An innovative examination of the nature of reality in the 21st century by award-winning author Laurence Scott - part personal memoir, part philosophical exploration. Read by Stephen Mangan.

In today's fourth episode - how are you feeling? It takes in developments in robotics, Charles Darwin, and why animals don't blush.

Laurence Scott says "We are all now quizzed on or invited to share our emotions, as a matter of daily life. The first thing to greet me on my Facebook page is a question: 'What's on your mind?' But all social-media posts occupy a paradoxical space: are they diary entries or press releases? Every idea, every proposition, is potentially subjected to international peer-review. Having a feeling in public is a dangerous pastime, since our feelings are often not up to such scrutiny..."

Laurence Scott is a writer, broadcaster, academic and a Senior Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at Arcadia in London. He is author of The Four-Dimensional Human: Ways of Being in the Digital World, which was shortlisted for the 2015 Samuel Johnson Prize, won the Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Prize, and was named the Sunday Times Thought Book of the Year. In 2011 he was named one of ten New Generation Thinkers by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the BBC.

Read by Stephen Mangan
Adapted by Elizabeth Burke
Produced by Alexandra Quinn
A Loftus production for BBC Radio 4. Show less