Start the Week

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 Norihito Nakatani.

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, 1592 (c) Museo degli ex voto del santuario di Madonna dell'Arco.

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 than as insurmountable barriers between people. Producer: Katy Hickman.

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.