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