Start The Week

On Start the Week Amol Rajan seeks the truth in a post-truth world. The political columnist Matthew D'Ancona paints a dystopian picture in which trust has evaporated, conspiracy theories thrive, and feelings trump fact. He argues that the very foundations of democracy are under threat. Claire Wardle is hoping her organisation First Draft will equip users to verify the sources of stories and tackle misinformation online. But what happens when the peddlers of misinformation are state-sponsored? The Chinese writer Lijia Zhang spent a decade working in a rocket factory and her memoir, Socialism is Great!, reflects the great social transformation in China since the 1980s, and the shifts in trust and truth which mirrored such changes. The writer China Miéville, who is best known for his stories of urban surrealism, turns his attention to the story of the Russian Revolution. Producer: Kirsty McQuire.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr talks to the writer and performer Kate Tempest about her desire to bring out the epic in everyday lives, and to show the poetry in lived experience. Tracy Chevalier has taken the themes of Shakespeare's Othello and transported them to a US elementary school, while Hanif Kureishi mines the dark world of jealousy and revenge in his latest novel. Lewis Hyde looks back to mythical mischief makers from Hermes to Loki to celebrate modern day rule breakers as the shapers of culture. Producer: Katy HickmanImage: Kate Tempest Photographer: Hayley Louisa Brown.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr talks to the American writer, poet and farmer Wendell Berry. In his latest collection of essays, The World-Ending Fire, Berry speaks out against the degradation of the earth and the violence and greed of unbridled consumerism, while evoking the awe he feels as he walks the land in his native Kentucky. His challenge to the false call of progress and the American Dream is echoed in the writing of Paul Kingsnorth, whose book Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist eschews the grand narrative of a global green movement to focus on what matters - the small plot of land beneath his feet. Kate Raworth calls herself a renegade economist and, like Berry and Kingsnorth, challenges orthodox thinking, as she points to new ways to understand the global economy which take into consideration human prosperity and ecological sustainability.Producer: Katy HickmanImage: Wendell Berry Photographer: James Baker Hall.

On Start the Week Kirsty Wark asks whether it's possible to produce art for all. She's joined by the former Director of the National Theatre Nicholas Hytner who looks at the balancing act between art and show business but argues for the power of a national theatre to become part of the cultural bloodstream. The designer Lucienne Day made the link between mass production and fine art, and the curator of an exhibition of her fabrics, Jennifer Harris, says her abstract designs could be seen in households across the country. Singer-songwriter Eliza Carthy is a member of one of British folk's great dynasties, and has helped popularise folk music for new generations, combining tradition with innovation. Nietzsche suggested that 'art raises its head where religions decline' and the philosopher Jules Evans who studies human ecstasy, asks whether art galleries and theatres can really help us come together, lose control and connect with something beyond ourselves.Producer: Katy HickmanImage: Eliza Carthy and The Waywar

On Start the Week Andrew Marr explores the fashions and fads in architecture and food over the last fifty years. In 'The Age of Spectacle' the design critic Tom Dyckhoff explores how consumer culture has impacted on the building of our cities, from iconic architecture on a grand scale to soulless shopping centres and designer homes. The average life span of a family home in Japan is just 25 years: although the architect Takeshi Hayatsu regrets the destruction of so much of Japan's architectural heritage, he reflects that it's created a boon in innovate designs on a small scale. Innovations also abound in food technology and the experimental psychologist Charles Spence reveals how chefs can use science to influence diners and their taste buds, but the food writer Anissa Helou asks for a return to simplicity, away from the latest trends of 'molecular' techniques and foraged ingredients.Producer: Katy HickmanImage: Kiko Mozuna's model of 'Anti-Dwelling Box', late 1970s. Photo by Keizo Kioku. Collection of Norihi

On Start the Week Andrew Marr looks back 500 years to the moment Martin Luther challenged the power and authority of the Catholic Church. Peter Stanford brings to light the character of this lowly born German monk in a new biography. Prior to Luther, for a thousand years the Catholic Church had been one of the greatest powers on earth, but in her study of the Italian Renaissance the writer Sarah Dunant reveals how bloated, corrupt and complacent it had become. Dunant also explores the role of the Church in the home, in a new exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Madonnas and Miracles, before the Reformation swept away such iconography. The historian Alec Ryrie charts the rise of the Protestant faith from its rebellious beginnings to the present day, while the sociologist Linda Woodhead asks whether the defining characteristics of Protestant Britain, such as the freedom of the individual, national pride and a strong work ethic are still relevant today.Producer: Katy HickmanImage: Boy falling from a window, 159

On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe delves into the world of transhumanism, a movement whose aim is to use technology to transform the human condition. The writer Mark O'Connell has explored this world of cyborgs, utopians and the futurists looking to live forever. Raymond Tallis seeks to wrest the mysteries of time away from the scientists in his reflections on the nature of transience and mortality. Laura Tunbridge listens to the late works of Beethoven, Schumann and Mahler to ask whether intimations of mortality shape these pieces, while the mortician Carla Valentine uncovers what the dead reveal about their past life. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Amol Rajan talks to Sayeeda Warsi about how far Britain's Muslim community is viewed as 'the enemy within'. As the child of Pakistani immigrants who became Britain's first Muslim Cabinet Minister, Baroness Warsi is in a unique position to explore questions of cultural difference, terrorism, and 'British values', and to explore how society can become more integrated. The economist Paul Collier has spent his career looking for solutions to seemingly intractable problems: in his latest book he focuses on the Syrian refugee crisis and argues for the establishment of special economic zones where displaced Syrians could work and benefit their host countries. The philosopher Roger Scruton develops his ideas of human nature by concentrating on our relations with others, bound together in a shared world. Producer: Katy Hickman.

Start the Week is at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage, Gateshead where Tom Sutcliffe explores the pace and rhythm of life - from the heart-stopping moments to the sleep of the innocent. His guests include Russell Foster whose work on circadian rhythms sheds light on the mechanisms of our body clocks and sleep. The crime writer Denise Mina is more interested in counting the bodies than counting sheep, as she revels in the psychological undercurrents in her latest thriller. The cardiac surgeon Stephen Westaby understands the delicate balance between life and death: he has saved hundreds of lives, holding each heart in his hand and feeling its beat. The mathematician Eugenia Cheng considers what it means when that beat goes on forever, with her study of the infinite.Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr discusses the future of politics with David Goodhart and Oliver Letwin MP. In his latest book Goodhart looks at the fractious state of the west and the rise of populism, while Oliver Letwin asks what the government can do to reach those who feel marginalised. The playwright Richard Bean reaches back to another time of internal conflict, the beginning of the English Civil War, and finds humour in the desperate attempts of one man to retain power. Machiavelli is always associated with unscrupulous scheming, but his latest biographer Erica Benner argues that he was a man devoted to political and human freedom. Producer: Katy HickmanIMAGE: Rowan Polonski as Prince Rupert and Martin Barrass as Mayor Barnard in The Hypocrite by Richard Bean, a Hull Truck, Hull 2017 and RSC co-production. Photograph by Duncan Lomax (c) RSC.

Andrew Marr talks to Paul Auster about his latest work, 4 3 2 1, which weaves together four versions of his hero's life alongside the monumental events of mid-twentieth century America. The turbulence of the last six decades in US history, from JFK's assassination to Vietnam, to the AIDS crisis, racism and gender politics, is also presented through artists' prints in a new exhibition at the British Museum, co-curated by Catherine Daunt. In the 1960s and 70s, Robert Evans became one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood only to fall spectacularly from grace a decade later. In The Kid Stays in the Picture, the theatre director Simon McBurney brings his rise and fall to the stage. Producer: Katy HickmanIMAGE: Jasper Johns (b. 1930), Flags I. Colour screenprint, 1973. Gift of Johanna and Leslie Garfield, on loan from the American Friends of the British Museum. (c) Jasper Johns/VAGA, New York/DACS, London 2016. (c) Tom Powel Imaging.

On Start the Week Kirsty Wark explores what it means to live either side of a wall, and whether barriers are built to repel or protect. Supporters of the US President urge him to 'build a great wall' along the Mexican border but the journalist Ed Vulliamy points out that there is already a wall and border guards, supported and funded by US Presidents for decades. And yet still drugs, guns, money and people continue to move north and south. Israel has been building its own separation barrier since the turn of the century, but Dorit Rabinyan is more interested in psychological barriers that drive Palestinians and Israelis apart. The map-maker Garrett Carr travels Ireland's border to explore the smugglers, kings, peacemakers and terrorists who've criss-crossed this frontier, and asks what it will become when the United Kingdom leaves the EU. The historian Tom Holland looks back at the successes and failures of wall-building from Offa's Dyke to Hadrian's Wall and asks whether they work more as statements of power

On Start the Week Andrew Marr talks to the poet Elaine Feinstein about her work from over half a century of writing, from her early poems of feminist rebellion to reflections on middle age and marriage, to wry amusement on the fallibility of memory. The curator Rebecca Daniels looks back at the life and work of one of Australia's most celebrated modern painters, Sidney Nolan, and challenges the audience to look beyond his early depictions of the outback and the outlaw Ned Kelly, to see a world artist. The theatre director Trevor Nunn finds the comedy in pitting idealistic Hamlet-esque youth against a wealthy businessman in his production of Rattigan's Love in Idleness. The composer Ryan Wigglesworth has produced a new operatic interpretation of The Winter's Tale, Shakespeare's study of love, loss and reconciliation. Producer: Katy HickmanIMAGE: A section of 'Myself' by Sidney Nolan, 1988.

