The week in audio: Human Intelligence; Sergei & the Westminster Spy Ring; UnReality; The Hole Truth – review

Naomi Alderman’s 50-part Human Intelligence looks ‘poised to become as seminal’ as Neil MacGregor’s A History of the World in 100 Objects. Photograph: Phil Fisk

Human Intelligence Radio 4/ BBC Sounds
Sergei & the Westminster Spy Ring Project Citizen/the Citizens
UnReality (Talia Augustidis/Transmission Roundhouse)
The Hole Truth (Transmission Roundhouse)

On Radio 4, clever Naomi Alderman is discussing clever people. The author of The Power has a new series, Human Intelligence, made in association with the Open University; 50 15-minute episodes, each one about a different brainiac. It’s called Human Intelligence to contrast with the artificial kind, but also because great human minds, as Alderman says, don’t think alike. Last week she gave us her first five, whom she calls disruptors: Socrates (who thought about thinking), George Washington (who introduced the two-term US presidency), Martin Luther (Protestantism), Malcolm X (black civil rights and a huge personal capacity for learning) and Mary Wollstonecraft (equal rights for women).