From Picnic at Hanging Rock to an Iron Curtain Pan European picnic Read more
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Picnics
From Picnic at Hanging Rock to an Iron Curtain Pan European picnic
The Greenwich Outrage
The attempt by an anarchist to blow up the Royal Observatory in 1894 and its consequences
Chocolate
Shahidha Bari discusses the confection that has conquered the world
The Condom and V.D.
Matthew Sweet and guests talk about sexual health, VD clinics, sex work and condoms
Myths, ships and history
Anna McKay, Lloyd Belton and Oliver Finnegan delve in the deep for seafaring histories
Can - Future Days
Matthew Sweet and guests take a deep dive into the influential German group's 1973 album.
New Thinking: Stitching Stories
Shahidha Bari visits a textile art show + research on embroidery, stage outfits, vintage
Hitchhiking
Matthew Sweet considers examples from Texas Chainsaw Massacre to a system of Polish tokens
The Dutch Connection
John Gallagher hears about new research into Anglo-Dutch trade and early publishing
Sarah Maldoror, Storm Jameson, the Hague Congress
Ahead of International Women's Day Shahidha Bari hears stories linking women with war
Muses and women's creativity
From Pre-Raphaelite models to the daughter of Maud Gonne: Naomi Paxton with new research
Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation
Matthew Sweet and guests look at the 1974 Gene Hackman film about surveillance and murder
Images of Persia
Poetry by Hafez, Nowruz (New Year) and the Haft Sin table, the Mongol invasion, music
Sleep justice and sleeplessness
Laurence Scott talks to researchers exploring how we sleep and the idea of sleep justice
Edward Bond
Matthew Sweet and guests discuss the playwright Edward Bond (18 July 1934 – 3 March 2024)
Call Me Mother
How the shape of words for mother helps babies eat their food. Rebecca Woods explains
Free speech, censorship and modern China
The writings of Chinese women, from Ding Ling to coming of age in the 1990s
Scottish Kingship
Medieval myth-making, the kings of Scotland and the Stone of Destiny
Germany’s Mary Wollstonecraft
Andrew Cooper on the school teacher who tried to ignite a feminist revolution in Germany
From algorithms to oceans
Kerry McInerney explores the promise of the ‘sustainable AI’ movement and how AI develops
Weird Viking Bodies
Marianne Hem Eriksen on the meaning of a skull bone carved with "pain" thrown onto a tip
Gas, oil and the Essex blues
Sam Johnson-Schlee draws links between Dr Feelgood, Canvey Island and energy policies
The Legacy of the Laundries
Louise Brangan reflects on the uncovering of the secret lives lived in Irish laundries
New Thinking: How water shapes our history and environment
From the aqueducts of ancient Rome to 19th century river Nile and today's running water
Arteries of tomorrow
Dan Taylor considers the way communities along the A13 are looking to the future
Writing Place
Sylvia Townsend Warner's move to Dorset, Heidegger's Heimat and the Arun river in Sussex.
Rock, Paper, Saints and Sinners
Gemma Tidman describes a game created by a Jesuit missionary seeking Mohawk converts.
New Thinking: East West artistic connections
A war captive turned musician in the Ottoman court and Islamic influences in Rubens' art
Approaches to death
Archaeologists Marianne Hem Eriksen, Pauline Harding: historians Cat Byers, Harriet Soper
New Thinking: Light and Darkness
Darkness and how it affects those with dementia, to light in modernist literature