Start the Week

From Europe’s perspective Christopher Columbus ‘discovered’ America in 1492. But the historian Caroline Dodds Pennock shifts the focus in her new book, On Savage Shores, to explore what the great civilisations of the Americas – the Aztecs, Maya, Totonacs, Inuit and others – found in return. The stories of Indigenous Americans abroad are ones of abduction, loss and cultural appropriation, but also bafflement at the lives and beliefs in 15th century Europe. On Savage Shores is BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week.

Iokiñe Rodríguez Fernandez is a Venezuelan sociologist who co-founded Grupo Confluencias, a consortium of Latin American conflict resolution practitioners. She works closely with indigenous communities who are fighting to retain their ways of life, and the focus is very much on local history, local knowledge and traditions.

The Royal Academy of Arts in London is showcasing treasures from Spain and the Hispanic World from 21st January. This landmark exhibition will present a visual narrative of the history of Spanish culture, bringing together works from Spain and from its colonies in Latin America, from antiquity to the early 20th century. The co-curator Adrian Locke explains how the artistic, cultural and religious influences from abroad helped shape and enrich art in Spain.

Producer: Katy Hickman

In Not So Black and White: A History of Race from White Supremacy to Identity Politics Kenan Malik questions what he sees as lazy assumptions about race and culture. He retells the forgotten history of a racialised working class which sits uncomfortably with today’s obsession with ‘white privilege’. He tells Tom Sutcliffe that we need to confront the issues facing society in terms of class and inequality, and not in terms of identity.

The academic Francesca Sobande believes people’s racial identity is a key factor in their experiences and how they are treated. Black Oot Here, co-authored with layla-roxanne hill, explores the history and contemporary lives of Black people in Scotland.

The prize winning poet Don Paterson grew up on a working-class council housing estate in Dundee in Scotland. He looks back at that time in his memoir, Toy Fights, interweaving the moments of love, joy and musical delight with the dark side of growing up surrounded by poverty.

Producer: Katy Hickman

Image credit: '40 George Square' by Francesca Sobande

The award-winning social psychologist Dacher Keltner believes he’s found the answer to happiness: finding awe. In his new book, Awe: The Transformative Power of Everyday Wonder, he shows how this elusive, but powerful, emotion can have physical and psychological effects, impacting our bodies and brains.

Anna Lapwood is an organist and conductor, and currently the Director of Music at Pembroke College, Cambridge. She is also a great believer in the transformative power of music. She regularly plays the Royal Albert Hall’s organ – described as ‘the voice of Jupiter’ – and believes listeners can feel the wonder vibrating through the music.

Looking up at the night sky and contemplating galaxies far away is often seen as a sure way to elicit wonder, but the physicist Felix Flicker argues that it can be found much smaller and much closer to home. In The Magick of Matter he shows how truly inspiring crystalline specks of dust can be, and when they're combined the sky’s the limit.

Producer: Katy Hickman

Image: Anna Lapwood - Leeds Town Hall (Credit Tom Arber)

George Balanchine is one of the most revered and influential choreographers of the twentieth century. In this first major biography about his life Jennifer Homans offers an intimate portrait of the man who co-founded the New York City Ballet and brought the art form so spectacularly into the modern age. She explores his life and legacy, revealing a complicated genius who was inspired to choreograph dances from subjects as diverse as Spinoza’s philosophy to Orthodox icons, disrupting the norms of ballet and pushing the dancers into creative worlds of abstraction.

Wayne McGregor is a contemporary titan of the dance world. He has just returned from Toronto where his ballet based on Margaret Atwood’s post-apocalyptic book, MADDADDAM, had its world premiere in a joint production for The Royal Ballet and the National Ballet of Canada. Wayne McGregor’s own dance company is celebrating its thirtieth anniversary and since its inception has been the experimental and creative forum for Wayne’s innovative choreographic style.

Ballet Black was founded by Cassa Pancho just over twenty years ago in response to the lack of racial diversity in ballet and offers dancers of Black and Asian descent a platform to showcase their talents. The company has gone from strength to strength, continually overturning stereotypes and transforming the landscape of classical dance. In March 2023 the company will perform ‘Pioneers’ at the Barbican, comprising new and original work by award-winning choreographers Will Tuckett and Mthuthuzeli November.

Producer: Natalia Fernandez

Music credits: Wayne McGregor's MADDADDAM, Act 1 (except), original score by Max Richter. A co-production between the National Ballet of Canada and The Royal Ballet, inspired by the trilogy by Margaret Atwood.

Johan Eklöf is a Swedish bat scientist on a mission. In The Darkness Manifesto (translated by Elizabeth DeNoma) he warns how light pollution is threatening the ancient rhythms of life. Many creatures across the world come to life at night – with bats specially adapted to fly using echolocation. By keeping the lights on we are disrupting entire ecosystems.

But darkness can appear alien and frightening. The writer Kate Summerscale explores the phobias that haunt the imagination as the lights go off: nyctophobia, xylophobia and hypnophobia – intense and morbid fears of the dark, of forests and of falling asleep.

But why do bumps in the night sound so much more unnerving than during the day? The neuroscientist Professor Geraint Rees focuses his research on seeking to understand the neural basis of consciousness and he explores how our different senses are integral to the way we perceive and experience the world around us.

The forces of light and darkness are pitted against each other in the classic children’s story The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper, now adapted for BBC World Service radio, starting on Tuesday 20th December. Producer and co-adapter Simon McBurney creates a spine-tingling winter soundscape with the use of binaural sound, giving listeners using headphones a unique immersive experience.

