Start the Week

How far does evolution explain mental health? The psychiatrist Randolph Nesse tells Kirsty Wark that negative emotions make sense in certain situations but can become excessive. He argues that positioning disorders in light of natural selection helps explain the ubiquity of human suffering - and may help in finding new paths for relieving it.The neuropsychologist AK Benjamin investigates the boundaries of sanity and madness in his book, Let Me Not Be Mad. Through a series of consultations with patients, he explores the mind unravelling at the seams. But the question remains whether this unravelling mind belongs to the doctor or the patient.The poet George Szirtes looks at the damaging impact of international events on a single family, in his memoir of his mother Magda. The Photographer At Sixteen follows Magda from her teenage life in Hungary, through political uprisings, internment in two concentration camps and transition to life in England. He explores the effect of an unravelling world on a family's mental health.Producer: Katy Hickman

Society is at a turning point, warns Professor Shoshana Zuboff. Democracy and liberty are under threat as capitalism and the digital revolution combine forces. She tells Andrew Marr how new technologies are not only mining our minds for data, but radically changing them in the process. As Facebook celebrates its 15th birthday she examines what happens when a few companies have unprecedented power and little democratic oversight. Although behavioural data is constantly being abstracted by tech companies, John Thornhill, Innovations Editor at the Financial Times, questions whether they have yet worked out how to use it effectively to manipulate people. And he argues that the technological revolution has brought many innovations which have benefitted society.The award-winning writer Ece Temelkuran has warned readers about rising authoritarianism in her native Turkey. In her new book, How To Lose a Country, she widens that warning to the rest of the world. She argues that right-wing populism and nationalism do not appear already fully-formed in government - but creep insidiously in the shadows, unchallenged and underestimated until too late.Producer: Katy Hickman

There is nothing new for chemistry to discover, says Bernie Bulkin. In Solving Chemistry: A Scientist's Journey, the former Head of Science at BP argues that an unprecedented event has happened: a branch of science has made all the major discoveries it is likely to make. He tells Tom Sutcliffe what this means for chemistry - and for science more broadly.Medicine is in the midst of 'a biomedical revolution' says Professor Sir Robert Lechler. His own field of kidney transplants has been transformed by our new understanding of the immune system. He has helped to curate Spare Parts, an exhibition at the Science Gallery that poses the question: how many transplants could we have before we were no longer ourselves?Elizabeth Pisani has watched interest in different diseases rise and fall. As an epidemiologist she charts the impact that press attention and public grants have on medical research, with some becoming fashionable while in others treatments lag behind. And she warns that scientists too often fail to take account of the human context when delivering medicines. Astrophysicist Jo Dunkley assesses our understanding of the universe in a concise new guide. But the universe is 85% dark matter - and we still know very little about this. She draws attention to the brilliant female scientists who contributed to breakthroughs in physics, but whose contributions have been forgotten along the way.Picture: Big Heart Data by Gareth McKee, part of Spare Parts at the Science GalleryProducer: Hannah Sander

Andrew Marr on beauty and politics in art. Our idea of beauty was shaped by the great Victorian art critic John Ruskin. He thought all people deserved to see beauty every day, and compared, and founded a gallery in Sheffield for local industrial workers. To mark Ruskin's bicentenary, curator Louise Pullen has put together a new exhibition showing how his ideas about art, science, truth and beauty shaped the politics of the day."All art is propaganda and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists," declared WEB Du Bois. The civil rights campaigner, philosopher and social thinker argued that it was an artist's duty to shape a better world. Academic Liam Bright explains why Du Bois thought both artists and scientists had a duty to tell the truth.In poet Fiona Benson's new volume Vertigo and Ghost, beauty, violence and power are never far apart. Benson's poems depict Zeus as a serial rapist, and capture the claustrophobia of modern domestic life.And design guru Stephen Bayley considers what creativity is - and what it is for - in his new book How To Steal Fire. As a leading cultural critic, he asks what place beauty and imagination have in modern life.Producer: Hannah Sander

The prize-winning writer John Lanchester considers the political endgame of a fractious world in his new novel, The Wall. He tells Amol Rajan why he has written a dystopian fable in which the young distrust the old, and the world appears broken.But just how violent are we as a species? The primatologist Richard Wrangham believes there is a 'goodness paradox': at an individual level we have evolved to become a more peaceful animal, especially compared to our closest relatives, the chimpanzee; but our ability to organise and plan an attack has made us lethal.The ancient Assyrians celebrated every detail of cruelty, massacre and torture, including skinning prisoners alive, as they built their empire and conquered their enemies. The academic Eleanor Robson looks back at the reign of the King Ashurbanipal from the 7th century BC, immortalised in an exhibition at the British Museum.Shortly after the King’s death the Empire fell. Dr Patricia Lewis is an expert on international security and studies the ebb and flow of wars across the world from chemical warfare to cyber-attacks. She looks ahead to the major conflicts to watch in the coming year.The above image is from the British Museum’s exhibition I Am Ashurbanipal: King of the World, King of AssyriaProducer: Katy Hickman

Andrew Marr starts the year in search of happiness with the behavioural scientist and happiness professor Paul Dolan. Dolan has advised the government on how to measure wellbeing, and in his latest book Happy Ever After argues that we’ve been sold a lie about the sources of happiness. The route to fulfilment may be far more unexpected that we thought.The writer Laura Freeman deplores what she calls the current Pollyana tendencies to ‘keep smiling’ via the mood-tracker apps on your phone. Freeman recounts how she herself found an appetite for life, after years of suffering with anorexia, through her love of reading.The science journalist Linda Geddes explores the impact of sunlight on our minds and bodies. In Chasing the Sun she looks at its significance in improving our health, sleep, productivity and mood.But what if our mood is really affected not by our mind, but our bodies? Professor Edward Bullmore has studied the link between mental health and physical inflammation, and argues that we need to look more closely at our immune system in the treatment of depression.Producer: Katy Hickman

