The American singer-songwriter Natalie Merchant often uses fictional or mythological characters in her songs, to capture contemporary and political concerns. Her latest album, Keep Your Courage, is a song cycle composed entirely of love songs. She tells Kirsty Wark she wanted to explore the isolation of illness and the power of care, felt in the last few years.

In his new book, Musical Truth, the educator and broadcaster Jeffrey Boakye creates a soundtrack that encapsulates key historical moments of the 20th and 21st century – from the carving up of Africa to feminism and football. Using jazz, disco and hip hop he explores how music both feeds into and mirrors its time, as well as its political and cultural impact.

But the writer Michel Faber is more interested in how music affects the individual. In a collection of essays, Listen: On Music, Sound and Us, he explores what’s going on inside when we listen to a whole range of tunes. And he asks two questions: how do we listen to music and why?

Producer: Katy Hickman

The plasma product Factor VIII was heralded in the 1960s as a miracle treatment that helped those with haemophilia to live fuller lives. By the 1980s it was killing them in their thousands, as the product from the US was riddled with hepatitis and AIDs. The investigative journalist Cara McGoogan pieces together the sorry tale of medical negligence, commercial greed and government failures in The Poison Line: A True Story of Death, Deception and Infected Blood.

In many other countries inquiries have been held, compensation paid out and individuals sent to prison, but the victims and their families in the UK are still waiting, 40 years later. Jason Evans was just 4 years old when his father died after being infected by HIV in Factor VIII. He has dedicated his adult life to getting to the truth and is now awaiting the findings of the public inquiry which began in 2018, and is expected to publish its report in March 2024.

The public health expert and physician Dr Gabriel Scally is a veteran of medical inquires – from the Bristol heart scandal to the Cervical Smear failures in Ireland. He has spent his career arguing for a system of clinical governance with a duty of candour placed not just on organisations but individual medics too. He tells Tom Sutcliffe why he thinks scandals and cover-ups continue to happen, and whether a public inquiry is the best way to get to the truth.

Producer: Katy Hickman

The writer and academic Emma Dabiri encourages unruliness in her latest book, Disobedient Bodies. She puts the origins of western beauty ideals under the spotlight and explores ways to rebel against and subvert the current orthodoxy. The book is accompanied by an exhibition, The Cult of Beauty, at the Wellcome Collection from 26 October 2023 to 28 April 2024.

It was in the Wellcome’s archive that the filmmaker Carol Morley came across the works and writings of the artist Audrey Amiss. In her new film, Typist Artist Pirate King, Morley creates an imaginative tribute to an unjustly neglected and misunderstood artist.

The norm in the world of medical research has been the male body, but in her latest work the scientist and author Cat Bohannon focuses exclusively on women. In Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 million Years of Human Revolution she looks at everything from birth to death.

Producer: Katy Hickman

This programme was set up before the violence broke out in Israel. Tom Sutcliffe will also be joined by the BBC's Diplomatic Correspondent James Landale.

The Israeli novelist and psychologist Ayelet Gundar-Goshen describes the shock felt by the attacks on her country. The Editor of the Jewish Chronicle Jake Wallis Simons discusses his book Israelophobia in which he argues that throughout history Jews have been hated for their religion and their race, and now anti-Semitism is focused on their nation-state. The journalist Nathan Thrall has been reporting in Israel and Palestine for many year. His book The Day in the Life of Abed Salama reveals the every day life of Palestinians in one of the most contested places on earth.

Producer: Katy Hickman

After her translation of Homer’s The Odyssey the classicist Emily Wilson tackles his epic, The Iliad. She brings to life the battle cries between the Greeks and the Trojans, the bellicose leaders, the political manoeuvres and the deals with the gods.

Mary Beard looks at the expression of power in the ancient Roman world in her new study of Emperor of Rome. From Julius Caesar to Alexander Severus nearly two hundred years later, she explores just how much control and authority these rulers had, and the lengths they had to go to in order to cling on to power.

The Westminster journalist Ben Riley-Smith looks at how the Conservative Party has clung on to power over the past dozen years in his story, The Right to Rule. With five Prime Ministers in the last decade, this tale of political control involves betrayal, rebellion and the merciless ousting of leaders, in the bid to remain in government.

Producer: Katy Hickman

In front of an audience at the Contains Strong Language Festival in Leeds the poets, Lemn Sissay and Lebogang Mashile, and the curator Clare O’Dowd explore the transformative power of language, and the quest to break down barriers.

