Taking a lead from Confucius - a man who loved a good ritual - Sara Wheeler explores the continuing fascination of rituals. 'Two and a half millennia ago,' writes Sara, 'Confucius famously fiddled about moving his mat so it was exactly straight before he crossed his legs and sat down on it.' He believed that ritual improves character and that, in turn, benefits society as a whole. Sara delves into her favourite rituals and ponders the role of ritual today. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

As the size and capability of the Royal Navy is thrust into the spotlight with events in the Red Sea, Stephen Smith reflects on whether this will put an end to speculation of planned cuts to the oldest arm of the British armed forces. And with a spot of naval history in his family, Stephen examines why Britain's relationship with the sea, for all its flaws, is fundamental to who we are. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Liam Morrey Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

AL Kennedy on the recent theft of her backpack and how misfortune can help us reclaim who we really want to be.She reflects on how an an accident of birth - being white, able-bodied, heterosexual, being baptised a Christian and having English as a first language - has put her in 'a position of completely unearned privilege' when asking for help.But 'in a decade when so many people, in so many places, have lost everything,' Alison ponders the role we all have in helping people whose needs aren't being met. 'I believe in helping', she writes. 'I didn't lose that worldview in my backpack.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Mark Damazer says we need to find a different vocabulary to define political leadership and achievement. 'The rhetoric that accompanied Alistair Darling's death,' Mark writes, 'raises some age-old questions about the way we think and judge our political masters'. He questions why 'this torrent of respect, admiration and affection' can only happen when a politician dies. 'You simply don't talk this way about any living politician', he says, 'unless you're a cultist'. The present way of judging politicians, he believes, gives us little idea who is any good at getting the job done. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Zoe Strimpel explores our relationship with sugar - from the days of the 12th century chronicler William of Tyre when sugar was regarded as 'very necessary for the use and health of mankind' to the 'sugar is evil' attitude of today. And she reflects on sugar's power to bind generations together and keep history alive. 'My grandmother and I would often bond over a plate of pfeffernusse... powdered gingerbread stuffed shapes from Germany', Zoe writes. 'Recipes for cakes - we are a family of women who love cake - were passed down on yellow, lined paper in stained scrapbooks and closely guarded'.'And so here I am, 41, and still unable to give up the white stuff.'Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Alex Massie delves into Hogmanays past and present. 'The traditional 'first footing' gifts of the New Year - a lump of coal and a black bun - linger on,' Alex writes, 'though with diminished take-up and not just because few houses are coal-heated now and few people truly appreciate the black bun.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Janet Staples Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Michael Morpurgo reflects on why Christmas is the perfect time of year for 'taking your time.' In a special edition of A Point of View, recorded on a walk near his home in Devon, Michael invites us to enjoy with him the crispness of a frosty morning, the dry leaves crunching underfoot and the 'frantic flurry of splashing and quacking ducks'. He takes us to his favourite wood, past the hill he used to roll down, his children rolled down and now his grandchildren, and on to the River Torridge where, a few days ago, he sighted an otter for the first time in 50 years - 'the best Christmas present I've ever had'. Producer: Adele Armstrong Recording and sound design: Andy Fell Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith.

In a pew in Edwin Lutyens' ecclesiastical masterpiece, St Jude on the Hill in North London, Will Self ponders the contemporary power of the sermon.'Dearly Beloved,' he begins, as he explains the appeal of a good sermon! And he reminds us that 'the sermon was instituted, in part, to correct the fake news of an age before the media that now disseminate it.'Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

John Gray argues that the power of the imagination fuels the worst kind of politics. 'Nobody', he argues, 'is in overall charge of events. There are patterns in history, but particular human events are mostly random. We prefer an illusion of order to the brute fact of chaos.' But, he says, pessimism may be the key to changing our fate. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Rebecca Stott grew up in a creationist, fundamentalist community, where her childhood creativity and curiosity were severely restricted. Now, helping her neighbour's young son to read, Rebecca reflects on the importance of nurturing the curiosity of children and encouraging them to extend their horizons. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Adam Gopnik tries to rationalise what lies behind his new obsession - of walking 10,000 steps every day. With the help of his daughter, Darwin and the Cynics of ancient Greece, Adam concludes that, in our search for meaning in life, 'meaning bound around by a number is easier to grasp than meaning left to meander where it will.' 'The act of taking 10,000 steps a day,' he says, 'brings with it a sense of conscious accomplishment that the phrase "a good long walk" cannot'. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

From clay tablets in Mesopotamia two and a half thousand years ago to the stuff of dreams today, Sarah Dunant examines the continuing mystery of the function and meaning of dreams. 'As science digs further into every nook and cranny of our brains,' writes Sarah, 'the elusive, individual nature of dreams is possibly the most magical element of human existence that remains.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Zoe Strimpel is turning her sights from artsy academic interests to much more concrete ones. Cultural warfare and events in the Middle East have left her feeling, she says, as if she's in a 'ceaselessly enraged world'. So instead of her usual contacts in sociology, anthropology and political science, she's seeking out engineers, agriculturalists and silversmiths - 'people who actually know something about the everyday things we all depend on and how it all works.' 'I find this far more dazzling these days than a new insight on cultural Marxism, and also less depressing,' Zoe writes, 'in a world that feels as if things are in freefall, and increasingly subject to entropic and evil forces.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

John Connell reflects on how rain has shaped Irish culture. 'Over the centuries, the Irish - most days anyway - have learned to accept, sometimes even love, the rain,' writes John. But, he says, that is now beginning to change. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: James Beard Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Bridget Harney

Sara Wheeler challenges the idea that there's an equivalence between loving nature and being a good person. 'This queerly opaque idea has embedded itself in the collective subconscious since Granny Smiths ripened in the Garden of Eden,' writes Sara, 'but recent concerns have raised its stock.' She argues that the logic of that is flawed. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Graham Puddifoot Production coordinator: Katie Morrison Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Edwin Landseer's famous painting of a majestic Highland stag, 'Monarch of the Glen', has been given pride of place in the newly opened galleries at the National in Edinburgh. Alex Massie ponders the role of the deer - and deer stalking - in the Scottish psyche. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Will Self on why - for the past eight weeks - he's lived an almost entirely news-free existence. After a lifetime of keeping up with events and - in recent years - obsessively toggling between news apps 'with all the real cogitation of a commuter playing Candy Crush,' Will has decided to stop paying attention to the news. 'I realised I'd been reading about - and listening to - politicians and pundits for quite possibly months of my life, without really caring one jot or tittle about them.' He reflects on how the British became the news consumers par excellence in the 19th and 20th Centuries and on growing up in a household where following the daily go-round of news constituted a 'civic virtue.' In the aftermath of events in the Middle East, Will has a new guiding principle for his news consumption. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Sarah Dunant argues that the patriarchy of the classical music business is finally starting to change. Reliving her early relationship with music - from excruciating piano lessons to rebellious dancing in the mosh pit - Sarah reflects on the remarkable changes in classical music. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: China Collins

Stephen Smith on why HS2 is such a cause of national hand-wringing. 'We get railways, we do railways - ever since Stephenson's Rocket in the nineteenth century. We gave railways to the world', writes Stephen. He argues that there would never have been the same sense of dismay if we were talking about a road or a runway. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Peter Bosher Editor: China Collins

'Russell Brand winked at me in the street once', begins Howard Jacobson. He reflects on that chance encounter many years ago and the dishonourable role we all play in the creation of celebrity. 'We watched too much television; we rubbed the lamp and set the extremely egregious genie free; we saw a blank slate and wrote the words ourselves.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: China Collins

AL Kennedy discusses the addictive nature of hate. 'Religion', she writes, 'was once called the opium of the masses; hate is now the Oxycontin of the masses. That low thrum of resentment, spikes of rage, hate gives them a logic, an addictive rush.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Bridget Harney

Zoe Strimpel discusses the thrills and psychic satisfactions of the spooky. She argues that the disorientating nature of contemporary society creates the ideal breeding ground for our resurgent interest in things supernatural. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound; Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Bridget Harney

Will Self reflects on the spread of the craze for so-called 'bucket lists'. He argues that 'far from introducing the ecstatic into our necessarily ephemeral existence, the bucket list reimposes the clock-watching go-round most of us have endured for most of our lives'. 'What gives life to life is death - nothing else,' he writes, 'while to live that life to the full is to realize this fully'. Producer: Adele Armstrong Editor: Bridget Harney

Megan Nolan explores the concept of the 'trad wife'. She argues that 'the failings of mainstream girl-boss feminism' are leading to a resurgence of the sort of women's lifestyle associated with the 1950s. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Bridget Harney

John Gray puts the case for the monarchy in modern Britain. 'Those who campaign for the abolition of a royal head of state in Britain,' he says, 'seem to me to be in thrall to a simple-minded idea of reason, and fail to grasp the subtler rationality embodied in monarchy.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Rod Farquhar Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Bridget Harney

Sara Wheeler reflects on the concept of limbo as a way of helping us deal with current uncertainties but she recognizes this will not be easy. 'Limbo is a borderless, undefined, in-between state that is neither one thing nor the other and therefore it is hard to label and harder to accept.' She believes though that an acceptance of unknowability may be increasingly important since 'the rules and certainties on which we built our lives have altered beyond all recognition.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Bridget Harney

This week, UNESCO recommended that Venice should be added to its list of World Heritage in Danger, citing its failure to adequately protect the city from overwhelming tourism and the impact of climate change. As unprecedented numbers of tourists are visiting Europe, Sarah Dunant reflects on how historic cities can manage the challenges of overtourism. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Bridget Harney

Stephen Smith on our fascination with the belongings of the rich and famous... or infamous. 'Years ago, after the fall of the Romanian dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu,' writes Stephen, 'I entered his by now ransacked hunting lodge and made off with the late president's ....coat hanger. That's right: Ceausescu's coat hanger.' As the possessions of the altogether more savoury personality, Freddie Mercury, go on show next week before they are auctioned, Stephen ponders why we aspire to have and to hold something which belonged to a notable figure. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Sabine Schereck Editor: Bridget Harney

As a seasoned protester, Trevor Phillips explores what’s wrong with protest today. After getting his first taste for protest as a schoolboy in Guyana (which led to detention in an army barracks and an audience with a government minister) Trevor remembers his days of student activism in the 1970s - which he describes as 'the start of a long and undistinguished career of being a pain in the backside of authority'. Reflecting on the campaigns of groups like Just Stop Oil, he argues that many of today’s protesters simply choose the wrong target. He concludes that there is still a point to protest, even though success might not be immediate - because victory may come later, and in a way that's often unpredictable. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

While viewing a 16th Century painting of St George slaying a dragon, Adam Gopnik reflects on how we all, in life, attempt to slay ‘the dragons of our disorder.’ He concludes that 'dragon and saint are permanently entangled, as our demonic forces are with our better nature.’ Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Michael Morpurgo reflects on age as he approaches his 80th birthday. 'The truth is,' writes Michael, 'that older people are increasing in numbers and will very likely continue to do so. This is clear. But the place - or the role - of older people in society is far from clear.' He says in a 'civilised society' we have to find better ways of bridging the gap in understanding between young and old. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor Adele Armstrong

AL Kennedy explores how we get information without an overload of negativity. 'Sadness, rage, anxiety...our media use them to hook us, withhold the good news, exhaust us with the bad', she writes. She reflects on why 'selective news avoidance' is on the increase. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross Editor: Penny Murphy

Will Self reflects on mirrors, past and present. 'The imperfect mirrors of the past', he writes, 'were objectified metaphors of human imperfection, rather than the perfect ones that give contemporary humans the delusion that they too can achieve such earthly perfection.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Graham Puddifoot Editor: Penny Murphy

Rebecca Stott reflects on the colours of Midsummer as she attempts to find a paint for the hall in her new home, With an array of paint charts laid out on her kitchen table, she looks to Darwin, Joseph Conrad and the former paint guru of Lewes for inspiration. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

The trend for expensive age-defying treatments is 'an insult to youth itself' says Zoe Strimpel, as she argues against treating youth as a commodity that can be bought. After admiring the seemingly ageless beauty of 41-year-old singing superstar Beyoncé at her recent stadium show in London, Zoe reflects on her own experience of getting older - and the people desperate to avoid it. She hones in on 45-year-old American tech mogul, Bryan Johnson, who is attempting to transform his body into that of a teenager in a highly scientific quest for youth. His mission is to regain the body of an 18-year-old - albeit with the help of 30 doctors and experts, extreme diets (exactly 1,977 vegan calories a day), gruelling workouts and an array of medical procedures. While an extreme case, Zoe reflects on how the possibilities of looking and feeling younger are intensifying with each new development in cosmetic technology or the science of diets. She argues that however distasteful we might find such projects, what is more unsettling 'is the thieving, plundering nature of this quest - the insult to youth itself - as if it is nothing but a product to be had at any time, rather than a transient stage of life, whose splendour is in that very transience.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

John Connell reveals how his love for a pristine lawn gave way to letting the grass grow wild. A leaflet urging the adoption of 'No Mow May' led him to set aside his urge to 'rip and tear and snip' to let nature take its course, above all for the sake of wild bees. 'My lawn is long now, but the green desert is no more. In exchange for neatness there are wildflowers and weeds growing side by side in a riot of colour.' Producer: Sheila Cook Sound Engineer: Peter Bosher Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith Production Co-ordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross

Howard Jacobson deplores the recent vandalising of Eric Gill's sculpture at BBC Broadcasting House as a failure to understand the meaning of art. 'Art, we go on protesting, is not the artist, but some will always believe that whatever is fashioned by evil hands must itself be evil,' he writes. 'If art and the artist were not distinct, the word art itself would have no meaning. For it denotes manufacture and artifice... not simple equation or reflection.' Producer: Sheila Cook Sound Engineer: Peter Bosher Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith Production Co-ordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross

Tom Shakespeare bemoans the fashion for being asked to rate everything we buy or do. "The theory is that this drives up quality for everyone, because we won't tolerate terrible products or services - but have they really improved since these ratings became so commonplace?" Producer: Sheila Cook Sound Engineer: Peter Bosher Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith Production Co-ordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross

When the world's first state pension was introduced in Prussia in 1889, the qualifying age was 70 and the average life expectancy was 40. Half a century later, in 1935, many countries lowered the retirement age to 65, but still barely half the population lived long enough to claim it. Now, it's clearly a very different story. With the help of PD James, Sarah Dunant looks at how the UK can tackle the demographic nightmare it currently faces - an ageing population but falling birth rates. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Rebecca Stott ponders the nature of dust, as Spring sunshine sharpens the sight of it gathering in the old house she is restoring. She reflects on the social history of Spring cleaning as traditionally women's work, and sees in the complex substance and symbolism of dust a reflection of our own mortality. "We don't come to dust alone, we come to dust together and in history. And the dust we make as we move slowly through life into old age, mingles with the historic dust that the much loved houses we pass through and its previous occupants have made through time - in my case the dust of horsehair and deathwatch beetles and lead and lime." Producer: Sheila Cook Sound Engineer: Peter Bosher Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith Production Co-ordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross

The coronation in 1953, which heralded a new Elizabethan age, was accompanied by that most famous of mountaineering exploits - the conquering of Mount Everest. 'This weekend,' writes Sara Wheeler, 'we are not, perhaps regrettably, expecting celebratory rocket-runners from Mars announcing touchdown on the red planet.' But, Sara suggests, the new Carolean age should be about collective effort rather than focussed on individual achievement. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

The philosopher Michel de Certeau characterised space as ‘the practice of place’, Will Self argues that, in order to appreciate the places we inhabit, we have to indulge in 'that most unfashionable and unproductive of things: abide". 'To be in a place', he writes, 'is not to be distracted by the possibility of other places, but absorbed by the particularity of the one you're in.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Living in New York during lockdown, Adam Gopnik spent his time enjoying the escapism of foreign TV shows - like the BBC's W1A and 2012. While these shows were unapologetically British, chock-full of alien cultural references to Frankie Howerd and Dad's Army, Adam says these shows helped him appreciate the universal language of satire. 'I'd say we enjoy satire more when we don't know the things being satirized' he writes, 'and so cannot protest their portrayal'. He says we 'depend on the satirist for all our information, both for the ground and for the graffiti he scrawls upon it.' Producer: Sheila Cook Sound Engineer: Peter Bosher Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith Production Co-ordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross

Sara Wheeler finds writing a biography to be a humanising process, in which learning to see the world through someone else's eyes is more important than rushing to judge them. 'We are quick to judge - quicker than ever in grotesquely polarised times. But if we can't know another person, how can we judge them?', she writes. 'I am suggesting that we use the biographer's craft as a tool for understanding. And a tool for avoiding generalisation, compartmentalisation and judgement.' Producer: Sheila Cook Sound Engineer: Peter Bosher Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith Production Co-ordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross

Megan Nolan says millennial adulthood feels just as uneasy as her teenage years. Short term job contracts and expensive housing has left her generation with a permanent sense of insecurity. As a teenager, Megan struggled to find her identity and place in the world, and felt 'wrong and different in the most profound and private of ways'. She was told these feelings would pass. Now as an adult, however, the anxiety about her place in society has returned. 'Not knowing where your body will be from one year to the next, once you're out of your younger, wilder years, conjures a feeling not dissimilar to the nameless dread of adolescence,' she writes. This leaves Megan and her peers 'in a state of constant insecurity, certainly now, but in a deeper sense, always.' Producer: Arlene Gregorius Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Brenda Brown Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

John Gray makes the case for proportional representation as a means to revive British politics and fuel new political ideas. He argues that, for the last thirty years, government in Britain has been 'Thatcherism on autopilot'. He says that the 'cult' of the free market has been pursued by both main parties but it has long since run its course. He believes a change in the electoral system is now urgently needed, to encourage a greater variety of parties entering government and truly present voters with a choice. 'A seesaw between two parties,' he writes, 'can only accelerate our ongoing slide into becoming a poor country in which nothing works.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

After being given an amaryllis as a gift, Howard Jacobson wonders why he's never stared at a flower...until now. He ponder his life-long ignorance of flowers. Growing up, the family garden was a dumping ground for his dad's old trucks; seeds were something you fed to a budgerigar. 'And wasn't there a flower called An Enemy?' Howard asks. 'There you are then. I've had enough of those in life without finding more in the garden'. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Zoe Strimpel explores what lies behind her new-found impulse to collect art to fill the blank spaces on her walls - and how collecting means something different for men and women. "It is perhaps no surprise to discover that the greater the instability outside our walls, the more we may want to create a secure and beautiful world inside, or on, them." Producer: Sheila Cook Sound engineer: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

AL Kennedy finds echoes of the movies of her childhood in our current state of affairs. "Jaws, like many disaster and horror movies contain the core lesson - whenever there's a problem, greedy people will ignore it - corporations, local authorities, politicians, contractors - people who love money more than, well, people.' Producer: Sheila Cook Sound engineer: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Trevor Phillips argues that Britain, in its desperation to eliminate inequality, risks destroying the very principles that have drawn people here for generations. He points to its eccentricity, its easy going tolerance and its spirit of non-conformity, but he believes 'zealots' are slowly demanding a new sort of 'group-think' that has all the features of a repressive sect. 'I, for one, hope that the rough spirit of British eccentricity, the awkward squad, of putting two fingers up to the establishment, endures.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Sarah Dunant says the rediscovery of ideas from the past can help with 'the toxicity of the present'. Just as the Renaissance master Donatello drew from the classical world to create revolutionary art, so we can find a moment in history to inspire progress in our time. 'On the surface it seems like an impossible task' says Sarah, 'not least because like everything else in this angry, polarised moment, the past itself has been commandeered as a weapon...but the wonderful thing about ideas, is that while they can travel weightlessly through history, they still pack a punch.' Producer: Sheila Cook Sound engineer: Peter Bosher Production Co-ordinator: Helena Warwick Cross Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Will Self on the pleasure of walking without purpose, with no final destination in mind, and the freedom that comes from getting lost once in a while. He reflects on the rising perception that our public spaces are becoming ever more threatening - especially for women. 'Our movements about this wide and wonderful world are for the most part painfully constrained,' he writes. 'Comfort zones have become more and more constricted'. He argues that there are many reasons for this, including the grim revelations in recent years about the criminal activities of police officers. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Adam Gopnik challenges the idea that the artistic and literary creations of artificial intelligence can match human endeavour. Although impressive in their ability to produce pastiche, he thinks AI programmes fail to produce anything 'newly memorable'. 'They are not smart at all in the sense that we usually mean it, capable of constructing creative ideas from scratch,' he writes. 'But rather they're sorts of cognitive scavengers with immense capacity - like whales scooping up all the shrimp and algae from the sea bed, and then churning on it, cud like, until asked to spit up one particular bit.' Producer: Sheila Cook Sound Engineer: Peter Bosher Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith Production Co-ordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross

Rebecca Stott ponders if a move to more communal living could be key in solving some of our most pressing problems. 'I've begun to wonder whether our current crises of social care, childcare, energy, climate, housing could be the catalyst that makes some of us rethink the solitary ways we live,' she writes, 'to search for more practical, affordable and sustainable alternatives to the nuclear single-family household?' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Zoe Strimpel looks at the history of masculinity and its moments of crisis, from Emile Durkheim at the end of the 19th Century to self-professed misogynist, Andrew Tate, today. 'The contemporary manosphere', she writes, 'doesn't appear to have any positive idea of what men should be, apart from rich, priapic and nasty - and within the long history of masculinity in crisis - this feels new'. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Megan Nolan ponders a bizarre alignment between her life and that of Prince Harry. 'Sure, I was taught by nuns in an Irish convent school while he was dragged up through the mean streets of Eton' but - reading Harry's memoir, 'Spare' - Megan calculates that the comparisons between them go beyond their iconic reddish hair and devil-may-care attitudes. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Tom Shakespeare looks to some DVD classics and the Japanese concept of ikigai to provide some light relief from the doom and gloom of January. 'The definitive guide to ikigai,' Tom writes, 'says ikigai is what allows you to look forward to the future, even if you're miserable right now.' And yes, Morrissey makes an appearance too! Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Janet Staples Editor: Penny Murphy

Howard Jacobson reflects on why we look to comedy to see one year out and a new year in. Reflecting on the misbehaviour of a mischievous Australian cockatoo and a 'great mocking Rigoletto chorus' of shearwaters in the Canary Islands, he considers whether he may himself have been a bird in an earlier life, as he celebrates the way animals rescue us from self-importance - and help us imagine a funnier, fairer world. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

John Connell looks forward to becoming a father for the first time, with the help of three poets: Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes and Philip Larkin. As he collects the turf and attends to his organic farm, he ponders what of this he'll pass onto his child. And he wonders if his new son or daughter will have any truck with Heaney's 'cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap of soggy peat'. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

As meteorologists tell us that the chance of snow is decreasing year on year, Sara Wheeler reflects on a future where younger generations may never get to experience snow - and what that means for a season so ingrained in our lives and culture. 'Winter is deeply embedded in the English language - the white stuff of metaphor', she writes. 'But if climate change blanches the seasons, one wonders what the as yet unborn writers will reach for when they try to put the unsayable into words.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Zoe Strimpel reflects on the new sexual conservatives changing the face of feminism. 'The sexual revolution bequeathed us choice: to shag as voraciously as we wanted or to get married and have a baby at 30,' she writes. But, she says, the landscape of sexual politics today has changed dramatically. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Will Self says there are distinct downsides to being tall. At six foot, four and a half inches, Will ponders the drawbacks of a lofty stature. 'The very ideal of beauty is the small', writes Will, 'so how awful it is to realise that you will never fulfil this artistic ideal with your enormous person which, far from being an artwork, is simply a scale model of gigantism!' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Adam Gopnik, recently recovered from his first bout of Covid, explores the profound impact of the pandemic on our whole belief system. 'Covid acted as a kind of universal solvent,' Adam writes, 'dissolving pretty much everyone's expectations of what could happen in the world'. He looks in particular at the concept of ‘trusting the science’ and argues that ‘science is not a transaction of faith but of accumulated confidence’. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

David Goodhart argues that our politics is stuck, not for want of clear ideas about what to do, but because of the inability to get important things done. 'Politics has always been about herding cats', he writes, 'but is the current generation of politicians less good at herding? Or perhaps the cats are even less herdable than usual.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Tom Shakespeare weighs up his options to avoid being crushed by the tottering pile of books on his bedside table. 'Shutting the blinds a few weeks ago,' Tom writes, 'I was hit on the head by three or four falling Terry Pratchett books'. So act he must...and he came up with a plan to ensure no book goes unread. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

As Americans prepare to go to the polls in the US midterm elections and the COP27 environment conference gets underway, AL Kennedy takes the temperature of debate and of the environment from a barn in upstate New York. And she reflects on being a Brit these days in the US. 'In the normal course of events,' she writes, 'it's Brits who like to make fun of Americans. Now, Americans are bewildered by us'. Producer: Adele Armstrong Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

As warnings are sounded of possible power cuts and lights going out this winter, Rebecca Stott reflects on our relationship with darkness. She looks at how our ancestors experienced the dark and our enduring fascination with celebrating the dark season of winter. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Will Self ponders the close connection between man and dog, as his dog nears the end of his life. He reflects on lessons learnt: 'You've taught me such a lot these past fifteen years, I wonder, old friend, what you have to teach me now that you're dying?' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

From cancel culture - ancient Greek style - to the binary politics of today, Sara Wheeler argues that the perils of entrenched positions have been clear for a very long time. In ancient Greece, once a year, citizens gathered in the forum to scratch the name of the person they most wanted removed from the political arena on an ostrakon, a shard of broken pot. Too many appearances, and you got banished to a faraway province for a decade...ostracised by the ostraka. 'Once you were out of Athens in the fifth century BCE', Sara writes, 'you were cancelled good and proper'. History, she says, ought to teach us the importance of listening to each other and the value of nuance. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Howard Jacobson ponders greed, wealth and horse-and-sparrow, or 'trickle down', economics. From King Lear and Deuteronomy to bankers' bonuses and universal credit, Howard extols the concept of sufficiency and concludes that trickle down economics simply doesn't work. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Bernardine Evaristo reflects on notions of blackness in the aftermath of comments made this week by the Labour MP, Rupa Huq, who described the Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, as 'superficially' black. 'If one of the most egregious features of racism' Bernardine writes, 'is to reduce people to stereotypes, to homogenise and generalise the qualities of people according to their racialised identities, then what does it say about us when we describe a person as not really being black or Asian because they do not behave according to our values, cultural codes or political interests?' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

As Vladimir Putin warns he is willing to use any military means necessary in the war with Ukraine, Zoe Strimpel - a recent convert to chess - examines how Mr Putin is likely to play his next hand. 'The future of the world once more hangs in the balance of moves between the West and Russia,' she writes. 'The question of whether Russia really does have a strategic grandmaster at the helm - and whether the West can outmanoeuvre him - has become a matter of horrible urgency'. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Michael Morpurgo reflects on the remarkable life of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. 'The crown and the jewels were costume, the Palace was a stage. She knew that, we knew that', writes Michael. 'It was a charade, but one that worked wonderfully well, because she was centre stage in our national drama, because enough of us believed in her'. As the world changed around her, Michael argues, the Queen at all times looked to the future, helped us find our place in the world and discover who we are as a people. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Megan Nolan questions why women writers still struggle to be taken seriously. 'The appearance of the woman writer', she says, 'is often clumsily welded together with her work in an effort to make the two inseparable, or indeed to act as a sort of explanation of her work, that she is able to create it at all'. Megan discusses the pressures this imposes. Photo credit: Sophie Davidson Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Penny Murphy

Will Self reflects on success...and failure. 'Ours is a society', he writes, 'in which that hoary old saying, 'Nothing succeeds like success', has been elevated to the status of a political, philosophic and indeed moral credo.' But, Will argues, this is a world typified by hyperbole and exaggeration, where the successful, 'with plenty of cake to eat, have no need to partake of the true bread of life, which is, of course, failure'. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Penny Murphy

Linda Colley argues that President Putin's invasion of Ukraine is a wake-up call which should remind people that the days of empire are far from over. And these enduring imperial habits, she says, are evident in some unexpected quarters - not just in places like Russia and China. 'When Donald Trump floated the idea of the US purchasing Greenland in 2019, this was widely dismissed as just another Trumpian eccentricity', she writes. 'But this 'real estate deal' as the former president characteristically described his Greenland project, was actually in line with large portions of American history'. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Rod Farquhar Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

John Connell goes fishing in northern Spain, home to one of the oldest populations of Atlantic salmon in the world. But he discovers a world on an ecological edge - with water at dangerously low levels, distraught fishermen and virtually no fish. 'What is a fish without a river?' he asks. 'Indeed what is a river without a fish?' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Neil Churchill Production Coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Sara Wheeler has just been appointed the authorised biographer of the travel writer, Jan Morris. But she faces a dilemma. She's concerned that she is 'effectively appropriating the story of a woman who appropriated hundreds of other stories'. How, she wonders, can she navigate this tricky territory. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

From boyhood, through young adulthood, to the present day, Howard Jacobson ponders his relationship with dancing. As summer festivals get underway across the UK, Howard tries to understand the attraction. 'I didn’t dance to Paul McCartney in the 60s, and I’m not going to start now... dancing isn’t what I do,' he says. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Tom Shakespeare decided several years ago he was no longer going to fly for pleasure. But his father's cousin - who lives in the US - has just turned 90 and he'd love to see her again. He describes his fraught decision - as he grapples with his environmental conscience. Reading from WH Auden's poem, 'Musée des Beaux Arts'. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

As the Tory leadership election highlights questions of social mobility, David Goodhart looks at why some people seem to have more luck than others. To what extent can we create our own opportunities, regardless of background? What role does personality play? And is it really possible to engineer and cultivate our own luck by being open to chance encounters? Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

'We're witnessing a major change in British politics,' writes John Gray. 'But to what?' With Boris Johnson on the way out, many Conservatives, he says, believe the party needs a new 'big idea'. But that is a fundamental error, he believes. 'What the party needs is not another new philosophy but a healthy dose of pragmatism...new thinking, but not some grand new theory'. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Penny Murphy

Zoe Strimpel argues that wealth creation should be the bedrock of politics. She says that while she loathes the arrogance sometimes displayed by the super rich - especially in the present climate where millions are sinking into poverty - it's not billionaires who are the problem. 'My view is that we need not fewer billionaires but more, the richer the better,' she writes. 'In fact, the more rich people the better'. Hatred of billionaires, she believes, is perplexing at a time when government can't, or won't, fill huge gaps in funding. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith.

Sarah Dunant relives a road trip she took 50 years ago, travelling across the USA at a time when Roe v Wade was the talk of America, and revolution was in the air. 'I can only imagine what it must be like to be a woman living in America this week, she writes in the aftermath of the decision by the US Supreme Court - a decision which almost instantly makes abortion illegal in more than 20 US states. She takes us back to 1972 and her travels across America in a beat-up car, when radical lawyers were honing their arguments to first present the case to the country's highest court. 'America's post-war abundance and energy, its style, its movies and its music saturated our youth', she says. 'We had the time of our lives - even the bad bits were good, we were living the dream'. And, fifty years on, she reflects on what has happened to 'the fabric of this extraordinary country'. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

'It's time to acknowledge', writes Will Self, 'that we don't really feel nostalgia at all - only something far more worrying and debilitating: a condition I've named no-stalgia'. Will argues that the West is particularly in thrall to rose-tinted nostalgia and looks to Japan - and its concept of 'mono no aware' - as an alternative and healthier way of thinking about the past. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Howard Jacobson reflects on his upcoming 'significant birthday' and why he's become a willing participant in the ways of personal trainers. 'I say trainer but I am past training,' writes Howard. 'He's more my stretcher. My wife's stretcher, actually, but she doesn't want to be stretched while I shrink. I refused to have him at first. But I capitulated. It was either that or watch my wife by stretched to twice my length'. So down on the floor he goes, 'hoping someone - anyone - will think I'm a weekend younger than I actually am'. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith.

Adam Gopnik grew up in Canada, where he saw the Queen age gracefully on the country's bank notes - though he says the royal connection often felt vague. Arriving in London this week amid union flags and flowers, Adam reflects on the constancy of the Queen's reign. "What lasts for seventy years," he writes, "and never takes a turn into indecency or becomes cruel or sordid in any of the obvious ways has my vote. Well, not my vote, obviously....my allegiance. Well, okay, not my allegiance... my admiration." Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Nigel Appleton Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

After recently discovering the secret of her local meadow, which hides the ruins of World War Two, Rebecca Stott reflects on how we rebuild lives and landscapes, from 6th Century Britain to post-war Berlin to Beirut. She reflects on the damage currently being inflicted on Ukraine, and highlights recent discussions held by the Mayor of Kharkiv to plan the rebuilding of his city. 'It struck me as remarkable that despite the war, despite seeing his city in ruins... the mayor had the capacity to start thinking about the future.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith.

'Over the centuries', writes Michael Morpurgo, 'we have been a safe haven to so many, and they have helped make us the people we are today - at our best, a deeply humanitarian people. I fear we are not at our best today'. Michael argues that, although we need to address the issue of people smuggling and deaths from dangerous Channel crossings, we must not lose our capacity for kindness and 'generosity of spirit' towards those who need our help. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Hugh Levinson

'We must never underestimate the power of words to shape public opinion and politics', writes Bernardine Evaristo. This comes in the aftermath of a call from a school authority in South Dakota for the banning of her novel, 'Girl, Woman, Other' on the grounds that it - and four other novels - are unsuitable for seventeen and eighteen-year-olds. Bernardine argues that we should avoid vocabulary that fosters outrage and try instead to find words that convey our exact, and reasoned, argument. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

In the aftermath of recent headlines coming out of the Commons, Sarah Dunant explores sexual equality through the ages. She looks in particular at the idea that 'women are temptresses who cannot - by definition of their sex - be trusted'. "So ingrained is this within Christian culture," Sarah writes, "that it defined attitudes towards women for millennia". Biblical accounts, renaissance sculpture, fairy tales and politics are all put under the spotlight. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Will Self presents a very British solution to the issues surrounding the legalisation of marijuana. Considering the pervasiveness of cannabis in the UK, he says the question that should currently be preoccupying us as a society is not whether marijuana should be legalised, but how. "My model here would be the old Tote," he says, "a form of nationalised gambling that for many years mitigated its worst effects by limiting opportunities and hence possible losses." He says that we must avoid the "commercialised free-for-all that's emerging in the US and parts of Canada." Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

"It is a terrible thing to be in possession of a truth that people don't want to hear," writes Howard Jacobson. By way of Primo Levi, the great chronicler of the Holocaust, Coleridge's 'The Ancient Mariner' and stories emerging today from Ukraine, Howard argues that stories of truth must be listened to, no matter how uncomfortable or challenging we find them. "No deceit is ever so perfected," he says, "that it doesn't require the connivance of the deceived". Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Zoe Strimpel asks the seemingly simple question 'what is a woman', but finds no simple answer as she explores the question through a brief history of feminist thought. She explores the ongoing controversy over trans women in women's competitive sport, and the reluctance of public figures to define what a woman is. while revealing her own views on the issue. "As the history of feminism itself makes clear, gender and sex are genuinely complicated. That overconfident or oversimplified definitions of woman - which apparently we're all supposed to be able to produce - can be limiting and crude. Not just in relation to trans women but biological women too," she writes. She continues: "The bitter debate about trans women versus women is a debate about the meaning and realness of biology. And yes, biological difference matters, sometimes hugely. It is certainly real. But there is room for nuance: indeed, there is a necessity for it. Without it, I fear a relapse into arguing that women are defined by their biology beyond the swimming pool or the cycling track or the locker room." Producer: Sheila Cook Sound: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Janet Staples Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

The everyday repression of life in Russia, as experienced by an anonymous dissident playwright. In this essay, she reflects on the war in Ukraine and asks what role she and her fellow Russians might have played in it, what they might have done to stop it - and what Ukrainians must think of them now. In turn, she explains how the Russian state is actively controlling the narrative about the war - and reveals the harsh consequences for those who dare veer from the approved 'truth'. "They arrest protestors for carrying blank sheets of paper. It doesn’t matter what’s written on it, only that you are carrying it. If you are suspected of opposing the government, then you must be guilty." Reflecting on Russia's history, she weighs up how life today both mirrors and is profoundly different to the harshest days of Stalinist rule, while pointing out the numerous violations of the country's constitution. The essay is translated and read by poet and translator Sasha Dugdale. Producer: Sheila Cook Sound: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

'Perhaps, like me,' writes A L Kennedy, 'you can now only picture Cabinet meetings as gatherings where ministers and staff sing la-la-la with their fingers in their ears while dancing between the wine fridges.' In the midst of a lot of bad news, Alison finds some room for cheer. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Vadon

Adam Gopnik seeks enlightenment for our time in Tolstoy's War and Peace, finding parallels in Tolstoy's thinking for today's war in Ukraine. Reflecting on how Russian characters in the book converse in fluent French, Adam considers how mixed identities should not undermine national integrity, writing that the composite nature of Ukrainian identity does not cast doubt on its integrity as a country. He also explores Tolstoy's debunking of the 'great man' theory of history, and a reminder that 'history lies outside the control of any one hero, or heroine' while conceding that heroism is in itself a plausible concept, and 'if great men and women do not cause history, they surely make history. We seem to be seeing it made in action right now.' Producer: Sheila Cook Sound: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

"When war smashes its way into our living rooms as it did three weeks ago", writes Sarah Dunant, "it is pictures rather than words that hit hardest". Sarah discusses the impact of images from war through the centuries and the history they write. And she ponders which image from Putin's war will represent this moment in the future. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Hugh Levinson

For the past five years, Rebecca Stott and a Russian friend have spent time together... digging heavy soil, planting hawthorn trees and pruning wild roses. Veronika is a translator and a university lecturer, with a talent for gardening. She's helped Rebecca in her garden; Rebecca has discussed translations with Veronika. Now, in the light of events in Ukraine, Rebecca talks about their friendship. Producer: Adele Armstrong Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman Sound: Peter Bosher Editor: Penny Murphy

Will Self tells the story of Vasily Arkhipov, the commander of a Soviet nuclear-armed submarine, who during the Cuban Missile Crisis refused to fire his vessel's nuclear weapon and averted, many believe, a Third World War. In the light of President Putin's actions this week, Will argues that the threat of nuclear apocalypse has never really gone away, however much we've tried to convince ourselves otherwise. Producer: Adele Armstrong Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman Sound: Rod Farquhar Editor: Hugh Levinson

