Start the Week

Searching for economic solutions 01.06.2026 42min

What are the biggest problems facing the economy - and how might we set about dealing with them - from inequality to inflation, domestic growth to geopolitics? On Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, setting the cultural agenda every Monday, Tom Sutcliffe leads a conversation exploring what the solutions might look like.Jeremy Hunt’s new book Can We Be Rich Again?: The Surprising Potential of Britain's Economy makes the case for optimism. The former Chancellor of the Exchequer outlines current problems – low growth, high public debt and taxes, stagnant living standards and divided politics, but he argues Britain still has a lot going for it - the tech sector, financial services and respected institutions. He says if the British economy is to grow again, politicians need to get better at delivering their plans.Mariana Mazzucato believes we need to rethink the way we manage economics with government and business working together to promote human flourishing. For her, the problems are deepening inequality, the climate crisis and declining public trust. She is Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College, London where she is the Founding Director of the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. Her new book The Common Good Economy: A New Compass sets out how the economy could be designed to serve people and the planet better.And, how has the way that we think and talk about the global economy and national problems changed in recent years? Patrick Foulis is contributing editor at the Financial Times, a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution and author of a forthcoming book on globalisation. Producer: Ruth Watts

Mythmaking at Hay: from Medea to Rasputin 25.05.2026 42min

In front of an audience at the Hay Festival, Tom Sutcliffe hosts Radio 4's discussion programme which starts the week, bringing together three thinkers who each, in different ways, examine the stories societies tell about themselves, and how those stories become enduring myths.Historian Antony Beevor investigates the life of Rasputin, a figure who has long hovered between fact and legend. His new work asks how a barely literate peasant from Siberia, the so-called ‘mad monk’, managed to bewitch the Romanovs, and how the wild stories that swirled around him, inexorably led to the Tsar’s downfall. Philosopher Susan Neiman turns to the moral narratives that underpin contemporary political life. Her work asks whether universal values can still guide societies when myths of division are so compelling.Classicist, broadcaster and performer Natalie Haynes brings the ancient world into sharp modern focus. Her retellings of Greek myths restore voice and agency to characters, particularly women, who have been sidelined or simplified by centuries of interpretation. Her latest novel, No Friend to This House, puts the abandoned Medea centre stage.Producer: Katy Hickman

Farming, food production and rural life 18.05.2026 42min

What is the future of farming and rural life? Adam Rutherford hosts Radio 4's discussion programme which starts the week, asking about the future of food production and the communities that support it. Minette Batters was the first female president of the National Farmers’ Union. Born and raised on the family farm that she took over running, she became a committed advocate for the UK farming industry. UK agriculture has faced challenges from Brexit, Covid as well as international conflict and energy crises. Her new book, Harvest, part memoir and manifesto, makes a case for how and why we must rally to support British farming and rural life. Dave Goulson is Professor of Biology at the University of Sussex. Modern, intensive farming systems producing pesticide-laced foods at scale, he says, are bad for us and bad for the planet. He believes that it is time to change the way we produce food today, making the case for sustainable agriculture. In Eat the Planet Well he argues that consumers can lead this change, even where governments fail to act. Melissa Harrison has written columns, nature diaries, a series of novels and non fiction books including All Among the Barley, Rain and At Hawthorn Time, and a book for children. Her latest novel, The Given World, is a portrait of rural society, village life and the English countryside which explores a way of life, exploring social tension and the rhythms of the natural world. Producer: Ruth Watts Assistant Producer: Emily Channon

German history 11.05.2026 40min

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 history of East Germany which concentrated on the consequences the Nazi rule and the Second World War. Now the Anglo-German Historian has turned her attention to Weimar, the town that gave its name to the ambitious republic whose failure paved the way to Nazism. Looking at the stories of a series of varied individuals, she asks how a nation that prided itself on its culture and civility enabled Nazism and why it haunts us to this day because we fear a repeat. Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe is BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week for a fortnight.Art historian John-Paul Stonard's new book is The Worst Exhibition in the World: Degenerate Art, 1937. The exhibition of Entartete Kunst ('degenerate art') was held in the Hofgarten arcade in Munich in the summer of 1937. Just a few weeks earlier, the same paintings and sculptures by modern German artists had been on display in some of the most prestigious museums in Germany. An extensive propaganda campaign of confiscation and defamation by the Nazis saw the condemnation of works by Jews, Bolsheviks and the enemies of the German Reich. It remains one of the most visited exhibitions ever - and it shaped views of modern art well into the second half of the twentieth century.Julia Boyd's There is Sweet Music Here: The World of Wigmore Hall tells the story of London's privately run music venue. During the Second World War it was possible for audiences to hear exiled German and Austrian Jewish musicians playing Beethoven among a wide range of recitals. Other concerts programmed included Entartete Musik (forbidden or so-called 'degenerate Music’), including the banned composer Gustav Mahler. Producer: Ruth Watts

