Patients care apps - which give patients unprecedented access to their health records - are being rolled out by NHS trusts across the country.

You might imagine, says Will Self, that 'this previously unimaginable access to such a wealth of medical data should empower me, make me feel I have a choice, and enable me to assist those treating me by being what every conscientious statistic wants to become: a good patient.'

Will argues that, on the contrary, this 'revolution in healthcare' only makes us more impotent, reduces patients to the status of customers and undermines the authority and expertise of medical professionals.

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Liam Morrey Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Caleb Azumah Nelson on why anger is no longer a stranger to him, but a friend.

He talks of a childhood in which he tried to navigate a world which was 'already coding a young black man as dangerous, threatening. Angry.'

'As I've grown older,' writes Caleb, 'the question is not whether I should be angry, but do I love myself enough to be angry, to object when I feel wronged or faced with injustice.'

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher: Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Sara Wheeler reflects on the experience of being a sibling to her brother who has a lifelong disability.

"Posting on social media on National Siblings Day, which fell on a Wednesday this year, brothers and sisters like me express pride. 'You love them more, not less' is a common thread. Because what all this is really about is the sibling's acute awareness of the lack of empathy routinely shown to the disabled - after all, childhood gives us, the siblings, a unique perspective. It's 'Does he take sugar?' times ten - ignoring the point of view of the disabled person and not even trying to stand in her shoes. Ask us. We know."

Producer: Sheila Cook Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Liam Morrey Editor: Penny Murphy

Zoe Strimpel reflects on the extraordinary experience of ‘crossing the rubicon separating non-motherhood from matrescence’.

‘I had never quite put aside an abiding ambivalence about having a baby, even during pregnancy,’ writes Zoe.

But in the space of thirty minutes - and the delivery of a baby girl by C-section - Zoe says, ‘my hop over the long-tended, long-contemplated border with motherland rapidly resolved as her tiny features came into focus and a sense of interestingness became a sense of desperate affection and even of familiarity.’

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Liam Morrey Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

A L Kennedy argues that, as a country with low productivity, we must urgently address our unhealthy relationship with work.

But creating more workaholics like herself, she says, is the last thing we should be doing.

'Toxic work doesn't just blight our business hours - it wearies our affection, steals our time for each other,' Alison writes.

'We rely on free moments and free energy to invent, to recharge, to create. An exhausted, stressed population is docile, but doesn't solve problems well.'

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Liam Morrey Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

John Gray assesses what's going wrong for liberals in the US election.

'It's not chiefly Joe Biden's alleged faltering mental powers that lie behind Trump's march to the White House', John writes. 'Far more, it's the evident inability of American liberals to learn from their mistakes.'

And he believes they are displaying a 'reckless hubris' for which they risk being severely punished come November. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Liam Morrey Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Adam Gopnik warns of our tendency to normalise evil behaviour. What may pass for entertainment in Mafia movies, must be seen through a different lens in real life.

"The risk of crime is not crime alone, but the abyss that opens at our feet when once we have decided that the rules that count for other people don't count for us."

Producer: Sheila Cook Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Liam Morrey Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Will Self believes we are reaching a state of 'peak envy'.

'Is it any surprise,' Will writes, 'that in this, arguably the second century of self, when for the most part humans see nothing around them but images of those better off than themselves, envy should be quite so epidemic: a greenish toxin - the very mustard gas of modernity.'

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Sarah Dunant reflects on martyrdom past and present.

As Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny is laid to rest, Sarah looks to history to ponder what his legacy might be.

And she turns to the work of the 19th-century philosopher Soren Kierkegaard: 'The tyrant dies and his rule is over...the martyr dies and his rule begins'.

'History is a long game,' Sarah writes. 'And the shelf life of martyrs in particular is impressive.'

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Liam Morrey Editor: Penny Murphy

Following a recent incident in a London theatre where, it appears, Jewish Israelis were targeted by a comedian because they wouldn't stand for a Palestinian flag, Howard Jacobson reflects on the power of mockery and the liberation of laughter.

'Do the best comedians truly turn the world upside down', Howard asks, 'or do they merely strap us into a fairground roller-coaster so that we can feign fear and scream in unison?'

He argues that the norms of outrage have been jettisoned in the reaction to events in Israel on October 7.

'Once the world is turned upside down,' he writes, 'humanity and justice fall like loose change from our pockets.'

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Liam Morrey Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Rebecca Stott says the idea of 'going down a rabbit hole' is often characterised as a bad thing - here, she makes the case for what's to be gained.

"These days we invariably use the phrase 'down the rabbit hole' to describe a negative experience...where people get lost, then become overwhelmed, ensnare themselves in conspiracy theories and can't get back out," she says.

"But I don't believe rabbit holes are bad in themselves. If we avoid them altogether we lose the chance to experience their joy and excitement."

She recalls her own experience of discovery - and tells the story of how Charles Darwin once spent eight years distracted by barnacles.

Producer: Sheila Cook Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Liam Morrey Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith