Naomi Klein argues that the greatest contributor to global warming is not carbon and climate change, but capitalism. She tells Anne McElvoy that the market's addiction to growth and profit is killing the planet. But the economist Dieter Helm questions whether capitalism is really at war with the environment and looks to the world's innovators to invent our way out of crisis. Climate change is a global issue, but the author Tahmima Anam looks at what it means for her home country Bangladesh. Jere...
Oct 06, 2014•42 min
Karen Armstrong argues against the notion that religion is the major cause of war. The former nun tells Tom Sutcliffe that faith is as likely to produce pacifists and peace-builders as medieval crusaders and modern-day jihadists. But Justin Marozzi charts the violent history of Baghdad and asks what role religion had to play there. The philosopher Christopher Coker explores how warfare dominates our history, and argues that war, like religion, is central to the human condition. Producer: Katy Hi...
Sep 29, 2014•42 min
Hilary Mantel takes a break from her award-winning series of novels charting the rise and fall of the Tudor fixer, Thomas Cromwell, to discuss her new collection of short stories. She talks to Tom Sutcliffe about why her latest work eschews the historical to focus on contemporary Britain. The Director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor tells the story of Germany from its Roman past to the present day through objects that symbolise the dynamic changes in its culture and identity. 'English Magi...
Sep 22, 2014•42 min
Tom Sutcliffe talks to Michael Holroyd about why he put his own family in the spotlight in his late 50s novel A Dog's Life, only published in the UK after the death of his parents. Family secrets and a doctor's revenge are at the heart of Herman Koch's darkly comic novel, while Hugo Blick's new television series, An Honourable Woman, explores how the sins of the father resonate in the present. The playwright Rona Munro looks ahead to a trilogy of plays which chart the rise and fall of Scotland's...
Jul 07, 2014•42 min
Andrew Marr discusses how far the brain can change and adapt with the neuroscientist Heidi Johansen-Berg. Decades ago it was thought that the adult brain was immutable but later research has shown that even brains damaged by stroke have the capacity to adapt. The writer Ben Shephard looks back to the turn of the 20th century and the birth of modern neuroscience, while the novelist Charles Fernyhough asks whether knowing more about the way the brain works will have as big an impact as the finding...
Jun 30, 2014•42 min
Tom Sutcliffe talks to the director Erica Whyman about a series of plays by the RSC which focus on the idea that 'well behaved women rarely make history'. The historian Helen Castor looks back at the Middle Ages to some of the earliest roaring girls, while the soprano Joyce DiDonato brings alive Mary, Queen of Scots, the tragic hero of Donizetti's opera. The political activist Julie Bindel has been behaving badly since she came out as a lesbian in the 1970s. She looks at what it means to be gay ...
Jun 23, 2014•42 min
Tom Sutcliffe discusses the history of pain with the historian Joanna Bourke, who explores how our attitude to suffering has changed through the centuries. The former Conservative MP, Norman Fowler, looks back at the public health campaign that revolutionised the fight against HIV and Aids in Britain in the 1980s, and how discrimination and political expediency are hampering prevention and treatment around the world today. The Director of the Wellcome Trust, Jeremy Farrar remembers when he was a...
Jun 16, 2014•42 min
Tom Sutcliffe discusses whether Western states have anything to learn from countries like China and Singapore. Adrian Wooldridge argues that many governments have become bloated and there's a global race to reinvent the state. In the past Britain was at the forefront of exporting ideas on how to run a country, as the Labour MP Tristram Hunt explains in his book on the legacy of empire. Charu Lata Hogg from Chatham House looks at the challenges to democracy in Thailand where the country is in pol...
Jun 09, 2014•42 min
Tom Sutcliffe talks to the commentator Rod Liddle about his assertion that modern Western society has become politically and socially stagnant. In his polemic, Selfish Whining Monkeys, Liddle argues that his generation are self-obsessed, deluded and spoilt. Neil Jameson from Citizens UK dismisses this description of society and says his growing number of members are organised, socially active and community-minded. The Chinese writer and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo contrasts East and West in her latest ...
Jun 02, 2014•42 min
Picture taken by Axel Hesslenberg Start the Week is at the Charleston literary Festival with the novelists Tim Winton, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Nicola Barker and the poet and publisher Michael Schmidt. The death of the novel has been predicted since the early twentieth century but in a special programme recorded in front of an audience Tom Sutcliffe talks to three leading novelists from around the world about their latest works. They discuss their influences and their divergent styles, from Knausgaa...
