An insight into the private obsessions and insecurities of the author of Lord of the Flies. With contributions from his daughter and son and bestselling author Stephen King. Show more

John Gray draws on a story by Walter de la Mare to argue that the prevailing creed of scientific materialism is a 'simple-minded philosophy' too limited for an unknowable world. Show more

John Gray draws on the novels of Mervyn Peake to argue it's a mistake to imagine that modernity marks a fundamental change in human experience. Show more

John Gray turns to the writer Patricia Highsmith and her character Tom Ripley for a perspective on the meaning of evil. Show more

John Gray argues for another way of perceiving the world, inspired by the fantasy fiction writer Arthur Machen. Human fulfilment does not lie only in action but in awareness. Show more

John Gray finds new resonance for our own age in the story of 'The Great Gatsby'. 'Just like Gatsby, we want to return to a world that was conjured into being from dreams'. Show more

John Gray gives only two cheers for human rights. Rather than imposing them like a religious creed, he says we should see them as useful devices that quite often don't work. Show more

A weekly reflection on a topical issue. John Gray reflects on the damage that can be caused by evangelical belief in a religion or in a political idea. Show more

John Gray reflects on the things 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. Show more

A weekly reflection on a topical issue. John Gray gives his own theory for the cultural longevity of Charles Dickens, celebrating his view of life as a theatre of the absurd. Show more

Tom Sutcliffe discusses wilderness and freedom with Sarah Hall, Adrienne Mayor and John Gray. Show more

John Gray sees the European currency as a misconceived project from the outset and thinks the austerity policies imposed on Greece are destructive and self-defeating. Show more

John Gray recalls the life and work of the thriller writer Eric Ambler and finds unsettling echoes of the Europe of today in the pages of his novels. Show more

John Gray reflects on why the advance of capitalism is not, as is widely believed, inevitable. He argues that the 'seemingly unstoppable advance of market forces' is often random. Show more

The new food substitute Soylent allows you to give up eating meals in order to have more free time. But John Gray argues that human beings crave busy lives. Show more

John Gray points to lessons from the novels of Dostoevsky about the danger of ideas, such as misguided idealism sweeping away tyrannies without regard for the risks of anarchy. Show more

John Gray argues that 'thinking the unthinkable' means exaggerating to the point of absurdity beliefs that are currently fashionable. Show more

John Gray argues that the Sunni extremist group Isis (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) is actually a revolutionary force, not a reactionary one. Show more

John Gray argues that believing in the power of human reason to improve humankind is more 'childish' than believing in religion. Show more

John Gray argues that there are many kinds of atheism and that it's time to rethink today's narrow view of unbelief. Show more