Producer: Katy Hickman

It is fifty years since the last manned-flight to the moon. While the Apollo missions have long been superseded by explorations further afield, the science journalist Oliver Morton insists the moon landings remain strong in our cultural imagination. In his 2019 book, The Moon, he explained how a spherical piece of rock had captured the world’s attention, but then been largely ignored. He tells Tom Sutcliffe how scientists and politicians are now once again turning their focus to our nearest neighbour.

Throughout history the moon has inspired artists, poets, scientists, writers and musicians the world over. The artist Luke Jerram has created an extraordinary replica of the Moon measuring seven metres in diameter, fusing NASA imagery of the lunar surface, moonlight, and sound composition. The Museum of the Moon has been exhibited hundreds of times – both indoors and outdoors – across the world, and Jerram explains how each installation has stimulated different events.

While NASA’s Artemis mission explores sending astronauts back to the Moon as a stepping stone to human exploration to Mars, and celebrity billionaires sell visions of private space travel, Mary-Jane Rubenstein sounds a warning. In Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race she sees comparisons with the destructive effects of the centuries-long history of European colonialism. As problems multiply on Earth she dismisses the offer by wealthy messiahs of an other-worldly salvation for a chosen few.

Producer: Katy Hickman

Image: Museum of the Moon by Luke Jerram, Cork Midsummer Festival, UK, 2017

Real faith ‘passes first through the body/ like an arrow’ so writes the American-Iranian poet Kaveh Akbar. In his collection Pilgrim Bell he plays with the physical and divine, the human capacity for cruelty and grace, and the reality of living as a Muslim in an Islamophobic nation.

The Anglican priest and biblical scholar John Barton turns his attention to the word of God as it has travelled across the world. The Bible have been translated thousands of times into more than 700 languages. In The Word he traces the challenges of crossing linguistic borders from antiquity to the present, while remaining faithful to the original.

Faith, fanaticism and fame combine in Emma Donoghue’s novel, The Wonder, now made into a film, starring Florence Pugh. It follows the story of a young girl in 1860s Ireland who stops eating, but miraculously stays alive, and the nurse sent to discover the truth.

Producer: Katy Hickman

Image: From the film, 'The Wonder'. (L to R) Florence Pugh as Lib Wright, Josie Walker as Sister Michael in The Wonder. Cr. Aidan Monaghan/Netflix © 2022

The Nobel peace prize-winner Maria Ressa is a journalist who has spent decades speaking truth to power in the country of her birth, the Philippines. She looks back at her life, and her ongoing battle against disinformation and political lies in How To Stand Up To A Dictator. She tells Kirsty Wark that although she is hounded by the state and faces threats of imprisonment, she is determined to continue fighting for the truth.

Zsuzsanna Szelényi was once one of the leading politicians in Hungary’s ruling party, Fidesz, but now sits in opposition. In Tainted Democracy she charts what she calls her country’s descent into autocracy. She explores how the populist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has consolidated his grip on power, reining in the media and making sweeping changes to legal and economic frameworks.

In his latest three part series for BBC television, History of Now, Simon Schama looks back at the dramatic history that has played out in the decades of his own life from 1945. He explores the vital role of artists, writers and musicians in fighting for democracy and equality post-war. The series reveals the extraordinary power of art to shape the world, and the immense personal cost of creating work that dares to take a stand.

Producer: Katy Hickman

Image: Simon Schama in front of Picasso’s 'Guernica'. From Simon Schama's 'History of Now', Episode 1, BBC 2 (Credit: BBC/Oxford Films/Eddie Knox)

In art the Greek and Roman body is often portrayed as one of perfection – flawlessly cast in bronze and white marble. But the classicist Caroline Vout tells Adam Rutherford that the reality was very different. In her new book, Exposed: The Greek and Roman Body, she reveals all the imperfections and anxieties, and makes visible those who were regarded at the time as far from perfect – women and servants.

The curator and art historian Katy Hessel is also challenging the accepted history in her work, The Story of Art Without Men. She shines a light on women artists, from Sofonisba Anguissola of the Renaissance, to the radical Harriet Power in 19th century America, and the women artists working all over the world in the 21st century.

Throughout history the human skin has also been a canvas: permanent markings were discovered on bodies from as early as 5000 BCE. In Painted People: Humanity in 21 Tattoos, Matt Lodder reveals the often hidden artworks – and the people who wore them – to explore a changing world.

Producer: Katy Hickman

The award-winning writer Jonathan Coe presents a portrait of Britain told through four generations of one family, in his latest novel Bournville. Set in middle England, in a suburb of Birmingham, he chronicles the years of social change post-war, and the events that both brought people together and divided them, from royal events and the World Cup to Brexit and Covid-19.

The chocolate factory that features heavily in the novel, and was once at the centre of life in Bournville, has since been transformed in part into a theme park, no doubt offering an authentic chocolate experience. The journalist Emily Bootle turns her attention to what she sees now as an obsession with authenticity. In a collection of essays, This Is Not Who I Am, she unpicks the ideology surrounding the goal of ‘living our truth’ amidst the fakery of digital culture and the illusion of infinite choice.

The award-winning saxophonist and rapper Soweto Kinch also takes a long hard look at the state of the nation for his latest album, White Juju, recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra. Conceived at the height of the pandemic the music is his response to lockdown, BLM, British history and the culture wars. He takes inspiration from European folklore, the African Diaspora and divisive national myths to create a unified modern tone poem.

Producer: Katy Hickman