Arts & Ideas Folgen

Shereen El Feki, author of Sex and the Citadel, joins Philip Dodd to explore how the struggles for political change in the Arab world have been accompanied by a sexual revolution. Professor Andrew Hussey explains how the culture and history of France can by understood by observing the history of the Louvre. As Science is becoming ever more popular in our news and consciousness, neuroscientist Daniel Glaser and philosopher of science Rupert Read discuss whether we are living through a new age of Enlightenment. And critic Nigel Floyd reviews Broken, the new film directed by Rufus Norris.

As extreme libertarian thought is on the rise in right-wing politics, Anne McElvoy is joined by Business editor of The Economist Robert Guest and American historian Tim Stanley to explore the growth of ‘anarcho-capitalism’. Italian film writer Pasquale Iannone reviews Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's Caesar Must Die. Set designer Christopher Oram and theatre critic Susannah Clapp take a look at what makes great theatre stage design. And to coincide with the Southbank’s The Rest is Noise festival, Anne and guests explore the cultural and political transformations of Berlin during the 1920s and ‘30s.

Samira Ahmed examines why James Joyce's experimental and 'difficult' work Finnegans Wake has been a surprise hit in China. Travel writer Sara Wheeler discusses her new book, 'O my America!’, which tells the story of six remarkable women who fled nineteenth-century England to reinvent themselves in the USA. Historian Justin Champion, sociologist Eileen Barker and theologian Martin Palmer join Samira to discuss why we are so obsessed with the idea of the end of the world. And we look at an unlikely cultural movement which has flourished in post 9/11 America - Muslim comedy.