Start the Week

In a special edition of Start the Week Andrew Marr is at the Bluecoat Gallery in Liverpool. He's joined by the writer Phil Redmond, historian John Belchem and journalists Gary Younge and Kajsa Norman to discuss historical myth-making, segregation and assimilation - from Liverpool's radical past, to the US and its obsession with guns and race, to the Transvaal and the survival tactics of the Afrikaner community. With the Labour party conference in full swing in Liverpool Andrew Marr will also be discussing how far people will go to retain their cultural identity and what happens when splits appear. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr talks to the MP Margaret Hodge who challenged multinational companies to explain their tax affairs and shone a light on the billions wasted by government every year. The former Chair of the Public Accounts Committee argues that it's time Ministers and Civil Servants learnt from their mistakes. Sir John Armitt masterminded the successful delivery of the 2012 London Olympics and explains why big projects are notorious for budget overspends. MPs will have to decide soon on a multi-billion pound proposal to renovate the Palace of Westminster which would involve them moving out for several years: the political journalist Philip Webster reflects on working in the House of Commons for four decades and how the building influences the business of politics. The best-selling novels of Robert Harris reveal the machinations behind the closed doors of those in power, or seeking it - from Ancient Rome to New Labour. His latest book centres on the intrigue in the corridors of the world's smallest state, the Vatican, as they vote for the next Pope.

On Start the Week Andrew discusses love, loss and scandal. Carrie Cracknell is directing Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea, the story of an overpowering, self-destructive love affair set in post-war Britain. Michel Faber's collection of poetry explores the loss and grief at the death of his beloved wife, Eva. AE Housman wrote a series of poems at the end of the 19th century - A Shropshire Lad - which were hugely popular and came to encapsulate the nostalgia for an unspoilt pastoral idyll, but the writer Peter Parker says they're also shot through with unfulfilled longing for a young man. Homosexuality only became legal in the late 1960s and John Preston retells the story of the MP Jeremy Thorpe - a tale of sex, lies, murder and scandal at the heart of the establishment. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr explores food and politics. Churchill charged Lord Woolton with the daunting task of feeding Britain during WW2. The food writer William Sitwell looks at the black markets and shop raids Woolton had to battle as the country teetered on the edge of anarchy. Economist Jane Harrigan argues that it was rising food prices that sowed the seeds for the Arab Spring Uprisings, and food historian Bee Wilson asks what governments can do now to control what we eat.Producer: Hannah Sander.

On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe asks if one day we might know everything. The mathematician Marcus du Sautoy and the physicist Roger Penrose explore the far reaches of knowledge, questioning whether certain fields of research will always lie beyond human comprehension. They ask how much fashion and faith shape scientific theories. The experimental physicist Suzie Sheehy attempts to build machines to test the latest theories, while Joanna Kavenna plays with a philosophical Theory of Everything in her latest novel A Field Guide to Reality. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr explores the state of the arts. The English National Opera has lost £5 million of funding and its chorus recently went on strike, but the newly appointed Artistic Director Daniel Kramer, hopes to turn it around. He's directing a new production of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, and the philosopher Roger Scruton celebrates the mastery of Wagner to express truths about the human condition. The biographer Franny Moyle looks at the life and career of Britain's most famous landscape painter, JMW Turner. Born as the Royal Academy was founded and British art was deemed inferior to its Continental counterpart, his work pushed the boundaries of what was accepted as art at the time. Julia Peyton-Jones looks back at a quarter of a century at the Serpentine Gallery in London, and makes a case for London as the centre of the art world. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr traces the quest to decipher the human genome. The idea of a 'unit of heredity' first emerged at the end of the 19th century: cancer physician Siddhartha Mukherjee recounts the history of the gene and the latest research into genetic heredity and mutation. Giles Yeo looks at what genes can tell us about body weight, while Aarathi Prasad explores how India practises medicine - from cutting-edge science to traditional healing. The historian Emily Mayhew traces the medical breakthroughs that have emerged from the battlefield, from World War I to the conflict in Afghanistan. Producer: Katy Hickman.

