Listen to the programme

The Forum, the BBC World Service programme which boldly crosses boundaries: scientific, creative and geographic, presented by Susan Greenfield.

MEET THE GUESTS

Professor Steve Jones talks about Darwin's last book The Formation of Vegetable Mould, Through the Action of Worms and explains why it's extremely relevant for today's climate change. He also explores the constantly-mutating DNA in our bodies and why there aren't more mutants about.

South African novelist Gillian Slovo discusses the ideas behind her latest novel Black Orchids. She follows the link between humiliation and defiance: both protagonists of her novel are breaking the rules of the society around them but are not ready to accept the disgrace which follows.

Professor Barbara Taylor argues that when we are solitary we are emphatically not alone. She also says that attitudes towards solitude might well be formed when we are infants.

Your comments...

On humiliation: Humiliation exists in exact proportion to ego. Consider the 20th Cententury spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti. He had no ego. Consequently he could not be humiliated. And what is ego? An inflated sense of self. A false self that arises when one identifies the 'me' with material and conceptual forms.
R Molony
UK