Sara Wheeler reflects that the attack on Ukraine is not the war of the Russian people she has known. "The calamitous news eroding any remote sense we might have nurtured of peace in our time is, we now know, not going to cease any time soon. Yet while the image of a villainous Russia dominates the news agenda, I remember Russians I have met over the years on my travels in their land. This is not their war." Producer: Sheila Cook Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman Sound: Peter Bosher Editor: Penny Murphy

John Connell reflects on planting trees on his family farm in Ireland as reparation for the years he has spent flying round the world, and also as an intrinsic good. "For so many the planting of the tree for nature itself, not for politics, or development or climate change or remembrance of some brutal war but for the contribution of life is never thought of....We do not measure success in knowing the way of the earth because for the most part, the greater part of society is cut off from the political act of growing something to produce oxygen and sequester carbon." Producer: Sheila Cook Sound: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Hugh Levinson

Sara Wheeler reflects on the harm done by seeing the world only from our own point of view. "At the heart of both day-to-day thoughtlessness and internecine slaughter lies a failure to see things through the eyes of another. If we all tried to see clearly rather than selectively - well, you know, I think the planet would get on quite a lot better." Producer: Sheila Cook Sound: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Penny Murphy

Will Self deplores the British attitude to children, seeing a mix of sentimentality and cruelty, and a culture which for decades allowed child sex abuse to hide "in plain view". "I'd argue that under cover of a positively Dickensian level of sentimentality that sees every child as a Tiny Tim, our cruelty and disdain for actual children continues to hold sway....The nauseating oscillation between outrage at the news of another child murdered by its parents or carers, often as a result of poverty and its drunken, drugged abusive sequels; and the prosecution of some benighted young soul for this or that 'crime' - in almost all cases actions themselves determined by exactly the same kinds of deprivation - has been a constant in my life...And then came the pandemic and its associated social measures - and exposed once more the fundamental British misopedia... A pervasive addiction to screen based work, entertainment and now education marches in lock-step with a view of children not as vitally distinct - and so necessarily in need of nurturance - but merely as little adults in waiting with all the troubling appetites that this implies." Sound: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman Producer: Sheila Cook

As she leaves academia, Rebecca Stott says an audit culture is stifling universities. "Once universities had been turned into businesses and forced to compete with each other for students and fees, scores and league tables followed. And now we are assessed and monitored all the time too. It has eroded trust....When a seminar works you can feel the electricity crackle...You can't bottle this or record it or give it a score or sell it because it happens in the moment and in the room. " Sound Engineer :Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman Producer: Sheila Cook

Sarah Dunant asks if we should judge the past by the standards of the present or future, as shifting social attitudes colour our view of how the past is portrayed. "What current historians share with those historians of the past whose vision we vehemently decry, is that they too thought they were right at the time...If we now find their views abhorrent and unjust then how about us; what might there be about our present moral certainty that the future might take issue with. What might we be missing?" Producer: Sheila Cook Sound: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman

David Goodhart rejects what he calls the 'Eton conspiracy myth' of a cabal of his old school's alumni at the top of politics and welcomes its declining influence as a sign of growing equality. "The Eton obsession not only overlooks progress made in slowly detaching our elite institutions from privilege, it also distracts from a hard-headed discussion about what we want from our elite." Producer: Sheila Cook

Zoe Strimpel reflects on the impact of rapid home delivery on the way we live our lives, and asks what our human experience might lose from this democratisation of laziness. "A whole generation is about to come of age experiencing goods and service as simply things you can have delivered to your doorstep, fast. Will their brains cease to distinguish between different types of desire and demand?...Will they lose the capacity to form plans and commit to them, plans as minor as what to cook later that night?" Producer: Sheila Cook

Adam Gopnik on why a visit to get his phone repaired resulted in an unlikely revelation. Watching those waiting alongside him, Adam comes to the realisation that we have poured ourselves so completely into our phones that the devices, paradoxically, are the one place where we can picture ourselves as selves. They have become the equivalent of the confession booths of old, or the diary in the 18th century. "We all need some box to hold our fears and desires as the winds of the world threaten to blow us away," he concludes. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Howard Jacobson ponders why he's always associated Christmas with the sea. Strange, he reckons, given he's not exactly maritime by temperament. 'Long ago at Blackpool,' he writes, 'I was lifted onto a donkey and afterwards told to make a sandcastle, but I fell off the donkey and wilder boys in Brillo-pad swimming trunks trampled over my battlements'. He looks to Matthew Arnold for an explanation of this 'mysterious nexus of sea and Santa'. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Will Self reflects on his B&B renaissance. From early memories of B&Bs with his parents...to the anonymous isolation of corporate hotels...to the 'pseudo-hygge' of Airbnbs, Will looks at our changing relationship with property. Producer: Adele Armstrong

A junk shop, a wooden chest, and some old newspapers from 1941 get Sarah Dunant pondering how we can deal with a world turned upside down. "The last time the world shook", Sarah writes, "there was an element of learned resilience". But today, she believes, most of us don't have the benefit of that. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"Landscape made us', writes Sara Wheeler, 'and now, in the dying phase of our divorce from our environment, we are unmaking the landscape'. Sara discusses the importance of place names in linking us to the land. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Tom Shakespeare explains why he can't get enough of University Challenge. Starter for ten, picture round and music round.....it's all here! But thirty-five years after he first appeared on the show, he asks if Britain is a better country. Producer: Adele Armstrong

AL Kennedy attempts to work out why, and how, everything these days seems to annoy us. But, she says, it's up to us to resist the work of 'the crisis engineers, political extremists and paid agents who turned up our emotional thermostat'. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Zoe Strimpel on the difficulty of deciding whether to have, or not have, children. She describes the 'paralysis of ambivalence'. But this ambivalence is surely, she writes, 'a natural response to the idea of setting in train the most unknowable outcome on earth'. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Sarah Dunant argues that if we can't agree on wearing masks in a crowded space, this doesn't bode well for our ability to adapt to the monumental changes we'll soon have to make to avert the climate crisis. She reports from the Italian city of Mantova where she finds a rather un-Italian attitude to all of this. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Will Self argues that the car is anything but a source of freedom. While drivers think it gives them the ability to go anywhere, in truth 'they're shackled to a grotesque and Sisyphean go-round: they have to make the money, to pay for the car, to sit in the traffic jam, to make the money to pay for the car'. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"Who owns a story?" asks Adam Gopnik. "The storyteller? The subject? Or do all stories in some sense own themselves?" Adam explores the drama being played out in the US in two stories of feuding writers, caught up in the ethics of artistic appropriation. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"In the 1880s," writes Sara Wheeler, "the scientific community began to recognise and categorise neurodiversity." We've come a long way since then, she says. But there's a long way to go. And as neurological research presses on, she argues that we, as a society, must try to keep up with its findings. Producer: Adele Armstrong

David Goodhart discusses why integration is a permanent dilemma for multi-ethnic societies. And he wonders whether, "if there is no solution to the issues that it throws up, then not talking about it much might be a rational strategy". Or, he asks, is that too complacent? Producer: Adele Armstrong

"Tomorrow's world," writes Zia Haider Rahman, "will be shaped still more by finance, tech, and the minds of the mathematically disposed." He argues that we ignore maths at our peril. Producer: Adele Armstrong

In the aftermath of the recent report on religious groups in the UK carried out by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, Rebecca Stott ponders the tension between defending the right to religious freedom and defending the rights of the child. "Maybe it is time," she writes, "to admit that closed, highly-controlling environments , that refuse or escape scrutiny in the name of religious toleration... might not be safe places to entrust the hearts, minds and bodies of children." Producer: Adele Armstrong

As thousands of Afghan refugees look to make their home in the UK, Michael Morpurgo tells the story of one child refugee, Little Amal. "Surely," he argues, "just as we now fully acknowledge our global responsibility to restore the world about us, the world we ourselves have damaged, so we must play our part as one of the richest nations on earth, to welcome in as many refugees as we can, to give them safe haven with us, to treat them right, as we know we should." Producer: Adele Armstrong Recorded by James Vickery of Radio Devon

John Gray on how former British Prime Minister, Arthur Balfour, identified a weakness in the idea that science and faith are opposites. "Beyond our narrow corner of things, there may be limitless possibilities, or else primordial chaos," he writes. "Our belief in the uniformity of nature is not a result but a presupposition of science - in other words, an act of faith." Producer: Adele Armstrong

Sara Wheeler looks at the emotional power of food. "It's regrettable", she writes, "that the link between food and happiness has been broken by the epidemic of obesity that bedevils the developed world." Producer: Adele Armstrong

'I don't want to find an eight-part drama more interesting than my life', writes Zoe Strimpel. Zoe reflects on the power of TV as a coping mechanism at the height of the COVID pandemic. But she argues that the creep of the on-screen narrative must now be slowed down in order for us to fully re-engage with our lives. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Rebecca Stott responds to the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And she reflects on how our ancestors dealt with dramatic weather events - and the gods they believed were responsible. "Our ancestors would have sacrificed everything they owned to appease those gods.....they would have prayed together, sacrificed together". "But what," she wonders, "will we in the west sacrifice to save our species? Our cars? Our meat-eating? Our air-conditioning? Our foreign holidays?" Producer: Adele Armstrong

Adam Gopnik reflects on the ever-increasing accessibility of the past. He ponders what effect it has when "everything in the world that we can ever remember, everything that has accidentally haunted our imaginations for even a moment" is available online. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Howard Jacobson turns his thoughts to the unlikely subject of present wrapping. He delves into "Expectation Disconfirmation Theory" which, he claims, "will explain why you are less happy than you ever thought you'd be with your new trainers, and more happy than you ever expected you'd be listening to this programme!" Producer: Adele Armstrong

'In the dog days of the pandemic,' writes John Connell, 'I decided the place to recharge my spirit was the mountains and oceans of Ireland's west coast.' John sets off in the footsteps of the famous Irish monk and journeyman, St Brendan, in an attempt to recover a sense of 'wonder'. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Bernardine Evaristo argues that the racist abuse levelled at England players after the final of the Euros has troubling ramifications. She says it's the kind of "vile, in-yer-face bile many of us thought we'd left behind decades ago." The essay contains very strong racist language. Producer: Adele Armstrong

'I object to the demotion of the noble art of indoor swimming,' writes Sara Wheeler, 'in the current frenzy to leap into the nearest river.' Sara explains why she has little time for the new fad of wild swimming and sings the praises of those gorgeous pools that sprang up around the UK from the nineteenth century. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Tom Shakespeare argues that red tape should be regarded as a force for good. From Charles Dickens' famous mention of red tape until today, making fun of red tape has been virtually a national pastime. But Tom cautions that as Britain prepares to set aside rules and regulations surrounding COVID, we shouldn't act too hastily. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Niall Ferguson argues that a post-pandemic 'Roaring Twenties' is far from certain. 'There are good reasons to doubt that the 2020s will be roaring in any sense at all, good or bad', he writes. 'Rather the remainder of the decade may prove distinctly boring.' Reflecting on his own teenage boredom, he believes - for young people - a boring decade would be the biggest disappointment of all. Producer: Adele Armstrong (Image: Niall Ferguson. Credit: Dewald Aukema)

Zoe Strimpel argues that the culture war is no fake or proxy war - but rather ideas about what is acceptable to know, to teach and to think. Thirty years after the US sociologist James Davison Hunter wrote his book 'Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America', Zoe looks at how those ideas are playing out around the world today. 'There is a sense of menace about,' she writes, 'of pent-up, complicated grievance. I worry that the culture war could tip into something far more deadly.' Producer: Adele Armstrong

"To locate Zionism's origins," argues Howard Jacobson, "we must leave historical for spiritual time." Howard ponders whether a hint of the tragic world view would change perceptions today in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Bernardine Evaristo argues that, as we move out of lockdown and rebuild our creative infrastructure, we must cherish the country's arts culture. She criticises disinvestment in the arts and the notion that school children should be, at every stage of their education, steered towards science and maths subjects. 'Creativity infuses every aspect of society and how we function as human beings,' she writes. 'Without creativity everything stagnates, including advances in STEM subjects.' Producer: Adele Armstrong

Sara Wheeler rereads her youthful diaries and ponders lessons learned. 'Discarding perished rubber bands that once sheaved the slim volumes,' Sara writes, 'I read the story of my own life.' She wonders if accepting and understanding the past can help us escape 'the three rs of lived experience - regret, remorse and recrimination.' Producer: Adele Armstrong

'I have to concede: I am a fervent eavesdropper', writes Will Self. He ponders eavesdropping etiquette, the hard and fast rules of the game, and whether - in our straitened times - there can be any future for the eavesdropper. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Rebecca Stott reflects on why we should be looking to the Romans, and our other ancestors, for imaginative ways of building. "People who walked the planet long before us knew more sustainable ways to build their homes", she writes. With concrete responsible for 8% of the world's carbon emissions, Rebecca argues that we urgently need to find alternatives. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"The Venetian Republic," writes Adam Gopnik, "built one of the greatest and most beautiful churches in the world, Santa Maria della Salute, to celebrate the end of one of their plagues in 1630." Adam examines why today - as we attempt to put the pandemic behind us - any sense of exaltation is notable by its absence. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Zoe Strimpel questions some of the dominant gender narratives around the Me Too movement. 'The problem,' she writes, 'is that there is no space in all this for the lives and experiences of the many straight women who don't have this problem, who do not live in fear of men, and who are not sexualised at every turn.' Producer: Adele Armstrong

David Goodhart reflects on group identities in the aftermath of the Sewell report and argues that the mere existence of a difference is not evidence of unfairness. He calls for a more nuanced understanding of group difference and the challenges this poses in an egalitarian age. Producer: Adele Armstrong

'While self-righteousness loosens the tongues of fools,' writes Howard Jacobson, 'self-censorship ties the tongues of the wise.’ Howard argues that it's not autocracy that has bedevilled us in the past twelve months, it is levity. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Michael Morpurgo reflects on meeting the Duke of Edinburgh when he was 16 and the indirect effect that meeting had in shaping his views later in life. 'He realised', writes Michael, 'that investing in our young people is the most important investment we can make as a society' . He says the Duke's passion for helping young people will be needed more than ever in the difficult months ahead, as we come out of the pandemic. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"The K beater, the whisk and the dough hook are rattling around in the bowl, and I am tasting butterscotch Angel Delight on my lips." Rebecca Stott relives memories of her 1970s childhood with one kitchen device taking centre stage. And she sees a lesson for today. Producer: Adele Armstrong (This episode was previously broadcast on the 9th October 2020.)

Adam Gopnik on the intricacies of the generation gap. It's highlighted, Adam argues, by what he calls the ‘Florida Phone Call’ - the call you get from your children ‘announcing that not only are you no longer fully competent to grasp contemporary life and its technology...but there is no longer any chance that you will grasp contemporary life and its technology!’ Producer: Adele Armstrong

Sara Wheeler explains why online packages arriving at her house are now addressed to 'The Right Reverend Sara Wheeler'! Sara looks back at the surprising history of the Mrs-Miss distinction and concludes it has no place in contemporary Britain. Producer: Adele Armstrong

'There is a theory,' writes Sarah Dunant, 'that we needed to pull back from too much face-to-face conversation...because we had all got so damn angry with each other.' The past year has certainly put a stop to much conversation, angry or otherwise. Sarah imagines how conversation will be - once we're finally able to talk to each other again, face to face. Producer: Adele Armstrong

'The spell of the cities is now being broken,' writes John Connell. On his family farm in Ireland - where he's returned after many years abroad - John reflects on the new wave of migrants to rural areas and how the pandemic is changing the face of rural communities. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"So far," writes Tom Shakespeare, "the pub has weathered the tides of history and adapted to every change...so far." But Tom argues that, in the aftermath of months of closure, this great British institution is now in peril and we all have a role in saving it. Producer: Adele Armstrong

As a psychotherapist, Susie Orbach spends her working days helping people find words to express their emotional dilemmas. But the seesaw of the pandemic presents particular challenges. "We are not simply able," she writes, "to breathe into a difficult situation, roll up our psychological sleeves or dig ourselves in without the emotional cost of feeling constrained, nervous, watchful, touchy." Producer: Adele Armstrong

Will Self reflects on a year of not travelling on the London underground... and why he's starting to miss it. "On winter days," writes Will, "when it's dark first thing, then twilight, then dark again, the tube achieves its most magical state." And he says that, without the tube, the city seems to have lost its foundations. Producer: Adele Armstrong

As the government announces a tightening of Britain's borders, Zoe Strimpel tries to understand her very personal reaction. "As a Jewish descendent of German Jewish refugees," she writes, "I have felt - for the first time in my life - a sharp edge of panic and fear." Producer: Adele Armstrong

Sarah Dunant finds chilling parallels between recent events in Washington and the Sack of Rome in 1527. "Both seemed to feel," Sarah writes, "that whatever the threat, 'God's Holy City' or 'the seat of American democracy', were somehow, by their very nature, inviolate. I mean nobody would dare, would they?" Powerful first-hand accounts, the crowd fired up by wild stories and the use of new technology are all there. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Rebecca Stott on why stories told over time seem so fitting for lockdown. "In this third lockdown," Rebecca writes, "now that my grown up children have gone back to their flats, I am living alone for the first time. I miss our conversations over the dinner table. I miss mulling over the day with them." But, she says, the cumulative power of slow storytelling is a perfect antidote. And, in particular, The Archers! Producer: Adele Armstrong

John Gray argues that the social media bans on Donald Trump pose many risks. "The country is already divided between political tribes that hardly speak to one another," he writes. "More than any other advanced country, American has developed a dangerously binary type of public life. " He fears curbing free speech - in the way the tech giants have done with Donald Trump - risks threatening America's very stability. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Adam Gopnik attempts to make sense of events in Washington this week and argues that the attack on Congress was predictable. And he explores "the fascinating mismatch between the cult leader and the cult". Producer: Adele Armstrong

Adam Gopnik, cycling around Central Park in New York, explains why going round in circles suddenly appears not futile, but fortunate. In the midst of the pandemic, Adam - like thousands of other New Yorkers - has taken to cycling round the park on a daily basis. "The truth, revealed at the end of one more revolution is simple," he writes. "We feel lucky to be alive. That may be the one truth we didn't know before, or didn't know enough." Producer: Adele Armstrong

Bernardine Evaristo reflects on spirituality and syncretism. "There are many people," she writes, "who are rock solid in a particular faith...but others are more flexible or live with multiple belief systems." Bernardine tells us why she loves the idea of the African-American celebration of Kwanzaa, founded in 1966 and designed to give African-Americans a winter festival that is uniquely theirs. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Sara Wheeler loves maps. Taking her cue from a 1755 map on her desk, she asks how maps can help us navigate our contemporary crisis. And she argues that - from cholera to covid - public health cartography has played a crucial role. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Howard Jacobson reflects on hugging, past and present. He casts his mind back to his school days and one of his favourite plays, Moliere's The Misanthropist. Howard decides that the play's hero, the misanthropic Alceste, is "the perfect citizen for our times - one who respects social distancing, stays out of pubs and similar places of entertainment, and compromises no other person's health." And he believes that, were more of us to follow Alceste's lead, then the virus would have "nowhere to travel to and must at last give up and turn into a recluse itself." Producer: Adele Armstrong

"Unusual conditions produce novel responses" writes Will Self. And Will's response is what he calls "edible architecture". Pounding the pavements with his son during lockdown, they imagine which of London's edifices would be most edible...were they to be made out of food, rather than masonry. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Bernardine Evaristo discusses body image and the fashion industry. Why, she asks, do fashionable clothes still need to be marketed by "long-limbed, boy-hipped young women whose silhouettes have no womanly curves and whose body parts have no jiggle-factor?" Producer: Adele Armstrong

In the week where his appointment to the Equality and Human Rights Commission has come in for criticism, David Goodhart defends objective facts over personal experience. "Our knowledge of the world is usually some sort of balance between personal experience and abstract ideas," he writes. "But the focus on the primacy of subjective experience....can go too far." Producer: Adele Armstrong

Sara Wheeler reflects on lockdown for her brother - profoundly learning disabled - and others like him. Books, she writes, "teach us that my brother's isolation and society's inability to embrace him as he deserves to be embraced have always been with us." But she wonders if, in these times, books can also teach us to be kind. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Howard Jacobson with his personal reaction to a monumental week in US politics. In an attempt to define what's at stake, Howard turns his attention to Basil Fawlty, the Garden of Eden and Jonathan Swift's Big and Little-Endians. And he has a brush with concussion along the way! Producer: Adele Armstrong

Zoe Strimpel examines why so many people have become passionately obsessed with dogs. "We have moved," she writes, "beyond affection, beyond dog-is-person's-best-friend love, into a passionate confusion whereby we now seem to think and feel that there is literally no difference between pets and people." She examines the roots of our attachment to dogs and argues that we need to re-discover a more "pet-appropriate variety" of love in relation to our pooches. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"My mother tended to do it in shops and on public transport - my father favoured pubs..." Taking a leaf out of his parents' book, Will Self advocates a novel "practice" for our times. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"Big as it looks, it is nothing but gas and more gas, imposing its will on the sky by sheer bluster." On a night walk through Manhattan, Adam Gopnik reflects on the appearance of Jupiter high in the sky... and muses on the significance of this gassy planet today. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"The K beater, the whisk and the dough hook are rattling around in the bowl, and I am tasting butterscotch Angel Delight on my lips." Rebecca Stott relives memories of her 1970s childhood with one kitchen device taking centre stage. And she sees a lesson for today. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"As a fully fledged luvvie," writes Bernardine Evaristo, "practically every greeting and farewell is accompanied by a kiss or hug." But these days hugs feel like a distant memory and, she argues, wearing a mask is the least we can do. "It's an act of compassion, self-protection and a commitment towards the survival of our fellow humans, our country, our world." Producer: Adele Armstrong

With widespread unease over the government 's handling of the pandemic, Tom Shakespeare proposes that ordinary citizens should be allowed a greater say in what rules we should be following. "Then there would be no elites to blame," he says, "because the people making the decisions would be you and me, and our deliberations would be public." Producer: Adele Armstrong

Facts have lost their meaning," writes Sarah Dunant. "In their place, belief has taken over." Sarah discusses QAnon, widening social divisions, and her conversations with her hairdresser. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"As the culture war has heated up," writes Zoe Strimpel, "every word and tweet is vested with the insignia of identity, and neutrality is no longer an acceptable carpet under which to hide." Zoe discusses how subjects which were, until fairly recently, little more than sources of minor disagreements now form "the basis of warring social groups." Producer: Adele Armstrong

As children return to school, Michael Morpurgo questions whether we are educating our children....or programming them. "The pandemic has found us out," Michael writes, "shown us how ridiculous and absurd and sad" is the rigidity of a system of education so dictated and dominated by endless data gathering and exams. He argues that we must use this opportunity - where so much is up for grabs - to take a serious look at what needs to change. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"At no time, in modern times," writes Adam Gopnik, "have we endured so much and understood so little." But Adam reminds us that plagues have often, in the past, preceded times of plenty - the Jazz Age, for example, following closely on the heels of the 1918 flu pandemic in the US. "So what lies before us may be parched austerity and continuing depression... or champagne at midnight in Gatsby's garden." Producer: Adele Armstrong

"The strange kind of liberalism that is currently in fashion," writes John Gray, "has rejected tolerance in favour of enforcing what it is sure is the truth." He says these new "illiberal liberals" who allow freedom of expression only to those they regard as progressive, risk smothering "the contradictory and enlightened ideas that make us human." Producer: Adele Armstrong

The writer, Katherine Mansfield, was diagnosed with TB in 1917. She travelled across Europe - trying all sorts of therapies - until her death. But it would be another twenty years before a cure was actually discovered. Will Self questions whether - if it takes years to find an effective vaccine or treatment for COVID 19 - we will still manage to maintain our faith in human progress. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"If we accept that gender is something imposed on us," writes Bernardine Evaristo, "as opposed to intrinsic to who we are as humans, then what does it matter if people want to switch genders?" Bernardine discusses the "gender revolution" and our attitudes to the disruption of traditional gender roles. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"There's nothing wrong with ambition," writes Linda Colley, "but coming to terms with our inescapable geographical smallness would be helpful." She says historically there's been a tendency to kick against this awkward fact and an obsession with the idea of a global Britain. Linda argues that we should recognise the advantages of smallness - nourishing a nation's innovation and agility. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"Once in a blue moon," writes Rebecca Stott, "new technologies become available that make it possible to open up ancient, long-shelved historical mysteries." Rebecca tells how modern science has explained the events of 536 AD when the sun 'disappeared' and a devastating pandemic followed. And she ponders what scientists - hundreds of years from now - will be able to tell about our current pandemic and our environmental crisis. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Will Self on why a novelty bottle opener - with little plastic seahorses floating in an acrylic handle - is his idea of a perfect inheritance. "The security that financial inheritance may convey is merely relative - and divisive," he writes. So, instead, Will suggests leaving behind something ordinary....and useful. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"In the absence of sports, sports radio thrives," writes Adam Gopnik, "and churns and heaves and roils on a diet of pure abstraction, stays awake all night on the caffeine of accelerated nothingness." Adam examines the American fascination with call-in shows about sport - and the paradox that although they have absolutely no sport to talk about right now, the shows have never been more argumentative or more alive. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"We need to challenge how we historicise the past and give it a thorough spring clean," writes Bernardine Evaristo. Bernardine discusses the UK's response to Black Lives Matter, "a necessary moment in our political history." Producer: Adele Armstrong

"There is a piece of advice that my white British friends seem never to receive but which I have had the good fortune to be given on many occasions - 'If you don't like it here, you can always leave'". Zia Haider Rahman reflects on what lies behind the comment. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Mary Beard asks if the iconic university lecture might have had its day, in the aftermath of the pandemic. "I reckon that over my career I've done getting on for 2000 of them....I doubt I'll be doing another before I retire." Producer: Adele Armstrong

"It seemed to occur to nobody in the Cummings hunt that the greater good would almost certainly have been served by down-playing the story". David Goodhart examines the accountability and transparency requirements of modern institutions and the impact they've had on the government's handling of the pandemic. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"I put myself under lock and key a week before everyone else after a clammy jogger in a pink velveteen suit panted in my face in Hyde Park". Howard Jacobson takes a wry view of life under lockdown. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"However different our days are, we are all waiting," writes Rebecca Stott. Via Samuel Beckett, a walk in Norfolk and a discussion of the three stages of twilight, Rebecca reflects on the waiting of lockdown. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"Others may thrill to the serendipity of bacon-and-eggs," writes Will Self, "but it's the determinism of dustpan-and-brush that I exalt". Dusting, wiping, vacuuming and sweeping in lockdown, Will ponders the Great British Wipe-Up. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"She'd been waiting for the catastrophe to end catastrophes all her life and now it was here she seemed not to give a fig about it". Howard Jacobson reflects on his mother's life - and death. Producer: Adele Armstrong

AL Kennedy ponders why we're bad at assessing risks. "We prioritize them according to emotion and information," she says, "but our emotions cloud our judgement and our information may be patchy, absent or misleading." She argues that one risk though is incontrovertible - the risk to the planet - and we need to find a way to ensure its survival. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"I can't have been alone among those quarantined these past few weeks," writes Will Self, "in seeking out the greatest imaginative spaces with which to counterpoint my confinement." Courtesy of Google Earth, Will sets out to simulate a trip he was planning to make to central Australia and ponders what lessons Aboriginal culture might have for the days of pandemic. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Zia Haider Rahman describes the "profound moral questions" facing society as it starts to discuss how the COVID-19 lockdown might, eventually, be ended. We have to face up to the fact, he says, that our choices will have huge impacts for which we must take responsibility. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"I’ve been thinking about projects left unfinished," writes Rebecca Stott. " I’ve got the pages of two unfinished novels on my hard-drive, and a pile of sewing projects, seams pinned, pins rusting, in my sewing basket." With the help of Leonardo da Vinci, "a notorious non-finisher," Rebecca ponders the meaning of our imperfect and incomplete projects. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"I can see her on my phone, I can even hear her on my phone, but I can't feel her weight in my arms and her wiggling warmth," writes Tom Shakespeare about his new-born granddaughter. With everyone in lock-down, Tom talks about his longing to meet his first grand-daughter. And he knows it's a sadness he shares with many other grandparents. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"Having been alone in the apartment now for almost three weeks," writes Adam Gopnik in New York, "I have become aware of the countless fine shades of solitude". Adam describes the daily roller coaster ride of anxiety and normalcy - from the solitude of morning coffee with the dog to the solitude of the Manhattan street late at night. With each day that passes, he finds that "the hues and shades of solitude are defining themselves, with a distinction that gives at least a shape, and sometimes the hint of a meaning, to our time inside". Producer: Adele Armstrong

"As our physical reality is reduced down to a few rooms or a view from a window," writes Sarah Dunant, "our ability to conjure up things we're not able to experience is going to be vital to feed our imaginations." Sarah argues that - given social distancing - imagination is going to be an exceedingly powerful inner muscle when it comes to our mental survival. She offers us a few of her stand out images to get us started. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"I have come to think of the virus as that monster from the ancient Norse legend of Beowulf, Grendel," writes Michael Morpurgo. "He's out there now, threatening my home, my village, my family and friends". Michael talks about what it feels like to be hunkered down in his little cottage in Devon - waiting for coronavirus to pass. Recorded by Hamish Marshall from Radio Devon. Produced by Adele Armstrong.

"There is nothing some of us enjoy more," writes Adam Gopnik, "than finding analogies to our own paltry and predictable lives in scenes from famous gangster movies." As his children move away from home and he becomes an "empty nester", Adam finds himself, too, doing just that. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"There are some things that one just has to put up with," writes Tom Shakespeare. "Sometimes over-thinking is the worst response." Tom reflects on how we can best respond to difficult situations. Producer: Adele Armstrong

To recline....or not to recline your aeroplane seat? Adam Gopnik ponders the question of “recline-gate” in the aftermath of the recent American Airlines incident that went viral. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"I am holding history in my hands," writes Sarah Dunant. "The date on the letter is February 1490...the place, the city of Mantua in Italy". As she delves through the Mantuan State Archive, Sarah reflects on the task of understanding and writing history. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"We have been here before, many times" writes Sarah Dunant as she charts some key moments in history when the world has been gripped by fear over the spread of disease. From Columbus and the outbreak of syphilis in 1495, to cholera at Mecca in the 1860s ....and Wuhan today. She ponders what insights this present crisis might bring. Producer: Adele Armstrong

From the “pernicious fife-footlers polluting the sooty Victorian cities” to the “fiendish electronic cacophony” of today, Will Self bemoans the ever-increasing difficulty of finding a bit of peace and quiet. He wonders why we tolerate this growing noise pollution, even though we know that high levels of ambient noise cause stress, insomnia and even, if persistent, poor mental health. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"Of all the men I never wanted to grow old into", writes Howard Jacobson, "this is the man I wanted to grow into least: the prepared-for-all-eventualities shopper". Howard describes his hours of neatly folding plastic bags on his hands and knees on his living room floor...in order to let him shop responsibly. Gone is his old profligacy. "The wild", he says, "have become the watchful". Producer: Adele Armstrong

"All racism is a species not only of unreason... but of unreason enthusiastically embraced", writes Howard Jacobson. Howard discusses why anti-Semitism should trouble us all, regardless of our background. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Following the death of the philosopher, author and self-professed Wagner fan, Sir Roger Scruton, this is one of our favourite talks he did for the series. As Wagner’s Ring – that huge and controversial cycle of operas - went on tour around the UK, Roger talked about why The Ring is absolutely a story for our time. "I have loved The Ring and learned from it for over 50 years and for me, it is quite simply the truth about our world - but the truth expressed by means of music of unquestionable authority and supreme melodic and harmonic power". The talk was first broadcast in 2016. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Will Self explores what he sees as a growing sense of collective hypocrisy. He looks at why we're often so reluctant to use the word "hypocrisy" and argues that we accept hypocrisy in part because "civilisation as currently constituted would be quite impossible without a whole panoply of carefully evolved rituals designed to elide incompatible acts and beliefs". Producer: Adele Armstrong

"After months of hearing about the climate emergency", writes Rebecca Stott, "I thought it would be a good thing to spend some time around a species that was doing really well". She decided to become a seal warden...but the job is rather different from what she was expecting. "This wild, old, slithery, stinking world of the sand dunes really isn't cute" she says. "But there are some things in nature, dare I say it, that are a lot more interesting than cute". Producer: Adele Armstrong

"I've long been fascinated with taxidermy", writes Rebecca Stott, "but it disturbs me". She explains why - after many years - she's made her peace with taxidermy. "After all, can we really be all high-horse-ish about the way our ancestors shot, classified and stuffed everything in their path, given how much damage we've done to species and their habitats in the last fifty years alone?" Producer: Adele Armstrong

“Whatever humans do, the world is not going to end”, writes John Gray. “Humankind cannot destroy the planet any more than it can save it”. John Gray ponders why the belief that the human world can be completely and suddenly transformed, never really goes away. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"I can no longer force myself", writes Will Self, "to make choices that appear quite meaningless to me". He outlines why he decided - for the first time in his life - not to cast a vote in the election. Producer: Adele Armstrong

John Gray tells the story of Archy and Mehitabel, a newspaper column created in 1916 by the US journalist Don Marquis. It chronicles the conversations between a cockroach and a cat and was a phenomenal success with a readership who "mistrusted politicians and intellectuals who talked grandly of a radiant future". John Gray reflects on the lessons for today. Producer: Adele Armstrong ,

Following the death of the brilliantly funny Clive James - one of the first presenters of "A Point of View" - this is one of his early talks for the series. In this programme - first broadcast in 2007 - Clive ponders what makes us happy. In his own pursuit of happiness, he sits on a bench in Central Park, relives his first slice of watermelon and considers the wise words of Lawrence of Arabia. Producer: Adele Armstrong Originally produced by Rosie Goldsmith

"In all things erotic", writes Adam Gopnik, "morals and manners run at right angles to each other". Adam argues that the much discussed "sex recession" in the US is primarily a question of misunderstanding between generations - and is certainly not a cause for moral panic! "We misread the sex because the signs change, and we misread the signs to mean that the sex is changing...or even that the sex is vanishing". Producer: Adele Armstrong

"Only when I wander, usually by accident, into my spam box", writes Adam Gopnik, "do I find anything resembling actual affection - prose that captures the spark of human sympathy, the language of exquisite deference, that the Enlightenment philosophers insisted was the necessary mucilage of human societies". The excessive courtesy of spam letters is, of course, designed to entrap the reader but why, Adam wonders, have the decencies of human correspondence disappeared from virtually all other forms of communication these days. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"Finding, promoting and revaluing women artists through the ages", writes Sarah Dunant, "has been one of the great – albeit still ongoing – cultural success stories of our time". Sarah discusses the undervalued women of art who are being rediscovered in large numbers - and the very modern stories they tell. Producer: Adele Armstrong

For many, three or four years away from home at a residential university is "a kind of rite of passage into adulthood", says David Goodhart. But - given most other countries seem to do fine without it - is it time to think again about this very British tradition? Producer: Adele Armstrong

"It is the most extraordinary thing about humans", writes Sarah Dunant, "that along with our - albeit limited - ability to prepare for an unknown future, we find it very hard to accept the unassailable fact of our own end". Sarah describes her experience talking with a group of strangers one evening at a Death Cafe. Producer: Adele Armstrong

David Goodhart discusses the rise of new "tribes" in British political life. "The old tribes were scarcely visible because they had become so familiar", he writes. "The new ones seem noisy and jarring and all too visible". He calls this new anti-left/right package the "hidden majority" package. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Margaret Heffernan argues that, in the world of technology, there's nothing inevitable about the future. "I'm not saying that automation isn't a big trend or that driverless cars aren't a possibility", she writes, "but there is nothing about them that is inevitable". She believes all these assertions of inevitability have agendas. "If we let Silicon Valley hijack our future", she says, "we gain the comfort of certainty, but lose our freedom". Producer: Adele Armstrong

"Childhood really should be the happiest days of our children's lives," writes Michael Morpurgo. "But for so many of them today it is not". Michael Morpurgo reflects on the damage being caused to increasing numbers of children by stress and anxiety. He makes an impassioned plea to schools to do much more to alleviate stress. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Michael Morpurgo reflects on growing old. "You find you are now amongst the last old trees in the park", he writes, "wary of wild winds of fortune that might weaken you or uproot you". But he finds his mentors - the young and the very old. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"Let me tell you about dwarfs and being stared at". With a hint of stand up comedy, Tom Shakespeare writes poignantly about what it feels like to be stared at. "The English," he says, "who were once known everywhere for their politeness and decorum, no longer hold back...we do what we want because we consider we have a right". Tom appeals for a rediscovery of "the chain of mutual dependency in which we are still all linked together." Producer: Adele Armstrong

The economist, John Maynard Keynes once said to someone, "When my information changes, I change my mind. What do you do?" Tom Shakespeare argues that we need to reconsider our view that changing your mind is a weakness. "Sticking to your guns", he says, is of little benefit in today's complicated, fast-changing world. Producer: Adele Armstrong

For the September blues, writes Sarah Dunant, "usually time is the healer...you buckle down and get on with it...and by the end of October, things are on track for winter". But not, she thinks, this year. Sarah describes why she feels this year's September malaise has a different quality to it. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Rebecca Stott is fascinated with abandoned or ruined cities. She knows she's in good company - along with the millions of people who've been drawn to the recent mini-series, Chernobyl... or the video game, Metro Exodus. She believes that, in these precarious times, they give us what H.G. Wells once called 'a sense of dethronement'. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"For several centuries", writes Rebecca Stott, "the dominant Western version of Nature has been Mother Nature, benevolent, ever-giving, nurturing, bountiful and compliant". This was later replaced by a less compliant and benevolent image....but we've always perpetuated an idea of Nature as something outside us, something to be mastered. Rebecca argues that we need to rethink our relationship with nature - and see ourselves as in nature and part of nature, not outside of it. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"No matter how many times you see the sun rise", writes Will Self, "it doesn't mean it will definitely rise tomorrow - or, indeed, that you'll be there to see it". Will sets out why he has a problem with theory of all sorts and the negative effect “theory addicts” are having on our contemporary intellectual culture. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"Christianity has a lot to answer for," writes Will Self, "when it comes to our estrangement from our bodies - making our evacuations, quite as much as our sexual acts - an anathema in polite society". Will argues that our infantilism in this regard detracts from our engagement with the world. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"That culture can be - and is - being commoditised in the private sector, is a truth universally acknowledged with every ticket and book sale," writes Will Self. But, he argues, the conflating of cultural and financial value has now spread well beyond the private realm. The National Lottery is head of his blame list. "I think of the National Lottery as a sort of reverse Midas-touch, turning everything gold it finances to....rubbish." Producer: Adele Armstrong

"It's well within living memory," writes Sarah Dunant, "that tourism and travel was a wondrous thing." But times have changed: "It feels as if every unnecessary journey we make now has the dull drumbeat of global fragility and climate change in the background." Sarah ponders where foreign travel goes from here. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"Could it be that the only way out at this point is a no deal Brexit of the kind that so many dread?" asks John Gray. He argues that it is the logical conclusion of present events. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"Of late, words have foregone their meaning or been given meanings they never had", writes Howard Jacobson. Starting with "betrayal" and ending with "the will of the people", Howard sets out to take back sovereignty....over words. "I can't complain", he admits, "of some parties to our great national debate being Little Englanders if I'm a little Languager.....but if each party to a discussion doesn't know what the other is talking about, we might as well not have language at all". Producer: Adele Armstrong

Taking his lead from Duke Ellington, Amit Chaudhuri ponders what we mean by “my people”. He asks whether we need to create new, more inclusive, categories fit for modern times in order to describe the groups we belong to. Producer: Adele Armstrong

David Goodhart argues that earlier eras have much to teach us about group solidarity. He explores the changes that have led to our post-industrial disenchantment. "We cannot and do not want to go back to a past when social horizons and life chances were far more limited", he writes, "but a recognition of some of the merits of earlier eras might help us to see more clearly the pathologies of today's achievement society". Producer: Adele Armstrong

Linda Colley argues that we all have a role to play in resolving our present political difficulties. In tough times, she says, there's a long history of people searching for a "modern man on horseback, a populist hero, who they hope will come and rescue them and make the bad things go away". But she says there are many problems with this - the most obvious one being that "leaders of this sort never properly deliver and usually do immense damage". She concludes that all of us must get involved in the work of effective democratic politics. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Monica Ali discusses the UK's use of immigration detention centres and, in particular, indefinite detention. She argues that, although detention or deportation are sometimes necessary, the policy of indefinite detention is "callous and dehumanising". She believes - as the only place in Europe that allows indefinite detention - the UK should adopt the recommendations of a recent parliamentary report and introduce a 28 day limit. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"If you're a writer of colour", writes Monica Ali, "you're only supposed to write about what people imagine to be your self". "That self might be labelled as Asian writer, or Bangladeshi writer or BAME writer, but it is never labelled simply 'writer' - that would be the true privilege". Producer: Adele Armstrong

Val McDermid argues that - at a time when public discourse is so polarised - it's vital to keep our public libraries open. "A library card is a powerful weapon to change lives", Val writes. "With it, we learn how to value what we have, to mourn what we have lost and to dream of what we might become". She says that whatever we may hear about the death of libraries, we must ensure their future because they are "one of the few remaining places where a genuine diversity of voices can still be encountered". Producer: Adele Armstrong

David Goodhart argues that recent events show that democracy - far from being in crisis - is actually thriving. And in the aftermath of Teresa May announcing her resignation, David writes, "I think there is a great political prize for a politician or a party, old or new, that can speak across the liberal/small-c conservative value divide". Producer: Adele Armstrong

Val McDermid argues that if homelessness was classified as an illness, we'd be demanding a cure. She takes a walk round her home city to try to imagine what it would look like through the eyes of a homeless person. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Rebecca Stott imagines a conversation with Darwin about our environmental concerns

"While I would love to find a poetic way into this", writes Sarah Dunant, "I think it best just to spit it out. I'm angry. And I have been angry for quite a while now". Sarah says she doesn't see herself as an angry person - but wonders why aggression and outrage seem to have become so much part of our emotional diet. She proposes some solutions - including an National Anger Day - a great moment of catharsis to help us all be a little less....angry! Producer: Adele Armstrong

"For many Parisians, it's Notre Dame's constancy that's so reassuring" writes Joanna Robertson. "Pass by before dawn, she’s waiting there. Or late at night, amidst the deserted streets, her dark form is holding steady. Notre Dame was inviolable". Joanna Robertson reflects on how the fire is changing that taken-for-granted sight. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"If you have ever tried to scan a bio-metric passport, an e-ticket or just a packet of frozen peas", writes AL Kennedy, "you'll know that using technology can turn, within moments, into a bizarre ritual of presenting, rubbing, re-presenting, murmured prayers and computer generated instructions which lead either to complete defeat or the intervention of human assistance that could have been there all along". She argues that automation must be governed by human needs and strengths. Personal contact, she believes, is more important than ever. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"There's one thing I can't bear", writes Rebecca Stott, "and that's being talked AT". Having grown up in a separatist fundamentalist Christian sect called the Exclusive Brethren, she says she's probably rather uniquely sensitised to this. She listened to her father and grandfather holding forth for hours - "3000 hours of male monologues before I was six" she reckons! Rebecca reflects on the art of good conversation. Producer: Adele Armstrong

John Gray reflects on where British politics goes from here. "Whether Brexit is a good or bad idea," he writes, "is no longer the central issue that Britain is facing." "Instead, the question is whether our political system can survive the damage a mishandled Brexit has inflicted on it." Producer: Adele Armstrong Correction: The 1975 referendum took place on the 5th June that year on the UK's continued membership of the European Economic Community which it had joined two years earlier.

Sarah Dunant looks at the queasy relationship between art, finance and corruption. Recent protests by the photographer Nan Goldin and others over "dirty money" have hit the headlines. But Sarah argues that without some of this rather dubious funding, the art world would look very different. "What do you want", she asks. "A clean church and white walls? Because there's no doubt that without all of this lamentable corruption we would not have many of the greatest works of art the world has ever seen." Producer: Adele Armstrong

Zia Haider Rahman on why Brexit has made him feel closer to Britain. He says the referendum has revealed deeper schisms in British society than the lines between native and immigrant. "The sociological explanation", he argues, "might be that by confronting everyone with the variety and complexity of native British identities, Brexit has created space for other British identities". Producer: Adele Armstrong

AL Kennedy on why - even with apparent chaos all around us - we can’t afford to despair. "Despairing of justice, positive change, even kindness", she writes, "begins to rob our minds of the capacity to produce those things”. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Tom Shakespeare on why we’re in urgent need of a bit of plain speaking. "I don't mean here to exalt the obnoxious, the downright rude", he writes, "but while civility is a virtue, I think we could do with a little more directness". Producer: Adele Armstrong

AL Kennedy questions her love of cookery shows. "That's when I start to feel uneasy, sitting at home staring at entremets and buttercream, three-foot-high cakes made with pints of fresh eggs, because I have this theory...that television tends to memorialise things, just as they fade away. Producer: Adele Armstrong

AL Kennedy reflects on how the British sense of humour is standing up to our present political woes. "Don't get me wrong," she says, "it's nice to make people smile...but possibly Britain is now too funny". She wonders if the rest of the world is still laughing with us. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Will Self asks why our relationship with our bodies - our corporeal self - has become such a distant one. "One thing that becomes screamingly obvious the second we fall ill - and which remains with us day after day, if we're chronically so - is that we are our bodies", he writes. He warns of the dangers of exalting our minds above all else. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"For a long time we forgot about the sea", writes Stella Tillyard. "But it did not forget us. It was always there, like a jilted lover waiting to make a move. And now it is back". She says the seemingly empty and tranquil space of the Mediterranean has been abruptly reanimated, not by nature, but by man. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Val McDermid argues that referendums have had a devastating effect on our political system. "I am by nature an optimist", she writes. "But I'm really struggling here. We've broken our democracy. I don't know how to fix it and I'm afraid nobody else does either". She says the bottom line is that our political system isn't designed for the polarization that referendums inevitably bring. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Linda Colley reflects on an historic week in British politics. She turns to Lawrence Stone's famous book, "The Causes of the English Revolution", to cast light on the present turmoil. And she asks if the bitter fractures over Brexit could eventually turn out to be the modernizing force the UK needs. Producer: Adele Armstrong

As many Christmas presents start making the surreptitious trip to the charity shop, Stella Tillyard argues that many of us appear to be freeing ourselves from the unfulfilling grip of "things". She asks if - as the earth is dying under the weight or our excesses - we're "reaching a wider, bigger moment: a weariness with acquisition itself". Producer: Adele Armstrong

"There is little more infuriating", writes Tom Shakespeare, "than some quotidian website which demands you devise a new 11 letter password, including a capital letter, a lowercase letter, a number and a non-alphanumeric character, just to buy a tee shirt." Tom muses on the near impossible task of remembering an ever-growing number of online passwords. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Howard Jacobson on the joys of city parks. "I am, and always have been, a lover of city parks", he writes. "A park finishes, that's its beauty. It is circumscribed. If you want more you can walk it twice. If you want less you can slip back out into the city". Producer: Adele Armstrong

"Is our taste for righteous self-blown indignation so indurated and inwrought" writes Howard Jacobson, "that we will never again be able to shrug our shoulders, forget who we are and what we believe and embrace people who believe differently?" Howard explores the destructive nature of the Cult of Self. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"I listen to Money Box on Radio 4 as others might to a recording of Indonesian gamelan music", writes Will Self, "thrilling to the intricacies, even as I find them altogether alien". Will ponders why personal finance is such an alien concept for him. But his thoughts move to “those hundreds of thousands out there for whom the words ‘personal finance’ are, quite simply, terrifying”. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"Two things seem incontrovertible about the mounting environmental catastrophe", writes Will Self.. "It's genuinely unprecedented - and we really are in it together". Will wonders what we should say to our children about global warming and our role in it. He says we have to hope that some sort of collective wisdom can emerge "because the alternative is frankly terrifying: a degraded, dystopic and nakedly Darwinian future". Producer: Adele Armstrong

Roger Scruton argues that political correctness, far from being the cure to our conflicts, is actually the ultimate source of them. The "isms" and "phobias", he says, have been used in order to "put some complex matters beyond discussion, so that only one perspective can be publicly confessed to". "In the world of political correctness", he writes, "there is no presumption of innocence, but only a hunger for targets". Producer: Adele Armstrong

"For most of my adult life", writes Stella Tillyard, "I have had a template which I have used not only to understand myself but also to interpret the world around me. History has been my guide". But today, she says, history appears inadequate "to describe the chaos that now seems to surround us". Producer: Adele Armstrong

Stella Tillyard on how we bury and remember our dead. The idea of immortality, she believes, is taking hold in a new form. "Surely it will not be long before a new form of cemetery is created...a virtual space where all the digital remains of a person will be gathered, curated and tended". Producer: Adele Armstrong

Howard Jacobson on a very tricky dilemma - which of his possessions can he throw away or put into storage...and which must he keep? "I inhabit a simple moral universe when it comes to sheets of paper", he writes. "Paper with words on, good. Paper with numbers on, bad". But it's more complicated with some other things "How can I release the evidence of me to a storage company somewhere on the North Circular Road!" Producer: Adele Armstrong

Michael Morpurgo reflects on our future connection with the First World War. "How will we pass it on, this torch of history?", he asks. "Those missing men, those wounded, those who lived to count the cost, their story is our story and we must tell it again, keep it alive" Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Howard Jacobson discusses the politics of dress - form religious clothing ....via too short trousers...to ripped jeans. And why are men so reluctant these days, he wonders, to put on a "little finery"? Producer: Adele Armstrong

Howard Jacobson on the end of mooching as a way of life. "Rooting around, doing nothing in particular, walking but not knowing where I was walking to....I can only regret the happy mooching hours of earlier times", writes Howard. He ponders whether our present age of mass anger and disgruntlement is partly a result of our expectations of instant gratification. "We sit, like so many privileged Aladdins, rubbing our smart lamps in full confidence that the cyber genie will appear in ripped trousers and give us all we ask for". Producer: Adele Armstrong

Howard Jacobson reflects on maleness in the aftermath of the Brett Kavanaugh story. "With every sniff and grimace" Howard writes of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, "it wasn't sorrow or confusion we witnessed but petulance and menace, as though a prize bull had been cornered and in its fury knew only to kick out". "This is not a good time to be a man", he says. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Val McDermid argues that the sheer scale of tourism on a shoestring is destroying the very thing we crave when we travel. "Our great cities are year-round destinations", she writes, "but when the hordes arrive, cultural simplification is seldom far behind". She says we've grown used to cheap and cheerful instant gratification in many areas of our lives without any thought for the consequences. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Val McDermid asks if Sadiq Khan’s plan for a Glasgow-style crime reduction unit can have the same transformative effect in London as it did in Scotland. "If we change the script people live by", writes Val, "then surely we should be able to alter our outcomes". Producer: Adele Armstrong

