In the second of our podcasts from the Cambridge festival of ideas, we ask if the recession is likely to decimate the arts, and what can be done to boost private funding

Professor Adrian Poole chairs a debate from the Cambridge Festival of Ideas on the origin of ideas, with writers Lisa Appignanesi and Andrew Robinson, and academics Dame Gillian Beer and Professor Rosamond McKitterick

Adrian Searle finds the seven ages of man, from birth into a river of blood to death in the mouth of a fearsome-looking devil, are laid out in Grayson Perry's new work, The Walthamstow Tapestry

Adrian Searle is thrilled by the paintings of Californian artist Ed Ruscha, whose signs, cornstalks and burning gas stations offer a rare glimpse into the American mind

Standing in a room above a pub in east London, Adrian Searle is impressed by this hotly tipped American artist's first UK solo show – a cruise ship on a doomed voyage across the Atlantic

Adrian Searle pays close attention to the 'funny, serious and inscrutable' works arranged by artist Richard Wentworth for a new show at London's Lisson Gallery, cleverly connecting disparate works by the likes of Bridget Riley, Tony Cragg and Donald Judd

Adrian Searle takes a first look at Steve McQueen's new film, Giardini, at the Venice Biennale and is stunned by its ethereal melancholy

An exhibition focusing on Shah 'Abbas at the British Museum forms the starting point for a debate about the 17th-century ruler's influence on modern Iran

Benjamin Zephaniah talks to Hannah Pool

Some look saintly, some look cross ... Adrian Searle visits Francis Alÿs's tribute to Saint Fabiola at the National Portrait gallery