Arts & Ideas Folgen

As NASA’s rover Curiosity conducts its mission on Mars, Samira Ahmed presents a special programme on the Red Planet. To plot a course through the clouds of theology, astronomy and pure speculation, Samira is joined by the science writer Marcus Chown, theoretical physicist Lawrence M. Krauss, and one of Radio 3's New Generation Thinkers, Josh Nall - a science historian from Cambridge University. They're joined on board by the writers Francis Spufford, Liz Williams and Sophia McDougall who'll dissect the fictional record of our involvement with Mars. And sound artist and broadcaster Robert Worby ponders the planet’s influence on musicians and composers.

Matthew Sweet examines the newly opened Islamic art wing at the Paris Louvre with Karl Sharro. There's a review, also from Paris of the global hit comedy about disability, race and class; Untouchable. Matthew talks to Tarun J Tejpal, a novelist and journalist who founded Tehelka a leading weekly political magazine in India. And Pamela Cox and Emma Griffin, a Radio3 New Generation Thinker, take Night Waves downstairs to discuss the history of servants.

Philip Dodd talks to Mark Rylance, the former artistic director of the Globe. He has been called the greatest stage performer in the world and won awards on both sides of the Atlantic for his performance as Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron in Jerusalem. But he made his name with Shakespeare, and in this extended conversation Philip Dodd examines Rylance’s passion for engaging with "original practice" versions of the Bard to challenging audience relationship with the action on stage, through to playing Shakespeare's most notorious villain.