Start the Week Folgen

On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe talks to Adrienne Mayor about the Amazons, the legendary warrior women who glorified in fighting, hunting and sexual freedom. The Greeks described these wild barbarian archers, and Mayor reveals new archaeological discoveries which prove these women were not merely figments of their imagination. Five hundred years ago wolves roamed throughout Britain's wilderness and in her latest novel, The Wolf Border, Sarah Hall considers the possibility of re-wilding the countryside. Such freedom would have its limits and the wolves' movements would have to be managed and contained, a condition which John Gray considers in his book on human freedom: The Soul of the Marionette.Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr talks to Robert Douglas-Fairhurst about the life of Lewis Carroll. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has become an influential part of our cultural heritage but beneath the fairy tale lies the complex history of the author and his subject. Gillian Beer explores the links between Darwin and Carroll and the struggle to define and classify a changing world. The children's author Katherine Rundell enjoys the chaos and ambivalence in the Alice stories, and brings a sense of adventure to her own work. Centuries earlier, as intrepid travellers returned from distant lands with tales of wonder and exotic beasts, fearful hybrid monsters were all the rage as Damien Kempf describes in his Medieval Monsters.Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Susan Pinker argues that face-to-face contact increases longevity and reduces the risks of illness. She tells Anne McElvoy that although new technology connects more people, it can often leave us more disconnected. However the writer and gamer Nicholas Lovell explains that online gamers have their own sense of community. The philosopher Daniel Dennett considers whether it's possible to create a robot that can rival the human brain, and the poet Sam Riviere has used and manipulated the results of search-engines to compose his new collection: 72 poems marking the 72 days of Kim Kardashian's marriage in 2011. Producer: Katy Hickman.