Author: BBC Radio 4

At the Free Thinking Festival at Sage, Gateshead Tom Sutcliffe presents a special edition exploring the art and science of communication. The American diplomat William J Burns played a central role in American foreign policy from the end of the Cold War to the collapse of relations with Putin’s Russian, and including secret talks with Iran. He explores the language of diplomacy.

Harriet Shawcross is an award-winning filmmaker and journalist. She reflects on how as a teenager she stopped speaking for almost a year. In her book Unspeakable she considers the power of silence.

The musician and composer Kathryn Tickell roots her work in in the landscape and people of Northumbria. She is the foremost exponent of the Northumbrian pipes, and tells the story of Northumbria with - and without - words.

Thomas Dixon studies emotional outbursts as the director of the Centre for the History of Emotions. He unveils the scientific and philosophical underpinnings of anger and weeping.

Producer: Katy Hickman

The prize-winning author Karl Ove Knausgaard explores the life and work of a fellow Norwegian artist, Expressionist Edvard Munch. He tells Tom Sutcliffe that Munch’s work extends far beyond his iconic painting The Scream. Knausgaard brings together art history, biography and personal memoir to reflect on what it means to be an artist.

Munch is known as a painter of the inner life and even his landscapes are infused with personal reflection. But at the turn of the twentieth century, while he was looking inward, art schools across Europe were forging new philosophies and were engaging with the wider world. In Germany the Bauhaus movement, founded by Walter Gropius, stood for experiment and creative freedom. Fiona MacCarthy’s new biography of Gropius re-evaluates his intellectual and emotional life. She depicts him at the heights of Bauhaus fame and through his post-war years in London to his architectural successes in America.

Back in the UK, Charles Rennie Mackintosh was at the centre of a movement based at the Glasgow School of Art. Curator Alison Brown explains how that city became the birthplace of the only Art Nouveau ‘movement’ in the UK. The style and influence of Mackintosh and his disciples has since spread throughout the world.

Both Bauhaus and Art Nouveau designs became commercially successful and mass produced. But the earlier Arts and Craft Movement of William Morris championed the principle of handmade production. In an extraordinary find, the social historian Tamsin Wimhurst, came across a terraced house in Cambridge owned by a working-class Victorian decorative artist who reproduced the work of Morris for his own pleasure at home. The David Parr House is opened to the public later this year.

Producer: Katy Hickman

The Chinese journalist and activist Xinran tells the story of China since the start of the 20th century through four generations of one family. She tells Andrew Marr how the family lived through enormous social upheaval, and reveals how traditional values started to unravel with the tide of modernity.

The academic Roel Sterckx looks back beyond the last century to ancient Chinese philosophers and thinkers. He argues that in order to understand modern China we need to understand its past. The practice of power, government and social harmony has a long tradition.

It is seventy years since Mao founded the People’s Republic of China and Julia Lovell re-evaluates Mao's philosophy both at home and abroad. For decades Maoism has been dismissed in the West as an outdated historical and political phenomenon, and yet his ideas remain central to China’s Communist government - and continue to influence people around the world.

Not only Chinese ideas have spread throughout the globe: the latest play from director David K S Tse is based on the lives of Chinese people who moved to the UK. From Shore to Shore is staged in Chinese takeaways around the country and blends English, Mandarin and Cantonese, to tell the story of three journeys to find a home.

Producer: Katy Hickman

David Nott's holiday plans are not like most. For 25 years the surgeon has used unpaid leave to volunteer as a war doctor. His work has taken him from Sarajevo under siege to rebel-held Aleppo, and to the aftermath of natural disasters in Haiti and Nepal. He tells Kirsty Wark how a combination of bravery, compassion and the thrill of danger inspired him to risk his life helping others.

Azad Cudi had war forced upon him as a conscript in the Iranian army. A decade later he volunteered in the fight for an independent Kurdistan: as a sniper fighting against so-called Islamic State. His memoir, Long Shot, describes the fighters, activists and intellectuals he worked alongside. He asks what will happen to the Kurdish cause as Western powers look to pull out of Syria and Iraq.

Men are not the only volunteers in the Middle East - and the causes that influence people are not always positive. Joana Cook from the International Centre for Radicalisation Studies has examined the large number of women and teenagers who have become "affiliates" of the so-called Islamic State. Some women were inspired by the healthcare, education and job opportunities offered to volunteers. Others became powerful agents of radicalisation. Cook urges politicians to consider these nuances when they decide what to do with volunteers who now wish to return home.

The morality of public duty and public service is the topic of an upcoming lecture by Claire Foster-Gilbert, director of the Westminster Abbey Institute. She argues that public servants in politics and beyond make moral choices every day; but that if we fail to scrutinise these properly, we could fail prey to anger, vengeance and injustice.

Producer: Hannah Sander

Andrew Marr discusses the complex interplay between language and culture. The prize-winning American author Jhumpa Lahiri has spent many years living in Italy immersing herself in the language. She has brought together 40 short story writers – many translated into English for the first time – in a collection that reflects the regional landscapes, private passions and political events of her adopted country over the past century.

April De Angelis is a writer steeped in translation and adaptation: she brought Elena Ferrante’s novels of Neapolitan life to the stage. And she is now involved in the English National Opera’s production of The Merry Widow – a French comic play re-imagined by an Austro-Hungarian composer. The power of translation is explored in a new exhibition at the Bodleian Library curated by the academic Katrin Kohl. At the centre is the story of the Tower of Babel, an origin myth in the Bible which explains why people speak different languages. Kohl argues that studying how a story is translated from one language to another allows us to glimpse the rich diversity of life and culture around the world.

Many people now rely on computers to translate from one language to another. The mathematician Marcus du Sautoy looks at how AI is being programmed to be creative in language and the arts, and what that means for the human touch.

Producer: Katy Hickman

Amol Rajan explores how geology and demography have shaped the modern world. Paul Morland argues that we have underestimated the crucial impact of population changes on global events. He looks at how demography has had a major influence, from world wars to China’s rise; and from the Arab Spring to Brexit.

In the distant past people could walk all the way from continental Europe to England through the ancient region of Doggerland. Julia Blackburn scours the Suffolk coastline for this lost land which was submerged by rising sea levels around 5000 BC.

As the debate around the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland continues to dominate discussions on Brexit, the historian Diarmaid Ferriter explains how this line became a political battleground. The meandering boundary which cuts through fields and crosses rivers was once dotted with watchtowers and military checkpoints to stop movements of people and goods.

Producer: Katy Hickman