Start the Week

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 Gallery

Producer: 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

The prize-winning writer John Lanchester considers the political endgame of a fractious world in his new novel, The Wall. He tells Amol Rajan why he has written a dystopian fable in which the young distrust the old, and the world appears broken.

But just how violent are we as a species? The primatologist Richard Wrangham believes there is a 'goodness paradox': at an individual level we have evolved to become a more peaceful animal, especially compared to our closest relatives, the chimpanzee; but our ability to organise and plan an attack has made us lethal.

The ancient Assyrians celebrated every detail of cruelty, massacre and torture, including skinning prisoners alive, as they built their empire and conquered their enemies. The academic Eleanor Robson looks back at the reign of the King Ashurbanipal from the 7th century BC, immortalised in an exhibition at the British Museum.

Shortly after the King’s death the Empire fell. Dr Patricia Lewis is an expert on international security and studies the ebb and flow of wars across the world from chemical warfare to cyber-attacks. She looks ahead to the major conflicts to watch in the coming year.

The above image is from the British Museum’s exhibition I Am Ashurbanipal: King of the World, King of Assyria

Producer: Katy Hickman

Andrew Marr starts the year in search of happiness with the behavioural scientist and happiness professor Paul Dolan. Dolan has advised the government on how to measure wellbeing, and in his latest book Happy Ever After argues that we’ve been sold a lie about the sources of happiness. The route to fulfilment may be far more unexpected that we thought.

The writer Laura Freeman deplores what she calls the current Pollyana tendencies to ‘keep smiling’ via the mood-tracker apps on your phone. Freeman recounts how she herself found an appetite for life, after years of suffering with anorexia, through her love of reading.

The science journalist Linda Geddes explores the impact of sunlight on our minds and bodies. In Chasing the Sun she looks at its significance in improving our health, sleep, productivity and mood.

But what if our mood is really affected not by our mind, but our bodies? Professor Edward Bullmore has studied the link between mental health and physical inflammation, and argues that we need to look more closely at our immune system in the treatment of depression.

Producer: Katy Hickman

On Christmas Eve, Andrew Marr explores the mysteries of snow and ice. Michelle Paver's novels dwell in the darkest places: an Arctic hut in midwinter haunted by ghosts, an isolated mountain peak, and a prehistoric frozen forest. She explains the appeal of these inhospitable settings, and asks why the cold still terrifies us.

Ben Saunders knows the sounds and smells of ice better than most. As one of the world's leading polar explorers he has skied to the North Pole and completed Scott and Shackleton's aborted trip to the South Pole. He describes the exhaustion, frustration and wonder of life on a frozen sea.

Materials scientist Mark Miodownik knows that liquids are not to be trusted, even when frozen solid. His latest book, Liquid: The Delightful and Dangerous Substances That Flow Through Our Lives, unpicks the cracks, creaks and crystals of ice.

Poet and writer Nancy Campbell set out from the world's northernmost museum to understand our fascination with ice and snow. Her new book, The Library of Ice: Readings from a Cold Climate,brings to life the people who dwell in these icy landscapes, many of which are now disappearing.

Producer: Hannah Sander

Kirsty Wark explores national stories and myths – from both inside and outside a country’s borders.

Neil MacGregor discusses how Dickens, Monty Python and the Suez Crisis have influenced the way Britain is perceived abroad. He visits five different countries to find out which historical events, cultural influences and objects have shaped the way how others see us. The answers may well surprise people back home.

Sweden has a strong sense of its own national identity: it boasts the world’s oldest free press and prides itself on its special brand of social democracy. But the journalist Kajsa Norman looks beyond this utopian myth to expose the darkness in the Swedish soul. She reveals what happens to those who dare to dissent from consensus.

Japan’s national image abroad is one of staid tradition mixed with bizarre pop culture, and the samurai warrior alongside the grey mass of ‘salarymen’. But the academic Christopher Harding argues there is far more to Japanese society than these enduring clichés. He looks at how Japan has been reinventing itself over the last century and a half, and the often radical and outspoken resistance to conformity.

Producer: Katy Hickman

Trees may have vibrant inner lives and certainly appear to have individual personalities, claims the forester-cum-writer Peter Wollheben. In his bestselling book, The Hidden Life of Trees, he uncovers an underground social network of communication between trees.

In the late 1990s the journalist Ruth Pavey purchased four acres of scrub woodland in Somerset, and set about transforming this derelict land into a sanctuary for woodland plants, creatures and her own thoughts.

The natural world comes alive in the poetry of Kathleen Jamie. Although her landscape is often her Scottish homeland, politics, history and human folly are never far

And breathing clean air is the goal of Gary Fuller’s book, The Invisible Killer. He studies the rising threat of air pollution from London’s congested streets to wood-burning damage in New Zealand.

Producer: Katy Hickman