The farmer James Rebanks recounts a season he spent on a remote Norwegian island learning the ancient trade of caring for wild Eider ducks and gathering their down. In The Place of Tides he tells the story of Anna, a ‘duck woman’ who helped revive this centuries-old tradition. As he traces the rough pattern of her work and her relationship with the wild, Rebanks reassess his own relationship with his Lake District farm, his family and home. Alice Robinson is a designer who has never shied away f...
Nov 04, 2024•42 min
Does ambition have to be seen as corrupting, or like a kind of illness’? These are the questions the business writer Stefan Stern asks in his book, Fair or Foul: the Lady Macbeth Guide to Ambition. He argues that far from the cliché of a scheming wife, Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth demonstrates a more sophisticated understanding of human nature, that could help us navigate the pitfalls of ambition today. The playwright Zinnie Harris made Lady Macbeth the hero of her adaptation of the classic play l...
Oct 28, 2024•42 min
Adam Rutherford gets to grips with the crisis in adult social care and asks, whose responsibility is it to fix it? David Goodhart, from the Policy Exchange think tank, writes about the huge changes that have been wrought on family life over the past 60 years and how they have impacted the way in which we live and care for each other. In his new book, The Care Dilemma, he argues that we are in desperate need of a new policy settlement that not only supports gender equality, but also recognises th...
Oct 21, 2024•42 min
Yuval Noah Harari’s best-selling Sapiens explored human’s extraordinary progress alongside the capacity to spin stories. In Nexus he focuses on how those stories have been shared and manipulated, and how the flow of information has made, and unmade, our world. With examples from the ancient world, to contemporary democracies and authoritarian regimes, he pits the pursuit of truth against the desire to control the narrative. And warns against the dangers of allowing AI to dominate information net...
Oct 14, 2024•42 min
The prize-winning writer Richard Powers moves from the forests and outer space in his last two novels The Overstory and Bewilderment, to dive into the vast and mysterious ocean in his latest work, Playground. Through the lives of four main characters he explores the ubiquity of play in the natural world, and the role technology is playing in the game of evolution. The scuba diving philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith concludes his three part exploration of the origins of intelligence, with Living on ...
Oct 07, 2024•42 min
The best-selling historian William Dalrymple presents India as the great superpower of ancient times in The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World. He argues that for more than a millennium India art, religions, technology, astronomy, music and mathematics spread far and wide from the Red Sea to the Pacific, and its influence was unprecedented, but now largely forgotten. China’s significance has long been celebrated and understood, with reference to the ancient trading routes linki...
Sep 30, 2024•42 min
‘Professor Risk’ David Spiegelhalter delves into the data and statistics to explore the forces of chance, ignorance and luck in The Art of Uncertainty. Whereas life is uncertain, he shows how far the circumstances of how, when and where you were born have an overriding influence on your future. But he warns against confusing the improbable with the impossible. The novelist Roddy Doyle returns to the fortunes of one of his iconic characters, Paula Spencer, in his new book, The Woman Behind The Do...
Sep 23, 2024•42 min
The historian Timothy Snyder is famous for his work on the horrors of the 20th century and his call to arms to fight against tyranny in the 21st. Now, in ‘On Freedom’ he explores what liberty really means. He challenges the idea that this is freedom ‘from’ state or other obligations, and explores how across the US, Russia and Ukraine, true liberty is the freedom ‘to’ thrive and take risks. The Ukrainian poet, Oskana Maksymchuk also considers the question of freedom in her collection, Still City,...
Sep 16, 2024•42 min
The author and poet Kathleen Jamie celebrates a new form of writing – weaving personal notes, prose poems and acts of witness – in her latest book, Cairn. The new collection is a meditation on the preciousness and precariousness of both memory and the natural world. The broadcaster Jennifer Lucy Allan has taken a closer look at the relationship between humans and the earth in her book Clay. From the first clay tablets to the throwing of pots on a wheel, the history of this everyday material is b...
Jul 01, 2024•42 min
How do animals detect natural disasters before they happen? Martin Wikelski, Director of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour at the University of Konstanz argues they have a ‘sixth sense’ that humans are only just beginning to understand. In his book, The Internet of Animals, he reveals the extraordinary network of information gathered by tagging and tracking thousands of animals across the world. At the University of Glasgow researchers have been looking at how technology can be used t...
Jun 24, 2024•42 min
British social etiquette might be famed for its liberal use of please and thank you, but civility is very much a European import, according to John Gallagher, professor of Early Modern History at the University of Leeds. As courtiers visited the French and Italian courts in the 16th century they not only learnt new languages but new rules of behaviour too. As the century progressed civility began to be weaponised as travellers sought to distinguish themselves from the ‘barbarous’ foreigners. The...
Jun 17, 2024•42 min
Why are there areas of severe deprivation in prosperous countries, and how can prosperity be shared more equally? Those are the questions the world-renowned development economist Paul Collier explores in his book, Left Behind: A New Economics for Neglected Places. He looks at areas that were once thriving – from the mining towns of South Yorkshire to the bustling city ports in Colombia – to explore widening inequality, but also to offer ideas of economic renewal. Matthew Xia directs the UK premi...
Jun 10, 2024•42 min
In front of an audience at the Hay Literary Festival Adam Rutherford talks to the botanist and Native American Robin Wall Kimmerer. In her book, Braiding Sweetgrass she shows the importance of bringing together indigenous wisdom and scientific knowledge, to increase understanding of the languages and worlds of plants and animals. Hugh Warwick is an expert on hedgehogs but in his latest book, Cull of the Wild, he focuses on animals less native, and beloved. From grey squirrels in Anglesey to cane...
Jun 03, 2024•42 min
The American author Marilynne Robinson is celebrated as a writer of fiction and non-fiction that raises philosophical questions about how to live an ethical life. In her latest book, Reading Genesis, she explores the stories in the Bible and God’s promise of enduring covenant with humanity. The writer Naomi Alderman grew up with stories from the Old Testament, and although no longer a believer, attests to the power and strangeness of these ancient stories. She wishes they were as popular as the ...
May 27, 2024•41 min
The National Gallery in London is displaying Caravaggio’s last painting, The Martyrdom of Saint Ursula (until 21 July 2024), an extraordinary work depicting the violence and intense naturalism of the scene, and the painter’s revolutionary use of dramatic lighting. The curator Francesca Whitlum-Cooper says Caravaggio changed the art world in the 17th century. But the painter was as famous for his personal life as his art: he left murder and mayhem in his wake as he attempted to evade the law. For...
May 20, 2024•42 min
As a new exhibition opens in Liverpool exploring the survival of bees Start the Week takes stock of the life and times of this extraordinary insect. The artist Wolfgang Buttress uses a fusion of art, science and technology to create a sensory experience of the sights and sounds of bees. Bees: A Story of Survival is on at the World Museum, Liverpool until May 2025. They’ve been around for over 120 million years and Lars Chittka, Professor of Sensory and Behavioural Ecology at Queen Mary Universit...
May 13, 2024•42 min
May Day is the title of Jackie Kay’s new collection. The former Makar of Scotland explores a history of political protest, and the cultural influencers of the past, from Rabbie Burns to the poet Audre Lorde and Paul Robeson. She also celebrates the lives and activism of her parents, and grieves for their loss. The Green MP Caroline Lucas wants to reclaim and rewrite England’s national story in her book, Another England. By exploring its radical tradition through its literary heritage she seeks t...
May 06, 2024•42 min
The astrophysicist Professor Lisa Kaltenegger is like an explorer of old, but her voyage takes her far from earth, planet hunting across the universe. She is Director of the Carl Sagan Institute to Search for Life in the Cosmos at Cornell University, and in her new book Alien Earths she describes the very latest discoveries of exoplanets which are the best contenders for harbouring alien life. Claudia de Rham is Professor of Theoretical Physics at Imperial College London and in her book The Beau...
Apr 29, 2024•42 min
London, and the river that runs through it, is at the heart of the new play London Tide, an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend. Ben Power has adapted the novel and co-written original songs with the singer-songwriter PJ Harvey. He tells Adam Rutherford that although it combines the savage satire and social analysis of the original, it is, in essence, a love letter to the capital. London Tide is playing at the National Theatre until 22nd June. The award-winning architect Amanda Leve...
Apr 22, 2024•42 min
2024 has been dubbed the year of elections, as at least 64 countries – including the UK – are heading for the polls. Tom Sutcliffe and guests explore the state of democracy. The political philosopher Erica Benner reflects on the tensions in liberal democracy in her book, Adventures in Democracy: The Turbulent World of People Power. From her childhood in post-war Japan, to working in post-communist Poland, and with forays into ancient Greece and Renaissance Erica Benner looks at the role of ordin...
