Every moment of the day tiny biological clocks are ticking throughout the body, but Russell Foster, world-renowned expert in circadian neuroscience, warns that modern life is playing havoc with these ancient and delicate mechanisms. In his latest book, Life Time: The New Science Of The Body Clock And How It Can Revolutionise Your Sleep and Health, Professor Foster reveals how this essential part of our biology works. He tells Tom Sutcliffe how new understandings about our daily routines could help reset how we live and sleep.ViSiBLE is a professional theatre company dedicated to creating new and provocative works, with and about older people. Its latest performance, Five Characters in Search of a Good Night's Sleep, is at the Southwark Playhouse until 21st May. ViSiBLE’s founder, the playwright Sonja Linden, says the new piece was inspired by the experiences of the actors who as they’ve aged have found sleep more elusive and sleep-inducing techniques more desperate. Ros Holmes is a lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of St Andrews. Her research focuses on ideas about sleep and insomnia, and how they’ve been represented in the visual culture of twentieth century and contemporary China. From the images of ‘national awakening’ in the early years of the Republic and the always-alert workers of the Cultural Revolution to the cities that never sleep today – sleep deprivation has become part of life in China.Producer: Katy HickmanPhoto Image: 'Five Characters in Search of a Good Night's Sleep' (credit: Bessell Photography)

The Syrian architect Marwa al-Sabouni is the Guest Co-Director of this year’s Brighton Festival and her flagship project The Riwaq on Hove seafront provides a space for social and artistic exchange. Rebuilding is the festival’s theme and the subject of her latest book, Building for Hope – Towards an Architecture of Belonging which explores how cities can be rebuilt after crisis and war. She tells Helen Lewis that architecture has a pivotal role in generating community, not just in devastated cities, but all around the world. Dame Jo da Silva is an engineer at the building firm Arup who specialises in disaster relief. After years spent realising the high designs of architects for everything from airports to bus shelters, she became involved in projects to rebuild communities hit by catastrophes. As urbanisation reaches record levels globally she argues that it’s more important than ever to build in sustainability and resilience. The historian Jessie Childs focuses her story of the violence and disaster of the English civil war on The Siege of Loyalty House in the 1640s. To the parliamentarians Basing House, the royalist stronghold, was the devil’s seat. Over two years, the inhabitants were bombarded, starved and gassed from the outside, and faced smallpox, spies and mutiny from within.Producer: Katy Hickman

Wonder at the natural world has inspired people and fuelled curiosity for millennia. The ancient Greek Theophrastus had interests that spread far and wide, from biology and physics to ethics and metaphysics. But although he was Aristotle’s friend and collaborator, and his notes on botany inspired Linnaeus, his name has mostly been forgotten. The writer Laura Beatty’s new book, Looking for Theophrastus, aims to rescue him from obscurity. The scientist, Suzie Sheehy, still feels a childlike wonder at the way physics seems to be able to describe everything – from the smallest subatomic particle to the scale of the Universe. In The Matter of Everything: Twelve Experiments That Changed Our World, she looks back at the people who engineered ground-breaking experiments, and the human ingenuity, creativity and curiosity, as well as luck and serendipity that propelled them forward.While physicists attempt to describe and define the universe, the workings of the human mind still remain a challenge to scientists and philosophers. In The Book of Minds, the science writer Philip Ball looks at what we know about the minds of other creatures, from octopuses to chimpanzees, and of the workings of computers and alien intelligences. By understanding how minds differ, he argues, the better we can understand our own.Producer: Katy Hickman

In The Age of the Strongman, the journalist Gideon Rachman explores how populist and authoritarian leaders have become a central feature of global politics. Since Vladimir Putin took power in Russia at the beginning of the new millennium, self-styled strongmen have emerged across the globe, from Trump and Bolsonaro to Orbán, Xi and Modi. Rachman tells Tom Sutcliffe how these leaders have taken power and the challenge they pose to liberal democracy. Judy Dempsey is a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe and editor in chief of the Strategic Europe blog. She explains how Viktor Orbán has tightened his grip on power in Hungary, while the EU has dragged its heels. And how Putin’s war in Ukraine has not only exacerbated pre-existing global divisions but divided Europe as well. History is littered with powerful leaders, and Christopher de Bellaigue, tells of the rise of one of the most feared – Suleyman the Magnificent. In The Lion House: The Coming of a King the 16th century Ottoman Sultan dominates the lives of those from Baghdad to the walls of Vienna.Producer: Katy Hickman

The new novel, Glory, by prize winning writing NoViolet Bulawayo is a postcolonial tale of power and tyranny – an African Animal Farm. It’s set in the fictional Jidada, that resembles Zimbabwe during the overthrow of Robert Mugabe, and is populated by a vivid cast of animals – from the vicious dog-soldiers to the powerful Old Horse leader himself. She tells Adam Rutherford how her chorus of animal voices help reveal the human world more clearly. The journalist Dipo Faloyin wants to push against harmful stereotypes of modern Africa. In his latest book, Africa Is Not A Country, he argues that a continent of over 1.4 billion people, 54 countries and more than 2,000 languages has been reduced to a simplistic story. He looks at how politics, culture and community have emerged in different ways across Africa.Julia Gallagher is Professor of African Politics at SOAS, University of London. Her research explores the architecture of state buildings in different African countries – from the re-purposed colonial structures to the new palatial palaces of post-independence – and how citizens respond to them. Also as the African Union celebrates twenty years since it was founded – housed in a new compound built by the Chinese in Addis Ababa – she looks at the position of the AU in the 21st century. Producer: Katy HickmanImage: photograph of NoViolet Bulawayo - copyright Nye' Lyn Tho

