Start the Week
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Weekly discussion programme, setting the cultural agenda every Monday
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Retelling history in art and drama
How do we tell the stories of the past, and whose histories get remembered? On Radio 4’s weekly discussion programme, Adam Rutherford is joined by three guests whose work challenges inherited narratives …
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How do we tell the stories of the past, and whose histories get remembered? On Radio 4’s weekly discussion programme, Adam Rutherford is joined by three guests whose work challenges inherited narratives, recovers overlooked voices, and reimagines history through theatre, art and storytelling.
The theatre director Dominic Cooke discusses his new production of Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine, a landmark play from 1979 that examines gender, power and the enduring legacies of empire through settings in colonial Africa and twentieth-century Britain. Cloud Nine is on at the National Theatre, London until 13th January 2027.
The writer and co-host of the BBC podcast Here for the History, Alice Loxton talks about A History of Britain in 21 Paintings, in which she uses artworks spanning more than a millennium to illuminate key moments in Britain's past and explore the stories behind some of the nation’s best-known myths, like that of St George. Her examples include Stubbs' image of a horse and LS Lowry's Bolton workers
The poet and playwright Inua Ellams talks about his award-winning new play Once Upon a Time in Sokoto, an epic drama set in nineteenth-century West Africa that explores friendship, faith, slavery and the forces that shaped the creation of modern Nigeria. Once Upon a Time in Sokoto is touring to Leeds, Brighton, Bristol, Keswick and London until May 2027, presented by Fuel Theatre in association with Touring Together.
Producer: Katy Hickman Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez
Global instability and the end of illusion
What happens when the certainties that underpinned the post-war international order begin to fall apart? On Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, Naomi Alderman is joined by three guests examining the forces …
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What happens when the certainties that underpinned the post-war international order begin to fall apart? On Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, Naomi Alderman is joined by three guests examining the forces that shape global power and the legacies of conflict.
The journalist and author Kim Ghattas discusses The Best Kind of American: Murder, War, and America's Undoing in the Middle East. Through an investigation into the assassination of Middle East scholar Malcolm Kerr in 1980s Beirut, she traces the origins of many of the conflicts and rivalries that continue to define the region today, linking warlords, revolutionaries and political leaders across four decades of turbulent history.
Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs columnist at the Financial Times, talks about War is Interested in You: The Breakdown of International Order and the Threat of World War Three. Drawing on discussions with political and intelligence leaders around the world, he argues that an era of relative stability is giving way to a more dangerous and unpredictable age of geopolitical competition and conflict. And the historian and broadcaster David Runciman talks about his Radio 4 series 1956: End of Illusion, which tells the intertwined stories of the Suez Crisis and the Hungarian Revolution. Together, these events exposed the limits of British power, challenged assumptions about East and West, and reshaped the global political landscape of the post-war world.
Producer: Katy Hickman Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez
John Berger and another way of seeing
Can looking differently at the world help us imagine a better future? On Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, Tom Sutcliffe is joined by three guests exploring ideas of art, community and social change. The …
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Can looking differently at the world help us imagine a better future? On Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, Tom Sutcliffe is joined by three guests exploring ideas of art, community and social change.
The writer and archivist Tom Overton discusses John Berger: From Life, his biography of the influential critic, novelist and broadcaster. Berger was born on November 5th 1926 and died aged 90. Drawing on Berger's archive and their years of friendship and collaboration, Overton examines a figure whose work transformed the way we think about art, culture, politics and the lives of ordinary people. (BBC Radio 4 is broadcasting Seeing John Berger on Tuesday 27th October at 4pm).
Berger wrote extensively about the peasantry. The academic Maryam Aslany carries on that tradition in her new book, Peasants: Makers of the Modern World. Combining history, reportage and fieldwork across Asia, Africa and Latin America, Aslany argues that peasants still remain central to the global economy, food systems and environmental sustainability.
And the curator of the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow Rowan Bain talks about Morris and his circle and their belief that art and beauty could be agents of social change, offering a radical vision of a fairer and more sustainable society. Their current show Earthly Paradise: Radical Living in the UK looks at a range of artists' houses including Cedric Morris’s Benton End; Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage and William Morris’s Red House.
Following its presentation at William Morris Gallery it will tour to Tŷ Pawb, Wrexham (April – September 2027), Blackwell – The Arts & Crafts house, Bowness-on-Windermere (October 2027 – February 2028) and Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh (March – September 2028).
Producer: Natalia Fernandez
Napoleon’s marshals and President Trump’s civil servants
What happens when the relationship between leaders and those entrusted to implement policy breaks down? On Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, Adam Rutherford is joined by three guests to explore power …
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What happens when the relationship between leaders and those entrusted to implement policy breaks down? On Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, Adam Rutherford is joined by three guests to explore power, loyalty and the often unseen people who make complex systems work.
