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BBC Radio 4


Weekly discussion programme, setting the cultural agenda every Monday


Start the Week

The experimental cognitive psychologist and popular science writer, Steven Pinker delves into the intricacies of human interactions in his latest book, ‘When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...: Common Knowledge and the Science of Harmony, Hypocrisy and Outrage’. From avoiding the elephant in the room to the outing of the emperor’s new clothes, Pinker reveals the paradoxes of human behaviour. 

Common knowledge can bind people and communities together in a shared purpose, but Aleks Krotoski, the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s The Artificial Human and The Digital Human, journeys to the fringes of human endeavour in The Immortalists. There, Silicon Valley tech billionaires are using their wealth to focus on their own futures, attempting to disrupt and defy their own mortality.

How people behave to strangers and how much they’re willing to spend to help them, is at the heart of David Edmonds’s biography of the philosopher Peter Singer. Death in a Shallow Pond considers Singer’s most famous thought experiment and his contention that we’re morally obliged to come to the aid of those less fortunate if we can. It’s a practical philosophy that has divided opinion, but also inspired a new movement of effective altruism.

Producer: Katy Hickman
Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez

Steven Pinker on common knowledge

At the Contains Strong Language Festival in Bradford, Tom Sutcliffe and guests explore the history and culture of the city, and nation, through its poetry and stories. From battlefields and royal courts, coalmines to curry houses Start the Week looks at the language and rhythms that have captured the country.

 The historian Catherine Clarke is retelling the story of the past in a new way in ‘A History of England in 25 Poems’. From the 8th century to today these verses illuminate the experiences, emotions and imaginations of those who lived through it. 

As the 2025 City of Culture, Bradford gets an imaginative re-making in ‘The Book of Bradford: A City in Short Fiction’, a collection filled with rich diversity and youthful energy. Its editor Saima Mir, who grew up in the city, says the stories don’t avoid the scars of past challenges, but there’s pride in a city that has overcome differences and is looking ahead.

Moving on from the past is also reflected in Andrew McMillan’s debut novel, ‘Pity’, which follows three generations of a Yorkshire mining family, exploring themes of masculinity and post-industrial decline. As a prize-winning poet, McMillan will also be performing at the Contains Strong Language Festival in Bradford.

Producer: Katy Hickman
Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez

Contains Strong Language Festival, Bradford

Lyse Doucet tells the history of Afghanistan in recent decades through the story of the Inter-Continental hotel, which opened in the capital in 1969. The BBC’s international correspondent stayed there frequently from the late 1980s, and she details how the Soviet occupation, civil war, US invasion and the rise, fall and rise of the Taliban have all left their mark on 'The Finest Hotel in Kabul', and the people who worked there.

There’s plenty of pink champagne and fine dining in Michela Wrong’s study of the rise and fall of Mobutu Sese Seko, the charismatic dictator of Congo/ Zaire at the end of the 20th century. It’s 25 years since her biography, 'In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz', was published, and as the Democratic Republic of Congo appears to be on the brink of another civil war, she reflects on this latest cycle of violence.

There have been calls for international help in the DRC, but just how effective is military intervention in the long run? Ashleigh Percival-Borley served in Afghanistan in 2010 but had to watch from the sidelines as the US and UK abruptly pulled out a decade later, leaving a vacuum filled by the Taliban. Now, as a military historian and one of BBC Radio 4's researchers-in-residence, she’s interested in giving voice to women in war – not just as the victims, but as active participants. 
The New Generation Thinkers scheme, which puts research on radio, is a partnership between BBC Radio 4 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. 

Producer: Katy Hickman
Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez

Afghanistan and the DRC

The Booker prize winning novelist Arundhati Roy looks back at her foremost influences in her memoir, Mother Mary Comes To Me. While her writing and activism are shaped by early circumstances – both financial and political – at the centre is her relationship with her mother, who she describes as ‘my shelter and my storm’.

The poet Sarah Howe won the TS Eliot prize for poetry for her debut collection, Loop of Jade. In her new work, Foretokens, she returns to the complex inheritance of family and language, as she tries to piece together the fragmentary, often mythical, early life of her Chinese mother, given away at birth. 

