A Point Of View

Adam Gopnik reflects on the attitude of the French to the sex lives of their statesmen and gives his opinion that the price of privilege is prudence. "Puritanical societies are less morally alert than ones like France that aren't, because the puritanical societies have the judgments prepackaged and their hypocrisies, too. Instead, in France, the moral rights and wrongs, I've learned, are adjudicated case by case."Producer: Sheila Cook.

John Gray reflects on "unknown knowns" - what we know but prefer not to think about, whether it's the truth about the invasion of Iraq or the failures of the financial system that led to the banking crisis. "We humans are sturdy and resilient animals with enormous capacities of creativity and adaptability; but consistently realistic thinking seems to be beyond our powers."Producer: Sheila Cook.

John Gray reflects on the damage that can be caused by evangelical belief in a religion or in a political idea. "Whether they are religious or political, evangelists seem to me a blight on civilisation. For them as for those they persecute or bully, belief is an obstacle to a fulfilling life."Producer: Sheila Cook.

John Gray gives only two cheers for human rights. We are in danger, he argues, of turning them into a "comforting dogma through which we try to escape the painful dilemmas of war and politics.""Rather than thinking of rights as a militant creed that can deliver the world from its conflicts, we should recognise rights for what they are - useful devices that quite often don't work.".

In the week when Prince Charles has drawn attention to violence against Christians in the Middle East, William Dalrymple says it's time to remember the "old and often forgotten co-habitation of Islam and Christianity"."Christmas time is perhaps the proper moment to remember the long tradition of revering the nativity in the Islamic world. ...There are certainly major differences between the two faiths, not least the central fact, in mainstream Christianity, of Jesus' divinity. But Christmas - the ultimate celebration of Christ's humanity - is a feast which Muslims and Christians can share without reservation.".

John Gray gives his own theory for the cultural longevity of Charles Dickens, celebrating his view of life as a theatre of the absurd. "Dickens enjoyed human beings as he found them: unregenerate, peculiar and incorrigibly themselves."Producer: Sheila Cook.

Will Self reflects that our modern, secular society has silenced the voices of the dead. As a result, he argues, we fail to appreciate the sacred buildings, art and literature of the past. "Having purged them on the basis that they can furnish no proof of their existence, do we not begin to undermine the capacity of that which they have left behind to also speak to us?"Producer: Sheila Cook.

Will Self warns against politicians' superficially attractive policies which turn out to be Trojan horses. "It all comes down to gifts - presents that we save up for through the countrywide Christmas club we call progressive taxation, and which are then handed out by the jolly, hoho-ing Government in the form of public services."Producer: Sheila Cook.

Will Self reflects from the top of the new One World Trade Center in New York on the challenge of rebuilding after the destruction of 9.11."The downtown site, mired in ground sacred to mammon, has mixed into it a complex mulch of private rights and public responsibilities: to harmonise these competing interests in the frozen music of architecture has proved a gruelling compositional task.".

Will Self argues for greater British cultural self confidence in the debate over the wearing of the veil.Apologies are not needed for an insistence on uncovered faces in court, he says, and the best safeguard against extremism is engagement with the Western philosophic tradition and its multicultural influences."Of course British culture will be changed by the cultures of our recent immigrants, but surely our greatest desideratum is precisely this: to be the heirs, possessors and transmitters of a legacy that is ready and able to adapt."Producer: Sheila Cook.

Will Self reflects on America's view of the assassination of JF Kennedy, fifty years on. After years of talk of conspiracy, cover-up and doctored film footage, he concludes, "It isn't so much that the Kennedy assassination has transitioned smoothly into a commonsensical past; it's rather that it was the first instance of a peculiarly modern variant of the historic event: its media simulation". Producer: Sheila Cook.

Will Self reflects on the malign influence of the older generation on the young as the population of Britain ages. "In my darker moments - of which there are quite a few - I often envision the baby boomer generation as a giant and warty toad squatting on the youth of our society".Producer: Sheila Cook.

Lisa Jardine reflects on the sensitive questions surrounding IVF as she comes to the end of her term as Chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. "I would have loved to have been able to have spoken more often and more publicly, with more words of caution for those preparing to undertake IVF, or postponing their family because IVF seems a reliable option should natural conception fail." Producer: Sheila Cook.

Lisa Jardine compares the contributions of Ada Lovelace and Alan Turing a century later to computer science and contrasts their views on the potential of and limits to machine intelligence.Producer: Sheila Cook.

Lisa Jardine reflects on the internationalism that underpins the progress of science in a week when individual nations celebrate their Nobel prize winners. "Science has always ignored national borders, in pursuit of the fullest possible understanding of nature."Producer: Sheila Cook.

Lisa Jardine learned the story of Leo Szilard from her father who regarded him as an exemplary figure in science. Szilard, an Hungarian physicist, helped to develop the atom bomb, but later fought against its use. His story provides lessons about the relationship between science and human values - even though the version of the tale Lisa was taught turns out not to have been entirely true.Producer: Sheila Cook.

Stephen King says "Love creates horror." AL Kennedy agrees. "As someone who often says 'I think' and almost never says 'I feel', I don't personally welcome love's ability to make me fear not only for myself, but others," she writes.But love makes us altruistic, humane. "We would find it bizarre if a parent was more worried about dropping a vase than dropping their baby - even a Ming vase and an ugly baby. An absence of love within a family or a relationship is taken as a sign of something having gone very wrong," she says."But an absence of love in the world we help construct around us, that's regarded as a form of common sense. We are used to making decisions - or having them made for us - which would save the vase and not the baby."Producer: Sheila Cook.

AL Kennedy reflects on our tendency to behave badly when we think no-one's watching or when we follow the wrong crowd."When psychologists test how people behave with and without oversight, it becomes depressingly clear that if we think nobody's looking, we don't even remotely always let our consciences be our guides," she writes. "Even very normal, pleasant people can delegate their morality to other people who appear to be in charge, even of bizarre and disturbing scenarios."Producer: Sheila Cook.

AL Kennedy reflects on the stuggle to establish truth in what she regards as an age of lies. Lies, she says, are proliferating on TV, in politics, in business and throughout public and private life. Extracting truths in moral and effective ways, she argues, is an ever greater challenge.Producer: Sheila Cook.

Fear of change can lead us astray. It can keep us from mercy. It can be used by authorities as an excuse for sticking with the status quo. It's a barrier to happiness. AL Kennedy doesn't like change. But she thinks perhaps she should change her mind.