In a year when Covid-19 has had a devastating effect on families, with loved ones dying sometimes alone in hospital or without the usual funeral rites, Tom Sutcliffe and guests discuss mortality and what it means to have ‘a good death’. In her latest book, Should We Stay Or Should We Go, the writer Lionel Shriver explores a number of alternative endings. The couple at the centre of her novel make a pact to end their lives when they hit 80, to avoid a slow decline either physically or mentally. A...
Jun 07, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast DH Lawrence was once a towering figure in literature in the 20th century but his reputation has taken a battering, with accusations of nostalgia, self-indulgence and misogyny. But Frances Wilson tells Andrew Marr that it’s time to look again at this complex and courageous man, and the full spectrum of work he produced – from his novels, poetry, criticism and letters. In Burning Man Wilson focuses on a decade in his life from the suppression of The Rainbow in 1915 through his years of travelling ...
May 31, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Once-indomitable glaciers – from high up in the Himalayas to the polar regions – are today in grave peril, as our climate warms at an accelerating rate. The glaciologist Jemma Wadham says that melting ice sheets not only leads to meltwater overwhelming sensitive marine ecosystems but could also release vast quantities of methane. In her book Ice Rivers she shows that far from being freezing sterile environments, the world’s glaciers are teeming with microbial life, as rich and fascinating as the...
May 24, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Nobel prize-winning economist and Professor of Psychology Daniel Kahneman focuses his latest research on the high cost of inconsistent decision making. In Noise, co-authored with Oliver Sibony and Cass R Sunstein, he looks at why humans can be so unreliable, and what can be done about it. He tells Andrew Marr that people working in the same job often make wildly different judgements, influenced by factors like their current mood, when they last ate, even the weather. He argues that ‘noise’ i...
May 17, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Sackler name is more often associated with philanthropy and lavish donations in the arts and sciences. But the investigative reporter Patrick Radden Keefe tells another story in Empire of Pain. He questions how much of the Sackler wealth was made from the making and aggressive marketing of the painkiller, Oxycontin. He tells Amol Rajan of the misery that has unfolded in today’s opioid crisis – an epidemic of drug addiction which has killed nearly half a million people in the US. The direct m...
May 10, 2021•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast The looting of art in war time is nothing new, but Napoleon took it to new heights: demanding of his defeated enemies across Italy their most valuable statues and paintings. Cynthia Saltzman’s Napoleon’s Plunder tells the story of how the most magnificent works of the High Renaissance – by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Titian and Veronese – went on triumphant display in the Louvre. She tells Andrew Marr how Paris was transformed during this period into the art capital of Europe, and the role art p...
May 03, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast What it means to be a black Christian woman in the UK is at the heart of Chine McDonald’s new book, God Is Not a White Man. Part memoir and part theological and historical study, McDonald looks back at the role the Christian faith has played over the centuries in perpetuating ideas of white supremacy. She tells Tom Sutcliffe that black women in the church have stayed silent too long. The writer Jeet Thayil re-imagines the story of the New Testament through the eyes of the women suppressed and er...
Apr 26, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast The French writer Laurent Binet’s new book Civilisations is a flight of fancy re-imagining the modern world. He tells Andrew Marr that his counter-factual novel looks at what could have happened if the Vikings had made it to America, Columbus had failed, and the Incas and Aztecs had ended up fighting over the colonisation of Europe. Caroline Dodds Pennock, one of the world’s foremost historians of Mesoamerican culture, considers the experiences of Indigenous Americans (such as the Aztecs, Maya, ...
Apr 19, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast In 1962 the world teetered on the edge of nuclear destruction as the Presidents of the USA and the Soviet Union fought over Soviet warheads installed on the islands of Cuba. In Nuclear Folly: A New History of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the historian Serhii Plokhy retells the tortuous decision-making and calculated brinkmanship of John F Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro. He tells Amol Rajan it was ultimately fear that saved the planet, and it’s time to draw lessons from the many mistake...
Apr 12, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Reports of a mental health epidemic among young people both leading up to and during the pandemic are now widespread. Sally Holland is the Children’s Commissioner for Wales and a former social worker. She tells Andrew Marr that mental health services in Wales, and the rest of the UK, need a serious rethink, because too many children are waiting too long for help. But the health researcher and psychologist Lucy Foulkes asks whether we have become fixated with labelling the stresses and challenges...
