The Black Country past and present

Matthew Sweet and guests with an audience at the 2022 Contains Strong Language Festival

• 44 mins

Writing and Place: Cornwall

Wyl Menmuir and Natasha Carthew talk to Joan Passey

• 20 mins

Writing and Place: The Cairngorms

Amanda Thomson and Merryn Glover talk to Kate Molleson about Scots nature writing

• 23 mins

Wolfson Prize 2023

Rana Mitter talks to the six authors shortlisted for the UK's main history writing prize

• 44 mins

Queer history, new narrative in San Fransisco

Diarmuid Hester & Dodie Bellamy on a '70s US writing group. Lauren Elkin on art monsters

• 44 mins

The Red Shoes

Ahead of a BFI festival, Matthew Sweet and guests discuss Powell and Pressburger's film

• 45 mins

Black Atlantic

Artist Jaqueline Bishop and curator of an exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge

• 45 mins

Why go into space?

Christopher Harding investigates the history, culture and science of space exploration

• 45 mins

Notebooks and new technology

Authors Jonathan Coe, Roland Allen, Lesley Smith and art book maker Gill Partington

• 45 mins

Betty Miller and Marghanita Laski

Howard Jacobson, Lara Feigel and Lisa Mullen with Matthew Sweet

• 45 mins

Childbirth and parenthood: Contains Strong Language Festival

Testament, Hannah Silva, historian Jessica Cox and Thackray museum curator Laura Sellers

• 45 mins

Hobbes and New Leviathans

John Gray on why re-reading Hobbes can help us understand contemporary politics

• 45 mins

Slavic culture and myth

Matthew Sweet looks at the origins of creatures like Baba Yaga, Banniks and Rusalkas.

• 44 mins

Refuge and National Poetry Day

Poets Momtaza Mehri, Julianknxx and historian Jesús Sanjurjo join Matthew Sweet

• 44 mins

Faith, consciousness and creating meaning in life

Philosophers Daniel Dennett, Philip Goff, podcaster Liz Oldfield & a faith museum curator

• 44 mins

New Thinking: Modernism, exile and homelessness

Nathan Waddell and Laura Ryan talk to Jade Munslow Ong about writers depicting precarity

• 29 mins

Art, Kew, a symphony and nature

Artist Mat Collishaw, composer Jimmy López Bellido, academics Vid Simoniti & Sarah Casey

• 44 mins

The Frieze/Radio 3 Museum Directors Debate 2023

The art museum as community space, immersive art experiences & other hot topics.

• 44 mins

Being Blonde

Matthew Sweet discusses the genealogy of blondeness

• 44 mins

New Thinking: Work and protest

From Luddite protests in 1811 in textile mills to school strikes in 1911

• 35 mins

Victorian colour, jewellery and metalwork

Nandini Das visits Colour Revolution at the Ashmolean in Oxford and talks to a jeweller

• 44 mins

Humours and The Body

From mitochondrial medicine to 17th century cancer treatments, via Bach's Cantatas

• 44 mins

Valis and Philip K Dick

A weirdly autobiographical science fiction novel from 1981 inspired by hallucinations.

• 45 mins

Sankofa and Afrofuturism

Curator Ekow Eshun, academic Sarah Jilani, sculptor Zak Ové with Shahihda Bari

• 44 mins

Sleep

John Gallagher gets sleeping tips from research pioneers and early modern history

• 44 mins

Eliza Flower and non-conformist thinking

Matthew Sweet hears about research into the singer & friend of JS Mill feat. live songs!

• 45 mins

Robert Aickman

For Halloween, Matthew Sweet & guests discuss supernatural fiction, bad teeth & canals

• 45 mins

African identity via China and photography

Teju Cole, Noo Saro-Wiwa and Tate curator Osei Bonsu talk to Laurence Scott.

• 45 mins

New Thinking: Writing exile and overcoming statelessness

The lives of Bengalis in Pakistan/a novel about a Lebanese boy wanting to be an astronaut

• 31 mins

New Thinking: Food

Lisa Mullen hears about new research into eating habits and ideas about hospitality

• 44 mins