Start the Week
Сувгийн дэлгэрэнгүй
Start the Week
Weekly discussion programme, setting the cultural agenda every Monday
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Animals and Meaning
What do animals mean to us? Naomi Alderman explores how animals shape human understanding, from ancient burial rites to modern science.
The psyc...
Poetry - reading, writing, editing and translating
How much can we truly know about the inner lives of others? Tom Sutcliffe is joined by Miles Leeson and Karen Leeder to reflect on the challenge of in...
The Dark
Three visions of darkness as the days draw in. Adam Rutherford's guests for Radio 4's Monday discussion programme are a poet, a photographer of night-...
Histories, emotions and identity
Three prize-winning authors in today's discussion programme hosted by Tom Sutcliffe:
The German Peasants’ War of 1524–1525 was the greatest popu...
Space, Quantum Frontiers and Cosmic Clues
What can the cosmos tell us about our past and future? Tom Sutcliffe and guests look skyward and deep into the quantum world to ask how much we can re...
Genes and hands: mapping character and health
What can genetics and palmistry tell us about how we understand identity, character and health? Adam Rutherford is joined by Professor of Zoology Matt...
Digital Futures and Information Crises
How can we reclaim the internet? Tom Sutcliffe and guests discuss the digital age - its supporters and discontents.
Tech critic Cory Doctorow i...
Saving Tigers, Green Crime and Cli-fi
Threats to the natural world are the focus of today’s conversation. Adam Rutherford talks to wildlife biologist Jonathan Slaght, novelist Juhea Kim an...
Storytelling: Jeanette Winterson, Rory Stewart and Soweto Kinch
In her latest novel, One Aladdin Two Lamps, the writer Jeanette Winterson takes inspiration from the legendary story of Shahrazad in One Thousand and...
Crossing genres with Wayne McGregor
The internationally renowned choreographer Sir Wayne McGregor swaps stage for gallery in a landmark exhibition exploring his multifaceted career at So...
Maps – lost, secret and revealing
The Library of Lost Maps by James Cheshire, Professor of Geographic Information and Cartography, tells the story of the discovery of a treasure-trove...
Endangered languages and vanishing landscapes
Of the 7,000 languages estimated to exist, half will have disappeared by the end of this century. That’s the stark warning from the Director of the En...
Yanis Varoufakis on Greece’s civil war
The economist Yanis Varoufakis found himself in the eye of the storm as Greece’s Minister of Finance in 2015, at the height of the country’s debt cris...
Steven Pinker on common knowledge
The experimental cognitive psychologist and popular science writer, Steven Pinker delves into the intricacies of human interactions in his latest book...
Contains Strong Language Festival, Bradford
At the Contains Strong Language Festival in Bradford, Tom Sutcliffe and guests explore the history and culture of the city, and nation, through its po...
Afghanistan and the DRC
Lyse Doucet tells the history of Afghanistan in recent decades through the story of the Inter-Continental hotel, which opened in the capital in 1969....
Arundhati Roy and maternal inheritance
The Booker prize winning novelist Arundhati Roy looks back at her foremost influences in her memoir, Mother Mary Comes To Me. While her writing and ac...
Sanctuary, refuge and exile
Sanctuary is an ancient idea of a place of refuge or freedom from harm. It has deep roots in the history, literature and myths of many cultures. Mari...
The Idea of Genius
We think we know what a genius is: a tortured poet; rebellious scientist; monstrous artist; or a tech disruptor. You can tell what a society values by...
Hidden spaces and dangerous places
There is a parallel world which operates under different rules and benefits those with money and power. That’s the argument made by the journalist Ato...
The uses and abuses of the atom
Professor Frank Close looks at how the quest to understand radioactivity and the atomic nucleus was initially fired by scientific curiosity and then b...
Hay Festival: exposing the secrets of rubbish
In front of an audience at the Hay Literary Festival Tom Sutcliffe talks to The archaeologist and presenter of the hit TV show, The Great British Dig,...
Mathematics, Symbiosis and Japanese art
In his new book, Blueprints, Marcus du Sautoy traces the connections between mathematics and art and the ways in which creatives use numbers to underp...
History: private, personal and political
The cultural historian Tiffany Jenkins looks at the long history of the private life from Ancient Athens to the digital age. In her new book, Stranger...
Smell – the underrated sense
Our sense of smell is vital to appreciating food and drink, it can warn us of danger, and enhance enjoyment of our environment, and yet it is one of o...
Advocating for nature
In his new book, Robert Macfarlane takes the reader on a river journey, through history and geography, to posit the idea that rivers are not merely fo...
Christianity and British society
As congregations age and dwindle, what are we to make of the decline of Christianity in England? Bijan Omrani argues that Christianity has had a profo...
Impunity and fighting for justice
The lawyer Philippe Sands weaves together a story of historical crimes, impunity and the law in his latest book, 38 Londres Street. He uncovers the li...
Untangling fact from fiction
In 1967 a group of writers in the US pulled off an ingenious hoax – the publication of a so-called top secret document detailing how global peace woul...
Delusions of grandeur and freedom of speech
The celebrated artist, Sir Grayson Perry, has a new exhibition of work, Delusions of Grandeur, made in direct response to the masterpieces at the Wall...
Abdulrazak Gurnah on family and resistance
Abdulrazak Gurnah won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021 ‘for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism.’ In...
Lockdown and the Covid generation
Five years ago, in response to the Covid pandemic, the government mandated a series of lockdowns, with the closure of schools and businesses and socia...
How political ideology affects the brain
In The Ideological Brain Leor Zmigrod studies the impact of political ideology on the makeup and shape of the brain. She found that those on the polit...
The Great Auk meets Victorian explorers, and zombie ponds
The Great Auk: Its Extraordinary Life, Hideous Death and Mysterious Afterlife is the subject of Tim Birkhead’s new book. This goose-sized seabird beca...
Community and industrial decline
The story of Liverpool’s once thriving port is one of spectacular rise, and spectacular fall. In Liverpool and the Unmaking of Britain, the historian...
Writing and rewriting history
History was written down for the very first time in the ancient region of Mesopotamia. In Between Two Rivers, Moudhy Al-Rashid tells the story of the...
Wages for Housework – then and now
From the early 1970s feminist activists from across the globe campaigned under a single demand – Wages for Housework. The historian Emily Callaci trac...
Manufacturing and sustainability
We might live surrounded by manufactured goods but the business of making is far removed and often hidden from our lives, according to the Professor o...
Climate Crisis: truth, lies and compromise
Every year world leaders gather at the United Nation’s COP (the Conference of Parties) to discuss how to work together on solutions to tackle climate...
Music and movement; mind and body
Music as Medicine is the latest work by the neuroscientist and best-selling author Daniel Levitin. In it he explores the healing power of music, and t...