Rowan Williams celebrates The Book of Taliesin – legendary Welsh poems of enchantment and warfare. The former Archbishop of Canterbury tells Andrew Marr how the collection of poems speak of a lost world of folklore and mythology, and the figure of Taliesin is an elusive and exuberant creative poetic fiction. Martin Sixsmith tells the extraordinary story of the Russian poet Sergei Yesenin at the turn of the 20th century. Yesenin lived through the most turbulent times in Russian history, and during an age when poets were stars, and millions could recite his works by heart. The poet Jay Bernard has found inspiration in exploring the black British archive, and the enquiry into the New Cross Fire in 1981 which killed thirteen young people. The poems shine a light on an unacknowledged chapter in British history, and find resonance with the horror of the Grenfell tower fire two years ago.The poet, writer and teacher, Kate Clanchy has seen first-hand poetry’s unique ability to unleash young voices. At the multicultural school in Oxford where she teaches, students speak 30 languages and poetry has become a vital part of bringing pupils together, giving them pride in their work and allowing them to express the reality of their lives.Producer: Katy HickmanImage of Jay Bernard, taken by Joshua Virasami

Andrew Marr discusses money, from central banks to personal finances. The historian John Guy looks back to the emergence of London as the financial centre of the world. His latest biography focuses on the life and world of Sir Thomas Gresham, Elizabeth I’s banker – a flawed and ambitious man who dabbled in blackmail, fraud and adultery and left his widow saddled with debt.Few of today’s central bankers could match Gresham’s tumultuous private life, but they do wield enormous power in the markets. Paul Tucker spent more than 30 years as a central banker and regulator at the Bank of England and sounds a warning against increasing the authority of technocrats.Miatta Fahnbulleh is the Chief Executive of the radical economics think-tank, NEF, which aims to build a new economy from the bottom up and put more power in the hands of the people. She looks at the role central banks have to play in a Green New Deal and the impact of debt on the country and its citizens. While government debt makes the headlines, personal debt is now at a record high, and could derail future confidence in the market. The behavioural economist Alice Tapper offers a guide to personal finances and argues for more openness when it comes to talking about what we earn and what we spend.Producer: Katy Hickman

Diego Maradona was a footballer of unrivalled talent, but off the pitch his story is one of despair and betrayal. Chris King, the editor of a feature documentary on the player, tells Kirsty Wark that the film reveals the life of this flawed icon through his own words and personal archive. Hussein Kesvani also aims to tell a story that goes beyond the usual headlines, exploring the unexpected online worlds of British Muslims. He reveals a new generation of young media-savvy Muslims creating their own diverse cultural identities online.More secrets are unveiled in Shahidha Bari’s book, Dressed, which looks at the hidden power of clothes in our culture and daily lives. She explores the link between what we wear and who we are. The latest exhibition at the British Museum offers visitors the chance to enter a graphic world where art and storytelling collide in its display of Japanese manga. The curator Nicole Rousmaniere argues that manga has long been a way to tell the stories of those whose history is not recorded. Correction: the programme wrongly states that Adolf Eichmann’s trial took place at Nuremberg. He was tried in Jerusalem in 1961.Producer: Katy Hickman

Jared Diamond explores how countries survive national crises. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author and polymath talks to Andrew Marr about the process seven countries went through at moments of huge upheaval – from Japan and Finland to Australia and Chile. Using the lessons learnt in overcoming personal trauma, Diamond charts the painful process of self-appraisal, selective change and flexibility needed to move forward.Britain is facing its own national crisis, with the public and political parties divided over Brexit, political leadership and the way to move forward. Professor David Runciman and the Associate Director at the IEA Kate Andrews put Jared Diamond’s thesis to the test. They explore how far we can learn from past disasters and whether there are core national values that could help to unite the country. And, as the Conservative leadership contest begins and President Trump arrives in the UK, they discuss the limits to power and the myth of the strong leader.

In a special edition recorded live at the Hay Festival, Tom Sutcliffe discusses the impact of human ingenuity. From the myth of Frankenstein to geoengineering, he explores how normality and deviancy became entrenched in society. In her latest novel, the award-winning writer Jeanette Winterson moves between 1816, when the young Mary Shelley wrote the great Gothic novel of scientific hubris, Frankenstein, and the present day, exploring the far-reaching consequences of the AI revolution. John Browne, the former CEO of BP, argues against putting the brakes on technological advance. He maintains that civilisation is founded on engineering innovation.Naomi Wolf looks back to the 1857 Obscene Publications Act to pinpoint the moment that law enforced the sexuality morality of the time. She sees reverberations lasting to this day.Producer: Katy Hickman

Dr Joshua Mezrich is a leading transplant surgeon. He tells Andrew Marr how death and life are intimately connected in his field of expertise. And he explains the extraordinary breakthroughs that have emerged in transplant surgery, along with the ethical questions that arise when choosing who will be given the chance of a new beginning. Scientific research needs to be evidence-based. But it can too easily be based on underlying assumptions and biases. The science writer Angela Saini reports on the history - and recent revival - of race science, a field of study that sees race as a biological fact.Caroline Criado Perez exposes the gender biases in medical and scientific research. She argues that women have often been excluded from the data which has had a huge impact on the efficacy of the pills prescribed, and the treatment offered.The latest promise of better healthcare is personalised medicine, which aims to get the right dose to the right patient at the right time. But Richard Ashcroft, Professor of Biomedical Ethics, cautions that grouping patients by their genetic constitution may well create new forms of inequality.Producer: Katy Hickman

Kerry Hudson grew up in all-encompassing and grinding poverty. She is now an acclaimed author, but tells Tom Sutcliffe why she returned home to explore the impact and trap of being lowborn.Howard Brenton’s latest play is loosely inspired by Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure and features a clever, ambitious young woman fighting for an opportunity, yet held back by her background. Will Tanner, director of the think tank Onward, looks at what social mobility - or a lack of it - means in the political sphere. The age at which voters are more likely to vote Conservative than Labour has risen rapidly, and Tanner sees this as both a challenge and an opportunity for all the main parties.The musician and activist Billy Bragg has written about the Three Dimensions of Freedom in which he argues that without equality and accountability, freedom is a mere shadow.Producer: Katy Hickman

Chaucer is renowned as the father of English literature. But in a new biography Marion Turner argues he is a far more cosmopolitan writer and thinker than we might assume. She tells Andrew Marr how the 14th-century author of The Canterbury Tales moved from the commercial wharves of London to the chapels of Florence, and from a spell as a prisoner of war in France to the role of diplomat in Milan. The academic Emma Smith challenges audiences to look with fresh eyes at the plays of Shakespeare. In a series of essays she reveals how his plays have as much to say about PTSD, intersectionality and #MeToo as they do about Ovid, marriage and the divine right of kings.When Charles Dickens started his writing career, his ambition was global: to speak to ‘every nation upon earth’. And he succeeded. His stories reached Russia, China, Australia, even Antarctica, and he was mobbed in the street when he visited America. Juliet John, co-curator of the exhibition Global Dickens, examines how Dickens’s work could travel so far, when the settings of his novels were much closer to home.Producer: Katy Hickman

'Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced', wrote the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. His new biographer, Clare Carlisle, explores the life experiences that moulded Kierkegaard's ideas as he struggled to understand how to be a human being in this world. She tells Amol Rajan that Kierkegaard was very much a philosopher of the heart.DeRay Mckesson’s reality became one of struggle and action after he quit his job as a school teacher and became a key figure in the Black Lives Matter movement in the US. He spent 400 days on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, often walking day and night after a new law was introduced making it illegal to stand still. In his memoir, On the Other Side of Freedom, he explores the intellectual and political framework of the liberation movement that has dominated American life in the 21st century. The award-winning poet and playwright Inua Ellams’s latest work also explores freedom and power, but in a world where fate and vengeful gods hold sway. His epic poem The Half-God of Rainfall begins with a game of basketball in Nigeria with the Yoruba gods looking on, and ends with a demonstration of female revenge – both human and mythological.While Kierkegaard was focused on the subjective experience of being a human, and how we create ourselves through our action, the writer Elizabeth Day is interested in what happens when those actions go awry. ‘How To Fail’ is a painfully honest exploration of things going wrong, and what we can learn from our mistakes.Producer: Katy Hickman

We underestimate how difficult it is to live in remote areas, says travel writer Dan Richards. He tells Kirsty Wark how he trekked to high mountain huts and distant snowy cabins for his new book, Outposts. Richards followed in the footsteps of Virginia Woolf, Roald Dahl and Jack Kerouac, who all found inspiration in the wilderness. But just as Kerouac went temporarily mad living on a remote mountainside, so today’s tourists in the Scottish Highlands and Nordic isles underestimate “hard nature’s indifference”.Icelandic model turned sheep farmer Heida Asgeirsdottir knows how challenging countryside life can be. After an early career as a model in New York, she returned to Iceland to take over her parents’ sheep farm in a region of volcanoes and elemental storms. But even this distant region needs modern power and infrastructure, and this means a new hydro-electric plant whose owners want to flood her farm.A family feel stuck in the middle of nowhere in Chekhov’s searing play Three Sisters. Rebecca Frecknall is directing a new production at the Almeida Theatre, exploring the thwarted ambitions and dreams of a provincial Russian town. Sisters Irina, Olga and Masha long to return to Moscow, but become bogged down in dead-end jobs and trapped by mortgages and marriage.Chekhov’s play could easily be set in a British town today, says Sarah O’Connor from the Financial Times. She looks at the stark problems facing our seaside resorts and post-industrial towns. In her Orwell Prize-winning study of Blackpool, she challenged the idea that our seaside towns lack aspiration and are destined to fail. Now she explains why terms like “the Left Behinds” are dangerously misleading.Producer: Hannah Sander