Understand

Lias Saoudi, singer, author, and frontman of Fat White Family, reflects on turning 40 and becoming a father. He revisits a life of drugs, chaos, outsider identity, and creative rebellion. Lockdown, pregnancy, depression, and the fear of losing his freedom all reshape his world, while dawn walks and a moment beneath a willow tree mark an unexpected new chapter.

Matthew Todd, journalist, activist and former Attitude editor, reflects on being a gay man in his 50s. He discusses growing up alienated from masculinity, homophobia during the AIDS crisis, and finding refuge in The Phantom of the Opera. He explores addiction, trauma, recovery, grief, fatherhood, climate activism and learning to see vulnerability, friendship and responsibility as part of manhood.

David Baddiel, the English comedian, author and broadcaster, reflects on being a man in his sixties. He confronts ageing, physical decline and the growing reality of mortality. He explores fatherhood, his complicated relationship with his own father, rejecting anger as masculine authority, and how comedy sustains intimacy. He also considers friendship with his adult children and the shape of masculinity in later life.

Colm Tóibín, the acclaimed Irish novelist, poet and playwright, reflects on life in his seventies. He discusses changing sexual energy, surviving testicular cancer, and redefining masculinity as a gay man. He also explores rebuilding physical strength, learning to swim, the limitless possibilities of creative work, and why older men can still surprise expectations.

Michael Palin, Monty Python comedian, actor, writer and acclaimed travel presenter, joins Michael Rosen for a candid conversation about masculinity in later life. They revisit the competitive world of Python, the freedom of turning 80, and Palin’s increasingly gender-neutral identity. They also explore grief, the loss of Palin’s wife Helen after 60 years, reconciliation, and the art of listening without having all the answers.

Michael Rosen reflects on turning 80 and asks what being a man really means. Across seven decades, men discuss aging, sexuality, creativity, fatherhood, competition, grief, emotional vulnerability, and the pressures of masculinity. Expect candid, funny, awkward, and tender stories about the roles men inherit, question, and pass on.

Can AI solve humanity’s value crisis, or deepen it? This discussion explores AI’s promise of abundance, scientific breakthroughs and new creative possibilities, alongside battles over stolen creative work, concentrated ownership and synthetic companionship. It also asks why human judgment, effort and genuine relationships may matter more as machines take on more of our thinking.

John Cassidy, a New Yorker journalist focused on economics and financial crises, and Brian Merchant, a technology writer exploring automation and labor, join a historical tour of technological upheaval. They revisit the printing press, the Luddites, Victorian photography, and the dot-com bubble, tracing battles over knowledge, privacy, skilled work, and financial value. The discussion asks what today’s AI anxieties can learn from the past.

Technology is reshaping what matters, from friendship and culture to finance and work. Explore how frictionless relationships may lose depth, algorithms can flatten cultural discovery, and prices can drift away from worth. As AI unsettles careers in translation, coding and beyond, the wider question emerges: are we facing a crisis of value or a profound reshuffling?

Technology is rewriting what we value, from friendship and culture to money and work. Explore whether frictionless connection leaves us more isolated, how algorithms shape taste and finance, and what past revolutions can teach us about today’s upheaval. As AI transforms creativity, intimacy, science and jobs, could it help us design a better future, or deepen a crisis of value?