The academic Lea Ypi travels through the history of Ottoman aristocracy to the making of modern Albania and the early days of communism as she attempts to retrace the life of her beloved grandmother. In her new book, Indignity: A Life Reimagined, she reveals the fragility of truth, as her own memories collide with secret police reports and newly discovered photographs.

Producer: Katy Hickman
Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez

Arundhati Roy and maternal inheritance

Sanctuary is an ancient idea of a place of refuge or freedom from harm. It has deep roots in the history, literature and myths of many cultures. Marina Warner’s new book Sanctuary explores travelling tales and concepts of hospitality and home - suggesting that myths, stories and works of art can be places of sanctuary too. 

The story of leprosy is a story of isolation and exclusion over thousands of years. In his book, Outcast, Oliver Basciano has written about his journey across the hinterlands of the world to demystify the lives of those who have been ostracised. He argues that the image we still hold onto of medieval leprosy is a nineteenth-century myth invented to justify the gross mistreatment of patients in the name of colonial, religious and economic exploitation. 

Churches are a spiritual home for some 200 million Christians worldwide, but they often hold a fascination and interest for the most committed atheist. A church is a place of sanctuary, but also a place where the drama of life is played out. Fergus Butler-Gallie is an Anglican priest and his new book Twelve Churches explores the history of Christianity through the places worshippers have built. 

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe
Producer: Ruth Watts

Sanctuary, refuge and exile

We think we know what a genius is: a tortured poet; rebellious scientist; monstrous artist; or a tech disruptor. You can tell what a society values by who it labels as a genius says Helen Lewis in her new book, The Genius Myth: The Dangerous Allure of Rebels, Monsters and Rule-Breakers. From Leonardo da Vinci to Elon Musk, she asks if the modern idea of genius, as a class of special people, is distorting our view of the world.

With ten platinum albums Tupac Shakur was one of the stars of hip hop music when he was murdered at the age of 25. His music was very influential and his name is also associated with the legacy of Black Panther politics. In Words for My Comrades: A Political Biography of Tupac Shakur, Dean Van Nguyen argues that while much of the energy of the Black political movement was absorbed by the commercial music culture of the 1990s – Tupac’s contribution lives on today. 

Gertrude Stein was considered a genius by some, a charlatan by others. She posed for Picasso’s portrait; hosted Matisse and Hemingway in Bohemian Paris; and she dazzled American crowds on her sell-out tour for her sensational Autobiography of Alice B Toklas, a version of the relationship with her partner. Francesca Wade’s new book Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife, explores the creation of the Stein myth. 

Presenter: Adam Rutherford
Producer: Ruth Watts

The Idea of Genius

There is a parallel world which operates under different rules and benefits those with money and power. That’s the argument made by the journalist Atossa Araxia Abrahamian in her new book The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the world. She traces the rise of a freeports, charter cities and offshore havens. 

Danny Dorling contends that we’re not very good at spotting the real crises we face today. In The Next Crisis: What We Think About the Future, he explains why the most urgent global crises are rarely the ones that hit the headlines. From inequality, immigration and international conflicts to climate change, pandemics and tsunamis, he challenges our assumptions about the threats we face and how we should think about our uncertain future.

It is time to reclaim online spaces, says Adele Zeynep Walton. In her new book Logging Off: The Human Cost of Our Digital World she explores how the price of the connections and conveniences of online life has been the mental health of a generation. She says that social media platforms and digital technology are making us vulnerable and it is time these spaces were governed and regulated.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe
Producer: Ruth Watts

Hidden spaces and dangerous places

Professor Frank Close looks at how the quest to understand radioactivity and the atomic nucleus was initially fired by scientific curiosity and then by more human motives. What began as collaboration between scientists in the pursuit of atomic energy was overwhelmed by politics and opened the way to the possibility of nuclear war. Frank Close’s Destroyer of Worlds: The Deep History of the Nuclear Age: 1895-1965 shows how scientific knowledge is often advanced by personal convictions and relationships and takes us into the rooms where discoveries and decisions were made. 

