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 Armst...
Jul 07, 2023•11 min
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
Jun 30, 2023•10 min
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
Jun 23, 2023•11 min
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
Jun 16, 2023•11 min
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...
Jun 09, 2023•10 min
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...
Jun 02, 2023•11 min
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: Pet...
May 26, 2023•11 min
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
May 19, 2023•11 min
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...
May 16, 2023•11 min
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 house...
May 12, 2023•10 min
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: Rich...
May 05, 2023•11 min
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-Smi...
Apr 21, 2023•11 min
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...
Apr 14, 2023•10 min
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 ...
Apr 07, 2023•10 min
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 ...
Mar 31, 2023•10 min
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 voter...
Mar 24, 2023•9 min
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:...
Mar 17, 2023•9 min
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
Mar 10, 2023•10 min
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
Mar 03, 2023•10 min
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 establi...
Feb 24, 2023•10 min
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 tha...
Feb 17, 2023•10 min
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 ...
Feb 10, 2023•10 min
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 ...
Feb 03, 2023•10 min
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 Hamm...
Jan 27, 2023•10 min
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-...
Jan 20, 2023•9 min
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
Jan 13, 2023•9 min
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
Jan 06, 2023•10 min
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...
Dec 30, 2022•10 min
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-S...
Dec 23, 2022•9 min
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:...
Dec 16, 2022•10 min
