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BBC Radio 4


Leading thinkers discuss the ideas shaping our lives – looking back at the news and making links between past and present. Broadcast as Free Thinking, Fridays at 9pm on BBC Radio 4. Presented by Matthew Sweet, Shahidha Bari and Anne McElvoy.


Arts & Ideas

From taking the middle ground to the mid-life crisis, Middle England to middle managers, to being a middle child - is occupying a position in the middle out of fashion?

Anne McElvoy hosts Radio 4's ideas discussion programme and her guests this week for a middling conversation are:

Journalist Catherine Carr. Her new book Who's the Favourite?: The Loving, Messy Realities of Sibling Relationships explores being a middle child and the relevance of birth order

Writer and broadcaster Mark Lawson, who has written novels set in middle England

Symeon Brown, home affairs correspondent at Channel 4 news, whose forthcoming book is The Good, the Black and the Boujee: The Story of Britain's New Black Middle Class

Adrian Wooldridge, journalist, author and Global Business Columnist at Bloomberg Opinion. His recent book is entitled Centrists of the World Unite! The Lost Genius of Liberalism.

and

Claire Ainsley, former adviser to Keir Starmer, now at the Progressive Policy Institute.

Producer: Eliane Glaser

The Middle

How do weapons exert real and symbolic power, both now and in history?

Joining Matthew Sweet in Radio 4's round table discussion programme about ideas are:

The former soldier and politician Tobias Ellwood

The sculptor Hew Locke, whose artworks exploring colonial power have featured weaponry

The Renaissance historian Catherine Fletcher, whose latest book is The Firearm Revolution: From Renaissance Italy to the European Empires

The historian and broadcaster Mark Urban, whose books include Tank and Rifles

and

Hailey Austin, Lecturer in Visual Media and Culture at Abertay University who researches comics and videogames.

Producer: Eliane Glaser

Weapons, real and symbolic

From spiritual cleanliness to purity spirals: Matthew Sweet is joined by guests including David Aaronovitch; Catherine Coldstream, author of Cloistered – My Years as a Nun; Linda Woodhead, Professor of the Sociology of Religion at King's College, University of London; Izabella Scott, author of The Bed Trick; and Louise Brangan, author of The Fallen: The Magdalene Laundries and Ireland’s Legacy of Silence. They’ll be discussing ideas of purity in political ideology, religion, anthropology and the experiences of teenage girls.

Producer Luke Mulhall

Purity

From Spinoza's thinking and the approach of different religions to the Dickens' character Uriah Heep and the "humble brag" - in Radio 4's late night ideas discussion programme Matthew Sweet and guests explore humility.

Lamorna Ash is a writer and journalist and the author of Don't Forget We're Here Forever, which explores what it means to be a Christian for young people throughout the UK today and reflected on her own journey into faith.

Sir Robert Buckland is the former Conservative MP for South Swindon, a former Lord Chancellor and Solicitor General. He is a practicing barrister with Foundry Chambers, a visiting law professor at the LSE and the Third Church Estates Commissioner.

Aaron Reeves is Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and co author of Born to Rule: The Making and Remaking of the British Elite with Sam Friedman.

Ceri Sullivan is a Professor of English Literature at Cardiff University. Her research has encompassed the managerial techniques presented in Shakespeare's history plays, pragmatism in literary texts and devotional poetry.

Dr Dan Taylor is Senior Lecturer in Social and Political Thought at the Open University. He is the author of Spinoza and the Politics of Freedom and is involved in long term projects with long-term projects examining inclusion and housing in Barking and Dagenham; unpaid care in Gateshead; and community in the Fens.

Producer: Ruth Watts

Humility

Oracy - the ability to express oneself fluently - has been included in plans to modernise the national curriculum, with a new focus on equipping young people with the skills they need for life and work. In Radio 4's round-table discussion programme, Anne McElvoy and guests look at how you teach oracy and explore the value of passing on traditional knowledge using methods like songs and poems. Joining Anne are

Reetika Subramanian is based at the University of East Anglia and is currently a researcher in residence with BBC Radio 4. She hosts the Climate Brides podcast and studies women’s work songs as records of environmental change

Edith Hall, Professor of Classics at Durham University who champions the use of Classical rhetoric to foster oracy in schools

Philip Collins, former speechwriter to Tony Blair

Edith and Philip have taken part in Our Public House, a theatre performance staged by Dash Arts that builds on workshops with over 700 people nationwide who shared their visions for our nation's future.

Stephen Batchelor, secular Buddhist teacher and writer and author of Buddha, Socrates and Us: Ethical Living in Uncertain Times, published by Yale University Press (2025).

Tom F. Wright, historian of rhetoric at the University of Sussex

Producer: Eliane Glaser

Oral tradition and oracy

'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 substance? Who are the thinkers who have considered a philosophy of aesthetics
Matthew Sweet hosts Radio 4's late night ideas discussion programme. His guests are:

Film historian and New Generation Thinker Sarah Smyth, who lectures in film and TV at the University of Essex
Philosopher Dr John Callanan, who lectures on Kant at King's College London
Writer and management consultant Peter York, whose books include Style War, co-author of The Official Sloane Ranger handbook
Broadcaster and writer Emma Dabiri who co-presented Britain's Lost Masterpieces for BBC 4 and whose latest book is Disobedient Bodies: Reclaim Your Unruly Beauty
Opera singer Le Gateau Chocolat

Producer Luke Mulhall

Taste

In a special programme looking ahead to International Women’s Day on March 8th, Shahidha Bari looks at how women express themselves in language, argument, poetry and art. Her guests include:

Sara Ahmed is the author of No is Not a Lonely Utterance
Karen McCarthy Woolf's latest poetry collection is called Unsafe
Lauren Elkin's books include Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art, she translated Simone de Beauvoir's previously-unpublished novel The Inseparables and has a new book coming out in May Vocal Break: On Women, Music, and Power. She has been reading the new translation by Sophie Lewis of Angst by the French feminist thinker Hélène Cixous
Mary Wellesley is a historian and author of Hidden Hands: The Lives of Manuscripts and Their Makers
Ash Percival-Borley, military historian and former soldier

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Women, language & experience

Is authority a justly unfashionable quality that we should consign to the past? Or does it still have a place in political and business leadership, schools, medical settings and in the home? What is the difference between authority and power, how have historical shifts such as the advent of the internet affected public perceptions of authority, and how much should authority feature in the raising of children?

In Radio 4's roundtable discussion programme about ideas past and present, Anne McElvoy and guests explore these questions and more.

Justine Greening is a former Conservative Secretary of State for Education and Minister for Women and Equalities
Martin Gurri is a former CIA analyst who writes about the relationship between politics and media who published a book called The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium
Sophie Scott-Brown is a philosopher and historian of anarchism
Peter Hyman is a former headteacher and adviser to Tony Blair and Keir Starmer who writes a Substack, Changing the Story
Tom Simpson is the Alfred Landecker Professor of Values and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford

Producer: Eliane Glaser

Authority

How have attitudes to punishment changed over time, and what ideas about the rationale for punishment are circulating today? In Radio 4's roundtable discussion programme, Matthew Sweet and guests explore the criminal justice system through history.

With:

Stephanie Brown, Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Hull and BBC / AHRC New Generation Thinker on the scheme which puts research on radio

Scout Tzofiya Bolton, poet and broadcaster who presents on National Prison Radio, and for Radio 4 the Illuminated episode called The Ballad of Scout and the Alcohol Tag. Her poetry collection is called The Mad Art of Doing Time

Joanna Hardy-Susskind, criminal barrister and presenter for Radio 4 of a series called You Do Not Have To Say Anything

Stephen Shapiro, Professor of American Literature at the University of Warwick

Jonathan Sumption, former Supreme Court judge and now Moral Maze panellist for BBC Radio 4 and author of a five-volume account of The Hundred Years War

Producer: Eliane Glaser

Crime and punishment medieval to modern

From an impoverished neighbourhood in South London, Charlie Chaplin became one of the most significant figures in the development of cinema. More recently, TV writers like Sophie Willan and Michaela Coel have transformed the way working class lives are depicted on TV, from the concerned paternalism of the 1960s to a more celebratory view from the inside in the 2020s. In this week's edition of Radio 4's arts and ideas discussion programme, Matthew Sweet charts these changes, and considers what they mean for our understanding of class categories in wider society. With TV historian Laura Minor, art historian Jacqueline Riding, novelist Adelle Stripe, and historian Samuel Johnson-Schlee. Plus, an interview with Ian La Frenais, co-creator of such comedy classics as The Likely Lads and Porridge.
The paperback of Adelle Stripe's memoir Base Notes, and Jacqueline Riding's book Hard Street: Working Class Lives in Charlie Chaplin's London, are both published in February.
Producer: Luke Mulhall

Working Class Creativity

Will Abberley asks novelist Charlotte Mendelson why writers seem reluctant to engage with happiness and why so much literature is full of unhappy people; they are joined by psychologist and broadcaster Claudia Hammond.

Proms Extra: Happiness

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