On Start the Week, Tom Sutcliffe considers the relationship between play and creativity. Steven Johnson examines how the human appetite for amusement has driven innovation throughout history. Writer and theatre maker Stella Duffy has revived Joan Littlewood's 1960s concept of The Fun Palace- a 'laboratory of fun' for all. The economist Tim Harford advocates embracing disorder in every area of our lives, from messy desks to messy dating. Journalist and former cricketer Ed Smith believes that creativity in sport is a combination of skill and luck.Producer: Kirsty McQuire.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr explores how childhood experiences affect later life. The screenwriter Paul Abbott famously put his early life into the television series Shameless. Although his later work, including his latest police drama No Offence, moves far beyond his own experiences, he excels at finding the comedy in the tragic. In France the writer Édouard Louis has caused a storm with his brutal autobiographical novel about class, violence and sexuality. The book is his attempt to bury his childhood. The psychiatrist Gwen Adshead spent years working at Broadmoor Hospital studying the nature of human violence and looks at the moral choices people make. The poet Paul Farley is interested not in the early life of poets but in their dying. From Shelley's drowning to Sylvia Plath's desperate suicide their deaths have become the stuff of myth casting a backward shadow on their work, creating a skewed image of the poet's life as doomed and self-destructive.

Amol Rajan discusses Turkey past and present with the authors Elif Shafak and Kaya Genç, Chatham House's Fadi Hakura and the historian Bettany Hughes. Shafak's new novel, The Three Daughters of Eve, moves between Turkey and Britain, and is a tale of friendship, faith and betrayal. It portrays Turkey as a country riven by deep divisions in society, politics and religion. Kaya Genç reports from across Turkey, exploring the lives of the country's angry young people on both sides of the political divide, while Fadi Hakura from Chatham House considers Turkey's changing relations with the outside world amid increasing nationalist feeling and isolationism. Bettany Hughes's biography of Istanbul is the story of three cities - Byzantium, Constantinople and Istanbul - and reveals a city that's been at the heart of political life between the East and the West for the last eight thousand years.Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe discusses what Islam means in the modern world. Graeme Wood has spent his career getting to know Islamist fundamentalists to try to understand the apocalyptic ideology and theology at the heart of the so-called Islamic State. Sara Khan campaigns to reclaim her faith from extremism, while Ziauddin Sardar argues that Islam demands reason and critical inquiry from its believers. Loretta Napoleoni 'follows the money' to uncover the millions made by those exploiting the destabilisation of Syria and Iraq and the rise of ISIS. Producer: Katy HickmanPhoto: Sara Khan Credit: Joe McGorty.

Andrew Marr talks to the best-selling author Martin Sixsmith about his latest book which tells the story of a daughter's search for the truth about her beloved father. Secrets, corruption and political intrigue are uncovered as they travel from Britain to Pakistan. There's more political scandal and family drama from the Nigerian author Chibundu Onuzo in her latest novel, Welcome to Lagos, and the playwright Oladipo Agboluaje imagines a political revolution in 21st century Nigeria and the moral compromises made in the pursuit of power and political change. Laurence Cockcroft is the co-founder of Transparency International in the UK and in his latest work turns his attention to the flavour of corruption in the West.Producer: Katy Hickman.

Andrew Marr visits the Parker Library at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge to meet the oldest non-archaeological artefact in England, which is the oldest surviving illustrated Latin Gospel in the world - the sixth century Gospel of Saint Augustine. The Librarian Christopher de Hamel tells the stories of rare and beautiful manuscripts which have crisscrossed Europe for hundreds of years at the whim of power politics, religion and social change, but even now have secrets that are yet to be discovered. The musician and broadcaster Lucie Skeaping has also turned detective in her study of the Elizabethan jig - a popular and bawdy play set to music - where only fragments of parchment and clues to the tunes remain. Edward Brooke-Hitching uncovers the myths, lies and blunders which have plagued the cartographers of old, with his book of early maps. Mythical sea monsters, fabled mountain ranges, even phantom islands have all been written into the atlas of the world.Producer Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr looks back at lost heroes of science, and forward to cutting-edge experiments. Saiful Islam, Professor of Materials Chemistry, recreates Michael Faraday's famous 19th century experiments for the Royal Institution's Christmas lectures before exploring the latest materials being invented to boost clean energy. More Christmas fare as Brian Cox attempts to explain the birth of the entire universe with music, dance and comedy. Andrea Wulf celebrates the Victorian naturalist, geographer and explorer Alexander von Humboldt, whose name although mostly forgotten lives on through his research - from the Humboldt Current to Humboldt penguins. Michael Lewis has turned his attention from the financial crisis and his bestselling Liar's Poker and The Big Short to the birth of the Nobel-prize winning theory of behavioural economics, and the remarkable scientific partnership at its heart. Producer: Katy Hickman.