THE BBC

Adam speaks regularly about a variety of topics on Radio 4's "A Point of View."

• "The Shape of Our Time" (December 30 2016) Adam revisits a much explored subject - the differences between patriotism and nationalism. 
• “Baby It’s Cold Outside” (December 18 2016)  Adam on the controversy surrounding the Christmas song Baby It's Cold Outside. 
• "Holes in Clothes" (December 9 2016) Adam reflects on the greater significance of designer holes in jeans.
• "A Liberal Credo" (November 25 2016) Adam muses on liberals and liberalism - and why liberalism is so despised.
• "Can we ever find quiet time?" (March 18 2016) Is the peace and serenity promised by meditation just an illusion? 
• "Why Did Shakespeare Want a Shield?" (March 14 2016)  Medals and honours don't make people richer, but they do make them happier - even when they're meaningless. 
• "Human Hybrids" (March 11 2016) Adam deplores the fashion for attacking so-called "cultural expropriation" as in the recent fuss over American students wearing sombreros at a Mexican theme party.
• "Will future generations condemn us?" (February 26 16) Protesters in South Africa and now Oxford have demanded the destruction of memorials to Cecil Rhodes, a man whose behaviour and beliefs they say are unacceptable in the modern world. But Adam asks if our 21st Century ways will look acceptable to future generations.
• "Vanilla Happiness"  (February 19 2016) Adam says the secret of happiness lies in unexpected pleasures, like finding yoghourt is vanilla when you expect it to be plain.
• "Why Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders aren’t as revolutionary as they appear" (February 12 2016) The support for Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders reflects age-old concerns among US voters rather than new anxieties. 
• "Long-Form Television" (August 10 2015) Adam reflects on the reason for our obsession with long - form television series and sees a link to the current brevity of all our other forms of discourse.
• "Phoneless in Paris" (July 31 2015) The loss of a phone in Paris provides a moral lesson for Adam Gopnik - but not the one he was expecting.
• "Power, Persecution, and Pluralism" (July 10, 2015): Adam wonders why religious people are feeling "persecuted" by same-sex marriage.
• "Family Reunions" (July 3, 2015): Adam's ten-year family reunion brings into focus the passage of time.
• "Words and Music" (June 26, 2015): Adam casts light on the mysterious relationship between words and music.
• "Indispensable  Man" (June 19, 2015): Adam concludes that there are no indispensable people in any family or organization. 
• "Charlie Hebdo" (January 9, 2015): Adam reflects on the Charlie Hebdo massacre.
• "A Lesson From Lovelocks" (October 24, 2014): Adam draws a lesson on the nature of true love from the eyesore of lovelocks in Paris.
• "The Football Fallacy" (October 17, 2014): Adam explains why the English are better at watching football than playing it and why the Americans are better at talking about democracy than practicing it.
• "Dying with Dignity" (October 10, 2014): Adam thinks we fail too often to let people die with dignity at the end of their lives and believes the answer lies in showing deference. 
• "Short and Successful" (October 3, 2014): Adam thinks there's a simple reason for the recent findings that short men enjoy stable marriages. It's not that they are desperate to please, but are desperate to prevail. 
• "Money Matters" (February 14, 2014): Adam explains why he thinks the pictures on our banknotes matter.
• "Twitter-Free" (February 9, 2014): Adam explains his indifference to Twitter and social media. "
• "Why Sportsmanship Matters" (February 2, 2014): Adam reflects on the value of sportsmanship ahead of the American Super Bowl following controversy over a player's supposedly unsporting comments.
• "Self-Drive Manhood" (January 26, 2014): Adam hails the development of the self-drive car as the way to rescue his male identity after years as a non driver. He also muses on the need for such cars to have "ethical engines" capable of moral judgements.
• "Sex and the French" (January 19, 2014): Adam 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.
• "What to do about a bad review" (June 4, 2013): Adam ruminates on how to handle a bad review.
• "On Children Leaving Home" (April 21, 2013): Adam's son is about to leave home. His suitcase is already packed. It's not a day Adam is looking forward to. Why is love between parents and their children so asymmetric, he wonders? Why do parents love their children infinitely - while children feel about their parents, at best, a mix of affection, pity, tolerance and forgiveness?
• "Science, Madness, and Madness" (April 14, 2013): What is the difference between magic and science? What is the difference between Galileo and his contemporary, the famous Elizabethan astrologer and alchemist John Dee? According to Adam, it's the experimental method - the looking and seeing and testing that goes with true science. But when he wrote about this recently he found that fervent members of the John Dee fan club disagreed.
• "The Irrationality of Nations" (April 7, 2013): Every nation has a core irrationality - a belief about itself which no amount of contrary evidence can shift - Adam contends. He tries to uncover the core irrationality of the four nations he knows best: the United States, France, Canada and the UK.
• "The Secret of a Happy Marriage" (March 29, 2013): Adam reflects on what makes a happy marriage.
• "Turkish Notions" (March 24, 2013):  "Lately I've been thinking a lot about the Turk", writes Adam. He's talking - not of the Ottomans - but the famous chess playing machine constructed in the late 18th century.
• "The Curse of a Ridiculous Name" (July 8, 2012): "I have a funny name. I know it," Adam starts out. "Don't say it isn't or try to make me feel better about it...If I ever google myself, I find myself as often as not as Adam Gropnik."
• "Nazis - Gopnik's Amendment" (July 1, 2012): Adam reflects on our continuing obsession with the Nazis and ponders the place of the Second World War in our history.
• "Beatle Time" (June 17, 2012): Adam ponders exactly what it is that makes their music endure. Why is it, he asks, that one of the things people never say is "I don't like the Beatles". For his children, he says, "the Beatles are as uncontroversial as the moon. Just there, shining on".
• "Embarrassing Parents: The Thirteen-Year-Old Truth" (June 10, 2012): "One thing that is written into the human genome" says Adam, "is that exactly at the age of thirteen, your child - in a minute, and no matter how close or sympathetic the two of you have been before - will discover that you are now the most ridiculous, embarrassing and annoying person on the planet".
• "On Bees and Being" (June 3, 2012): "The other day" Adam writes, "my son was working his way through the text of Shakespeare's 'Henry V' with an eye to a student production". He read Canterbury's famous speech on how the well regulated kingdom is like a bee hive. "How could Shakespeare know that much about the division of bee-labour" he ponders "and not know that the big bee in the center was -- a girl bee?"