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

We have been obsessed with the ideal body since Renaissance artists rediscovered nudity, says art historian Jill Burke. She tells Andrew Marr how artists including Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Titian established rigid beauty standards and an obsession with the body that we still live with today.Our image of power was hugely influenced by the Elizabethan miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard. To mark his 400th anniversary, historian Elizabeth Goldring reexamines the artist who painted all the principal rulers of his day, including Queen Elizabeth and James I. Hilliard's tiny images encapsulated political power in a portrait.Elizabethan ideas of power and beauty are unpicked in Christopher Marlowe's play Edward II, the story of a king whose homosexuality brings his downfall. Tom Stuart plays the titular role at The Globe and has written a new sequel, After Edward, exploring the persecution and politicisation of homosexuals today.Playwright Martin Sherman wrote the iconic play about gay persecution, Bent, and has returned to themes of desire and persecution in his new work. Gently Down the Stream addresses the challenges of love between the generations, and asks what we should do with the history and ideals we have inherited from the past.Producer: Hannah Sander

How far does evolution explain mental health? The psychiatrist Randolph Nesse tells Kirsty Wark that negative emotions make sense in certain situations but can become excessive. He argues that positioning disorders in light of natural selection helps explain the ubiquity of human suffering - and may help in finding new paths for relieving it.The neuropsychologist AK Benjamin investigates the boundaries of sanity and madness in his book, Let Me Not Be Mad. Through a series of consultations with patients, he explores the mind unravelling at the seams. But the question remains whether this unravelling mind belongs to the doctor or the patient.The poet George Szirtes looks at the damaging impact of international events on a single family, in his memoir of his mother Magda. The Photographer At Sixteen follows Magda from her teenage life in Hungary, through political uprisings, internment in two concentration camps and transition to life in England. He explores the effect of an unravelling world on a family's mental health.Producer: Katy Hickman

Society is at a turning point, warns Professor Shoshana Zuboff. Democracy and liberty are under threat as capitalism and the digital revolution combine forces. She tells Andrew Marr how new technologies are not only mining our minds for data, but radically changing them in the process. As Facebook celebrates its 15th birthday she examines what happens when a few companies have unprecedented power and little democratic oversight. Although behavioural data is constantly being abstracted by tech companies, John Thornhill, Innovations Editor at the Financial Times, questions whether they have yet worked out how to use it effectively to manipulate people. And he argues that the technological revolution has brought many innovations which have benefitted society.The award-winning writer Ece Temelkuran has warned readers about rising authoritarianism in her native Turkey. In her new book, How To Lose a Country, she widens that warning to the rest of the world. She argues that right-wing populism and nationalism do not appear already fully-formed in government - but creep insidiously in the shadows, unchallenged and underestimated until too late.Producer: Katy Hickman

There is nothing new for chemistry to discover, says Bernie Bulkin. In Solving Chemistry: A Scientist's Journey, the former Head of Science at BP argues that an unprecedented event has happened: a branch of science has made all the major discoveries it is likely to make. He tells Tom Sutcliffe what this means for chemistry - and for science more broadly.Medicine is in the midst of 'a biomedical revolution' says Professor Sir Robert Lechler. His own field of kidney transplants has been transformed by our new understanding of the immune system. He has helped to curate Spare Parts, an exhibition at the Science Gallery that poses the question: how many transplants could we have before we were no longer ourselves?Elizabeth Pisani has watched interest in different diseases rise and fall. As an epidemiologist she charts the impact that press attention and public grants have on medical research, with some becoming fashionable while in others treatments lag behind. And she warns that scientists too often fail to take account of the human context when delivering medicines. Astrophysicist Jo Dunkley assesses our understanding of the universe in a concise new guide. But the universe is 85% dark matter - and we still know very little about this. She draws attention to the brilliant female scientists who contributed to breakthroughs in physics, but whose contributions have been forgotten along the way.Picture: Big Heart Data by Gareth McKee, part of Spare Parts at the Science GalleryProducer: Hannah Sander

Andrew Marr on beauty and politics in art. Our idea of beauty was shaped by the great Victorian art critic John Ruskin. He thought all people deserved to see beauty every day, and compared, and founded a gallery in Sheffield for local industrial workers. To mark Ruskin's bicentenary, curator Louise Pullen has put together a new exhibition showing how his ideas about art, science, truth and beauty shaped the politics of the day."All art is propaganda and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists," declared WEB Du Bois. The civil rights campaigner, philosopher and social thinker argued that it was an artist's duty to shape a better world. Academic Liam Bright explains why Du Bois thought both artists and scientists had a duty to tell the truth.In poet Fiona Benson's new volume Vertigo and Ghost, beauty, violence and power are never far apart. Benson's poems depict Zeus as a serial rapist, and capture the claustrophobia of modern domestic life.And design guru Stephen Bayley considers what creativity is - and what it is for - in his new book How To Steal Fire. As a leading cultural critic, he asks what place beauty and imagination have in modern life.Producer: Hannah Sander