By BBC Radio 4
A weekly reflection on a topical issue.
Megan Nolan ponders her generation's housing crisis. 'Sometimes it all crashes over me, how adrift I am, and how laughably inconceivable the idea is that I would ever own a place on my own,' writes Megan. But there are...
Zoe Strimpel reflects on the 'commercial exploitation' of fandom. From Swiftie 'friendship bracelets' to beauty products and sportswear, she argues that you can no longer be a true superfan, or a true popstar, without the merch. 'But...
When it comes to fast cars or literary festivals, Howard Jacobson reckons that, for the average male, there isn't usually much of a contest. 'You don't get as many men at a literary festival as you do on a...
Mark Damazer looks to George Orwell's essay, 'Politics and the English Language', to see if he can be our guide through the fractious language of the next few weeks of the election campaign. He says Orwell's critique in 1946...
Sara Wheeler asks whether trying to get away from it all is a futile endeavour. 'We go to all that trouble', writes Sara, 'up at 4.30, cancelled planes and trains and bent tent poles - only to find ourselves, boring...
Tom Shakespeare calls for new thinking to fix the current crisis in our prisons. Against a backdrop of overcrowding, violence and high rates of reoffending, he says we need a clearer vision of what prisons are really for. "We want...
Rebecca Stott is on a quest for a decent-tasting apple. Along the way she discovers a revival of interest in wonderful heritage varieties: the rough-textured russets like Ashmead's Kernel, the rich, aromatic Saltcote Pippin or the sharp tanginess of...
Megan Nolan on the allure of New York and the city's 'main character' syndrome. The city is, she says, 'the place that makes me happier to be alive than anywhere else - not in spite but because of its...
Patients care apps - which give patients unprecedented access to their health records - are being rolled out by NHS trusts across the country. You might imagine, says Will Self, that 'this previously unimaginable access to such a wealth...
Caleb Azumah Nelson on why anger is no longer a stranger to him, but a friend. He talks of a childhood in which he tried to navigate a world which was 'already coding a young black man as dangerous, threatening....
Sara Wheeler reflects on the experience of being a sibling to her brother who has a lifelong disability. "Posting on social media on National Siblings Day, which fell on a Wednesday this year, brothers and sisters like me express...
Zoe Strimpel reflects on the extraordinary experience of ‘crossing the rubicon separating non-motherhood from matrescence’. ‘I had never quite put aside an abiding ambivalence about having a baby, even during pregnancy,’ writes Zoe. But in the space...
A L Kennedy argues that, as a country with low productivity, we must urgently address our unhealthy relationship with work. But creating more workaholics like herself, she says, is the last thing we should be doing. ...
John Gray assesses what's going wrong for liberals in the US election. 'It's not chiefly Joe Biden's alleged faltering mental powers that lie behind Trump's march to the White House', John writes. 'Far more, it's the evident inability...
Adam Gopnik warns of our tendency to normalise evil behaviour. What may pass for entertainment in Mafia movies, must be seen through a different lens in real life. "The risk of crime is not crime alone, but the...
Will Self believes we are reaching a state of 'peak envy'. 'Is it any surprise,' Will writes, 'that in this, arguably the second century of self, when for the most part humans see nothing around them but images of...
Sarah Dunant reflects on martyrdom past and present. As Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny is laid to rest, Sarah looks to history to ponder what his legacy might be. And she turns to the work of the 19th-century...
Following a recent incident in a London theatre where, it appears, Jewish Israelis were targeted by a comedian because they wouldn't stand for a Palestinian flag, Howard Jacobson reflects on the power of mockery and the liberation of laughter. ...
Rebecca Stott says the idea of 'going down a rabbit hole' is often characterised as a bad thing - here, she makes the case for what's to be gained. "These days we invariably use the phrase 'down the rabbit hole'...
Tom Shakespeare reflects on the 'endangered skill of handwriting.' 'The most ambitious thing I author,' writes Tom, 'is the shopping list on my fridge. And several times a week I scrawl with my index finger when something is delivered'. His...
Taking a lead from Confucius - a man who loved a good ritual - Sara Wheeler explores the continuing fascination of rituals. 'Two and a half millennia ago,' writes Sara, 'Confucius famously fiddled about moving his mat so...
As the size and capability of the Royal Navy is thrust into the spotlight with events in the Red Sea, Stephen Smith reflects on whether this will put an end to speculation of planned cuts to the oldest arm of...
AL Kennedy on the recent theft of her backpack and how misfortune can help us reclaim who we really want to be. She reflects on how an an accident of birth - being white, able-bodied, heterosexual, being baptised a Christian...
Mark Damazer says we need to find a different vocabulary to define political leadership and achievement. 'The rhetoric that accompanied Alistair Darling's death,' Mark writes, 'raises some age-old questions about the way we think and judge our political masters'....
Zoe Strimpel explores our relationship with sugar - from the days of the 12th century chronicler William of Tyre when sugar was regarded as 'very necessary for the use and health of mankind' to the 'sugar is evil' attitude of...
