Start the Week

The data analyst Hannah Ritchie challenges the doomsday climate scenarios dominating the headlines to argue for a more hopeful outlook. In Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet she uses the data to show what progress has been made, and what actions will have the most impact in the future.

Capitalism, consumerism and unfettered growth are often blamed for the climate crisis, but the Bloomberg journalist Akshat Rathi believes that capitalism is the best means we have to tackle the issues in time. In Climate Capitalism he meets the business people and politicians from around the world who are finding innovative ways to go green.

The oceanographer and Joint Director of the UK National Climate Science Partnership, Professor Michael Meredith often works in one of the most difficult and least understood areas of the planet - the Southern Ocean around the Antarctic. He believes that while individual actions and choices are important to tackle climate change, only stronger worldwide governance can slow the irreversible effects of ice sheet decline and rising sea levels.

Correction: during the live broadcast we mistakenly stated that Britain gets more than 40% of its energy from renewables, instead of 40% of its electricity.

Producer: Katy Hickman

The Labour Party first took office on 22nd January 1924. In the century that followed it has only had six prime ministers and been in power for a total of 33 years. The Labour MP Jon Cruddas looks back at A Century of Labour – the successes and failures. While the Party has been riven by factions from the left and the right, Cruddas also looks at the competing visions of the what the Party represents.

The Labour Party was born out of the increase in franchise, the industrialisation of the workforce and unions, and in its early days class was a key factor in voting patterns. The political scientist Jane Green is a specialist in public opinion and electoral behaviour. She argues that the Brexit vote created a new divide between Leavers and Remainers, and considers the significant impact of age and education on voting habits.

With an election due this year all political parties will be preparing their manifestos and presenting their vision of the future. The Professor of Politics at the London School of Economics, Jonathan White, focuses on the future as a political idea in The Long Run. While the democratic electoral cycle foregrounds short term policies, White argues it’s time for politicians to consider long-term solutions.

Producer: Katy Hickman

Artificial Intelligence will be the focus of this year’s Royal Institution Christmas Lectures by the Oxford Professor of Computer Science, Mike Wooldridge. In his series of lectures (broadcast on BBC Four in late December) he will attempt to disentangle the realities from the myths, but will also demonstrate the huge impact AI is already having in fields ranging from medicine to football to astrophysics, as well as on the creative arts.

The bestselling novelist Naomi Alderman has fun with AI and its tech trillionaire-creators in her latest thriller The Future. While the wealthy corporate heads are effectively decapitated by an end-of-the-world scenario, the story explores whether the technology that could presage the apocalypse can also be used for the good of society.

The Professor of Politics at Cambridge, David Runciman, wants to change the way people think about a future in which artificial intelligence has taken control. In The Handover he looks back to the formation of states and corporations, arguing that these are the precursors to AI: powerful artificial entities that have come to rule our world. While thy have made us richer and safer, he questions what will happen to human existence if these two machines – states and AI – join forces.

Producer: Katy Hickman

With the fall of the Soviet Union, the theoretical physicist Armen Sarkissian returned home and became first the Prime Minister and then the President of the newly reformed state of Armenia. In his book, The Small States Club: How Small Smart States Can Save the World, he argues that successful smaller nations have had to learn to be more agile, adaptive and cooperative, compared to the world’s ‘greater’ powers.

The world map has changed considerably, especially in the 19th and 20th century, as empires fell apart and smaller nations fought for independence. The Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan looks back at this time, and considers how small states survive during times of conflict. In 2018 she presented the BBC’s Reith Lectures, The Mark of Cain, on the tangled history of war and society.

The BBC’s Chief International Correspondent Lyse Doucet is no stranger to conflict in the world, as she has covered all the major stories across the Middle East and North Africa for the past two decades. But she is also interested in the way small states have been instrumental in mediating world conflicts, and punching above their weight on international issues like the climate crisis.

Producer: Katy Hickman

It’s play time on Start the Week. The mathematician Marcus Du Sautoy looks at the numbers behind the games we play, from Monopoly to rock paper scissors. In Around The World in 80 Games he shows how understanding maths can give you the edge, and why games are integral to human psychology and culture.

The historian Anthony Bale looks at game-playing in the medieval world. In A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages, he finds travellers passing the time with dice and tric trac, as well as collecting pilgrim badges along the way.

