Four Thought

Annie Broadbent shares her experience of being bereaved, and thinks we should overcome the taboos that surround talking about grief.

"If we have the courage to change our way of feeling and thinking about death, not only will we be better placed to support the ones who are left behind, we will change our relationship with life."

Recorded at the Phoenix Artist Club in London.

Presenter: Helen Zaltzman

Andrew Martin explains his passion for using cash in the face of the advancing tide of electronic payments. An aid to thrift, it also spares him from feeling that every purchase is being recorded and potentially monitored.

"I have become like my Dad, who forty years ago, would be deflected from a whimsical purchase because it would mean "breaking into a tenner".

Recorded at the Phoenix Artist Club in London.

Presenter: Helen Zaltzman

Hanna Pickard says we need to understand the reasons why desperate people become addicted to drugs, seeing them neither as "victims of a neurobiological disease", nor as "selfish, lazy hedonists".

"Choosing to use drugs, including alcohol, to gain pleasure and escape from life's banality, isn't the same as choosing to use drugs to relieve suffering."

Recorded at the Phoenix Artist Club in London.

Presenter: Helen Zaltzman

Juno Dawson thinks we should get over our prurient obsession with transgender people and value them like any other individuals, in her case as a writer of young adult fiction.

John Ballatt calls for a new approach to supporting the NHS, using "intelligent kindness" to transform the culture of healthcare.

"Simplistic faith in industrialisation and procedural rules leads us to tell staff what to do , when, how and with what result, and to monitor them with quite ruthless intrusiveness. Inevitably this distracts, creates anxiety, squeezing out the very intelligence, and kindness, upon which good work depends."

Recorded at the Hay Festival.

Hugh Warwick charts the fragmentation of the British landscape by the lines which cross it, and he calls for urgent reconnection to allow our flora and fauna to flourish. "I believe we need to reinterpret the landscape in order to hold back the deterioration of the land we share with wildlife." Recorded at the Hay Festival.

Cyberpsychologist Dr Mary Aiken warns of the risk to human development posed by our obsession with cyberspace. Millions of babies round the world deprived of eye contact and proper attention, because their parents are distracted by their smartphones, could cause "an evolutionary blip".

Recorded at the Hay Festival.

Presenter: Helen Zaltzman

Richard Gillis explains how a mistake at the 2014 Ryder Cup explains a trend across our society.

Richard is a sports and business writer who believes that the leadership industry is bolstered by ideas about what it means to be in charge garnered from and popularised by sport.

Producer: Giles Edwards.

Josie Appleton argues that petty rules stifle our human responses and damage society.

Josie is Director of The Manifesto Club, which campaigns against state intrusion into everyday life. In this Four Thought, recorded at the Design Museum in London, she argues that it isn't just the state which is coming up with rules, but many other parts of civil society. She thinks we need to rally against this trend, arguing that we need to respond as normal human beings should, not according to a set of rules or policies. Our rallying cry, she said, should be simply "behave normally".

Producer: Giles Edwards.

Andrea Cooper argues that football is an 'electric currency', and explains why she believes it can change the world for the better.

Andrea is Head of the Liverpool Football Club Foundation, and in this talk she describes watching young people listening intently to their favourite footballers, and how her foundation now hopes to work with the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in the developing world. She hopes to use the deep wellspring of affection amongst Liverpool Football Club's immense global fanbase to encourage young fans to pay more attention to healthcare messages. It could, she says, tilt the world on its axis, and prove a concept which would work elsewhere.

Producer: Giles Edwards.