May 23, 2014•42 min
Anne McElvoy talks to the biologist Ken Thompson who dismisses attempts to control invasive species and questions the veracity of dividing plants and animals into 'native' and 'alien'. However the Director of the Kew Innovation Unit Monique Simmonds warns that alien pests and diseases can have a devastating effect on much-loved plants, and that it's vital to maintain and support diverse environments. The farmer John Lewis-Stempel records the passage of the seasons in his account of the life of a...
May 19, 2014•42 min
Tom Sutcliffe asks whether it's better to lead from the front, or advise from the side-line. The Deputy Chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi, Richard Hytner celebrates the latter: those who wield influence and authority away from the limelight. Heather Rabbatts has experience of being a Deputy and a Chief Executive in both politics and business. The academic Archie Brown looks back at the history of political leadership and questions whether strong leaders are the most successful and admirable, whi...
May 12, 2014•42 min
Anne McElvoy talks to the poet Simon Armitage about his dramatisation of The Last Days of Troy. His play, based on Homer's epic, reveals how cycles of conflict and revenge, pride and self-deception continue throughout history. Greek myth is at the heart of a new opera, Thebans, in which the playwright and poet Frank McGuinness draws on the tragedy of the mythical monarch Oedipus and his daughter Antigone. Natalie Haynes explores what happens when troubled teenagers become enthralled by Greek tal...
May 02, 2014•42 min
Anne McElvoy talks to the social theorist Jeremy Rifkin who foresees the gradual decline of capitalism and the rise of a collaborative economy. As new technology enables greater sharing of goods and services, Rifkin argues that it provides a challenge to the market economy. The sociologist Saskia Sassen warns that the majority of people may not enjoy the fruits of this new world as increasing inequality, land evictions and complex financial systems lead to their expulsion from the economy. The C...
Apr 28, 2014•42 min
Picture of James Lovelock provided by the Science Museum Anne McElvoy looks back at the life of the maverick scientist James Lovelock who pioneered the theory of Gaia, of a self-regulating Earth. Lovelock also looks to the future and the next evolution of Gaia which could lead to the extinction of human life, and a rise of Artificial Intelligence, but the writer and ecologist George Monbiot prefers his future world with wolves, wild boars and beavers living alongside humans. The UN's intergovern...
Apr 21, 2014•42 min
Tom Sutcliffe looks back three hundred years to the Hanoverian succession to the British throne. The curator Lucy Worsley explains how the German Georges claimed the crown and how they kept it. The Georgian period is also the setting for Paula Byrne's biography of Dido Belle, the daughter of an aristocrat and a captured West Indian slave. Also on the programme, the MP Chris Bryant explores the history of Parliament and the movement of power from King to democracy. But what of today's Royals? The...
Apr 14, 2014•42 min
Tom Sutcliffe looks at both the reality of police life and its portrayal. The playwright Roy Williams's latest drama is set in a police station in Kingston, Jamaica, revealing a world of corruption and intrigue. TV writer Sam Bain, of Peep Show fame, talks about Babylon, a drama which take a wry look at modern policing. The former police officer Christian Plowman explains what life was like undercover, and the criminologist Jennifer Brown looks back at the history of policing in the UK. Producer...
Apr 07, 2014•42 min
Tom Sutcliffe talks to AL Kennedy about her latest collection of short stories of love and hurt. The poet Lavinia Greenlaw retells the tragic love story of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. The philosopher Simon Blackburn unpicks the idea of self-love from the myth of Narcissus to today's tv hair adverts: 'because you're worth it', while the humorist David Sedaris uses his own life and loves as the focus of his writing. Producer: Katy Hickman.
Mar 31, 2014•42 min
Anne McElvoy explores the roads not taken with the historian Richard Evans. Counterfactual history began as an Enlightenment parlour game and has become a serious academic pursuit, but Evans argues against endless speculation as to what might have been. The final meeting between Lawrence of Arabia and Faisal I of Iraq was an anti-climax which belied their history. The biographers of these two leaders, Scott Anderson and the former Iraqi politician Ali Allawi, place these men at the centre of the...
Mar 24, 2014•42 min
Tom Sutcliffe discusses how we make decisions with the Nobel prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman. Moral choices in politics can be a complicated business, according to the academic and former politician Michael Ignatieff, who explores whether the age of international intervention is over. Doctors work under the oath 'do no harm', but the neurosurgeon Henry Marsh says the decision whether to operate on a brain is rarely that simple. High emotion can cloud your judgement and the writer Lisa...
