What can genetics and palmistry tell us about how we understand identity, character and health? Adam Rutherford is joined by Professor of Zoology Matthew Cobb; the historian Professor Alison Bashford and the geneticist Charlotte Houldcroft.Matthew Cobb discusses his biography Crick: A Mind in Motion. From the discovery of DNA’s structure to Francis Crick’s later work on consciousness, Cobb reveals a restless thinker whose collaborations — with scientists, artists and poets — shaped some of the most profound ideas of the 20th century.Alison Bashford turns to palm reading in her new book Decoding the Hand, a history of palmistry and its surprising entanglement with science, medicine and magic.The geneticist Charlotte Houldcroft's research uses ancient DNA to work out how DNA viruses - such as smallpox and herpes - change over time and the consequences of this evolution for our immune systems.Producer: Natalia Fernandez
Kultur & Gesellschaft
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Weekly discussion programme, setting the cultural agenda every Monday
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Folge vom 24.11.2025Genes and hands: mapping character and health
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Folge vom 17.11.2025Digital Futures and Information CrisesHow can we reclaim the internet? Tom Sutcliffe and guests discuss the digital age - its supporters and discontents. Tech critic Cory Doctorow introduces his new book Enshittification, a blistering diagnosis of how online platforms have decayed — from innovation to exploitation — and what we can do to make it better for ordinary users. Novelist and broadcaster Naomi Alderman draws on history in Don’t Burn Anyone at the Stake Today, arguing that we’ve lived through information crises before, and that lessons from the invention of writing and the printing press can help us navigate today’s digital turbulence. Journalist Oliver Moody, the author of Baltic: The Future of Europe, discusses Estonia’s radical embrace of digital governance, and what it reveals about the possibilities — and limits — of a truly connected state.Producer: Katy Hickman Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez
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Folge vom 10.11.2025Saving Tigers, Green Crime and Cli-fiThreats to the natural world are the focus of today’s conversation. Adam Rutherford talks to wildlife biologist Jonathan Slaght, novelist Juhea Kim and criminal psychologist Julia Shaw.Jonathan Slaght discusses Tigers Between Empires, his account of the international effort to save the Siberian tiger from extinction in the wake of the Cold War. Juhea Kim’s short story collection A Love Story from the End of the World imagines lives lived in precarious balance with nature, from biodomes in Seoul to landfill islands in the Pacific. Dr Julia Shaw’s Green Crime investigates the psychology behind environmental destruction, profiling the perpetrators of ecological harm and the people fighting to stop them.Producer: Katy Hickman Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez
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Folge vom 03.11.2025Storytelling: Jeanette Winterson, Rory Stewart and Soweto KinchIn her latest novel, One Aladdin Two Lamps, the writer Jeanette Winterson takes inspiration from the legendary story of Shahrazad in One Thousand and One Nights. But she calls on the reader to look again at stories we think we know, unpick how fiction works, and have the courage to challenge and change the narrative.The saxophonist and presenter Soweto Kinch will perform his new album, Soundtrack to the Apocalypse, with the London Symphony Orchestra (at the Barbican, London, on Friday 14th November), combining British jazz, hip-hop and orchestral music. This is the finale of his acclaimed trilogy of politically charged, genre-defying works that tell different stories of the past, present and future. The former MP Rory Stewart spent nearly a decade in Britain’s most rural constituency, Penrith and Borders, and wrote a column for a local newspaper. In Middleland: Dispatches from the Borders he’s collected together these fragmentary moments from rural life and local politics to capture a wide-ranging portrait of life and stories from the Cumbrian countryside. Producer: Katy Hickman Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez