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Time and the value of doing nothing
Should We Keep Pets?
John Bradshaw, Jessica Pierce, Philip Howell and Laura Purcell with Anne McElvoy.
A Literary Salon.
Malika Booker, Neil Brand, Katherine Cooper and Jake Arnott join Matthew Sweet.
Rethinking Tradition
Roger Scruton, Kevin Davey, Kirsty Gunn & Haroon Mirza on tradition & experiment
The Invention of the Circus Ring
Matthew Sweet looks at the career of impresario Philip Astley and 250 years of circus
Diving Deep
Diving as metaphor, occupation and study from Tudor times to the present
Landmark: The Odyssey
Amit Chaudhuri, Karen McCarthy Woolf, Daniel Mendelsohn and Emily Wilson join Philip Dodd
The In Between
Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough considers airport lounges railway stations and liminal spaces
Counterculture and Protest
Matthew Sweet with Paul Hartnoll, Tony White, Tessa DeCarlo & Paul Cronin on uprisings.
Australian novelist Peter Carey.
A car race around Australia is fictionalised in Peter Carey's latest novel + Ovid's tales
French writing and politics
Leïla Slimani, President Macron's champion of French culture and language, is interviewed
Frankenstein and AI now.
Fiona Sampson, Daisy Hay, Christopher Frayling and David H. Guston with Matthew Sweet.
Oscar Contenders, Movie Moguls and Silent Film Stars
Lucy Porter & Steve Massa on women of the silent era, Vanda Krefft on William Fox's life
Royalty, art and patronage.
Craig Brown, Afua Hirsch, Robert Jobson, Joe Moshenska, AN Wilson, Philip Dodd on royalty
Burns the Radical; Exploration
Humboldt as Ecuadorian explorer, plus the territory between Scotland and England.
Landmark: Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries
Colm Toibin, critic Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and Ellen Wettmark join Matthew Sweet.
The Working Class in Culture
Philip Dodd and guests ask has culture forgotten the working class?
Trade, Davos, Ocean travel and Mermaids
Anne McElvoy on Davos discussions, Ocean liner style at the V&A and mermaids in fiction.
Celebrating Buchi Emecheta
Single motherhood, child slavery & parallels w/ Grenfell in the books of Buchi Emecheta
Tariq Ali
Rana Mitter talks to Tariq Ali, novelist, historian & political activist about 1968.
Michael Ignatieff and Central Europe
Philip Dodd talks to Michael Ignatieff about the political landscape of central Europe.
How Big Should the State Be?
David Willetts, Polly Toynbee, Simone Finn, Julia Black & Adrian Wooldridge at LSE.
Free Thinking: Mark Dion; Colour, Insects, Virginia Woolf
Human Beings are part of Natural History discuss: via art, science and the Bloosmbury set
Reflecting Rural Life
Film maker Clio Barnard and novelist Amanda Craig on rural life. Matthew Sweet presents.
Napoleon in Fact & Fiction
Napoleon impersonators, ballads and what if he didn't die in exile?
Steven Pinker on Progress
Steven Pinker explains to Philip Dodd why we should ignore headlines & be more optimistic
The Joy of Bureaucracy
Matthew Sweet with guests including Lord Butler, André Spicer and Eliane Glaser
What Lies Beneath; Neanderthal Cave Art to Fatbergs
Poetic and archaeological trip round our fascination with what comes up when we dig down.
A Sentimental Journey
Seán Williams rereads Laurence Sterne's subjective travel book & talks to Philip Hensher
The Golden Notebook
Lara Feigel, Xiaolu Guo, Melissa Benn + David Aaronovitch on Doris Lessing's 1962 novel.
New Research into the UK Women's Suffrage Movement.
With Helen Pankhurst, Jane Robinson, Shahida Rahman, Fern Riddell and Miranda Garrett