Laurie Anderson: Strange and Disorientating Landscapes 04.05.2026 41min

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 80s hit Big Science, to illuminate the political and emotional strangeness of the present moment. (Her new album, Let X=X is released on May 8, 2026)Writer Nina Allan reflects on co-authoring The Illuminated Man, the biography her late husband, the novelist Christopher Priest, had started about J. G. Ballard. She explores Ballard’s singular imagination, shaped by wartime internment in Shanghai, and his repeated motifs of flooded cities, drained swimming pools, and the violence seeping through gated communities seen in books including Empire of the Sun, Crash and The Drowned World. Art historian Joy Sleeman introduces the first major UK exhibition devoted to the American artist Nancy Holt, MoonSunStarEarthSkyWater, at the Goodwood Art Foundation (until November 2026). She reveals how Holt’s land art, from her 18 feet long concrete Sun Tunnels to a posthumous installation Hydra’s Head, invites viewers into cosmic and elemental landscapes where art and the environment meet.Producer: Katy Hickman Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez

Chemical Reactions 27.04.2026 42min

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 and the reactions that sustain all life, while recounting her own story, from childhood in post war Nigeria to a groundbreaking career designing treatments for blindness.Science historian Kit Chapman introduces The Age of Alchemy, tracing the long, global evolution of chemistry before it became a modern science. Travelling from ancient Sri Lankan steel forges to Egyptian alchemical texts and Chinese herbal laboratories, he reveals how early experimenters, merging mysticism, medicine and metallurgy, laid crucial foundations for scientific method and discovery.Professor Mark Miodownik set up the Institute for Making at University College London and is Royal Society Professor of Public Engagement with Science. He is a leading materials scientist who has led work on plastic waste and biodegradable plastics. He discusses the latest research on the chemical composition of the things we are making, and the things we throw away. Producer: Ruth Watts

Why Stuff Matters: Objects, Power and the Past 20.04.2026 41min

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.Theatre director Greg Doran set himself the task of tracking down the surviving copies of Shakespeare’s First folio, after the death of his husband the actor Antony Sher. He recounts his worldwide quest in Walking Shadow: Love, Loss and Shakespeare, which also reveals the importance of the enduring physical presence of Shakespeare’s work.Dr Sophia Adams, curator at the British Museum, discusses the extraordinary Melsonby Hoard, the largest collection of Iron Age metalwork ever found in Britain, and what its burnt and buried objects reveal about power, ritual and life before the Roman conquest. The exhibition, Chariots, Treasure and Power: Secrets of the Melsonby Hoard, will go on display at the Yorkshire Museum, York from 15th May 2026.Producer: Katy HickmanAssistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez

Challenges and solutions 13.04.2026 41min

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 Others Won’t.But Nicolas Niarchos questions how we live sustainably when the hidden costs of the green transition can be so devastating. In The Elements of Power he investigates the global supply of rare earth metals, essential for decarbonisation, and the terrible, bloody human cost for those involved in their extraction.Natasha Walter explores how activism is being reshaped in the era of climate emergency. In Feminism for a World on Fire, she reflects on the movements fighting for justice, and asks what forms of solidarity and resistance are needed when the planet itself is under threat.Together, the panel consider the innovations, compromises and moral dilemmas that come with trying to live well on a warming planet.Producer: Katy Hickman Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez

Zoos, sex and conservation 06.04.2026 41min

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 how our Planet is Populated, uncovering how mating strategies and reproductive behaviour evolved across species. From Californian Condors to clownfish, the dazzling array of ways in which the animal kingdom procreates is both baffling and astonishing.Cultural historian Elsa Richardson, from the University of Strathclyde, discusses her latest research into the archives of Edinburgh Zoo, revealing a rich and little‑known record of early zoological observation, public spectacle and the shifting moral landscapes of how people have imagined, displayed and interpreted animal behaviour.And Sarah Forsyth, Curator of Mammals at ZSL, reflects on the history of the organisation and offers insights into the crucial conservation work that the Zoo is involved in today. From field programmes to breeding initiatives, Sarah explores how modern zoos can help safeguard species and shape our understanding of animals in a rapidly changing world.Producer: Natalia Fernandez Senior Producer: Katy Hickman

Industrial action: from 1926 General Strike to today 30.03.2026 41min

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 the confrontation reveals about national identity, political authority and collective action.Professor Jane Holgate, a long time trade unionist and community organiser, reflects on the dynamics of solidarity. She is the co-author of Changemakers, a study of radical strategies for social movement organising, the evolving role of unions, and what effective action looks like in a fragmented modern economy.The Financial Times journalist and editor of the Working It brand Isabel Berwick looks ahead to the future of work, assessing how technology, demographic change and shifting employee expectations are reshaping the workplace.Producer: Katy Hickman Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez

Growing Up 23.03.2026 41min

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 ways childhood experiences reverberate across a lifetime. Filmmaker and writer Penny Woolcock grew up in a British enclave in Argentina. Her coming-of-age memoir, The Man Who Gave Me a Biscuit: Love and Death in Argentina, interweaves memories of teenage rebellion with the buried histories of genocide, authoritarianism and a society built on repression. The historian Laura Tisdall discusses We Have Come to Be Destroyed, her vivid account of growing up in Cold War Britain, revealing how young people challenged the world adults made for them - from activism and anxieties about the future, to everyday resistance against narrow expectations.Producer: Katy Hickman Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez

Consciousness and Identity 16.03.2026 41min

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 neuroscience, philosophy and plant biology reveal about awareness.Cultural historian Fay Bound-Alberti traces the long, complex history of the human face, showing how it has been used to define identity, moral character and social status, and how new technologies – from photography to facial recognition – shape our understanding of selfhood in the modern world.Mary Costello’s latest novel A Beautiful Loan, focuses on the life of Anna Hughes, a woman looking back across decades of love, loss and betrayal as she tries to understand the choices that shaped her and the deeper self she learns, slowly, to claim.Producer: Katy Hickman Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez

Under the sea 09.03.2026 41min

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 the unlikely treasure hunter to search for the shipwreck of an eighteenth century galleon, the San José. Laden with riches on its way to the New World, it was sunk in a fierce battle and its location was forgotten for centuries. The pursuit is a tale of maritime archaeology, rival treasure hunters, legal and political obstacles and the challenge of narrowing the search to a small area of the sea bed. We think of the internet as wireless, but it is connected by nearly 900,000 miles of fiber-optic cables at the bottom of the ocean, stitching whole continents together. In The Web Beneath the Waves, the journalist Samanth Subramanian explains the secretive cable-laying operations behind the world of undersea infrastructure. He discovers the environmental risks to them, corporate interests over them and the acts of “grey zone warfare” when ghost ships cut the cables of other countries.Joan Passey is a senior lecturer in English at Bristol University and a BBC Arts and Humanities Research Council New Generation Thinker. She is the co-founder of the Haunted Shores Network and a leading researcher in literary study of coasts and seascapes, combining an understanding of folklore, myth and technology. Producer: Ruth Watts

Reading and storytelling 02.03.2026 41min

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 the value of reading and the simple pleasure of picking up a book cut through? Tom Sutcliffe chairs Radio 4's discussion programme which starts the week. His guests are:Margaret Busby was Britain's first Black woman publisher who has enjoyed a 50 year career at the centre of cultural life and the book trade. Among her achievements she founded a publishing house, edited the ground-breaking international anthologies Daughters of Africa and New Daughters of Africa and championed authors marginalised by the mainstream. Her new book Part of the Story: Writings from Half a Century features her own literary output from between 1966 and 2023. Sarah Dillon, Professor at the University of Cambridge, has looked at the question 'what are you reading?' The books we encounter shape the choices we make and when it comes to scientists, it appears that ideas from imaginative literature influence their thinking. Storylistening: Narrative Evidence and Public Reasoning, co-authored with Dr Claire Craig, former Director of the UK Government Office for Science, makes the case for the value of attention to stories in decision making.Lottie Moggach is an arts journalists and writer of literary thrillers - she's also edited, researched and taught writing. Her latest novel, Mrs Pearcey, is Victorian true crime novel. She reflects on historical fiction, her own reading and working as a writer today. Producer: Ruth Watts

