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At the Free Thinking Festival at Sage, Gateshead Tom Sutcliffe presents a special edition exploring the art and science of communication. The American diplomat William J Burns played a central role in American foreign policy from the end of the Cold War to the collapse of relations with Putin’s Russian, and including secret talks with Iran. He explores the language of diplomacy.Harriet Shawcross is an award-winning filmmaker and journalist. She reflects on how as a teenager she stopped speaking for almost a year. In her book Unspeakable she considers the power of silence.The musician and composer Kathryn Tickell roots her work in in the landscape and people of Northumbria. She is the foremost exponent of the Northumbrian pipes, and tells the story of Northumbria with - and without - words.Thomas Dixon studies emotional outbursts as the director of the Centre for the History of Emotions. He unveils the scientific and philosophical underpinnings of anger and weeping. Producer: Katy Hickman

The prize-winning author Karl Ove Knausgaard explores the life and work of a fellow Norwegian artist, Expressionist Edvard Munch. He tells Tom Sutcliffe that Munch’s work extends far beyond his iconic painting The Scream. Knausgaard brings together art history, biography and personal memoir to reflect on what it means to be an artist.Munch is known as a painter of the inner life and even his landscapes are infused with personal reflection. But at the turn of the twentieth century, while he was looking inward, art schools across Europe were forging new philosophies and were engaging with the wider world. In Germany the Bauhaus movement, founded by Walter Gropius, stood for experiment and creative freedom. Fiona MacCarthy’s new biography of Gropius re-evaluates his intellectual and emotional life. She depicts him at the heights of Bauhaus fame and through his post-war years in London to his architectural successes in America.Back in the UK, Charles Rennie Mackintosh was at the centre of a movement based at the Glasgow School of Art. Curator Alison Brown explains how that city became the birthplace of the only Art Nouveau ‘movement’ in the UK. The style and influence of Mackintosh and his disciples has since spread throughout the world.Both Bauhaus and Art Nouveau designs became commercially successful and mass produced. But the earlier Arts and Craft Movement of William Morris championed the principle of handmade production. In an extraordinary find, the social historian Tamsin Wimhurst, came across a terraced house in Cambridge owned by a working-class Victorian decorative artist who reproduced the work of Morris for his own pleasure at home. The David Parr House is opened to the public later this year.Producer: Katy Hickman

The Chinese journalist and activist Xinran tells the story of China since the start of the 20th century through four generations of one family. She tells Andrew Marr how the family lived through enormous social upheaval, and reveals how traditional values started to unravel with the tide of modernity.The academic Roel Sterckx looks back beyond the last century to ancient Chinese philosophers and thinkers. He argues that in order to understand modern China we need to understand its past. The practice of power, government and social harmony has a long tradition.It is seventy years since Mao founded the People’s Republic of China and Julia Lovell re-evaluates Mao's philosophy both at home and abroad. For decades Maoism has been dismissed in the West as an outdated historical and political phenomenon, and yet his ideas remain central to China’s Communist government - and continue to influence people around the world.Not only Chinese ideas have spread throughout the globe: the latest play from director David K S Tse is based on the lives of Chinese people who moved to the UK. From Shore to Shore is staged in Chinese takeaways around the country and blends English, Mandarin and Cantonese, to tell the story of three journeys to find a home. Producer: Katy Hickman