Recycling Victorian clothes, the history of costume design, the messages conveyed in art made from textiles and the stories encoded in ancient embroidery are explored by Shahidha Bari and her guests Isabella Rosner, Rianna Norbert-David, Jade Halbert and Danielle Dove. They also look at exhibitions at the Barbican Gallery in London and the Museum of London in Docklands.

Isabella Rosner is the curator of the Royal School of Needlework and a New Generation Thinker. You can hear an Essay from her about Quaker needlework broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in March

Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art runs at the Barbican Art Gallery in London from Tue 13 Feb—Sun 26 May 2024

Producer: Robyn Read

Formed in 1968, the German group Can's founding members included Irmin Schmidt and Holger Czukay who had both studied under Karlheinz Stockhausen. Joined by jazz drummer Jaki Liebezeit, guitarist Michael Karoli and Japanese vocalist Damo Suzuki for the group's 'classic' line-up that recorded Tago Mago (1971) and Ege Bamyasi (1972), their fourth album - Future Days - saw them exploring a more ambient, blissed-out sound, in contrast to their previous releases. Matthew Sweet is joined by musicians Jah Wobble and Gwenno, novelist Alan Warner and cultural historian Mererid Puw Davies to take a deep dive into the album and explore the blend of influences that made Can such a unique musical proposition.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

An expanded edition of Jah Wobble's autobiography Dark Luminosity: Memoirs of a Geezer is out on 7th March.

Asked to picture a nineteenth-century ship, you might think of the HMS Victory or HMS Temeraire, symbolic of empire. Something epitomised by flag-waving and victory - Britannia rules the waves. In this edition of Free Thinking, Catherine Fletcher asks if we memorialise one aspect of our maritime past at the expense of others.

Remember in Great Expectations when Magwitch escapes from a prison ship anchored by the coast? Dickens was likely inspired by the reality of the 19th century "prison hulks", decommissioned warships moored on docks to house criminals. Dr Anna McKay of the University of Liverpool can tell us more about how the hulks, supposed to be a short term solution to a crisis, ended up being used for decades. Dr Lloyd Belton of the University of Glasgow studies the Kru - fiercely independent West African sailors who formed an alliance with the Royal Navy to rid the African coast of slavers. His research follows what happened these men, who saw themselves as servants of the Empire, when they settled in Liverpool between the wars. And Dr Oliver Finnegan from the National Archive at Kew will tell us about the enorrmous historical potential of the "Prize Papers", a collection of thousands of unopened letters, legal papers and other documents from ships captured by British privateers and the Royal navy between 1652 and 1815.

Presented by: Catherine Fletcher

BBC Radio 3's Words and Music episode about Antartica, the explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton and his ship Endurance is available on BBC Sounds and you can find other episodes of Free Thinking exploring ships in history hearing from Sarah Caputo, Hew Locke and Jake Subryan Richards

The first condoms were made of cloth and intended to be used after sex. Later they were replaced by hand stitched animal gut ones – designed to be washed and reused. We chart the bizzare, fraught and sexist history of attempts to deal with the prevention of sexually transmitted disease - where medical practice came into conflict with the morals of society.

Histories of Sexual Health in Britain 1918-1980 is a research project being led by Anne Hanley. She joins Bill Yarber from the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University and Kate Lister from the Leeds Centre for Victorian Studies who has looked at the experiences and depictions of sex work from the nineteenth century to today. Matthew Sweet hosts the discussion

Producer: Julian Siddle

Dr Kate Lister is a Senior Lecturer at Leeds Trinity University. She curates the online project www.thewhoresofyore.com and is the author the book A Curious History of Sex. You can hear more from her in a Free Thinking episode called How we talk about sex and women's bodies

Chocolate is an indulgent luxury used to mark special points in the calendar like Valentine's Day, Easter and Christmas. But it's also everywhere, from breakfast cereals to protein shakes. Shahidha Bari unravels this paradox, tracing the meanings of chocolate from ancient Central America, via the Aztecs and Maya, over the Atlantic to the Spanish court, the coffee houses and palaces of 17th century London, to the invention of mass-produced milk chocolate as we know it today in Switzerland in the late 19th and early 20th century. It's a story of pleasure, intoxication, conquest and industrialisation, all following from the specific culinary qualities of a bean.

