Jordan Peterson, clinical psychologist and YouTube sensation, professes to bring order to chaos in his 12 Rules for Life. He tells Tom Sutcliffe about the importance of individual responsibility, using lessons from humanity's oldest myths and stories. But his home truths are not without controversy: acclaimed by many, his critics accuse him of reinforcing traditional gender and family roles and attacking liberal values. Hashi Mohamed is the living embodiment of many of Peterson's life rules: he ...
May 14, 2018•42 min
Will we recognise the signs that democracy has ended? Cambridge professor David Runciman worries that we spend far too much time comparing today's politics with the 1930s, and that this blinds us to the frailties of democracy today. He tells Amol Rajan why he thinks our current political system will come to an end - and why we may not even notice this happening. Professor Nic Cheeseman is all too aware that democracy can become an empty shell. His new book How To Rig An Election, co-written with...
May 07, 2018•42 min
The Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli delves into the meaning of time. He tells Andrew Marr how we live in a timeless world but have evolved to perceive time's flow. The astrophysicist Carole Mundell is interested in the extragalactic. Her studies of the universe beyond our Milky Way help expand knowledge of cosmic black holes and explain powerful explosions in space. Space travel is the new frontier, but exactly 250 years ago the Endeavour set sail from Plymouth seeking to test the limits of scie...
Apr 30, 2018•42 min
Tom Sutcliffe discusses free will and fate; dreams and reality. Jesmyn Ward's prize-winning novel Sing, Unburied, Sing, set in the American South, is haunted by the ghosts of the past. Ward writes of incarceration and freedom, and the strength - and weakness - of family bonds. For his latest ballet, choreographer Kim Brandstrup has taken inspiration from Calderon's 17th century Spanish play Life is a Dream, in which a dire prophecy leads a King to imprison his son. Brandstrup uses contemporary d...
Apr 23, 2018•42 min
Fifty years after radicals took to the streets of Paris and stormed campuses across the Western World, Andrew Marr unpicks the legacy of 1968. Historian Richard Vinen finds waves of protest across the western world in his book The Long '68: Radical Protest and Its Enemies. Some movements were genuinely revolutionary, such as the ten million French workers whose strike nearly toppled the government. But on American university campuses and in British art schools, protests took the forms of civil r...
Apr 16, 2018•42 min
Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes makes a case for cash handouts to the poor. He tells Andrew Marr that having become exceptionally wealthy he is looking for the most efficient way to give something back to society, and a Universal Basic Income is among his ideas. But the Oxford academic Ian Goldin argues that UBI is an intellectual sticking plaster. He suggests targeted benefits, better taxation and philanthropy may be the answers to today's growing inequality and the prospect of mass job losses...
Apr 09, 2018•41 min
Amol Rajan discusses faith and doubt. Religion is a recurrent theme in Naomi Alderman's novels. Her first book, Disobedience, explored a Jewish girl's split with orthodox religion, while in Liar's Gospel she told multiple stories of Jesus through the eyes of those around him. Obedience was a virtue for the nuns of sixteenth-century Italy, but the music they wrote and sang was far less virtuous. Music professor and performer Laurie Stras has unearthed sensual and experimental works by nuns includ...
Apr 02, 2018•42 min
Sue Black spends much of her time with dead bodies. As one of the world's leading forensic anthropologists she has encountered death in many forms, leading British expeditions to Kosovo and to Thailand following the Boxing Day Tsunami. She tells Andrew Marr what ancient cadavers and recent corpses can teach us about mortality. Medieval depictions of death and injury don't shy away from the grotesque, says art historian Jack Hartnell. The mutilated bodies of saints and martyrs were often on displ...
Mar 26, 2018•42 min
We are drawn to wildness and disorder, argues historian Bettany Hughes. She tells Andrew Marr about the attraction of Bacchus, the god of wine and fertility, and the subject of a new BBC Four documentary. Bacchus (also known as Dionysus) has been a symbol of excess ever since Roman maidens fled to the woods and drank wine in his name. Hughes follows the Bacchic cult through history, and argues that chaos has been as important to civilisation as reason and restraint. The wood - scene of so many B...
Mar 19, 2018•41 min
At the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead Lionel Shriver discusses her new collection of short stories Property with presenter Kirsty Wark. While Lionel Shriver explores our relationship with objects and places, and asks what the increasing accumulation of things may be doing to the soul, the sociologist Bev Skeggs explores how we are being bought and sold in the digital sphere. She also counts the cost of the monetisation of human relations and highlights communities in the North of Engla...
