Seriously...

Zora Neale Hurston. You might not recognise her name. She was an African American novelist and folklorist, a queen of the Harlem Renaissance and a contemporary of Langston Hughes and Richard Wright.

But when she died in 1960 she was living on welfare and was buried in an unmarked grave. Her name was even misspelt on her death certificate. Scotland's National poet Jackie Kay tells the story of how Zora became part of America's literary canon.

Alice Walker wrote in her collection of essays 'In Search of Our Mother's Gardens': "We are a people. A people do not throw their geniuses away. And if they are thrown away, it is our duty as artists and as witnesses for the future to collect them again for the sake of our children, and, if necessary, bone by bone."

And that's what Alice did: travelling to Florida in search of Zora's grave where she laid down a gravestone declaring Zora "A Genius of the South".

Eighty years since the publication of her greatest work 'Their Eyes Were Watching God', Jackie Kay tells Zora's story.

Interviews include author Alice Walker, the poet Sonia Sanchez, The Guardian's Editor at Large Gary Younge and Zora's biographer Valerie Boyd.

Readings by Solange Knowles.

Photo: Carl Van Vechten

Producer: Caitlin Smith.

For centuries musicians have defied gender boundaries to create some of the most evocative and provocative art and music.

Journalist and culture critic Laura Snapes joins the dots of a fascinating musical history that encompasses musical icons such as Ma Rainey, Little Richard, Lou Reed, the Pet Shop Boys, Grace Jones and Madonna, and looks at how today's musicians use music and performance to express who their own gender and sexuality.

In recent years the issue of gender and identity has been a hot topic in the musical landscape and beyond. From niche publications to tabloids and political debate, issues surrounding gender identity and how it influences both personal and social life have been widely publicised.

Amid the deeply complex personal world of gender identity and the often ruthlessly myopic world of the music industry, a new generation of artists are using music for fearless expressions of their gender and sexuality that break beyond the archetypes set by their forebears.

Rock Transition speaks with artists such as garage maverick Ezra Furman, Canadian pop stars Tegan and Sara, musician and author CN Lester, and musician and activist Ryan Cassata to understand why music offers an exciting platform to express and explore gender identity and sexuality - and asks how these artists can resist being marginalised and commodified by an industry keen to capitalise on a hot topic.

If you ask the author, Nathan Filer, when he first came into contact with mental illness, he'll tell you it was in 1999 when he first became a psychiatric nurse. But, like many of us, he'd actually met it much earlier : through film, drama and the news. Like many of us, his understanding had been shaped by how the media chose to portray it. But he quickly realised how very different real life was to fiction and the reports.

Now he asks what does that difference do to us - both as a society and to us as individuals, when many of us have experienced mental health disorders in our every day lives, either personally or to close family and friends. How does story-telling in the 21st century influence public understanding and our sympathy or condemnation for those experiencing mental health disorders?

Times are changing. As Alastair Campbell says, in the 80s, if you'd suggested to the newsroom a piece on depression, it just wasn't on the agenda. But although mental health is becoming more common as a storyline or story, many myths still prevail about violence, treatment, diagnosis, recovery.

Looking back through archive, Nathan Filer tells the story of the way we've framed mental health and illness across all media over the last few decades, and he talks to those with knowledge to explore its effect. Featuring Alastair Campbell; Professor Graham Thornicroft of Kings College London; Jenni Regan, senior editorial advisor at Mind; Dr Sarah Carr; Erica Crompton; and author Ramsey Campbell, among others.

The producer is Polly Weston.

For information and support on the subjects discussed in this programme visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1NGvFrTqWChr03LrYlw2Hkk/information-and-support-mental-health.

As we dream of sending humans to Mars, the psychological problems of a mission loom large. As part of Radio 4's Mars season. Claudia Hammond investigates the mind-set behind the desire of those of us who want to colonise the red planet. What does it take to survive the confines of a 9 month journey and the enclosed pod-like environments that mission leaders envisage will be the housing needed to occupy this inhospitable planet?

Claudia meets the wannabe Martian explorers who've been sampling similar long term simulations here on earth and the psychologists who've overseen the design, selection and planning for future communities in space.