On Christmas Eve, Andrew Marr explores the mysteries of snow and ice. Michelle Paver's novels dwell in the darkest places: an Arctic hut in midwinter haunted by ghosts, an isolated mountain peak, and a prehistoric frozen forest. She explains the appeal of these inhospitable settings, and asks why the cold still terrifies us.Ben Saunders knows the sounds and smells of ice better than most. As one of the world's leading polar explorers he has skied to the North Pole and completed Scott and Shackleton's aborted trip to the South Pole. He describes the exhaustion, frustration and wonder of life on a frozen sea.Materials scientist Mark Miodownik knows that liquids are not to be trusted, even when frozen solid. His latest book, Liquid: The Delightful and Dangerous Substances That Flow Through Our Lives, unpicks the cracks, creaks and crystals of ice.Poet and writer Nancy Campbell set out from the world's northernmost museum to understand our fascination with ice and snow. Her new book, The Library of Ice: Readings from a Cold Climate,brings to life the people who dwell in these icy landscapes, many of which are now disappearing.Producer: Hannah Sander

Kirsty Wark explores national stories and myths – from both inside and outside a country’s borders.Neil MacGregor discusses how Dickens, Monty Python and the Suez Crisis have influenced the way Britain is perceived abroad. He visits five different countries to find out which historical events, cultural influences and objects have shaped the way how others see us. The answers may well surprise people back home. Sweden has a strong sense of its own national identity: it boasts the world’s oldest free press and prides itself on its special brand of social democracy. But the journalist Kajsa Norman looks beyond this utopian myth to expose the darkness in the Swedish soul. She reveals what happens to those who dare to dissent from consensus.Japan’s national image abroad is one of staid tradition mixed with bizarre pop culture, and the samurai warrior alongside the grey mass of ‘salarymen’. But the academic Christopher Harding argues there is far more to Japanese society than these enduring clichés. He looks at how Japan has been reinventing itself over the last century and a half, and the often radical and outspoken resistance to conformity.Producer: Katy Hickman

Trees may have vibrant inner lives and certainly appear to have individual personalities, claims the forester-cum-writer Peter Wollheben. In his bestselling book, The Hidden Life of Trees, he uncovers an underground social network of communication between trees.In the late 1990s the journalist Ruth Pavey purchased four acres of scrub woodland in Somerset, and set about transforming this derelict land into a sanctuary for woodland plants, creatures and her own thoughts. The natural world comes alive in the poetry of Kathleen Jamie. Although her landscape is often her Scottish homeland, politics, history and human folly are never far away, as she asks how we can live more equably with nature.And breathing clean air is the goal of Gary Fuller’s book, The Invisible Killer. He studies the rising threat of air pollution from London’s congested streets to wood-burning damage in New Zealand.Producer: Katy Hickman

Today's battle for political power began with Thomas Cromwell, argues Diarmaid MacCulloch. In a landmark new biography he tells Tom Sutcliffe how Henry VIII's chief reformer claimed power from Europe and the pope - and gave it to an English parliament instead. But Cromwell is one of the most notorious figures in history, admired as a master statesman and reviled as a Machiavel.Acclaimed playwright James Graham dramatises the political power-play of the Brexit campaign in his new Channel 4 drama. Starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Dominic Cummings, the driving force behind Vote Leave, Graham depicts ten weeks of machinations that forever changed Britain's relationship with Europe.Isabel Hardman, Assistant Editor of the Spectator, has followed the political upheavals of Brexit closely. In her book Why We Get the Wrong Politicians she looks at the demands made on MPs and how this has changed over time. She argues that their role has shifted from legislator to constituency worker - and that our political system is worse as a result.And Professor Steven Fielding looks back at the MPs have been depicted in culture. But where novelist Anthony Trollope's fictional Prime Minster is a hero, Fileding argues that the MPs found in The Thick of It and Yes Minister are uniformly venal and cowardly.Producer: Hannah Sander

The director Paulette Randall brings to the stage the ultimate tale of sacrifice in the pursuit of power: Doctor Faustus. She tells Andrew Marr how, in coveting fame, power and knowledge, he sells his soul to the devil. This bargain with the devil is one of the most iconic cultural motifs in the Western tradition.The poet and writer Ann Wroe looks to another founding story of Christianity, that of St Francis of Assisi. Born into luxury he forsakes it all after hearing the voice of God commanding him to rebuild the Church and live in poverty. Wroe writes his life story in verse and see echoes of it all around her today.The philosopher Julian Baggini sees such ancient stories as helping to explore and explain how people think in the West. But in his new book, How the World Thinks, he admits his own failures to learn about the stories and early philosophies which have come out of the East. Without them, he argues, you cannot understand the development of distinct cultures around the world.The novelist and essayist Amit Chaudhuri has looked far and wide for his influences, from Nobel laureate Tagore and filmmaker Satyajit Ray to Cervantes’s Don Quixote. In The Origins of Dislike he explores the way writers understand their work both in antithesis to, and affinity with, past writers and movements from around the world.Producer: Katy Hickman

A stifling culture of safety is now spreading throughout Western academic institutions leading to a crisis in mental health, according to the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. He tells Amol Rajan that the current obsession with ‘safe spaces’ and no-platforming, is not only a breach of freedom of speech, but is creating a generation unable to cope with modern life.But the commentator Yasmin Alibhai-Brown argues that free speech has often been used as a justification to spout hate speech and prejudice. She defends political correctness as a means to build a safer, more compassionate world.The writer Olivia Sudjic made her name after the publication of her debut novel Sympathy which explored surveillance and identity in the internet age. But as she became the focus of attention she felt trapped in a spiral of self-doubt. She looks at the epidemic of anxiety among the so-called ‘snowflake’ generation.Changing attitudes are at the heart of Mark Ravenhill’s new play, The Cane. Should a well-respected teacher be punished retrospectively for past actions which are now deemed unacceptable, but few questioned at the time?Producer: Katy Hickman

