Sara Wheeler finds writing a biography to be a humanising process, in which learning to see the world through someone else's eyes is more important than rushing to judge them.'We are quick to judge - quicker than ever in grotesquely polarised times. But if we can't know another person, how can we judge them?', she writes. 'I am suggesting that we use the biographer's craft as a tool for understanding. And a tool for avoiding generalisation, compartmentalisation and judgement.'Producer: Sheila Cook Sound Engineer: Peter Bosher Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith Production Co-ordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross

Megan Nolan says millennial adulthood feels just as uneasy as her teenage years. Short term job contracts and expensive housing has left her generation with a permanent sense of insecurity.As a teenager, Megan struggled to find her identity and place in the world, and felt 'wrong and different in the most profound and private of ways'. She was told these feelings would pass. Now as an adult, however, the anxiety about her place in society has returned.'Not knowing where your body will be from one year to the next, once you're out of your younger, wilder years, conjures a feeling not dissimilar to the nameless dread of adolescence,' she writes. This leaves Megan and her peers 'in a state of constant insecurity, certainly now, but in a deeper sense, always.' Producer: Arlene Gregorius Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Brenda Brown Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

John Gray makes the case for proportional representation as a means to revive British politics and fuel new political ideas.He argues that, for the last thirty years, government in Britain has been 'Thatcherism on autopilot'. He says that the 'cult' of the free market has been pursued by both main parties but it has long since run its course. He believes a change in the electoral system is now urgently needed, to encourage a greater variety of parties entering government and truly present voters with a choice. 'A seesaw between two parties,' he writes, 'can only accelerate our ongoing slide into becoming a poor country in which nothing works.'Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

After being given an amaryllis as a gift, Howard Jacobson wonders why he's never stared at a flower...until now.He ponder his life-long ignorance of flowers. Growing up, the family garden was a dumping ground for his dad's old trucks; seeds were something you fed to a budgerigar. 'And wasn't there a flower called An Enemy?' Howard asks. 'There you are then. I've had enough of those in life without finding more in the garden'.Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Zoe Strimpel explores what lies behind her new-found impulse to collect art to fill the blank spaces on her walls - and how collecting means something different for men and women. "It is perhaps no surprise to discover that the greater the instability outside our walls, the more we may want to create a secure and beautiful world inside, or on, them." Producer: Sheila Cook Sound engineer: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

AL Kennedy finds echoes of the movies of her childhood in our current state of affairs. "Jaws, like many disaster and horror movies contain the core lesson - whenever there's a problem, greedy people will ignore it - corporations, local authorities, politicians, contractors - people who love money more than, well, people.'Producer: Sheila Cook Sound engineer: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Trevor Phillips argues that Britain, in its desperation to eliminate inequality, risks destroying the very principles that have drawn people here for generations. He points to its eccentricity, its easy going tolerance and its spirit of non-conformity, but he believes 'zealots' are slowly demanding a new sort of 'group-think' that has all the features of a repressive sect. 'I, for one, hope that the rough spirit of British eccentricity, the awkward squad, of putting two fingers up to the establishment, endures.'Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Sarah Dunant says the rediscovery of ideas from the past can help with 'the toxicity of the present'. Just as the Renaissance master Donatello drew from the classical world to create revolutionary art, so we can find a moment in history to inspire progress in our time. 'On the surface it seems like an impossible task' says Sarah, 'not least because like everything else in this angry, polarised moment, the past itself has been commandeered as a weapon...but the wonderful thing about ideas, is that while they can travel weightlessly through history, they still pack a punch.' Producer: Sheila Cook Sound engineer: Peter Bosher Production Co-ordinator: Helena Warwick Cross Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Will Self on the pleasure of walking without purpose, with no final destination in mind, and the freedom that comes from getting lost once in a while.He reflects on the rising perception that our public spaces are becoming ever more threatening - especially for women. 'Our movements about this wide and wonderful world are for the most part painfully constrained,' he writes. 'Comfort zones have become more and more constricted'. He argues that there are many reasons for this, including the grim revelations in recent years about the criminal activities of police officers.Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Adam Gopnik challenges the idea that the artistic and literary creations of artificial intelligence can match human endeavour. Although impressive in their ability to produce pastiche, he thinks AI programmes fail to produce anything 'newly memorable'. 'They are not smart at all in the sense that we usually mean it, capable of constructing creative ideas from scratch,' he writes.'But rather they're sorts of cognitive scavengers with immense capacity - like whales scooping up all the shrimp and algae from the sea bed, and then churning on it, cud like, until asked to spit up one particular bit.'Producer: Sheila Cook Sound Engineer: Peter Bosher Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith Production Co-ordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross