Arts and Ideas

Philip Dodd and Susan Hitch review the world premier of Jonathan Dove's opera, Life is a Dream and also Paul Allen reviews Complicite's The Master and Margarita. Night Waves also discusses the world out of which Tarkovsky's imagination came and the romance of the past and the essentials of the future of engineering.

Anne McElvoy talks to Nobel laureate and Booker Prize winner Nadine Gordimer. In her new novel, No Time Like the Present, Gordimer examines her home country of South Africa in the post-apartheid world of Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma and what has become of it since Mandela's jubilant release from prison. At the centre of the story is an interracial couple, Steve and Jabulile, living in a newly - tentatively - free South Africa, he a university lecturer she a lawyer, both comrades in the Struggle and now parents of children born in freedom. There is nothing extraordinary about their lives, and yet, in telling their story, and the stories of their friends and families, Gordimer manages to capture the state of her nation.

Matthew Sweet on 'Opium: Reality's Dark Dream.' Corruption and pain relief, war and poetry in a new book by Thomas Dormandy. Night Waves discusses current historical TV dramas with the social historian Juliet Gardiner and the cultural commentator Christopher Cook. The film critic Jonathan Romney assesses The Kid with a Bike and Sonia Solicari views new exhibition, The Age of Elegance.

Diarmaid MacCulloch talks to Anne McElvoy about why he believes that Christianity offers the best way to understand how and why the English are as they are. Anne discusses the new documentary, 'Four Horsemen' with its director, Ross Ashcroft and the financial analyst Louise Cooper. Richard Cork visits the Yorkshire Sculpture Park to review the first major exhibition of Joan Miro's works of sculpture. And Gabrielle Walker talks about her new book which maps the intricate histories of the world's most uninhabitable territory: Antarctica.

Philip Dodd with an interview with cultural historian, Eli Zaretsky on his new book, 'Why America needs a Left'. Lindsay Johns reviews "Moon on a Rainbow Shawl" and Ian Christie talks about "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia".

Matthew Sweet discusses "Turner Inspired" at the National Gallery in London and Sue Prideaux's new biography of Strindberg. Also on the programme, an examination of Kony 2012, a campaigning You Tube video now seen by over 76 million people and the award winning novelist Marilynne Robinson on her new book of essays.

Samira Ahmed is joined by Helen Wallace to review the UK premiere of composer Judith Weir's new opera, 'Miss Fortune'. Historian Jerry White talks about his latest chronicle of London, this time the 18th century, physical theatre director Lloyd Newson and James Cuno and Mark Jones discuss the merits and pitfalls of narrating museum exhibits in an explanatory, encyclopaedic arrangement.

Susannah Clapp reviews a new play Going Dark running at the Young Vic Theatre. Martin Dusinberre, Christopher Gerteis and Geoff Brumfiel discuss whether attitudes to natural disaster in Japan have changed. Russell Banks, a twice Pulitzer finalist, discusses his latest book, The Lost Memory of Skin and Ginette Vincendeau reveiws Bel Ami.

As we approach the centenary of Bram Stoker's death, Philip Dodd presents a Landmark edition of Night Waves devoted to his Victorian gothic horror novel Dracula.

Rana Mitter meets Paul Preston, whose new account of the Spanish Civil War is called 'The Spanish Holocaust - Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth Century Spain'. We visit 'The Stuff That Really Matters' - a new exhibition of textiles assembled by Seth Siegelaub for the Center for Social Research on Old Textiles. Neuroscientist Mark Pagel and the philosopher Kristina Musholt discuss the ways in which different academic disciplines see humanity. And finally Chung Kuo China is a fascinating window on 1970s China under Mao and Li Jie of Harvard University talks about this important film.

Matthew Sweet meets James Robinson who offers a new way of understanding wealth and poverty. Peter Gill one of Britain's most important directors of the last thirty years talks about adapting A Provincial Life based on a Chekhov short story. And The Patagonian Hare is Claude Lanzmann's memoir of his life as a writer, thinker, film director and witness to the twentieth century.

Anne McElvoy talks to Eamon McCabe about the late photographer Eve Arnold, the German film maker Cyril Tuschi about his new documentary, 'Khodorkovsky'. Discusses the importance of beauty in evolution with the philosopher David Rothenberg. And asks what does Raspberry-Pi - the ultra-cheap computer designed to make you engage with programming tell us about our relationship with technology?

The historian Jon Agar and the science writer, Marcus Chown consider the achievements of science in the 20th century. DJ Taylor and Justin Cartwright reflect on how the world of money and finance is represented in fiction. Sarah Kent will be assessing the first major retropsective of the Italian artist, Alighiero Boetti. And Professor of Historical Geography Christopher Withers reflects on whether it's time to switch from Greenwich Mean Time to the atomic clock.

Philip Dodd explores the boundaries between faith and doubt. His expert guides in this vast territory are the former bishop, Richard Holloway and the writers, Jonathan Safran Foer and Howard Jacobson.

With Rana Mitter. Donovan Hohn talks about tracking 28,000 yellow plastic ducks lost at sea. John Gittings and Hew Strachan discuss war and peace in today's world. And Susannah Clapp provides a first night review of National Theatre of Scotland's production 'An Appointment with the Wickerman' in Aberdeen.