Author: BBC Radio 4

Andrew Marr talks to the prize-winning novelist, Peter Carey about his latest work, The Chemistry of Tears. At its heart is a small clockwork puzzle and Carey muses on how the industrial revolution has changed what it means to be human. The science writer Philip Ball goes back another century to the world of Galileo and Newton, to study the changes in thinking and knowledge embodied by the scientifically curious. And the historian Rebecca Stott rediscovers the first evolutionists, and the collective daring of Darwin's scientific forebears who had the imagination to speculate on the natural world.

Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr looks back at the political and cultural landscape of the last 20 years with the author Alwyn Turner. In 1992 Margaret Thatcher proclaimed 'the death of socialism' after the Conservative election victory, and Turner argues this moment led to a generation turning away from politics, putting their energy into culture. But Janet Daley believes that it wasn't John Major's victory but the fall of communism that demoralised and destabilised the left, and the lessons of 1989 are still to be learnt. In its defence, the Labour MP Tristram Hunt points to the long history of socialism and believes its death has been much exaggerated. And the political cartoonist Martin Rowson lampoons both left and right. In his latest book he updates Swift's Gulliver's Travels to the late 1990s, targeting the government of Tony Blair, media moguls and Europe.

Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr looks back at the political and cultural landscape of the last 20 years with the author Alwyn Turner. In 1992 Margaret Thatcher proclaimed 'the death of socialism' after the Conservative election victory, and Turner argues this moment led to a generation turning away from politics, putting their energy into culture. But Janet Daley believes that it wasn't John Major's victory but the fall of communism that demoralised and destabilised the left, and the lessons of 1989 are still to be learnt. In its defence, the Labour MP Tristram Hunt points to the long history of socialism and believes its death has been much exaggerated. And the political cartoonist Martin Rowson lampoons both left and right. In his latest book he updates Swift's Gulliver's Travels to the late 1990s, targeting the government of Tony Blair, media moguls and Europe.

Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Anne McElvoy talks to the filmmaker Werner Herzog about his latest documentary which gazes "into the abyss of the human soul", in its exploration of death row. Liz Mermin delves into the world of particle physics for her latest film venture, spending a year at CERN. While work there continues to try and understand the fundamental laws of nature, Mermin attempts to understand the people behind the experiments. The writer Geoff Dyer obsesses about Tarkovsky's film, Stalker, as a means to look at his own life, and to understand how we discover our deepest wishes. While in his new collection of poetry, Paul Farley, explores 'the art of seeing': weaving the past and the present to highlight those moments glimpsed out of the corner of your eye, and what's hidden in plain sight. Producer: Katy Hickman.

On Start the Week Anne McElvoy talks to the filmmaker Werner Herzog about his latest documentary which gazes "into the abyss of the human soul", in its exploration of death row. Liz Mermin delves into the world of particle physics for her latest film venture, spending a year at CERN. While work there continues to try and understand the fundamental laws of nature, Mermin attempts to understand the people behind the experiments. The writer Geoff Dyer obsesses about Tarkovsky's film, Stalker, as a means to look at his own life, and to understand how we discover our deepest wishes. While in his new collection of poetry, Paul Farley, explores 'the art of seeing': weaving the past and the present to highlight those moments glimpsed out of the corner of your eye, and what's hidden in plain sight. Producer: Katy Hickman.

Andrew Marr talks to the Nobel Prize winning author Nadine Gordimer. In her latest book she explores the tensions at the heart of a nation struggling to define itself post-apartheid, through the lives of an interracial couple in suburban South Africa. The past and present also collide in the poet Jack Mapanje's attempt to understand why he was arrested by the Malawian secret police, and imprisoned without charge. Richard Dowden looks to the future of Africa to ask whether Chinese investment, an explosion in mobile technology and a growing middle class, means this will be Africa's decade. Producer: Katy Hickman.