"Stand still, and I will read to thee / A lecture, love, in love's philosophy." John Donne is one of the greatest love poets in the history of the English language. In a new biography, Super-Infinite, Katherine Rundell reveals the many transformations in his life – from scholar to sea adventurer to priest. She also tells Kirsty Wark of his extraordinary ability to transform language into something new. Copies of his Metaphysical Poems will be well-thumbed by students around the country. But what of the power of books in general? In Portable Magic: A History of Books and their Readers, Emma Smith presents an iconoclastic and revisionist story of our love affair with books. Megan Walsh meanwhile has been looking at contemporary Chinese literature. The Subplot: What China is Reading and Why it Matters, reveals the huge appetite for books and the wonderful diversity of Chinese writing – from migrant-worker poetry movements and homoerotic romances to surreal stories and sci-fi.Producer: Katy Hickman

The picture of a lone figure, plastic bags in hand, standing in front of a column of tanks in Tiananmen Square in China in 1989 has become an iconic image of resistance to overpowering might. As Russian tanks have crossed into Ukraine, individuals have put themselves in similar positions to halt the advance. But what about in Russia itself. Arkady Ostrovksy is Russia and eastern Europe editor for The Economist. He tells Tom Sutcliffe about the thousands who have been arrested protesting against the war, and President Putin’s measures to quash any dissent. In Resistance: The Underground War in Europe, 1939-45, Halik Kochanski has written a sweeping history of occupation and resistance. She uncovers extraordinary tales of ordinary people who carried out exceptional acts of defiance against Nazi Germany. But she also challenges the heroic myths that surround underground resistance, and asks painful questions about why people didn’t resist, and equally what was actually achieved by those that did. Nathan Law was one of the student leaders whose week-long class boycott against China’s increasing interference in Hong Kong led to the 79-day Umbrella Movement protest in 2014. In Freedom: How We Lose It And How We Fight Back he argues for the importance of standing up to authoritarianism around the world, despite the dangers. He left Hong Kong as the Chinese government enacted wide-ranging security laws, and has since been granted political asylum in Britain.Producer: Katy HickmanImage: People participate in a Unity March to show solidarity and patriotic spirit over the escalating tensions with Russia on February 12, 2022 in Kiev, Ukraine.

With the Russian invasion of Ukraine images of war in Europe dominate the news, and questions rage about the political failure to both prevent and end the atrocities. Amol Rajan discusses the political forces that have allowed the West to flourish and the cracks that are beginning to widen. Developed in the wake of European wars of religion and nationalism, Liberalism was designed as a system to govern diverse societies, with a strong emphasis on the rights of individuals, equality and the rule of law. In Liberalism and Its Discontents Francis Fukuyama argues for a return to its classical form but shows how attacks from both the left and right have left it in a state of crisis.Europe’s dependence on Russian oil is central to Helen Thompson’s book, Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century. She looks back at the historical origins of today’s overlapping geopolitical, economic and political failures.Shifts in the global balance of power in the 19th century between Old Europe and the New World of American Imperialism are at the heart of Edward Shawcross’s extraordinary tale. He describes the ignoble end of a Habsburg Archduke, aided by Napoleon III, who crossed the world to become The Last Emperor of Mexico.Producer: Katy HickmanImage credit: Francis Fukuyama – © Djurdja Padejski

In May Wales will hold local elections to elect members of all twenty-two local authorities. Richard Wyn Jones, professor of Welsh politics, examines the issues facing the country. He tells Helen Lewis how nationalism plays an important role in politics in Wales, but that its national identity is a complex mix of Welsh, English and British. What does it meant to be Welsh today? And what of the future of Wales? These are the questions posed in a series of essays, Welsh [Plural]. The poet Hanan Issa is one of the co-editors, and is looking to get beyond the stereotype images of castles, coal and choirs, and understand the full rich diversity of Welsh identities.The historian Dr Marion Loeffler explores how pivotal works of art and literature have helped shape Wales. In a landmark BBC series, Art That Made Us (on BBC2 in April) she looks back to the 7th century poem Y Gododdin and the painter Penry Williams’ depiction of Cyfarthfa Ironworks Interior at Night, 1825. Wales’s industrial landscape is at the centre of Richard King’s oral history, Brittle With Relics, which focuses on the huge changes that took place during the second half of the 20th century. The story of the effects of deindustrialisation, loss of employment and social cohesion, as well as the fight for a voice, language and identity, is told through the people who lived through it.Producer: Katy HickmanImage credit: BBC ClearStory - Artist and Performer Sean Parry with a byddar drum

Humans have been fascinated with birdlife since the first cave drawings 12,000 years ago. In Birds and Us, Tim Birkhead explores how birds have captured our imaginations and inspired both art and science. He looks back to the mummified ibises of Ancient Egypt and the Victorian obsessions with egg collecting, to today’s bustling guillemot colonies on the Faroe Islands and the fight to save endangered species. Around 1820 John James Audubon declared his intention to paint every bird species in North America. The result was the hugely ambitious Birds of America featuring 435 life-size, hand-coloured prints. The National Museum of Scotland is currently exhibiting several of his original unbound prints, and the curator Mark Glancy tells the story of this controversial figure who shot thousands of birds in his pursuit of the perfect pose and specimen, but also had a unique eye for their beauty. Alison Richard has spent five decades investigating one of the most extraordinarily diverse places on earth – Madagascar. She recreates the island of the past with its towering flightless Elephant birds and giant tortoises. Her latest book, The Sloth Lemur’s Song captures the magic and mystery of Madagascar today, but also serves as a warning at what could lie ahead for its unique wildlife.Producer: Katy HickmanImage Credit: Detail from a print depicting Carolina Pigeons or Turtle Doves from Birds of America by John James Audubon © National Museums Scotland.jpg