Many of today’s most popular video games immerse players in historical settings, and the practice of collecting items along the way is nothing new to gamers. The co-director of the Games and Gaming Lab at the University of Glasgow, Jane Draycott, researches the historical authenticity of these online worlds, and especially the depiction of women.

And the mathematician G.T. Karber has taken his love of classic detective fiction and puzzles to create the murder-mystery riddle Murdle. A combination of Cluedo and Sudoku, what started as an online game is now a series of bestselling books. The latest is Murdle: More Killer Puzzles.

Producer: Katy Hickman

Tim Peake was the first British astronaut to visit the International Space Station, and is one of only 628 people in human history to have left the Earth’s atmosphere. In Space he tells the human story of space exploration – from launch to landing.

In Samantha Harvey’s latest novel Orbital six astronauts on a space station rotate above the Earth. While their waking lives are spent conducting scientific experiments and maintaining the spacecraft, their attention is constantly drawn back to the Earth – its beauty as they circle it, and the fragility of the human life on it.

The cosmologist Roberto Trotta stands on firm ground and gazes skyward. In Starborn he wonders how different our world would be if our ancestors had looked up and there were no stars. From navigation to time, gravity to the wonder of the universe, the cosmos has profoundly shaped our understanding of the world.

Producer: Katy Hickman

The Impressionist painter Claude Monet wrote that he was driven ‘wild with the need to put down what I experience’. In his long career he revolutionised painting and made some of the most iconic images of western art. The art critic Jackie Wullschläger’s biography of Monet looks at the man behind the famous artist.

Monet’s late series of paintings of water lilies became less and less concerned with a conventional depiction of nature. The artist Mat Collishaw’s latest works also draw on evocative imagery from the natural world, including use of AI technology. At an exhibition at Kew Gardens (until April 2024) Collishaw takes inspiration from 17th century still life paintings of flowers, but on closer inspection the viewer sees the flowers morph into layers of insects.

Humans have always used technology to expand our limited vision, from the stone mirror 8,000 years ago to facial recognition and surveillance software today. Jill Walker Rettberg is Professor of Digital Culture at the University of Bergen. In her book, Machine Vision, she looks at the implications of the latest technologies, and how they are changing the way we see the world.

Producer: Katy Hickman

The award-winning composer Errollyn Wallen offers an insight into what it’s like to write a piece of music. In her memoir, Becoming a Composer, she also looks back on how a girl born in Belize and brought up in Tottenham found herself at home in the world of classical music.

Handel was gradually losing his sight in 1751 as he finished what was his last dramatic oratorio Jephtha. The harpsichordist Laurence Cummings conducts a new performance of this biblical tale of faith and sacrifice, at the Royal Opera House (8–24 November; on BBC Radio 3 on 27 January). He explains how Handel’s work has been reinterpreted for today’s audience.

Jazz musicians are celebrated for their re-interpretation of classics and improvisation. As the London Jazz festival is in full swing (10-19 November, and on BBC Radio 3), the celebrated jazz singer Emma Smith talks about what happens when the notes on the page are transformed into a performance.

Producer: Katy Hickman

In the winter of 770 the Chinese poet Du Fu wrote his final words, ‘Excitement gone, now nothing troubles me…/ Rushing madly at last where do I go?’ Looking back at his life and work, the historian Michael Wood retraces Du Fu’s journeys across China. He lived through war and famine, but his poetry found beauty and grandeur in the minutiae of everyday life and the natural world. Michael Wood tells Tom Sutcliffe how Du Fu’s poetry has the timeless quality of Shakespeare or Dante.

The travel writer Noo Saro-Wiwa goes on a different journey into China, finding out about the lives of Africans living there today. In Black Ghosts she traces the waves of immigration from the 1950s onwards, which benefitted African students and economic migrants who found Europe closed to them. As she meets those from all walks of life – from visa-overstayers to top surgeons – she considers the precarity of their lives, and the ultimate power imbalance in Sino-African relations.

China is Africa's largest trading partner and in the past China has lent huge sums for infrastructure in its Belt and Road project. But as China’s economy begins to falter, the economist and China specialist George Magnus looks at the implications. Abroad many African countries are deeply indebted, and at home after 40 years of China’s seemingly irrepressible rise, the country is now facing a surge in urban youth unemployment and signs of deflation.

Producer: Katy Hickman

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