Why would you go to the coldest place on Earth? A place mostly devoid of life, where there are rarely more than a few thousand other humans spread out across a landmass twice the size of Australia. A place whose sublime beauty is matched by its capacity to kill you, very fast. We are talking about Antarctica. A continent which belongs to no nation has no government and is run according to an international treaty signed nearly 60 years ago.Shabnam Grewal went there many years ago and knows the joy of being surrounded by ice blue glaciers and the hardships of working in a freezing climate. She talks to others who were drawn there too, by the beauty of the place or in search of knowledge or to test themselves and understand who they really are.(Picture: A Freediver in Antartica, Credit: Freedive Antarctica / Barcroft / Barcroft Media via Getty Images)

Boredom is a powerful emotion, one which many of us will go to lengths to avoid. Psychologists describe its purpose as trying to get us to do something else. Boredom can spur us on to do something more meaningful, or tempt us into dangerous behaviours. In this edition of the Why Factor, Sandra Kanthal talks with researchers who think boredom is anything but boring.Image: A bored woman behind a rainy window in a tram, (c) Getty Images.

Lesley Curwen has sailed thousands of miles around Europe on her yacht and knows the strange joy of being out of sight of land. Talking to fellow sea-lovers - sailors, a marine biologist, an artist and a Captain of a merchant ship - she asks why we are drawn to go to sea and put ourselves at the mercy of wind and waves. Is it a yearning to be close to nature, a test of self-reliance or can science explain why our brains are attracted to the ocean?Photo: The sea. Copyright Shutterstock

Why do so many of us love boats? They are used as homes as well as for work and pleasure across the world. Lesley Curwen, a proud owner of a yacht, finds out how our love affair with the boat can be a deep, passionate attachment and how some vessels can take on the character of their owners. In some cultures boats are seen as living things and the best place to create family memories far from the busy, connected world of dry land.(Photo: A boat on the sea)

Just like in the TV show Sex and the City, female friendships tend to be uniquely close – women talk often and share a lot. But this level of intimacy can make the relationships susceptible to serious and even terminal breakdown. As friendships increasingly take place through social media, Nastaran Tavakoli-Far looks at why new technology can be a mixed blessing for female friendship by exaggerating existing vulnerabilities yet enabling increased connectedness. She also learns why it’s a particular problem for teenagers as well as how a mutual admiration of One Direction can be the bedrock of a good friendship.(Photo: Three Female Friends. Credit: Shutterstock)

From the Obama-Biden bromance to the transformative experience of the men’s group, Nastaran Tavakoli-Far explores what men can get from their friendships with other men that is unique. With theories from Aristotle to the modern day, she looks at how long held notions of masculinity sit within redefined gender roles and can prevent men from getting close to other men.And also learns about the importance of music in making friends and why being able to show our weaknesses is so crucial to forming friendships.(Photo: Joe Biden and Barack Obama. Credit: The White House)

Why do people go to their school reunion? Caz Graham goes to a 50th anniversary school reunion in the North of England where she meets people who are encountering friends who have not seen each other for years. She hears how the event prompts their memories of school days from the 1960s and also what they have done in the years since leaving school.Caz explores the strength of feelings that school day memories produce and finds out from experts why these enduring memories draw people back to reunions. She hears from Professor Vered Vinitsky Seroussi about the importance of being able to recount what has happened in our lives to those who were our first friends during school days. The benefits of attending a school reunion are explained by Professor Jerome Short. School reunions happen around the world and can start just a few years after leaving school – Jen Bilik has attended four reunions, starting with the tenth anniversary and explains how her attitude towards them changed over the subsequent years. She explains how attending a school reunion is a way of taking part in a longitudinal study of our lives.(Image: School Reunion. Credit: Shutterstock)

Dividing people into groups is part of our social experience. Be it through race, gender, nationality; we build our identities through groups we belong to. And these identities can be numerous and elastic. But, what makes us decide who is like us and who is the other? In this week’s Why Factor, Sandra Kanthal asks; why do we divide the world into us and them?(Image: Baseball caps, Credit: Sandra Kanthal/BBC)

How often do you think about other peoples’ opinion of you?In many parts of the world status is something we can change through education, occupation and wealth but what if you come from a culture where the status you are born with is inescapable? We speak to author Sujatha Gidla about growing up as one of India’s Untouchables: the outcasts of the country’s rigid Caste system.Lifestyle and fashion blogger Sasha Wilson shows us how high the status stakes are in the completive online world of Instagram. And is the pursuit of status bad for our mental health? Professor Richard Wilkinson believes so and argues that the bigger the gap between rich and poor the greater our obsession becomes with it.Finally, is status something we can just buy? Brian Hamilton runs a business selling Scottish noble titles to the highest bidder and so presenter Priscilla Ngethe considers becoming Baroness of Pentland…(Field recordings of the Shuar Ecuadorian Indians thanks to Mike Woloszyn and freesound.org)Image: John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett in the Class Sketch from Frost Over England, 1967 (Credit: BBC)

People have been fishing for thousands of years – it is one of the last hunter gatherer activities. But increasingly it is becoming more difficult, as fish stocks dwindle or regulation limits the number of fishes that can be caught. Caz Graham asks why do people continue to fish despite these difficulties. She goes out into the Solway Firth in the north of England, with a group of haaf net fishers who use a traditional form of salmon fishing that dates back over a thousand years. She hears how new regulations have limited the number of fish that can be caught – something that the fishers say could threaten this form of fishing. To find out more about how people continue to fish internationally, we hear from a fishing community in Alaska, and about tuna fishing in the Maldives. On the North East coast of England, we meet a fishing party as they complete successful day’s fishing from the tiny harbour of Staithes – and further along that coast, we hear from a trainee at the Whitby Fishing School who explains why he wants to join the fishing industry. Professor Calum Roberts of York University in the UK explains the motivation behind fishing and the changing character of fishing today.(Image: Old fisherman with nets, Credit: Shutterstock)