Poland turns 100 this November. The country had existed for a thousand years but it was only in 1918 with the Treaty of Versailles that an independent Poland was created. Amol Rajan explores its turbulent history.No nation's story has been so distorted as Poland's, says historian Adam Zamoyski. He looks back to the great medieval nation that was once a European heavyweight. But Russia, Prussia and Austria divided Poland up in 1797 and turned it into a backwater - before the Nazis and Soviet soldiers arrived to do more damage.The decades since independence in 1918 have seen extraordinary twists in the tale. Composer Roxanna Panufnik combines Polish poetry with a Catholic mass in her new oratorio Faithful Journey - Mass for Poland. This huge work for choir and orchestra covers the bloodshed of two world wars, the relative prosperity and optimism of the 1930s, the censorship of communist rule and a new hope for the coming years.In the 1950s Stalin offered the people of Warsaw a choice between two gifts: a metro system or a vast skyscraper. They asked for the metro. He built the Joseph Stalin Palace of Culture and Science instead. Today the Palace is one of Poland's most recognisable sights and has starred on the cover of Vogue. But Michal Muraswki explains that to Poles today the Palace represents their communist legacy - something that the ruling Law and Justice Party are keen to forget,The reforms of the Law and Justice Party, including a move to ban all abortions, have been met with criticism at home and abroad. Award-winning journalist Witold Szablowski examines Poland's relationship with Europe, with its neighbours and with its past.Producer: Hannah Sander

Andrew Marr talks to the journalist Lindsey Hilsum about the extraordinary life of the war correspondent Marie Colvin. Throughout her career she travelled to the most dangerous places in the world, to bear witness to the suffering of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events. She wrote: “it has always seemed to me that what I write about is humanity in extremis, pushed to the unendurable, and that it is important to tell people what really happens in wars.’ She was killed in Syria in 2012.For most of her career Marie Colvin wrote for The Sunday Times newspaper. Eve Pollard knows only too well the added pressures of getting a scoop for the nation’s weekend papers, as she formerly edited both the Sunday Mirror and the Sunday Express. She’s now the UK Chair of Reporters Without Borders which this week will honour courage, impact and independence in journalism.Anabel Hernandez is an investigative reporter who has fought to lay bare the terrible facts behind the disappearance of forty-three Mexican students in 2014. Her book, A Massacre in Mexico, details the systemic corruption and cover-up among state officials, from the local police to government ministers.It is a hundred years since the poet Wilfred Owen died in battle, just a week before the end of WWI. The poet Gillian Clarke explores how Owen’s poetry brought to light the physical and mental trauma of combat, and how in her own work she’s reflected contemporary conflicts. Producer: Katy Hickman

On Budget day, Andrew Marr discusses what is broken in our economic and social system, and how it could be mended - if only those in charge were bold enough.Oxford’s Paul Collier is an economist known around the world for his work on inequality. His new book, The Future of Capitalism, focuses on the great rifts dividing Britain, with solutions on how to close them.David Willetts, the former Conservative minister, is focused on generational fairness and the increasing tensions between the successful and the struggling in society. The Resolution Foundation, of which he is chair, suggests the state must do more to redistribute wealth and responsibility.Baroness Helena Kennedy has been a campaigning lawyer and a feminist throughout her career. Her new book, Eve was Shamed, looks at how British justice has been failing women - and comes up with solutions.And for those who think bad news for other people may be good for them, Tiffany Watt Smith explains that most British of Germanic concepts: schadenfreude.Producer: Hannah Sander

Pirates come in many forms – from swashbuckling Captain Hook to today's poverty-stricken pirates off the coast of Somalia. It’s 400 years since one of the most charismatic and controversial figures in English history was executed. Sir Walter Ralegh was a favourite of Elizabeth I and was a famous adventurer and poet. But his exploits divided opinion even in his own lifetime, and his biographer Anna Beer tells Kirsty Wark the Spanish regarded him as a state-sponsored pirate.Captain Hook, Long John Silver and Jack Sparrow are at the heart of a new exhibition on fictional pirates at the V & A Museum of Childhood. The exhibition, curated by Will Newton, explores adventures on the high seas and charts how the moral ambiguity of Robert Louis Stevenson’s creation became the romanticised and sanitised version in today’s popular imagination.In 2012 the journalist Michael Scott Moore, who had covered the first trial in Europe of a Somali pirate, travelled to the Horn of Africa to find out more. He ended up being kidnapped and held captive for 977 days. He explores the historical and political case for piracy in Somalia, as well as religious extremism and the art of survival aboard a hijacked ship.Last month an American and a Chinese ship nearly collided in the South China Sea - which would probably have led to a major war, explains Veerle Nouwens. Through her role at defence think tank the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) she monitors the ongoing race to control the South China Sea. She explains when an island is not an island, and why a calamity in this shipping route could bring chaos to the global economy.Producer: Hannah SanderPlastic pirate figures © Papo

Francis Fukuyama once famously announced ‘the end of history’. He now turns his attention to what he sees as the great challenge to liberal democracy: identity politics. He tells Andrew Marr that today’s descent into identities narrowly focused on nation, religion, race or gender have resulted in an increasingly polarised and factional society.Birkbeck Professor of Politics, Eric Kaufmann, is looking at populism, immigration and the future of white majorities. He argues that the concerns of white people should be listened to and questions whether it's possible to transform and redefine the debate about ethnic diversity. But the black student activist Roseanne Chantiluke argues that for too long issues of race have been side-lined to maintain the status quo. She was involved in the campaign to remove the statue of Cecil Rhodes in Oxford and to challenge imperialist attitudes within the University. Sexual politics, power and identity are at the heart of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. The director Josie Rourke explores what happens when the actors playing the powerful male Deputy and the powerless female Novice alternate from one act to the next. Producer: Katy Hickman

