The astrophysicist Professor Lisa Kaltenegger is like an explorer of old, but her voyage takes her far from earth, planet hunting across the universe. She is Director of the Carl Sagan Institute to Search for Life in the Cosmos at Cornell University, and in her new book Alien Earths she describes the very latest discoveries of exoplanets which are the best contenders for harbouring alien life. Claudia de Rham is Professor of Theoretical Physics at Imperial College London and in her book The...

London, and the river that runs through it, is at the heart of the new play London Tide, an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend. Ben Power has adapted the novel and co-written original songs with the singer-songwriter PJ Harvey. He tells Adam Rutherford that although it combines the savage satire and social analysis of the original, it is, in essence, a love letter to the capital. London Tide is playing at the National Theatre until 22nd June. The award-winning architect Amanda...

2024 has been dubbed the year of elections, as at least 64 countries – including the UK – are heading for the polls. Tom Sutcliffe and guests explore the state of democracy. The political philosopher Erica Benner reflects on the tensions in liberal democracy in her book, Adventures in Democracy: The Turbulent World of People Power. From her childhood in post-war Japan, to working in post-communist Poland, and with forays into ancient Greece and Renaissance Erica Benner looks at the role of...

Humankind’s relationship with music can be traced back millions of years and across continents. In Sound Tracks the archaeologist Graeme Lawson unearths some of the oldest instruments, from water-filled pots in Peru from AD700 that chirp like a bird, to bells from a tomb in 5th century China. He argues that music is part of what makes us human. An ancient horn, played from a watchtower on Hadrian's Wall, is a far cry from the modern version the award-winning trumpeter Alison Balsom plays. She...

The historian Michael Taylor looks back at the past tug of war between religion and science, and how the discovery of ancient bones challenged religious orthodoxy. Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin and the War Between Science and Religion is the story of a group of people whose insights tested beliefs about creation and cosmology, and ushered in the secular age. But Nick Spencer from the thinktank Theos dismisses the idea that science has rightly relegated religion to the margins. In his...

The Vietnamese American writer Viet Thanh Nguyen was awarded the Pulitzer prize for his debut novel The Sympathiser in 2016. Now he turns his attention to memoir, in A Man of Two Faces. He was four when he was forced to flee Vietnam with his family, but as he looks back at his life he explores the necessity of forgetting and remembering, and how far the promise and dream of America can be trusted. The journalist and Deputy Editor of Harper’s Bazaar Helena Lee wants to showcase the voices and...

Andrey Kurkov is Ukraine’s most celebrated novelist. When Russia invaded Ukraine he turned his writing to journalism and memoir, but his latest book is a work of fiction set amid the chaos of the Russian Revolution. The Silver Bone (translated by Boris Dralyuk) is the first in a trilogy of historical mysteries in which the recently orphaned detective investigates his first case while Bolsheviks, Cossacks, and white Army Guards all vie to take control of Kyiv. The journalist and writer Peter...

The Nobel prize winning molecular biologist Venki Ramakrishnan explores how time affects our bodies, brains and emotions in his new book, Why We Die: The New Science of Ageing and the Quest for Immortality. As he explains the recent scientific breakthroughs to extend lifespan by altering our biology, he also considers the ethical questions such efforts raise. The neuroscientist Charan Ranganath asks a different question in his book, Why We Remember. Using case studies he unveils the...

The plant Rafflesia has the world’s largest flowers and gives off one of the worst scents; it’s also something of a biological enigma, a leafless parasite that lives off forest vines. For the botanist Chris Thorogood, an expert in parasitic and carnivorous plants at the Oxford Botanic Garden and Arboretum, Rafflesia is also an obsession. In his book, Pathless Forest, he goes in search of this mysterious plant in some of the last wildernesses in South East Asia. Dr Kelsey Byers is an...

Over the past 50 years, worldwide obesity rates have tripled, and now headlines increasingly shout of a public health crisis, even an obesity epidemic. Tom Sutcliffe explores the consequences of using such negative and emotional language to describe weight and the increasing rates of fat phobia in society. He looks at the health issues and the so-called ‘miracle drugs’ that suppress appetite, and where genetics and diet meet. He’s joined by Naveed Sattar, Professor of Metabolic Medicine at...

The journalist and broadcaster Ellen E. Jones explores the immense potential of film to challenge the status quo in her book, Screen Deep: How Film And TV Can Solve Racism And Save The World. She explores different genres from superheroes and westerns to horror and arthouse. And she argues that such a popular art form - either shared in the cinema, or beamed direct into your home – revels in the diversity of its story-telling. The Iranian-Australian filmmaker Noora Niasari has chosen to draw...

Ancient Greece and Rome loom large in the understanding of the roots of Western Civilisation, but the Professor of Ancient History Josephine Quinn wants to challenge that simple narrative. In How The World Made The West – A 4,000 Year History she shows how western values were developed by long-standing links between a much larger group of cultures, from the Gobi Desert to the Atlantic Ocean and beyond. The British Museum’s major new exhibition Legion looks at life in the Roman army (on until...

