How cultured are animals? It’s a question the marine biologist Karsten Brensing explores as he studies dolphins calling one another by name, ducklings scoring well in abstract reasoning, and the loyalty, forgiveness and empathy that are becoming apparent in the animal kingdom. He tells Andrew Marr that the latest scientific findings reveal animals with behaviour and cognitive sophistication very similar to our own.The intricate lives of animals and birds plus their spectacular habitats are on television screens this autumn with the BBC’s series Seven Worlds, One Planet. In a forthcoming episode the producer Emma Napper shows how species isolated on Australia have evolved like nowhere else on Earth: from the most dangerous bird in the word, the cassowary, to desert reptiles that drink through their skin.Although concern for animals has been expressed since ancient times, it was only in the early 19th century that the first laws protecting animals were passed. The historian Diana Donald looks back at the chequered past of animal welfare, and the pioneering woman who helped bring about change. While cattle and domestic animals were protected under laws in 1822 and 1835, it took decades until wild animals were included.Rhinos were once found throughout Eurasia and Africa, but now three of the five rhino species face extinction unless drastic action is taken to counter poaching and habitat loss. This has led scientists, including Professor Fritz Vollrath of Oxford University, to come up with the ingenious invention of fake rhino horn. Using horse hair and regenerated silk the fabricated horn is almost indistinguishable with the real thing, and could be used to undermine the market in rhino horn. Producer: Katy Hickman

Esther Duflo was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics this autumn for her work in the developing world. In her latest book, Good Economics for Hard Times, the French economist turns her attention to the thorniest issues of our time, from global immigration to climate change. She tells Tom Sutcliffe how the lessons from the world's poorest countries can be applied to Western economies, and why we should be wary of complacency.One of the worst economic crises imaginable struck Weimar Germany in the 1920s. Hyperinflation led to prices in 1923 that were astonishingly a billion times higher than they had been in 1914. But historian Richard J Evans explains that the chaos and suffering caused by sky-high prices did not affect all Germans equally. The middle classes saw their mortgages and rent fall to practically nothing, while many businesses expanded rapidly. Evans explores the fracturing of society that followed this hardest of times.The Booker prize-winning author Julian Barnes looks back at France’s Belle Epoque, an era known for luscious Renoir and Monet paintings, for flamboyant nights at the Moulin Rouge, and for widespread glamour and wealth. In The Man in the Red Coat, Barnes looks beneath the surface of this glittering era, and instead finds rampant prejudice, nativism, hysteria and violence. He depicts an era of enormous social change, with striking parallels to our own time.Producer: Hannah Sander.

“The painter must give a completely free rein to any feeling or sensations he may have.” So said the celebrated artist Lucian Freud. His biographer William Feaver tells Andrew Marr how Freud’s work revealed not only something about the subject of the painting, but also what the artist was feeling. The two are combined in a new exhibition of Freud’s self-portraits in which the painter turns his unflinching eye on himself.In 2006 the artist Humphrey Ocean started making a series of portraits of visitors to his studio. Using simple forms and bold colours the painter illuminated something unique about each person. Ocean is the RA Schools’ Professor of Perspective and his work details his observations of everyday life.The underbelly of everyday life in the 18th century is very much in evidence in William Hogarth’s work. As an exhibition at Sir John Soane’s Museum brings together all Hogarth’s painted series for the first time, the art critic Kate Grandjouan explains what he reveals about people from all strata of society, in a London devoid of morality.Producer: Katy Hickman

Hospitality and hostility come from a common root, according to the writer Priya Basil. In her latest book, Be My Guest, she explores the diverse meaning of the Indo-European word ‘ghos-ti’ which combines host, guest and stranger. She tells Kirsty Wark how breaking bread together is a way of breaking down barriers. Shamil Thakrar is the co-founder of the award-winning restaurant chain, Dishoom. He traces the roots of the restaurant’s success, looking back to the sights, sounds and tastes of the much-loved cosmopolitan Bombay of his childhood. While Thakrar’s father and uncle established the food company, Tilda Rice, when they arrived in London in the 1970s, Thomas Harding’s relatives came to Britain in the early 1800s and went on to create the largest catering company in the world: J. Lyons. In Legacy, Harding, looks at how Lyons tea rooms became a fixture on every high street in the country, transforming the way we eat and drink, and democratising eating out.Lyons pioneered different processed foods, from coffee to ice cream. Food writer Joanna Blythman sees processed food as the biggest peril to our health today. She worries that in the rush to adopt a plant-based diet, we will swap nutritious red meat for meat substitutes full of gum and other additives. Blythman also challenges the idea that only by giving up meat can we save our planet from climate change,Producer: Katy Hickman

The writer Fatima Bhutto celebrates the new global popular culture emerging from the East. She tells Andrew Marr that the West’s soft power dominance is on the wane as K-Pop, Dizi and Bollywood take the world by storm.The Korean artist Nam June Paik was among the first to foresee the importance of mass media and new technologies, coining the phrase ‘electronic superhighway’. Sook-Kyung Lee is co-curating a global tour of his work, starting at Tate Modern.A new play, Museum in Baghdad, brings together the stories of its British founder Gertrude Bell in 1926 with Ghalia Hussein’s attempts to reopen it in 2006 after looting during the war. The RSC director Erica Whyman says the play questions the role of culture in helping to create a nation.And the writer John Burnside turns to the poets of the 20th century to give voice to an alternative cultural history of the time. He draws on the work of poets, both renowned and unjustly obscure, to give shape and meaning to the world.Producer: Katy HickmanPicture credit: Tate

