Thinking Allowed

Segregation: a Global History of Divided Cities' Laurie Taylor talks to Carl Nightingale, the author of a groundbreaking new book about the ideology and practice of racial segregation in the city. Traversing continents and millennia, he analyses the urban divide from its imperial origins to postwar suburbanisation; from the racially split city of Calcutta to the American South in the age of Jim Crow. Finally, he considers the extent to which separation by race continues to deform the contemporary city. Also, the sociologist Malcolm Brynin, charts the causes and consequences of pay gaps between different ethnic groups in the UK.

Producer: Jayne Egerton.

'Odd Couples' - friendships which cross the boundaries of gender and sexuality. A new book challenges the widespread assumption that men and women are fundamentally different and can only forge significant bonds within romantic relationships. It charts the deep friendships between gay men and straight women, and also between lesbians and straight men. Laurie Taylor talks to the sociologist, Anna Muraco, who claims that such 'intersectional' friendships serve as as a barometer for shifting social and sexual norms. The UK sociologist, Brian Heaphy joins the discussion. Also, an in depth study of the centrality of drinking to student identity. Its author, Maria Piacentini, discusses the ways in which young people neutralise feelings of guilt and stigma regarding their alcohol consumption.

What has cause the Italian family to decline so fast? What are the prospects for encouraging Italians to start having more children? Laurie is joined in the studio by three experts in order to discuss his explorations of the family in Italy. Geoff Andrews, David Gilmour and Annalisa Piras give their views on what has caused the Italian crisis and what hopes there are for the future.

Italy, home to the Pope and the Holy See, perhaps the most Catholic of all countries, is undergoing a peculiarly un-Catholic crisis; it now has one of the lowest birth rates in the world. There are so few children being born that if the current trend persists, traditional Italians are at risk of dying out in just a handful of generations. How can the nation famed for Romanticism, for enormous affectionate families, for Mamma Mia and for an enviable certainty that all you need is good food, good wine and your family around you, be the same nation that no longer gives birth? Laurie travels to Milan to unpick the tangled interactions between the individual, the family, the church and the state and discovers why Italians are delaying parenthood and in many cases rejecting having a family altogether.

Italy, home to the Pope and the Holy See, perhaps the most Catholic of all countries, is undergoing a peculiarly un-Catholic crisis; it now has one of the lowest birth rates in the world. There are so few children being born that if the current trend persists, traditional Italians are at risk of dying out in just a handful of generations. How can the nation famed for Romanticism, for enormous affectionate families, for Mamma Mia and for an enviable certainty that all you need is good food, good wine and your family around you, be the same nation that no longer gives birth? Laurie travels to the South of Italy and visits the sole-remaining glove maker in Naples, in an attempt to discover whether the Italian family business is heading for extinction. He also explores whether organised crime is a distortion of Italian family values - or their logical extension.

The first generation of women to establish themselves on Wall Street began their careers in the 1960s. Laurie Taylor hears from Melissa Fisher about her in depth study of the working lives of the women at the heart of America's financial centre, and Liz Bolshaw joins the discussion to bring a comparison with women in The City of London.

What happens when middle class white people move into vibrant, ethnically diverse and challenging areas in inner city London? Emma Jackson talks to Laurie about the developing attitudes of the 'gentrifiers' in Peckham and in Brixton.

'Jobs for the Boys?' New research presented at the British Sociological Association's 2012 conference claimed that middle class people hoard job opportunities in the UK TV and film industry. In a pre- recorded interview from the conference, Professor Irena Grugulis, suggests to Laurie Taylor that working class people don't get these jobs because they don't have the right accents, clothes, backgrounds or friends. Indeed, it's hard to find an area of the economy where connections and contacts are more significant. But is this mainly due to structural changes in the industry rather than to class based prejudice? The media expert, Sir Peter Bazalgette and Professor of Sociology, Mike Savage, respond to this research and explore nepotism, networking and discrimination in the media world and beyond.

Producer: Jayne Egerton.

Advanced CCTV, security cordons and an £80 million pound electric fence: The security impact of the Olympics is already being felt in the London Borough of Newham. Security procedures are some of the most intense and developed in the world, designed to protect not only Olympic visitors but also future residents of the 40,000 new homes due to be completed by the end of the decade. Newham is one of the most impoverished areas in the country and the condition of its current residents stands in sharp contrast to the lives of people flooding into the borough for the Olympics. Laurie Taylor talks to Gary Armstrong about a large scale study of security, policing and the impact of the 'Regeneration Olympics' on the lives of the residents of Newham.

Building workers constitute between five and ten per cent of the total labour market in almost every country. We rely on them to construct the infrastructure of our societies yet we know little about their culture. The sociologist, Darren Thiel, talks to Laurie Taylor about his study into their every day lives on a London construction site.

Also, drawing on research with musicians in the North East of England, Dr Susan Coulson finds that co-operation, creativity and entrepreneurship make uneasy bedfellows.

Producer: Jayne Egerton.