research with Shahidha Bari.

  22. The Black Fantastic

    How the speculative and the mythical have shaped and continue to shape Black art.

  23. Writing about money

    Orwell Prize finalist Kojo Koram plus poetry interested in economics

  24. Vampires and the Penny Dreadful

    Matthew Sweet, Joan Passey, Roger Luckhurst and Sam George look at Varney the Vampire

  25. David Chalmers and Iain McGilchrist

    Two leading thinkers who are investigating the nature of mind and its place in the world.

  26. Belief, Habit and Religion

    Rana Mitter discusses religion, evolution, neuroscience and history.

  27. Late works

    Dame Sheila Hancock, viola player Rachel Stott and writer Geoff Dyer on endings.

  28. ETA Hoffmann

    Anne McElvoy and guests look at the writing of the German Romantic writer and musician.

  29. Sheffield

    Reimagining the city through Chris Bush's drama trilogy about its oldest scissor factory.

  30. Slow film and ecology

    Matthew Sweet discusses environmental thinking and a film about rice made over 18 years.

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