Real faith ‘passes first through the body/ like an arrow’ so writes the American-Iranian poet Kaveh Akbar. In his collection Pilgrim Bell he plays with the physical and divine, the human capacity for cruelty and grace, and the reality of living as a Muslim in an Islamophobic nation.The Anglican priest and biblical scholar John Barton turns his attention to the word of God as it has travelled across the world. The Bible have been translated thousands of times into more than 700 languages. In The Word he traces the challenges of crossing linguistic borders from antiquity to the present, while remaining faithful to the original. Faith, fanaticism and fame combine in Emma Donoghue’s novel, The Wonder, now made into a film, starring Florence Pugh. It follows the story of a young girl in 1860s Ireland who stops eating, but miraculously stays alive, and the nurse sent to discover the truth.Producer: Katy HickmanImage: From the film, 'The Wonder'. (L to R) Florence Pugh as Lib Wright, Josie Walker as Sister Michael in The Wonder. Cr. Aidan Monaghan/Netflix © 2022

The Nobel peace prize-winner Maria Ressa is a journalist who has spent decades speaking truth to power in the country of her birth, the Philippines. She looks back at her life, and her ongoing battle against disinformation and political lies in How To Stand Up To A Dictator. She tells Kirsty Wark that although she is hounded by the state and faces threats of imprisonment, she is determined to continue fighting for the truth.Zsuzsanna Szelényi was once one of the leading politicians in Hungary’s ruling party, Fidesz, but now sits in opposition. In Tainted Democracy she charts what she calls her country’s descent into autocracy. She explores how the populist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has consolidated his grip on power, reining in the media and making sweeping changes to legal and economic frameworks. In his latest three part series for BBC television, History of Now, Simon Schama looks back at the dramatic history that has played out in the decades of his own life from 1945. He explores the vital role of artists, writers and musicians in fighting for democracy and equality post-war. The series reveals the extraordinary power of art to shape the world, and the immense personal cost of creating work that dares to take a stand.Producer: Katy HickmanImage: Simon Schama in front of Picasso’s 'Guernica'. From Simon Schama's 'History of Now', Episode 1, BBC 2 (Credit: BBC/Oxford Films/Eddie Knox)

In art the Greek and Roman body is often portrayed as one of perfection – flawlessly cast in bronze and white marble. But the classicist Caroline Vout tells Adam Rutherford that the reality was very different. In her new book, Exposed: The Greek and Roman Body, she reveals all the imperfections and anxieties, and makes visible those who were regarded at the time as far from perfect – women and servants.The curator and art historian Katy Hessel is also challenging the accepted history in her work, The Story of Art Without Men. She shines a light on women artists, from Sofonisba Anguissola of the Renaissance, to the radical Harriet Power in 19th century America, and the women artists working all over the world in the 21st century. Throughout history the human skin has also been a canvas: permanent markings were discovered on bodies from as early as 5000 BCE. In Painted People: Humanity in 21 Tattoos, Matt Lodder reveals the often hidden artworks – and the people who wore them – to explore a changing world.Producer: Katy Hickman

The award-winning writer Jonathan Coe presents a portrait of Britain told through four generations of one family, in his latest novel Bournville. Set in middle England, in a suburb of Birmingham, he chronicles the years of social change post-war, and the events that both brought people together and divided them, from royal events and the World Cup to Brexit and Covid-19. The chocolate factory that features heavily in the novel, and was once at the centre of life in Bournville, has since been transformed in part into a theme park, no doubt offering an authentic chocolate experience. The journalist Emily Bootle turns her attention to what she sees now as an obsession with authenticity. In a collection of essays, This Is Not Who I Am, she unpicks the ideology surrounding the goal of ‘living our truth’ amidst the fakery of digital culture and the illusion of infinite choice. The award-winning saxophonist and rapper Soweto Kinch also takes a long hard look at the state of the nation for his latest album, White Juju, recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra. Conceived at the height of the pandemic the music is his response to lockdown, BLM, British history and the culture wars. He takes inspiration from European folklore, the African Diaspora and divisive national myths to create a unified modern tone poem.Producer: Katy Hickman

The Pulitzer-winning oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee recalls the thrill of seeing for the first time the extraordinary ‘luminosity’ of a living cell. In his latest work, The Song of the Cell, he explores the history, the present and the future of cellular biology. He tells Adam Rutherford that without understanding cells you can’t understand the human body, medicine, and especially the story of life itself. ‘Once upon a time I fell in love with a cell.’ So recalls the leading cardiologist Sian Harding, when she looked closely at a single heart muscle cell, and she found a ‘deeper beauty’ revealing the ‘perfection of the heart’s construction’. In her book, The Exquisite Machine, she describes how new scientific developments are opening up the mysteries of the heart, and why a ‘broken heart’ might be more than a literary flight of fancy.The prize-winning science fiction writer Paul McAuley was once a research scientist studying symbiosis, especially single-celled algae inside host cells. He has since used his understanding of science to write books that ask questions about life on earth and outer-space, and about the implications of the latest cutting edge research, from nanotechnology to gene editing. His 2001 novel The Secret of Life, which features the escape of a protean Martian microorganism from a Chinese laboratory, has just been reissued. Producer: Katy Hickman

