Arts & Ideas

Claire Ainsley, centre-left policy adviser turned think-tanker. Adrian Wooldridge, columnist and author on political ideas. Symeon Brown, reporter on Britain’s Black middle class. Mark Lawson, writer on Middle England and culture. Catherine Carr, author on sibling dynamics. They debate birth order and middle-child tropes, middle age and mid-life timing, the politics and class of the centre, cultural middlebrow value, and Black professional identity.

Hayley Austin, a visual media lecturer who studies comics and games, discusses gaming’s ties to warfare. Hew Locke, sculptor exploring colonial power, talks about weapon imagery in art. Mark Urban, military historian and broadcaster, reflects on armoured warfare. Tobias Ellwood, former soldier and MP, brings defence policy perspective. Catherine Fletcher, Renaissance historian, traces the firearm’s cultural and technological rise. They debate guns in history, art, gaming, policy and technology.

How do weapons exert real and symbolic power, both now and in history?Joining Matthew Sweet are:The former soldier and politician Tobias EllwoodThe sculptor Hew Locke, whose artworks exploring colonial power have featured weaponryThe Renaissance historian Catherine Fletcher, whose latest book is The Firearm Revolution: From Renaissance Italy to the European EmpiresThe historian and broadcaster Mark Urban, whose books include Tank and RiflesandHailey Austin, Lecturer in Visual Media and Culture at Abertay University who researches comics and videogames.Producer: Eliane Glaser

Louise Brangan, criminologist who researches the Magdalene laundries. Izabella Scott, author and legal-literary investigator of historical purity cases. Linda Woodhead, sociologist of religion. Catherine Coldstream, former Carmelite nun and theologian. David Aaronovitch, journalist and cultural commentator. They explore purity as social order, monastic practice, legal credibility, political purity tests and the laundries’ punitive logic.

Dr Dan Taylor, Spinoza scholar; Ceri Sullivan, Shakespeare and Renaissance expert; Aaron Reeves, sociologist of elites; Sir Robert Buckland, former Lord Chancellor and barrister; Lamorna Ash, writer on contemporary Christian life. They debate humility as inward virtue, ritual and religious practice, Spinoza’s critique, performative ordinariness by elites, and humility’s role in politics and public service.

Stephen Batchelor, secular Buddhist teacher and writer, on oral transmission and listening practices. Reetika Subramanian, researcher and podcaster, on women’s work songs as environmental archives. Tom F. Wright, historian of rhetoric, on teaching oracy and memory. Philip Collins, former speechwriter, on political speechcraft and persuasion. Edith Hall, classics professor, on ancient rhetoric and the somatic voice. They discuss orality, rhythm, public speaking and oral archives.

Le Gateau Chocolat, an opera singer and performer, reflects on opera spaces, race and live reception. Emma Dabiri, writer and broadcaster, explores culture, race and beauty politics. John Callanan, Kant scholar, outlines philosophical views on aesthetic judgment. Sarah Smith, film historian, examines film canons, gender and criticism. They debate taste, style versus substance, class, race and AI's role in shaping aesthetics.

In a special programme looking ahead to International Women’s Day on March 8th, Shahidha Bari looks at how women express themselves in language, argument, poetry and art. Her guests include:Sara Ahmed is the author of No is Not a Lonely Utterance Karen McCarthy Woolf's latest poetry collection is called Unsafe Lauren Elkin's books include Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art, she translated Simone de Beauvoir's previously-unpublished novel The Inseparables and has a new book coming out in May Vocal Break: On Women, Music, and Power. She has been reading the new translation by Sophie Lewis of Angst by the French feminist thinker Hélène Cixous Mary Wellesley is a historian and author of Hidden Hands: The Lives of Manuscripts and Their Makers Ash Percival-Borley, military historian and former soldierProducer: Luke Mulhall

Tom Simpson, Oxford professor of values and public policy; Peter Hyman, former headteacher and political adviser; Sophie Scott-Brown, philosopher and historian of anarchism; Martin Gurri, ex-CIA analyst on media and politics; Justine Greening, former education secretary on social mobility. They debate authority’s forms, how the internet and big tech have unsettled institutions, schooling discipline versus autonomy, and how leaders or institutions can regain legitimacy.

Jonathan Sumption, former Supreme Court judge and medieval historian; Stephen Shapiro, cultural historian versed in Foucault; Joanna Hardy-Susskind, criminal defence barrister and broadcaster; Scout Tzofiya Bolton, poet with lived prison experience; Stephanie Brown, criminologist researching medieval justice. They compare medieval community-based investigations with modern courts. They debate public spectacle versus surveillance, prison failures and alternatives, and how media shapes punishment.