We remember the Renaissance as an age of human flourishing: a rebirth after centuries of misery, a return to the glories of antiquity where the culture of Greece and Rome was not only imitated but surpassed. But is that reputation deserved, or a construct of future historians with their own goals in mind? Starring Battle-Popes, necromancers, sculptors, scholars, and assassins, Ada Palmer's new book Inventing the Renaissance is a wild ride through some of the most thrilling and important events in world-history and a glimpse into the making of the modern world.

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How can we say 'no' when it matters most? Cornell University's Dr Sunita Sah joins us to share the radical need for each of us to rediscover our core values, and shares how we can navigate a fraught world while staying true to ourselves. Exploring the balance between defiance and safety, justice and belonging, Professor Sah reveals how we can each live more authentically and make decisions that align with our vales in the moments that matter most.

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'Chinese and Any Other Asian.' On official documents, a vast range of identities in the East and South East Asian (ESEA) population in the UK is reduced to a single vague checkbox, an act of Othering with a history several centuries in the making. Academic, poet, and journalist Dr Anna Sulan Masing seeks to change the narrative. Exploring the history of the ESEA population in the UK, which spans on the one hand Empire, violence, and appropriation, and on the other, creativity, fusion, and multiplicity, Anna Sulan reveals a multifaceted history. From how the mythos of MSG drew on the language of Victorian media on opium dens, to why we should close the chapter on Miss Saigon for good, Anna Sulan reveals the rising voices reclaiming a stolen narrative.

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History and geopolitical intrigue meet fiction under the masterful skill of #1 New York Times bestselling author Neal Stephenson. He joins us with a new tale: Polostan, a vividly imagined historical epic that traces the enigmatic life of protagonist Dawn Rae Bjornberg. Her life criss-crosses some of the 20th century’s pivotal scenes, from Leningrad to the Great Depression. When a surprising revelation about her past puts her in the crosshairs of U.S. authorities, Dawn returns to Russia, where she is groomed as a spy by the organisation that later becomes the KGB. An expert at merging thrilling fiction with meticulous detail grounded in real historical events, Neal draws back the curtains of his new epic foretelling the dawn of the Atomic Age and marking the beginning of his new series.

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Lola Young has been an actress, an academic, an activist and campaigner, well known for her work on modern slavery and climate justice. But from the age of eight weeks to eighteen years, she was moved between foster care placements and children’s homes in North London. It would take many decades before she was able to begin the search for answers to the long-standing questions that would help her make sense of her childhood.

Now she tells Hannah MacInnes the powerful story of how she defied the odds of the ‘care cliff’ to become one of the country’s most prominent activists, a story of care records, lost letters and one of the highest offices in the country. She joins us to share her insights into parliamentary reform, the role of art in politics, and why poverty is the biggest problem facing the UK today.

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Why are are the rich getting richer? Why is prosperity moving further and further out of reach for most people? An iconoclast unafraid to speak truth to power, George Monbiot joins comedian Frankie Boyle to take on the fringe philosophy which the wealthy elite have hijacked to guard their fortunes and power. While neoliberalism permeates society, from our mental and economic wellbeing to the foundation of democracy itself, the fight to restore democracy to the people is far from over. George reveals how we can fight back.

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We live in the here and now much less than we tend to think. Imagination isn’t the exception in our daily lives; it’s our default setting. Far from being a faculty used only in creative endeavours, the imagination is used constantly when we reminisce, anticipate, plan, daydream and read. Yet only now are we beginning to understand exactly how it works.

From hallucination to sleepwalking, REM to delusions and the curious case of the mind’s eye, neuroscientist Professor Adam Zeman guides us through the latest science of imagination. Drawing on research in neuroscience, the study of human origins and child development, he shares how the human brain is above all else a creative, imaginative organ – and why we have evolved to share what we imagine.

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Whether anticipating the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in his short story Radicalised, helping the world to wake up to the grift of the social media giants through his concept of 'Enshittification', or imagining a genuinely better world to replace the dystopia of our present in novels like The Lost Cause and Walkaway, Cory Doctorow is equally accomplished as an award-winning storyteller and as an analyst of our present and near future.

His new series of noirish crime thrillers transport us into a Silicon Valley where grifters, gangsters, and plutocrats wreck chaos. Cory's decades of firsthand experience of the Valley and deep thought about the relationship between technology and power imbue every page with authenticity and insight. He joins us to reveal the crimes at the heart of the latest book, Picks and Shovels, and the real life misdemenours that inspired the novel.

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One winter’s night, Alex James received an unexpected call. Blur had been invited to play their biggest gig ever: Wembley Stadium. The only trouble was, he and his bandmates hadn’t spoken to – or even shouted at – each other for years. And he now had five children, an out-of-control menagerie of cats, and a sprawling farm to run. This is the story of what happened next.

Taking us behind the scenes of a raucous, rollercoaster year, Alex tells Times journalist and bestselling author Caitlin Moran how the band made a surprise – and emotional – return, recording an acclaimed album and playing sold-out shows around the world, from Colchester to Colombia and beyond.

Plus: how he went on a crash diet to fit back into his ‘Britpop Trousers,’ a chastening encounter with the President of Columbia, and the magical story behind She's So High.

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Erudite and comic, ironic and profound, philosopher Slavoj Žižek has travelled into territory where few of us dare to tread – and aged 75 he shows no signs of becoming less provocative. In this electric conversation with Yanis Varoufakis the pair explore whether progress is a good thing, where the new technologies of our age are taking us and why Slavoj is known as ‘the most dangerous philosopher in the West’.

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