It’s nearly a century since the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator was first conceived. It has gone on to become a multi-million pound industry categorising people from thinking introverts to feeling extroverts. But the mother-daughter team who came up with the idea had no psychological expertise and the test itself has no scientific basis, as the author Merve Emre explains to Tom Sutcliffe.Our genes are the most important factor in shaping who we are, according to the psychologist Robert Plomin. He argues that DNA influences everything from physical traits to intelligence and personality, and that nature not only trumps nurture, but is the main driver of it too. But the educationalist Naomi Eisenstadt argues that environment has a significant impact on children, especially in their early years. Eisenstadt was the first director of the Sure Start Unit when it was set up at the end of the 1990s and has been a government advisor on education and inequality. She questions whether there is any role for DNA testing in government policy. Producer: Katy Hickman

Yuval Noah Harari offers his 21 lessons for the 21st century. In a wide ranging discussion with Andrew Marr, Harari looks back to his best-selling history of the world, Sapiens, and forward to a possible post-human future. Technological disruption, ecological cataclysms, fake news and threats of terrorism make the 21st century a frightening prospect. Harari argues against sheltering in nostalgic political fantasies. He calls for a clear-sighted view of the unprecedented challenges that lie ahead.Producer: Katy Hickman

The prize-winning novelist William Boyd has set his latest novel, Love Is Blind, at the turn of the 20th century. He tells Amol Rajan how his young Scottish protagonist travels across Europe in a tale of obsession, passion and music.Lust and violence combine in Strauss's opera Salome in which a young princess performs the Dance of the Seven Veils for the head of John the Baptist on a platter. Director Adena Jacobs has put a bold new spin on the story for English National Opera in her psychologically challenging interpretation. Nietzsche may have written the famous phrase 'God is dead' but he also wrote movingly about love, guilt and hate. Biographer Sue Prideaux argues that Nietzsche is one of the most misunderstood philosophers. She explodes prevailing myths that he was a Nazi-sympathising, humourless misogynist.And popular culture is under the spotlight in the film critic Peter Biskind's latest book, The Sky is Falling. He argues that zombies, androids and superheroes heralded the age of political extremism.Producer: Katy Hickman.

It is 40 years since Sir David Attenborough told the story of Life on Earth, from its very first spark 4 billion years ago to the abundance of plants and animals today. He tells Andrew Marr how more pieces of the puzzle have fallen into place over the last four decades. The German ornithologist Michael Quetting spent a year hand rearing seven goslings: caring for them as they hatched, helping them learn to swim, and teaching them to fly alongside his aircraft. The project is part of an ambitious scientific research programme to understand birds in flight and use them to gather weather data for us.Lord Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, looks beyond the earth to ask about potential life among the stars. He sees the future of humanity as bound to the future of science, and believes that space explorers in the next century will be electronic and not organic.A hundred years after Holst wrote The Planets, leading composers are again trying to capture the essence of our solar system in music. But this time they are working in collaboration with scientists. The geologist Dr Philippa Mason has helped bring deeper insight to Venus: a planet once thought to be a lush tropical swamp world, but in reality a crushing, violent inferno.(Producer: Katy Hickman).

The Vietnam War was a 30-year conflict in which three million people died and the reputations of successive US presidents were wrecked. Max Hastings tells Andrew Marr about the extraordinary political meddling, strategic failure and lack of compassion that characterises that war.The historian Helen Parr was seven years old in 1982 when her uncle was killed in the Falklands War. She brings to life his experiences in the Parachute Regiment, often known as the Paras, an elite fighting force founded in 1940.The former head of the British Army Richard Dannatt, looks at the present health of the military - and considers the difficulties that lie ahead.While the Defence Editor of The Times newspaper, Deborah Haynes, scrutinises the defence budget and criticises the prevailing media and public narrative of the soldier as hero or victim.Producer: Katy Hickman.

Andrew Marr presents a special edition of Start the Week at the Edinburgh Festivals, weaving together ancient stories and contemporary fiction - from Scotland to Iceland via ancient Greece.He speaks to award-winning writers Pat Barker, Sjón and James Robertson and the singer-songwriter Karine Polwart. Karine also performs live.Producer: Katy Hickman.

Britain has imported its culture from Europe for generations. Andrew Marr presents a special edition from Hatchlands Park in Surrey, home to the Cobbe Collection of musical instruments including pianos owned by Chopin, Mahler and Marie Antoinette.Frederic Chopin had a pan-European career. He swapped his native Poland for Paris, fled to Mallorca in search of sunshine and inspiration, and toured Britain twice, complaining bitterly about the 'crafty' locals and 'dreadful' British weather. But he had a huge impact on the musical scenes he left behind. Paul Kildea charts Chopin's journey across Europe. Sitting at the keys of Chopin's own piano, Kildea explains how this visionary composer shaped Romanticism.European composers and performers in Britain faced a tougher reception in the wake of two world wars. In her new book, Singing in the Age of Anxiety, Laura Tunbridge depicts the contradictions of a generation that viewed Wagner as a cultural high-point - but decried all things German as enemy propaganda. At the same time radio and gramophones dramatically altered the way people heard and responded to music. The digital world offers vast new audiences, but also brings new challenges to those in the arts. Munira Mirza is Director of HENI Talks, an online platform that aims to share cultural information and understanding with much wider audiences. By combining leading experts and world-famous works such as the Mona Lisa, she wants to take art outside the gallery. As former Deputy Mayor for Culture in London, Mirza envisages a future in which we have a truly international cultural scene.Producer: Hannah Sander.

