As Donald Trump prepares to re-enter the White House, Mark Damazer reflects on America's leadership in the world.

Eavesdropping on a focus group recently, Mark tells us that the country's leadership was seen as 'a burden and a luxury - and a luxury they wanted to do without.'

'There was a time when large chunks of the world were grateful for American involvement...but gratitude is now more thinly expressed', he says. 'And Donald Trump well understands that.'

In this new world order, Mark argues, 'we have our work cut out to find a response.'

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

In deepest, darkest January, Adam Gopnik muses on light and dark.

Adam reminds us that - from the natural world of the ghost moth to the politics of today's America - although we live in a 'gloomy moment' we can 'adjust our eyes to the gloom.'

'Every little bit of light we make,' writes Adam, 'in every decent thing we do and every indecency we refuse to accept, illuminates some small corner of our universe. Even at night, after all, we still see light. The stars shine, too.'

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

Sara Wheeler explains why every week for several decades - despite knowing nothing about art - she has called in to London’s National Gallery to look at the same two paintings.

'This habit of mine,' writes Sara, 'started by accident when I moved to London forty years ago' when she first set eyes on Botticelli's 'Portrait of a Young Man' and van Eyck's 'Portrait of a Man.'

'I have come to realise,' says Sara, the extraordinary power of 'familiarity, close contact and regular attention'.

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

Megan Nolan rediscovers a childhood diary with her first New Year's Resolutions.

She was fascinated and appalled, she says, by what she read:. The final resolution, underlined, read simply 'be a better person!'

These days, Megan looks on self-improvement in a rather different way - less an attempt at perfection and more 'an attempt to courageously embrace living in all its chaos.'

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

Mary Beards reflects on what really lies behind our attachment to Christmas ritual and tradition.

In a special edition of A Point of View, recorded in Mary's kitchen as she prepares her Christmas puddings, she ponders 'why those of us who aren't particularly wedded to the idea of tradition for the rest of the year, fall hook, line and sinker for it at this time.'

'My hunch,' Mary says, 'is that our fixed traditions are about constructing a family identity for ourselves, about displaying to ourselves as a family - changing, expanding and contracting as families always are - what makes us 'us.''

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound design: Peregrine Andrews Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Reading of Dickens/Herodotus: Simon Slater Reading of Mrs Beeton: Ruth Everett

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1. Extracts of Keith Floyd from A Farewell to Floyd, produced by Cactus TV. 2. The ancient recipe for Herodotus pudding is from Herodotus, Histories 2. 40.

With water companies reeling from criticism over sewage discharge and rising bills, Stephen Smith squelches through London's watery underworld.

'Descending into London's Victorian sewers', Stephen says, 'is like spelunking through the layers of the city's history, and reminds you that problems over water and sanitation have been the norm rather than an aberration' for centuries.

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

Zoe Strimpel on the joys of seeing the world through the eyes of her 9 month old daughter.

'Where previously I would barely have noticed them,' Zoe writes, 'I now size up trees from below in terms of buds, leaves, colour, height - and how all of these may look to my little lady viewed from her pram or carrier in which her neck swivels constantly like a periscope, or an owl.'

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

Rebecca Stott ponders the task of clearing her Mum's house, and the enormous difficulty of dismantling the things her mother loved and that Rebecca remembers her buying from bric-a-brac and antique shops.

'The beauty of the objects in my mother's house exists in her artistry,' writes Rebecca, 'the way she had placed some of them so that the evening light falls on them, the way that the kooky little Italian lamp sits next to the framed print of the Venetian canal... the way that everything is in the place that she had chosen for it.'

It gets her wondering about how many other people are doing the same with their parents' homes, in towns and cities across the country.

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

John Gray believes the British state is broken, and that we urgently need a new centre ground in British politics.

'Outside the echo chamber of metropolitan opinion', John writes, 'there is a restive electorate perplexed and discomforted by the country the UK has become'.

He says our politicians seem bent on continuing the status quo, seemingly unable to comprehend a surge in support for populist politics.

But he wonders if the election of Kemi Badenoch could be a first step towards creating something radical in a new centre ground.

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

From the escape of Cholmondley the chimp from London Zoo in 1848, to Chichi from the Kharkiv Zoo in 2022, to a group of 43 macaque monkeys from a research facility in South Carolina last week, Megan Nolan reflects on the great annals of animal escapes and why they hold an almost mystical appeal to humans.

She believes the reason they are so potent is that they contain the 'dazzling knowledge that things which ARE so, need not REMAIN so'.

'In a week where it felt especially apparent that we have no meaningful ability to shape the world in which we live', writes Megan, the realisation that we can defy inevitability is intoxicating.'

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

Sara Wheeler reflects on the valuable perspective offered by out-of-date guide books. They shed light on the life of the early traveler - advised to pack an iron bedstead and a portable bath tub - and reveal how destinations may have evolved or be frozen in time.

'The chief question I ask the old guides is whether the spirit of a place - the genius loci - can survive the upheaval of the years. Is the spirit of the place immutable or can it change?' asks Sara.

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