Mar 12, 2018•49 min
What is art - and why do we need it? Fifty years ago the landmark BBC Two series Civilisation set out to answer this question. Now historians Mary Beard, Simon Schama and David Olusoga take on this challenge of defining human civilisation through art, in a bold update renamed Civilisations. Mary Beard tells Andrew Marr how humans have chosen to depict themselves, from enormous pre-historic heads in Mexico to lustful paintings meant for male eyes. She unpicks the bloody battle between religion an...
Mar 05, 2018•42 min
Brain damage can radically change a person's character - but does that mean they are no longer themselves? Consultant neurologist Jules Montague works with people suffering dementia and brain injuries. She tells Tom Sutcliffe what happens when the brain misbehaves. Memories may fade and names disappear - but does that mean a person no longer has the same identity? Behavioural scientist Nick Chater is sceptical about whether we have an inner self at all. His book The Mind is Flat exposes what he ...
Feb 26, 2018•42 min
Humanity is flourishing and the Enlightenment has worked, declares Steven Pinker. The Harvard psychologist has looked across health, prosperity, safety, peace and happiness, and sees signs that all are improving. He tells Andrew Marr how Enlightenment attitudes to reason and science have made this the best age in which to live. But Enlightenment values are under attack and Pinker calls for their vigorous defence. Dutch philosopher Rob Riemen also sees humanism under threat from fascism, with its...
Feb 19, 2018•42 min
What would the perfect city look like? Today more people live in cities than ever before and that shapes the way we think, says sociologist Richard Sennett. He lays out a vision for a city of the future based not on ancient Greece but on new 'open' streets. Structural engineer Roma Agrawal charts the growth of cities from simple mud huts to the modern metropolis. She tells Amol Rajan about the engineering magic that holds towering city skylines in place, and recalls the eccentric engineers whose...
Feb 12, 2018•42 min
Andrew Marr discusses money, transformation and the obsession with growth with two leading economists: Diane Coyle and Dharshini David. Professor Coyle argues it's time to rethink the way we measure productivity, while the broadcaster Dharshini David follows the journey of a single dollar in her study of globalisation. The theatre director Anna Ledwich is more interested in the people whose lives revolve around the money markets: her latest play Dry Powder highlights their vulnerability, vision ...
Feb 05, 2018•42 min
With millions of people on the move around the world, the novelist Mohsin Hamid has set his latest novel against the backdrop of the refugee crisis. He tells Kirsty Wark how he imagined those fleeing home passing through mysterious black doors into other parts of the world. The lawyer and sociologist Carol Bohmer examines the culture of suspicion which greets migrants when they arrive. She looks at how officials judge the line between truth and deception, and increasingly label people as liars, ...
Jan 29, 2018•42 min
Art was power for Britain's kings and queens. In a new BBC TV series, Andrew Graham-Dixon visits the paintings amassed by King Charles I, the first great royal collector in British history. He tells Andrew Marr why after Charles was executed his royal artworks were flogged across Europe. The lost royal collection will finally be reunited this year in an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts. Historian Leanda de Lisle brings the Stuart monarch back to life in her biography White King. But was t...
Jan 22, 2018•42 min
The prize-winning novelist Peter Carey tackles head on for the first time the legacies of colonialism in his native Australia in his latest book, A Long Way From Home. He talks to Tom Sutcliffe about the damage and loss for the Stolen Generations. The writer and broadcaster Afua Hirsch believes Britain is also a nation in denial about the past and present, and argues it's time to talk more openly about race and identity. The Dutch journalist Geert Mak once travelled the breadth of Europe to expl...
Jan 15, 2018•42 min
British women first got the vote a century ago this year. The social historian Jane Robinson tells Andrew Marr the suffrage movement is known for the actions of its militant wing and their call for 'deeds not words'. But thousands of ordinary women, known as suffragists, campaigned successfully to have their voices heard too. Political theorist Christopher Finlay asks whether violent political protest is ever justified, while the artist Peter Kennard explains how he was inspired by the protest m...
Jan 08, 2018•42 min
The former President of the Supreme Court, Lord Neuberger, questions how senior judges became cast as 'enemies of the people' last year. He tells Andrew Marr how the judiciary has grown more powerful and ready to challenge the government over the last half century - while professor of politics Tim Bale explores whether parliament has at the same time become weaker. Cicero was proscribed as an enemy of the people in the 1st century BC. Robert Harris's Cicero trilogy has now been dramatized for th...
