Living with uncertainty
How do we navigate a world where simple answers are often the most seductive and the least reliable? On Radio 4's weekly discussion programm...
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Start the Week
Weekly discussion programme, setting the cultural agenda every Monday
Episodes
20 of 656 episodesGordon Brown: The Future Starts with Us
How did we arrive at an age of global instability, conflict and political distrust, and can democracy renew itself? On Radio 4's weekly disc...
Life Online: Power, Risk and Resistance
How has life online reshaped society in real life? On Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, Tom Sutcliffe is joined by 3 guests who are inv...
Working-Class Lives: Identity and Political Fractures
What has happened to working-class identity in Britain? On Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, Adam Rutherford explores the political fra...
Scientific discovery and misunderstanding
How have we made discoveries about the world around us and how has our understanding changed when we got it wrong? Adam Rutherford hosts Rad...
Searching for economic solutions
What are the biggest problems facing the economy - and how might we set about dealing with them - from inequality to inflation, domestic gro...
Mythmaking at Hay: from Medea to Rasputin
In front of an audience at the Hay Festival, Tom Sutcliffe hosts Radio 4's discussion programme which starts the week, bringing together thr...
Farming, food production and rural life
What is the future of farming and rural life? Adam Rutherford hosts Radio 4's discussion programme which starts the week, asking about the f...
German history
What can an art exhibition, a concert hall and Classical town tell us about twentieth century German history? On Radio 4's weekly discussion...
Laurie Anderson: Strange and Disorientating Landscapes
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 we...
Chemical Reactions
What can chemistry reveal about what it means to be human? On Radio 4’s weekly conversation programme, Tom Sutcliffe leads a conversation th...
Why Stuff Matters: Objects, Power and the Past
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 ma...
Challenges and solutions
Is radical change possible to solve some of today’s most intractable problems? In Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, Tom Sutcliffe is jo...
Zoos, sex and conservation
How have the evolutionary forces that shaped animal sex and behaviour influenced the ways humans conserve, study and coexist with other spec...
Industrial action: from 1926 General Strike to today
What can past and present struggles over work and power tell us about the future of labour? Tom Sutcliffe and guests examine tensions betwee...
Growing Up
How do the stories we inherit, and the ones we tell, shape our journey from childhood into adulthood? In Radio 4's weekly discussion program...
Consciousness and Identity
What makes us who we are? In Radio 4's discussion programme to start off the week, Tom Sutcliffe and guests explore consciousness and identi...
Under the sea
What lies beneath the world's oceans? From the phenomenal infrastructure of telecoms cables to shipwrecked galleons and treasure and the sea...
Reading and storytelling
The UK government has declared 2026, the National Year of Reading. The numbers suggest that reading needs all the public relations it can ge...
Thinking about war
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 start...