Free Thinking
Today: #174 in Society & Culture, United Kingdom on our combined chart.
Chart positions today · India
Not on the United States charts we track today.
Not on the Canada charts we track today.
Not on the Australia charts we track today.
Not on the Germany charts we track today.
Not on the Brazil charts we track today.
Not on the Mexico charts we track today.
Not on the New Zealand charts we track today.
Not on the Ireland charts we track today.
Not on the India charts we track today.
Not on the Japan charts we track today.
Not on the Philippines charts we track today.
Not on the South Africa charts we track today.
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Ranking history · India
Latest episodes
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Reading against the grain
October 9, 2026 · 57 minWhat 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…
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The example of St Francis
October 2, 2026 · 57 minHe 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…
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Intellectuals
September 25, 2026 · 57 minWhat 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…
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The Ethics of Knowledge
July 10, 2026 · 57 minDo 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…
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Trade and Traffic
July 3, 2026 · 57 minWhat 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…
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The Child's Eye View
June 26, 2026 · 56 minShahidha 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…
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Eccentrics & Outsiders
June 19, 2026 · 57 minHow 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…
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Satire and Gulliver's Travels
June 12, 2026 · 57 min300 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…
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Wealth
June 5, 2026 · 57 minAnne McElvoy and guests discuss the concentration, distribution and morality of wealth now and look back at An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, published by the Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith in…
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Free Thinking at the Hay Festival: Responsibility
May 29, 2026 · 57 minFreedom is one of the leading values of our society. But with freedom comes responsibility, which is a much more contested principle. Deciding where responsibility lies, and what it means to take it, is the job of the courts. It is also…
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Thinking with Food
May 22, 2026 · 57 minThe links between food and philosophy, ideas about experimentation, taste and how food and traditions become part of our identity are explored by Matthew Sweet in Radio 4's round-table discussion programme. His guests are: Author John…
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Technologies of the Self
May 15, 2026 · 57 min‘Technologies of the self’ is a phrase from the French philosopher Michel Foucault to describe things people might do to shape the people they are, like dieting, exercise, journaling, or in an earlier age perhaps like prayer, or…