Thinking about war 23.02.2026 41min

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 political calculation, military tactics, organisational behaviour, character and psychology.A new exhibition opens in March at the Imperial War Museum, London titled Beauty and Destruction: Wartime London in Art. The curator Rebecca Newell explains what we learn from the ways in which artists recorded changes to the city during the Second World War in paintings, drawings and film.The Hôtel Lutetia, the grand hotel on Paris's Left Bank, has over the years drawn bohemians and great artists, including Matisse and Picasso. However, for a short period around the Second World War, the hotel was witness to significant events. Jane Rogoyska's new book Hotel Exile: Paris in the Shadow of War peoples the hotel with the intellectual and refugees gathering there in the 1930s, the men of the German military intelligence service who made it their headquarters and the deportees returning from concentration camps.Producer: Ruth Watts

Breakage and repair 16.02.2026 41min

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 reckoning of a man who resists facing his life and legacy. The Turkish writer, Ece Temulkuran's new book Nation of Strangers: Rebuilding a Home in the 21st Century explores the rising global displacement of people who will need to forge stronger connections amid political and social upheaval. In an investigation of money laundering, Oliver Bullough's Everybody Loves Our Dollars sets out the scale of the problem and why we are failing to tackle the global systems that allow illicit money to move freely using sites as varied as Bicester Shopping Village in Oxfordshire and a casino in Vancouver, Canada. Producer: Ruth Watts

Fun and games 09.02.2026 41min

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 reduced to points.Journalist and critic Keza MacDonald discusses Super Nintendo, her cultural history of the iconic console, tracing how its games, aesthetics and innovations transformed the medium and helped define what play means for generations of players.The Financial Times' commentator Stephen Bush examines the growing role of games and game like incentives in public life, exploring how the techniques of play — from reward structures to competitive framing — are reshaping political behaviour and communication.Producer: Katy Hickman

Censorship 02.02.2026 42min

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 the pervasive influence of corporate power, social media and dominant interest groups in democracies. Baroness Helena Kennedy has written the introduction to collected writings of Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist who was murdered outside her home in Moscow twenty years ago. With continued attacks in Russia on press freedom, the way she spoke truth to power remains inspirational for Baroness Kennedy. The figure of the Samurai is often associated with ideas about discipline, sacrifice and war but a new exhibition at the British Museum (on until May 4th) looks at the way this warrior class became consumers and patrons of culture. Rosina Buckland has co-curated the show. Producer: Ruth Watts

Biology, technology and the future 26.01.2026 42min

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 Future of Species Authoring Life by Means of Artificial Biological Intelligence' he imagines a future where - we grow houses rather than build them; smartphones are living; clothing has opinions; all human knowledge fits into a speck of DNA; disease is a thing of the past; and the human lifespan is dramatically extended.What can we learn by combining cognitive science and artificial intelligence? In The Emergent Mind, a new book co-authored by Gaurav Suri, looks at how a data-driven neural network can create thoughts, emotions, and ideas – a mind – in both humans and machines alike. He argues that if we want to understand intelligence then we should look at the concept of neural network, the framework inspired by the human brain that lies behind Artificial Intelligence. He explains a new idea 'emergence' - and what it may mean.Joanna Kavenna's latest novel, Seven is a satire about a game without rules. It encompasses encounters with philosophy, artificial intelligence and dreams, poetry and the natural world. The plot travels through time and space, in a world without boundaries and where nothing can be pinned down and everything is in flux. It raises questions about how much we can truly know about reality. Producer: Ruth Watts

Rethinking politics 19.01.2026 41min

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 proffering empty promises. In her new book, Politics without Politicians she posits that, among other solutions, we need Athenian style participation through mechanisms such as civic lotteries. More people need to be involved first hand in decision making if everyone is to feel heard. Author and broadcaster Phil Tinline explains why he thinks politicians need to start thinking and talking about power again if they are to stand a chance of delivering on their promises. He argues that if nothing ever changes, then we need to understand who has too much power and who has too little and be prepared to do something about it. Michael Gove is the editor of The Spectator and a member of the House of Lords. He has extensive experience of government, serving in cabinet under four prime ministers between 2010 and 2024. It is widely acknowledged among, both his admirers and his critics, that he rapidly got to grips with his department's brief and knew exactly how to drive an agenda for change. He reflects on his experiences. Producer: Ruth Watts