Arts & Ideas

• Christian faith, politics and culture

  Anne McElvoy and guests explore the intersections between Christian faith and political decision-making and look at some recent dramas which explore the impact of belief.Chine McDonald is director of the Christian Think Tank Theos, Mark Lawson is a writer, broadcaster and theatre critic of Catholic journal The Tablet, Prof Anna Rowlands is St Hilda Professor of Catholic Social Thought & Practice at the University of Durham, Dafydd Mills Daniel is a Lecturer in Divinity at the University of St Andrews and Sam Tanenhaus, has published a biography of influential American conservative thinker and Catholic, William F Buckley Jnr. called Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America.Producer: Debbie Kilbride

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• Language

  Journalists Peter Hitchens and Oliver Kamm, radio presenter and comedian Ellis James, languages expert Ross Perlin, Diana Sutton director of The Bell Foundation and podcaster and academic Reetika Revathy Subramanian join Matthew Sweet for a conversation about how language unites and divides us.Ross Perlin's book Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues was the winner of the British Academy Book prize and he is in London for the British Academy Summer showcase. Reetika Revathy Subramanian has been chosen as one of six researchers in residence at BBC Radio 4 in the coming year on the New Generation Thinkers scheme run in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council. She is a Senior Research Associate, School of Global Development at the University of East Anglia and hosts the Climate Brides podcast. You can also find a recent episode of Free Thinking exploring peace which features another of the researchers in residence Ashleigh Percival-Borley, a former soldier who is now a military historian based at the University of Durham.Producer: Debbie Kilbride

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• Failure

  "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." The words of Samuel Beckett from a 1983 short story Worstward Ho inspire a Free Thinking conversation about failure chaired by Matthew Sweet. His guests are: Cath Bishop rowed for Britain in the Olympics, winning a silver medal and worked as a diplomat and business coach. She has written a book called The Long Win and co-hosts the Inside Out Culture Podcast with Colin Ellis which explores what can go wrong from business to sport, the Met police to the music industry. David Stevenson is Dean and Professor of Cultural Policy and Arts Management at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh. He has researched the failure of arts organisations and co-authored with Leila Jancovich Failures in Cultural Participation Katarina Skoberne started an advertising agency, has worked as an interpreter in conflict zones and presented a TV show showcasing her experience in coaching. She now runs training in speech-making BeYourBestRemoteSelf. Dr Michelle Clement's research focuses on British government and public service reform. She's based at King's College, London. She has written a book The Art of Delivery: The Inside Story of How the Blair Government Transformed Britain’s Public Services Dr Joseph Anderton is an Associate Professor of Literature at Birmingham City University researching authors including Samuel Beckett and he is the author of Beckett's Creatures: Art of Failure after the HolocaustProducer: Luke Mulhall

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• Podcasting difficult histories

  Personal Identity is at the heart of contemporary culture. Political philosophies are built around it and family history is a hobby undertaken by hundreds of thousands. Understanding where you came from is seen as central to understanding who you are. But what if the things that are uncovered are uncomfortable, upsetting or even life-changing?Matthew Sweet is joined at the Hay Festival by three writers who have hosted podcasts which raise these questions – Joe Dunthorne, whose memoir Children of Radium and BBC Radio 4 series Half Life explore his great-grandfather's work with chemical weapons; Kavita Puri, whose series Three Million told the story of the Bengal Famine, and of British culpability in it; and Jenny Kleeman, whose BBC Radio 4 podcast The Gift tells the stories of lives upended by DNA testing kits. How does the format of the podcast help them explore these complicated subjects?The Gift, Three Million and The History Podcast, Half Life are all available now on BBC Sounds Producer: Luke Mulhall

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• Common Sense

  What do we mean by 'common sense'? In 1925 the philosopher GE Moore wrote a Defence of Common Sense which argued against philosophical idealism, on the grounds that it seemed to deny a set of propositions that he claimed were indisputably true. His colleague Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote a detailed response to Moore's paper, and its influence extended into the work of contemporaries like Susan Stebbing. How do we understand common sense now? What role does common sense play in politics? Matthew Sweet's guests are the philosopher Dr Rachael Wiseman, the politician Ann Widdecombe, the historian of emotion Dr Tiffany Watt Smith and the journalist and scholar of post colonial culture Dr Sarah Jilani.Producer: Luke Mulhall

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