A Point of View

Howard Jacobson reflects on the radio essay, after almost two decades of A Point of View.With nods to Clive James, body-pierced baritones and with a plentiful supply of svelte notebooks, Howard explains why he believes the radio essay is 'more than words on paper'...why it captures the 'frolicsome spirit of truth'. And, Howard writes, 'at a time when we no longer have the concentration to read entire books, and what we do read leads us into the arms of madmen, we should love the shards of scepticism with which the best essays dazzle us.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Liam Morrey Editor: Penny Murphy

The celebrated American theorist, Francis Fukuyama, in his book 'The End of History and the Last Man' argued that US-style liberalism was the ultimate destination for all mankind, 'the final form of human government'.John Gray explains why he believes his prophecy has been turned on its head. 'As in the past, many human beings will live under tyrannies, theocracies, and empires of various kinds,' John writes. 'Failed states and zones of anarchy will be common. Democratic nations are likely to be rare, and often short-lived.'Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Liam Morrey Editor: Penny Murphy

After Donald Trump proposed that Canada could be consumed as America's 51st State, Adam Gopnik reflects on his homeland's history with the United States and Canada's new-found patriotic toughness - and how it differs from nationalism. 'It's is only a little startling, though very Canadian, to find the new motto 'elbows up' radiating everywhere in Canada,' Adam writes, referring to a defensive position found in the country's premier passion, ice hockey. 'It is a classic patriotic stance - not throwing a punch, but letting the other side know that there are angles in your physique and resistance,' he writes.'The picture now is one of an entire country, elbows proudly up'.Producer: Sheila Cook Sound: Peter Bosher Production Co-ordinator: Liam Morrey Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Zoe Strimpel explains why she's decided to lean in to social media, and not worry about how much time she spends scrolling.Despite ongoing concerns about its impact on our brains, Zoe says she's personally found the algorithm benign, offering her endless information about food and cooking."I have come to the conclusion that for a grown woman with many cares, it's mostly beneficial, interesting, soothing and yes, also sometimes even useful"Producer: Sheila Cook Sound: Peter Bosher Production Co-ordinator: Liam Morrey Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

As farmers prepare for another march at Whitehall in protest at the government's inheritance tax plans, Michael Morpurgo discusses the growing divide between city and countryside. 'The family farm, still at the heart of rural England,' writes Michael, 'is under threat, more than ever'. Michael reflects on how, during World War Two, we needed to produce all the food we could in order to survive. He argues that, as an island nation, taking food security for granted, even today, is risky. And he says there is a real sense these days that our pastoral roots are being 'reshaped irrevocably...by those who don't know or love the countryside.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Liam Morrey Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Tom Shakespeare explores the pitfalls of dramatised history and its influence on real life - but confesses to his own minor role in rewriting the past. "We turn to stories when the reality we desire fails us," he writes, "but if the legend is not based in fact, then history is in deep trouble, and so are we all." Producer: Sheila Cook Sound: Peter Bosher Production Co-ordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

From sacks of correspondence belonging to a well known author to archives from the Battle of Waterloo (and the odd wooden leg), Sara Wheeler reflects on the joys of Britain's personal archives. 'I have loved almost every day I have ever spent in an archive,' Sara writes, 'and not just because dead people are so easy to get along with.' But she fears that idiosyncratic borough and country archives will suffer because of budget cuts. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Liam Morrey Editor: Bridget Harney

Walking along the muddy tracks of the River Ouse near her home a few days ago, Rebecca Stott reflects on migration. She contemplates the lives of the Canada geese that frequently fly over her home, as well as Aristotle's own studies of bird migration - and his extraordinary life as a migrant - while considering the historic links between the migration of people and human progress. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Liam Morrey Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

The 'overwhelm' - noun, not verb - has been around 'since at least 1596', AL Kennedy discovers.She looks at the reasons why the word is making a comeback - and she has some advice for those who also feel lost in 'the overwhelm.'Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Remember the days, Howard Jacobson implores us, when we got on fine with 'very'? Today, Howard argues, 'very' is not ‘very' enough for the times we live in.' In its place, 'incredible' and other supersized words, spreading 'verbal chaos.' Howard reflects on the dangers of over-inflated language, 'where words prance about without their clothes, shouting obscenities.'Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

As Donald Trump prepares to re-enter the White House, Mark Damazer reflects on America's leadership in the world. Eavesdropping on a focus group recently, Mark tells us that the country's leadership was seen as 'a burden and a luxury - and a luxury they wanted to do without.' 'There was a time when large chunks of the world were grateful for American involvement...but gratitude is now more thinly expressed', he says. 'And Donald Trump well understands that.'In this new world order, Mark argues, 'we have our work cut out to find a response.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Liam Morrey Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

In deepest, darkest January, Adam Gopnik muses on light and dark. Adam reminds us that - from the natural world of the ghost moth to the politics of today's America - although we live in a 'gloomy moment' we can 'adjust our eyes to the gloom.''Every little bit of light we make,' writes Adam, 'in every decent thing we do and every indecency we refuse to accept, illuminates some small corner of our universe. Even at night, after all, we still see light. The stars shine, too.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Sara Wheeler explains why every week for several decades - despite knowing nothing about art - she has called in to London's National Gallery to look at the same two paintings. 'This habit of mine,' writes Sara, 'started by accident when I moved to London forty years ago' when she first set eyes on Botticelli's 'Portrait of a Young Man' and van Eyck's 'Portrait of a Man.' 'I have come to realise,' says Sara, the extraordinary power of 'familiarity, close contact and regular attention'. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Megan Nolan rediscovers a childhood diary with her first New Year's Resolutions. She was fascinated and appalled, she says, by what she read:. The final resolution, underlined, read simply 'be a better person!'These days, Megan looks on self-improvement in a rather different way - less an attempt at perfection and more 'an attempt to courageously embrace living in all its chaos.'Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Mary Beards reflects on what really lies behind our attachment to Christmas ritual and tradition. In a special edition of A Point of View, recorded in Mary's kitchen as she prepares her Christmas puddings, she ponders 'why those of us who aren't particularly wedded to the idea of tradition for the rest of the year, fall hook, line and sinker for it at this time.' 'My hunch,' Mary says, 'is that our fixed traditions are about constructing a family identity for ourselves, about displaying to ourselves as a family - changing, expanding and contracting as families always are - what makes us 'us.''Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound design: Peregrine Andrews Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith Reading of Dickens/Herodotus: Simon Slater Reading of Mrs Beeton: Ruth Everett ARCHIVE1. Extracts of Keith Floyd from A Farewell to Floyd, produced by Cactus TV. 2. The ancient recipe for Herodotus pudding is from Herodotus, Histories 2. 40.

With water companies reeling from criticism over sewage discharge and rising bills, Stephen Smith squelches through London's watery underworld. 'Descending into London's Victorian sewers', Stephen says, 'is like spelunking through the layers of the city's history, and reminds you that problems over water and sanitation have been the norm rather than an aberration' for centuries. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Zoe Strimpel on the joys of seeing the world through the eyes of her 9 month old daughter. 'Where previously I would barely have noticed them,' Zoe writes, 'I now size up trees from below in terms of buds, leaves, colour, height - and how all of these may look to my little lady viewed from her pram or carrier in which her neck swivels constantly like a periscope, or an owl.'Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Rebecca Stott ponders the task of clearing her Mum's house, and the enormous difficulty of dismantling the things her mother loved and that Rebecca remembers her buying from bric-a-brac and antique shops. 'The beauty of the objects in my mother's house exists in her artistry,' writes Rebecca, 'the way she had placed some of them so that the evening light falls on them, the way that the kooky little Italian lamp sits next to the framed print of the Venetian canal... the way that everything is in the place that she had chosen for it.' It gets her wondering about how many other people are doing the same with their parents' homes, in towns and cities across the country. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Liam Morrey Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

John Gray believes the British state is broken, and that we urgently need a new centre ground in British politics. 'Outside the echo chamber of metropolitan opinion', John writes, 'there is a restive electorate perplexed and discomforted by the country the UK has become'. He says our politicians seem bent on continuing the status quo, seemingly unable to comprehend a surge in support for populist politics.But he wonders if the election of Kemi Badenoch could be a first step towards creating something radical in a new centre ground. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

From the escape of Cholmondley the chimp from London Zoo in 1848, to Chichi from the Kharkiv Zoo in 2022, to a group of 43 macaque monkeys from a research facility in South Carolina last week, Megan Nolan reflects on the great annals of animal escapes and why they hold an almost mystical appeal to humans. She believes the reason they are so potent is that they contain the 'dazzling knowledge that things which ARE so, need not REMAIN so'. 'In a week where it felt especially apparent that we have no meaningful ability to shape the world in which we live', writes Megan, the realisation that we can defy inevitability is intoxicating.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Sara Wheeler reflects on the valuable perspective offered by out-of-date guide books. They shed light on the life of the early traveler - advised to pack an iron bedstead and a portable bath tub - and reveal how destinations may have evolved or be frozen in time.'The chief question I ask the old guides is whether the spirit of a place - the genius loci - can survive the upheaval of the years. Is the spirit of the place immutable or can it change?' asks Sara. Producer: Sheila Cook Sound: Peter Bosher Production Co-ordinator: Liam Morrey Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

