Free Thinking

Is democracy in crisis? From anarchic social media to the rise of authoritarianism, Mathew Sweet and guests give our political system a full MOT, from the basics of democratic theory to questions about how it should run from day-to-day.

Hugo Drochon is an Associate Professor in Political Theory at the University of Nottingham. His latest book is Elites & Democracy

Teresa Bejan is a Professor of Political Theory at the University of Oxford. Her latest book is First Among Equals: Visions of Equality Before Egalitarianism

Melissa Lane is a Professor at Princeton teaching classics and philosophy. Her latest book is Of Rule and Office: Plato's Ideas of the Political

Guto Harri is a writer and consultant, formerly Downing Street Head of Communications

Producer: Luke Mulhall

The 'bread of life', your 'bread and butter', bread riots and 'let them eat cake', gentrification and bakeries: Shahidha Bari hosts the round-table discussion programme about ideas and, as part of Radio 4's Farming Tomorrow season of programmes, our topic is bread. Shahidha's guests are:

Paul Mason, journalist and writer on economics and history whose latest book is Reds: A Global History of Communism

Producer: Ruth Watts

What is left unsaid and who is missing from historical archives? Reading against the grain is a way of thinking about these questions and in the week when Woman's Hour marks 80 years of broadcasting, Radio 4's Friday night round table discussion programme about ideas traces the way thinking about representation has changed through the decades.

Matthew Sweet is joined by:

Sally Alexander, an activist with the Women's Liberation Movement and founding editor of the History Workshop Journal, where ideas like reading against the grain were developed and put to use;

Suzannah Lipscomb, whose book The Voices of Nîmes uses overlooked sources to reconstruct the lives of women in Early Modern France;

Adjoa Osei researches women singers and performers who made their names in Paris and on stage in the 1930s including Josephine Baker; the Afro-Brazilian erotic acrobatic dancer, Miss Bartira; the Malian performer Melka Soudani; the British Tiller Girls; the Afro-Guadeloupean dancer and muse of Man Ray, Adrienne Fideline and others;

Hetta Howes is the author of Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife: The Extraordinary Lives of Medieval Women;

Sophie Oliver's book What The Dresses Know: A Women's History Of Modernism Told Through Clothes will be published in November

Producer: Luke Mulhall

He renounced his fortune and lived amongst animals so does the example of St Francis help us think about issues like the wealth gap and our relationship with the environment and the natural world. October 4th is his feast day and this year the Catholic church is marking the 800th anniversary of his death.

For Radio 4's Friday night roundtable discussion programme about ideas past and present Anne McElvoy is joined by:

Peter Stanford is an author of articles and books on religion including about pilgrimage, angels, 50 religious ideas you really need to know and most recently Gaudí: God’s Architect.

New Generation Thinker Dr Jakub Kowalewski, a Senior Research Fellow at St Mary's University Twickenham, author of A Philosophy of Climate Apocalypticism. He is working on the Guardians of Creation Project investigating paths to sustainable and ecologically sensitive change in the Catholic Church.

Carmody Grey, is professor of Integral Ecology at the Laudato Si’ Institute at Radboud University. She also appears as a panelist on some episodes of Radio 4's Moral Maze.

Rupert Read is Emeritus Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia and Co-Director of the Climate Majority Project.

Daniel Susskind is Professor of Business at Gresham College, a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University and the author of What Should My Children Do? How to Flourish in the Age of AI

Producer: Ruth Watts

What is the role of intellectuals in public life? Matthew Sweet hosts Radio 4's Friday night round table discussion programme about ideas. His guests are:

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Do we have a responsibility to inform ourselves about the state of the world? Is the experience of some people valued more highly than that of others? Matthew Sweet investigates the ethics of knowledge in Radio 4's round table discussion programme.

Part of a series of programmes across Radio 4 looking at what drives us apart and how to bring us together – look for Common Ground.

What does trade set in motion beyond the exchange of goods? Anne McElvoy explores the movement of commerce across time as a carrier of habits, ideas, ambitions and influence, as well as of material things. From the early modern world, where trade was entangled with colonial expansion and shaped by unequal, sometimes unexpected encounters, to the supply chains and diplomatic negotiations of the present, this discussion asks how economic exchange has also mediated cultural contact. Alongside rivalry and wealth, how has trade given rise to its own languages of civility, reciprocity and trust?

Guests include:

Nandini Das is Professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture at Oxford University and author of This Little World: A New History of Tudor and Stuart England

Jeremy Hunt is a former Chancellor of the Exchequer and the author of Can We Be Rich Again?

Soumaya Keynes is an economist and columnist at the Financial Times and the author of How to Win a Trade War

Professor Rana Mitter is ST Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School

Dr Lauren Working is a Lecturer in Early Modern Literature at York University and author of A Golden World: How the Americas Transformed Renaissance England

Producer: Ruth Watts

Shahidha Bari investigates the child’s-eye view of the world. From navigating AI to living through war and the joys of reading, what makes children’s perspectives so distinctive? With writer Katherine Rundell, psychotherapist Josh Cohen, nature writer and novelist Elizabeth-Jane Burnett, historian Emma Butcher and psychologist Nomisha Kurian.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

How has the figure of the outsider or eccentric been used to explore English culture, history, politics, and our relationship with nature and the countryside? Matthew Sweet discusses, including a re-reading of Sylvia Townsend Warner's 1926 novel Lolly Willowes, in which a middle aged woman leaves her suburban life behind to become a witch. With philosopher Charles Foster, literary historian Jade Munslow Ong, political philosopher Sophie Scott Brown, and psychotherapist Mark Vernon.

300 years after the publication of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Matthew Sweet looks at satire, past and present. How can satirists reflect critically and humorously on political events in an age of social media saturation and at a time when reality can seem stranger than fiction?

He is joined by:

Andrew Hunter Murray, comedian, writer and host of Radio 4's The Naked Week. His new book is Bad Deeds.

Jan Ravens, actor and impressionist, known for her work on Spitting Image and Radio 4's Dead Ringers

Rosie Holt, actor and comedian. Rosie's shows Churchill's Urinal and Rosie Holt: The Illegal Aliens have landed! will both be at Edinburgh Festival.

Tom Peck, Parliamentary sketch writer for The Times

and

Siôn Parkinson, artist, Research Associate at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and 2026 AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker.

Producer: Eliane Glaser