A Point of View

John Gray assesses why experts failed to predict recent seismic events. He says they operated under the long-held but mistaken belief that history unfolds according to predictable patterns. "Human events have no overall direction", he writes, "and history obeys no laws". He discusses how we can prepare ourselves for the "unknowable future". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

"I haven't been visiting schools and drowsing during headteachers' PowerPoint presentations for nothing this past quarter century", writes Will Self. "I know full-well that the purpose of both British education and British employment is the same: to keep us busy and purposive from cradle to grave". Will Self explores how the worlds of work and education have become seamlessly merged with each other. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

John Gray examines what lies behind our desire to protect our "way of life". "If people are forced to choose between insecurity and a promise of stability through tyranny", he writes, "many will opt for tyranny".He argues that spending vast amounts of money on "grandiose wars while large sections of our own people languish in neglect and despair can only leave our societies more vulnerable to extremist demagogues". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Will Self argues that, at a time when we're observing "our so-called leaders, fretting and strutting on the world stage", it really is a worthwhile exercise to spend time worrying about why we're here. "I'd argue", he writes, "that to engage fully with the weird mystery of being is to at least take the helm of your own ship - even if its course is determined by some automatic pilot". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Will Self says it's time for schools to stop "teaching to the test". He argues that in the contemporary wired world, "it seems obvious that young people need more than ever to know how to think outside the boxes, rather than simply tick them". There's no reason, he says, to shackle children "to the go-round of memorization and regugitation". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Will Self explores the significance of the art work that adorns the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square. He asks what such public art projects represent in this "festival of ephemerality our society seems to have become". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

"We're constantly being reminded that this is a democracy", writes Will Self "one, indeed, which we should take back control of". But in the arena of national defence, he says, the role of the citizen "is relegated to that of a guilty bystander, his fate in the hands of the state's hirelings". Will Self argues for the re-introduction of National Service to invigorate British democracy. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Adam Gopnik revisits a much explored subject - the differences between patriotism and nationalism. In the light of the events of the past year, he questions why the politics of nationalism appear irresistible today. He wonders "if we cannot now see that patriotism and nationalism have a more fluid, a more organic, a more connected relationship that we might want to imagine". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

"Perhaps we should try, before the year's out", writes Howard Jacobson, " to agree on the International Word of 2016 - the word that most describes where we've been these last 12 months". "Post-truth", "Trump" and "Farage" are all in the running. But in the end, Jacobson's chooses "people" as in "the people have spoken" for his Word of the Year. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

The Christmas song "Baby It's Cold Outside" has become the cause of intense controversy in the US where it's been described as a "hymn to rape" . "As the father of a teenage daughter" writes Adam Gopnik, "I will stand down to no one in the fight against sexual assault of all kinds". But, he argues, the worst thing liberal minded people can do is "allow their liberalism to become infected with puritanism". Producer: Adele Armstrong.