Discussions/interviews: Slavoj 沤i啪ek, Xinran, Ivan Kl铆ma, Claudia Rankine, Pankaj Mishra All of these programmes are available as Arts and Ideas podcasts via the Downloads tab.
An architect who lived in Homs during the war, a translator of Adonis and a media analyst.
John Gallagher talks to four researchers uncovering lives from past census records.
Rana Mitter reads the first biography of the Palestinian academic, pianist and negotiator
Author Viet Thanh Nguyen, film critic Phuong Le and Peter Salmon join Matthew Sweet.
Selina Todd, David Goodhart, Timandra Harkness and Sadie Ryan talk with Matthew Sweet.
Michael Rosen and Martin Puchner talk to Matthew Sweet about languages, codes and secrecy.
Fiona Sampson, Peggy Reynolds and Anne McElvoy talk poetry and writing personal stories
Having survived a plane crash, the Turkish prime minister 1950-60 died in an execution.
Samira Shackle, Ejaz Haider and Majed Akhter talk about Karachi, power, crime and energy.
Democracy and dissent in Hong Kong and the USA. Are confrontational politics here to stay?
From Neanderthals to Sikh warriors to the idea of weird people, three authors look at kin.
Sarah Churchwell, Kathryn Napier Gray and Lauren Working with Eleanor Barraclough.
Naomi Paxton looks at new research into the effectiveness of the UK act passed in 2015.
Laurence Scott looks at the way Dutch writers are addressing history and contemporary life
Historian Tom Holland, critic Fatima Bhutto, Ziauddin Sardar, and artist Inci Eviner.
Matthew Sweet and guests on Chaplin's 1941 film, The Great Dictator, and rising populism.
Rana Mitter talks to historians of China Jung Chang and Julia Lovell, and Cindy Yu.
The German joker Tyll Ulenspiegel. Anne McElvoy, Daniel Kehlmann and Karen Leeder discuss.
Hiromi Ito, Tomoko Sawada, Yukiko Motoya and Motoyuki Shibata
Philip Dodd talks to actor Christopher Eccleston and historian Ruth Dudley Edwards.
Rana Mitter talks to Jason Webster, Ed Morales, Iain Sinclair and Iwona Blazwick.
Rana Mitter considers fearing Russia past and present with Mark B Smith & Tamar Koplatadze
Matthew Sweet talks to two campaigning women: a writer from Turkey and an animal expert.
Johny Pitts and Caryl Phillips discuss the idea of Afropean identity with Matthew Sweet.
