Start the Week

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-time and a National Gallery curator.

Night Vision is the latest book from the award-winning poet and writer Jean Sprackland exploring our complex relationship with the dark: what we fear and what we wish to banish. In the dark she finds a place of possibility and she asks what might w...

Three prize-winning authors in today's discussion programme hosted by Tom Sutcliffe:

The German Peasants’ War of 1524–1525 was the greatest popular uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution. Tens of thousands of peasants rose up to demand a new, more egalitarian order—only to be crushed in a brutal counterattack that left up to 100,000 dead. The historian Lyndal Roper argues that this rebellion was far from chaotic: it...

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 really know about the universe - and about ourselves.

Space scientist Maggie Aderin-Pocock, presenter of this year’s Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, shares her passion for inspiring the next generation to think big, as she explores the wonders of our solar system and the questions...

What can genetics and palmistry tell us about how we understand identity, character and health? Adam Rutherford is joined by Professor of Zoology Matthew Cobb; the historian Professor Alison Bashford and the geneticist Charlotte Houldcroft.

Matthew Cobb discusses his biography Crick: A Mind in Motion. From the discovery of DNA’s structure to Francis Crick’s later work on consciousness, Cobb reveals a restless thinker whose collabor...

How can we reclaim the internet? Tom Sutcliffe and guests discuss the digital age - its supporters and discontents.

Tech critic Cory Doctorow introduces his new book Enshittification, a blistering diagnosis of how online platforms have decayed — from innovation to exploitation — and what we can do to make it better for ordinary users.

Novelist and broadcaster Naomi Alderman draws on history in Don’t Burn Anyone at the Stake Today, ...

Threats to the natural world are the focus of today’s conversation. Adam Rutherford talks to wildlife biologist Jonathan Slaght, novelist Juhea Kim and criminal psychologist Julia Shaw.

Jonathan Slaght discusses Tigers Between Empires, his account of the international effort to save the Siberian tiger from extinction in the wake of the Cold War.

Juhea Kim’s short story collection A Love Story from the End of the World imagines lives...

In her latest novel, One Aladdin Two Lamps, the writer Jeanette Winterson takes inspiration from the legendary story of Shahrazad in One Thousand and One Nights. But she calls on the reader to look again at stories we think we know, unpick how fiction works, and have the courage to challenge and change the narrative.

The saxophonist and presenter Soweto Kinch will perform his new album, Soundtrack to the Apocalypse, with the London ...

The internationally renowned choreographer Sir Wayne McGregor swaps stage for gallery in a landmark exhibition exploring his multifaceted career at Somerset House (from 30 Oct 2025–22 Feb 2026). ‘Infinite Bodies’ investigates how Wayne McGregor has combined body, movement and cutting-edge digital technologies to redefine perceptions of physical intelligence. Throughout the gallery space he draws together designers, musicians, engin...

The Library of Lost Maps by James Cheshire, Professor of Geographic Information and Cartography, tells the story of the discovery of a treasure-trove at the heart of University College London. In a long-forgotten room James found thousands of maps and atlases. This abandoned archive reveals how maps have traced the contours of the world, inspiring some of the greatest scientific discoveries, as well as leading to terrible atrocitie...

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 Endangered Languages Archive, Mandana Seyfeddinipur. The evolution of languages, and their rise and fall, is part of human history, but the speed at which this is happening today is unprecedented. Mandana will be appearing at the inaugural Voiced: The Festival for Endangered Languages a...

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 crisis. Now he reflects on his political awakenings and the women who influenced him in Raise Your Soul. It’s a family story that starts in Egypt in the 1920s and traces Greece’s tumultuous century through Nazi occupation, civil war, dictatorship, socialism and economic crisis.

The histor...

The experimental cognitive psychologist and popular science writer, Steven Pinker delves into the intricacies of human interactions in his latest book, ‘When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...: Common Knowledge and the Science of Harmony, Hypocrisy and Outrage’. From avoiding the elephant in the room to the outing of the emperor’s new clothes, Pinker reveals the paradoxes of human behaviour.

Common knowledge can bind people and ...

At the Contains Strong Language Festival in Bradford, Tom Sutcliffe and guests explore the history and culture of the city, and nation, through its poetry and stories. From battlefields and royal courts, coalmines to curry houses Start the Week looks at the language and rhythms that have captured the country.

The historian Catherine Clarke is retelling the story of the past in a new way in ‘A History of England in 25 Poems’. From t...

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. The BBC’s international correspondent stayed there frequently from the late 1980s, and she details how the Soviet occupation, civil war, US invasion and the rise, fall and rise of the Taliban have all left their mark on 'The Finest Hotel in Kabul', and the people who worked there.

Ther...

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 activism are shaped by early circumstances – both financial and political – at the centre is her relationship with her mother, who she describes as ‘my shelter and my storm’.

The poet Sarah Howe won the TS Eliot prize for poetry for her debut collection, Loop of Jade. In her new work, Fo...

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. Marina Warner’s new book Sanctuary explores travelling tales and concepts of hospitality and home - suggesting that myths, stories and works of art can be places of sanctuary too.

The story of leprosy is a story of isolation and exclusion over thousands of years. In his book, Outcast, O...

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 who it labels as a genius says Helen Lewis in her new book, The Genius Myth: The Dangerous Allure of Rebels, Monsters and Rule-Breakers. From Leonardo da Vinci to Elon Musk, she asks if the modern idea of genius, as a class of special people, is distorting our view of the world.

With ...

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 Atossa Araxia Abrahamian in her new book The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the world. She traces the rise of a freeports, charter cities and offshore havens.

Danny Dorling contends that we’re not very good at spotting the real crises we face today. In The Next Crisis: What We Think Abou...

Professor Frank Close looks at how the quest to understand radioactivity and the atomic nucleus was initially fired by scientific curiosity and then by more human motives. What began as collaboration between scientists in the pursuit of atomic energy was overwhelmed by politics and opened the way to the possibility of nuclear war. Frank Close’s Destroyer of Worlds: The Deep History of the Nuclear Age: 1895-1965 shows how scientific...