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The director Paulette Randall brings to the stage the ultimate tale of sacrifice in the pursuit of power: Doctor Faustus. She tells Andrew Marr how, in coveting fame, power and knowledge, he sells his soul to the devil. This bargain with the devil is one of the most iconic cultural motifs in the Western tradition.The poet and writer Ann Wroe looks to another founding story of Christianity, that of St Francis of Assisi. Born into luxury he forsakes it all after hearing the voice of God commanding him to rebuild the Church and live in poverty. Wroe writes his life story in verse and see echoes of it all around her today.The philosopher Julian Baggini sees such ancient stories as helping to explore and explain how people think in the West. But in his new book, How the World Thinks, he admits his own failures to learn about the stories and early philosophies which have come out of the East. Without them, he argues, you cannot understand the development of distinct cultures around the world.The novelist and essayist Amit Chaudhuri has looked far and wide for his influences, from Nobel laureate Tagore and filmmaker Satyajit Ray to Cervantes’s Don Quixote. In The Origins of Dislike he explores the way writers understand their work both in antithesis to, and affinity with, past writers and movements from around the world.Producer: Katy Hickman

A stifling culture of safety is now spreading throughout Western academic institutions leading to a crisis in mental health, according to the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. He tells Amol Rajan that the current obsession with ‘safe spaces’ and no-platforming, is not only a breach of freedom of speech, but is creating a generation unable to cope with modern life.But the commentator Yasmin Alibhai-Brown argues that free speech has often been used as a justification to spout hate speech and prejudice. She defends political correctness as a means to build a safer, more compassionate world.The writer Olivia Sudjic made her name after the publication of her debut novel Sympathy which explored surveillance and identity in the internet age. But as she became the focus of attention she felt trapped in a spiral of self-doubt. She looks at the epidemic of anxiety among the so-called ‘snowflake’ generation.Changing attitudes are at the heart of Mark Ravenhill’s new play, The Cane. Should a well-respected teacher be punished retrospectively for past actions which are now deemed unacceptable, but few questioned at the time?Producer: Katy Hickman

Poland turns 100 this November. The country had existed for a thousand years but it was only in 1918 with the Treaty of Versailles that an independent Poland was created. Amol Rajan explores its turbulent history.No nation's story has been so distorted as Poland's, says historian Adam Zamoyski. He looks back to the great medieval nation that was once a European heavyweight. But Russia, Prussia and Austria divided Poland up in 1797 and turned it into a backwater - before the Nazis and Soviet soldiers arrived to do more damage.The decades since independence in 1918 have seen extraordinary twists in the tale. Composer Roxanna Panufnik combines Polish poetry with a Catholic mass in her new oratorio Faithful Journey - Mass for Poland. This huge work for choir and orchestra covers the bloodshed of two world wars, the relative prosperity and optimism of the 1930s, the censorship of communist rule and a new hope for the coming years.In the 1950s Stalin offered the people of Warsaw a choice between two gifts: a metro system or a vast skyscraper. They asked for the metro. He built the Joseph Stalin Palace of Culture and Science instead. Today the Palace is one of Poland's most recognisable sights and has starred on the cover of Vogue. But Michal Muraswki explains that to Poles today the Palace represents their communist legacy - something that the ruling Law and Justice Party are keen to forget,The reforms of the Law and Justice Party, including a move to ban all abortions, have been met with criticism at home and abroad. Award-winning journalist Witold Szablowski examines Poland's relationship with Europe, with its neighbours and with its past.Producer: Hannah Sander