Nuclear energy is the most promising tool that we have to tackle the climate emergency, so argues Tim Gregory in his new book Going Nuclear How the Atom Will Save the World. He says it is time to debunk the myths about nuclear waste and radiation and that nuclear power is reliable and safe. Harnessing the atom is our best hope of providing abundant and clean energy to ensure an equitable and prosperous future. 

For Baroness Natalie Bennett, former leader of the Green Party, nuclear has been a continual disaster. As an energy source nuclear it has been impractical, inflexible and unreliable; a dinosaur technology whose use has declined. She believes that the continued appearance of nuclear in policy debates is a distraction from renewables and energy conservation. She believes that we have not found an adequate solution to the problem of nuclear waste. And in the field of defence, the majority of countries want a ban on nuclear weapons. 
 
Presenter: Shahidha Bari
Producer: Ruth Watts

The uses and abuses of the atom

In front of an audience at the Hay Literary Festival Tom Sutcliffe talks to The archaeologist and presenter of the hit TV show, The Great British Dig, Chloë Duckworth, who explains how every object tells a story. She reveals how even the rubbish our ancestors threw away can offer a window on the past and forge a connection with the present day. 

Business journalist Saabira Chaudhuri's new book Consumed, examines how companies have harnessed single-use plastics to turbocharge their profits over the last seventy years. Consumer goods makers have poured billions of dollars into convincing us we need disposable cups, bags, bottles, sachets and plastic-packaged ultra-processed foods. Taking in marketing, commercial strategy and psychology, she explains just how we got here. 

The paleobiologist Sarah Gabbott is more interested in looking at how what we throw away today becomes the fossils of tomorrow. Discarded (co-authored with Jan Zalasiewicz) highlights the cutting-edge science that is emerging to reveal the far-future human footprint on Earth.

Producer: Katy Hickman

Hay Festival: exposing the secrets of rubbish

In his new book, Blueprints, Marcus du Sautoy traces the connections between mathematics and art and the ways in which creatives use numbers to underpin their work – unconsciously or otherwise. From the earliest stone circles to the unique architecture of Zaha Hadid, du Sautoy shows us that there are blueprints everywhere and how logic and aesthetics are intrinsically intermingled. 

Sophie Pavelle is also interested in connections and her forthcoming book, To Have or To Hold, explores symbiotic relationships in nature. Focusing on eight key examples, Sophie Pavelle explains how these mutually beneficial connections are crucial for the survival of our natural world and how they play an integral role in regulating ecosystems and strengthening resilience. She asks if we are capable of restoring and nurturing our environment or will we continue to exploit the Earth’s resources, till death do us part? 

The British Museum’s new exhibition illuminates the captivating work of the nineteenth-century Japanese artist, Utagawa Hiroshige (from 1st May to 7th September 2025). He was fascinated by the natural world and many of his pictures take flora and fauna as their subject matter. Hiroshige was one of Japan’s most talented, prolific and popular artists and his influence was not only felt in his home country, but spread globally – influencing artists such as Vincent Van Gogh and contemporary artists such as Julian Opie. The curator of the exhibition, Alfred Haft, shines a light on the oeuvre of Hiroshige, his techniques and enduring legacy.

Producer: Natalia Fernandez

Mathematics, Symbiosis and Japanese art

Tom Sutcliffe explores the importance of acoustics and the evolution of building design in the enjoyment of music. The academic Fiona Smyth tells the story of the groundbreaking work undertaken by scientists, architects and musicians, who revolutionised this new science in the 20th century, in her new book Pistols in St Paul’s. Trevor Cox, Professor of Acoustic Engineering at the University of Salford, updates the story, revealing the very latest scientific breakthroughs and why certain music venues capture the purity of sound. And the saxophonist Jess Gillam gives a personal view on what playing with different acoustics entails. Gillam is playing in two Christmas concerts, 19th + 20th December, with the CBSO at Symphony Hall, Birmingham – one of the best-designed music venues in the country. 

Producer: Kay Hickman

Acoustics, music and architecture

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