The Man Booker prize winning novelist George Saunders turns to short-stories for his latest book, Liberation Day. From workers dressed as ‘ghouls’ in an underground amusement park to brainwashed political protestors and story-telling slaves his protagonists underscore what it means to live in community with others. George Saunders tells Tom Sutcliffe how his stories veer from bizarre fantasy to brutal reality. The move from fantasy to stark reality can be seen in the history of Russians living in exile in Paris after the Revolution in 1917. Helen Rappaport’s After the Romanovs details how former princes, used to a life of luxury, could be seen driving taxicabs. While some emigres, like Diaghilev and Chagall, found great success in this new world, others became trapped in a cycle of poverty and homesickness for a country that was no longer theirs.The BFI and UK-wide horror film season In Dreams are Monsters celebrates how monstrous bodies of all kinds have been represented on screen over the past hundred years. Curator Anna Bogutskaya explores the symbolism and emotional impact of ghosts, vampires, witches and, arguably the most politicised of all cinematic monsters, the zombie – a terrifying, dead-eyed blank canvas for social commentary.Producer: Katy Hickman

The first event marking Black History Month UK took place thirty five years ago, and the re-claiming and documenting of Black British and International History has since evolved into a national movement. But how much has changed in those three decades? The historian Miranda Kaufmann has spent years uncovering evidence of Africans in Renaissance Britain. Her first book Black Tudors: The Untold Story was published five years ago and has since become a free online course. The British Nigerian poet Yomi Ṣode interweaves his native Yoruba with English slang in his debut collection Manorism. He explores what it means to grow up black in Britain and the pressure to be constantly adapting his behaviour and language. But he also shows the past works in mysterious ways by finding inspiration in the life of the 17th century Italian painter, Caravaggio. The curator Christine Checinska explores how fashion has formed a key part of Africa’s cultural renaissance in a ground-breaking exhibition at the V&A. Africa Fashion starts with the years of African independence that sparked radical political and social movements. But the show also includes contemporary designers who have broken with historical ideas to look to the future.The historian Peter Frankopan makes the case for world history – a view of the past from multiple foci – in the essay collection, What Is History, Now? He questions the role of history; whose stories are told and why. But the challenge of broadening horizons to encompass the whole world can make it oversimplistic and fractured. Frankopan believes the job of the historian is to look at the connections between societies, and explore what the past can tell about today’s world.Image: Thomas Gainsborough's 'Portrait of Ignatius Sancho', 1768

In her latest novel, The Unfolding, the prize-winning AM Homes has created a compelling central character: a larger than life American patriot and family man. Undone by Obama’s victory in the 2008 presidential election, he collects together a band of like-minded men to spread their version of the American dream, and to reclaim it by force if necessary. AM Homes tells Tom Sutcliffe her Big Guy’s fight to retain his influence is confounded by his failure to keep his own family from fracturing.Power, reputation and family dynamics are also central to Ibsen’s play John Gabriel Borkman, now playing at the Bridge Theatre, directed by Nick Hytner, in a new version by Lucinda Coxon. Borkman was once a great man, who put wealth and influence ahead of his family and personal life. But now, disgraced and destitute after a financial scandal, he sits alone in an upstairs room obsessively planning his comeback.Families and dynastic power is at the heart of Simon Sebag Montefiore’s history of The World: A Family History Of Humanity. The grand themes of war, migration, plague, religion and technology are told through the stories of the world’s great dynasties as they battle to stay relevant and retain power through the ages.Producer: Katy HickmanImage credit: Photograph - Front l-r Simon Russell Beale (John Gabriel Borkman) and Sebastian De Souza (Erhart Borkman), photo by Manuel Harlan

During the pandemic our laws were radically remade by a government which exercised almost unlimited power, according to the human rights barrister, Adam Wagner. In Emergency State: How We Lost Our Freedoms in the Pandemic and Why it Matters he decries the lack of parliamentary debate and oversight as restrictions became tighter, and warns against the possiblity of future emergencies following the same political path. But how effective is our parliamentary democracy in scrutinising the government? The Assistant Editor of the Spectator, Isabel Hardman is a seasoned politician-watcher and joins the programme from the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham. She fears MPs are failing in their role as effective legislators both because of demands on their time from their constituencies, and because of concern about ruining their chances of joining the executive. The historian Tim Bale studies the fortunes of the Conservative Party, and is looking with interest at the direction the new government is heading. Not since 1979 has the country faced such challenging economic circumstances. But Bale asks how far the new Prime Minister Liz Truss is reaching back in history for answers to today’s problems. The Italian film director and journalist, Annalisa Piras is also following Italy’s new government with interest, following the snap election last week. As the far-right leader Giorgia Meloni is set to become the country’s first female prime minister, Piras looks at her policies for dealing with the cost of living crisis, and how Italy’s politicians are placed to oversee government decisions. Producer: Katy Hickman

In a special edition of the show, in front of an audience at the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, Adam Rutherford and guests focus on scientific curiosity – its thrills and its dangers. Professor Matthew Cobb looks back over the last fifty years at the extraordinary development in gene editing. In his book The Genetic Age: Our Perilous Quest to Edit Life he traces the excitement of innovation and progress. But as the full potential of manipulating life is understood, he sounds a warning too.The science historian Professor Alison Bashford tells the history of modern science and culture through the story of one family – the extraordinary Huxley dynasty. Through four generations the family profoundly shaped how we see ourselves, and pushed the boundaries of knowledge in science, literature and film.Born in Bradford is an internationally-recognised research programme which aims to find out what keeps families healthy and happy. Professor Deborah Lawlor was born in the city and was one of the many scientists involved in setting up the programme. She explains how this vast ‘city of research’ – with data from more than 700,000 citizens – is being used to improve population health.Producer: Katy Hickman