The bestselling writer Michael Lewis discusses Blockers: Rebels in the Deep State, his account of the civil servants who found themselves resisting attempts by the Trump administration to dismantle parts of the American state. He asks what happens when public service is devalued, and why we rarely notice the institutions around us until they are threatened.
Jill Rutter, Senior Fellow at the Institute for Government reflects on the relationship between politicians and the civil service. Drawing on her experience in government, from HM Treasury and No.10 to DEFRA, she examines why civil servants have increasingly been characterised by some politicians as ‘the blob’, and what that tension reveals about the challenges of governing a modern state.
Historian Andrew Roberts discusses Napoleon and His Marshals, about the men who helped build, sustain and ultimately undermine Napoleon's empire. Roberts argues that Napoleon's downfall owed as much to his troubled relationships with his closest lieutenants as it did to military defeat, offering a revealing study of leadership, rivalry and betrayal.
Producer: Katy Hickman
Inheritance – from stories to genetics
What do we inherit from the past and what happens when old stories are told in new ways? On Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, Naomi Alderman is joined by three guests exploring the traces the past leaves …
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What do we inherit from the past and what happens when old stories are told in new ways? On Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, Naomi Alderman is joined by three guests exploring the traces the past leaves behind, in memory, mythology and our DNA.
The writer Gillian Slovo discusses her new novel Inheritance, in which her protagonist returns home to South Africa after an unexpected legacy uncovers long-buried family secrets. Moving between London and a country still dealing with the horror of apartheid, the novel explores memory, forgiveness and the burdens passed from one generation to the next.
The classicist Edith Hall talks about her book Medea: A Life, which reimagines one of mythology's most notorious women. By treating Medea as a historical subject rather than simply a villain, Hall offers a fresh perspective on an ancient story that continues to resonate today.
And Pontus Skoglund, geneticist and leader of the Ancient Genomics Laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute, explains how ancient DNA is transforming our understanding of human evolution, migration and disease. His research, and the Institute's exhibition We Go Way Back (until July 2027), reveal how genetic evidence can uncover forgotten lives and rewrite histories we thought we knew.
Producer: Katy Hickman Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez
Jon Ronson: men unravelling
From crumbling buildings to collapsing certainties, are we living through an age of unravelling? On Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, Tom Sutcliffe is joined by three guests reflecting on the changing …
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From crumbling buildings to collapsing certainties, are we living through an age of unravelling? On Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, Tom Sutcliffe is joined by three guests reflecting on the changing cultural forces that shape our sense of self and what happens when those foundations start to fall apart.
Jon Ronson discusses The Castle: Adventures in a World of Unravelling Men, an investigation into the lives of men searching for belonging amid confusion about masculinity, purpose and identity. What begins as a mystery becomes a wider portrait of a changing world and those struggling to find their place within it.
Michael Landy's exhibition Future Ruins (at Sir John Soane's Museum,14 October 2026 – 17 January 2027) imagines celebrated buildings, political monuments and personal landmarks reduced to decay. It’s a quarter of a century since Landy’s celebrated art work, Breakdown, in which he systematically destroyed all his possessions.
And Roisín Kiberd discusses The Most Normal Woman: Essays on Appearances, exploring the endless pursuit of normality and perfection, and the pressure to conform. Through personal experience and cultural criticism, she examines how standards of beauty are created, enforced and resisted.
Producer: Katy Hickman Assistant Producer: Debbie Kilbride
Contains Strong Language Festival in Salford
In front of an audience at the Contains Strong Language Festival in Salford Tom Sutcliffe is joined by three guests to celebrate poetry ancient and new and to explore the latest innovations in hearing the …
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In front of an audience at the Contains Strong Language Festival in Salford Tom Sutcliffe is joined by three guests to celebrate poetry ancient and new and to explore the latest innovations in hearing the spoken word.
The Poet Laureate Simon Armitage discusses his new verse translation of the ancient epic poem Gilgamesh, a timeless adventure story of power, love and loss. The poet and academic Jade Cuttle celebrates found objects - from Mesopotamian tablets to mudlarking treasure troves. Professor Trevor Cox from the University of Salford’s world-renowned Acoustics Innovation Institute explains the latest science behind hearing, listening and making yourself heard.
Producer: Katy Hickman Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez
Carlo Rovelli: complexity and value
What can we really know about the world around us and our place within it? On Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, Adam Rutherford is joined by three guests who explore the values that shape our lives and the …
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What can we really know about the world around us and our place within it? On Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, Adam Rutherford is joined by three guests who explore the values that shape our lives and the things that still matter even when they cannot easily be counted, explained or priced.
The theoretical physicist and internationally acclaimed writer Carlo Rovelli discusses his new book On the Equality of All Things: Physics and Philosophy (translated by Simon Carnell). Drawing on modern physics and philosophical inquiry, he explores the relationships between minds and matter, ideas and objects, and asks us to reconsider how we understand the world and our place within it.
The poet and writer Lavinia Greenlaw has drawn on science in her work. She talks about On Difficulty (and Poetry), her exploration of why difficult experiences, ideas and works of art can be so rewarding. She argues that resistance and complexity are not obstacles to understanding but can open up new ways of seeing and thinking.