Tina Brown was an Englishwoman barely out of her twenties when she arrived in New York. She transformed herself into a star magazine editor, at the helm of Vanity Fair and later the New Yorker. She tells Amol Rajan how the backstabbing and status-driven world of American politics allows figures like Donald Trump to triumph.Didier Eribon is one of France's leading philosophers and the biographer of Foucault. But he has only just "come out" as working class. In his memoir Returning to Reims he asks why social status is still toxic in Europe today. And he gives a damning account of how the French working class shifted their loyalty from the Communist Party to Marine Le Pen's National Front.Frida Kahlo is a communist icon. As one of the world's most marketable faces she has even appeared on Theresa May's bracelet. Kahlo had a keen sense of her own image from an early age, and painted endless self-portraits. But she was also ashamed of her body and the accident that had left her unable to bear a child. As a blockbuster exhibition opens at the Victoria and Albert Museum, author Miranda France unpicks Kahlo's slippery reputation.A governess arrives at a grand country house and is terrified by the sexual freedom she encounters, in Benjamin Britten's opera The Turn of the Screw. Timothy Sheader directs a new production for Regent's Park Theatre and the English National Opera. He explains how a ghost story about a boy seduced by a powerful working man enabled Britten to address the shame and criminality of homosexuality in 1950s Britain.Producer: Hannah Sander.

One-third of the earth's surface is classified as desert. The writer William Atkins has travelled to eight of the world's hottest, driest places. He tells Andrew Marr about these forbidding, inhuman landscapes. The Arabian Desert lies mostly in Saudi Arabia but crosses borders from Egypt to Qatar, UAE to Oman. The economic analyst Jane Kinninmont looks at how this shared landscape affects regional politics and culture.In the 1950s deserts were the preferred places for Britain and America to test their nuclear bombs in secret. The science journalist Fred Pearce explores the human ingenuity - and human error - that has fuelled the atomic age. Producer: Katy Hickman.

Psychedelic drugs are once again being trialled to treat a range of psychological conditions. The writer Mike Pollan tells Kirsty Wark about the science of LSD and magic mushrooms: from the 1940s to the 1960s they promised to shed light not only on the deep mysteries of consciousness, but also to offer relief from addiction and mental illness. Banned since the 1970s, there is now a resurgence of research into these mind-altering substances.While some psychiatrists were getting their patients to experiment with psychedelics in the 1950s, far more were administering electroconvulsive therapy - both have a controversial history. ECT involves sending an electric current through the brain to trigger an epileptic seizure. It gained a reputation as a barbaric treatment, after the film One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. But the psychiatrist Dr Tammy Burmeister believes that it's time people understood the therapeutic potential from this procedure.The poet Andrew Motion's latest book Essex Clay is an attempt to return to heartfelt memories of childhood. He looks back at his mother's riding accident, which left her 'floating herself among the nebulae and gas clouds of her vast unconsciousness' and her subsequent slow death. The book revolves around loss and memory and retrieval. The evolution of the human brain is one of the wonders of nature, but the philosopher of science Peter Godfrey-Smith asks what if intelligent life on Earth evolved not once, but twice? He wonders how the octopus - a solitary creature - became so smart. He traces the story from single-celled organism 3.8 billion years ago to the development of cephalopod consciousness, casting new light on the octopus mind. Producer: Katy Hickman.

Booker Prize-winning novelist Arundhati Roy's latest book weaves together the lives of the misfits and outcasts from India's bustling streets. Roy is famous as an advocate for the most vulnerable and dehumanised in Indian society. She tells Andrew Marr how her main character Anjum builds a small paradise for the dispossessed in a graveyard in Delhi. Ivan Mishukov walked out of his Moscow flat aged four and spent two years living on the city streets, where he found a home among a pack of wild dogs. Playwright Hattie Naylor used this true and extraordinary story as the basis for a play and now a film, Lek and the Dogs. She explores how the human world failed to look after the child, but how his kindness won the trust and protection of street dogs.Damian Le Bas grew up surrounded by Gypsy history from his great grandmother. He sets out on the road to discover Travellers' stopping places and to understand how the romanticised stories of the past were replaced by the critical, outcast image of present-day Gypsies.The columnist and Conservative Peer Daniel Finkelstein appears to be the ultimate establishment insider. But his parents were refugees who were forced to move across Europe because of antisemitism. He believes their desire for rootedness and belonging underlines his own politics.Producer: Katy HickmanPicture: Arundhati Roy (credit Mayank Austen Soofi).

In a special edition at Hay Festival, Tom Sutcliffe explores success and failure, from Homer's epic poetry to global pandemics. The historian David Christian looks at the birth and development of the universe. He weaves together science, arts and humanities in his vast tale of human existence.Emily Wilson is the first woman to translate, The Odyssey, the great adventure story of classical literature.The historian Antony Beevor reconstructs the tragedy of Arnhem, the Battle for the Bridges in 1944. He questions whether the British military strategy was doomed from the start.Success and failure are woven through Dr Jonathan D Quick's study of epidemics. He asks whether politics and science can come together to prevent the deaths of millions of people.Producer: Katy Hickman.

Giant factories are at the centre of Joshua Freeman's history of mass production. From the textile mills in England that powered the Industrial Revolution to the car plants of 20th century America and today's colossal sweat shops in Asia, Freeman tells Amol Rajan how factories have reflected both the hopes and fears of social change.The poems in Jane Commane's collection, Assembly Line, are set in a Midlands where ghosts haunt the deserted factory floor and the landscape is littered with 'heartsick towns'.The architecture critic Rowan Moore looks at the changing landscape of work in the 21st century, from huge impersonal distribution centres to the pleasure palaces of tech giants.The economist Mariana Mazzucato is calling for a reform of capitalism, to replace taking with making. She argues that the global economy has become a parasitic system in which value-extraction is more highly rewarded than value-creation. Producer: Katy Hickman.