Alex Massie delves into Hogmanays past and present. 'The traditional 'first footing' gifts of the New Year - a lump of coal and a black bun - linger on,' Alex writes, 'though with diminished take-up and not just because...
Michael Morpurgo reflects on why Christmas is the perfect time of year for 'taking your time.' In a special edition of A Point of View, recorded on a walk near his home in Devon, Michael invites...
In a pew in Edwin Lutyens' ecclesiastical masterpiece, St Jude on the Hill in North London, Will Self ponders the contemporary power of the sermon. 'Dearly Beloved,' he begins, as he explains the appeal of a good sermon! ...
John Gray argues that the power of the imagination fuels the worst kind of politics. 'Nobody', he argues, 'is in overall charge of events. There are patterns in history, but particular human events are mostly random. We...
Rebecca Stott grew up in a creationist, fundamentalist community, where her childhood creativity and curiosity were severely restricted. Now, helping her neighbour's young son to read, Rebecca reflects on the importance of nurturing the curiosity of children...
Adam Gopnik tries to rationalise what lies behind his new obsession - of walking 10,000 steps every day. With the help of his daughter, Darwin and the Cynics of ancient Greece, Adam concludes that, in our search for meaning in...
From clay tablets in Mesopotamia two and a half thousand years ago to the stuff of dreams today, Sarah Dunant examines the continuing mystery of the function and meaning of dreams. 'As science digs further into every nook and...
Zoe Strimpel is turning her sights from artsy academic interests to much more concrete ones. Cultural warfare and events in the Middle East have left her feeling, she says, as if she's in a 'ceaselessly enraged world'. So...
John Connell reflects on how rain has shaped Irish culture. 'Over the centuries, the Irish - most days anyway - have learned to accept, sometimes even love, the rain,' writes John. But, he...
Sara Wheeler challenges the idea that there's an equivalence between loving nature and being a good person. 'This queerly opaque idea has embedded itself in the collective subconscious since Granny Smiths ripened in the Garden of Eden,' writes Sara, 'but...
Edwin Landseer's famous painting of a majestic Highland stag, 'Monarch of the Glen', has been given pride of place in the newly opened galleries at the National in Edinburgh. Alex Massie ponders the role of the deer - and...
Will Self on why - for the past eight weeks - he's lived an almost entirely news-free existence. After a lifetime of keeping up with events and - in recent years - obsessively toggling between news apps 'with all the...
Sarah Dunant argues that the patriarchy of the classical music business is finally starting to change. Reliving her early relationship with music - from excruciating piano lessons to rebellious dancing in the mosh pit - Sarah reflects on the...
Stephen Smith on why HS2 is such a cause of national hand-wringing. 'We get railways, we do railways - ever since Stephenson's Rocket in the nineteenth century. We gave railways to the world', writes Stephen. He...
'Russell Brand winked at me in the street once', begins Howard Jacobson. He reflects on that chance encounter many years ago and the dishonourable role we all play in the creation of celebrity. 'We watched too much...
AL Kennedy discusses the addictive nature of hate. 'Religion', she writes, 'was once called the opium of the masses; hate is now the Oxycontin of the masses. That low thrum of resentment, spikes of rage, hate gives them a...
Zoe Strimpel discusses the thrills and psychic satisfactions of the spooky. She argues that the disorientating nature of contemporary society creates the ideal breeding ground for our resurgent interest in things supernatural. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound; Peter Bosher Production coordinator:...
Will Self reflects on the spread of the craze for so-called 'bucket lists'. He argues that 'far from introducing the ecstatic into our necessarily ephemeral existence, the bucket list reimposes the clock-watching go-round most of us have endured for...
Megan Nolan explores the concept of the 'trad wife'. She argues that 'the failings of mainstream girl-boss feminism' are leading to a resurgence of the sort of women's lifestyle associated with the 1950s. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production...
John Gray puts the case for the monarchy in modern Britain. 'Those who campaign for the abolition of a royal head of state in Britain,' he says, 'seem to me to be in thrall to a simple-minded idea of...
Sara Wheeler reflects on the concept of limbo as a way of helping us deal with current uncertainties but she recognizes this will not be easy. 'Limbo is a borderless, undefined, in-between state that is neither one thing nor...
This week, UNESCO recommended that Venice should be added to its list of World Heritage in Danger, citing its failure to adequately protect the city from overwhelming tourism and the impact of climate change. As unprecedented numbers of...
Stephen Smith on our fascination with the belongings of the rich and famous... or infamous. 'Years ago, after the fall of the Romanian dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu,' writes Stephen, 'I entered his by now ransacked hunting lodge and made off...
As a seasoned protester, Trevor Phillips explores what’s wrong with protest today. After getting his first taste for protest as a schoolboy in Guyana (which led to detention in an army barracks and an audience with a government minister) Trevor...
While viewing a 16th Century painting of St George slaying a dragon, Adam Gopnik reflects on how we all, in life, attempt to slay ‘the dragons of our disorder.’ He concludes that 'dragon and saint are permanently entangled,...