And the award-winning playwright James Graham discusses The Standard of Living, his new play about the economist John Maynard Keynes. Set amid economic crisis and social change, it asks what makes a good life and whether art, love and human connection might matter more than wealth and power.
Producer: Katy Hickman Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez
Living with uncertainty
How do we navigate a world where simple answers are often the most seductive and the least reliable? On Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, Naomi Alderman is joined by three guests who explore how we search …
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How do we navigate a world where simple answers are often the most seductive and the least reliable? On Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, Naomi Alderman is joined by three guests who explore how we search for certainty, why we are drawn to stories and what we can learn from doubt. Drawing on philosophy, medicine and fiction, they ask how we can live with uncertainty rather than trying to escape it.
Dr Xand van Tulleken - who hosts the Radio 4 podcast What's Up Docs? with his brother, discusses his book Make Me Well: A Quest to Understand the Confusing World of Wellness. As health advice becomes increasingly entangled with supplements, wearable technology and personalised testing, he investigates the promises of the booming wellness industry and asks how consumers can distinguish evidence from marketing.
The philosopher Lani Watson is the author of Q: The Hidden Power of Questions in a World That Wants Answers. She argues that modern life places too much value on certainty and solutions, and not enough on curiosity and inquiry. Drawing on philosophy, psychology and neuroscience, she makes the case for questioning as one of our most important human skills.
Daniel Mason is a psychiatrist as well as an award-winning novelist. His new novel Country People was picked out as one to read this summer. It follows a family who move to rural Vermont, where eccentric neighbours, local folklore and a mysterious legend blur the boundaries between fantasy and fact. With warmth, humour and an eye for the absurd, Mason explores why people cling to stories, misconceptions and beliefs, and how imagination, playfulness and community help us make sense of an uncertain world.
Producer: Katy Hickman Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez
Gordon Brown: The Future Starts with Us
How did we arrive at an age of global instability, conflict and political distrust, and can democracy renew itself? On Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, Tom Sutcliffe is joined by three guests to examine …
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How did we arrive at an age of global instability, conflict and political distrust, and can democracy renew itself? On Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, Tom Sutcliffe is joined by three guests to examine the pressures facing the international order and the ideas that might help sustain it.
Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown discusses his new book The Future Starts With Us, which argues that the erosion of civic life and the fracturing of the rules-based international system are deeply connected. Drawing on global research and decades of political experience, he makes the case for renewed civic engagement as the foundation for a more equitable and sustainable future.
Political scientist Francis Fukuyama became one of the most influential thinkers of the post-Cold War era after the publication of ‘The End of History and the Last Man’ in 1992. In his new memoir, In the Realm of the Last Man, he reflects on the events and ideas that shaped that argument, his subsequent break with neoconservatism after the Iraq War, and his reassessment of the strengths and vulnerabilities of liberal democracy in today’s multipolar world.
Bronwen Maddox, Director and Chief Executive of Chatham House, brings her perspective on a rapidly changing geopolitical landscape. From the war in Ukraine and European security to debates about democracy, power and America's constitutional future as the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, she assesses the challenges facing the West and the international order.
Producer: Katy Hickman Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez
Life Online: Power, Risk and Resistance
How has life online reshaped society in real life? On Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, Tom Sutcliffe is joined by 3 guests who are investigating the digital sphere, and in some cases resisting its …
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How has life online reshaped society in real life? On Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, Tom Sutcliffe is joined by 3 guests who are investigating the digital sphere, and in some cases resisting its ubiquity.
The filmmaker Baroness Beeban Kidron exposes how digital platforms exploit and divide in her book, Users: How Big Tech Took Control and How to Fight Back. She argues for more political and civic action to counter their unchecked influence.
The business journalist Katherine Dunn explores how GPS shapes so many aspects of everyday life, from dating and supermarket shopping to global trade and navigation. In Little Blue Dot she also reveals the hidden fragility of this technology.
The Indian novelist Meena Kandasamy talks about Fieldwork as a Sex Object, a fierce exploration of online misogyny, deepfakes and digital mob violence, where the internet’s political and cultural conflicts spill into the real world with devastating consequences.
Producer: Katy Hickman
Start the Week returns after our summer break on Monday 7th September.
Working-Class Lives: Identity and Political Fractures
What has happened to working-class identity in Britain? On Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, Adam Rutherford explores the political fractures within families and communities.Nicola Wilding discusses These …
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What has happened to working-class identity in Britain? On Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, Adam Rutherford explores the political fractures within families and communities.
Nicola Wilding discusses These Wild English: A Family, a Class, a Country on Fire, tracing three generations of her family and the pull of belonging, nationalism and far-right politics amid economic decline.
Natasha Carthew draws on her personal experience of growing up poor in Cornwall in her latest work. Rough Edges brings to light the inequalities shaping coastal communities, where austerity, second homes and seasonal work deepen divisions and marginalisation.