Val McDermid argues that crime fiction isn't really about murder at all. "We shift people out of their comfort zones and make them squirm", she writes. "But not because we kill people". "It might be murder that sets the wheels in motion, but it's the time and place that lead us through the labyrinth to answers that are not always comfortable". Producer: Adele Armstrong

Adam Gopnik examines the issues raised by the row between Serena Williams and an umpire. "The question everyone is asking", writes Adam, is "would he have done the same to a man?" Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Adam Gopnik on why the prefixes we use speak volumes about us. The "pregnant prefix", Adam writes, "is now the giveaway of class identity - and class bound condescension. The "um"s, "like"s, "look"s, "well"s and particularly "so"s of the world tell all". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

"To stand in the corridor of a crowded locked ward in a contemporary British mental hospital" writes Will Self, "is still to feel oneself closer to Hogarth's hellish vision of Bedlam, than any enlightened healthcare". Will tells the disturbing story of what happened to a friend, recently detained in a London psychiatric hospital. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Tom Shakespeare is downsizing. But what to do with his books? He points out that he has nothing like the magnitude of problem faced by the Argentine-Canadian author, Alberto Manguel, a few years ago when he downsized from his medieval presbytery in France to an apartment in New York and had to deal with 35,000 books! Or even the 3,000 books Penelope Lively wrote about recently. But Tom ponders how few of his thousand or so books will be enough to live with. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Tom Shakespeare on why he rejects the idea of a bucket list. He proposes instead an idea dreamt up by one of his mates - a list that rhymes with bucket but begins with an F. "Let's call it a Forget-it-list" he says. Tom shares the top ten items on his Forget it List this week. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

As we near the end of four years of collective reflection on the First World War, Michael Morpurgo talks of the importance of never taking peace for granted. "We have been looking back, remembering, or trying to", he writes, "because remembering a time and a war that none of us can remember is hard". He discusses one particular plan - the dream of a WW1 soldier - to make a new pilgrims way in No Man's Land. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Michael Morpurgo argues it's time to think again over Brexit. "It is surely time to accept that we have made a mistake", he writes, "that whichever way we voted, things are not turning out the way we expected". "Or are we too proud?" he asks. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Michael Morpurgo on a new initiative to help refugee children. Michael says "it shames us" that Britain in recent years has done so little to help child refugees. "There are fine examples of how our predecessors have shown great kindness towards the suffering of child refugees", he writes. He argues that we now need to follow their example. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

John Gray argues that in the Brexit debate, few Remainers seem to have noticed the illiberal and fragmented Europe that has recently come into being. "Illiberal forces are advancing across the European continent", he writes, with hard right politics strengthening their hold in many countries. He says the idea that staying in the European Union is a way of protecting liberal values is simply an "illusion". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Sarah Dunant on her uneasy conundrum over inheritance tax. "Like most intelligent beings", Sarah writes, "I'm passionate about addressing climate change for future generations. But my urgency of commitment also comes from an attachment to one in particular - the next". The desire to hand something on has always been with us, but it raises big moral dilemmas. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Adam Gopnik sets out to determine the difference between cliche and universal truth. Via Homer, Shakespeare and the Beatles, Adam observes that "the deepest statements in literature are very near relations to the dumbest statements in life". How can Homer get away with writing twenty lines about laundry?! And end up with an epic poem of great beauty. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Will Self argues that the past is not "a foreign country". He says we often have delusions about the past because of our "failure to grasp how our present shapes our hindsight". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

"What would it be like to consciously feel you were nothing but a robotic phenotype", asks Will Self, "pre-programmed to replicate its own integrated genotypic code then become...obsolete?" Taking the contemporary TV series "Westworld" as his starting point, Will explores consciousness, humanity and artificial intelligence. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Will Self once wrote that he could no longer identify as a Jew at all. As anti-Semitism once again comes back to the centre stage of British political life, Will says he's had cause to rethink his position. "Once societies contain a certain proportion of active bigots", he writes, "all rational debate on such matters begins to shut down as everyone reverts - tediously, ineluctably - to type". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

"Cute mobile machines with arms, hands and big friendly eyes reminding you to take your next pill... or lifting people in and out of wheelchairs" - is this the way to look after a growing elderly population? Sarah Dunant reflects on the crisis in care for the elderly and wonders if artificial intelligence can provide a satisfactory answer. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

On 5th June 1968, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. In one of the most famous editions of Radio 4's "Letter from America" - Alistair Cooke gave an eye witness account of the assassination. This is an edited version of the original talk - broadcast on Sunday 9th June 1968.

Amit Chaudhuri on why he believes modern movies have a "spiritual glumness". "Digitisation's subterranean agenda", he says, "is to repress natural light." Unlike old black and white films which were flooded in natural light, he sees the light of digitisation as a grey light. "We're meant to be distracted by drama, violence and special effects; but, crucially, enchantment is withheld from us." Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Sarah Dunant gives a personal view on Ireland's abortion referendum. She remembers one of her first jobs after university - working in a Pregnancy Advisory Service in London as a counsellor - and seeing many young women from the Republic of Ireland who'd come to England seeking an abortion. And the day, some years later, when she went back there, that time as a client.

"Calcutta was born old", writes Amit Chaudhuri. But restoration work of old buildings in the city, he says, "is now often based on the assumption that an old building...must have once looked new, or should have". He says restoration in Calcutta - and in many other cities around the world - must stop fetishizing the new.

"My problem with words is something I have never written down or spoken out about". The writer, Stella Tillyard, talks about her "battle" with dyslexia - from her childhood to now. She vividly describes the "gremlin that takes me by the hand, pulls my confidence away, and makes my heart beat too fast when I have - as now - to read aloud". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Tom Shakespeare ponders why disabled sexuality is still so often taboo. "Sexuality is a human right", he points out....and says we must set aside the notion that disabled people have "special needs" when it comes to sexuality. "We have all the normal needs of non-disabled people". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

"The past is concretised and solidified in things", writes Stella Tillyard "and they vibrate with the experience of their use". Stella tells the story of a small Italian Museum - the Museum of Deportation and Resistance - and reflects on how we remember the past. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Tom Shakespeare on why we need to rethink our use of the mental illness metaphor. Is President Trump really "mad"?, he asks. Is Brexit "bonkers"? Or is the latest government policy "schizophrenic"? He says we all do it. "Within five minutes of starting to write this talk, I find I'm doing it myself!" But he says we need to break the habit since it shows a profound lack of understanding towards people with real mental health conditions. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

"Western liberals", writes John Gray, "are horrified by the rise of Xi Jinping". But as China's parliament votes to allow him to be President for life, John Gray argues that the future of the liberal West ironically depends on the continuing success of the world's most powerful authoritarian state. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

John Gray says the idea that empire has had its day is one of the delusions of our age. Old empires, he says, are being replaced by new ones - in China, Russia and - he argues - in Europe. He examines the idea of a European "empire of the good" - one that is liberal and democratic throughout. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

There was Chick Lit, then Grit Lit....now it's "Up Lit" - uplifting stories about kindness and community that we all seem to be reading. Kamila Shamsie says she, too, has been carried along with this wave of escapism from "dark times". But she says the idea that "upliftment" should be marketed to the reading public as the only fictional response to difficult times strikes her as problematic. "The best fiction always makes us look at - rather than away from - the world". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

At a time when the word "civilisation" is the subject of great debate, Kamila Shamsie explores the meaning of the word through the prism of Indian art. "If you really want to understand how the world's civilisations interact and meld", she writes, "go and look at the art of Gandhara". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Tom Shakespeare tells us why he believes the phrase "going forward" is an inelegant and negative replacement for "in future". When you talk about the future, he says, you are using a temporal concept. It's a different time from now - the time to come - and "invites us to open out our imaginative space". It offers the possibility that things might be different. "Going forward", on the other hand, is a spatial concept - "nothing but the present, infinitely extended". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

"We're in one of those recurring periods in history", writes John Gray, "when the idea of revolution has become appealing again". In this context, John says we should dust off the work of Teffi - one of the best known writers in Russia before the revolution. "I doubt", he says, "if anyone has written with such luminous clarity of what it means to live in a time of chaos". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

John Gray argues that, throughout history, highly educated people have often made the worst decisions. Taking George Orwell as his starting point "There are some ideas so absurd that only intellectuals could believe them", he asks why we're still so reluctant today to give credence to the views of ordinary people. He examines the role of universities in teaching critical thought in the humanities and social sciences and wonders if students who have "swallowed this mishmash" really have a better understanding of the world around them. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

In 1967, the philosopher Philippa Foot developed a thought experiment about a runaway trolley. It involved countless dilemmas designed to illustrate human behaviour. But whatever the scenario, the rhetoric was always the same....the overwhelming desire was for the trolley to kill fewer people and save more. AL Kennedy argues that today that rhetoric is in danger of being turned on its head. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

"Death's not great for selling yoghurt" writes AL Kennedy, "but making Death dance through a culture seems to do more than reinforce dominant ideologies....it can lend power to the powerless". She says for millennia, the human race has searched for everlasting life. Instead of resisting our mortality, she argues that it's empowering to reflect on it. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

"Winning - isn't it great?" asks AL Kennedy. But she argues that our "winner takes all" mentality is suffocating democracy. "On both sides of the Atlantic, in regimes around the world", she writes, "we can watch the chaotic dissolution of administrations based on winning at any price". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

AL Kennedy on why Hollywood has never been a nice place. In 1919, barely three decades after the advent of moving pictures, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and others thought things were bad enough in the studio system to break away and form an independent creative producing collective, United Artists. There are many other examples of Hollywood's woes in the C20th. But in this time of political instability, Alison writes, "don't we need entertainment to get everybody through, aiming higher?" Producer: Adele Armstrong.

"How long", asks Howard Jacobson, "before the protocols of looking forbid our looking appreciatively at anyone?" He explores the enormous difficulties surrounding the language of appreciation, "no matter whether the viewer in question is a mechanic ogling a pin-up in his workshop or an art critic pausing at a wall of French nudes in the Wallace Collection". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Howard Jacobson ponders why misanthropy is out of fashion. "Where have they gone?", he asks, "such great haters of mankind as Juvenal, Swift, Flaubert". Mankind, he believes, has not grown less tribal over time. But instead of a general enemy, he says, "we each have our own individual tormentor - a private phobic for every one of us". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Howard Jacobson on why we need to preserve Bohemia. London's Soho, he says, is the nearest the UK has to a Bohemia but "you don't sniff aesthetic licence in the streets of Soho as you once did". But one day recently, writes Howard, Soho recovered its spirit - at the funeral of the leopard-skin jacketed "Prince of Soho". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

"It isn't just because they have become platforms for propaganda and interpersonal odiousness that we should declare war on the social media", writes Howard Jacobson. "It is because they reduce all discourse to a shout". Howard appeals for a re-discovery of the subtlety of language and explains why he believes we should leave behind the "frozen wastes of Emojiland". "A thumb up or thumb down culture has given up on the idea that difference of opinion comes in shades, that thought is gradual and graded, that argument is more about adjustment than it is about assertion". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Howard Jacobson on the art of the feuilleton....and the joy of the ordinary. He says the feuilletonists - those writers of short observational pieces - show "you don't have to be tendentious to be of consequence". He asks us to step back and seek what's important around us...and even question whether there's such a thing as importance at all. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

"Great television is taking over the space occupied by many novels", writes Zia Haider Rahman "and taking with it many excellent writers". He says that many novels have already moved in the direction of the televisual - written with an eye to a film or TV adaptation. "If novelists are relinquishing the very things that are exclusively the province of the novel", he writes, "then they are complicit in the demise of the novel".

"It's not merely facts that are under assault in the polarised politics of the UK, the US and other nations twisting in the winds of what some call populism" writes Zia Haider Rahman. "There's also a troubling assault on reason". He argues that authoritarian tendencies know that warping the facts is only a start. "Warping reason and logic and clarity of thought is the holy grail". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

"On my computer", writes Zia Haider Rahman, "I have a folder of exchanges with organisations and corporations, a folder called 'Hope'". Zia describes the letters he's written to some of Britain's foremost institutions on their lack of diversity. He says empirical research of cognitive scientists points ever more clearly to the immense difficulty of changing minds. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Will Self reflects on the epidemic of sleeplessness. He explores the "heady cocktail" of modern life that's keeping us awake and argues that we all need the imaginative sustenance of dreams. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Will Self on how wearing glasses has become something that is entirely unremarkable. "Nowadays the acquisition of glasses", he writes, "is simply another opportunity for the conspicuous consumption we've all become so very expert at". But he says there are drawbacks to seeing too clearly. He suggests that a National No Glasses Day might be an idea "so we can all wander about the place in blurry bliss". Producer: Adele Armstrong.