Arts & Ideas Folgen

Rocks have shaped the fates of civilizations and the study of geology has transformed our intellectual landscape. In the 19th century developments in earth sciences led to the scientific rejection of Biblical timescales in favour of the far greater spans of geological time, which opened the way for Darwin's development of the theory of evolution by natural selection. More recently, historians have been keen to incorporate factors like access to natural resources and major events like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions into their accounts of the past and analyses of the present. Matthew Sweet asks how disciplines in the humanities, like history and political theory, might be transformed by incorporating insights and data from the earth sciences, and also how the earth sciences might be transformed if they become more historically and culturally aware. With historians Peter Frankopan and Rosemary Hill, geologist Anjana Khatwa, philosopher Graham Harman, and poet Sarah Jackson.Producer: Luke Mulhall

What function do ceremonies like Armistice Day perform? How do we balance desires for reconciliation with feelings about revenge? How we remember wars and what commemoration means is much less settled than we might think. And that throws up questions, in times when conflicts are spreading close to us in western Europe, of how wars end and how we balance our concern for justice and peace with darker impulses?Joining presenter Anne McElvoy for BBC Radio 4's roundtable discussion about the ideas shaping our world are: classicist Natalie Haynes whose most recent novel No End to this House re-imagines the story of Medea, former solider Ashleigh Percival-Borley, who is now an academic and on the New Generation Thinkers scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council Duncan Wheeler, author of Following Franco and an academic studying contemporary Spain. neuro-scientist Nicholas Wright who advises the Pentagon and has written Warhead: How the Brain Shapes War and War Shapes the Brain and, Andy West, prison philosophy teacher and author of The Life InsideProducer: Ruth Watts

"Doom-prepping" tech billionaires have been in the headlines recently and whether it’s ecological crisis or a breakdown in law and order, fear of societal collapse seems to lurk in the background of a lot of discussion in politics and wider society. But what does it mean? When has it happened in the past? Can we avoid it – or survive it – in the future? Joining presenter Shahidha Bari for Radio 4's roundtable discussion about the ideas shaping our world are: Luke Kemp from the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, the writer and commentator Peter Hitchens, classical historian Neville Morley, historian of modern politics Phil Tinline and Rhiannon Firth, sociologist at University College London.Producer: Luke Mulhall