Four Thought

Dick Moore calls for urgent action to tackle the problems of adolescent mental health. Driven by personal experience, he sees a growing need for society to provide young people with more emotional support.

Steven Poole argues that we should resist the modern message, from pop science and brain scans, that humans are irrational creatures, driven by instant judgement and primordial urges.

Instead, he says we should stand up together and say we can think, and that's what makes us human.

Four Thought is a series of talks which combine new ideas and personal stories. Speakers explain their latest thinking on the trends and ideas in culture and society in front of a live audience. It is recorded in front of a live audience at Somerset House in London.

Producer: Giles Edwards.

Anna Woodhouse explores what looking through glass and glasses means for us.

When she was a call centre worker Anna could see the towers of Leeds University through the window of her high rise block on a Leeds council estate. For her, this symbolised both possibility and disconnection from the object of her desire. When she eventually left the estate, she completed a study on the place of glass in our culture.

Four Thought is a series of talks which combine new ideas and personal stories. Speakers explain their latest thinking on the trends and ideas in culture and society in front of a live audience at Somerset House.

Producer: Giles Edwards.

Henry Stewart argues that bad management blights the working lives of millions of people, and that the solution is to let everyone choose their own bosses.

Four Thought is a series of talks which combine new ideas and personal stories. Speakers explain their latest thinking on the trends and ideas in culture and society in front of a live audience at Somerset House.

Producer: Giles Edwards.

The science writer Emma Byrne argues that, far from tuning out, we should listen carefully when people swear, because they often do so for good reasons.

Four Thought is a series of talks which combine new ideas and personal stories. Speakers explain their latest thinking on the trends and ideas in culture and society in front of a live audience at Somerset House.

Producer: Giles Edwards.

Stewart Henderson argues that a lack of poetry in politics is fuelling disengagement. He draws on past and current speeches from Winston Churchill to Aneurin Bevan and David Cameron to Ed Miliband to make the case for putting poetry back in political rhetoric.

Four Thought is a series of talks which combine new ideas and personal stories. Speakers explain their latest thinking on the trends and ideas in culture and society in front of a live audience. It is recorded in front of a live audience at Somerset House in London.

Producer: Laura Francis.

Daniela Papi explores the dark side of volunteering overseas, and asks how local people and wealthy 'voluntourists' alike can ensure a positive experience.

Four Thought is a series of talks which combine new ideas and personal stories. Speakers explain their latest thinking on the trends and ideas in culture and society in front of a live audience at Somerset House.

Producer: Giles Edwards.

Historian Mat Paskins argues that history can be made real when we bring back to life the excitement which previous generations felt at new developments: to make us, who live in our ancestors' future, feel their wonder when first confronted with future possibility. And he tells the story of two experiments - an ambitious attempt in the eighteenth century to use black sand to make steel, and his own youthful efforts to see if he could eat everything.

Four Thought is a series of talks which combine new ideas and personal stories. Speakers explain their latest thinking on the trends and ideas in culture and society in front of a live audience. It is recorded in front of a live audience at Somerset House in London.

Producer: Giles Edwards.

Emma Woolf explores how people suffering from eating disorders might now have a proper explanation for the condition. Emma has suffered from anorexia and written and talked about it extensively. A proper explanation for her illness has remained elusive - until now.

Four Thought is a series of talks which combine new ideas and personal stories. Speakers explain their latest thinking on the trends and ideas in culture and society in front of a live audience. It is recorded in front of a live audience at Somerset House in London.

Producer: Giles Edwards.

William Dalrymple introduces the Oscar-winning documentary-maker Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy, in Four Thought at the Jaipur Literature Festival. Obaid Chinoy, whose films include Saving Face, argues that although her work is reportage, she cannot be - and should not be - impartial. There is a difference, she says, "between story-telling and journalism".