BBC Radio 4 · Arts & Culture

Free Thinking

Leading thinkers discuss the ideas shaping our lives - looking back at the news and making links between past and present. Fridays at 9pm on BBC Radio 4. Presented by Matthew Sweet, Shahidha Bari and Anne McElvoy.

Episodes

The kitchen serves as a complex site of social, political, and historical power, evolving from a functional hearth to a modern status symbol. In Viking longhouses, the hearth acted as a social gravity point where power structures were reinforced through seating and ritual, sometimes involving the integration of human r...