Arts & Ideas Folgen

What 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, where trade was entangled with colonial expansion and shaped by unequal, sometimes unexpected encounters, to the supply chains and diplomatic negotiations of the present, this discussion asks how economic exchange has also mediated cultural contact. Alongside rivalry and wealth, how has trade given rise to its own languages of civility, reciprocity and trust?Guests include:Nandini Das is Professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture at Oxford University and author of This Little World: A New History of Tudor and Stuart EnglandJeremy Hunt is a former Chancellor of the Exchequer and the author of Can We Be Rich Again?Soumaya Keynes is an economist and columnist at the Financial Times and the author of How to Win a Trade WarProfessor Rana Mitter is ST Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy SchoolDr Lauren Working is a Lecturer in Early Modern Literature at York University and author of A Golden World: How the Americas Transformed Renaissance EnglandProducer: Ruth Watts

Shahidha Bari investigates the child’s-eye view of the world. From navigating AI, to living through war, to the joys of reading, what makes children’s perspectives so distinctive? With writer Katherine Rundell, psychotherapist Josh Cohen, nature writer and novelist Elizabeth-Jane Burnett, historian Emma Butcher, and psychologist Nomisha Kurian.Producer: Luke Mulhall

How has the figure of the outsider or eccentric has 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 novel Lolly Willowes, in which a middle aged woman leaves her suburban life behind to become a witch. With philosopher Charles Foster, literary historian Jade Munslow Ong, political philosopher Sophie Scott Brown, and psychotherapist Mark Vernon. Producer: Luke Mulhall