Free Thinking

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
Pen Vogler author of Stuffed: A History of Good Food and Hard Times in Britain
New Generation Thinker Dr Dan Taylor, a Senior Lecturer In Social And Political Thought at the Open University
Elizabeth Oldfield, presenter of The Sacred podcast and author of Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times.
And, Susannah Savage, the commodities correspondent for the Financial Times.
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:
Emile Chabal, author of a new biography about Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm;
Sophie Scott Brown, who’s researching BBC TV programme The Brains Trust, in which historians, philosophers and others answered questions sent in by the audience; critic and columnist Muriel Zagha;
former editor of Prospect magazine David Goodhart;
and curator and critic Pierre d'Alancaisez.
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.
With:
Quassim Cassam, philosopher and author of Intellectual Vices
Havi Carel, a philosopher who's worked extensively on imbalances of knowledge in healthcare and other areas
Ian Kidd, philosopher specializing in the ethics of knowledge
Ebony Reid, author of Trapped Lives
Marianna Spring, the BBC's misinformation correspondent
Producer: Luke Mulhall
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.