Author: BBC Radio 4

Andrew Marr talks to the journalist Lindsey Hilsum about the extraordinary life of the war correspondent Marie Colvin. Throughout her career she travelled to the most dangerous places in the world, to bear witness to the suffering of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events. She wrote: “it has always seemed to me that what I write about is humanity in extremis, pushed to the unendurable, and that it is important to tell people what really happens in wars.’ She was killed in Syria in 2012.

For most of her career Marie Colvin wrote for The Sunday Times newspaper. Eve Pollard knows only too well the added pressures of getting a scoop for the nation’s weekend papers, as she formerly edited both the Sunday Mirror and the Sunday Express. She’s now the UK Chair of Reporters Without Borders which this week will honour courage, impact and independence in journalism.

Anabel Hernandez is an investigative reporter who has fought to lay bare the terrible facts behind the disappearance of forty-three Mexican students in 2014. Her book, A Massacre in Mexico, details the systemic corruption and cover-up among state officials, from the local police to government ministers.

It is a hundred years since the poet Wilfred Owen died in battle, just a week before the end of WWI. The poet Gillian Clarke explores how Owen’s poetry brought to light the physical and mental trauma of combat, and how in her own work she’s reflected contemporary conflicts.

Producer: Katy Hickman

On Budget day, Andrew Marr discusses what is broken in our economic and social system, and how it could be mended - if only those in charge were bold enough.

Oxford’s Paul Collier is an economist known around the world for his work on inequality. His new book, The Future of Capitalism, focuses on the great rifts dividing Britain, with solutions on how to close them.

David Willetts, the former Conservative minister, is focused on generational fairness and the increasing tensions between the successful and the struggling in society. The Resolution Foundation, of which he is chair, suggests the state must do more to redistribute wealth and responsibility.

Baroness Helena Kennedy has been a campaigning lawyer and a feminist throughout her career. Her new book, Eve was Shamed, looks at how British justice has been failing women - and comes up with solutions.

And for those who think bad news for other people may be good for them, Tiffany Watt Smith explains that most British of Germanic concepts: schadenfreude.

Producer: Hannah Sander

Pirates come in many forms – from swashbuckling Captain Hook to today's poverty-stricken pirates off the coast of Somalia.

It’s 400 years since one of the most charismatic and controversial figures in English history was executed. Sir Walter Ralegh was a favourite of Elizabeth I and was a famous adventurer and poet. But his exploits divided opinion even in his own lifetime, and his biographer Anna Beer tells Kirsty Wark the Spanish regarded him as a state-sponsored pirate.

Captain Hook, Long John Silver and Jack Sparrow are at the heart of a new exhibition on fictional pirates at the V & A Museum of Childhood. The exhibition, curated by Will Newton, explores adventures on the high seas and charts how the moral ambiguity of Robert Louis Stevenson’s creation became the romanticised and sanitised version in today’s popular imagination.

In 2012 the journalist Michael Scott Moore, who had covered the first trial in Europe of a Somali pirate, travelled to the Horn of Africa to find out more. He ended up being kidnapped and held captive for 977 days. He explores the historical and political case for piracy in Somalia, as well as religious extremism and the art of survival aboard a hijacked ship.

Last month an American and a Chinese ship nearly collided in the South China Sea - which would probably have led to a major war, explains Veerle Nouwens. Through her role at defence think tank the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) she monitors the ongoing race to control the South China Sea. She explains when an island is not an island, and why a calamity in this shipping route could bring chaos to the global economy.

Producer: Hannah Sander

Plastic pirate figures © Papo

Francis Fukuyama once famously announced ‘the end of history’. He now turns his attention to what he sees as the great challenge to liberal democracy: identity politics. He tells Andrew Marr that today’s descent into identities narrowly focused on nation, religion, race or gender have resulted in an increasingly polarised and factional society.

Birkbeck Professor of Politics, Eric Kaufmann, is looking at populism, immigration and the future of white majorities. He argues that the concerns of white people should be listened to and questions whether it's possible to transform and redefine the debate about ethnic diversity.

But the black student activist Roseanne Chantiluke argues that for too long issues of race have been side-lined to maintain the status quo. She was involved in the campaign to remove the statue of Cecil Rhodes in Oxford and to challenge imperialist attitudes within the University.

Sexual politics, power and identity are at the heart of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. The director Josie Rourke explores what happens when the actors playing the powerful male Deputy and the powerless female Novice alternate from one act to the next.

Producer: Katy Hickman