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Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil and lithium are the stars of Ed Conway’s book, Material World. He tells Tom Sutcliffe how they built our world, from the Dark Ages to the present day. And how much the battle to secure them will shape our geopolitical future.The science writer Aarathi Prasad focuses on one of the world’s strongest biological materials ever known – Silk. In her latest book she explores the ancient origins of silk, its global reach, and how it continues to inspire new technologies – from pharmaceuticals to holograms.And materials and how different civilisations use them are at the heart of the British Museum’s exhibition, Luxury and Power: Persia to Greece (until 13th August). The curator, Jamie Fraser, highlights the perceived excesses of the Persian empire – with its abundance of gold, finely crafted pottery and frankincense – in direct contrast to the plainer tastes of their Greek victors.Producer: Katy Hickman

Kirsty Wark celebrates the artistry of numbers with three mathematicians Eugenia Cheng, Sarah Hart and Emily Howard.Eugenia Cheng asks Is Maths Real? in her new book, which offers a new way to look at the subject by focusing on the questions, rather than the answers. She explores how asking the simplest of questions – ‘why does 1 + 1 = 2?’ – can get to the very heart of the search for mathematical truth.Sarah Hart wants to break down the perceived barriers between mathematics and the creative arts. In Once Upon a Prime: The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature she reveals the geometry lurking in Moby-Dick, George Eliot’s obsession with statistics, and Jurassic Park’s fractal patterns.Emily Howard has a dual passion for maths and music. In her compositions she plays with mathematical shapes and processes. Her new record Torus, released on NMC Recordings in April, brings together works including sphere and Compass.Producer: Katy Hickman

Just how safe is the online world? Yale Professor of Law and Philosophy Scott Shapiro delves into cybersecurity in his book, Fancy Bear Goes Phishing. The book’s title derives from the exploits of ‘Fancy Bear’, an elite unit of the Russian military intelligence that hacked the US Democratic National Committee in 2016. From a bored graduate student who accidentally crashed the nascent internet, to cyber criminals and bot farms, Shapiro looks at the dark history of the information age.Dr Alice Hutchings first began researching cybercrime in the late 1990s, while working in industry, and is now Director of the Cambridge Cybercrime Centre. She argues that the romanticised image of the underground hacker as an anti-authoritarian ‘lone wolf’ who possesses technological wizardry is outdated. Hacking has become industrialised with criminals able to buy ‘off-the-shelf’ tools to infect computers. While hackers constantly look to exploit vulnerabilities within the technology, one of the major weak points are users themselves. Jenny Radcliffe’s job is to expose the flaws and weaknesses in security operations. In People Hacker she explains how she uses a blend of psychology, stagecraft and charm to gain access to computer systems, and reveals how people can boost their security and make her job more difficult.Producer: Katy Hickman