Each morning the award-winning writer Lemn Sissay composes a short poem as dawn breaks, to banish his own dark thoughts and look forward to the day. The result is his new collection, Let the Light Pour In. Transformation is also at the heart of his retelling of Kafka’s Metamorphosis for the stage, in a touring production by A Frantic Assembly.

The poet, performer and activist Lebogang Mashile explains how poetry has always carried political power in her native South Africa. Exiled as a child to the US she returned to Johannesburg after the end of apartheid. Her poetry highlights her sense of being an outsider and how verse is a vehicle in the fight for change.

Divisions between the arts are broken down in the exhibition – The Weight of Words – at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (until 26th November). The co-curator Clare O’Dowd tells Tom Sutcliffe how the group exhibition explores what happens when poetry and sculpture intermingle and collide.

Producer: Katy Hickman

The French archaeologist Ludovic Slimak has spent three decades uncovering evidence of ancient human life. In The Naked Neanderthal (translated by David Watson) he explores the last great extinction of a humanity that died out at the very moment Homo Sapiens expanded across the earth.

The ingenuity, compassion and cruelty of Homo Sapiens are at the centre of Sebastian Faulks’s new novel, The Seventh Son. As scientists develop methods to genetically alter the human race, ethical questions arise, as do questions about how humans respond to difference.

The American playwright Lauren Gunderson interrogates our relationship with AI in her new play, Anthropology, at the Hampstead Theatre, London (to 14th October). When Angie goes missing, presumed dead, her grieving sister Merril assembles the digital footprint she left behind, and builds herself a digital simulation.

Producer: Katy Hickman

To mark the 75th anniversary of the NHS Kirsty Wark looks back at its formation, its current health and future prognosis with the medic and broadcaster Kevin Fong, historian Andrew Seaton, political commentator Isabel Hardman and GP Phil Whitaker.

In ‘Our NHS’ Andrew Seaton explores the history of Britain’s ‘best-loved institution’, and how it has changed and adapted over the decades. Isabel Hilton focuses on the most critical moments in its 75 years in ‘Fighting for Life’. She talks to key decision makers from politicians to consultants, keyworkers to patients, to explore how the NHS has become a political battleground. Phil Whitaker has been a GP for more than 30 years. In ‘What Is A Doctor?’ he paints a damning portrait of political interference in medical treatment and what he sees as a worrying shift away from patient-centred care. As part of the BBC’s focus on the NHS the consultant anaesthetist Kevin Fong takes a step back to examine the roots of today’s problems, and possible solutions, in 'The NHS: Who Cares?' (on BBC Radio 4 from 10th July at 9am)

Producer: Katy Hickman

Start the Week is back on air on Monday 18th September

Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil and lithium are the stars of Ed Conway’s book, Material World. He tells Tom Sutcliffe how they built our world, from the Dark Ages to the present day. And how much the battle to secure them will shape our geopolitical future.

The science writer Aarathi Prasad focuses on one of the world’s strongest biological materials ever known – Silk. In her latest book she explores the ancient origins of silk, its global reach, and how it continues to inspire new technologies – from pharmaceuticals to holograms.

And materials and how different civilisations use them are at the heart of the British Museum’s exhibition, Luxury and Power: Persia to Greece (until 13th August). The curator, Jamie Fraser, highlights the perceived excesses of the Persian empire – with its abundance of gold, finely crafted pottery and frankincense – in direct contrast to the plainer tastes of their Greek victors.

Producer: Katy Hickman

Kirsty Wark celebrates the artistry of numbers with three mathematicians Eugenia Cheng, Sarah Hart and Emily Howard.

Eugenia Cheng asks Is Maths Real? in her new book, which offers a new way to look at the subject by focusing on the questions, rather than the answers. She explores how asking the simplest of questions – ‘why does 1 + 1 = 2?’ – can get to the very heart of the search for mathematical truth.

Sarah Hart wants to break down the perceived barriers between mathematics and the creative arts. In Once Upon a Prime: The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature she reveals the geometry lurking in Moby-Dick, George Eliot’s obsession with statistics, and Jurassic Park’s fractal patterns.

Emily Howard has a dual passion for maths and music. In her compositions she plays with mathematical shapes and processes. Her new record Torus, released on NMC Recordings in April, brings together works including sphere and Compass.

Producer: Katy Hickman