A Point of View

John Gray reflects on the controversial "safe spaces" policy being pursued by some universities.It may have been devised to ensure that people of all identities are entitled to a tolerant environment ...but John Gray argues that the policy not only threatens a fundamental liberal value but represents a demand to be sheltered from human reality. He says the point of education used to be to learn how to live well in full awareness of the disorder of life. "A lack of realism ...was considered not just an intellectual failing but also a moral flaw". He says we ignore this lesson of history at our peril. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

John Gray assesses what lies behind the Trump phenomenon and the remarkable political upheaval that could - possibly - see Donald Trump propelled into the White House. From the start, he says, Trump's campaign has been an audacious experiment in mass persuasion. "His uncouth language, megalomaniac self-admiration and strangely coloured hair....all deliberately cultivated" to help him profit from the popular resentment against the elites of the main parties. "Whatever happens", writes Gray, "there will be no return to pre-Trump normalcy". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Wheelchair user, Tom Shakespeare, reflects on what it feels like to be dependent on others. He says care often leaves the recipient in a devalued state. He calls for society to respond to the challenge of delivering help "without creating domination and infantilisation" and for care to be funded properly. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

John Gray muses on what his idea of heaven is....and why it shouldn't be a perfect world. History teaches us that trying to create a perfect society leads to hell on earth, he writes. "But dreams of a perfect world don't fail because human beings are incurably flawed. They fail because human beings are more complicated and interesting that their dreams of perfection".

Tom Shakespeare - a new dog owner - reflects on what dogs can teach us about contentment. Remembering his childhood obsession with the Peanuts cartoon, he quotes Snoopy "My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I'm Happy. I can't figure it out. What am I doing right?" Dogs, writes Tom, have a much greater capacity for contentment than people and we can all learn from this.Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Will Self reflects on the joys of genealogy - truffling in census returns and parish records and establishing "our genuine links to multiple generations of nonentities"! "As a passionate Londoner", he writes, "I wanted to establish when the first Self had arrived in the city". Entire family sagas, he says, are today vanishing into thin air, in an era of nuclear families. Gone are those generations of extended families where over a cup of tea, the same old stories were told about the same old relatives. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Will Self explores what's wrong with modern art. "I've been responsible for a fair amount of absolutely total nonsense in my time", he writes, but says most contemporary art is little more than "overvalued tosh and useless ephemera". Instead of a world where Russian oligarchs "buy artworks by the metric tonne and plaster them on the walls of their vulgar houses", he calls for a genuine understanding of art where - once again - we become "capable of conveying and explaining the subtle ambiguities of genuine art". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Will Self explains why he finds it hard to always act his age."To alternate between being an errant child and a corrective adult must, I think, be intrinsic to the human condition." Producer: Sheila Cook.

Tom Shakespeare gives a very personal view of the implications for society of a prenatal screening technology due to be announced shortly. Tom inherited the genetic condition, achondroplasia, or restricted growth from his father and passed it on to both his children. Soon we will have to decide, he writes, what sort of people we are prepared to accept in our families and in our society. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Via steak and kidney pie and a spot of Morris dancing, AL Kennedy reflects on Englishness...at a time, she writes, "when Englishness is struggling to decide what it can be". She appeals to England - with all its different views, customs, history and opinions - to "treasure yourself, all of yourself". Producer: Adele Armstrong.