The only way to start the week

Every Monday morning there is a programme on Radio 4 called Start the Week, which most of you miss because you have been at work for two hours or are still in bed, so I have programmed the mighty computer here at The Independent to produce a representative sample of the programme, compressed from one hour into three minutes. Any time you feel deprived of Start the Week, just pull this out of your wallet and read it to yourself.

Bragg: Hello. Plenty to talk about this week, as we have with us in the studio a geneticist, sadly not Steve Jones, but Professor Brian Bingham, who has written a new book called Programmed for the Millennium. We have Roger Graft, whose 43-part TV programme A History of Peace starts on BBC1 on Monday. We have Melina Vassentype, who is giving a lecture somewhere tomorrow on "The Potato as a Feminist Issue", and Jonathan Miller, who is in a cab somewhere between here and Ealing. We also have Rubella Hastings from The Guardian. Professor Bingham, it's always nice to have a scientist on the programme ...

Bingham: Why is it?

Bragg: Well, because as an arts chap who has always been over-obsessed with dead writers, I became aware in mid-life that I knew nothing about science, which has had such an effect on our century, and as it was too late to learn much in a meaningful way about science, I thought I could at least invite a few scientists on this programme and hope a bit would rub off.

Bingham: Then why not say so?

Bragg: I have said so.

Bingham: Only because I forced it out of you. To begin with you said, "It is always nice to have a scientist on the programme", which is one of these untested pseudo-scientific theories which a real scientist abhors.

Bragg: What a load of tosh.

Bingham: And there's another.

Bragg: So, Professor Bingham, I have read your book and I think it's wonderful. What's it about?

Bingham: Can't you guess?

Bragg: Yes. I've read it. I just want you to tell the listeners what it's about.

Bingham: Then why not say so?

Bragg: Tell the listeners what it is about.

Bingham: In my book Programmed for the Millennium, I have put forward the theory that time has a great deal more effect on us than anyone has suspected. We always decry the habit of carving history up into decades, as it seems quite arbitrary, but I think that the human mind reacts to the end of a decade and draws a mental line before going on to a new chapter. Decades are different from each. Centuries do have a different flavour from each other.

Bragg: That's fascinating. Can you give us an example?

SOUND OF A DOOR OPENING. ENTER DR JONATHAN MILLER.

Miller: Anyone got pounds 20 for a cab? We came through

Harlesden by mistake. Gosh, thanks.

DOOR SLAMS.

Bragg: I know everyone is dying to get in here. Melina?

Vassentype: I have always found time fascinating. I find it fascinating that a Briton and an Australian can have a concept of last Thursday even thought they refer to totally different times. We are asleep when Aussies are awake and vice versa, so in a real sense we don't share experience time at all.

Bragg: Is that the sort of thing you mean, Professor?

Bingham: No.

Bragg: Graft?

Graft: Time-wise, I am fascinated by the way you expect everyone to discuss life and death issues at 9am on Monday and for people out there to digest it all. Bingham: That's a better example.

SOUND OF A DOOR RE-OPENING. RE-ENTER JONATHAN MILLER.

Miller: Talking of cognition ...

Bragg: We weren't talking about cognition.

Miller: That's strange. You usually are at 9.28.

Bragg: Roger Graft, why a history of peace? What's wrong with war?

Graft: There's nothing wrong with war. It makes really good television. But there is more peace than war, always has been, and I am trying to get us to look at history in terms of peace. We love war, so we talk about the Great War, the 14-18 War. But why don't we talk about the Great 1918- 1939 Peace?

Bingham: What tosh.

Bragg: With respect, Professor, that's my line on this show. Rubella?

Hastings: Hi.

Bragg: Hi. Now, Melina, why the potato and feminism?

Vassentype: Why not?

Bragg: Jonathan, do you want to come in on this one?

Miller: Which one?

Bragg: Well, we could go on talking about this all day but sadly we haven't got time. Next week it's a physicist, a historian, a friend of mine who has made a TV series and Taramasalata Dryden from The Observer. Goodbye.