Apr 15, 2024•42 min
Humankind’s relationship with music can be traced back millions of years and across continents. In Sound Tracks the archaeologist Graeme Lawson unearths some of the oldest instruments, from water-filled pots in Peru from AD700 that chirp like a bird, to bells from a tomb in 5th century China. He argues that music is part of what makes us human. An ancient horn, played from a watchtower on Hadrian's Wall, is a far cry from the modern version the award-winning trumpeter Alison Balsom plays. She is...
Apr 08, 2024•42 min
The historian Michael Taylor looks back at the past tug of war between religion and science, and how the discovery of ancient bones challenged religious orthodoxy. Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin and the War Between Science and Religion is the story of a group of people whose insights tested beliefs about creation and cosmology, and ushered in the secular age. But Nick Spencer from the thinktank Theos dismisses the idea that science has rightly relegated religion to the margins. In his ne...
Apr 01, 2024•42 min
The Vietnamese American writer Viet Thanh Nguyen was awarded the Pulitzer prize for his debut novel The Sympathiser in 2016. Now he turns his attention to memoir, in A Man of Two Faces. He was four when he was forced to flee Vietnam with his family, but as he looks back at his life he explores the necessity of forgetting and remembering, and how far the promise and dream of America can be trusted. The journalist and Deputy Editor of Harper’s Bazaar Helena Lee wants to showcase the voices and exp...
Mar 25, 2024•42 min
Andrey Kurkov is Ukraine’s most celebrated novelist. When Russia invaded Ukraine he turned his writing to journalism and memoir, but his latest book is a work of fiction set amid the chaos of the Russian Revolution. The Silver Bone (translated by Boris Dralyuk) is the first in a trilogy of historical mysteries in which the recently orphaned detective investigates his first case while Bolsheviks, Cossacks, and white Army Guards all vie to take control of Kyiv. The journalist and writer Peter Pome...
Mar 18, 2024•42 min
The Nobel prize winning molecular biologist Venki Ramakrishnan explores how time affects our bodies, brains and emotions in his new book, Why We Die: The New Science of Ageing and the Quest for Immortality. As he explains the recent scientific breakthroughs to extend lifespan by altering our biology, he also considers the ethical questions such efforts raise. The neuroscientist Charan Ranganath asks a different question in his book, Why We Remember. Using case studies he unveils the principles b...
Mar 11, 2024•42 min
The plant Rafflesia has the world’s largest flowers and gives off one of the worst scents; it’s also something of a biological enigma, a leafless parasite that lives off forest vines. For the botanist Chris Thorogood, an expert in parasitic and carnivorous plants at the Oxford Botanic Garden and Arboretum, Rafflesia is also an obsession. In his book, Pathless Forest, he goes in search of this mysterious plant in some of the last wildernesses in South East Asia. Dr Kelsey Byers is an evolutionary...
Mar 04, 2024•42 min
Over the past 50 years, worldwide obesity rates have tripled, and now headlines increasingly shout of a public health crisis, even an obesity epidemic. Tom Sutcliffe explores the consequences of using such negative and emotional language to describe weight and the increasing rates of fat phobia in society. He looks at the health issues and the so-called ‘miracle drugs’ that suppress appetite, and where genetics and diet meet. He’s joined by Naveed Sattar, Professor of Metabolic Medicine at the U...
Feb 26, 2024•42 min
The journalist and broadcaster Ellen E. Jones explores the immense potential of film to challenge the status quo in her book, Screen Deep: How Film And TV Can Solve Racism And Save The World. She explores different genres from superheroes and westerns to horror and arthouse. And she argues that such a popular art form - either shared in the cinema, or beamed direct into your home – revels in the diversity of its story-telling. The Iranian-Australian filmmaker Noora Niasari has chosen to draw fro...
Feb 19, 2024•42 min
Ancient Greece and Rome loom large in the understanding of the roots of Western Civilisation, but the Professor of Ancient History Josephine Quinn wants to challenge that simple narrative. In How The World Made The West – A 4,000 Year History she shows how western values were developed by long-standing links between a much larger group of cultures, from the Gobi Desert to the Atlantic Ocean and beyond. The British Museum’s major new exhibition Legion looks at life in the Roman army (on until 23r...
Feb 12, 2024•42 min
The trade in opium formed a backdrop to Amitav Ghosh’s best-selling novels, The Ibis Trilogy. In his latest work of non-fiction, Smoke and Ashes, he investigates the impact of that trade on Britain, India and China, and follows the money that was made by some of America’s most powerful and well-respected families. He reveals how the poppy plant enabled the financial survival of Empire and proved catastrophic for Indian farmers and Chinese users. In the 21st century Afghanistan became the biggest...
Feb 05, 2024•42 min