The poet Daljit Nagra reflects on his upbringing in a predominantly white working-class town for his latest collection, Yiewsley, exploring race, migration and the cultural shifts that have reshaped Britain from the post-war years to the present.
Producer: Katy Hickman
Scientific discovery and misunderstanding
How have we made discoveries about the world around us and how has our understanding changed when we got it wrong? Adam Rutherford hosts Radio 4's discussion programme which starts the week, asking about the …
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How have we made discoveries about the world around us and how has our understanding changed when we got it wrong? Adam Rutherford hosts Radio 4's discussion programme which starts the week, asking about the the nature of scientific discovery, understanding and changing our mind.
Andrea Wulf's latest book is The Traveller: The Revolutionary Life of George Forster and his Search for Humanity. She has reassessed the botanist and ethnologist who accompanied Captain Cook's second voyage, taking him from Antarctica to the tropical islands of the South Pacific. During this time, Forster studied diverse people, culture and nature and returned a confirmed opponent of empire, racism and slavery: he was celebrated in his lifetime, but has since been largely forgotten by history.
The geneticist Kathryn Paige Harden argues that the latest research complicates our ideas about blame, punishment and moral responsibility. In her new book Original Sin: The Genetics of Wrongdoing, the Problem of Blame and the Future of Forgiveness, she looks at the area where human behaviour meets inherited biology. She thinks we must look again at questions of wrong doing and free will, reassessing old ideas of guilt and accountability.
We are all hormonal all of the time, because to be hormonal is to be human says Saira Hameed, a leading endocrinologist. Hormones are the often misunderstood signalling system that makes our bodies function which she explain in her new book, Signals: The Inside Story of Our Hormones, separating medical breakthroughs from the obsessions of wellness influencers.
Producer: Ruth Watts
Searching for economic solutions
What are the biggest problems facing the economy - and how might we set about dealing with them - from inequality to inflation, domestic growth to geopolitics? On Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, setting …
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What are the biggest problems facing the economy - and how might we set about dealing with them - from inequality to inflation, domestic growth to geopolitics? On Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, setting the cultural agenda every Monday, Tom Sutcliffe leads a conversation exploring what the solutions might look like.
Jeremy Hunt’s new book Can We Be Rich Again?: The Surprising Potential of Britain's Economy makes the case for optimism. The former Chancellor of the Exchequer outlines current problems – low growth, high public debt and taxes, stagnant living standards and divided politics, but he argues Britain still has a lot going for it - the tech sector, financial services and respected institutions. He says if the British economy is to grow again, politicians need to get better at delivering their plans.
Mariana Mazzucato believes we need to rethink the way we manage economics with government and business working together to promote human flourishing. For her, the problems are deepening inequality, the climate crisis and declining public trust. She is Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College, London where she is the Founding Director of the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. Her new book The Common Good Economy: A New Compass sets out how the economy could be designed to serve people and the planet better.
And, how has the way that we think and talk about the global economy and national problems changed in recent years? Patrick Foulis is contributing editor at the Financial Times, a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution and author of a forthcoming book on globalisation.
Producer: Ruth Watts
Mythmaking at Hay: from Medea to Rasputin
In front of an audience at the Hay Festival, Tom Sutcliffe hosts Radio 4's discussion programme which starts the week, bringing together three thinkers who each, in different ways, examine the stories societies …
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In front of an audience at the Hay Festival, Tom Sutcliffe hosts Radio 4's discussion programme which starts the week, bringing together three thinkers who each, in different ways, examine the stories societies tell about themselves, and how those stories become enduring myths.
Historian Antony Beevor investigates the life of Rasputin, a figure who has long hovered between fact and legend. His new work asks how a barely literate peasant from Siberia, the so-called ‘mad monk’, managed to bewitch the Romanovs, and how the wild stories that swirled around him, inexorably led to the Tsar’s downfall.
Philosopher Susan Neiman turns to the moral narratives that underpin contemporary political life. Her work asks whether universal values can still guide societies when myths of division are so compelling.
Classicist, broadcaster and performer Natalie Haynes brings the ancient world into sharp modern focus. Her retellings of Greek myths restore voice and agency to characters, particularly women, who have been sidelined or simplified by centuries of interpretation. Her latest novel, No Friend to This House, puts the abandoned Medea centre stage.
Producer: Katy Hickman
Farming, food production and rural life
What is the future of farming and rural life? Adam Rutherford hosts Radio 4's discussion programme which starts the week, asking about the future of food production and the communities that support it. Minette …
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What is the future of farming and rural life? Adam Rutherford hosts Radio 4's discussion programme which starts the week, asking about the future of food production and the communities that support it.
Minette Batters was the first female president of the National Farmers’ Union. Born and raised on the family farm that she took over running, she became a committed advocate for the UK farming industry. UK agriculture has faced challenges from Brexit, Covid as well as international conflict and energy crises. Her new book, Harvest, part memoir and manifesto, makes a case for how and why we must rally to support British farming and rural life.
