Four Thought

Mark Lorch asks why we are all so afraid of chemicals.Biology has plants, animals and David Attenborough. Physics has lasers, stars and Brian Cox. Meanwhile chemistry, by reputation, has chemical weapons, pollution and Walter White from Breaking Bad.Mark, himself a chemistry lecturer at Hull University, explores why we have the wrong end of the stick, and what can be done about it.Producer: Giles Edwards.

Mark O'Connell argues that in an age of strong opinions, we should embrace ambivalence.As a child, Mark's constitutional ambiguity meant his mother considered printing the phrase 'I might and I mightn't' on a t-shirt. Today, Mark's job as a writer for Slate magazine is to take strong positions. In this fascinating look at the role of ambiguity in our society, he attempts to square the circle - or should that be circle the square - in his determination to have the courage of his own ambivalence.Producer: Giles Edwards.

Jane Burston argues that by placing too much emphasis on profit, companies behave in an unethical way, and it is time for social purpose to take centre stage.Jane describes what she sees as a systematic problem in big companies and argues that only by viewing profit as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself, can we create an ethical business sector. And she believes that shareholders will embrace her plan, even if it means business leaders taking on the mantle of moral leaders and sometimes compromising profit for social good.Producer: Giles Edwards.

Sam Edwards argues that we should think again about how and what we memorialise - including wars and other major events in our national history.Sam is a lecturer in American History at Manchester Metropolitan University, and has long been fascinated with memorials. He tells the story of how, as a young man, he would journey around the Suffolk countryside visiting the many memorials to the US 8th Air Force, and the effect it had on him.Producer: Giles Edwards.

Molly Naylor has spent years thinking how much she could teach her teenage self. But in this talk, Molly turns her thinking on its head. What if her teenage self has something to teach her?Producer: Giles Edwards.

Matt Locke traces the stories of three 'empires of attention' to examine how our attention, and the way it was measured, has shaped our culture.Producer: Giles Edwards.

Farrah Jarral puts the case for more cheekiness, arguing that it is a core British value and a creative, playful way of checking power and subverting the status quo.Farrah, a GP by day, tells the story of how one patient smashed the usual doctor-patient power gradient. She sets out to discover whether any other language has a concept quite like cheekiness, and she explains why she is convinced that there is far greater depth to it than first meets the eye.Producer: Giles Edwards.

Paul Dimeo argues that drugs made modern sport what it is today, and that we ought to take a more sympathetic view of those athletes whose will to win takes them outside the rules of the game. Paul believes the entire Olympic movement was saved by the drug-fuelled rivalry between the United States, Soviet Union and East Germany, and makes the case that drugs dramatically enliven sport as a spectacle and as a talking point. Producer: Giles Edwards.

Author and broadcaster Lindsay Johns argues that language is power, and makes the case for speaking English properly.Lindsay, who has mentored young people in Peckham, south London, for years, believes that street slang and what he calls 'ghetto grammar' disempower and limit the life chances of those who speak it.And he says that those who make excuses for this language, or argue that it is good for young people, are really just encouraging them to ostracize themselves even further from mainstream society.Producer: Giles Edwards.

As the first Muslim chair in Islamic and Interreligious Studies at the University of Edinburgh, Mona Siddiqui regularly engages on inter-faith issues. Reflecting on her own life, Mona says that far from being a private matter, friendship is more of a societal good that is achieving ever greater significance in the globalized world.Four Thought is a series of talks which combine new ideas and personal stories.Recorded during the Edinburgh festival, speakers explain their thinking on the trends and ideas in culture and society in front of a live audience.Producer: Caitlin Smith.

The United Nations recently predicted that the world's population will grow to nine billion by 2050 and ten billion by the end of the century.Whilst news of population growth is often greeted with panic and dismay Danny Doring, a human geographer at the Oxford University Centre for the Environment, argues that, in fact, there's nothing to fear in the future, because the population bomb has already diffused.Four Thought is a series of talks which combine new ideas and personal stories.Recorded during the Edinburgh festival, speakers explain their thinking on the trends and ideas in culture and society in front of a live audience.Producer: Caitlin Smith.

We might think the web is something different, another world somewhere out there - or indeed in our devices - but as Emily Bell argues, the web is actually mapped onto our physical world: the real and the virtual are the same thing.Emily spent almost twenty years working at the Observer and then the Guardian, setting up Media Guardian website in 2000. Three years ago she and her family moved to New York and Emily became the Director of the Tow Centre for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School.Living her life over two continents has caused her to consider the affect of cyberspace on actual space. Are we, as so many promised in the 90s, witnessing the death of distance?Four Thought is a series of talks which combine new ideas and personal stories.Recorded during the Edinburgh festival, speakers explain their thinking on the trends and ideas in culture and society in front of a live audience.

In the 1990s, author Alan Bissett was a lad and women were 'birds'.In a frank and personal account, Alan talks about why he turned to the work of the late American radical feminist Andrea Dworkin after becoming concerned over his use of internet pornography.He dissects elements of what he describes as our "sex saturated culture" and argues that men need to start engaging with feminism for the good of all. Four Thought is a series of talks which combine new ideas and personal stories.Recorded during the Edinburgh festival, speakers explain their thinking on the trends and ideas in culture and society in front of a live audience.Producer: Caitlin Smith.

Greg Votolato confesses his addiction to cars while arguing for more sustainable designs to meet our desire for status and private space. Four Thought is a series of talks which combine new ideas and personal stories. Speakers explain their thinking on the trends and ideas in culture and society in front of a live audience. Producer: Sheila Cook.

Yasmin Hai says it's not Western foreign policy that is radicalising British Muslims but more pedestrian psychological factors closer to home. Four Thought is a series of talks which combine new ideas and personal stories. Speakers explain their thinking on the trends and ideas in culture and society in front of a live audience. Producer: Sheila Cook.

Jad Adams thinks we're dealing with homelessness less well than in the 1930s. Speaking from his experience helping homeless people, he argues that current policy - which he says ties the homeless to hostels funded by their benefits - is not the answer. Four Thought is a series of talks which combine new ideas and personal stories. Speakers explain their thinking on the trends and ideas in culture and society in front of a live audience.

Andrew Graystone speaks from personal experience to argue that we're using the wrong language to talk about cancer. Four Thought is a series of talks which combine new ideas and personal stories. Speakers explain their thinking on the trends and ideas in culture and society in front of a live audience.

Advertising guru Kevin Allen tells a tale of missing cutlery on passenger jets to show where business leaders go wrong. Success, he says, belongs to the "buoyant" leader, riding high on the esteem of the workforce, rather than ruling by fear.Four Thought is a series of thought-provoking talks combining personal stories with ideas of contemporary relevance. Speakers air their thinking in front of a live audience, hosted by David Baddiel.

Social anthropologist Jamie Tehrani sees our obsession with celebrity culture as a result of our maladapted brains. Four Thought is a series of thought-provoking talks which combine personal stories with ideas of contemporary relevance. Speakers air their thinking in front of a live audience, hosted by David Baddiel.

Economist Judith Shapiro argues that the next steps towards equality for women will be far harder than those which went before.Four Thought is a series of thought-provoking talks which combine personal stories with ideas of contemporary relevance. Speakers air their thinking in front of a live audience, hosted by David Baddiel.Producer: Sheila Cook.