In the last of his essays reflecting on America's search for meaning, James Naughtie recalls a meeting a year ago with General Michael Hayden - the former head of the CIA - who, without fanfare, expressed concern for the future of US Democracy. 'I don't know that we'll come through this,' he said. ‘Right now I think it's about 50-50.'James reflects on past presidents, such as Jimmy Carter, and his dedication to the promotion and protection of democracy around the world, and compares it to the present, as we enter the final days of the 2024 campaign. What might a tight result might mean in the coming months? 'The system will be on trial,' he writes, recalling the legal battles over the 'hanging chads' of 2000 in which the fate of the nation was decided on just 537 votes.Producer: Sheila Cook Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

James Naughtie argues that a common American identity will be achieved - one day - despite the heightened political rhetoric around immigration, that is making it one of the most contentious issues in this year's presidential election. He recalls Ronald Reagan's 'homely evocation of an American character'. For Reagan, James says, the inscription on the Statue of Liberty, 'give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses', had real contemporary power. For many Republicans today, he says, it's a very different story. But he sees signs of change. On a recent visit to the US border in Arizona, he met a 'cattleman of resolute conservative views in his 80s', who tells James that although he's fed up with armed drug runners using his land, he believes most people cutting through the fence are 'good people, in search of new lives'. 'The huddled masses will be absorbed... eventually', James writes. 'But the question right now is how much damage will be done in getting there - to the principles of their democracy, and perhaps to their precious belief in themselves.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

From the description of Alexander Hamilton as 'the bastard brat of a Scotch pedlar', to Lyndon Johnson's depiction of Gerald Ford as a man who 'couldn't fart and chew gum at the same time', James Naughtie argues that American political language has long been teeming with insult. He recalls as a student in 1974, queuing at the back door of the White House one evening and coming away with transcripts of the Watergate tapes, full of 'expletive deleted' notes 'that blacked out various Nixon explosions.' But in our own time, James says, something quite different is at play. The language of politics today, he says, 'instead of being punctuated by insults, it's become enslaved to them. And the more exaggerated political language becomes, the more it is devalued - because it has lost its true purpose.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

James Naughtie presents the first of four personal essays exploring America's 'wild search for meaning' in the run-up to November's presidential election. From the freezing waters of Nantucket Sound in Moby Dick, via sunken levees of the Mississippi and the railroad blues of New Orleans, to the ‘raucous expeditions into an underworld of…richly wounded humanity' in contemporary crime novels, James contemplates this moment in the United States through its fiction.Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Adam Gopnik revisits two famous American essays from the 1960s and finds a remarkably contemporary vision - and one 'that seems to have an application to our own time and its evident crisis.' He couples Richard Hofstadter's 1964 essay, 'The Paranoid Style in American Politics' with Daniel Boorstin's 1962 classic on 'image' and America's tenuous relationship with facts. 'It is the admixture of Hofstadter's political paranoia with Boorstin's cult of publicity,' writes Adam, 'that makes Trump so very different from previous political figures.'Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Tom Bigwood

From Kamala Harris' 'word salads' to her views about wealth redistribution, Zoe Strimpel finds little to like in a Harris presidency. But it's her views on Israel that Zoe finds particularly hard to stomach.'In those halcyon days of my youth,' says Zoe, 'our family's concerns that the leader of the free world protect Israel was normal, uncontroversial and, with Clinton and Bush at the helm, not a particular worry... But Kamala's hazy demands for instant deals and ceasefires,' she writes, 'are like nails on a chalkboard to me.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator Gemma Ashman Editor: Tom Bigwood

With the help of certain Conservative politicians, form number 48879-2039-876/WC and a rabbit hutch, Howard Jacobson takes a wry look at the advantages of a nanny state. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Sarah Wadeson

Three of Megan Nolan's close friends have given birth in the past year. Another two are doing IVF. And anyone who can afford to, Megan says, is freezing their eggs. Megan reflects on how attitudes to having children have changed profoundly in Ireland in the space of a generation. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Tom Bigwood

As America gears up for next week's debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, Sarah Dunant looks at the seismic shift in sexual politics in the US since Trump debated with Hillary Clinton. 'Looming, threatening, even the word stalking was used' to describe that encounter, Sarah remembers. But when this presidential debate gets underway in the early hours of Wednesday morning UK time, Sarah thinks it will be a very different story. 'An encounter worth losing sleep for,' she reckons. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Tom Bigwood

In the week that one of Britain's most famous Paralympians Tanni Grey-Thompson was forced to crawl off a train, Tom Shakespeare describes his encounters with crawling. 'Don't get me wrong,' Tom says, I am not against crawling.' His holidays, he says, involve a lot of crawling: in Egypt to visit the apartment of the poet Constantine Cavafy or in Italy to see the childhood home of the communist revolutionary, Antonio Gramsci. But in day to day life, Tom argues, 'crawling is no way for adults to go about their business.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Tom Bigwood

