Thinking Allowed

BBC Radio 4

4.3 (34)
SOCIETY & CULTURE
UPDATED FORTNIGHTLY

New research on how society works

2 DAYS AGO

Prison violence, sound and survival

The winner of the British Society of Criminology Book Award in 2025 was Kate Herrity. Her study looks at the way our different senses contribute to the experience of prison life and is called Sound, Order and Survival in Prison: The Rhythms and Routines of HMP Midtown. Her research looks at the way for many prisoners, listening becomes a vital survival practice. Kate Gooch is a Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Bath. In her new book, 'Prison Violence - The Search for Recognition and Respect', she analyses the nature, causes and culture of prison victimisation in an English young offender institution for men aged 18-21 years old. Her research examines how hierarchies develop, how fear circulates, and how both staff and young men negotiate constantly shifting landscapes of threat, reputation and authority. Laurie Taylor presents. Producer: Natalia Fernandez

28 min
3 FEB

The go-along research method

How does the environment we move through shape the way we see and experience the world? Laurie Taylor talks to Alex Prior (London South Bank University) about his research inside Westminster, where he walked alongside MPs and staff to uncover how the corridors of power feel different depending on who you are and what your job is. James Fletcher from the University of Bath worked on a project exploring what it’s like to navigate the bus and tram routes of central Manchester while living with dementia. He looked at how familiar streets and transport systems change when memory and mobility are shifting and the implications of this. What is the value of research conducted in this way and what are the downsides? Producer: Natalia Fernandez

28 min
27 JAN

Colour in Film

How did the arrival of colour and film technology transform cinema and its cultural politics? Laurie Taylor explores the intertwined histories of technology, aesthetics, and identity. Swarnavel Eswaran, filmmaker and scholar at Michigan State University, introduces us to the remarkable story of Kodak Krishnan – Eastman Kodak’s “man from the East.” Krishnan played a pivotal role in bringing American film technology to India during the mid-20th century, a period when cinema was becoming a powerful medium for shaping ideas of modernity and national pride. Kirsty Sinclair Dootson, Associate Professor in the History of Art department at University College London, is one of the organisers of the Bombay Colour Research Network. Her book The Rainbow’s Gravity asked how new colour media transformed the way Britain saw itself and its empire between 1856 and 1968. Her research also examines how colour technologies – from early tinting processes to the vibrant palettes of Bollywood musicals became part of debates over race, class, and cultural representation. Kirsty Sinclair Dootson is one of the academics who has been a New Generation Thinker, on the scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to share research on radio. Producer: Natalia Fernandez

27 min
15/07/2025

Dogs

DOGS – Laurie Taylor explores the making of the modern companion animal, from working animals to pampered pets. Chris Pearson, Professor of Environmental History at the University of Liverpool, charts the changing fortunes of hunting dogs, street dogs and show dogs, as they moved from the rural to the urban, shedding utilitarian roles to become cherished family members. Also, Mariam Motamedi Fraser, Honorary Research Fellow at University College, London, asks if dogs belong with humans and the natural bond is less natural than we assume. Producer: Jayne Egerton

28 min
08/07/2025

Learning Disabilities

Laurie Taylor talks to Simon Jarrett, Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London, about the social history of people with learning disabilities, from 1700 to the present days. Using evidence from civil and criminal court-rooms, joke books, slang dictionaries, novels, art and caricature, he explores the explosive intermingling of ideas about intelligence and race, while bringing into sharp focus the lives of people often seen as the most marginalised in society. They’re joined by Magdalena Mikulak, a Research Fellow in Health at Lancaster University who has researched the way the term ‘behaviours that challenge others’ which are attributed to 20% of those with learning disabilities, can stigmatise and exclude people from society, Producer: Jayne Egerton

28 min
01/07/2025

The Irish in the UK

Laurie Taylor talks to Louise Ryan, Professor of Sociology at the London Metropolitan University, about her oral history of the Irish nurses who were the backbone of the NHS for many years. By the 1960s approximately 30,000 Irish-born nurses were working across the NHS, constituting around 12% of all nursing staff. From the rigours of training to the fun of dancehalls, she explores their life experiences as nurses and also as Irish migrants, including those times when they encountered anti Irish racism. They’re joined by Bronwen Walter, Emerita Professor of Irish Diaspora Studies at Anglia Ruskin University, who discusses the way that Irish migration offers an unusual opportunity to explore wider questions about the experience of immigrants and how ethnic identities persist or change over time. Producer: Jayne Egerton

28 min
24/06/2025

Russian Propaganda

Laurie Taylor talks to Nina Khrushcheva, Professor of International Affairs at The New School in New York City about her research into the propaganda formulas deployed by Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin over the last two decades. As the great granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, the Prime Minister of the Soviet Union between 1958 and 1964, she offers personal, as well as political insights, into these developments, drawing on previous periods of oppression in Russian history. She argues that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has intensified 'hard' propaganda, leading to a pervasive presence of military images in every day life and the rehabilitation of Josef Stalin, the former dictator of the Soviet Union, as a symbol of Russian power. She suggests that lessons from past eras, described by such Soviet classics as Alexander Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, can offer small grounds for optimism and hope, as ordinary people absorb alternative narratives. How else to explain the fact that George Orwell's dystopian novel, 1984, has been a bestseller for many years and has seen a surge in popularity since the start of the war in Ukraine? Producer: Jayne Egerton

28 min
17/06/2025

Death

Laurie Taylor talks to Molly Conisbee, Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath, about her ‘people’s’ history of mortality, beyond queens and aristocrats. From the plague pits to grave-robberies and wakes, she explores how cycles of dying, death and disposal have shaped our society. What did it mean to die well in the past, what does it mean now? Also, Chao Fang, Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Liverpool, talks about his study of the meaning of a good death in China & how it differs from western notions which centre the dying person’s wishes rather than family harmony. Producer: Jayne Egerton

28 min

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Laurie Taylor

Host

4.3

out of 5

34 Ratings

Great podcast

24/03/2020

picton34

Really enjoy this as Laurie brings his own take on the topics. Great guests.
Food for thought

02/03/2013

Sparrowdeplume

Sociological discussion about everyday topics with researchers. Well presented and edifying.
Interesting guests

29/10/2017

sidhitch

Who rarely get to finish a sentence. But you can track down their articles and books elsewhere.