Thinking Allowed

Skateboarding and parkour: Laurie Taylor explores lifestyle sports in the hyper regulated city. Iain Borden, Professor of Architecture and Urban Culture at UCL, considers the origins, history and thr...

19 Aug 202025min

Laurie Taylor explores the increasing use of metrics across diverse aspects of our lives. From education to healthcare, charities to policing, we are are target-driven society which places a heavy em...

12 Aug 202027min

Maoism: the changing face of a revolutionary ideology. Julia Lovell, Professor in Modern Chinese History and Literature at Birkbeck, University of London explores the origins and development of global...

5 Aug 202027min

Strategic ignorance and knowledge resistance: Laurie Taylor talks to Mikael Klintman, Professor of Sociology at the University of Lund, Sweden about our capacity for resisting insights from others. A...

15 Jul 202027min

Rummage & waste: Laurie Taylor talks to Emily Cockayne, Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of East Anglia, about the overlooked story of our throwaway past, from ladies of the...

8 Jul 202027min

Traders and finance: Daniel Beunza - Associate Professor in the Cass Business School at City, University of London, talks to Laurie Taylor about his study of a Wall Street derivatives-trading room....

1 Jul 202027min

Blood - Laurie Taylor explores the metaphorical, as well as material, reality of blood. He's joined by Gil Anidjar, Professor of Religion and Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies at Colum...

24 Jun 202028min

Trust in a time of pandemic. Laurie Taylor explores the role of social capital and trust in combatting Covid-19. He's joined by Michael Calnan, Professor of Medical Sociology at the University of Kent...

17 Jun 202028min