A Point of View

Oct 25 2024 763 ep. 9 mins 52.3k
A Point of View Podcast artwork

A weekly reflection on a topical issue.

  Society & Culture
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The Old Identity

Oct 25 2024 10 mins  
James Naughtie argues that a common American identity will be achieved - one day - despite the heightened political rhetoric around immigration, that is making it one of the most contentious issues in this year's presidential election. He recalls Ronald Reagan's 'homely evocation of an American character'. For Reagan, James says, the inscription on the Statue of Liberty, 'give me y

2. Words, Words, Words

Oct 18 2024 9 mins  
From the description of Alexander Hamilton as 'the bastard brat of a Scotch pedlar', to Lyndon Johnson's depiction of Gerald Ford as a man who 'couldn't fart and chew gum at the same time', James Naughtie argues that American political language has long been teeming with insult. He recalls as a student in 1974, queuing at the back door of the White House one evening and coming away

1. Call Me Ishmael

Oct 11 2024 10 mins  
James Naughtie presents the first of four personal essays exploring America's 'wild search for meaning' in the run-up to November's presidential election. From the freezing waters of Nantucket Sound in Moby Dick, via sunken levees of the Mississippi and the railroad blues of New Orleans, to the ‘raucous expeditions into an underworld of…richly wounded humanity’ in contemporar

Paranoids and Publicists

Oct 04 2024 10 mins  
Adam Gopnik revisits two famous American essays from the 1960s and finds a remarkably contemporary vision - and one 'that seems to have an application to our own time and its evident crisis.' He couples Richard Hofstadter's 1964 essay, 'The Paranoid Style in American Politics' with Daniel Boorstin's 1962 classic on 'image' and America's tenuous relationship with facts. 'It is the a

Kamala

Sep 27 2024 10 mins  
From Kamala Harris' 'word salads' to her views about wealth redistribution, Zoe Strimpel finds little to like in a Harris presidency. But it's her views on Israel that Zoe finds particularly hard to stomach.'In those halcyon days of my youth,' says Zoe, 'our family's concerns that the leader of the free world protect Israel was normal, uncontroversial and, with Clinton and Bush at

In Praise of the Nanny State

Sep 20 2024 10 mins  
With the help of certain Conservative politicians, form number 48879-2039-876/WC and a rabbit hutch, Howard Jacobson takes a wry look at the advantages of a nanny state. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Sarah Wadeson

Babies Making Babies

Sep 13 2024 10 mins  
Three of Megan Nolan's close friends have given birth in the past year. Another two are doing IVF. And anyone who can afford to, Megan says, is freezing their eggs. Megan reflects on how attitudes to having children have changed profoundly in Ireland in the space of a generation. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Tom Bigwo

Debating the American Future

Sep 06 2024 10 mins  
As America gears up for next week's debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, Sarah Dunant looks at the seismic shift in sexual politics in the US since Trump debated with Hillary Clinton. 'Looming, threatening, even the word stalking was used' to describe that encounter, Sarah remembers. But when this presidential debate gets underway in the early hours of Wednesday morning U

I know what it is to crawl

Aug 30 2024 10 mins  
In the week that one of Britain's most famous Paralympians Tanni Grey-Thompson was forced to crawl off a train, Tom Shakespeare describes his encounters with crawling. 'Don't get me wrong,' Tom says, I am not against crawling.' His holidays, he says, involve a lot of crawling: in Egypt to visit the apartment of the poet Constantine Cavafy or in Italy to see the childhood home of th

The Power of Weird

Aug 23 2024 9 mins  
At a village fete in rural France, AL Kennedy finds herself among barrel organs, sleeping piglets and 'a guy in a flowing blue smock gliding about on an ancient motor bicycle, just because he could.' After US Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz turned the word 'weird' into 'the soundtrack of our summer,' Alison relishes how the concept is reclaiming its roots. Producer: A