A weekly reflection on a topical issue.
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 for...
"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 Armst...
"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: Adel...
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...
