Matthew Sweet and guests discuss the history and ideas behind the charity shop, our relationship with 'stuff', and musical typewriters - aspects of November's Being Human Festival.

Matthew talks to researchers whose work is featured in the festival, which showcases research from a series of UK universities. His guests are anthropologist and soprano Jennifer Cearns from University College London; George Gosling, a historian at the University of Wolverhampton; Georgina Brewis of University College London's Institute of Education; plus Vaibhav Singh from the University of Reading, who shares his research into typewriters and plays a tune on a musical typewriter.

https://beinghumanfestival.org/

You can find conversations about love stories, researching archives, beer and buses, and haunted houses in previous episodes related to Being Human Festivals, alongside other new academic research in the Free Thinking playlist called New Research

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90

Producer: Emma Wallace