What can the cosmos tell us about our past and future? Tom Sutcliffe and guests look skyward and deep into the quantum world to ask how much we can really know about the universe - and about ourselves. Space scientist Maggie Aderin-Pocock, presenter of this year’s Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, shares her passion for inspiring the next generation to think big, as she explores the wonders of our solar system and the questions that still puzzle astronomers. Physicist and cosmologist Paul Davies introduces his new book Quantum 2.0, charting the strange and revolutionary principles of quantum mechanics and how they are reshaping technology, science, and our understanding of reality itself. From the Natural History Museum, Caroline Smith brings insights from meteorites — fragments of ancient worlds — and explains how these cosmic messengers help scientists search for life beyond Earth and piece together the story of our solar system’s origins. Together, in Radio 4's weekly ideas discussion programme Start the Week, they consider the limits of knowledge: whether in decoding quantum mysteries, interpreting rocks from space, or imagining the motivations of those who first looked to the stars.Producer: Ruth Watts
Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez
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42:00
Genes and hands: mapping character and health
What can genetics and palmistry tell us about how we understand identity, character and health? Adam Rutherford is joined by Professor of Zoology Matthew Cobb; the historian Professor Alison Bashford and the geneticist Charlotte Houldcroft.Matthew Cobb discusses his biography Crick: A Mind in Motion. From the discovery of DNA’s structure to Francis Crick’s later work on consciousness, Cobb reveals a restless thinker whose collaborations — with scientists, artists and poets — shaped some of the most profound ideas of the 20th century.Alison Bashford turns to palm reading in her new book Decoding the Hand, a history of palmistry and its surprising entanglement with science, medicine and magic.The geneticist Charlotte Houldcroft's research uses ancient DNA to work out how DNA viruses - such as smallpox and herpes - change over time and the consequences of this evolution for our immune systems.Producer: Natalia Fernandez
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41:37
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41:37
Digital Futures and Information Crises
How can we reclaim the internet? Tom Sutcliffe and guests discuss the digital age - its supporters and discontents. Tech critic Cory Doctorow introduces his new book Enshittification, a blistering diagnosis of how online platforms have decayed — from innovation to exploitation — and what we can do to make it better for ordinary users. Novelist and broadcaster Naomi Alderman draws on history in Don’t Burn Anyone at the Stake Today, arguing that we’ve lived through information crises before, and that lessons from the invention of writing and the printing press can help us navigate today’s digital turbulence. Journalist Oliver Moody, the author of Baltic: The Future of Europe, discusses Estonia’s radical embrace of digital governance, and what it reveals about the possibilities — and limits — of a truly connected state.Producer: Katy Hickman
Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez
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41:40
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41:40
Saving Tigers, Green Crime and Cli-fi
Threats to the natural world are the focus of today’s conversation. Adam Rutherford talks to wildlife biologist Jonathan Slaght, novelist Juhea Kim and criminal psychologist Julia Shaw.Jonathan Slaght discusses Tigers Between Empires, his account of the international effort to save the Siberian tiger from extinction in the wake of the Cold War. Juhea Kim’s short story collection A Love Story from the End of the World imagines lives lived in precarious balance with nature, from biodomes in Seoul to landfill islands in the Pacific. Dr Julia Shaw’s Green Crime investigates the psychology behind environmental destruction, profiling the perpetrators of ecological harm and the people fighting to stop them.Producer: Katy Hickman
Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez
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Storytelling: Jeanette Winterson, Rory Stewart and Soweto Kinch
In her latest novel, One Aladdin Two Lamps, the writer Jeanette Winterson takes inspiration from the legendary story of Shahrazad in One Thousand and One Nights. But she calls on the reader to look again at stories we think we know, unpick how fiction works, and have the courage to challenge and change the narrative.The saxophonist and presenter Soweto Kinch will perform his new album, Soundtrack to the Apocalypse, with the London Symphony Orchestra (at the Barbican, London, on Friday 14th November), combining British jazz, hip-hop and orchestral music. This is the finale of his acclaimed trilogy of politically charged, genre-defying works that tell different stories of the past, present and future. The former MP Rory Stewart spent nearly a decade in Britain’s most rural constituency, Penrith and Borders, and wrote a column for a local newspaper. In Middleland: Dispatches from the Borders he’s collected together these fragmentary moments from rural life and local politics to capture a wide-ranging portrait of life and stories from the Cumbrian countryside. Producer: Katy Hickman
Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez
Colombia