Simplify your life - ideas from 20th-century radicals

Laurence Scott hears about a pioneer of vegetarianism and advocates for nudism and camping as the academics Elsa Richardson, Annebella Pollen and Ben Anderson discuss the Life Reform Movement. Ideas included arguments for a basic income, clean eating, yoga, world peace and what a perfect body looked like. The movement emerged in the second half of the 19th century and was a loose collection of groups and individuals who pursued social reform of all kinds but their ideas were both utopian and had their darker side.

Annebella Pollen teaches at Brighton University and is the author of The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift: Intellectual Barbarians
Elsa Richardson teaches at the University of Strathclyde and is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and AHRC to promote research on radio.
Ben Anderson teaches at Keele University and is also a New Generation Thinker.

You can find more discussions about culture based on the latest academic research by downloading the BBC Radio 3 Arts & Ideas podcast episodes called New Thinking or look on the Free Thinking programme website where you will find a playlist called New Research. https://bbc.kongjiang.org/www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90

The Free Thinking exploration of Running is here https://bbc.kongjiang.org/www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b087yrll
The Joy of Sewing https://bbc.kongjiang.org/www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002mk2
Art for Health's Sake https://bbc.kongjiang.org/www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09v62w3

Producer Chris Wilson