All Episodes
Start the Week — 655 episodes
Gordon Brown: The Future Starts with Us
Life Online: Power, Risk and Resistance
Working-Class Lives: Identity and Political Fractures
Scientific discovery and misunderstanding
Searching for economic solutions
Mythmaking at Hay: from Medea to Rasputin
Farming, food production and rural life
German history
Laurie Anderson: Strange and Disorientating Landscapes
Chemical Reactions
Why Stuff Matters: Objects, Power and the Past
Challenges and solutions
Zoos, sex and conservation
Industrial action: from 1926 General Strike to today
Growing Up
Consciousness and Identity
Under the sea
Reading and storytelling
Thinking about war
Breakage and repair
Fun and games
Censorship
Biology, technology and the future
Rethinking politics
The arts and health
Animals and Meaning
Poetry - reading, writing, editing and translating
The Dark
Histories, emotions and identity
Space, Quantum Frontiers and Cosmic Clues
Genes and hands: mapping character and health
Digital Futures and Information Crises
Saving Tigers, Green Crime and Cli-fi
Storytelling: Jeanette Winterson, Rory Stewart and Soweto Kinch
Crossing genres with Wayne McGregor
Maps – lost, secret and revealing
Endangered languages and vanishing landscapes
Yanis Varoufakis on Greece’s civil war
Steven Pinker on common knowledge
Contains Strong Language Festival, Bradford
Afghanistan and the DRC
Arundhati Roy and maternal inheritance
Sanctuary, refuge and exile
The Idea of Genius
Hidden spaces and dangerous places
The uses and abuses of the atom
Hay Festival: exposing the secrets of rubbish
Mathematics, Symbiosis and Japanese art
History: private, personal and political
Smell – the underrated sense
Advocating for nature
Christianity and British society
Impunity and fighting for justice
Untangling fact from fiction
Delusions of grandeur and freedom of speech
Abdulrazak Gurnah on family and resistance
Lockdown and the Covid generation
How political ideology affects the brain
The Great Auk meets Victorian explorers, and zombie ponds
Community and industrial decline
Writing and rewriting history
Wages for Housework – then and now
Manufacturing and sustainability
Climate Crisis: truth, lies and compromise
Music and movement; mind and body
Socrates, optimism and racism
Human intelligence and imagination
Animals – up close and talking
Acoustics, music and architecture
Security threats and future prospects for Britain and the EU
The story of British art - from cave paintings to landscapes
The high street
Rise and fall of the political fixer
Sex and Christianity
Ancient crafts: feathers, leather and thatch
Female ambition and control
A duty of care
From Sapiens to AI
Oceans and the game of evolution
Ancient India and China: from golden to silk roads
Chance and fortune
On Freedom
Weaving magic in words, clay and paper
Animal communication
Politeness and civility
‘Left behind’, but not forgotten
Hay Festival: ancient wisdom and ecology
Reading the Bible
Art: market, money and malfeasance
Bees – culture and survival
Protest and patriotism
Alien life and gravity
City living
Power to the people
Music and poetry
The war between science and religion
Crossing borders and belonging
Intrigue and disinformation from the Russian Revolution to Ukraine invasion
Time passing: ageing, memory and nostalgia
Mysterious Plants
Weighty issues
Arts: changing the world?
Global influences
Opium trade to synthetic opiates
Made out of glass
War crimes justice
Climate resolutions
A century of Labour
AI, states and corporations
Small states: global impact and survival
Playing games
Space – the human story
Monet and machine vision
Music – from page to performance
China – its poetry and economy
Soundtrack to life
Infected blood - from scandal to inquiry
Unruly bodies
Israel
The Iliad and the right to rule
Contains Strong Language Festival in Leeds
Homo Sapiens +/-
The NHS at 75
Materials that shape our world
Sums, stories and musical scores
Hacking and cybercrime
Allergies and the Microbiome
Hay Festival - Dickens in the 21st century
Birds and moths
Virtuous bankers?
Monster artist/monstrous art?
Life behind the iron curtain
Ancient trees
A place called home
Ai Weiwei and design values
Mastering a new skill
Climate - past, present and future
Humanism - what is it good for?