At a village fete in rural France, AL Kennedy finds herself among barrel organs, sleeping piglets and 'a guy in a flowing blue smock gliding about on an ancient motor bicycle, just because he could.' After US Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz turned the word 'weird' into 'the soundtrack of our summer,' Alison relishes how the concept is reclaiming its roots. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Tom Bigwood

David Goodhart says that with 40% of universities facing deficits and, he believes, too many graduates chasing too few graduate jobs, it's time for a rethink on universities.And he has a reassuring message for those who didn't make the grade in Thursday's A level results. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Jonathan Glover Production coordinator: Sabine Schereck Editor: Tom Bigwood

Sara Wheeler on why sleeping in Captain Scott's bunk in the Antarctic got her thinking about imposter syndrome. 'It took me many years,' writes Sara, 'to realise that I had as much right to be in Captain Scott's hut as anyone else, because nobody owns the Antarctic, or the hut, or Scott's legacy."Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Rod Farquhar Production coordinator: Janet Staples Editor: Tom Bigwood

Will Self muses on change as he prepares for a stem cell transplant, an operation 'which will result in the greatest change in what has been a notably changeable life.' And he discusses the preparations he's making which he believes put him 'in pole position to race with this ...devilish adversary.'He concludes that the art of living is about recognizing that 'life is in continual flux - and our vacillating wills and changeable natures, psychic and physical alike, are just part of the cosmic churn - nothing in fact endures, but change itself.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Tom Bigwood

As the Olympics gets underway, Michael Morpurgo says we need to take care that the event doesn't stray too far from the ideals of the Olympics and the Paralympics. 'The announcement this year,' writes Michael, 'that athletes at the Olympics will, for the first time, be awarded prize money - $50,000 for each gold medal - sets a precedent in the Games' 128 year history.' But, he says, 'over the next two weeks, I should like to think that the Olympics will uphold the spirit that has sustained the Games for so long... that the glory is in the laurel wreath or the medal, that the heroism is in the triumphs and disasters.'Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Tom Bigwood

Adam Gopnik muses on why he'll always love the steam baths in New York.'My own pet answer,' Adam says, 'justified by intuition and half-heard rumours, is that it helps sleep to have a low internal body temperature. All that sweating lowers my own burning inner furnace and makes me more able to sleep.' This is, he admits, 'a perfectly sound scientific explanation that I have no intention of checking.'Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Liam Morrey Editor: Tom Bigwood

Sarah Dunant argues that Joe Biden's refusal to understand his moment in history is forcing the nation to confront the fact that she is no longer young. 'In the relatively short history of America from new country to super power,' writes Sarah, 'she has always - even when she behaves badly - projected an aura of self confidence, a vitality, almost cocky certainty that we associate with youth. And for the longest time, it made for an optimism, a sense of can do, that sometimes felt like manifest destiny.' That, Sarah argues, is starting to change. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Tom Bigwood

A night walk, listening to nightingales, and a memory of her late father lead Rebecca Stott to ponder Iris Murdoch's theory of 'unselfing'.The theory, writes Rebecca, was 'essentially about looking out and beyond ourselves and away from what Murdoch described as the 'fat, relentless ego.'' In this post election moment, Rebecca says, 'to rise to the challenges of housing, global migration, war, the cost of living, and the crisis of climate breakdown, as well as countering the global rise of nationalism and tribal politics, we might have to find ways to radically unself not just as individuals but as whole nations.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor Tom Bigwood

Mary Beard argues that 21st Century disputes about what museums should own - or give back - are far from being a modern phenomenon. 'Almost as far back as you can go, there have been contests about what museums should display, and where objects of heritage properly belonged,' writes Mary. 'These debates are written into museum history.' From the Great Bed of Ware to the Lewis Chessmen, Mary reflects on how we determine who owns objects from the distant past. Sometimes, she says, as in the case of the Broighter Hoard, it comes down to the kind of craziness of deciding whether 'some anonymous Iron Age bloke had planned to come back for his stuff, or not!' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

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 other ways of framing this dilemma too, she believes. 'My favourite of those is to think that I'm unusually capable of feeling at home in the world at large, instead of just one building, or just one town....There are parts of me that would not exist except for my privilege to live in other places, those parts were born all over the world, and I remember the luck of that when I feel at a loss about bricks and mortar.'Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

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 it is striking,' writes Zoe, 'that rather than reject the purely cynical commercialism of their fandom, fans demand it. Which begs the question of whether we are really fans of artists these days, or whether fandom has been consumed by corporations who have shape-shifted into the form of pop stars.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith