Start the Week

Picture of James Lovelock provided by the Science Museum Anne McElvoy looks back at the life of the maverick scientist James Lovelock who pioneered the theory of Gaia, of a self-regulating Earth. Lovelock also looks to the future and the next evolution of Gaia which could lead to the extinction of human life, and a rise of Artificial Intelligence, but the writer and ecologist George Monbiot prefer...

Tom Sutcliffe looks back three hundred years to the Hanoverian succession to the British throne. The curator Lucy Worsley explains how the German Georges claimed the crown and how they kept it. The Georgian period is also the setting for Paula Byrne's biography of Dido Belle, the daughter of an aristocrat and a captured West Indian slave. Also on the programme, the MP Chris Bryant explores the his...

Tom Sutcliffe looks at both the reality of police life and its portrayal. The playwright Roy Williams's latest drama is set in a police station in Kingston, Jamaica, revealing a world of corruption and intrigue. TV writer Sam Bain, of Peep Show fame, talks about Babylon, a drama which take a wry look at modern policing. The former police officer Christian Plowman explains what life was like underc...

Tom Sutcliffe talks to AL Kennedy about her latest collection of short stories of love and hurt. The poet Lavinia Greenlaw retells the tragic love story of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. The philosopher Simon Blackburn unpicks the idea of self-love from the myth of Narcissus to today's tv hair adverts: 'because you're worth it', while the humorist David Sedaris uses his own life and loves as the...

Anne McElvoy explores the roads not taken with the historian Richard Evans. Counterfactual history began as an Enlightenment parlour game and has become a serious academic pursuit, but Evans argues against endless speculation as to what might have been. The final meeting between Lawrence of Arabia and Faisal I of Iraq was an anti-climax which belied their history. The biographers of these two lead...

Tom Sutcliffe discusses how we make decisions with the Nobel prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman. Moral choices in politics can be a complicated business, according to the academic and former politician Michael Ignatieff, who explores whether the age of international intervention is over. Doctors work under the oath 'do no harm', but the neurosurgeon Henry Marsh says the decision whether to...

Tom Sutcliffe talks to Andrew Hussey about the often fraught relationship between France and its Arab ex-colonies, and how that plays out in the banlieues of Paris. The psychotherapist Gabrielle Rifkind recounts her experience of conflict resolution in the Middle East. While Rifkind emphases the need to understand what's happened in the past, the writer Ziauddin Sardar tries to imagine what the wo...

Tom Sutcliffe talks to the historian Michael Wood about the spirit and adventure of the Vikings who travelled all over Europe and as far east as Central Asia. The Vikings sailed close to the coast whenever possible, David Barrie celebrates the invention of the sextant three hundred years ago which made open water navigation and exploration possible. The majority of foreign goods we buy are transpo...

Tom Sutcliffe discusses money with the American economist Charles Calomiris, who looks back at the history of financial disasters and argues that they're caused more by government failures, than individual bankers. The former head of the Financial Services Authority, Adair Turner, might agree on the need for structural changes, but famously said 'heads should roll' in the banking industry, and has...

Andrew Marr discusses the history of confession with the writer John Cornwell, from its origins in the early church to the current day. The psychotherapist Susie Orbach explores whether the confession, both secular and religious, provides psychological relief, and the presenter Vanessa Feltz celebrates its public manifestations, the talk show and radio phone in. The former high-flying Wall Street...

Tom Sutcliffe looks at the role of the expert. The curator Irving Finkel decodes the symbols on a 4,000 year old clay tablet and discovers the instructions for the building of an ark. Harry Collins asks why attitudes towards scientific expertise have changed and looks to reassert the special status of science. Colin Blakemore is an expert in neuroscience and vision and he reflects on his part in t...

Last year The Guardian ran a series of scoops about the extent of mass surveillance by the security services here and in the USA. Anne McElvoy talks to the journalist Luke Harding about the inside story on the whistle-blower Edward Snowden and what motivated him to commit one of the biggest intelligence leaks in history. The former director of GCHQ, Sir David Omand, fears the leaks have done untol...

