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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

We’re unearthing a model writer for an anxious America. Dwight Macdonald was his own eccentric voice through the Cold War politics and culture of the 1950s and 60s. He was a peacenik at heart, otherwise unpredictable, a New York intellectual of his own school. So in this podcast, we’re just reading Dwight Macdonald aloud with John Summers, who has edited a collection he calls Atrocities of the Mind: Essays on Violence and Politics in the American Century.

John Summers.

The premise in our conversation is that a certain urgent music in Dwight Macdonald’s prose still sounds clearly enough for a world that has nobody with quite like his range today. Who was Dwight MacDonald—the pedigreed populist, sometime Trotskyite, hard left, who came to call himself a conservative anarchist?

The post America’s Orwell appeared first on Open Source with Christopher Lydon.

Elite sport is traditionally a celebration of the human, but for how much longer? We watch in awe as athletes perform feats of skill, strength and endurance,  and experience the high drama of triumph and defeat -  but it's all on a human scale, or at least it has been until now. Sport and technology have always been intertwined, but with the advent of AI, this week we're wondering if the human element of sport - the physical dimension, but also the ethical - might be under threat.

This is a catch-up version of James O'Brien's Mystery Hour. To join the game, call 0345 60 60 973, Thursdays at 12pm.

What's in a face? The face is where all our senses come together, but we also perceive each other's faces through the prisms of culture and technology. Historian Fay Bound-Alberti's new book examines how our perceptions of the face have been shaped by ancient ideas of morality, social hierarchy and psychology. 

Guest: Dr Fay Bound-Alberti is a professor of Modern History at King’s College London, and the author of ‘The Face: A Cultural History’

Before the Bosnian war, Biljana Plavšić  was a renowned biologist and university dean. She later became the only woman convicted by an international tribunal for mass atrocities. So how did a respected scientist become a leader of a violent nationalist movement? Bosnian-Australian law professor Olivera Simic, tracked down Plavšić in Belgrade, and has collated a series of interviews with her, in a book called Madam War Criminal. 

• Guest: Olivera Simic, Professor in Law, Griffith University and the author of, Madam War Criminal Biljana Plavšić, Serbia’s Iron Lady
• Producer: Ali Benton 

Australian-born artist, filmmaker and speculative architect Liam Young discusses his work and cultural influences with John Wilson. Young creates imaginary future worlds through films and art installations to provoke discussion about present-day social and environmental issues – including climate change, energy, migration, and technology. His films, including Planet City and The Great Endeavour, have been shown at the Venice Biennale and museums including MOMA and the Smithsonian and the Barbican Centre in London has staged a major exhibition of his work called In Other Worlds. He holds guest professorships at universities including Princeton, MiT and Cambridge. In the commercial sector, Liam Young works as a consultant to major brands and the film industry on designing visions of the future.

Producer: Edwina Pitman

In 1897, Paul Shishkoff was 10 years old and living with his family in rural Russia.

It was there he met the great Russian playwright, Anton Chekhov, who was resting after the end of Moscow's theatre season.

During the long, hot summer, Paul became friends with Chekhov - accompanying him on rambles and fishing expeditions.

In 1938, Paul spoke to the BBC about their friendship and how his family became the inspiration for one of Chekhov's most famous works - Three Sisters.

BBC archivist Tariq Hussain, who discovered the incredible recording, tells the story. Produced by Jacqueline Paine.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by and curious about the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there.

For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more.

Recent episodes explore everything from how the Excel spreadsheet was developed, the creation of cartoon rabbit Miffy and how the sound barrier was broken.

We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: the moment Reagan and Gorbachev met in Geneva, Haitian singer Emerante de Pradines’ life and Omar Sharif’s legendary movie entrance in Lawrence of Arabia.

You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, like the invention of a stent which has saved lives around the world; the birth of the G7; and the meeting of Maldives’ ministers underwater. We cover everything from World War Two and Cold War stories to Black History Month and our journeys into space.

(Photo: Anton Chekhov in his garden in Yalta, 1902. Credit: Heritage Images via Getty Images)

This episode is presented by Wispr Flow, a tool that turns voice notes into clear writing. I use it every day and recommend it to every writer I know. Try it for free at ref.wisprflow.ai/howiwrite

Andrew Hunter Murray is a writer, a journalist, and a comedian. What stood out from this conversation is his love for literature, which shows up both in his three novels and in how he's studied people like Edith Wharton and Jane Austen.

We talked about what makes a good premise and how to make a character feel alive. This conversation was a lot of fun.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the summer of 1937, some of the 20th Century's most famous artists, writers and photographers were holidaying in the south of France.

They included artist Pablo Picasso, photographer Lee Miller, poet Paul Éluard and the painter Man Ray.

The group were part of the Surrealist movement – a style of art inspired by dreams and hidden thoughts that can look strange and bizarre - and one of their most recent converts was artist Eileen Agar.

Through a 1985 BBC interview with Eileen, digital archivist Jonathan Charlton tells the story of that summer in an episode produced by Jane Wilkinson.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by and curious about the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there.

For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more.

Recent episodes explore everything from how the Excel spreadsheet was developed, the creation of cartoon rabbit Miffy and how the sound barrier was broken.

We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: the moment Reagan and Gorbachev met in Geneva, Haitian singer Emerante de Pradines’ life and Omar Sharif’s legendary movie entrance in Lawrence of Arabia.

You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, like the invention of a stent which has saved lives around the world; the birth of the G7; and the meeting of Maldives’ ministers underwater. We cover everything from World War Two and Cold War stories to Black History Month and our journeys into space.

(Photo: Roland Penrose, Ady Fidelin, Picasso and Dora Maar, Cote d’Azur, France 1937. Credit: Lee Miller Archives)