Thinking Allowed

Why is meaningless speech in the workplace so ubiquitous?

Exhaustion: is extreme fatigue a peculiarly modern phenomenon?

Laurie Taylor goes underground - from New York to Delhi.

An anthropological journey through the world of hair.

Laurie Taylor discusses a study of IVF tourism and also male infertility.

Is the Global South catching up with the North?

Heritage beyond saving: Laurie Taylor talks to Caitlin DeSilvey, associate professor of cultural geography & author of a new book which journeys from Cold War test sites to post industrial ruins. Do we need to challenge cherished assumptions about the conservation of cultural heritage? Might we embrace rather than resist natural processes of decay and decline? They're joined by Haidy Geismar, reader in anthropology at University College, London & Tiffany Jenkins, sociologist & cultural commentator.Producer: Jayne Egerton.

The philosophy of sport, and the evolution of a African Caribbean football club.

Fashion and Class: Laurie Taylor talks to Daniel Smith, Lecturer in Sociology at Anglia Ruskin University, and author of a study of the 'branded gentry' the target buyers of the Jack Wills clothing brand. How did a fashion company come to be associated with elite educational institutions and what can it tell us about the maintenance and reproduction of social and economic privilege? How has the relationshio between class, style and fashion democratised, or not, over the years? They're joined by Angela McRobbie, Professor of Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London and Angela Partington, Associate Dean at Kingston University.Producer: Jayne Egerton.

Doctors at War: a candid account of a trauma surgical team based, for a tour of duty, at a field hospital in Helmand, Afghanistan. Laurie Taylor talks to Mark de Rond, a professor of organizational ethnography at Cambridge University, about the highs and lows of surgical life in a morally ambiguous world in which good people face impossible choices and in which routines designed to normalize experience have the unintended effect of highlighting war's absurdity. The doctor and reporter, Saleyha Ahsan, joins the discussion.Also, Dr Nadia Llanwarne, Research Fellow at the Department of Primary Care at the University of Cambridge, discusses her study of patient's fears of wasting their GP's time.Producer: Jayne Egerton.