Tom Sutcliffe talks to the celebrated composer, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies on the eve of the premier of his tenth symphony. His latest work creates a musical structure based on architectural proportions, inspired by the 17th century architect Francesco Borromini. Waldemar Januszczak turns to the 18th century and Rococo for his inspiration, and looks at how this artistic movement spread from painting...

Tom Sutcliffe talks to the neuroscientist Dick Swaab who argues that everything we do and don't do is determined by our brain. He explains why 'we are our brains'. The philosopher Julian Baggini doesn't dispute the pre-eminence of brain processes but believes it doesn't tell the whole story. As a writer Helen Dunmore must get into the minds of her characters - the latest a war-damaged soldier from...

On Start the Week Anne McElvoy talks to Linda Colley about the history of the United Kingdom - what has brought it together, and what is driving it apart. David Pilling offers a contrasting island story, with his study of modern Japan. Europe is watching with interest the coming Scottish Independence Referendum, and the correspondent David Charter, looks at what 2014 holds for Britain's relationsh...

Andrew Marr discusses the teaching of history with the Government's Education Secretary Michael Gove. The new history curriculum for schools has been hotly contested and the Minister explains his views on whether facts and dates trump historical analysis. He's joined by Margaret MacMillan who will present a real-time countdown to the outbreak of WWI in the coming year, the academic and tv historia...

In a special programme Andrew Marr looks back over the long career of Clive James. Even at the height of his fame as the star of weekend television, Clive James was always writing: poetry, essays and a series of memoirs. Now in his 70s and suffering from serious illness, he has been nominated for an award for his translation of Dante's The Divine Comedy. James explains how this last phase of his l...

On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe talks to Josie Rourke about her production of Coriolanus, the story of the war hero destroyed by his own pride and the forces of realpolitik. His battle strategy fails on the streets of Rome as the masses get their first taste of democracy. David Runciman asks whether democracy breeds complacency rather than wisdom or reform, and in his study of Strategy, Lawrence F...

On Start the Week Anne McElvoy talks to the geneticist Alison Woollard about the extraordinary developments in biological science in the last decade, and how switching on and off certain genes could improve and extend life. The psychologist Kathryn Asbury studies the vexed question of nature and nurture, and whether a better understanding of genetic influence can improve children's education. Prof...

Bridget Kendall talks to Patrick Keiller about the relationship between film, cities and landscape. Victoria Henshaw is interested in what our cities smell like, and what we lose when we sterilise our environment. The poet Robin Robertston has written about the bleak, remote island of St Kilda and how the remnants of its close-knit community left together in 1930. The importance and difficulty of...

Tom Sutcliffe looks at the future of human rights with the campaigner Bianca Jagger and academic Stephen Hopgood. Jagger points to the failure of the global community to tackle violence against women and girls, while Hopgood sounds the death knell for international Human Rights with the rise of religious conservatism and the decline in influence of Europe and America. Pakistan's Tribal Area close...

Bridget Kendall looks back at the formative years of Gandhi with the historian Ramachandra Guha and opera director Phelim McDermott. At the turn of the twentieth century Gandhi spent more than twenty years in South Africa and England: Guha argues that these early experiences shaped his future ideas, while McDermott stages Gandhi's spiritual progress towards nonviolent protest in his production of...

Andrew Marr returns to Start the Week for a special programme on the early 17th century poet George Herbert. His English poetry was never published in his lifetime, but he hoped it would act as consolation 'of any dejected poor soul', and his latest biographer John Drury argues that with its focus on love over theology, his poetry still speaks to and for modern readers. The composer Sir John Taven...

Stephanie Flanders contemplates nothing with science editor Jeremy Webb who is fascinated with the idea of vacuum, voids and absolute zero; and astronomer Carolin Crawford explains there's more to black holes than meets the eye. The director Simon McBurney looks to reveal all in his production of the Magic Flute, including liberating the orchestra from the pit to centre stage; and Fiona Shaw asks...

Start the Week is at the Radio 3 Free Thinking Festival in Gateshead. Anne McElvoy talks to the historian Catherine Merridale about the Kremlin - a Russian fortress which has retained its original medieval function to intimidate and control, and which holds a special place in the imagination. Few buildings in England inspire such fear, but Simon Thurley explores how the country's architecture has...