Arts & Ideas Folgen

Women made up 10-15% of the workforce in the early days of the post office. Looking at a series of different records from the 17th century onwards, Sarah Ward Clavier has discovered stories about spying, how pubs, the links between pubs and post offices.Research suggests that communities with a local newspaper are more likely to vote in local elections. Rachel Matthews, who worked as a journalist in local news before turning to academia, explores the relationship between newspapers, readers, and advertisers across time and asks how the role of the local press is changing in the digital age.Anna Muggeridge has been looking into the hidden history of women politicians in local politics, in the first half of the twentieth century. This was an age when many important decisions on education and welfare were made at a local level – and where the story of women in local politics became intertwined with arguments around female suffrage.Producer in Cardiff: Fay LomasPresenter Dr Joan Passey teaches English at Bristol University and is a New Generation Thinker working with the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to share research on radio. Dr Sarah Ward Clavier, from the University of the West of England, researches the expansion and travails of the early Post Office, early modern news and communications, and Wales in the seventeenth century. Her most recent book is Royalism, Religion and Revolution: Wales, 1640-1688. Dr Rachel Matthews, from Coventry University, researches the impact of local journalism on the people and places to which it relates, both across history and in a contemporary context. She is the author of The History of the Provincial Press in England. Dr Anna Muggeridge is Lecturer in History at the University of Worcester and is currently researching a history of women in local government in interwar England and Wales. She also researches women’s political activism in the 20th century. This New Thinking episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast was made in partnership with the AHRC, part of UKRI. You can find more conversations about new research available on the website of Radio 4’s Free Thinking programme and on BBC Sounds

Classicist Mary Beard picks Tacitus as a figure who still has relevance if we're thinking about satire, power and celebrity. Shahidha Bari is joined by Mary, historian Helen Carr, who co-edited What is History Now? political sketch-writer from The Times newspaper Tom Peck and Konnie Huq, writer and former presenter of the children's TV show Blue Peter. On April 21st 1964, the tv channel BBC 2 launched with an episode for children of Play School and programmes like Bluey and Peppa Pig, have been making headlines so what do we want from kids TV? Plus - poet Lord Byron died 200 years ago this week - scholar Dr Corin Throsby has been reading the fan mail he received.Listen out for Mary Beard and the new series of Being Roman coming to BBC Radio 4 in May - and the first series is available on BBC Sounds. And if you're a fan of Oliver Postgate - The Clangers, Bagpuss and Noggin you can find a Free Thinking episode exploring those programmes.Producer: Lisa Jenkinson Studio Manager: Tim Heffer

"The times they are a changin" or are they? In politics people are talking about an appetite for change, or being a candidate for change but how radical can you be? With climate change, seasonal change and a change of broadcast time for this programme, Matthew Sweet and his guests discuss change, play a new collaborative version of scrabble, and after Richard Dawkins gave an interview talking about "cultural Christianity" - what do we understand by that phrase?Kate Maltby is a critic, columnist and cultural historian who holds a PhD in Elizabethan literature Sophie Grace Chappell is a Professor of Philosophy at the Open University, whose books include Epiphanies: An Ethics of Experience and Trans Figured Takeshi Morisato teaches philosophy at the University of Edinburgh Dorian Lynskey is a journalist, author and one of the hosts of the politics podcast Oh God, What Now? His books include The Ministry of Truth: A Biography of George Orwell's 1984 and Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the WorldGemma Tidman is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Queen Mary University London researching A History of French Literary Play, 1635–1789. You can hear more from her in a Free Thinking episode called Game PlayingProducer: Luke Mulhall