Bradley Cooper, Jonathan Franzen, George Takei

Hollywood star Bradley Cooper on his new role in celebrity-chef movie Burnt. Mongolia’s new record shop in Ulan Bator means music fans no longer have to make the 600 mile desert trek to Beijing to buy vinyl. Tibetan ex-monk turned music star Ngawang talks about exile and playing live for the Dalai Lama. And, from Kolkata India, we meet maybe the country’s only bluegrass mandolin player and the band Fiddler’s Green who merge Asian and Celtic folk music.

The US literary superstar Jonathan Franzen says how his irritation at George W Bush’s use of the word freedom inspired his novel Freedom. At the Nour Festival of contemporary art in London we explore the focus on Algerian identity in the exhibits. From Rwanda, we meet the band The Good Ones, comprising four survivors from different enemy tribes of the country’s 1994 genocide. And, original Star Trek TV actor George Takei opens Allegiance, a new musical on Broadway about the internment of 100,000 Japanese-Americans after the bombing of Pearl Harbour in World War Two.

(Photo: Bradley Cooper (left), Jonathan Franzen (centre), George Takei (right). Credit: Getty Images)