logo
episode-header-image
Aug 2022
42m 5s

Beyoncé's album Renaissance, poet Don P...

Bbc Radio 4
About this episode

Beyoncé's Renaissance: we discuss Beyoncé's house and disco inspired new album – her first solo material in six years - and her huge significance as an artist and cultural icon. Nick is joined by Jacqueline Springer – curator, music journalist and lecturer- and by the writer and editor Tara Joshi.

The Arctic is Don Paterson’s new collection of poems. The title refers not to the polar region but the third worst bar in Dundee, the resort of survivors of various apocalypses. Other poets are a presence, too, in Paterson’s poems ‘after’ Gabriela Mistral, Montale and Cavafy. Nick Ahad interviews Don Paterson about this poetic cornucopia.

David Byrne is the artistic director and chief executive of London’s New Diorama, the Stage newspaper’s Fringe Theatre of the Year. He joins Nick to explain his decision to present no public programme for the rest of the year.

Free-for-All is a programme that does what it says on the tin – all artworks on the walls of the Touchstones Gallery have been made by people from Rochdale. Artist Harry Meadley joins Nick to explain the concept.

And we remember American actor Nichelle Nichols, best known for her role in Star Trek as Lieutenant Uhura, who has died aged 89.

Presenter: Nick Ahad Producer: Ekene Akalawu

Image: Beyoncé

Up next
Aug 21
Review: Historical TV epic King and Conqueror, and Boudicca's Daughter by Elodie Harper
Critic Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and Medieval English Literature lecturer Dr Eleanor Parker join Samira Ahmed to discuss the BBC’s historical epic King and Conqueror starring James Norton. They’ve also read Boudicca’s Daughter by Elodie Harper, and watched Young Mothers by the award-wi ... Show More
42m 35s
Aug 20
Indigenous Australian didgeridoo virtuoso William Barton performs live
Theatre producer Nica Burns, who has run the Edinburgh Comedy Awards since 1984, and judge Ashley Davies discuss the acts shortlisted for this year's prize, the most prestigious annual award for comedy in the UK, which has previously been won by the likes of Steve Coogan, Jenny E ... Show More
42m 25s
Aug 19
Tom Hiddleston on becoming a dancing accountant in new Stephen King film, The Life of Chuck
Tom Hiddleston on becoming a dancing accountant in new Stephen King inspired film, The Life of Chuck. Sir Anish Kapoor on making a protest artwork in the North Sea with Greenpeace. A report from Bradford as artist Luke Jerram works with local communities to create a giant ball of ... Show More
42m 32s
Recommended Episodes
Nov 2024
Live! Garth Greenwell
This week, we bring you a live interview with Garth Greenwell, conducted in October 2024 at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn. Garth talks about growing up in Kentucky assuming that he would die young, the teacher who gave him a path toward being an artist, and the doggedness with which ... Show More
55m 34s
Sep 2024
Arlene Shechet
Episode No. 670 features artist Arlene Shechet.  Storm King Art Center in New Windsor, NY is showing "Arlene Shechet: Girl Group" through November 10. The exhibition joins Shechet's recent work exhibited in a typical gallery setting to six new monumental sculptures Shechet  creat ... Show More
57m 8s
Nov 2024
Sotheby's Talks – Radical Modernity: From Bloomsbury to Charleston, with Kim Jones and Darren Clarke
In this episode, writer, academic and critic Frances Wilson is joined by Artistic Director of Dior Homme and Vice President of Charleston, Kim Jones, Dr Darren Clarke, Head of Collections, Research and Exhibitions at Charleston and Sotheby’s, and Jen Hardie, Director and Senior S ... Show More
49m 19s
Oct 2024
Remix! Jericho Brown
We're revisiting our 2021 interview with the poet Jericho Brown, who this week was named a MacArthur Fellow-- one of the highest honors in the arts and humanities. He and Jordan talk about the great mystery of why we desire the things we desire; about oration and the poets he rea ... Show More
49m 29s
Jul 2024
Sarah Sze, Zoë Charlton
Episode No. 662 features artists Sarah Sze and Zoë Charlton. The Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas is showing "Sarah Sze," a presentation of new works that explore how memory marks time and space, and how art negotiates image and object. The ex\xhibition is on view through August ... Show More
1h 8m
Apr 2025
Writer, Critic & Curator Hilton Als Looks For The Silences
As a longtime staff writer at The New Yorker, Hilton Als's essays and profiles of figures like Toni Morrison, Joan Didion, and Richard Pryor have redefined cultural criticism, blending autobiography with literary and social commentary. Als is also a curator. His latest gallery ex ... Show More
44m 10s
Jun 2021
A Bengali Polymath and an ‘Accidental Modernist’
This week, Thea Lenarduzzi and Lucy Dallas are joined by Rosinka Chaudhuri, the author of ‘The Literary Thing: History, poetry and the making of a modern cultural sphere’, to discuss Rabindranath Tagore, who, in 1913, became the first non-white and non-European to win the Nobel P ... Show More
50m 21s
Jun 2023
Rowan Ricardo Phillips — Never Again Would Birds’ Song Be the Same
Have you ever had a private moment — perhaps in the middle of the night — in a large city? When it just seems like it’s you and the great dreaming metropolis? Rowan Ricardo Phillips brings us into a memory he can’t forget, complete with a Wu-Tang Clan soundtrack.Rowan Ricardo Phi ... Show More
12m 58s
Sep 2024
Sigrid Nunez
This week, Jordan talks to the novelist Sigrid Nunez about her youthful preoccupation with mimicking the prose of Virginia Woolf, the step-by-step intuitive way she writes prose now, and the best way to make overnight oats.Sigrid Nunez has published nine novels, including A Feath ... Show More
51m 57s
Oct 2024
Culture Gabfest: Demi Moore Gives Substance to The Substance
On this week’s show, the hosts are joined by a very special fourth panelist: Wesley Morris, a critic at The New York Times and the host of The Wonder of Stevie, a new podcast on Audible. First, the quartet explores The Substance, a lurid, monstrous body horror flick by writer-dir ... Show More
55m 34s