Mar 17, 2014•42 min
Tom Sutcliffe talks to Andrew Hussey about the often fraught relationship between France and its Arab ex-colonies, and how that plays out in the banlieues of Paris. The psychotherapist Gabrielle Rifkind recounts her experience of conflict resolution in the Middle East. While Rifkind emphases the need to understand what's happened in the past, the writer Ziauddin Sardar tries to imagine what the world would be like if we explored the future in a more systematic and scientific way. Producer: Katy ...
Mar 10, 2014•42 min
Tom Sutcliffe talks to the historian Michael Wood about the spirit and adventure of the Vikings who travelled all over Europe and as far east as Central Asia. The Vikings sailed close to the coast whenever possible, David Barrie celebrates the invention of the sextant three hundred years ago which made open water navigation and exploration possible. The majority of foreign goods we buy are transported by sea and Rose George charts the murky world of today's international shipping. The mystery an...
Mar 03, 2014•42 min
Tom Sutcliffe discusses money with the American economist Charles Calomiris, who looks back at the history of financial disasters and argues that they're caused more by government failures, than individual bankers. The former head of the Financial Services Authority, Adair Turner, might agree on the need for structural changes, but famously said 'heads should roll' in the banking industry, and has damned much of the banks' trading activities as 'socially useless'. If there has been a moral vacuu...
Feb 24, 2014•42 min
Andrew Marr discusses the history of confession with the writer John Cornwell, from its origins in the early church to the current day. The psychotherapist Susie Orbach explores whether the confession, both secular and religious, provides psychological relief, and the presenter Vanessa Feltz celebrates its public manifestations, the talk show and radio phone in. The former high-flying Wall Street trader, Turney Duff, is looking for absolution, as he reveals his life of excess. Producer: Katy Hic...
Feb 17, 2014•42 min
Tom Sutcliffe looks at the role of the expert. The curator Irving Finkel decodes the symbols on a 4,000 year old clay tablet and discovers the instructions for the building of an ark. Harry Collins asks why attitudes towards scientific expertise have changed and looks to reassert the special status of science. Colin Blakemore is an expert in neuroscience and vision and he reflects on his part in the documentary, Tim's Vermeer, which explores the relationship between art and science. The playwrig...
Feb 10, 2014•42 min
Last year The Guardian ran a series of scoops about the extent of mass surveillance by the security services here and in the USA. Anne McElvoy talks to the journalist Luke Harding about the inside story on the whistle-blower Edward Snowden and what motivated him to commit one of the biggest intelligence leaks in history. The former director of GCHQ, Sir David Omand, fears the leaks have done untold damage and endangered state security. Claims that America hacked the phone of the German Chancello...
Jan 29, 2014•42 min
Tom Sutcliffe talks to the celebrated composer, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies on the eve of the premier of his tenth symphony. His latest work creates a musical structure based on architectural proportions, inspired by the 17th century architect Francesco Borromini. Waldemar Januszczak turns to the 18th century and Rococo for his inspiration, and looks at how this artistic movement spread from painting and interior design, to music and theatre. The environment, both built and natural, is key to Trevo...
Jan 24, 2014•42 min
Tom Sutcliffe talks to the neuroscientist Dick Swaab who argues that everything we do and don't do is determined by our brain. He explains why 'we are our brains'. The philosopher Julian Baggini doesn't dispute the pre-eminence of brain processes but believes it doesn't tell the whole story. As a writer Helen Dunmore must get into the minds of her characters - the latest a war-damaged soldier from the trenches. Natalie Abrahami only has the heads of her characters to play with as she directs Sam...
Jan 20, 2014•42 min
On Start the Week Anne McElvoy talks to Linda Colley about the history of the United Kingdom - what has brought it together, and what is driving it apart. David Pilling offers a contrasting island story, with his study of modern Japan. Europe is watching with interest the coming Scottish Independence Referendum, and the correspondent David Charter, looks at what 2014 holds for Britain's relationship with the EU. Maria Delgado explores how far culture, especially theatre, has shaped, and been sha...
Jan 09, 2014•42 min
Andrew Marr discusses the teaching of history with the Government's Education Secretary Michael Gove. The new history curriculum for schools has been hotly contested and the Minister explains his views on whether facts and dates trump historical analysis. He's joined by Margaret MacMillan who will present a real-time countdown to the outbreak of WWI in the coming year, the academic and tv historian Simon Schama, and Tom Holland who has recently translated Herodotus, considered to be 'the Father ...
Dec 30, 2013•42 min
