Author: BBC Radio 4

On Start the Week Andrew Marr talks to the writer and performer Kate Tempest about her desire to bring out the epic in everyday lives, and to show the poetry in lived experience. Tracy Chevalier has taken the themes of Shakespeare's Othello and transported them to a US elementary school, while Hanif Kureishi mines the dark world of jealousy and revenge in his latest novel. Lewis Hyde looks back to mythical mischief makers from Hermes to Loki to celebrate modern day rule breakers as the shapers of culture. Producer: Katy Hickman

Image: Kate Tempest Photographer: Hayley Louisa Brown.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr talks to the American writer, poet and farmer Wendell Berry. In his latest collection of essays, The World-Ending Fire, Berry speaks out against the degradation of the earth and the violence and greed of unbridled consumerism, while evoking the awe he feels as he walks the land in his native Kentucky.

His challenge to the false call of progress and the American Dream is echoed in the writing of Paul Kingsnorth, whose book Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist eschews the grand narrative of a global green movement to focus on what matters - the small plot of land beneath his feet.

Kate Raworth calls herself a renegade economist and, like Berry and Kingsnorth, challenges orthodox thinking, as she points to new ways to understand the global economy which take into consideration human prosperity and ecological sustainability.

Producer: Katy Hickman

Image: Wendell Berry Photographer: James Baker Hall.

On Start the Week Kirsty Wark asks whether it's possible to produce art for all.

She's joined by the former Director of the National Theatre Nicholas Hytner who looks at the balancing act between art and show business but argues for the power of a national theatre to become part of the cultural bloodstream.

The designer Lucienne Day made the link between mass production and fine art, and the curator of an exhibition of her fabrics, Jennifer Harris, says her abstract designs could be seen in households across the country.

Singer-songwriter Eliza Carthy is a member of one of British folk's great dynasties, and has helped popularise folk music for new generations, combining tradition with innovation.

Nietzsche suggested that 'art raises its head where religions decline' and the philosopher Jules Evans who studies human ecstasy, asks whether art galleries and theatres can really help us come together, lose control and connect with something beyond ourselves.

Producer: Katy Hickman

Image: Eliza Carthy and The Wayward Band Photographer: Steve Gullick.

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 Hickman

Image: Kiko Mozuna's model of 'Anti-Dwelling Box', late 1970s. Photo by Keizo Kioku. Collection of Norihito Nakatani.