Shahidha Bari and guests explore life and leisure underground. Read more
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Going Underground
Shahidha Bari and guests explore life and leisure underground.
Oliver Postgate
Matthew Sweet with Daniel Postgate, Sandra Kerr, Neil Brand and Samira Ahmed.
Dead languages
John Gallagher says hello in Oscan, the language of ancient Pompeii
Orhan Pamuk and the Ottoman Empire
Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk joins academics Michael Talbot and Keya Anjaria.
Ghostwatch
An examination of the reality–horror/pseudo-documentary TV broadcast from 1992.
Alexander the Great
Military leader, city founder, underwater explorer?! Rana Mitter on images of Alexander.
Goethe, Schiller and the first Romantics
Andrea Wulf, author of a new group biography set in 1790s Jena, joins Anne McElvoy.
John Knox
A life of great drama and religious controversy explored by Matthew Sweet and guests.
The Imperial War Museum Remembrance Discussion 2022
Video game designers, a former soldier, and curator of War Games at IWM join Anne McElvoy.
Plastic and Clay
Lisa Mullen and guests compare the extraordinary uses of two contrasting materials.
Breakthroughs at Being Human 2022
New research on Benjamin Franklin in Cumbria, the Kenwood, lightbulbs and ganzflicker.
Experimentation in the arts
Shahidha Bari talks to the winner of the Goldsmiths Prize, awarded for creative daring.
George Bernard Shaw
Anne McElvoy and guests look at the arguments explored in the plays of Shaw (1856-1950).
St Teresa/Vivekananda/Nietzsche
Rana Mitter discusses three major philosophers of religion and self-development
Arabian queens, Bangladeshi mothers and women's tales
From the Arabian nights to refugee stories - female voices fictional and real.
Morgan – A Suitable Case for Treatment
Stephen Frears, Matthew Reisz, Lucy Bolton and Matthew Sweet look at this 1966 film.
Soil, Chickens and City Farms
Ahead of world soil day, Anne McElvoy looks at changes to both rural and urban farming.
How do we look at art?
Turner Prize shortlist, the vogue for surround-sound projections, and shows about sight.
Star Trek
Matthew Sweet with George Takei, Naomi Alderman, Una McCormack and José-Antonio Orosco.
Language, the Victorians, and Us
From Lancashire dialect protest poetry to Hardy's Dorset vowels. John Gallagher hosts.
Trapeze acts and circus celebrities
Shahidha Bari hears about aerialists Lillian Leitzel and Pablo Fanque.
Depicting AIDS in Drama
Russell T Davies, Jill Nalder, Sabina Dosani and Matthew Sweet, recorded with an audience.
Lists
Are lists a good way of organising chaos? Lisa Mullen and guests discuss
Beasts and animals
Shahidha Bari investigates the human invention of animals.
Landladies
Historical accounts and fictional depictions of the women who ran boarding houses.
Katherine Mansfield and Mavis Gallant
Claire Harman, Kirsty Gunn, Laurence Scott and Shahidha Bari discuss short story writing.
Amílcar Cabral
Rana Mitter and guests discuss the pan-Africanist poet and anti-colonial leader.
Wilkie Collins and disability
How the Victorian author’s own pain and drug dependency fed into his sensational novels.
Phillis Wheatley
Christienna Fryar explores the life and writing of the enslaved American poet (1753-1784).
Anna Kavan
Matthew Sweet looks at the writer of a dystopian psychodrama, Ice, who died in 1968.
Language Loss and Revival
John Gallagher is joined by Gwenno, who writes and sings in Cornish, and others.