Great Lives

Laura Marling, folk singer-songwriter, nominates the first female psychoanalyst, Lou Andreas-Salomé. Laura has been unravelling the mysteries of Russian-born Lou Andreas-Salomé ever since she came across her name in the biography of the poet, Rainer Maria Rilke. She'd never heard of Salomé's name but discovered she was Rilke's literary mentor for years. As well as this, she was the only woman allowed in Sigmund Freud's Inner Psychoanalytic Circle, and was proposed to by Friedrich Nietzsche, who called her “the cleverest person I ever knew...” Yet today, she's been largely forgotten. Laura makes the case for remembering this enigmatic woman who inspired some of the greatest minds of our time. Laura Marling has been nominated for the Grammy Awards, the Mercury Prize and has won a Brit award for best British Female Solo Artist. Chaired by Matthew Parris. Produced by Eliza Lomas in Bristol.

Robinson Crusoe is 300 years old this year. Is he real? Well, the book says that it was 'written by himself'. In celebration we have invited two notable desert island survivors to discuss his life and strange surprising adventures, eight and twenty years all alone in an uninhabited island near the mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque. Crusoe's nominator is Lucy Irvine. She spent spent a year on Tuin Island with a man called Gerald, her exploits later made famous by a book and a film called Castaway. Our second guest is journalist Martin Popplewell, who was inspired as a teenager by Brooke Shields in the film The Blue Lagoon to try desert island life for himself. "There's no mention in the entire Crusoe book of coconuts," Martin points out in this entertaining dissection of both Crusoe and his creator, Daniel Defoe. The presenter is Matthew Parris, the producer in Bristol is Miles Warde

Ed Balls discusses the influence of the 20th-century composer Herbert Howells with biographer Paul Spicer. Presented by Matthew Parris.

Kamila Shamsie, author of the award-winning novel 'Home Fire' champions the life of the Pakistani human rights lawyer Asma Jahangir. Kamila says she was only ten years old, growing up in Karachi, when Asma became her hero even before she really knew her name. She remembers her mother and her aunts all talking about this amazing woman lawyer and social activist who was standing up against many of the laws that Pakistan's President General Zia ul Haq had introduced in the 1980s. Jahangir was always making the news headlines or giving radio interviews. Here was a woman who was determined to speak her mind and stand up for women and the human rights of all its citizens - it seemed she feared no-one, recalls Shamsie. In this programme Kamila Shamsie is joined by Asma's daughter Sulema Jahangir, a lawyer now working in London and Pakistan who shares some personal stories and anecdotes about her mother and Saqlain Imam, journalist and broadcaster with BBC World Service Urdu Service. The presenter is Matthew Parris and the producer is Perminder Khatkar.

The prolific and most significant of American song-hunters - Alan Lomax - has been chosen by English folk singer Shirley Collins. She's joined by singer-songwriter and activist Billy Bragg. Lomax did whatever was necessary to preserve traditional music and take it to a wider audience. He was the first to record towering figures like Lead Belly, Muddy Waters and Woody Guthrie. He was instrumental in the revival of U.S. and UK folk. Shirley Collins met Lomax in 1954, after he'd moved to England to avoid the U.S. McCarthy witch-hunt. She tells the story of how they fell in love and describes their recording trips around Europe and in America's Deep South, on the cusp of the civil rights movement. Lomax's ambition was to give a voice to the voiceless, and that took him from fisherman shacks to prisons, farmyards to cotton mills. His steadfast drive to capture cultures before they disappeared resulted in a staggering amount of recordings we can listen to today, from gospel choirs to Cajun fiddling, country blues to calypsos and Haitian voodoo rituals. Chaired by Matthew Parris. Producer: Eliza Lomas