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Hello, I'm Matthew Price.

This is Beyond Today from BBC Radio 4. Today, Alan de Botan.

Do we need God back?

It has been such a heavy week and we're well aware that we've given you

episodes on climate change on rape on the dysfunctional political system and if it's all getting a bit much, which, you know, is familiar.

Alan de Botter today is going to make us feel better.

The number one thing missing currently from the public discussion on so many topics is kindness.

Alan de Botan is surprisingly popular for a philosopher, 5 million people subscribe to his YouTube channel.

Now, his main argument is that God has left us.

Religion is, he says, for many people a lot less important than it used to be, essentially we're a secular society, which leaves gaps in how we cope with things, gaps that the church in the past might have filled. So he's set up what he

calls the School of Life to help us address the things that keep us awake at

night. Love, death, loneliness, politics, parliament.

The news sells itself as the most important information that you need to know right now.

And that's very compelling, and I think probably all of us have very important

bits of news that we need to know every day at a certain point. The question is

what is it? What are the headlines that you need to know?

Do you really need to know that, you know, 600 miles away someone lost an arm in a threshing machine?

I mean, it's very tragic for some people. Is it the most important thing that needs to

enter your brain now?

Or might there be another message about, I don't know, tolerating your partner or making progress

in a project that you've been delaying or learning to say sorry or something?

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