Jordan Peterson, clinical psychologist and YouTube sensation, professes to bring order to chaos in his 12 Rules for Life. He tells Tom Sutcliffe about the importance of individual responsibility, using lessons from humanity's oldest myths and stories. But his home truths are not without controversy: acclaimed by many, his critics accuse him of reinforcing traditional gender and family roles and attacking liberal values.Hashi Mohamed is the living embodiment of many of Peterson's life rules: he came to Britain when he was 9 years old with little English and through a combination of skill, luck and hard work is now a barrister. But he is critical of the lack of social mobility and his own rags to riches story is one he thinks is increasingly difficult to realise.The Irish author Louise O'Neill has made her name challenging the roles given to women. In her books for young adults she has tackled small town hypocrisy and sexism, rape culture and victim-blaming. She too has looked to the stories of the past and her latest book is a radical retelling of Hans Christian Anderson's The Little Mermaid.The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Lawrence Wright turns his focus on his home state Texas, to see what it can teach us about America. A 'superstate' with a GDP larger than most industrialised countries, and with a population on track to double by 2050, Texas both confirms and challenges its stereotype. Wright is confronted by cowboy individualism, gun-loving patriotism and nostalgia for an ersatz past, but also finds pockets of liberal progressiveness and entrepreneurial drive. Producer: Katy HickmanPicture: Jonathan Castellino for Penguin.

Will we recognise the signs that democracy has ended? Cambridge professor David Runciman worries that we spend far too much time comparing today's politics with the 1930s, and that this blinds us to the frailties of democracy today. He tells Amol Rajan why he thinks our current political system will come to an end - and why we may not even notice this happening.Professor Nic Cheeseman is all too aware that democracy can become an empty shell. His new book How To Rig An Election, co-written with Brian Klaas, looks at the myriad ways autocrats use elections for their own ends, from buying votes and bribing electors to issuing fake pens in the ballot box. And it is not only the developing world in which corruption takes place. He addresses the role of outside states in the 2016 US presidential election, and asks how western democracy can be kept healthy.Anne Applebaum has studied the ways in which democracy can arise like a phoenix from the ashes of authoritarianism. As the author of Red Famine: Stalin's War On Ukraine, and a professor at the LSE, she has analysed the reasons why democracy flourished in Poland and Ukraine after 1989, and suggests reasons why the 2012 Arab Spring has not yet had the same results. But as a journalist for the Washington Post she is all too aware of attacks on democracy today, both in the former Soviet bloc and in America. She argues that the onus is on us to save our own systems.Producer: Hannah Sander.

The Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli delves into the meaning of time. He tells Andrew Marr how we live in a timeless world but have evolved to perceive time's flow.The astrophysicist Carole Mundell is interested in the extragalactic. Her studies of the universe beyond our Milky Way help expand knowledge of cosmic black holes and explain powerful explosions in space.Space travel is the new frontier, but exactly 250 years ago the Endeavour set sail from Plymouth seeking to test the limits of scientific understanding. An exhibition at the British Library, curated by Laura Walker, tells the story of Captain Cook's world-changing voyages and their studies into the skies, seas and lands beyond our shores.And the marine biologist Helen Scales is more interested in exploring the world beneath the oceans. Her latest book marvels at the wonders of fish, from centuries-old giants to tiny restless travellers moving in shoals across our globe.Producer: Katy Hickman.

Tom Sutcliffe discusses free will and fate; dreams and reality. Jesmyn Ward's prize-winning novel Sing, Unburied, Sing, set in the American South, is haunted by the ghosts of the past. Ward writes of incarceration and freedom, and the strength - and weakness - of family bonds.For his latest ballet, choreographer Kim Brandstrup has taken inspiration from Calderon's 17th century Spanish play Life is a Dream, in which a dire prophecy leads a King to imprison his son. Brandstrup uses contemporary dance to explore where dreams end and reality begins, but also to express wonder at life itself.How to live well is at the centre of Edith Hall's self-help book based on the teachings of Aristotle. She examines the ancient Greek philosopher's ideas on how self-knowledge, responsibility and love could help us forge a more meaningful life. And the philosopher John Gray continues his exploration of what it is to be human in his new work, Seven Types of Atheism.Producer: Katy Hickman.

Fifty years after radicals took to the streets of Paris and stormed campuses across the Western World, Andrew Marr unpicks the legacy of 1968.Historian Richard Vinen finds waves of protest across the western world in his book The Long '68: Radical Protest and Its Enemies. Some movements were genuinely revolutionary, such as the ten million French workers whose strike nearly toppled the government. But on American university campuses and in British art schools, protests took the forms of civil rights marches and feminist collectives, whose narratives changed the way we think today.In Paris, left-wing students armed with works of philosophy took on the police and the state. But Paris was still coming to terms with its Nazi occupation, explains Agnès Poirier. Her new book follows the artists and writers of the 40s and 50s, from Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre to Miles Davis and James Baldwin, as a new generation helped France regain its reputation for art, passion and political action.Not only left-wing radicals were inspired by the events of that year. In 1968 philosopher Roger Scruton was holed up in a Paris bedroom studying while rioters smashed windows outside. Scruton was horrified by the chaos and destruction, and turned his back on the left-wing politics of his childhood. He became part of a generation of new conservatives who sought to preserve the past rather than fight for an unknown future.Today France is facing new waves of strikes, with railway workers bringing the transport system to a halt and Emmanuel Macron pushing through sweeping reforms to social security. Sophie Pedder, Paris bureau chief for The Economist and author or a new biography of Macron, asks what France in 2018 owes to the events of 1968.Producer: Hannah Sander.

Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes makes a case for cash handouts to the poor. He tells Andrew Marr that having become exceptionally wealthy he is looking for the most efficient way to give something back to society, and a Universal Basic Income is among his ideas.But the Oxford academic Ian Goldin argues that UBI is an intellectual sticking plaster. He suggests targeted benefits, better taxation and philanthropy may be the answers to today's growing inequality and the prospect of mass job losses due to automation.Caroline Slocock was the first female Private Secretary at No.10, employed by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. She looks back at the last years of Thatcher's time in office, and Thatcher's vision of a smaller state and individual responsibility.Margaret Thatcher used the parable of the Good Samaritan to argue her case, suggesting that the voluntary actions of a wealthy Samaritan trumped the collective action of the state. Nick Spencer, Research Director at the public theology think tank Theos, explores how this parable has been hijacked for political ends from both the left and the right.Producers: Katy Hickman and Hannah Sander.

