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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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