George Eliot and married life
The Iraq War – 20 years on
Democratic capitalism – marriage on the rocks
Ancient knowledge
The food we eat
Power, violence and witches
The Victims of War
Videogames – from fantasy to reality
The view from Latin America
Where are you from?
Awesome
Dance Pioneers
Listening in the dark
Returning to the moon
Faith: lost in translation?
Taking a stand
Perfect skin
The authentic taste of Britain
Building the Body, Opening the Heart
Zombies, exiles and monsters
Black Britain and beyond
Power plays and family dynamics
Political leadership and oversight
Bradford - Brave New World
Birmingham
Health, sickness and exploitation
Justice, war crimes and targeted killings
Social inequality - up close
A revolution in food and farming
Family drama at Hay Festival
Learning from apes, fish and wasps
The body clock and sleep
Marwa Al-Sabouni - Rebuilding with hope
Curiosity, ingenuity and experimentation
The age of the strongman leader
NoViolet Bulawayo on Glory
Love poetry; love books
Resistance
Liberalism in crisis
Welsh identities
Feathered friends
Creating art; reflecting life
Post-war/post-Covid
Wealth, influence and the global elite
Stonehenge, and conserving the future
The Georgians
Bullish masculinity
Modernism
Old battles, new warfare
Finding consolation and community in reading
Vaccinate, ventilate and breathe
A musical journey – from the mountains to the multi-storey
Living in the Matrix
Witches
Levelling up; halting decline
Christianity: Changing Fortunes
Ancient lives and legacies in Latin America
Internet influencers and generation gaps
Ai Weiwei on creative freedom
Working the land - Orwell and HG Wells
Rationality in an Irrational Age
Views from across the water
Images of power
Colm Tóibín on Thomas Mann
Climate activism: the next generation
Life in the first person
Ali Smith
Jackie Kay on Bessie Smith
London - villain and victim?
Lionel Shriver on life and death decisions
DH Lawrence: life and work
On Thin Ice: Glaciers, Geopolitics, and Nature's Goods
Daniel Kahneman on 'noisy' human judgement
The opioid crisis and erosion of trust
Art - plunder, power and prestige
Personal faith and the Church
What if the Incas had colonised Europe?
Nuclear destruction
Defining mental illness
Trade deals and human rights – in Africa and China
Newton: science and worldly riches
Rights and responsibilities
Understanding Melancholy
Monsters of the deep
Family struggles - from Greek tragedy to The Troubles
Living online and IRL
Empire and class, shaping Britain
The fall of Maxwell – the end of an era.
Mariana Mazzucato on moonshot economics
Francis Bacon revealed
Scotland and the Union
Nicholas Hytner
Thomas Becket and the rift between church and state
Inspiring awe – from the heavens to the oceans
Laughter
Human ingenuity and shared inheritance
Derrida, Woolf, and the pleasure of reading
Landscapes real and imagined
Physics in all its glory
Great women of the classics
China and the global order
Fake news and data lies: how to win an election
Care and compassion
Contested histories
Faith in the modern world
Claudia Rankine and Margaret Atwood
The Radical Agenda
Meritocracy and inequality
Nature notes, from farming to fungi
Brit Bennett on race, identity and protest
James Joyce
Our coercive politics
The Future
Classics and class
Richard Ford, writing from the edges
Art in an emergency
Globalisation
Changing behaviour, from bystander to actor
Crisis in Europe from Notre-Dame to coronavirus
Nature worship
The genetic gender gap
Rebuilding conservatism in changing times
Famous and Infamous
Cultural icons from Shakespeare to Superman
Morality, money and power
Hilary Mantel
Leila Slimani on Sexual Politics
Love of home
Dresden - 75 years on
Artistic influence: Beethoven, Rembrandt and MeToo
Grayson Perry - the early years
Puritans and God-given government
No work, rest and play
A house and a home
Westminster Abbey
Numbers, nightmares and nanotech
Living near water
India past and present
Love and unreason
Life, death and taxes
Animals and us
Nobel Prize winner Esther Duflo
The artist - warts and all
Breaking bread together
Global culture
Lenny Henry
Where is power now?