Amol Rajan discusses faith and doubt. Religion is a recurrent theme in Naomi Alderman's novels. Her first book, Disobedience, explored a Jewish girl's split with orthodox religion, while in Liar's Gospel she told multiple stories of Jesus through the eyes of those around him.Obedience was a virtue for the nuns of sixteenth-century Italy, but the music they wrote and sang was far less virtuous. Music professor and performer Laurie Stras has unearthed sensual and experimental works by nuns including the daughter of Lucrezia Borgia. And while many flocked to the nunneries to hear these women perform, others accused them of irreligious vanity.Historian and Anglican priest Malcolm Guite tells the life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and finds religious imagery permeating Coleridge's most famous work, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.And the writer and former Bishop of Edinburgh, Richard Holloway, asks how spiritual belief can help us face our mortality, in his new book Waiting for the Last Bus.Producer: Katy Hickman.

Sue Black spends much of her time with dead bodies. As one of the world's leading forensic anthropologists she has encountered death in many forms, leading British expeditions to Kosovo and to Thailand following the Boxing Day Tsunami. She tells Andrew Marr what ancient cadavers and recent corpses can teach us about mortality.Medieval depictions of death and injury don't shy away from the grotesque, says art historian Jack Hartnell. The mutilated bodies of saints and martyrs were often on display in medieval buildings, but these blood-spattered images were meant to inspire hope and faith.A devastating loss divides a couple in award-winning novelist Kit de Waal's new book, The Trick to Time. As an expert in fostering and adoption, she has also helped both adults and children cope with the lifelong impact of tragedy.A courageous child sits at the heart of composer Mark-Anthony Turnage's latest opera, Coraline, a dark fantasy based on Neil Gaiman's tale. The heroic Coraline finds a magical world in her attic and steps inside. But this world's Other Mother is not to be trusted and Coraline must fight to restore her real family.Producer: Hannah Sander.

We are drawn to wildness and disorder, argues historian Bettany Hughes. She tells Andrew Marr about the attraction of Bacchus, the god of wine and fertility, and the subject of a new BBC Four documentary. Bacchus (also known as Dionysus) has been a symbol of excess ever since Roman maidens fled to the woods and drank wine in his name. Hughes follows the Bacchic cult through history, and argues that chaos has been as important to civilisation as reason and restraint.The wood - scene of so many Bacchic revelries - comes to life in nature writer John Lewis-Stempel's new account, The Wood: The Life and Times of Cockshutt Wood. Through poetry, folklore and his own observations he asks what it is that draws us to magical spaces.Today we revel in feelings of joy and wonder, but feelings themselves are a surprisingly modern invention, says cultural historian Rachel Hewitt. She looks back at the 1790s, the decade when men and women of learning first began to take emotions seriously. Hewitt explains how an Enlightenment interest in reason led us to explore our own chaotic moods.There are Bacchic scenes in the music of Debussy, as biographer Stephen Walsh shows in a new study of the French composer. Away from his piano Debussy had to battle professional vendettas, but in pieces such as Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, Debussy created a world of rich woodland scenes and musical intoxication.Producer: Hannah Sander.

At the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead Lionel Shriver discusses her new collection of short stories Property with presenter Kirsty Wark.While Lionel Shriver explores our relationship with objects and places, and asks what the increasing accumulation of things may be doing to the soul, the sociologist Bev Skeggs explores how we are being bought and sold in the digital sphere. She also counts the cost of the monetisation of human relations and highlights communities in the North of England who are bucking this trend.The economist Linda Yueh looks back to the thinkers of the past from Adam Smith to Milton Friedman, to show the importance of understanding the ideas that underpin the world of finance. And the poet Sean O'Brien armed with 'paper and a clock' explores the history of Europe in his latest collection and argues that Great Britain's future will be shaped by what we remember and what we forget of our shared past.Producer: Katy Hickman.

What is art - and why do we need it? Fifty years ago the landmark BBC Two series Civilisation set out to answer this question. Now historians Mary Beard, Simon Schama and David Olusoga take on this challenge of defining human civilisation through art, in a bold update renamed Civilisations. Mary Beard tells Andrew Marr how humans have chosen to depict themselves, from enormous pre-historic heads in Mexico to lustful paintings meant for male eyes. She unpicks the bloody battle between religion and art, and declares that "one man's art is another's barbarity".But should art make us recoil? Simon Schama explores our urge to destroy the images we dislike, and finds that hatred and destruction have followed art through the centuries. This clash of religions and cultures has enriched art, argues David Olusoga. He sees culture on the frontline as empires expanded and a battle took place to define what art could be.This spring the artist Tacita Dean offers her own account of art's value and meaning as she unveils three exhibitions at once: exploring landscapes at the Royal Academy, portraits at the National Portrait Gallery and still life at the National Gallery. Moving between film and painted images, she challenges our idea of what art looks like.Producer: Hannah Sander.

Brain damage can radically change a person's character - but does that mean they are no longer themselves? Consultant neurologist Jules Montague works with people suffering dementia and brain injuries. She tells Tom Sutcliffe what happens when the brain misbehaves. Memories may fade and names disappear - but does that mean a person no longer has the same identity? Behavioural scientist Nick Chater is sceptical about whether we have an inner self at all. His book The Mind is Flat exposes what he calls the 'shocking shallowness' of our psychology, and argues that we have no mental depths to plumb. Only by understanding this can we hope to understand ourselves. The problem of self-awareness challenges psychiatrists hoping to diagnose depression, schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. Neuropsychiatrist Anthony David explores self-reflection and the stigma of mental illness in a series of lectures at King's College, London. And fear of the mind runs through Ingmar Bergman's classic film Fanny and Alexander, now staged as a play at the Old Vic, London. Stephen Beresford has adapted it, and explains how the clash between a stern stepfather and his imaginative stepson reveals our unease at the power of the mind.Producer: Hannah Sander.