Dave Goulson is Professor of Biology at the University of Sussex. Modern, intensive farming systems producing pesticide-laced foods at scale, he says, are bad for us and bad for the planet. He believes that it is time to change the way we produce food today, making the case for sustainable agriculture. In Eat the Planet Well he argues that consumers can lead this change, even where governments fail to act.
Melissa Harrison has written columns, nature diaries, a series of novels and non fiction books including All Among the Barley, Rain and At Hawthorn Time, and a book for children. Her latest novel, The Given World, is a portrait of rural society, village life and the English countryside which explores a way of life, exploring social tension and the rhythms of the natural world.
Producer: Ruth Watts Assistant Producer: Emily Channon
German history
What can an art exhibition, a concert hall and Classical town tell us about twentieth century German history? On Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, setting the cultural agenda every Monday, Samira Ahmed …
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What can an art exhibition, a concert hall and Classical town tell us about twentieth century German history? On Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, setting the cultural agenda every Monday, Samira Ahmed leads a conversation exploring what inter-war Weimar, the Nazi's obsession with so-called 'degenerate art' and the programming of German music at the Wigmore Hall in London reveal about the course of German history and our responses to it.
Katja Hoyer's last book, Beyond the Wall was a history of East Germany which concentrated on the consequences the Nazi rule and the Second World War. Now the Anglo-German Historian has turned her attention to Weimar, the town that gave its name to the ambitious republic whose failure paved the way to Nazism. Looking at the stories of a series of varied individuals, she asks how a nation that prided itself on its culture and civility enabled Nazism and why it haunts us to this day because we fear a repeat. Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe is BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week for a fortnight.
Art historian John-Paul Stonard's new book is The Worst Exhibition in the World: Degenerate Art, 1937. The exhibition of Entartete Kunst ('degenerate art') was held in the Hofgarten arcade in Munich in the summer of 1937. Just a few weeks earlier, the same paintings and sculptures by modern German artists had been on display in some of the most prestigious museums in Germany. An extensive propaganda campaign of confiscation and defamation by the Nazis saw the condemnation of works by Jews, Bolsheviks and the enemies of the German Reich. It remains one of the most visited exhibitions ever - and it shaped views of modern art well into the second half of the twentieth century.
Julia Boyd's There is Sweet Music Here: The World of Wigmore Hall tells the story of London's privately run music venue. During the Second World War it was possible for audiences to hear exiled German and Austrian Jewish musicians playing Beethoven among a wide range of recitals. Other concerts programmed included Entartete Musik (forbidden or so-called 'degenerate Music’), including the banned composer Gustav Mahler.
Producer: Ruth Watts
Laurie Anderson: Strange and Disorientating Landscapes
What happens when art, fiction and biography take us to places that unsettle, reorient and transform our sense of the world? On Radio 4’s weekly discussion programme, Naomi Alderman moves from science fiction …
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What happens when art, fiction and biography take us to places that unsettle, reorient and transform our sense of the world? On Radio 4’s weekly discussion programme, Naomi Alderman moves from science fiction and land art to the landscape of the mind.
Pioneering multimedia artist and musician Laurie Anderson discusses The Republic of Love, which she is performing at the Brighton Festival on 6th May. It’s an immersive multi-sensory experience, in which she reinterprets past pieces, including her 80s hit Big Science, to illuminate the political and emotional strangeness of the present moment. (Her new album, Let X=X is released on May 8, 2026)
Writer Nina Allan reflects on co-authoring The Illuminated Man, the biography her late husband, the novelist Christopher Priest, had started about J. G. Ballard. She explores Ballard’s singular imagination, shaped by wartime internment in Shanghai, and his repeated motifs of flooded cities, drained swimming pools, and the violence seeping through gated communities seen in books including Empire of the Sun, Crash and The Drowned World.
Art historian Joy Sleeman introduces the first major UK exhibition devoted to the American artist Nancy Holt, MoonSunStarEarthSkyWater, at the Goodwood Art Foundation (until November 2026). She reveals how Holt’s land art, from her 18 feet long concrete Sun Tunnels to a posthumous installation Hydra’s Head, invites viewers into cosmic and elemental landscapes where art and the environment meet.
Producer: Katy Hickman Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez
Chemical Reactions
What can chemistry reveal about what it means to be human? On Radio 4’s weekly conversation programme, Tom Sutcliffe leads a conversation that ranges from the molecules within us to the experimental pioneers …
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What can chemistry reveal about what it means to be human? On Radio 4’s weekly conversation programme, Tom Sutcliffe leads a conversation that ranges from the molecules within us to the experimental pioneers who transformed our understanding of the material world.
Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu discusses Chain Reaction, her vivid and deeply personal journey into the chemistry underpinning everything we touch, consume and inhabit. She brings to life the chemical bonds that hold our bodies together and the reactions that sustain all life, while recounting her own story, from childhood in post war Nigeria to a groundbreaking career designing treatments for blindness.