Dec 18, 2017•42 min
A mysterious doll's house is at the centre of Jessie Burton's novel The Miniaturist, now dramatised for television. Burton tells Tom Sutcliffe about the claustrophobic world she created amidst the wealthy merchant traders of 17th century Holland. The economist Jonathan Haskel points to the quiet revolution that has taken place since then, as developed countries now invest more in intangible assets like design and software, than in tangible goods like machinery and computers. He asks what impact ...
Dec 11, 2017•42 min
Totalitarianism has reclaimed Russia. So journalist Masha Gessen tells Andrew Marr. Her book 'The Future is History' follows four figures born as the Soviet Union crumbled and whose new-found freedom is being slowly eradicated. The Soviet Union banned religion but ranked citizens by "nationality" - with Jews near the bottom and ethnic Russians at the top. Dominic Rubin explores the country's relationship with religion in 'Russia's Muslim Heartlands', while Oxford professor Roy Allison unpicks Ru...
Dec 04, 2017•43 min
It is a hundred years since Finland declared independence following the Russian Revolution. Amol Rajan asks what is unique about Europe's most sparsely populated country. The conductor Sakari Oramo celebrates Finland's greatest composer Sibelius, while the curator Sointu Fritze looks at the work of Tove Jansson, famed for her cartoon creatures the Moomins as well as her daring political cartoons and images of the sea. The writer Horatio Clare travels around the frozen seas of Finland on board a ...
Nov 27, 2017•42 min
Victorian hospitals were known as 'houses of death' and their surgeons, who never washed their hands, were praised for their brute strength and speed. Lindsey Fitzharris tells Andrew Marr about the pioneering British surgeon Joseph Lister who transformed his profession. Anaesthesia was discovered in the 1840s but Professor Lesley Colvin says we're still learning about the complex relationship between the brain and the perception of pain, as well as understanding the potential harm of the increas...
Nov 20, 2017•42 min
'I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore'. These are the words of the news anchor-man in the film Network, now adapted for the stage. The director Ivo van Hove tells Francine Stock how this satire on global capitalism and chasing ratings with populist rants has such relevance today. Composer Nico Muhly also looks to Hollywood, adapting Hitchock's film Marnie - and the novel that inspired it - for the English National Opera. Born into poverty, Marnie becomes trapped in a web of lies...
Nov 13, 2017•42 min
Andrew Marr discusses the work of Joseph Conrad with his biographer Maya Jasanoff. Conrad wrote about the underbelly of colonialism, terrorism, immigration and isolation and Jasanoff looks at the turn of the twentieth century through the lens of his life and work. While Conrad's Nostromo reflected the changing world order with the emerging dominance of the US and global capitalism, the FT columnist Gideon Rachman looks at the decline of the West amidst the growing power of the East, as well as r...
Nov 06, 2017•42 min
Amol Rajan discusses the uneasy interaction between the animal kingdom and humans. The anthropologist Alice Roberts looks back to the moment hunter-gatherers changed their relationship with other species and began to tame them, paving the way for our civilisation. Gaia Vince visits the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica where local people have found a way to both exploit and protect a natural resource, the olive ridley sea turtle. Re-introducing native species can be fraught with difficulties: John Ewe...
Oct 30, 2017•42 min
Are humans distinguished not just by a capacity to think, but by our need to believe - where the search is not so much for my place in the world, but for our place in the cosmos? Neil MacGregor, the former Director of the British Museum, discusses Living with the Gods, his Radio 4 series, in which he focuses on the expression of shared beliefs, across thousands of years, and around the globe, through objects from the Museum's collections and beyond. The curator Jennifer Sliwka looks at a world i...
Oct 23, 2017•42 min
War became illegal in 1928 with the Paris Peace Pact that created a new world order, according to the lawyer and academic Oona Hathaway. She tells Andrew Marr how this pivotal moment launched a new international system in which sanctions replaced gunboat diplomacy. Although inter-state wars have fallen since World War Two, intra-state conflicts have risen: Elisabeth Kendall explains the dire situation of one of the Arab's poorest countries, Yemen. The Norwegian ambassador to the UK Mona Juul tal...
Oct 16, 2017•42 min
The Russian Revolution a hundred years on. To mark the centenary Tom Sutcliffe is in Moscow to discuss the forces that led to the Revolution, and to find out how far Russians today embrace or reject such a pivotal moment in their country's history. He talks to a senior member of President Putin's political party, Konstantin Kosachev. And he is joined by the journalists Mikhail Zygar and Arkady Ostrovsky and the Director of the Tretyakov Gallery, Zelfira Tregulova. Producer: Katy Hickman.
Oct 09, 2017•41 min