Antony Gormley: challenging conventions
Escaping the past
Epic quests and Greek myths
The power of poetry
Money - in your pocket and in the bank
Beyond the headlines
Jared Diamond on national crisis
Hay Festival
Medical controversies
Billy Bragg on anger and hope
Icons of English literature
Freedom: From Kierkegaard to Black Lives Matter
Life in the wilderness
Ian McEwan
Ageing visibly
Free Thinking Festival
Art for all
Understanding China
The battle against so-called Islamic State
Language and Culture
Populations and contested lands
The Eye of the Beholder
The mind unravelling
Who is watching you?
The health of science
Art, truth and power
Violence and Conflict
Searching for happiness
Ice and Snow
National myths with Neil MacGregor
Trees: a wood wide web
Power in Politics
How the World Thinks
Safe spaces and snowflakes
Poland: A hundred years of history
Reporting from the Front Line
That's not fair
Pirates
Identity Politics
What's Your Type?
Yuval Noah Harari
From Ubermensch to Superman
David Attenborough: Life on Earth and Beyond
The Reality of War
Storytelling at the Edinburgh Festivals
British culture and European influence
Shame, Status and Self-invention
Deserts and the Nuclear Age
Altered Minds
Arundhati Roy on castes and outcasts
Survival and Destruction
Dark Satanic Mills
Jordan Peterson: Rules for Life
The Death of Democracy
Mysteries of the Universe
Life Is a Dream
1968: Radicals and Riots
The Good Samaritan
Faith and Doubt
Love and Loss
In Praise of Passion
Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead
Art and Civilisations
Who Am I? The Brain and Personality
Fascism and the Enlightenment with Steven Pinker
Rise and Fall of the City
Money Makes the World Go Around
Mohsin Hamid on leaving home
The Power of Art
Peter Carey on legacies of the past
Votes for Women
Who governs Britain?
The power and beauty of objects.
Russia, religion and the Middle East
Finland at 100
Blood, guts and swearing robots
Anger and deprivation
Heart of Darkness: Conrad and Orwell
Animals: tamed, exploited and resurrected
Living with the Gods
The End of War?
Russian Revolution a hundred years on
Power, the People and the Party
Hard work and sweet slumber
Orhan Pamuk on competing myths
Les Misérables: novel of the century?
From Darwin to Big Data with Richard Dawkins
Power: Fleet Street and Whitehall
Health Inequality: TB, Trauma and Technology
Crossing the Boundaries of Gender, Race and Class
Inventing the Self: Fact and Fiction
Live from the Hay Festival
India's Rise?
Post-Truth and Revolution
Kate Tempest: Everyday Epic
Wendell Berry: The Natural World
Eliza Carthy and Nicholas Hytner: Art for All
The Age of Spectacle?
Christianity: Luther's Legacy
Dissecting Death
Sayeeda Warsi: Muslims in Britain
The Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead
Britain Divided: 1642-2016
Paul Auster and the American Dream
'Build That Wall': Barriers and Crossings
Sidney Nolan: Life and Work
Play and Creativity
Paul Abbott: finding comedy in the tragic
Turkey: Past and Present
Sara Khan: The Battle within Islam
Chibundu Onuzo and Martin Sixsmith on corruption and family drama
Maps, Music and Medieval Manuscripts
Scientific Discoveries: from the mind to the cosmos
The Bolshoi and Culture Wars
Popular Protest and Patriotism
AIDS Activism and Surviving a Plague
Rewriting the Past: from Empire to ivory
Island Mentality
Virtue and Vice
Alan Bennett
Microbes, Genes and Human Endeavour
Soldiering on: the British Army, Lenin and Putin
Radical Liverpool
Political Drama: Robert Harris and Margaret Hodge
Love, Loss and Scandal
Food: From Bread Riots to Obesity
A Theory of Everything?
New Artistic Director of the ENO, Daniel Kramer
Genes: Our medical inheritance
Hay Festival: Spooks, war and genocide
Lost and Found: Ancient Egypt to Modern Art
World on the Move
Technology in Education
Cross-dressing and masculinity with Grayson Perry
Anish Kapoor on Light and Dark
Reporting War and Conflict
Loneliness and Inner Voices
Greece and the Eurozone with Yanis Varoufakis
Existentialism and Ways of Seeing
Is Faster Better?
The Easter Rising: 100 Years On
Scotland
Nature or Nurture?