Start the Week is at Hay Literary Festival this week discussing war and intelligence. Michael Hayden is a former Air Force four-star general who became director of the US National Security Agency and then the CIA. He talks to Tom Sutcliffe about the decisions made during America's war on terror: from rendition and interrogation to widespread surveillance. Harry Parker was in his twenties when he signed up to join the British Army - he uses the paraphernalia and weaponry of war to tell the story of conflict; while the journalist Janine di Giovanni reports on ordinary people caught up in the fighting in Syria. The human rights lawyer Philippe Sands looks back at his own family's history to make sense of crimes against humanity. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr talks to the artist Cornelia Parker about the secrets revealed in found objects. Parker's latest exhibition at the Foundling Museum is inspired by the 18th Century tokens left with babies by their mothers. Simon Armitage finds a new way of telling the medieval poem Pearl, an allegorical story of grief and lost love. Archaeologist Cyprian Broodbank explains how Must Farm, the first landscape-scale investigation of deep Fenland, is transforming our understanding of Bronze Age life, while British Museum curator Aurelia Masson-Berghoff celebrates the finding of two lost Egyptian cities submerged at the mouth of the Nile for over a thousand years. Producer: Katy Hickman.

World on the Move: on Start the Week Andrew Marr explores how the mass movement of people has changed societies, in a special edition broadcast in front of an audience as part of a day of programmes on BBC Radio 4. The historian Sir Hew Strachan looks back at the largest single influx of people into Britain when 250,000 Belgians arrived during the Great War, while Frank Dikötter explores the biggest forced internal migration as tens of millions of young Chinese were sent to work in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. The poet Patience Agbabi humanises the mass movement of people with her tale of one refugee's story. And what of those who return? The Bangladeshi author Tahmima Anam looks at what happens when you try to go back home. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr explores the use of technology in education. Professor Sugata Mitra has installed an internet-connected PC in a slum in India and watched how curiosity leads children to learn together. Digital technology is increasingly used in schools but the educationalist Neil Selwyn questions whether this is a positive step. The writer Lynsey Hanley looks at how class is embedded in the education system and the former Headmaster at Eton, Tony Little, on his vision for the future of schooling. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Grayson Perry discusses the concept of masculinity in modern Britain with Mary Ann Sieghart. The new artistic director at the Globe Theatre, Emma Rice, explains how she is playing with gender in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, and the celebrated mezzo-soprano Alice Coote talks of her career in 'breeches', singing the male role. The former artists' model, Kelley Swain reveals what it's like being the object of a work of art. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week the sculptor Anish Kapoor talks to Andrew Marr about his fascination with voids and black holes, and his excitement at the latest technological advances in deepest black: vantablack. The astrophysicist Martin Ward explains his research into supermassive black holes and why we're finding more of them, while the solar physicist Lucie Green journeys to the centre of the sun where each photon takes hundreds of thousands of years to reach the surface, but just eight minutes to shine as light on the Earth. Writer Ann Wroe walks on the Downs to experience how light affects Nature, and she turns to the artists to meditate on the nature of light. Producer: Katy HickmanPicture credit: Anish Kapoor.

On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe discusses the writing of war and conflict. The journalist Patrick Cockburn looks back at his years covering crises in the Middle East, especially the rise of the so-called Islamic state. The Turkish writer Ece Temelkuran looks at the difficulty of reporting in a country where press freedoms are severely curtailed and asks whether fiction and poetry are a way of telling a more truthful story. The legendary American investigative reporter Seymour Hersh first gained recognition in the 1960s for exposing the My Lai massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War and has spent his career uncovering wrong-doing at the highest level. But reporting is changing and the academic Charlie Beckett celebrates the rise of citizen journalism. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr talks to the psychologist Charles Fernyhough about the inner speech in our heads. But what if it's a lone voice? The writer Olivia Laing explores what it's like to be lonely in a bustling city, while the playwright Alistair McDowall explores what happens when you're abandoned on a distant planet with no sense of time. The biographer Frances Wilson writes a tale of hero-worship, betrayal and revenge through the life of Thomas De Quincey, a man who modelled his opium-habit on Coleridge and his voice and writing on Wordsworth. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr discusses the state of the Eurozone and the politics of austerity with the economist and former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, the Director of the Institute of Global Affairs Erik Berglof and the Mayor of London's Chief Economic Advisor, Gerard Lyons. Yanis Varoufakis tracks the problems of the Eurozone to its woeful design and its continued reliance on debt and austerity, rather than reform. The classicist Paul Cartledge explores the history of democracy back to its birthplace in Athens and traces the long slow degradation of the original Greek concept. Since the crisis in 2008 Greece has been in economic and political turmoil but there has also been a cultural renaissance. The academic Karen Van Dyck has brought together the best of contemporary Greek poetry by multi-ethnic poets in a new anthology.Producer: Katy HickmanPresenter: Andrew Marr.