Humanity is flourishing and the Enlightenment has worked, declares Steven Pinker. The Harvard psychologist has looked across health, prosperity, safety, peace and happiness, and sees signs that all are improving. He tells Andrew Marr how Enlightenment attitudes to reason and science have made this the best age in which to live. But Enlightenment values are under attack and Pinker calls for their vigorous defence.Dutch philosopher Rob Riemen also sees humanism under threat from fascism, with its politics of resentment and hatred of the life of the mind. But can reason, beauty and justice combat this threat?The neuroscientist Tali Sharot thinks reason and fear are not enough to make us change our minds. Only by understanding how the brain functions can we perfect the art of persuasion. Producer: Hannah Sander.

What would the perfect city look like? Today more people live in cities than ever before and that shapes the way we think, says sociologist Richard Sennett. He lays out a vision for a city of the future based not on ancient Greece but on new 'open' streets.Structural engineer Roma Agrawal charts the growth of cities from simple mud huts to the modern metropolis. She tells Amol Rajan about the engineering magic that holds towering city skylines in place, and recalls the eccentric engineers whose visions called our cities into being. The Chinese built a city for the dead more than two thousand years ago and now its relics are on display again. Historian Edward Burman describes how the Terracotta Army found in a necropolis shows a ruler planning for life after death. David Farr depicts the siege and destruction of Troy, the great city of the ancient world, in his vast new BBC One drama. He explains how the Trojans coped under ten long years of siege. Producer: Hannah Sander.

Andrew Marr discusses money, transformation and the obsession with growth with two leading economists: Diane Coyle and Dharshini David. Professor Coyle argues it's time to rethink the way we measure productivity, while the broadcaster Dharshini David follows the journey of a single dollar in her study of globalisation. The theatre director Anna Ledwich is more interested in the people whose lives revolve around the money markets: her latest play Dry Powder highlights their vulnerability, vision and sheer unadulterated greed. During the financial crisis of 2008, Iceland experienced proportionally the largest banking collapse by any country in economic history. The novelist Jón Kalman Stefánsson is writing a modern Icelandic family saga and explores whether the transformation of his country in the 20th century laid the foundations for its future collapse. Producer: Katy Hickman.

With millions of people on the move around the world, the novelist Mohsin Hamid has set his latest novel against the backdrop of the refugee crisis. He tells Kirsty Wark how he imagined those fleeing home passing through mysterious black doors into other parts of the world. The lawyer and sociologist Carol Bohmer examines the culture of suspicion which greets migrants when they arrive. She looks at how officials judge the line between truth and deception, and increasingly label people as liars, criminals or terrorists. While many countries are looking to fortify their borders, the former Portuguese Europe Minister Bruno Maçães believes we need to think on a super-continental scale. He travelled overland from the edges of Europe to the heart of Asia arguing for a new world order. But the theatre director Robert Hastie is more interested in what connects people to the land and their origins, as he revives Peter Gill's play The York Realist - a reflection on the rival forces of place, class and longing. Producer: Katy Hickman.

Art was power for Britain's kings and queens. In a new BBC TV series, Andrew Graham-Dixon visits the paintings amassed by King Charles I, the first great royal collector in British history. He tells Andrew Marr why after Charles was executed his royal artworks were flogged across Europe. The lost royal collection will finally be reunited this year in an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts. Historian Leanda de Lisle brings the Stuart monarch back to life in her biography White King. But was the art-loving king a traitor, a murderer or a martyr? And it is not only kings who use art to impress. Don Thompson meets hedge fund managers and foreign oligarchs in his study of the contemporary art scene, while artist Kelly Chorpening describes the role of Camberwell College of Art in shaping the art scene. Producer: Hannah SanderPicture credit: Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), Charles I in Three Positions, 1635-36 Royal Collection Trust / (c) Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018, www.royalcollection.org.uk.

The prize-winning novelist Peter Carey tackles head on for the first time the legacies of colonialism in his native Australia in his latest book, A Long Way From Home. He talks to Tom Sutcliffe about the damage and loss for the Stolen Generations. The writer and broadcaster Afua Hirsch believes Britain is also a nation in denial about the past and present, and argues it's time to talk more openly about race and identity. The Dutch journalist Geert Mak once travelled the breadth of Europe to explore what it meant to be European at the end of the 20th century. He found countries struggling to understand the wrongs they had committed during the Holocaust, the Second World War and decades of dictator rule.

British women first got the vote a century ago this year. The social historian Jane Robinson tells Andrew Marr the suffrage movement is known for the actions of its militant wing and their call for 'deeds not words'. But thousands of ordinary women, known as suffragists, campaigned successfully to have their voices heard too. Political theorist Christopher Finlay asks whether violent political protest is ever justified, while the artist Peter Kennard explains how he was inspired by the protest movements in Europe in 1968 to infuse his works with politics. The writer Mary Shelley was born into a politically radical family, with an anarchist father and her mother the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. On the 200th anniversary of her novel Frankenstein, the poet Fiona Sampson looks back at Shelley's radical life.Producer: Katy Hickman.

The former President of the Supreme Court, Lord Neuberger, questions how senior judges became cast as 'enemies of the people' last year. He tells Andrew Marr how the judiciary has grown more powerful and ready to challenge the government over the last half century - while professor of politics Tim Bale explores whether parliament has at the same time become weaker. Cicero was proscribed as an enemy of the people in the 1st century BC. Robert Harris's Cicero trilogy has now been dramatized for the stage, and is a timely reminder of earlier collisions of politics, the law and the people. Barbara Hosking understands the workings of politics and the media, having served under two Prime Ministers - Harold Wilson and Edward Heath - and pioneered breakfast television. She reflects back on her life travelling from a Cornish village to the corridors of power. Producer: Katy Hickman.