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 histor...
May 11, 2026•41 min
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 ...
May 04, 2026•42 min
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...
Apr 27, 2026•42 min
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. Theat...
Apr 20, 2026•42 min
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 O...
Apr 13, 2026•42 min
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...
Apr 06, 2026•41 min
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 th...
Mar 30, 2026•42 min
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 w...
Mar 23, 2026•42 min
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 neuros...
Mar 16, 2026•42 min
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 t...
Mar 09, 2026•42 min
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 t...
Mar 02, 2026•42 min
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 ...
Feb 23, 2026•42 min
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 ...
Feb 16, 2026•42 min
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 re...
Feb 09, 2026•42 min
A lawyer, artist and curator discuss different examples of censorship and self censorship in Radio 4's weekly discussion of ideas to kick off the week. Tom Sutcliffe's guests are: Ai Weiwei: a major name in contemporary art and for decades a leading voice for freedom of expression in his native China – and the wider world. In 2011 he was detained for eighty-one days in a secret location, unable to communicate with the outside world. His new book, On Censorship moves from authoritarian regimes to...
Feb 02, 2026•42 min
Adam Rutherford and guests discuss intelligence, genetics and the nature of reality. How are scientific advances in AI, cognitive science and genetics changing our understanding of the material world and what it means to be human? Adrian Woolfson argues that we must transform biology into programmable engineering material. To do this, we must decode the generative grammar of DNA, the language of life itself, so we might create or change genomes – possibly including our own. In his book, 'On the ...
Jan 26, 2026•42 min
If trust in politicians is broken and the political system isn't delivering, then how might we go about fixing things? Can we revive faith in democratic government by doing things differently? The political scientist Hélène Landemore argues that electoral politics is broken and that the answer lies in doing away with career politicians. She imagines dismantling a system that is biased in favour of the special interests of big money, propelled by the constant quest for re-election and the jaded p...
Jan 19, 2026•42 min
What is the purpose of the Arts? Can music, literature and visual art change our lives physically and socially, as well as personally? Adam Rutherford explores the power of the arts and how it might be defined and explained. Engaging with the arts is one of our most powerful tools for unlocking health and happiness argues Daisy Fancourt. She is is Professor of Psychobiology and Epidemiology at University College London and Director of the World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre on Arts an...
Jan 12, 2026•41 min
What do animals mean to us? Naomi Alderman explores how animals shape human understanding, from ancient burial rites to modern science. The psychologist Justin Gregg specialises in dolphin social cognition. He introduces his new book, Humanish, a witty and provocative look at anthropomorphism — our habit of seeing human traits in animals, objects and machines — and how it helps us make sense of the world and increases empathy. Peter Fretwell is a leading scientist at the British Antarctic Survey...
Dec 29, 2025•42 min
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 interpreting the minds and motivations of poets, both past and present. Editor Miles Leeson presents Poems from an Attic, a newly published collection of Iris Murdoch’s previously unseen poetry. Found in a box long after her death, these intimate verses offer fresh insight into the desires of a writer better known for her novels and philosophy. Profe...
Dec 22, 2025•42 min
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 we discover in the dark if we free our imagination. The photograph...
Dec 15, 2025•42 min
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 was a coherent mass movement inspired by the radical ideals of ...
Dec 08, 2025•42 min
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 that still puzzle astronomers. Physicist and cosmologist Paul Da...
Dec 01, 2025•42 min
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 collaborations — with scientists, artists and poets — shaped some of the ...
Nov 24, 2025•42 min
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, arguing that we’ve lived through information crises before, and t...
Nov 17, 2025•42 min
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 lived in precarious balance with nature, from biodomes in Seoul...
Nov 10, 2025•42 min
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 Symphony Orchestra (at the Barbican, London, on Friday 14th Nove...
Nov 03, 2025•42 min
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, engineers and dancers to bring the artworks to life. The Booker prize ...
Oct 27, 2025•42 min
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 atrocities and power grabs. But maps have not always been used to navigate...
Oct 20, 2025•42 min
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 at the Barbican in October. A sense of loss also runs through Sver...
Oct 13, 2025•42 min
