Thinking Allowed BBC Radio 4

Opioids in the US and UK; Laurie Taylor explores the changing nature of opioid use, from street heroin to synthetic prescription drugs. Helena Hansen Professor of Psychiatry and Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles, reveals the surprisingly white “new face” of the US opioid crisis. Although Black Americans are no more likely than whites to use illicit drugs, they are much more likely to be incarcerated for drug offenses. Meanwhile, a very different system for responding to the drug use of whites has emerged. White opioids – the synthetic opiates such as OxyContin - came to be at heart of epidemic prescription medication abuse among white, suburban and rural Americans. Why was the crisis so white? How did a century of structural racism in drug policy lead, counter intuitively, to mass white overdose deaths?
Also, Alex Stevens, Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Kent, provides a UK perspective, charting the rise of synthetic opioids which are much more potent than heroin. Heroin related deaths are concentrated in people over 40, who live in deindustrialised areas and are nine times higher in the most deprived decile of neighbourhoods in England. He argues that their increasing presence in the drug supply could dramatically increases the number of deaths as has been seen in the USA.
Producer: Jayne Egerton

Garden Utopias: Michael Gilson, Associate Fellow of the School of Media, Arts and Humanities, University of Sussex, takes Laurie Taylor behind the privet hedge, to explore the suburban garden and the beautification of Britain. How did millions of British people develop an obsession with their own cherished plot of land? Although stereotyped as symbols of dull, middle class conformity, these gardens were once seen as the vanguard of progressive social change, a dream of a world in which beauty would be central to all of our lives.
Also, JC Niala, anthropologist, allotment historian and writer, discusses 36 months of fieldwork on allotment sites and guerrilla gardened streets across Oxford and suggests these are places where urban gardeners imagine, invent, and produce a hopeful future within their city.
Producer: Jayne Egerton

Richard Sennett, leading cultural and social thinker and Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics, talks to Laurie Taylor. Growing up in a housing project in Chicago, he originally trained in music. An accident put paid to his cello playing and he turned to sociology. Over five decades he’s documented the social life of cities, work in modern society and the sociology of culture. His latest study explores the relations between performing in art (particularly music), politics and everyday experience. It draws personally on Sennett's early career as a professional cellist and explores the dangerous and ambiguous nature of performance, from the French theorist, Michel Foucault's hypnotic lectures to the demagoguery of contemporary politicians. He describes the tragic performances of unemployed dockworkers in New York City in the 1960s, as they competed for a dwindling number of jobs, and Aids patients in a Catholic hospital doing a reading of As You Like It and displaying defiance in the face of death and religious disapproval.
Producer: Jayne Egerton

Anonymity and self creation: Laurie Taylor talks to Thomas DeGloma, Associate Professor of Sociology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, about hidden identities and how and why we use anonymity, for good or ill. He explores a wide range of historical and contemporary cases, from the Ku Klux Klan to 'Dr H' the psychiatrist who disguised his identity in a meeting which changed his profession's regressive attitudes towards homosexuality. In recent years, anonymity has featured widely in the political and social landscape: from the pseudonymous artist, Banksy, to Hackers Anonymous and QAnon. What is anonymity, and why, under various circumstances, do individuals act anonymously? How do individuals use it, and, in some situations, how is it imposed on them?
Also, Tara Isabella Burton, Visiting Fellow at George Mason University's Mercatus Center, on the crafting of public personae, from Beau Brummell to the Kardashians. She finds the trend for personal branding, amongst ordinary people as well as celebrities, originated with the idea that we could shape our own destiny, once the power of the church had waned. What are the connections between the Renaissance genius and the Regency dandy, the Hollywood 'IT' girl and Reality TV star? Might there be social costs to seeing self-determination as the fundamental element of human life?
Producer: Jayne Egerton

Capitalism – what's the story behind the word and a cross cultural survey of peoples attitudes to it. Laurie Taylor talks to Michael Sonenscher, Fellow of Kings College, Cambridge about the evolution of a word which was first coined in France in the early 19th century. How has its meaning changed over time and how can a historical analysis shed light on political problems in the here and now? What’s at stake in our understanding or misunderstanding of the term?
They’re joined by the German sociologist and historian, Rainer Zitelmann, whose latest study argues that many people are buying into myths about Capitalism and includes the largest international survey of attitudes towards our economic system. He finds negative attitudes to be widespread, including in Great Britain, the motherland of Capitalism - only in 12 countries are attitudes more critical. What accounts for this disillusion?
Producer: Jayne Egerton

Traditionalism and Russian Orthodox Converts – Laurie Taylor talks to Mark Sedgwick, Professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at Aarhus University, about the radical project for restoring sacred order. Traditionalism is founded on ancient teachings that, its followers argue, have been handed down from time immemorial and which must be defended from modernity. How has this mystical doctrine come to have contemporary sway on the political right, inspiring ex President Trump's former chief strategist, as well as the Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, sometimes dubbed as “Putin’s brain”?
They’re joined by Sarah Riccardi-Swartz, Assistant Professor of Religion and Anthropology at Northeastern University, Boston, who has uncovered an extraordinary story of religious conversion in one corner of Appalachia. Here, a group of American citizens has embraced the Russian Orthodox Church and through it Putin’s New Russia. They look to Russian religion and politics for answers to Western secularism and the loss of traditional family values.
Producer: Jayne Egerton