Science historian Kit Chapman introduces The Age of Alchemy, tracing the long, global evolution of chemistry before it became a modern science. Travelling from ancient Sri Lankan steel forges to Egyptian alchemical texts and Chinese herbal laboratories, he reveals how early experimenters, merging mysticism, medicine and metallurgy, laid crucial foundations for scientific method and discovery.
Professor Mark Miodownik set up the Institute for Making at University College London and is Royal Society Professor of Public Engagement with Science. He is a leading materials scientist who has led work on plastic waste and biodegradable plastics. He discusses the latest research on the chemical composition of the things we are making, and the things we throw away.
Producer: Ruth Watts
Why Stuff Matters: Objects, Power and the Past
What can the things we create, keep and bury tell us about who we are? On Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, Adam Rutherford explores material culture – the power of objects you can touch – and how they …
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What can the things we create, keep and bury tell us about who we are? On Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, Adam Rutherford explores material culture – the power of objects you can touch – and how they connect us to the past.
Classicist Mary Beard discusses her book Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old, arguing that everyday remnants of antiquity, from bread to paint pots abandoned at Pompeii, still matter. And that Ancient Greece and Rome continue to shape how we see our own world.
Theatre director Greg Doran set himself the task of tracking down the surviving copies of Shakespeare’s First folio, after the death of his husband the actor Antony Sher. He recounts his worldwide quest in Walking Shadow: Love, Loss and Shakespeare, which also reveals the importance of the enduring physical presence of Shakespeare’s work.
Dr Sophia Adams, curator at the British Museum, discusses the extraordinary Melsonby Hoard, the largest collection of Iron Age metalwork ever found in Britain, and what its burnt and buried objects reveal about power, ritual and life before the Roman conquest. The exhibition, Chariots, Treasure and Power: Secrets of the Melsonby Hoard, will go on display at the Yorkshire Museum, York from 15th May 2026.
Producer: Katy Hickman
Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez
Challenges and solutions
Is radical change possible to solve some of today’s most intractable problems? In Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, Tom Sutcliffe is joined by three journalists to discuss the challenges of trying to live …
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Is radical change possible to solve some of today’s most intractable problems? In Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, Tom Sutcliffe is joined by three journalists to discuss the challenges of trying to live differently.
John Kampfner has travelled the world to find examples of places and people bravely and imaginatively confronting some of our most pressing problems – from climate change to health, housing and education. His book is called Braver New World: The Countries Daring to Do Things Others Won’t.
But Nicolas Niarchos questions how we live sustainably when the hidden costs of the green transition can be so devastating. In The Elements of Power he investigates the global supply of rare earth metals, essential for decarbonisation, and the terrible, bloody human cost for those involved in their extraction.
Natasha Walter explores how activism is being reshaped in the era of climate emergency. In Feminism for a World on Fire, she reflects on the movements fighting for justice, and asks what forms of solidarity and resistance are needed when the planet itself is under threat.
Together, the panel consider the innovations, compromises and moral dilemmas that come with trying to live well on a warming planet.
Producer: Katy Hickman Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez
Zoos, sex and conservation
How have the evolutionary forces that shaped animal sex and behaviour influenced the ways humans conserve, study and coexist with other species? As the Zoological Society of London, the precursor to the zoo …
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How have the evolutionary forces that shaped animal sex and behaviour influenced the ways humans conserve, study and coexist with other species? As the Zoological Society of London, the precursor to the zoo, celebrates its 200th anniversary, Adam Rutherford is joined by three guests whose work uncovers the scientific, historical and ethical threads connecting humans with the wider animal world.
Biologist Lixing Sun introduces his new book On the Origin of Sex - the Weird and Wonderful Science of how our Planet is Populated, uncovering how mating strategies and reproductive behaviour evolved across species. From Californian Condors to clownfish, the dazzling array of ways in which the animal kingdom procreates is both baffling and astonishing.
Cultural historian Elsa Richardson, from the University of Strathclyde, discusses her latest research into the archives of Edinburgh Zoo, revealing a rich and little‑known record of early zoological observation, public spectacle and the shifting moral landscapes of how people have imagined, displayed and interpreted animal behaviour.
And Sarah Forsyth, Curator of Mammals at ZSL, reflects on the history of the organisation and offers insights into the crucial conservation work that the Zoo is involved in today. From field programmes to breeding initiatives, Sarah explores how modern zoos can help safeguard species and shape our understanding of animals in a rapidly changing world.
Producer: Natalia Fernandez Senior Producer: Katy Hickman
Industrial action: from 1926 General Strike to today
What can past and present struggles over work and power tell us about the future of labour? Tom Sutcliffe and guests examine tensions between workers, employers and the state, from the upheavals of the early …
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What can past and present struggles over work and power tell us about the future of labour? Tom Sutcliffe and guests examine tensions between workers, employers and the state, from the upheavals of the early twentieth century to today’s shifting workplace.