Apr 05, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Tom Tugendhat MP is the Conservative chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee. He tells Andrew Marr that he’s very much focused on British foreign policy priorities after Brexit. But the government’s new Trade Bill is facing opposition from those insisting that human rights abuses must be investigated before any deals are done. The MP for Tonbridge and Malling also highlights the need to be more aware of China’s economic ambitions and global role. Geeta Tharmaratnam is keen that more focus should ...
Mar 29, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Edward St Aubyn is the award-winning author of the Patrick Melrose series. His new novel, Double Blind, also revolves around transformation and the headlong pursuit of knowledge. He tells Tom Sutcliffe that his characters range across the sciences – from genetics to ecology to psychoanalysis. And their investigations into inheritance, freedom and consciousness intertwine with their feelings of love, fear and greed. Isaac Newton is often revered as the scientific genius of the 18th century: an un...
Mar 22, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast The journalist Matthew d’Ancona attacks the torpor and complacency which has come to dominate the political landscape. In Identity, Ignorance, Innovation he analyses what’s gone wrong in Britain from education and social care, to technological inequality. He tells Andrew Marr that far from demonising identity politics, the right needs to embrace a diversity of voices. But identity politics has become a major battleground in the culture wars in Britain and the US. The writer Kenan Malik has been ...
Mar 15, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast 400 years ago Robert Burton produced his labyrinthine masterpiece, The Anatomy of Melancholy – a work which was celebrated in the Renaissance for its understanding of the huge variety of causes, symptoms and cures of mental distress. In A User’s Guide To Melancholy the academic Mary Ann Lund looks back to this precursor of the self-help book. She tells Amol Rajan that we have much to learn from those who struggled with melancholy in the past. In Heavy Light, the writer Horatio Clare shares how h...
Mar 08, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast The deep sea is the last, vast wilderness on Earth. In The Brilliant Abyss the marine biologist Helen Scales dives below the surface to tell the story of our relationship with the ocean floor. With an average depth of 12,000 feet it remains a frontier for new discoveries and extraordinary creatures. But Helen Scales warns Andrew Marr of the unfolding environmental disasters as people seek to exploit this new world, far beyond the public gaze. The writer Philip Hoare explores nature through the w...
Mar 01, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Kerri ní Dochartaigh was born in Derry-Londonderry at the height of the Troubles, to a Catholic mother and Protestant father. In Thin Places she traces a life affected by poverty, loss and violence, and the invisible border that runs through it. But she tells Kirsty Wark how the natural world has helped heal the traumas of childhood. For the writer Sally Bayley it was Shakespeare that brought her solace and ignited her imagination. Growing up in a working class household with no father figures B...
Feb 22, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast What happens when real life collides with your digital existence – the writer and ‘Poet Laureate of Twitter’ Patricia Lockwood talks to Andrew Marr. In her highly original novel, No One is Talking About This, Lockwood’s narrator becomes overwhelmed as drama in the human world encroaches on the life she leads online. Roisin Kiberd is part of the internet generation and believes the line between online and IRL has become so porous as to become meaningless. From the lure of endless scrolling, to th...
Feb 15, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Britain is a direct product of its imperial past. So argues the writer Sathnam Sanghera in his latest book, Empireland. He tells Tom Sutcliffe how we need to move beyond simplistic feelings of shame or pride in Britain’s empire if we are to truly understand who we are. It’s not just the story of empire shaping modern Britain but the longer more entrenched history of class. In Snakes and Ladders: The Great British Social Mobility Myth, the historian Selina Todd explores how class distinctions sti...
Feb 08, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast He was born into abject poverty in Czechoslovakia, fought for the British and was decorated for his heroism in WWII, and became a successful businessman and press baron courted by political leaders around the world. Yet Robert Maxwell ended his life reviled as the embodiment of greed and corruption. The writer John Preston discusses his book, Fall: The Mystery of Robert Maxwell, with Andrew Marr. The journalist Julia Langdon was appointed the political editor of the Daily Mirror in 1984 when Max...
Feb 01, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Mariana Mazzucato, Professor of Economics at University College London, tells Amol Rajan it’s time western governments took a braver approach to the biggest problems of our time – inequality, disease and environmental crisis. In her book, Mission Economy, she argues that capitalism has foundered. Taking inspiration from President Kennedy’s decision in 1962 to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, she calls for a greater sense of purpose from governments and a bolder public-private coop...
Jan 25, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Francis Bacon is one of Britain’s greatest twentieth century artists – a painter who captured and exposed the darker, stranger sides of life. He is the subject of a new biography, Revelations, by Annalyn Swan and Mark Stevens. Swan tells Andrew Marr how Bacon often fashioned his own autobiography, revelling in story-telling while immersed in the Soho nightlife. Francis Bacon never hid his homosexuality, even at a time when it was illegal in Britain. The celebrated script writer Russell T Davies ...
Jan 18, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Acts of Union 1707 brought together England and Scotland, ‘United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain’. But the historian Karin Bowie tells Andrew Marr that in the years preceding a growing number of pamphlets and demonstrations showed that many people were divided on the issue. In ‘Public Opinion in Early Modern Scotland c.1560–1707’ Bowie charts the growing debate across society. The failure of Scotland’s trading ambitions in the Darien Scheme also hit the country hard, both fina...
Jan 11, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast 2020 has been disastrous for the arts in Britain and many people have lost their jobs as Covid-19 has swept through the country. Sir Nicholas Hytner has been working in the theatre for nearly four decades and he tells Andrew Marr about the unprecedented challenges that now face his industry. Hytner made his name and fortune in the 1990s with the musical Miss Saigon. Further successes came with theatre and film productions of The Madness of King George and The History Boys, and the sell-out One M...
Dec 28, 2020•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast As the 850th anniversary of the murder of Thomas Becket approaches Andrew Marr explores the dynamic between church and state and what happens when the most powerful political friendships turn sour. The academic Laura Ashe explains the background to the murder in the cathedral on 29th December 1170. King Henry II had promoted the lowly born Thomas Becket to the highest positions in the land – first Lord Chancellor, then Archbishop of Canterbury. But their growing animosity and conflict over the r...
Dec 21, 2020•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast Look into the night sky in the coming days and Jupiter and Saturn will appear closer than they’ve been since the early 17th century, according to the astronomer Stuart Clark. He tells Tom Sutcliffe it’s a beautiful great conjunction that happens once every 20 years, but this year is especially rare. In his book, Beneath the Night, Clark explores how the stars have shaped the history of humankind, inspiring awe and fascination throughout the centuries. It was the extremity and majesty of whales t...
Dec 14, 2020•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Why do we laugh? This is the question the evolutionary ecologist Jonathan Silvertown sets out to answer in his latest book, The Comedy of Error. He looks back at laughter’s evolutionary origins, and to the similarities and differences in humour across cultures. The sell-out comic Sindhu Vee swapped a career in investment banking for one in comedy. She is an expert at exploiting cultural differences in her jokes, having been born in India, lived and studied in the Philippines and the US, before s...
Dec 07, 2020•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast Amol Rajan explores different ways of thinking, and how far humans can be seen as unique for their ability to invent. In The Pattern Seekers, Simon Baron-Cohen shows how humans have evolved remarkable ingenuity in every area of their lives – from the arts to the sciences – by using complex systemizing mechanisms. He says this ability to formulate if-and-then processes has driven progress for more than 70,000 years. He goes on to argue that the areas of the brain important for systemizing overlap...
Nov 30, 2020•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast ‘A text is not a text unless it hides from the first comer, from the first glance, the law of its composition and the rules of its game. A text remains, moreover, forever imperceptible’. So wrote the superstar philosopher Jacques Derrida. But what does it mean to question and deconstruct everything we think we know? In a new biography of Derrida titled An Event, Perhaps, Peter Salmon explores the life and works of one of the most enigmatic of thinkers. He questions how far Derrida’s ideas have l...
Nov 23, 2020•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ireland itself is a main character in Kevin Barry's new short story collection, That Old Country Music. He brings the western regions to life in stories set firmly in Ireland's present day but with an ancient, magical past lingering in the background. A pregnant teenager waits for her robber boyfriend, a factory worker falls for a Polish waitress, and a police officer seeks a known criminal, in stories set amidst wild and flourishing countryside. The concrete walls and tower blocks of Peckham in...
Nov 16, 2020•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sir Roger Penrose was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in physics this year for his ground-breaking work on black holes and their relationship with the general theory of relativity. He looks back at his extraordinary career with Andrew Marr – from his early interest in mathematical patterns and the ‘impossible’ works of Escher, to his revolutionary use of mathematics in cosmology and his continued fascination with the beginning and end of time. Carlo Rovelli is a theoretical physicist who researc...
Nov 09, 2020•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