Future Economies
Who Owns Culture?
Mind and Body
Language and Reinvention
Migration and Citizenship
Alaa Al Aswany on Egypt
Russia: Tsars to Putin
Shakespeare's Late Plays - recorded at the Globe's Playhouse
Space Survival and Exploration
Cultural Lifespans
Reforming Saudi Arabia
Augustine, Desire, Doing good
Jonathan Coe on Satire
France Special
Claudia Rankine at the Free Thinking Festival
Embracing Failure and Uncertainty
Social Class and Cultural Capital
Power and Corruption with Stephen Frears and Mary Beard
Kissinger
Jonathan Franzen
Celts and Romans
Edmund de Waal on Porcelain
Harmony and Balance
Alan Watts and the Way of Translation
Architecture and power - from Stalinist structures to model villages
The Value of Art with Grayson Perry and Hannah Rothschild
Illness: Psychosomatic and Physical
Saul Bellow and Finding a Voice
Hay Festival
Joseph Stiglitz and Steve Hilton on Inequality
Values from Ancient Greece to Contemporary Harlem
Vikram Seth
Violence
Life Underwater
David Sloan Wilson on Altruism
The Amazons
Lewis Carroll and the Story of Alice.
Susan Pinker on the benefits of face-to-face contact
Shame, with Jon Ronson
The Mathematical Mind with Cedric Villani
From Fringe to Frontline?
Joseph Nye on Soft Power
Life in Suburbia
The Rise of Islamic State
Organising the Mind
Surveillance and Self-censorship
The Tudors
Sense of Place
Hedonism
Reinventing Inventions
Arabian Nights
Evolution and Extinction
Science Fiction
Self-Portrayal
A Good Death
The Language of Money
Revolution
Napoleon
Crime Stories and Ghost Stories
Naomi Klein on climate change and growth
Karen Armstrong on War and Religion
Hilary Mantel
Tom Sutcliffe discusses family secrets and Scottish royalty
The Science of the Mind
Joyce DiDonato and Julie Bindel on Women Behaving Badly
Pain and Prejudice
What Is the State For?
Rod Liddle on the selfish generation
Charleston Festival
Alien Invaders
The Myth of the Strong Leader?
Simon Armitage on Greek Tragedy
The Future of Capitalism
James Lovelock
Lucy Worsley on the Georgians
Police drama with playwright Roy Williams
AL Kennedy and David Sedaris on matters of the heart
Faisal I of Iraq and the making of the modern Middle East
Decision-making with Daniel Kahneman and Michael Ignatieff
Andrew Hussey on the legacy of France's Arab Empire
The Vikings and Seafaring
Adair Turner on the Politics of Finance
Vanessa Feltz and Susie Orbach on Confession
Irving Finkel on the Ark Tablet
Spying and Surveillance: The Snowden Files
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies
Neuroscience and Free Will
Unity and Disunity
Michael Gove on teaching history
Clive James
Josie Rourke on strategy and Coriolanus
The Building Blocks of Life and Intelligence
Landscape and Community
Bianca Jagger on human rights
Gandhi's Early Years
Andrew Marr on poet George Herbert
Fiona Shaw; Simon McBurney; Journeys Into the Unknown
The Kremlin: A fortress that has shaped a nation
Paul Collier on Immigration Controls
Grayson Perry on contemporary art
Victorian Revivalism
Greek myth and the Indian epic Ramayana
Jamal Edwards on 'digital natives'
Margaret Atwood's Dystopian Future
Population: Ten Billion
Zadie Smith on social mobility
Hari Kunzru and Dystopia
Putin's Russia
Fairy Tale Physics?
Eric Schmidt on the New Digital Age
Antonia Fraser: Democracy and Reform
Music and the mind: Carrie Cracknell
Michael Rosen at the Brighton Festival
Gavin Turk on the Value of Art
Bernardo Bertolucci
The Origin and Future of Life
'Home' and cultural identity with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Tom Sutcliffe talks to John Gray and Mary Beard
Mohsin Hamid talks about How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia
Lisa Jardine talks to David Cannadine and Aleksandar Hemon
Ken Loach on post-war Britain
Feminism: Natasha Walter and Catherine Hakim
The Commonwealth - Don McKinnon and Kwasi Kwarteng
Mathematical modelling with Lisa Jardine
Al-Qaeda: Afghanistan to Mali
Political Writing: Joan Bakewell and Tim Montgomerie
History of Music - John Adams and Howard Goodall
Natural Capital: Tony Juniper
Family Secrets: Sarah Dunant and Deborah Cohen
The Human Voice: Rolando Villazon and Mark-Anthony Turnage
Science Special
Scotland - Ian Rankin and Alasdair Gray
Nuclear Iran - Shirley Williams and Geoffrey Robertson
Germany and the EU
Art and Design with Antony Gormley and Ron Arad
Award-winning film director Kevin Macdonald
Political Divide: Mary Robinson and Michael Ignatieff
Torture, terrorism and secrets
Modernism with Ali Smith and Kevin Jackson
Richard Ford on the US Elections
Diana Athill and Philip Hensher on the dying art of handwriting
Anne Applebaum on Eastern Europe
Grimm Tales with Philip Pullman
Salman Rushdie
National Identity with Maajid Nawaz and Sir Christopher Meyer.
The 'life unlived' with Adam Phillips and Helen Dunmore
Science and Politics: Professor David Nutt and David Blunkett
WWII with Antony Beevor and Max Hastings
Grayson Perry at the Charleston Festival
Thomas Heatherwick on design and architecture
Michael Sandel on Money and Morality
Spain in Crisis
The Digital Future
Creativity: Jonah Lehrer
Iain Banks and David Hare
China
Peter Carey on Start the Week
The 'death of socialism'?
Werner Herzog on Start the Week
Nobel Prize winning author, Nadine Gordimer
Writers on Families: Colm Tóibín and AS Byatt
Middle Age: David Bainbridge, Deborah Moggach, Simon Armitage and Claudia Hammond
Faith and Doubt: Richard Holloway, Karen Armstrong, Jonathan Safran Foer and Helen Edmundson
Ian Stewart, Peter Randall-Page, Mark Miodownik, Jane Rapley
Elizabethans: Max Hastings, Mary Beard, John Guy and Lola Young
Conservatism: Peter Hitchens, Margot James, Douglas Murray and Thomas Frank
Revolution: Wael Ghonim, Paul Mason and Mary King
Justice: with Simon Stephens, John Podmore, Shami Chakrabarti and Mike Hough
Financial Crisis: Philip Coggan, Angela Knight, Maurice Glasman and Detlev Schlichter
Austerity: Antony Gormley, David Kynaston and Anna Coote
David Hockney Special
The Spirit of Christmas: Claire Tomalin, Susan Hill and Canon Giles Fraser
12/12/2011
Philosophy: Bernard-Henri Levy, Mary Warnock and Roger Scruton
Political leadership: George Ayittey, Simon Heffer, Martin Wolf and Maha Azzam
The Arts and politics: Rory Bremner, Peter Kosminsky and Iwona Blazwick
Writing History with Peter Englund, Norman Davies, Boris Johnson and Alison Weir.
Australian culture with Thomas Keneally, Kate Grenville and Deborah Cheetham
31/10/2011
24/10/2011
God and science with the Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Richard Dawkins and Lisa Randall
Empire with Jeremy Paxman and Richard Gott
Afghanistan and the British Secret Service with Rory Stewart, Frank Ledwidge and Gordon Corera
Simon Jenkins' History of England, and the National Poet of Wales, Gillian Clarke
19/09/2011
Vasily Grossman: his life and legacy
04/07/2011
27/06/2011
20/06/2011
13/06/2011
06/06/2011
30/05/2011
23/05/2011
16/05/2011
09/05/2011
02/05/2011
25/04/2011
18/04/2011
11/04/2011
04/04/2011
28/03/2011
21/03/2011
14/03/2011
07/03/2011
28/02/2011
21/02/2011
14/02/2011
07/02/2011
31/01/2011
24/01/2011
17/01/2011
10/01/2011
27/12/2010
20/12/2010
13/12/2010
06/12/2010
29/11/2010
22/11/2010
15/11/2010
08/11/2010
01/11/2010
25/10/2010
18/10/2010
11/10/2010
04/10/2010
27/09/2010
20/09/2010