On Start the Week Kirsty Wark asks how we make choices about freedom and authenticity - questions that preoccupied Paris intellectuals in the 1930s. Sarah Bakewell looks back at one of the twentieth century's major philosophical movements - existentialism - and the revolutionary thinkers who came to shape it. Sartre and de Beauvoir may have spent their days drinking apricot cocktails in café's but Bakewell believes their ideas are more relevant than ever. The historian Sunil Khilnani reveals the Indian thinkers who didn't just talk about philosophy but lived it, and the photographer Stuart Franklin, famous for the pictures of the man in Tiananmen Square who stopped the tanks, discusses the impulse to record and preserve these moments of action. The art historian Frances Borzello looks at the female artists who chose the freedom to present themselves to the world in self-portraits. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr looks at the pace of life with the writer Robert Colvile who celebrates today's accelerating flow of change and argues that we are hard-wired to crave novelty, speed and convenience. But Carl Honoré challenges this cult of speed in his praise of slowness. The scientist Steve Jones looks back at another period of history where the pace of change was revolutionary impacting scientifically, socially and politically - the French Revolution. And the writer Sarah Dunant focuses on 16th century Italy at a time when ideas in politics, religion and art were gathering pace. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe looks back a hundred years to Easter Rising of 1916. Ruth Dudley Edwards explores the lives of Ireland's founding fathers and questions how they should be remembered, while Heather Jones places this historical moment in the context of the Great War. David Rieff praises forgetting in his study of the uses and abuses of historical memory, and its often pernicious influence on the present. And the Irish commentator Fintan O'Toole examines the present fortunes of a country once famed as the Celtic Tiger. Producer: Katy Hickman.

Start the Week comes from Glasgow this week. As the debate over the EU Referendum continues Kirsty Wark looks back at the Scottish Referendum with the historians Tom Devine and Chris Whatley. How much did the history of the union from 1707 and Scotland's sense of identity play a role in the public vote and imagination? The poet Kathleen Jamie wrote a poem a week to mark the momentous changes taking place in Scotland last year. Jamie is well-known for her celebration of the country's wild landscape, but the artist Angus Farquhar is focused on transforming a very different piece of Scottish heritage - the 60s modernist ruin, St Peter's Seminary. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Mary-Ann Sieghart asks why some people succeed while others fail. She talks to the journalist Helen Pearson about the Life Project, a study of the health, wellbeing and life chances of thousands of British children, started in 1946. The television producer Joseph Bullman also charts a series of families back to the Victorian times to look at social mobility through the generations. The psychologist Oliver James wades into the nature/ nurture debate by arguing that we are the result of our environment and upbringing, but the scientist Marcus Munafò says there is increasing evidence of genetic links to who we are and what we do. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr looks ahead to a future dominated by automation, cyber security, the 'sharing economy' and advanced life sciences with the innovation expert Alec Ross, computer scientist Steve Furber and the journalist Paul Mason who predicts such changes heralding a post-capitalist world. But cutting-edge advances in robotics and computers will have a huge but uneven impact on working lives: while previous industrial revolutions affected blue collar workers, in the future traditionally middle class jobs will be under threat. The journalist Hsiao-Hung Pai focuses on the most marginalised sector of the white working class - the British far right. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe discusses who owns culture. The writer Tiffany Jenkins tells the story of how western museums have come to acquire treasures from around the world, but dismisses the idea of righting the wrongs of the past by returning artefacts. The Zimbabwean writer Tendai Huchu believes the west shouldn't underestimate the impact of colonisation on cultural identity. Ellen McAdam, Director of Birmingham Museums Trust, discusses the pressures regional museums are under. While the art critic Waldemar Januszczak eschews traditional views of Renaissance art, arguing that far from a classical Italian form, its roots are in the 'barbarian' lands of Flanders and Germany. Producer: Hannah Robins.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr talks to Jane McGonigal, a designer of alternate reality games, about her latest innovation SuperBetter. Designed to aid her recovery from a brain injury and subsequent depression, the game reportedly gives people a sense of control over their own health. Harnessing the mind in the fight against chronic illnesses is the subject of Jo Marchant's book, Cure, which looks at the latest research into the science of mind over body. Rational thought and magic went hand in hand in the Renaissance period and the philosopher AC Grayling looks back at the life of John Dee - mathematician, alchemist and the Queen's conjurer. The actor Simon McBurney tests the limits of perception and human consciousness as he recreates what it feels like to be lost in the remote part of the Brazilian rainforest. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe talks to the violinist Edward Dusinberre about interpreting Beethoven's string quartets. The sixteen quartets are challenging to play and appreciate alike, and have been subject to endless reinterpretation. The director, Mariame Clément, puts her own spin on the rarely performed comic opera L'Etoile, introducing two actors - one English, one French - to comment on the action. A missing interpreter is at the heart of Diego Marani's new novel, which combines the author's promotion of multilingualism with an interest in the relationship between language and identity. While the poet Vahni Capildeo, who moved from her native Trinidad to Britain, explores the complexity of identity and exile and finds herself drawn to words: "Language is my home, I say; not one particular language." Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr explores the question of citizenship. While immigration issues dominate political debate, little attention is paid to the big increase in the number of people becoming British. The academic Thom Brooks and the Eurosceptic MEP Daniel Hannan look at the relationship between the two and the challenges for modern UK citizenship. Ben Rawlence spent four years reporting the stories of those who are stateless, living in the largest refugee camp in the world, while Frances Stonor Saunders explores the increasing complexity of today's border regimes and the obsession with the verified self. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe talks to the Egyptian writer Alaa Al Aswany about his latest novel which charts the country's social upheaval through the prism of Cairo's elite Automobile Club of Egypt. The foreign correspondent Wendell Steavenson looks back at the Egyptian revolution as the crowds gathered in Tahrir Square in 2011. The political economist Tarek Osman explores how Islamism has spread through the Middle East, and what its future prospects mean for the region, while Professor Hugh Kennedy charts the rise of the Caliphate and how the so-called Islamic State uses the iconography of early Islam as propaganda.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr looks at Russia from the heyday of the Soviet Empire to its transformation under Putin. The historian Simon Sebag Montefiore writes about the Romanovs, the most successful dynasty of modern times, while Amanda Vickery highlights a moment of defiance and triumph during WW2's siege of Leningrad. The journalist Arkady Ostrovsky charts the huge changes that have taken place, from Perestroika to corporate state. And David Aaronovitch explores the emotional pull of communism in Britain through the story of his family and their ties to The Party. Producer: Katy Hickman.