The trade in opium formed a backdrop to Amitav Ghosh’s best-selling novels, The Ibis Trilogy. In his latest work of non-fiction, Smoke and Ashes, he investigates the impact of that trade on Britain, India and China, and follows the money that was made by some of America’s most powerful and well-respected families. He reveals how the poppy plant enabled the financial survival of Empire and proved catastrophic for Indian farmers and Chinese users. In the 21st century Afghanistan became the...

The history of glass-making dates back to at least 3,600 years ago in Mesopotamia, and both manufactured and naturally-occurring glass have been used in a wide variety of objects across the world. The curator and director of the Stained Glass Museum in Ely, Jasmine Allen, looks back at its long and varied history, highlighting its practical and artistic qualities. In the last century or so its industrial heartlands in Britain have been in the Black Country and the north east of England. ...

The legal framework to prosecute war crimes and prohibit the use of ‘aggressive war’ came out of the international war crimes tribunals after WWII – in Germany and Japan. In Judgement at Tokyo the academic and writer Gary J. Bass retells the dramatic courtroom battles as Japan’s militaristic leaders were held accountable for their crimes. With prosecutors and judges drawn from eleven different Allied countries tensions flared, and justice in the Asia Pacific played out amidst the start of the...

The data analyst Hannah Ritchie challenges the doomsday climate scenarios dominating the headlines to argue for a more hopeful outlook. In Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet she uses the data to show what progress has been made, and what actions will have the most impact in the future. Capitalism, consumerism and unfettered growth are often blamed for the climate crisis, but the Bloomberg journalist Akshat Rathi believes that capitalism...

The Labour Party first took office on 22nd January 1924. In the century that followed it has only had six prime ministers and been in power for a total of 33 years. The Labour MP Jon Cruddas looks back at A Century of Labour – the successes and failures. While the Party has been riven by factions from the left and the right, Cruddas also looks at the competing visions of the what the Party represents. The Labour Party was born out of the increase in franchise, the industrialisation of the...

Artificial Intelligence will be the focus of this year’s Royal Institution Christmas Lectures by the Oxford Professor of Computer Science, Mike Wooldridge. In his series of lectures (broadcast on BBC Four in late December) he will attempt to disentangle the realities from the myths, but will also demonstrate the huge impact AI is already having in fields ranging from medicine to football to astrophysics, as well as on the creative arts. The bestselling novelist Naomi Alderman has fun with AI...

With the fall of the Soviet Union, the theoretical physicist Armen Sarkissian returned home and became first the Prime Minister and then the President of the newly reformed state of Armenia. In his book, The Small States Club: How Small Smart States Can Save the World, he argues that successful smaller nations have had to learn to be more agile, adaptive and cooperative, compared to the world’s ‘greater’ powers. The world map has changed considerably, especially in the 19th and 20th century,...

It’s play time on Start the Week. The mathematician Marcus Du Sautoy looks at the numbers behind the games we play, from Monopoly to rock paper scissors. In Around The World in 80 Games he shows how understanding maths can give you the edge, and why games are integral to human psychology and culture. The historian Anthony Bale looks at game-playing in the medieval world. In A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages, he finds travellers passing the time with dice and tric trac, as well as collecting...

Tim Peake was the first British astronaut to visit the International Space Station, and is one of only 628 people in human history to have left the Earth’s atmosphere. In Space he tells the human story of space exploration – from launch to landing. In Samantha Harvey’s latest novel Orbital six astronauts on a space station rotate above the Earth. While their waking lives are spent conducting scientific experiments and maintaining the spacecraft, their attention is constantly drawn back to...

The Impressionist painter Claude Monet wrote that he was driven ‘wild with the need to put down what I experience’. In his long career he revolutionised painting and made some of the most iconic images of western art. The art critic Jackie Wullschläger’s biography of Monet looks at the man behind the famous artist. Monet’s late series of paintings of water lilies became less and less concerned with a conventional depiction of nature. The artist Mat Collishaw’s latest works also draw on...

The award-winning composer Errollyn Wallen offers an insight into what it’s like to write a piece of music. In her memoir, Becoming a Composer, she also looks back on how a girl born in Belize and brought up in Tottenham found herself at home in the world of classical music. Handel was gradually losing his sight in 1751 as he finished what was his last dramatic oratorio Jephtha. The harpsichordist Laurence Cummings conducts a new performance of this biblical tale of faith and sacrifice, at...

In the winter of 770 the Chinese poet Du Fu wrote his final words, ‘Excitement gone, now nothing troubles me…/ Rushing madly at last where do I go?’ Looking back at his life and work, the historian Michael Wood retraces Du Fu’s journeys across China. He lived through war and famine, but his poetry found beauty and grandeur in the minutiae of everyday life and the natural world. Michael Wood tells Tom Sutcliffe how Du Fu’s poetry has the timeless quality of Shakespeare or Dante. The travel...