Terry Eagleton
The Prof ranges across literature and philosophy, and comes up with some answers of his own.
Azar Gat
The Professor of National Security asks: why do people go to war? Is it rooted in human nature or is it a late cultural invention? How does war relate to the other fundamental developments in the history of human civilization?
Richard Dawkins, Steve Jones, Martin Rees
Chaired by The Guardian’s Science Editor James Randerson.
Brenda Maddox
The amazing tale of the brilliant and sexually voracious Welsh psychoanalyst who rescued Sigmund from Vienna in 1938.
Steve Jones
Scientists are professional pessimists, always dubious about what they find. Believers, in contrast, are certain: full of joy that their own Big Book contains the truth. The geneticist talks about science and faith as conflicting explanations of what we are; and how biology, in the end, is blind.
Martin Rees, Neil Turok, Bernard Carr
The pre-eminent astronomers and cosmologists discuss how recent developments in cosmology and particle physics have led to the remarkable realization that our universe – rather than being unique – could be just one of many universes. This multiverse proposal may explain the fine-tunings which appear necessary for the emergence of life, as well as the origin of our universe. Chaired by science broadcaster Quentin Cooper.
AC Grayling
‘Humankind’s great conversation with itself about what is best in life involves reading, thinking, conversing, learning, enjoying, judging, being sceptical, being open-minded – and, in bad times, maintaining trust in all that these endeavours prove to be valuable.’
Karen Armstrong talks to Melvyn Bragg
Between 800 and 300 BC there was an explosion of new religious concepts fundamentally transforming our understanding of what it is to be human. But why did Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, Jeremiah, Lao Tzu and others all emerge in this 500-year span? And why do they have such similar ideas about humanity?
Alain de Botton
From the humble terraced house to some of the world’s most renowned buildings, the writer and thinker considers how our private homes and public edifices influence how we feel; and how we could learn to build in ways that would increase our chances of happiness.
Raymond Tallis
In his trilogy handkind the inspiring lecturer and physician and philosopher attempted to describe and account for the unique nature of human conciousness. His work in progress - Unthinkable Thought; The Significance of Parmanides builds on the theory of knowledge advanced in the trilogy.
Steve Jones
From chaos in the heavens to the fight against creationism, from optical illusions in tartan to the mathematics of elections to what rules the sex lives of cats, the biologist takes a turn around the world of science.
Christopher Hitchens
The contrarian traces the history of The Rights of Man from the publication of Part One in 1791 in London and its rapturous reception across the Atlantic. He analyses the meaning it has acquired since its creation, and its significance as the cornerstone of contemporary debates about our basic human rights.
Germaine Greer
In her annual poetry masterclass, Greer explores the idea that ‘Literature is a masculinist invention; poetry in particular is a spectacular form of male display. Women have to adapt a language which objectifies them absolutely to become the speakers, the verbal aggressors.’
Susan Greenfield
The most intriguing function of the human brain is to generate an inner world of feeling: emotions. Greenfield shows how both positive and negative emotions are with us all the time, but varying in degree. At the extreme she suggests that these entail an abrogation of a sense of self, the individual mind. She looks at what might actually be happening in the brain when you 'lose your mind', 'blow your mind' or 'let yourself go'.