A Point of View

"I will now pause for a full two seconds to allow you to throw things at the radio", begins Adam Gopnik. He's working hard, he claims, at a literary festival in Capri. While there he goes in search of a white staircase - the subject of his favourite painting in the world. As he searches, he reflects on art, life and "the sketchbook of the twenty first century", the iphone. Producer: Adele Armstron...

"It seems indisputable, to me", writes Will Self "that what makes it possible for our attractions to each other to be as deep and profound as they are, is some sort of difference - whether it be given, or something we create". Will reflects on what a truly gender-fluid society might look like. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Will Self gives a very personal view of high-rise buildings in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower disaster. "As a commentator on the built environment", Will writes, "I've been too wry, too cynical and too disengaged over the past twenty years". "Grenfell Tower", he says, "was the bonfire of any remaining civic vanity in London ". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Howard Jacobson reflects on the political ironies that are emerging following the election. What should our response be to losing politically? Producer: Adele Armstrong.

"The election has left many people wondering if politics has morphed into a wholly new condition" writes John Gray. He reflects on whether politics really has been turned upside down by a momentous election. He argues that the situation is not unprecedented but says "the election has punctured what was the ruling illusion of our age - the belief that we'd left behind the ideological antagonisms of...

"It's late in the year to be making a resolution I'm probably going to break, but the words have to be spoken" writes Howard Jacobson. "I hereby renounce Middlemarch". Howard reveals what lies behind his obsession for George Eliot's greatest novel and why he can't stop hymning its praises and quoting chunks of it from memory. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Howard Jacobson reflects on his home city's response to the Manchester attack. What confronts the city now, he says, is dealing with the fact that the perpetrator came from within itself. "All our cities shelter the same boy", he writes, "studiously immersed in the same story. And if we didn't know it before, stories can kill". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

As the season of literary festivals gets underway, Howard Jacobson tells us not to be lured by their appearance of being civilized. "The prevailing tone of sweet concord shouldn't be allowed to disguise the violent nature of creativity", he says. They're a fiercely competitive business for writers, he believes. "To write is to reconceive the world and only a God, or someone acting like a God, can...

Howard Jacobson speaks up in defense of the metropolitan liberal elite. He ponders why the word "elitist" has acquired such negative connotations in some fields - but not in others. "It makes no sense to me to love the best when they are footballers or the SAS, but not when they are thinkers or even politicians". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Howard Jacobson argues that talk of the dangers of artificial intelligence is premature. "The idea that if we feed enough lines of literature into a computer it will eventually be able to write its own Iliad", he writes, "is as preposterous as the old fancy that if a sufficient number of monkeys were given a sufficient number of Olivettis they would eventually hammer out a monkey Macbeth". Produce...

A L Kennedy commends paying attention to voices as a way to discern truth telling. "Listening to our media, our public voices, as if we're listening to people in our everyday lives, holding them to that standard and not their own can help us to know when we're being driven towards the sound of a faked emotion or spun a tale." Producer: Sheila Cook.

A L Kennedy reflects on the way our past shapes our present and our future. "As groups we get trapped in our pasts, not quite repeating them, but sometimes forcing our futures out of shape for the sake of their ghosts." Producer: Sheila Cook.

AL Kennedy extols the virtues of reading and its power to encourage respect for the value and sovereignty of other people's existence. "It allows you to look and feel your way through the lives of others who may apparently be very other - and yet here they are - inside your head." Producer: Sheila Cook.

AL Kennedy says we should reject the media outlets that peddle only bad news whether real or fake in ever shriller voices, depicting a world of unremitting awfulness. "Fake facts - let's just call them lies - and deceptively selective coverage have to be peddled with greater than average outrage and shock just to keep their frailty from being examined too closely." Producer: Sheila Cook.

Tom Shakespeare argues that viewing dementia as a disability could help those living with the condition win greater rights. In the last few decades, he writes, we have seen many impairment groups unite to demand a better deal from government. "But when it comes to dementia, we are still thinking in terms of disease and tragedy and passivity". He believes treating dementia as a disability - with al...

Tom Shakespeare reflects on how all the political populists who now occupy our imaginations are master story tellers. People need stories and these stories appeal to us, he says. But he argues that as well as persuasive stories, more than ever we need facts. "The plural of anecdote is not data, as a professor used to tell me", he writes. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Tom Shakespeare on why - in today's world of uncertainty and fear - it may give us some political consolation to remember that while everything positive in life is short-lived, so too is everything negative. He argues that believing that the best is behind us stops us making the most of present opportunities. "To wallow in the past is to be sentimental, to seek an impossible return", he writes. "O...

Stella Tillyard looks at the phonomenon of the "idling brain" - when the brain is supposedly at rest. She ponders what it means that we have no idea what's running through the minds of the people closest to us and argues that - in an increasingly fractured world - knowing what's going on in each other's minds might help us understand each other. Scientists, she points out, have taken up the challe...

"Human beings shape their perceptions according to their beliefs", writes John Gray, not the other way round. He says people "will persuade themselves to believe almost anything, no matter how far-fetched, if it enables them to preserve their view of the world". He asks how we can best come to terms with the realisation that the world is frighteningly unpredictable. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

John Gray look at the history of populism. He argues that modern-day populism has largely been created by centre parties who have identified themselves with an unsustainable status quo. He looks at how populism is likely to play out in the upcoming elections in France and Holland. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

John Gray assesses why experts failed to predict recent seismic events. He says they operated under the long-held but mistaken belief that history unfolds according to predictable patterns. "Human events have no overall direction", he writes, "and history obeys no laws". He discusses how we can prepare ourselves for the "unknowable future". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

"I haven't been visiting schools and drowsing during headteachers' PowerPoint presentations for nothing this past quarter century", writes Will Self. "I know full-well that the purpose of both British education and British employment is the same: to keep us busy and purposive from cradle to grave". Will Self explores how the worlds of work and education have become seamlessly merged with each othe...

John Gray examines what lies behind our desire to protect our "way of life". "If people are forced to choose between insecurity and a promise of stability through tyranny", he writes, "many will opt for tyranny". He argues that spending vast amounts of money on "grandiose wars while large sections of our own people languish in neglect and despair can only leave our societies more vulnerable to ext...

Will Self argues that, at a time when we're observing "our so-called leaders, fretting and strutting on the world stage", it really is a worthwhile exercise to spend time worrying about why we're here. "I'd argue", he writes, "that to engage fully with the weird mystery of being is to at least take the helm of your own ship - even if its course is determined by some automatic pilot". Producer: Ade...

Will Self says it's time for schools to stop "teaching to the test". He argues that in the contemporary wired world, "it seems obvious that young people need more than ever to know how to think outside the boxes, rather than simply tick them". There's no reason, he says, to shackle children "to the go-round of memorization and regugitation". Producer: Adele Armstrong.