Four Thought

Advertising guru Cindy Gallop argues that if as businesses and individuals we define what we stand for and stay true to it, we could embrace a world of zero privacy.Cindy describes her own embrace of zero privacy as rather more extreme than most, after a frank admission two years ago which has since gone viral online. She explains why she designed her internet startup to require its users to pause and reflect on what they stand for, and urges people from every walk of life to redesign their lives around what they want to do.Four Thought is a series of talks which combine thought provoking ideas and engaging storytelling. Recorded in front of an audience at the RSA in London, speakers take to the stage to air their latest thinking on the trends, ideas, interests and passions that affect our culture and society.Producer: Giles Edwards.

Matthew Goodwin says supporters of the far right are generally neither irrational nor isolated, and that a far right party without extremist baggage could be electable in Britain.He has spent much of the last decade with members and supporters of the British far right, examining their hopes and aspirations, what they wish to achieve.As an expert in electoral behaviour and extremism at the University of Nottingham, he has also been carefully studying hundreds of polls to explore whether there is a wider resonance for their message. It is an intensely controversial area of study - particularly in the light of the recent atrocities in Norway.Four Thought is a series of talks which combine thought provoking ideas and engaging storytelling. Recorded in front of an audience at the RSA in London, speakers take to the stage to air their latest thinking on the trends, ideas, interests and passions that affect our culture and society.Producer: Giles Edwards.

After the internet and social media, what will be the next technological revolution?Writer, blogger and social entrepreneur Russell M. Davies argues that like the early days of blogging, we are about to witness another flowering of individual creativity. This time, he says, it will unleash "all sorts of interesting gadgety things", and determine our relationships with them."It's about making your own stuff, which might be a bit silly and a bit trivial and pointless, but you get the satisfaction of making it yourself," he says. This revolution in individual gadgetry - and designing our relationship with them - will prove "exciting, radical, life-affirming stuff".Four Thought is a series of talks which combine thought provoking ideas and engaging storytelling. Recorded in front of an audience at the RSA in London, speakers take to the stage to air their latest thinking on the trends, ideas, interests and passions that affect our culture and society.Producer: Giles Edwards.

Scotland has the highest rate of Multiple Sclerosis in the world. This progressive neurological disease can lead to disability, balance problems and paralysis. But Scotland also happens to be the centre of research into MS, much of it focussing on a new generation of drugs which could help the body heal itself. Charles ffrench-Constant is the Professor of Multiple Sclerosis Research at the MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine at The University of Edinburgh.Four Thought is a series of talks which combine thought provoking ideas and engaging storytelling. Recorded live in front of an audience during the Edinburgh International Festival, speakers take to the stage to air their latest thinking on the trends, ideas, interests and passions that affect our culture and society.Producer: David Stenhouse.

You don't need to read the folk tales of the Brother's Grimm or go to Werewolf movies to realise that humankind has always had a fear of wolves. But is all this just anti-wolf propaganda? Historians believe the last wolf in Britain was dispatched near Findhorn, Moray, in 1743 amid an outcry that it had killed two children. Now, more than 250 years later, could we finally learn to coexist peacefully with wolves? Indeed could we even learn something from them? Jim Crumley has been described as 'the best nature writer working in Britain today'. He was born and grew up in Dundee, and has written over twenty books about natural history. Producer: David Stenhouse.

Ed Howker is a co-founder of the Intergenerational Foundation and co-author of 'Jilted Generation: How Britain has Bankrupted its Youth'. The London riots have unleashed a storm of recrimination and anger, much of it focussing on the people, some of them very young, who looted shops and burned homes and businesses to the ground.Are the London rioters bad or merely misguided? Have they failed us because we first failed them? If it's true that society gets the children it deserves, do we deserve this because of our indifference to what is happening in our own cities? Ed asks if young people deserve their reputation?Producer: David Stenhouse.

The writer Andrew Robinson has studied the lives of scores of geniuses and written about them, most recently in his new book, 'Genius, a Very Short Introduction'. Since time immemorial humanity has been fascinated by genius and geniuses - those extraordinary men and women whose abilities mark them out from the rest of us. Are geniuses born not made? Or do they have habits and skills which the rest of use can learn from? Andrew poses the question: What can we learn from geniuses?Four Thought is a series of talks which combine thought provoking ideas and engaging storytelling. Recorded live in front of an audience at the Edinburgh International Festival, speakers take to the stage to air their latest thinking on the trends, ideas, interests and passions that affect our culture and society.Producer: David Stenhouse.

Writer and cultural critic Owen Hatherley attacks the architectural results of recent "urban regeneration". He regrets the loss of confidence in a vision of how cities of the future should be. Defending the buildings of the 1960s, he says: "Even the most reviled of blocks contain spacious apartments," whereas "the new blocks you can see everywhere are designed from the outside in - irregular windows and brightly coloured cladding hides the tiny mean proportions and a total lack of planning for human use." Four Thought is a series of talks which combine thought provoking ideas and engaging storytelling. Recorded live in front of an audience at the RSA in London, speakers take to the stage to air their latest thinking on the trends, ideas, interests and passions that affect our culture and society.Producer: Sheila Cook.

Writer and entrepreneur Dominic Hobson argues that organised, competitive sport damages - rather than builds - the character of players and spectators alike. In common with war, Dominic condemns it as a zero sum game: what one side gains, the other loses: "Rich in triumphalism, disdain and pride". "I still recoil in horror from the behaviour of the parents, let alone the players, when my oldest son played for a youth football team in south London," he says. Producer: Sheila Cook.

"I have a lot of followers but I have no idea where I'm leading them," says poet and musician Musa Okwonga as he explores the downside of living a life on Twitter and Facebook.He describes his recent, but powerful, addiction to Tweeting and checking his Facebook page, explaining how a painful break-up with his girlfriend led him to reassess this dependence. "I clicked on a button and changed my relationship status from 'in a relationship' to 'single'," he says. "Thing is, I never even wanted to list that I was in a relationship in the first place." He is inspired anew by the words of an Egyptian revolutionary whose uprising was achieved on the streets - not in cyberspace. As Musa says: "While we retweet, they don't retreat." His solution is to get away from his computer and out into the real world, listening to his favourite soul-sustaining music. Producer: Sheila Cook.