Constitutional specialist David Torrance explores the economic, political and social forces that shaped the General Strike of 1926. His new book The Edge of Revolution explains how Britain came to the brink of constitutional crisis and what the confrontation reveals about national identity, political authority and collective action.
Professor Jane Holgate, a long time trade unionist and community organiser, reflects on the dynamics of solidarity. She is the co-author of Changemakers, a study of radical strategies for social movement organising, the evolving role of unions, and what effective action looks like in a fragmented modern economy.
The Financial Times journalist and editor of the Working It brand Isabel Berwick looks ahead to the future of work, assessing how technology, demographic change and shifting employee expectations are reshaping the workplace.
Producer: Katy Hickman Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez
Growing Up
How do the stories we inherit, and the ones we tell, shape our journey from childhood into adulthood? In Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, Naomi Alderman and guests examine the shifting boundaries between …
Shownotes
How do the stories we inherit, and the ones we tell, shape our journey from childhood into adulthood? In Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, Naomi Alderman and guests examine the shifting boundaries between youth, experience and societal expectation across memoir, history and fiction.
Booker Prize winner David Szalay talks about Flesh, his stark, propulsive novel tracing one boy’s path from adolescence in Hungary to adulthood among London’s super rich, exploring desire, power, class and the ways childhood experiences reverberate across a lifetime.
Filmmaker and writer Penny Woolcock grew up in a British enclave in Argentina. Her coming-of-age memoir, The Man Who Gave Me a Biscuit: Love and Death in Argentina, interweaves memories of teenage rebellion with the buried histories of genocide, authoritarianism and a society built on repression.
The historian Laura Tisdall discusses We Have Come to Be Destroyed, her vivid account of growing up in Cold War Britain, revealing how young people challenged the world adults made for them - from activism and anxieties about the future, to everyday resistance against narrow expectations.
Producer: Katy Hickman Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez
Consciousness and Identity
What makes us who we are? In Radio 4's discussion programme to start off the week, Tom Sutcliffe and guests explore consciousness and identity, and whether the face reveals our inner thoughts and …
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What makes us who we are? In Radio 4's discussion programme to start off the week, Tom Sutcliffe and guests explore consciousness and identity, and whether the face reveals our inner thoughts and character.
American science writer Michael Pollan is celebrated for his work on food and psychedelic drugs. His new book A World Appears, is a sweeping investigation into consciousness - examining where our sense of self comes from, how it is experienced across species, and what new theories from neuroscience, philosophy and plant biology reveal about awareness.
Cultural historian Fay Bound-Alberti traces the long, complex history of the human face, showing how it has been used to define identity, moral character and social status, and how new technologies – from photography to facial recognition – shape our understanding of selfhood in the modern world.
Mary Costello’s latest novel A Beautiful Loan, focuses on the life of Anna Hughes, a woman looking back across decades of love, loss and betrayal as she tries to understand the choices that shaped her and the deeper self she learns, slowly, to claim.
Producer: Katy Hickman Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez
Under the sea
What lies beneath the world's oceans? From the phenomenal infrastructure of telecoms cables to shipwrecked galleons and treasure and the sea creatures of the literary imagination - we explore the mysteries of …
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What lies beneath the world's oceans? From the phenomenal infrastructure of telecoms cables to shipwrecked galleons and treasure and the sea creatures of the literary imagination - we explore the mysteries of the deep. Adam Rutherford chairs Radio 4's discussion programme which starts the week. His guests are:
The writer Julian Sancton is the author of Neptune's Fortune which tells the story of Roger Dooley, a diver who went in search of a lost ship. An accidental discovery in the archives led the unlikely treasure hunter to search for the shipwreck of an eighteenth century galleon, the San José. Laden with riches on its way to the New World, it was sunk in a fierce battle and its location was forgotten for centuries. The pursuit is a tale of maritime archaeology, rival treasure hunters, legal and political obstacles and the challenge of narrowing the search to a small area of the sea bed.
We think of the internet as wireless, but it is connected by nearly 900,000 miles of fiber-optic cables at the bottom of the ocean, stitching whole continents together. In The Web Beneath the Waves, the journalist Samanth Subramanian explains the secretive cable-laying operations behind the world of undersea infrastructure. He discovers the environmental risks to them, corporate interests over them and the acts of “grey zone warfare” when ghost ships cut the cables of other countries.
Joan Passey is a senior lecturer in English at Bristol University and a BBC Arts and Humanities Research Council New Generation Thinker. She is the co-founder of the Haunted Shores Network and a leading researcher in literary study of coasts and seascapes, combining an understanding of folklore, myth and technology. Producer: Ruth Watts
Reading and storytelling
The UK government has declared 2026, the National Year of Reading. The numbers suggest that reading needs all the public relations it can get. Under a third of school children say they read for pleasure and the …
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The UK government has declared 2026, the National Year of Reading. The numbers suggest that reading needs all the public relations it can get. Under a third of school children say they read for pleasure and the number going on to read English Literature at University has shrunk by over a third in the last fifteen years. Their parents are not doing much better, with some surveys suggesting that any where up to half of adults have not read a single book in the last year. So, how can the case for the value of reading and the simple pleasure of picking up a book cut through? Tom Sutcliffe chairs Radio 4's discussion programme which starts the week. His guests are:
Margaret Busby was Britain's first Black woman publisher who has enjoyed a 50 year career at the centre of cultural life and the book trade. Among her achievements she founded a publishing house, edited the ground-breaking international anthologies Daughters of Africa and New Daughters of Africa and championed authors marginalised by the mainstream. Her new book Part of the Story: Writings from Half a Century features her own literary output from between 1966 and 2023.
Sarah Dillon, Professor at the University of Cambridge, has looked at the question 'what are you reading?' The books we encounter shape the choices we make and when it comes to scientists, it appears that ideas from imaginative literature influence their thinking. Storylistening: Narrative Evidence and Public Reasoning, co-authored with Dr Claire Craig, former Director of the UK Government Office for Science, makes the case for the value of attention to stories in decision making.
Lottie Moggach is an arts journalists and writer of literary thrillers - she's also edited, researched and taught writing. Her latest novel, Mrs Pearcey, is Victorian true crime novel. She reflects on historical fiction, her own reading and working as a writer today.
Producer: Ruth Watts
Thinking about war
How do we think about war? How do we imagine it, picture it and explain it? Adam Rutherford hosts Radio 4's discussion programme which starts the week, asking what we can learn about ourselves from our varied …
Shownotes
How do we think about war? How do we imagine it, picture it and explain it? Adam Rutherford hosts Radio 4's discussion programme which starts the week, asking what we can learn about ourselves from our varied intellectual and cultural responses to conflict.
Sir Lawrence Freedman is one of the world's leading scholars of warfare. In his new collection of essays, On Strategists and Strategy, he considers some of the key strategic thinkers of the last century and thoughts about the significance of political calculation, military tactics, organisational behaviour, character and psychology.
A new exhibition opens in March at the Imperial War Museum, London titled Beauty and Destruction: Wartime London in Art. The curator Rebecca Newell explains what we learn from the ways in which artists recorded changes to the city during the Second World War in paintings, drawings and film.
The Hôtel Lutetia, the grand hotel on Paris's Left Bank, has over the years drawn bohemians and great artists, including Matisse and Picasso. However, for a short period around the Second World War, the hotel was witness to significant events. Jane Rogoyska's new book Hotel Exile: Paris in the Shadow of War peoples the hotel with the intellectual and refugees gathering there in the 1930s, the men of the German military intelligence service who made it their headquarters and the deportees returning from concentration camps.
Producer: Ruth Watts
Breakage and repair
When society, financial systems and human beings fall short, how can we repair the damage? Tom Sutcliffe hosts Radio 4's discussion programme which starts the week, exploring the social, moral and political …
Shownotes
When society, financial systems and human beings fall short, how can we repair the damage? Tom Sutcliffe hosts Radio 4's discussion programme which starts the week, exploring the social, moral and political contradictions of the world we face today, with US novelist George Saunders, Turkish writer Ece Temulkuran and investigative journalist Oliver Bullough,
The Booker Prize winning novelist, George Saunders new book Vigil deals with the moral ambivalence of a greedy oil executive; the death bed reckoning of a man who resists facing his life and legacy. The Turkish writer, Ece Temulkuran's new book Nation of Strangers: Rebuilding a Home in the 21st Century explores the rising global displacement of people who will need to forge stronger connections amid political and social upheaval.
In an investigation of money laundering, Oliver Bullough's Everybody Loves Our Dollars sets out the scale of the problem and why we are failing to tackle the global systems that allow illicit money to move freely using sites as varied as Bicester Shopping Village in Oxfordshire and a casino in Vancouver, Canada.
Producer: Ruth Watts
Fun and games
Games are supposed to be fun — so what happens when the logic of games, points and competition escapes the playground and starts reshaping everyday life? The novelist and games-writer Naomi Alderman and her …
Shownotes
Games are supposed to be fun — so what happens when the logic of games, points and competition escapes the playground and starts reshaping everyday life? The novelist and games-writer Naomi Alderman and her guests explore how the joy of play collides with the pressures of a gamified society.
Philosopher C Thi Nguyen introduces The Score, his examination of how ranking systems and numerical targets can both sharpen and warp our values, revealing how life becomes less playful when everything is reduced to points.
Journalist and critic Keza MacDonald discusses Super Nintendo, her cultural history of the iconic console, tracing how its games, aesthetics and innovations transformed the medium and helped define what play means for generations of players.
The Financial Times' commentator Stephen Bush examines the growing role of games and game like incentives in public life, exploring how the techniques of play — from reward structures to competitive framing — are reshaping political behaviour and communication.
Producer: Katy Hickman
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