Andrew Marr presents a special edition of Start the Week, celebrating the later life and works of William Shakespeare. Recorded at the Globe's candle-lit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, the actor Simon Russell Beale and Artistic Director Dominic Dromgoole discuss the late romances. The writer Jeanette Winterson explores her personal connection to The Winter's Tale, and the academic Katherine Duncan-Jones questions whether Shakespeare ever gave up on life in London to retire to Stratford-upon-Avon, and the relevance of his will that left his wife their 'second-best bed'. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week, as the first Briton heads into space for two decades, Andrew Marr explores the future of space travel. Kevin Fong is an expert in space medicine and in this year's Royal Institution Christmas Lectures looks at how to survive in outer space. The Astronomer Royal Martin Rees questions whether human space travel is worth the money or the risk, while the astrophysicist Carole Haswell searches distant galaxies for habitable exoplanets. Stephen Baxter is a writer of hard science fiction who, as a member of the British Interplanetary Society, investigates star ship design and extra-terrestrial liberty. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe picks through the remains of vanished buildings with the writer James Crawford. In his book, Fallen Glory, Crawford looks at the life and death of some of the world's most iconic structures. The conductor Semyon Bychkov explores why some music fades, and the enduring appeal of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin. Julia Sallabank studies endangered languages and whether it's possible to revive indigenous languages on the verge of extinction. And it is origins which feature on Peter Randall-Page's latest sculpture: a naturally eroded glacial boulder carved with stories of creation myths from cuneiform to text speak. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr looks at the fortunes of Saudi Arabia. The academic Madawi Al-Rasheed challenges pre-conceived ideas about divine politics and uncovers the religious leaders, intellectuals and activists who are looking at modernising the country. William Patey is the former UK ambassador in the region and argues that although the House of Saud is resilient, strains are starting to appear. The American economist Deirdre McCloskey sees fault lines elsewhere in the country's failure to promote and encourage innovation; she believes that although Saudi Arabia has capital accumulation and oil, without creativity and ideas it will not flourish. The historian Ian Morris takes the long view as he studies 20,000 years of international relations and argues that each age and region gets the great powers it needs, and what that means for Saudi Arabia. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr explores goodness and its uneasy relationship with pleasure. The historian Robin Lane Fox looks to the work of Augustine and what is thought to be the first autobiography detailing the sinful excitement of youth before his anguished and hesitant conversion to Christianity. The philosopher Clare Carlisle explores Augustine's views on the link between desire and habit, while the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips asks why pleasure is more highly prized when it's perceived to be forbidden and guilty. Larissa MacFarquhar looks at the lives of those who have dedicated themselves to others and asks why do-gooders provoke deep suspicion in Western culture. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Mary Ann Sieghart takes a satirical look at the world with the novelist Jonathan Coe. His latest book is a state-of-the-nation satire which takes aim at politics, social media and inequality. It's the battle between ideals and pragmatism in the cynical world of the political elite of the 1920s which takes centre stage in the play Waste, famously banned when it was first written, now revived and directed by Roger Michell. The Times' political cartoonist, Peter Brookes, celebrates the power of the visual image to lampoon the country's leaders and the playwright Mia Chung explores whether satire can do justice to the questions raised by a regime like North Korea and talks about her latest play about two sisters fleeing the country. Producer: Katy Hickman.

Andrew Marr was in Paris on Friday to record a special edition of Start the Week about France. Hours later the Paris attacks happened. This programme is not about these attacks or Islamic State or the French role in the war in Syria, but it is a conversation about the political, cultural and religious fault lines in France from the 19th century to today. As BBC Radio 4 plans to broadcast a retelling of Emile Zola's 20 novel cycle, Les Rougon-Macquart, the journalist Anne-Elisabeth Moutet explores whether Zola is a 19th century gateway into understanding modern France. The novelist Agnès Desarthe has set her latest novel at the beginning of the 20th century and mixes the intimate with the great events of French history. The French Resistance is one of France's heroic myths and is central to the country's identity, but the historian Robert Gildea says the reality is far more complex. And contemporary France in all its complexity is represented in Karim Miské's thriller set among the radical Islamic preachers, Christian fundamentalists and corrupt police officers in one of the poorest suburbs of Paris. Producer: Katy Hickman.

