A Point of View

As America gears up for next week's debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, Sarah Dunant looks at the seismic shift in sexual politics in the US since Trump debated with Hillary Clinton.

'Looming, threatening, even the word stalking was used' to describe that encounter, Sarah remembers.

But when this presidential debate gets underway in the early hours of Wednesday morning UK time, Sarah thinks it will be a very different story.

'An encounter worth losing sleep for,' she reckons.

Producer: Adele Armstrong

In the week that one of Britain's most famous Paralympians Tanni Grey-Thompson was forced to crawl off a train, Tom Shakespeare describes his encounters with crawling.

'Don't get me wrong,' Tom says, I am not against crawling.' His holidays, he says, involve a lot of crawling: in Egypt to visit the apartment of the poet Constantine Cavafy or in Italy to see the childhood home of the communist revolutionary, Antonio Gramsci.

But in day to day life, Tom argues, 'crawling is no way for adults to go about their business.'

Producer: Adele Armstrong

At a village fete in rural France, AL Kennedy finds herself among barrel organs, sleeping piglets and 'a guy in a flowing blue smock gliding about on an ancient motor bicycle, just because he could.'

After US Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz turned the word 'weird' into 'the soundtrack of our summer,' Alison relishes how the concept is reclaiming its roots.

Producer: Adele Armstrong

David Goodhart says that with 40% of universities facing deficits and, he believes, too many graduates chasing too few graduate jobs, it's time for a rethink on universities.

And he has a reassuring message for those who didn't make the grade in Thursday's A level results.

Producer: Adele Armstrong

Sara Wheeler on why sleeping in Captain Scott's bunk in the Antarctic got her thinking about imposter syndrome.

'It took me many years,' writes Sara, 'to realise that I had as much right to be in Captain Scott's hut as anyone else, because nobody owns the Antarctic, or the hut, or Scott's legacy."

Producer: Adele Armstrong

Will Self muses on change as he prepares for a stem cell transplant, an operation 'which will result in the greatest change in what has been a notably changeable life.'

And he discusses the preparations he's making which he believes put him 'in pole position to race with this ...devilish adversary.'

He concludes that the art of living is about recognizing that 'life is in continual flux - and our vacillating wills and changeable natures, psychic and physical alike, are just part of the cosmic churn - nothing in fact endures, but change itself.'

Producer: Adele Armstrong

As the Olympics gets underway, Michael Morpurgo says we need to take care that the event doesn't stray too far from the ideals of the Olympics and the Paralympics.

'The announcement this year,' writes Michael, 'that athletes at the Olympics will, for the first time, be awarded prize money - $50,000 for each gold medal - sets a precedent in the Games' 128 year history.'

But, he says, 'over the next two weeks, I should like to think that the Olympics will uphold the spirit that has sustained the Games for so long... that the glory is in the laurel wreath or the medal, that the heroism is in the triumphs and disasters.'

Producer: Adele Armstrong

Adam Gopnik muses on why he'll always love the steam baths in New York.

'My own pet answer,' Adam says, 'justified by intuition and half-heard rumours, is that it helps sleep to have a low internal body temperature. All that sweating lowers my own burning inner furnace and makes me more able to sleep.' This is, he admits, 'a perfectly sound scientific explanation that I have no intention of checking.'

Producer: Adele Armstrong

Sarah Dunant argues that Joe Biden's refusal to understand his moment in history is forcing the nation to confront the fact that she is no longer young.

'In the relatively short history of America from new country to super power,' writes Sarah, 'she has always - even when she behaves badly - projected an aura of self confidence, a vitality, almost cocky certainty that we associate with youth. And for the longest time, it made for an optimism, a sense of can do, that sometimes felt like manifest destiny.'

That, Sarah argues, is starting to change.

Producer: Adele Armstrong

A night walk, listening to nightingales, and a memory of her late father lead Rebecca Stott to ponder Iris Murdoch's theory of 'unselfing'.

The theory, writes Rebecca, was 'essentially about looking out and beyond ourselves and away from what Murdoch described as the 'fat, relentless ego.''

In this post election moment, Rebecca says, 'to rise to the challenges of housing, global migration, war, the cost of living, and the crisis of climate breakdown, as well as countering the global rise of nationalism and tribal politics, we might have to find ways to radically unself not just as individuals but as whole nations.'

Producer: Adele Armstrong