Sarah Dunant relives a road trip she took 50 years ago, travelling across the USA at a time when Roe v Wade was the talk of America, and revolution was in the air. 'I can only imagine what it must be like to be a woman living in America this week, she writes in the aftermath of the decision by the US Supreme Court - a decision which almost instantly makes abortion illegal in more than 20 US states.  She takes us back to 1972 and her travels across America in a beat-up car, when radical lawyers were honing their arguments to first present the case to the country's highest court. 'America's post-war abundance and energy, its style, its movies and its music saturated our youth', she says.  'We had the time of our lives - even the bad bits were good, we were living the dream'.      And, fifty years on, she reflects on what has happened to 'the fabric of this extraordinary country'. Producer: Adele Armstrong 
Sound:  Peter Bosher 
Production coordinator: Iona Hammond 
Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Driving the American Dream

Personal Journals

Society & Culture

History

Philosophy

Places & Travel

Megan Nolan on the allure of New York and the city's 'main character' syndrome.  The city is, she says, 'the place that makes me happier to be alive than anywhere else - not in spite but because of its thoroughly human hopelessness.' 'Nature is nature, permanent and without moral taint,' writes Megan, 'but cities are paeans to the marvellous filth of the human spirit.' 'The real challenge is being moved by the effort to remain open to one another despite being consoled by surroundings made not of beauty and relief, but of cement and strife.'  Producer: Adele Armstrong 
Sound: Peter Bosher 
Production coordinator: Liam Morrey 
Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Protagonists of Reality

Patients care apps - which give patients unprecedented access to their health records - are being rolled out by NHS trusts across the country.  You might imagine, says Will Self, that 'this previously unimaginable access to such a wealth of medical data should empower me, make me feel I have a choice, and enable me to assist those treating me by being what every conscientious statistic wants to become: a good patient.'  Will argues that, on the contrary, this 'revolution in healthcare' only makes us more impotent, reduces patients to the status of customers and undermines the authority and expertise of medical professionals.   Producer: Adele Armstrong 
Sound: Peter Bosher 
Production coordinator: Liam Morrey 
Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Me and my medical data

Caleb Azumah Nelson on why anger is no longer a stranger to him, but a friend. He talks of a childhood in which he tried to navigate a world which was 'already coding a young black man as dangerous, threatening. Angry.'  'As I've grown older,' writes Caleb, 'the question is not whether I should be angry, but do I love myself enough to be angry, to object when I feel wronged or faced with injustice.' Producer: Adele Armstrong 
Sound: Peter Bosher: 
Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman 
Editor:  Richard Fenton-Smith

On Anger

Sara Wheeler reflects on the experience of being a sibling to her brother who has a lifelong disability.  "Posting on social media on National Siblings Day, which fell on a Wednesday this year, brothers and sisters like me express pride. 'You love them more, not less' is a common thread. Because what all this is really about is the sibling's acute awareness of the lack of empathy routinely shown to the disabled - after all, childhood gives us, the siblings, a unique perspective. It's 'Does he take sugar?' times ten - ignoring the point of view of the disabled person and not even trying to stand in her shoes. Ask us. We know."    Producer: Sheila Cook
Sound: Peter Bosher
Production coordinator: Liam Morrey
Editor: Penny Murphy

It's all right for you

Zoe Strimpel reflects on the extraordinary experience of ‘crossing the rubicon separating non-motherhood from matrescence’.   ‘I had never quite put aside an abiding ambivalence about having a baby, even during pregnancy,’ writes Zoe.  But in the space of thirty minutes - and the delivery of a baby girl by C-section - Zoe says, ‘my hop over the long-tended, long-contemplated border with motherland rapidly resolved as her tiny features came into focus and a sense of interestingness became a sense of desperate affection and even of familiarity.’ Producer: Adele Armstrong 
Sound: Peter Bosher
Production coordinator: Liam Morrey
Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Driving the American Dream

Download our free app to listen on your phone