In Praise of Profanity, what swearing adds to language; Shock Art, a new series; Vale Robert Silvers one of founding editors of the NYRB; Peter Polites new novel Down the Hume 'queers the streets' of Western Sydney. Arts, culture, books and ideas.

Israeli novelist Dorit Rabinyan's banned novel All the Rivers, musical duo Spare Pages on their song Illuminate, Libby Angel's debut novel The Trapeze Act, Matthew Bird's sleep art installation Dormitorium

Michael Rosen follows the famous French author Emile Zola in exile in London after he was sentenced to prison for his vocal support of Alfred Dreyfus; Australian screenwriter and poet Luke Davies reads the letter he has written, inspired by the music of Genevieve Lacey and James Crabb; and Germaine Greer, one of the most important feminist thinkers of the 20th Century, on her life, letters and legacy.

We celebrate the life of novelist and children's author Paula Fox, follow four generations of a Korean family in Min Jin Lee's Pachinko, and head to the Art Gallery of South Australia to see the sculptures of Auguste Rodin.

We revisit Charles Blackman's schoolgirls as part of a new exhibition in Melbourne, head to Woolloomooloo to catch up with Australian playwright Louis Nowra, and go behind the curtain of Russia's Bolshoi Ballet with Simon Morrison.

The hugely popular American artist Jeff Koons has been convicted of plagiarism, again; the Australian author, commentator and script writer Frank Moorhouse on the meaning and social value of writing; we look at the top ten bestselling Australian novels; and Neil Gaiman and the Norse Gods.

Photographer Bill Henson, Project Dance, Andy Warhol before Pop, fantasy fiction

Books and Arts comes to you from Adelaide today. We start in a quarry north of Adelaide, the setting of the theatre adaptation of Kate Grenville's novel, The Secret River, one of the highlights of Adelaide Festival; then we head to Adelaide Writer’s Week, where Michael is in conversation with Mexican writer Yuri Herrera, about his writing; and we end the show at the South Australian Museum, inside an exhibition which celebrates the power of the yidaki, or didjeridu.

The maverick Australian director Barrie Kosky on his opera of George Frideric Handel's Saul; Australian Indigenous author Ali Cobby Eckermann on winning the US Windham-Campbell Prize, one of the world's richest literary prizes; Archie Roach on returning to the Womadelaide music festival stage 25 years after he performed at the inaugural festival; and comedians Alex Ward and Cal Wilson on the funny side of International Women's Day.

Germaine Greer, one of the most important feminist thinkers of the 20th Century, on her life, letters and legacy; Kate Mulvany takes to the stage as one of Shakespeare's best villains, Richard III; and Robert Andrew, whose art combines traditional materials of ochres and oxides with modern technology to explore his Aboriginal heritage.