Edward Said's thinking

Rana Mitter reads the first biography of the Palestinian academic, pianist and negotiator

• 44 mins

What do we learn from census stats?

John Gallagher talks to four researchers uncovering lives from past census records.

• 44 mins

Introducing New Generation Thinkers 2021

Ten researchers look at colonial history, alphabets, punctuation, poetry, art terminology.

• 44 mins

Syria: Hope and Poetry

An architect who lived in Homs during the war, a translator of Adonis and a media analyst.

• 44 mins

Frantz Fanon

Re-reading the major 20th century theorist of decolonisation

• 44 mins

Pleasure

Matthew Sweet's guests share some secrets as they ask: Is pleasure ever simple or guilty?

• 44 mins

Churchill's Reputation

Anne McElvoy and guests on attitudes to the politician, his rhetoric and foreign policies.

• 44 mins

Writing about Faith

Stand-up Frank Skinner and novelists Jeet Thayil and Yaa Gyasi talk to Laurence Scott.

• 44 mins

From Blackface to Beyoncé

Hanif Abdurraqib, Dawn Walton, Adjoa Osei on black performers from jazz to the Super Bowl

• 44 mins

Spy Talk

From a secret Iraqi cell to new revelations of Cold War exploits. Rana Mitter hosts.

• 44 mins

The Liverpool Biennial Debate

How to reflect Liverpool's history in new artworks: Anne McElvoy hosts a discussion.

• 44 mins

Milton: Samson Agonistes

Rana Mitter looks at the way politics, blindness and the Bible fed into this dramatic poem

• 44 mins

Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalism and Schizophrenia

Matthew Sweet re-reads a classic of French postmodernism.

• 44 mins

Octavia Butler's Kindred

A novel from 1979 which uses time travel to explore race, slavery and trauma.

• 44 mins

Jacques Tati's Trafic

Matthew Sweet, Adam Scovell, Muriel Zagha and Phuong Le on the 1971 French comedy.

• 44 mins

Maryse Condé's writing plus Suzanne O'Sullivan

Shahidha Bari reads I Tituba, the story of the West Indian slave accused in Salem.

• 44 mins

Shakespeare's life lessons

Scholars Emma Smith, Patrick Gray and Emma Whipday find examples in different dramas.

• 44 mins

Bombing and morals, Flooding and the future

Malcolm Gladwell, Satyajit Ray's film Jalsaghar and Jessie Greengrass. Rana Mitter hosts.

• 44 mins

Epistemic Injustice

Shahidha Bari finds out how to use the theory of knowledge to address real-world problems.

• 44 mins

Links between Judaism and Christianity

Rector Giles Fraser tells Matthew Sweet how a crisis led to discovering his Jewish roots.

• 44 mins

Northern Ireland

Anne McElvoy marks the 1921 creation of Northern Ireland with historians and writers.

• 44 mins

Samuel Johnson's circle

Patience Agbabi's novel time-travels back to 18th-century London. So do we.

• 44 mins

Napoleon the Gardener and Art Thief

Ruth Scurr, Emma Rothschild and Natasha Pulley look at French history with Rana Mitter.

• 44 mins

Alison Bechdel

American graphic novelist Alison Bechdel talks mushrooms, therapy and Adrienne Rich.

• 44 mins

Marlon James and Neil Gaiman

Two weavers of fantastical fiction sift through myths with Matthew Sweet.

• 44 mins

Archiving, curating and digging for data

Behind the scenes at the Hepworth Wakefield, the Barbican and the Alan Turing Institute.

• 44 mins

Lost cities, 20s divas and 2011 uprisings

Anne McElvoy explores the past and present of the transcontinental nation of Egypt.

• 44 mins

The Wolfson History Prize 2021

Rana Mitter meets the six authors shortlisted for the UK's most prestigious history prize.

• 44 mins

Ghosts of the Spanish Civil War

Rana Mitter talks to documentary makers, a novelist and historian about breaking silences.

• 44 mins

Who Needs Critics?

Matthew Sweet questions the critic's role while Vid Simoniti looks at algorithms and art.

• 44 mins