May Day Rituals

Matthew Sweet and guests explore ideas about community, collective action and May revels.

• 44 mins

Kawanabe Kyōsai and Yukio Mishima

Japanese cultural experimentation: painter Kyōsai 1831-1889 and writer Mishima 1925-1970.

• 44 mins

Windows

From Rear Window to stained glass, TB to paintings at Dulwich. Shahidha Bari hosts.

• 44 mins

Odessa Stories

Linda Grant and Boris Dralyuk discuss the writer Isaac Babel with Matthew Sweet.

• 44 mins

Mental Health

Anne McElvoy looks at ASMR, clean air, loneliness and a memoir exploring mental health.

• 44 mins

Soil

John Gallagher and guests dig deep into the significance of soil.

• 44 mins

Soho

Matthew Sweet is joined by Jingan Young, Benjamin Halligan and David McGillivray.

• 44 mins

Gandhi, Indian architecture

Rana Mitter looks at a new play at the National Theatre about the man who murdered Gandhi.

• 44 mins

Goddesses

Christopher Harding investigates the feminine divine with Ronald Hutton and others.

• 44 mins

Tattoos

Shahidha Bari traces the move from markings on convicts and aristos to today's body art.

• 44 mins

The Tudor Mind

Donne, Hamlet, mathematics and the Tudor portraits composed by Vaughan Williams.

• 44 mins

Tudor families

Tangled bloodlines, executions and a big, gold inflatable thing belonging to Henry VIII.

• 44 mins

Oceans and the Sea

Abdulrazak Gurnah, Emily Shuckburgh and Joan Passey join Rana Mitter at Hay Festival.

• 44 mins

Amia Srinivasan and Philosophical Genealogy

The Right to Sex is the title of Amia Srinivasan's new book. Christopher Harding hosts.

• 44 mins

The Wolfson Prize 2022

Rana Mitter interviews the shortlisted authors for the Wolfson Prize for history writing.

• 44 mins

John McGrath's Scottish Drama

Anne McElvoy revisits the 1973 play The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil

• 44 mins

Victorian Streets

Is that strong, inescapable image of 19th-century city streets in our heads the right one?

• 44 mins

South African writing

Damon Galgut discusses his Booker Prize-winning novel, The Promise, with Anne McElvoy

• 44 mins

Bloomsday, Dalloway Day and 1922

Shahidha Bari looks at the writing of Woolf and Joyce and what was really popular in 1922.

• 44 mins

Slow film and ecology

Matthew Sweet discusses environmental thinking and a film about rice made over 18 years.

• 44 mins

Sheffield

Reimagining the city through Chris Bush's drama trilogy about its oldest scissor factory.

• 44 mins

ETA Hoffmann

Anne McElvoy and guests look at the writing of the German Romantic writer and musician.

• 44 mins

Late works

Dame Sheila Hancock, viola player Rachel Stott and writer Geoff Dyer on endings.

• 44 mins

Belief, Habit and Religion

Rana Mitter discusses religion, evolution, neuroscience and history.

• 44 mins

David Chalmers and Iain McGilchrist

Two leading thinkers who are investigating the nature of mind and its place in the world.

• 44 mins

Vampires and the Penny Dreadful

Matthew Sweet, Joan Passey, Roger Luckhurst and Sam George look at Varney the Vampire

• 44 mins

Writing about money

Orwell Prize finalist Kojo Koram plus poetry interested in economics

• 44 mins

The Black Fantastic

How the speculative and the mythical have shaped and continue to shape Black art.

• 44 mins

Women Warriors and Power Brokers

Shobana Jeyasingh, Cat Jarman and Janina Ramirez share new research with Shahidha Bari.

• 44 mins

France, music hall and history

An outdoor history of France and a look inside popular French theatre's view on Britain.

• 44 mins