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BBC Radio 4


Weekly discussion programme, setting the cultural agenda every Monday


Start the Week

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

Mythmaking at Hay: from Medea to Rasputin

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

Farming, food production and rural life

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

German history

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

Laurie Anderson: Strange and Disorientating Landscapes

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

Chemical Reactions

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 Hickman

Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez

Why Stuff Matters: Objects, Power and the Past

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

Challenges and solutions

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

Zoos, sex and conservation

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

Industrial action: from 1926 General Strike to today

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

Growing Up

Andrew Marr talks to the former British ambassador, Sherard Cowper-Coles, about the failures of Western policy in Afghanistan, and how diplomacy would have been a better option than the gun. In 2003 Baha Mousa was arrested by the British Army in Basra, in Iraq. Two days later he was dead. Richard Norton-Taylor sifts through all the evidence to bring the public inquiry into his death to the stage. David Pryce-Jones asks what motivates those who take up foreign causes, to the detriment of their own country, in Treason of the Heart. And the philosopher Angie Hobbs turns to the Greek Gods to untangle modern ideas of heroism and bravery.

Producer: Katy Hickman.

23/05/2011

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