Anne McElvoy presents a special edition of Start the Week at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage, Gateshead, exploring injustice, myth and the role of the poet 'to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides'. The American poet Claudia Rankine exposes the ever-present racial tensions in contemporary society, while the Syrian poet Amir Darwish, having arrived in the UK hanging underneath a lorry on a cross-channel ferry, writes of love, loss, exile and demonisation. The historian Catherine Fletcher looks at the stories told about Alessandro de'Medici, the 16th century duke of Florence who was believed to be mixed-race, and what those stories tell us about attitudes to race, while the philosopher Jules Holroyd tackles the thorny issue of implicit and unconscious bias. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe discusses the importance of uncertainty and failure. The former head of the European Research Council Helga Nowotny argues research is fed by uncertainty and that any form of scientific inquiry may produce results that are ambiguous. She criticises policy makers for focusing on easy short-term solutions, but the former conservative MP and Minister for Universities and Science, David Willetts, understands the difficulty for governments in dealing with uncertainty. In his role at the think tank Resolution Foundation he's attempting to use analytical research to improve policy on living standards. Matthew Syed examines how a positive attitude to failure can lead to success in areas as diverse as sport, business, politics and healthcare. The failure of governments to come to an agreement on climate change will be discussed next month at a UN conference in Paris and Oliver Morton looks at whether the radical, yet uncertain, strategies of geo-engineering are the answer. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr talks to the playwright Ben Power whose latest work interweaves three of DH Lawrence's dramas to evoke a lost world of manual labour and working class pride. The sociologist Mike Savage proposes a new way to think about class in Britain which not only looks at economic and social issues, but cultural preferences. Meanwhile the American writer Siri Hustvedt questions the cultural misogyny at play in the world of art, and Peter Davies celebrates the artists inspired by the northern industrial landscape. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week the classicist Mary Beard tells Tom Sutcliffe that Ancient Rome matters: its debates about citizenship, security and the rights of the individual still influence our own debates on civil liberty. The Magna Carta is the starting point for the playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker's latest play which draws parallels between the King's abuse of power in 1215 and the global business elite today. The film director Stephen Frears tells the story of the meteoric rise and fall of one of the most celebrated and controversial sportsmen in recent history, Lance Armstrong, and of the journalist who was vilified when he tried to expose him. Lurid headlines take centre stage in the play Clarion, directed by Mehmet Ergen, which takes a satirical look at nationalism and the state of the British media. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr talks to historian Niall Ferguson about his biography of Henry Kissinger. Reviled and revered in equal measure Kissinger was the statesman at the heart of American foreign policy for decades, and Ferguson argues that far from being a Machiavellian realist he was driven by idealism. Jane Smiley's trilogy of novels chart a hundred years of American life through the lives of one family. She shows clearly how the big political and social upheavals of the time were reflected in the day-to-day. The personal and political come together in the extraordinary diaries of Ivan Maisky, the Russian ambassador to London before WWII. Gabriel Gorodetsky has compiled the diaries which document Britain's drift to war during the 1930s. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe talks to the American writer Jonathan Franzen about his latest novel, Purity. One of Franzen's characters compares the internet with the East German Republic and he satirises the utopian ideas of the apparatchik web-users. The head of the Oxford Internet Institute Helen Margetts counters with her research on the success and failure of political action via social media. The artist Tacita Dean laments the ubiquity of digital at the expense of film, and the financial journalist Gillian Tett roots out tunnel vision - both personal and business - in her new book on silos. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Mary Ann Sieghart explores how far leaders and governments have shaped our world. Matt Ridley dismisses the assumption that history has been made by those on high, whether in government, business or religion, and argues for a system of evolution in which ideas and events develop from the bottom up. The historian Tom Holland revels in the antics of the house of Caesar, from Augustus to Nero, and how this imperial family greatly influenced the ancient world. Barry Cunliffe tells the story of the beginnings of civilisation across Europe and the Far East over the course of ten millennia while the curator Julia Farley concentrates on one of those groups - the Celts - and celebrates their distinctive stylised art in a new exhibition at the British Museum. Producer: Katy Hickman.

Start the Week returns for a new series with a discussion about cultural exchange. Andrew Marr talks to the potter Edmund de Waal about his fascination with porcelain. De Waal's journey to understand the history and secrets of 'white gold' takes him from China to Europe and the USA. From white pots to multi-coloured: the contemporary Chinese artist Ai Weiwei mounts an exhibition at the Royal Academy; co-curator Tim Marlow explores his cultural significance. The poet Annie Freud takes inspiration from shards of pottery found in her garden for her collection, The Remains. Producer: Katy Hickman.

