By BBC Radio 4
A weekly reflection on a topical issue.
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...
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...
"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...
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...
'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....
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....
"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...
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...
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...
'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...
"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...
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...
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. ...
'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,...
'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...
"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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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. ...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
"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...
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?" ...
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...
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...
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....
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...
"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...
"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...
"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....
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,...
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...
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...
"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, ...
"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...
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. ...
"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"...
"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...
"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...
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," ...