Bee Wilson, food writer whose most recent book is The Secret Of Cooking: Recipes For An Easier Life In The Kitchen

Sean Williams, Radio 3 & AHRC New Generation Thinker and Senior Lecturer in German and European Cultural History at the University of Sheffield

Caroline Dodds Pennock, Senior Lecturer in International History at the University of Sheffield, whose most recent book is On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe

Misha Ewen, Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Bristol

Producer: Luke Mulhall

An indulgent luxury used to mark special points in the calendar like Valentine's Day, Easter and Christmas, but it's also everywhere, from breakfast cereals to protein shakes. Shahidha Bari unravels this paradox, tracing the meanings of chocolate from ancient Central America, via the Aztecs and Maya, over the Atlantic to the Spanish court, the coffee houses and palaces of 17th century London, to the invention of mass-produced milk chocolate as we know it today in Switzerland in the late 19th and early 20th century. It's a story of pleasure, intoxication, conquest and industrialisation, all following from the specific culinary qualities of a bean.

Bee Wilson, food writer whose most recent book is The Secret Of Cooking: Recipes For An Easier Life In The Kitchen

Sean Williams, Radio 3 & AHRC New Generation Thinker and Senior Lecturer in German and European Cultural History at the University of Sheffield

Caroline Dodds Pennock, Senior Lecturer in International History at the University of Sheffield, whose most recent book is On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe

Misha Ewen, Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Bristol

Producer: Luke Mulhall

You can find other Free Thinking episodes exploring food, picnics, breakfast available on BBC Sounds and as the Arts & Ideas poodcast

In February 1894, the French anarchist Martial Bourdin was killed in Greenwich Park when the bomb he was carrying exploded accidentally. The event provided Joseph Conrad with the inspiration for his novel The Secret Agent, and the resulting backlash against anarchist groups in London eventually led to the first British immigration legislation - the 1905 Aliens Act. As a conference takes place exploring the incident and its legacy, Matthew Sweet is joined by historians Charlotte Jones, Ruth Kinna and Thomas Jones to discuss the bombing that was dubbed "the Greenwich Outrage".

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

In 1989 the demilitarized zone between East and West was the venue for a gathering which was titled the Pan-European picnic. Matthew Longo's new book explores the Hungarian, East German and Russian politics which led to this happening and how it contributed to the ending of the cold war. He joins historians of art and food in a conversation hosted by Anne McElvoy which ranges across picnics in ancient Greece, French impressionist painting, country house opera events like Glyndebourne and celebrating the arrival of the cherry blossom season.

Matthew Longo is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Leiden and author of The Picnic

Monika Hinkel is an art historian based at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London

Kirsty Sinclair Dootson is a lecturer in Film and Media at University College London

Pen Vogler is a food writer and the author of Scoff: A History of Food and Class in Britain

Producer: Ruth Watts

The Picnic: An Escape to Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain by Matthew Longo is out now

Bidisha, Peter Conradi and Lucy Bolton join Matthew Sweet to read the moral philosophy book published by Iris Murdoch in 1970. Murdoch, who died aged 79, 25 years ago on Feb 8th 1999, was a writer of novels and philosophy books which explored the nature of good/evil, the role of the unconscious and of sex and love. In 1978 she won the Booker prize for her story The Sea, The Sea and in 1987 she was made a Dame.

The Iris Murdoch Research Centre is at the University of Chichester.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

The "best sci-fi film" never made? That's what Andrzej Zulawski's project has been called. Shut down by the Polish government before production had finished in 1977, the film wasn't completed and released until 1987. It's a visually stunning and wildly ambitious exploration of myth, religion and being human in an alien world. Zulawski (1940-2016) studied cinema in France and became known for art-house films working with actresses including Romy Schneider, Isabelle Adjani and Sophie Marceau. Matthew Sweet and his guests Daniel Bird, Sarah Dillon and David Hering, have been watching On the Silver Globe.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod