Musician and journalist Katherine Whatley explores the rich and surprising history of jazz in Japan. Surprising because the chaotic individualism of this American art form appears at first to go against the very grain of Japan’s communitarian sprit. More surprising still that, having been banned as ‘enemy music’ during the second world war, jazz music was wholeheartedly embraced in Japan during the immediate post war period and the US-led allied occupation. In fact the market for jazz within Japan was once so great that the country has variously been credited with having the highest proportion of jazz fans in the world, and with almost single handedly propping up the jazz record industry.

But the story of jazz in Japan goes deeper than the enthusiastic collecting (and extensive reissuing) of American jazz records. As an American growing up in Tokyo, a student of traditional Japanese music, and a huge jazz fan herself, it’s a subject that’s close to presenter Katherine Whatley’s heart. She looks at the unique contribution that Japanese musicians have made to the jazz scene, and finds that jazz has become an inextricable part of Japanese culture.

Produced by Laura Yogasundram.

A succulent & mouth watering portrait of one of the least talked about organs of the body.

Sarah Dillon explores the stories behind how great works of literature were written.

Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough tells the magical story of the tree that sits at the heart of Christmas day - the pine tree. A tale of power, biological wonder and baubles.

'Fire!!' was a short-lived literary magazine from the Harlem Renaissance published in 1926, created by and for the young black artists of the movement. Featuring poetry, prose, drama and artwork from some of the biggest names of the Harlem Renaissance including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Bruce Nugent, Wallace Thurman and Aaron Douglas, the magazine was an explosive attempt to burn down the traditional western canon and replace it with a series of brutally honest and controversial depictions of African American life.

Fire!! lasted for just one issue, yet despite its very brief existence, the magazine is now considered to be an incredibly important document of the Harlem Renaissance, and an early example of an artistic youth rebellion in the African American printed press.

In this Sunday Feature, Writer, journalist and broadcaster Afua Hirsch travels to Harlem to find out all about this long-lost piece of African American history. Setting up in a house previously occupied by celebrated Harlem poet and novelist Langston Hughes, Afua discusses the history and legacy of Fire!! magazine with writer and professor Martha Nadell, and Professor Karla Holloway, whose forthcoming book 'A Death in Harlem' is set during the Renaissance.

Along the way we learn about the magazine's rapid rise and fall, and hear how the reactions to it in 1926 sum up the fascinating artistic conflicts at the heart of the Harlem Renaissance - conflicts that are still extremely relevant today - while young Harlem writers, artists and actors read extracts from Fire!! on the streets of Harlem where the magazine was born.

Producer: Nick Taylor.

Extracts from Fire!! read by:

Amazing travels of the first Englishman in India & a hunt for a lost poetic masterpiece.

Two features by R3 New Generation Thinkers. Dr Simon Beard and Dr Islam Issa

Two Features by R3 New Generation Thinkers Hetta Howes and Eleanor Lybeck.

Author Carlo Gebler has spent nearly three decades working in the Northern Ireland prison system as a teacher of creative writing.

Now Carlo wants to know if prison arts and education made any difference to the lives of those he taught. He meets the inmates attending classes in the education and skills section of HMP Magilligan on Northern Ireland's north coast. He visits his former boss who each day would tell him his job was not to teach, but to be a human being. He catches up with some of the former prisoners he worked with over many years and finds out what they're doing now.

Looking back at the protocols and practices which characterised his prison work, Carlo asks about the true potential of arts and education when it comes to punishment and rehabilitation.

Producer: Conor Garrett for BBC Northern Ireland

Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough enters the forests of our imagination, looking for stories. Alternative realities, holy quests and fairytales hidden among the glories of the Autumn forest.

Despite our evolution in the African rainforests, Eleanor wonders whether it is tales from the frozen North that have given us the most potent forests of the imagination, invading our psyche, inhabiting our stories, inspiring our architecture,

Legendary fairytale guru Jack Zipes introduces us to the darker side of the Black Forest, the central point of European folklore. Eleanor travels to Shakespeare's Forest of Arden, part real, part imagined - a forest full of magic and mystery, where we can become better versions of ourselves. We hear tales from the vast frozen Taiga forest, encircling the world in the North. And in the African rainforest we meet early hominids as they flit in and out of the trees, watching the forest biology shaping what we are and the stories we tell.

On the way we see the strange reality of the forest itself communicating. And as darkness falls, our imagination takes over as we spend a moonlit night in the New Forest, high in an oak tree, in the company of ravens, owls and deer.

Producer: Melvin Rickarby