Four Thought

Writer Joe Dunthorne asks what we can all learn about living together from the mosh pit at a rock gig.

Joe asks whether we should we all be a bit more open to social interaction. He contrasts the boisterous pushing and shoving at a rock gig with the quiet carriage on the train.

In one, he argues, everyone rubs along, and if you need something, you say it. The same cannot be said for the quiet carriage.

Producer: Giles Edwards.

Does history repeat itself? Entrepreneur Katarina Skoberne describes how in her family's case it did, and discusses the thought-provoking lessons it taught her.

Katarina's great-grandfather was an admiral in the Russian imperial navy. His life was often interrupted by disaster, and he twice lost everything and was forced to start again.

But Katarina recently discovered some of his writing, and more than 100 years later found interesting parallels to her own life and experiences.

Producer: Giles Edwards.

Architect Ali Mangera discusses the closely-connected futures of cities and shopping.

He describes how the retail industry is coming to terms with the major challenges it faces: from internet shopping to increasing demands for a local and sustainable experience. And, through the prism of his own experience working between Barcelona and London, he shares his vision for the future of shopping.

Ali argues that the two sides to the current retail experience - need, and hedonism - will be much more closely intertwined in future, with shopping being as much about entertainment and even education as it is about filling our bellies or clothing ourselves.

Producer: Giles Edwards.

Publisher and technologist James Bridle asks how computer networks will affect cultural memories. In this Four Thought, James brings his two lives together to look for the crossing points between books and technology.

How will storing our memories and experiences on 'the network' change how we relate to them? They are no longer spread through time and geography, and instead much more visible to us, but what does that mean?

When we have read a book, the book remains as a souvenir of the experience, but we do not yet have a similar way of accounting for the time we spend online.

Producer: Giles Edwards.

The Covent Garden Academy of Flowers' Gillian Wheeler

Flowers can both look and smell beautiful, and she says this powerful combination has the power to overcome tremendous obstacles.

Cut flowers will first grow, and then eventually die away. Gillian believes that this transience, which sees both the way they look and smell transformed several times over a matter of days, is the most important characteristic, and one which marks flowers out from other forms of art.

Producer: Giles Edwards.

Naif Al-Mutawa discusses the importance of interpreting and translating between cultures.

Naif created The 99 - comic books featuring characters based on Islamic culture and religion, but appealing to universal virtues.

In his Four Thought talk, he uses his own experiences running up against extremism and wilful misunderstanding, to meditate on the importance of cultural interpretation. And he argues that art and religion co-existed for centuries, and should be able to do so again.

Producer: Giles Edwards.

With the pressure on for victory at the Olympics, comedian Leisa Rea ponders the delights of losing.

She reveals what happened when she told a group of school children that she would only be rewarding them for appalling work, which fell way below the expected standard.

Producer: Giles Edwards.

Scientist Alice Bell argues that better engagement by scientists, rather than lessons in 'scientific literacy', is the solution to the lack of public understanding of science.

She is frustrated how often this apparent panacea is rolled out as the solution to the problem. But on some controversial subjects the scientific evidence does not point in a single direction, she says.

More than that, the specific bit of science needed to understand the subject at hand varies from issue to issue.

Instead, scientists should work to provide structures where non-experts can learn about science as and when they become important to them.

Producer: Giles Edwards.

Serial social entrepreneur Colin Crooks argues that politicians and the media are wrong to focus on youth unemployment.

Instead, he says, we should all be worried about the very high levels of persistent unemployment amongst the 'let-down generation' who were failed by poor education between the 1970s and 1990s.

Teaching them the lessons of being in work, he argues, would not only benefit them, but their children, too.

And he believes that to make a meaningful impact in these unemployed people's lives, we should stop developing skills for jobs which often do not exist, and instead focus on creating real jobs where they live.

Producer: Giles Edwards.

Computer games present a wonderful opportunity to know ourselves; a slow bombardment of opportunities for self-reflective thought says games developer Mitu Khandaker.

She argues that to look beyond the violent and mindless games of popular caricature is to see a new medium which represents the culmination of all our previous artistic forms - literature, film, painting, music. Parts of all of these, she says, can coalesce in games.

Producer: Giles Edwards.