Start the Week Folgen

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.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr finds out if it's possible to create a world less impersonal and more equal. David Cameron's former senior adviser, Steve Hilton, believes our governments and institutions are too big, and he argues for a more human-focused society. The US economist Joseph Stiglitz tackles rising inequality in the West and blames the unjust and misguided priorities of neoliberalism. The Russian writer Masha Gessen looks at the struggle between assimilation and alienation as she asks why two brothers turned terrorist, bombing the Boston Marathon. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Mariella Frostrup talks to the academic Hamid Dabashi about his critique of European intellectual heritage and identity. In his polemic Can Non-Europeans Think? Dabashi argues that those outside the West are often marginalised and mis-represented. Ancient Greece dominates the intellectual landscape in Europe and Edith Hall looks back to explore what made this civilisation so successful. The Greeks of Ancient Athens were always questioning their society and asking what makes people happy, and Douglas Murray wonders whether the secular West has stopped asking those questions, and is the shallower for it. The artist Glenn Ligon takes inspiration from black writers and abstract expressionists to give a fresh perspective on the values of contemporary America. Producer: Katy Hickman.