Four Thought

Anna Derrig asks who has the right to tell someone else's story.

Anna has worked in the media, in international development and in social and community work telling stories, and now she is writing the story of her life with a family member. It has made her think carefully about the ethics of writing other people's lives, an issue she now teaches the issue at Goldsmith's, University of London. It's a good time to be thinking about this subject, she argues, since so many of us are telling stories - our own and other people's.

Producer: Giles Edwards.

Dave Pickering makes the case for a men's liberation movement.

Sharing experiences from his own life, he argues that it is not just women who need liberation from 'the patriarchy', but men themselves.

Producer: Giles Edwards.

Sally Bayley traces the art of diary writing from Samuel Pepys to today's culture of blogging.

"In an age of practically universal web access, the diary represents an old fashioned sense of self scrutiny and surveillance, a period of personal introspection."

Four Thought was recorded at the End of the Road music festival.

Producer: Sheila Cook

Photo Credit: Sarah Caroline Photography.

Nick Ivins explains how the pull of the land turned him from a city dweller into a homesteader.

"We discovered that great pleasure that is putting food, by one's own hand, on to the family table. It is an act of love wrought by an equal share of creativity and sweated laboour that rewards the head, heart and belly in equal measure."

Four Thought was recorded at the End of the Road music festival

Producer: Sheila Cook.

Former political adviser and stand up comedian Ayesha Hazarika explains why she thinks humour is such an important part of our political discourse.

"It can be a weapon to attack, or a cloak to shield. But most importantly, it pinpoints the truth about how the world sees you, it shows self-awareness and helps you try to cling on to good faith in bleak times."

Four Thought was recorded at the End of the Road music festival.

Presenter: Mike Williams

Travis Elborough explores the role of public parks in British life and urges us to cherish them as institutions for the people.

"The best public parks, as artfully contrived areas of greenery in the midst of brick and concrete, offer the delights of nature with fewer of its downsides."

Four Thought was recorded at the End of the Road Music Festival.

Presenter: Mike Williams

(Photo by David X Green).

Brian Bilston, who accidentally became a poet through Twitter, explains the power of social media for poetry.

"Poetry on social media is more than a never-ending stream of haiku concerning the changing light of the moon on water, or the beauty of cherry blossom. It's far more interesting and relevant than that. It's an opportunity for poetry to present itself in situations when people most need it."

Producer: Sheila Cook.

Melissa Raphael argues that if people are shocked by contemporary pornography it's not because they are prudes but because, on the contrary, they actually enjoy sex. Pornography, she says, gets its thrill not from sex itself, which it finds monotonous, even disgusting, but from its own acts of transgression. Ironically, she argues, "while pornography has intensified its onslaught against sex, religious attitudes to sex have got ever more celebratory".

Producer: Sheila Cook.

Laurence Anholt describes how his dying father revealed the traumatic experiences of his early life, explaining his failure to be a loving parent to his son.

"I recalled the nightmares and mood swings he had suffered when I was young, and I began to realise that for most of his life, my father had suffered from acute untreated trauma."

Producer: Sheila Cook.

After the coup attempt in Turkey writer Elif Shafak describes how being Turkish means worrying about your country all the time "as though she were an eccentric relative one could neither fully trust on her own, nor stop loving."

Four Thought was recorded in front of a live audience at Somerset House in London.

Presenter: Mike Williams

Image credit: Muammer Yanmaz.