Mary Ann Sieghart discusses harmony and balance, in the universe and on a smaller scale. She is joined by Nobel Prize winning physicist Frank Wilczek, whose new book examines whether beauty is one of the organising principles of the universe, and by the choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh, who uses dance to explore our relationship with science and technology. The mathematician and standup comedian Matt Parker outlines things you can make and do in the fourth dimension, and the Canadian baritone opera singer and keen amateur astronomer Gerald Finley brings his perspective to bear. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr discusses the legacy of the philosopher Alan Watts with the writer Tim Lott and psychotherapist Mark Vernon. Watts popularised Buddhism and Eastern philosophy in the West and in Tim Lott's latest coming-of-age novel set in the 1970s he reflects on the power of self-discovery, while Mark Vernon questions how therapy has appropriated Buddhist ideas. The writer and translator Maureen Freely looks back at her itinerant upbringing in America, Turkey and Greece, and explores how she became the translator of other people's words and worlds, including the Nobel-prize winning author Orhan Pamuk. It's a 150 years since the first Welsh settlers established a community in Patagonia in Argentina, and the theatre director Marc Rees looks at how his countrymen retained their welsh identity in an alien landscape. Producer: Luke Mulhall.

On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe looks at the landscapes of communism with the writer Owen Hatherley whose new book reflects how power transformed the cities of the twentieth century. Jacqueline Yallop looks back at one of the most enduring experiments of Victorian philanthropy - the utopian 'model' village. The architect Graham Morrison is involved in a model village of his own, the regeneration and development of the 67 acre site at Kings Cross, and the artist Doug Aitken, famous for his large scale outdoor film installations which he's called 'liquid architecture', is creating a 30-day happening, Station-to-Station. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr discusses the value and authenticity of art. In her novel The Improbability of Love, Hannah Rothschild satirises the art world from the Russian oligarchs and sheiks ready to spend excessive amounts, to the unscrupulous dealers and politicians, as she explores what a painting is really worth. The artist Grayson Perry has never been slow to laugh at the art world and question the role of the artist, and in his latest exhibition he brings Provincial Punk to Margate. Xavier Bray is a curator at the Dulwich Picture Gallery which earlier this year placed a cheap Chinese copy among its collection to see if visitors could spot the difference, and the filmmaker Patrick Mark tells the story of the iconic luxury brand from the 19th century - Fabergé. Producer: Katy Hickman.

Tom Sutcliffe explores health and well-being from the musings of a 17th century doctor to the latest research into psychosomatic illness. The GP, Gavin Francis celebrates the marvels of the human body while Hugh Aldersey-Williams looks back at the life of the celebrated and ever-curious doctor Sir Thomas Browne. The consultant neurologist Suzanne O'Sullivan accepts that telling a patient 'it's all in your head' is unhelpful, but how do you treat those whose symptoms are medically unexplained, and may well have an emotional cause? Charlie Howard runs a youth mental health charity which takes the health professionals out of the clinic and onto the streets, and involves young people at all levels of diagnosis and treatment.Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr talks to Zachary Leader about the life and work of Saul Bellow, one of America's most famous novelists. Bellow's vivid prose and mix of high and low culture brought 20th century America to life. Linda Grant reflects on his significance for writers today and on the literature of immigration he represents. Aeschylus' play cycle The Oresteia brought to the stage a world the Ancient Greeks understood only too well - family drama and bloody politics. In a new production Robert Icke radically re-imagines the play for a modern audience. The rapper Speech DeBelle looks back at what inspired her to find her voice, and the challenge to retain it. Producer: Luke Mulhall.

Start the Week is at the Hay Festival for a discussion about what has made homo sapiens so successful. The historian Yuval Noah Harari looks back a hundred thousand years ago when at least six human species inhabited the earth and explores why only one came to dominate. Science was a key breakthrough and Beth Shapiro pushes at the limits of knowledge with her book on how to clone a mammoth. The writer Colm Tóibín reveals how much he owes past writers in his introduction to the enigmatic American poet, Elizabeth Bishop, while Owen Sheers explores the themes of loss and redemption in his latest novel. Producer: Katy Hickman.