Aditya Chakrabortty investigates five words that made the modern world.

These are the strange, sometimes amusing but true tales by which the reigning ideas of our time came to be the words you hear on the Today programme, on other news programmes and late-night current affairs discussions. What do words like 'narrative' and 'transparency', bandied around by politicians and experts, actually mean?

In this series, find out where these terms came from, how have they changed and how are they shaping our world in this unexpected journey from a simple word to an expose of modern life.

Today - when and why did 'diversity' become predominant, and what story does this word tell about us? On hand to chart its rise and what the consequences have been are Heidi Mirza, Professor of Race, Faith and Culture at Goldsmith's College, University of London; Avtah Brah, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Birkbeck University; Trevor Phillips, former chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission; and Clifford Soffield from the Oxford English Dictionary.

Produced by Eve Streeter
A Greenpoint production for BBC Radio 4. Show less