Four Thought

William Dalrymple introduces Ranjini Obeyesekere in Four Thought at the Jaipur Literature Festival. Obeyesekere - the Sri Lankan writer, translator and academic - argues that "translations are often considered a second-class activity, done by hacks" but that, however imperfect the result, making a work written in one language available in another, is a profoundly important art. But there are difficult questions. Is a bad translation better than no translation? Is true translation, in fact, the art of the impossible?

Anwar Akhtar, Director of The Samosa, argues that Pakistan should think of itself as an Asian nation, not as an Arab one. And after years of working between Britain and Pakistan, he says British Pakistanis are uniquely placed to help Pakistan embrace its multicultural history - and to create a prosperous and peaceful future with India.Four Thought is a series of talks which combine thought provoking ideas and engaging storytelling. Recorded live in front of an audience, speakers air their latest thinking on the trends, ideas, interests and passions that affect our culture and society.Producer: Giles Edwards.

Adventurer Sally Kettle argues that hope is not helpful, and suggests some alternative strategies.Sally has twice rowed the Atlantic Ocean, and worries that hope can lead to a passive state of mind. There is nothing, she believes, like taking concrete steps to make things happen.Four Thought is a series of talks which combine thought provoking ideas and engaging storytelling. Recorded live in front of an audience, speakers air their latest thinking on the trends, ideas, interests and passions that affect our culture and society.Producer: Giles Edwards.

Designer and technologist Tom Armitage argues that learning to write computer code means learning to think in a modern way, and that it should spur creativity: the possibility of doing entirely new things.Four Thought is a series of talks which combine thought provoking ideas and engaging storytelling. Recorded live in front of an audience, speakers air their latest thinking on the trends, ideas, interests and passions that affect our culture and society.Producer: Giles Edwards.

Georgie Fienberg believes that endless fundraising by overseas aid charities is not sustainable, and she argues that charities should want to close.Georgie is Founder of Afrikids, a charity which supports poor children in Ghana. When she started the organisation she set a deadline for closing its UK fundraising arm, so that the organisation in Ghana would be sustainable and self-sufficient.Four Thought is a series of talks which combine thought provoking ideas and engaging storytelling. Recorded live in front of an audience, speakers air their latest thinking on the trends, ideas, interests and passions that affect our culture and society.Producer: Giles Edwards.

Nancy Lublin, CEO of DoSomething.Org, discusses how the next generation are doing social activism. She describes the impact of the web on social activism, making it faster, cheaper and easier to do than ever before, and argues that this has big implications for societies around the world.Four Thought is a series of talks which combine thought provoking ideas and engaging storytelling. Recorded live in front of an audience, speakers air their latest thinking on the trends, ideas, interests and passions that affect our culture and society.Producer: Giles Edwards.

Amber Dermont explains the benefits of an unhappy childhood."Though my parents were caring people, I could not escape my own sense of despair," she says. She discusses the influence of sadness on the imagination, and describes how this upbringing took her on a journey that gradually helped her imagine a life for herself as a fiction writer.Four Thought is a series of talks which combine new ideas and personal stories. Speakers explain their latest thinking on the trends and ideas in culture and society in front of a live audience.Producer: Giles Edwards.

Model and activist Sara Ziff discusses the problems with fashion and modelling. Sara maintains that fashion modelling, far from being a glamorous profession, has a dark side. She argues that what links this dark side within the industry to its sometimes ugly public face is an unhealthy obsession with very young models.Producer: Giles Edwards.

Maria Popova, Editor of Brainpickings, discusses how, with the world's knowledge more readily available to us than ever before, the fragmentation of our interests is driving us to seek out more and more of what we're already interested in. How, she asks, can we master the architecture of human knowledge in a way that takes advantage of the "Information Age", yet broadens rather than contracts our intellectual and creative horizons, both as individual consumers and as publishers of information? Producer: Giles Edwards.

Ismail Einashe, who came to Britain as a child refugee from Somalia, reflects on the link between childhood war trauma suffered by young Somali men and the way some are drawn to violent gang culture. Four Thought is a series of talks offering a personal viewpoint recorded in front of an audience at the RSA in London. Producer: Sheila Cook.