Producer Adrian Washbourne.

Emily Dicks visits St Petersburg to trace her grandfather's teenage memories of the excitement and fear of the 1917 Revolutions - as preserved on a never-previously-revealed tape.

This extraordinary recording - kept in family archives - describes the lives of ordinary people caught up in the political turmoil between the two Russian Revolutions of 1917.

Henry Dicks was the son of an Estonian-based Englishman, sent to school in Petrograd during the First World War. He recorded his memories in an interview with his son in 1967. The tape covers the period immediately after Rasputin's death and the fall of the Tsar, all the way through to the Bolshevik attack on the Provisional Government's Winter Palace in October 1917, which Henry saw first-hand.

Henry remembers the joy after the Tsar's fall when "the whole population seemed to be in the streets", servants became "much cheekier" and his schoolmasters shed their uniforms.

But then the Bolsheviks strengthened their power and Henry describes the unnerving feeling in metropolitan Petrograd that they were "getting away with it".

One October morning when, as he remembers, "the air was thick with foreboding", Henry watched the attack of the Winter Palace. Once the Bolsheviks had seized power, Henry describes "a kind of terror beginning" and he eventually fled via Finland, where he was marooned in a hotel amid a civil war...

With: Helen Rappaport, Stephen Lovell

Producer: Phil Tinline.

A picture of the Caribbean, as seen by a new generation of writers and poets.

Elisha Efua Bartels talks to Trinidadian writers Sharon Millar, Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw, and Andre Bagoo about the sense of place in their work.

For Sharon Millar, author of the short story collection 'The Whale House', the landscape and colour of Trinidad is always the anchor, and she often explores the cultural interaction and foot traffic between the island and Venezuela, only 7 miles away. Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw delves under the surface of Trinidadian society in her novel 'Mrs B', set during the 1990 coup in Port of Spain and inspired by Flaubert's 'Madame Bovary'. In Andre Bagoo's poetry, locations in the city become symbolic of the state of the nation, both in their beauty and disgrace.

Elisha looks at the ways in which these writers capture Trinidadian landscapes and cityscapes in their work, and how they address what lies beneath.

Featuring readings from:

Radioactive waste can remain dangerous to humans for 100,000 years. Nations with nuclear power are building underground storage facilities to permanently house it, but how might they mark these sites for future generations? The nuclear industry is turning to artists for creative solutions. How might artists create a warning that will still be understood and heeded so far into the future? Radioactive Art meets artists whose work deals with issues around nuclear legacy, and visits the nuclear agency in France that has sought their input.

Presented by Gordon Young and Produced by Beatrice Pickup.

With contributions from:

Mark Steel loves Hip Hop in foreign languages. Even though he can't understand a word; he loves the energy and attitude. In this programme he hopes to persuade you that far from the violent, misogynistic 'anti-music' it is sometimes thought to be by its critics Hip Hop is where it is at for young people all over the world today.The simple combination of a beat and words has proved itself endlessly adaptable and it has taken root in cultures from Iceland to Iran from Tanzania to Taiwan.

When pop and rock burst upon the world in the 50's it was the voice of rebellion but became so closely aligned with English that for decades young people around had little choice but to look to people who sang in an alien tongue if they wanted to join the party - lacking the confidence or means to compete with the soft power of Anglo American musicians.

Hip Hop and the internet has changed that; The big American record companies are no longer gate keepers to music that they once were and the simplicity of 'rapping' in a vernacular has proved a powerful combination that's given birth to vibrant hip hop scenes in most countries in the world.

In this programme we visit Iceland and then hear from artists from Africa, Asia and Latin America where Hip Hop has become the dominant form of music through which young people talk among themselves about the big and small issues in their lives.

A true story of death, sex and elite politics in China.

Does what makes the heart beat faster really make the world go round? Oh yes. Welcome to a new history of lust presented by the American satirist Joe Queenan. From Helen and Paris of Troy to Bill and Monica via Rasputin, Edwina Currie and John Major, this is a tale of life as a bunga bunga bacchanal.