Lenny Henry was 16 when he first appeared on television making people laugh in the 1970s. He tells Kirsty Wark about coming of age in the spotlight at a time of casual chauvinism and blatant racism, all while under his Jamaican mother’s strict instruction to integrate. The novelist Tessa McWatt knows only too well the complexity of fitting in. Born in Guyana, raised in Canada and working in Britain, McWatt explores themes of the outsider in society and conflicting ideas of belonging. The writer and former sportsman Matthew Syed encourages breaking free of the echo chambers that surround us, to develop an ‘outsider mindset’. Cognitive diversity, he argues in his latest book, is the answer to many of the world’s most challenging problems.And the social psychologist Keon West explains the research being done to reduce bias between different groups of people. He argues that mandatory unconscious bias training is not only pointless - but possibly detrimental.Producer: Katy HickmanPicture credit: © ITV / Rex / Shutterstock

Against a backdrop of fierce political battles in Parliament and in court, Andrew Marr explores political power and examines those who wield it - from absolutism to anarchism.The political commentator Steve Richards has been in the House of Commons for many nights of political strife. Watching the behaviour of parliament and government today, he considers how different British Prime Ministers have used their many powers. In his new book 'The Prime Ministers' he reflects on the individual characters of leaders. From Harold Wilson to Boris Johnson, he recalls moments when Prime Ministers buckled or thrived under the pressure of their role.At the other end of the power spectrum, the academic Ruth Kinna explores ‘the government of no one’: anarchism. She argues that this much maligned ideology is far more adaptable and effective than we might expect. And she rejects the stereotyped view of it as chaotic and disordered.The theatre director Eleanor Rhode is bringing Shakespeare’s King John to the stage at the Royal Shakespeare Company. This rarely performed tale depicts a tumultuous nation reeling, as a weakened King fights to retain his crown from the invading French and his rebellious noblemen.And in a week that saw a landmark Supreme Court ruling on the government's use of prorogation, Catherine Haddon from the Institute for Government explains where constitutional power now lies: whether with parliament, government, the judiciary, the Prime Minister, or the Queen. She predicts major changes ahead...Producer: Hannah SanderPicture credit: Royal Shakespeare Company

Antony Gormley talks to Tom Sutcliffe about his forthcoming major show at the Royal Academy. The sculptor returns to his enduring interest in the inner dark space of the body and the body’s relation to its surroundings. As well as the famous casts of this own figure, seawater and clay fill one gallery, evoking the depths from which life emerged.The award-winning playwright Laura Wade discusses her revolutionary adaptation of Jane Austen. Her new play, The Watsons, is based on Austen’s unfinished novel, and shows what happens when characters threaten to break free from the original work and take control of the drama. The conductor Charles Hazlewood celebrates the rebellious side of classical music – minimalism. Minimalists in the 20th century, like Steve Reich and Terry Riley, flouted conventions and sought to redraw musical boundaries. But the music was also a direct response to the political and social fervour of the 1960s and 70s. One of the most creative and hedonistic periods of British culture was the nineties: the era of Cool Britannia, born in Thatcher’s Britain and flaunted by Tony Blair. The writer Daniel Rachel looks back at how art, comedy, fashion, film, football and music came together in a flowering of national self-confidence, and what broke it apart.Producers: Katy Hickman and Hannah Sander

Andrew Marr discusses how far nations have managed to confront the past. In Learning from the Germans, the philosopher Susan Neiman contrasts the way in which Germany continues to come to terms with its Nazi past, with the failure of the US to deal with slavery and the legacy of racial violence. The historian Stuart James Ward is interested in how far the ghosts of Empire have haunted the debate around Brexit. From the simplistic caricature of hankering after the past to a global vision of the future, both sides have summoned their own image of Empire. As an Australian academic who has spent his career in Denmark, Ward believes he is in a unique position to observe the unfolding political drama.The former MP David Howell argues it’s time to look ahead and not back in his new book, subtitled ‘Escaping the Prism of Past Politics’. Howell has been at the centre of government for four decades and was a member of Margaret Thatcher’s first cabinet. He believes Britain should be forging new relations and finding a new position in the world.The political scientist Jane Green looks beyond the present impasse in the Commons over the direction of Brexit to focus on public volatility in voting. Not since 1931 has there been such a fracturing of voter loyalty, but Green asks how much we can learn from the past. Producer: Katy Hickman

The playwright David Hare is adapting Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, an epic story of vanity and egotism. He tells Tom Sutcliffe his radical new working keeps the mountain of trolls but becomes a contemporary reflection of toxic masculinity in the age of the selfie. The writer Lucy Hughes-Hallett reincarnates ancient myths and folklore in her collection of short stories, Fabulous. Old tales from Orpheus to Mary Magdalen and Psyche, find new homes in the lives of a people-trafficking gangmaster and a well-behaved librarian.The great story-teller Stephen Fry breathes fresh life into the Greek myths as he prepares to embark on his first UK tour for forty years. From the creation of the Cosmos and the feuding of the Gods, to the extraordinary battles and epic journeys of the heroes, these tales still echo for audiences today. Alison Balsom is a world-renowned trumpeter who moves seamlessly through different periods of music in her curation of this year’s Cheltenham Music Festival. She explains her deep passion for the world of baroque music and the excitement of playing a new piece for the very first time, as she prepares for the premiere of Thea Musgrave’s Trumpet Concerto. Producer: Katy Hickman