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Who was responsible for Libor? It was hailed as the world’s most important number but who was looking after it and were the custodians behaving with integrity? While traders went to prison for rigging interest rates were there orchestrated manipulations of Libor by far bigger players? Presenter: Andy Verity Producer: Sarah Bowen Music: Oskar Jones
Pressure is put on a reluctant trader to manipulate interest rates. But where are his instructions coming from? As Libor begins to feel like a lie, Andy is given a flash drive with some incendiary audio recordings. Presenter: Andy Verity Producer: Sarah Bowen Music: Oskar Jones
Andy Verity investigates the secret history of Libor, asking did the right people go to jail? Were the rate rigging trials about law and the evidence, or were they show trials to appease public anger towards banks? Producer: Sarah Bowen Music: Oskar Jones
The secret tapes the authorities, on both sides of the Atlantic, wouldn’t want you to hear. Andy Verity, the BBC’s Economics Correspondent has audio recordings, kept secret for years, which reveal evidence that could upend the received version of the biggest scandal since the financial crash. We might have thought that the rate-rigging bankers, ‘the LIBOR manipulators’ were justly jailed in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, but over 5 episodes, Andy questions the traditional narrative....
Kevin Harman is an Edinburgh artist best known for creating 'situations', such as borrowing all his neighbours’ doormats to create an installation, smashing the window of an art gallery and transforming rubbish in skips into sculptures. In this programme he explores what happens when public art and people clash and gets a sense of what it's like when 'art comes in the night'. Whilst working on his own installation in Govan, he ponders what success and failure really mean in the sometimes controv...
What makes us feel in love? And can we make ourselves feel it? Biomedic Sophie Ward sets herself the deluded task of making a scientifically-accredited love potion, with the help of neuroscientists, evolutionary anthropologists, aphrodisiac historians, and a smell scientist who really likes pumpkin pie. Ingredients: a neurochemical cocktail of oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin and beta endorphin, a metaphorical "good egg", a splash of kindness, a cup of communication, five figs, an entire tiramisu, ...
Negotiations between the UK and Iran to settle an old debt and allow Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe to return to her family in the UK take a new turn. But the United States creates a fresh obstacle to her release. Presenter: Ceri Thomas Producer: Matt Russell Original music: Tom Kinsella A Tortoise Media production for BBC Radio 4
Richard Ratcliffe, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband, begins his public campaign to win her freedom. And the British government explores some creative solutions for paying off a debt it owes to Iran. Finally, in 2019 the UK and Iran head to the table to negotiate a deal for Nazanin’s release. Presenter: Ceri Thomas Producer: Matt Russell Original music: Tom Kinsella A Tortoise Media production for BBC Radio 4
In early 2016, the United States secured the release of some of its citizens imprisoned in Iran. Months later, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was taken hostage, caught up in the backdraft of the US deal. Her fate and the decades-old issue of an unpaid debt finally collide. Presenter: Ceri Thomas Producer: Matt Russell Original music: Tom Kinsella A Tortoise Media production for BBC Radio 4
A deal for the UK to sell tanks to Iran was cancelled after the Islamic revolution. The company behind it is owned entirely by the British government - International Military Services. Even today, it may hold the key to Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release. Presenter: Ceri Thomas Producer: Matt Russell Original music: Tom Kinsella A Tortoise Media production for BBC Radio 4
What’s the key to bringing home Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British woman who has been held hostage in Iran for almost six years? And how closely linked is Nazanin’s release to a tank deal debt more than 40 years old? In episode 1 of Nazanin, former Today programme editor, Ceri Thomas, explores the origins of the debt, the apparent corruption which surrounded the deal which created it, and its long, difficult legacy. It’s a story which begins in the freewheeling 1970s when the need to ‘grease...
The Irish cultural industries have in recent decades managed to turn James Joyce into a valuable tourist commodity - 'a cash machine', 'the nearest thing we've got to a literary leprechaun.' Joyce would surely have disapproved. "When the soul of man is born in this country," he wrote, "there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets." That is precisely what he did, leaving Ireland behind and living more t...
‘He was interested in why I was so attached to this penguin’ Bex is at university when she starts feeling anxious and overwhelmed. As Bex deteriorates, doctors are in a race against time to diagnose her. And that’s where the penguin comes in. In Room 5, Helena Merriman interviews people who - like her - were changed by a diagnosis. Written, presented and produced by Helena Merriman Composer: Jeremy Warmsley Sound Design: Eloise Whitmore Production Co-ordinator: Janet Staples Editor: Emma Rippon ...
Fifty years ago on 30 January 1972, a day that came to be forever known as “Bloody Sunday”, soldiers of the First Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, shot dead 13 civil rights marchers in Londonderry/Derry. Peter Taylor tells the story of that day with a mix of his own unique archive and new interviews from those on all sides about what the events meant then and still mean today - including a rare interview with Lord Saville, who carried out an exhaustive 12 year Inquiry into the events of that d...
At night women say goodbye, telling each other "text me when you're home". We carry keys between our knuckles, avoid dark streets, cross the road, then cross back again, keep looking over your shoulder. In Night Watch, four women from different parts of Britain share stories of street harassment. Woven through this feature is a new, specially commissioned poem by Hollie McNish. The murders of Sarah Everard and Sabina Nessa compounded the perception of city streets as male spaces- unwelcoming and...
Felicity Finch reports on a pioneering project that sees members of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra working alongside inmates in HMP Norwich. The aim is to workshop, draft and perform personal songs that will help establish a bond between offenders and their children. A lullaby is the most immediate of musical forms. The singer is a parent, the audience a child. The communication is intimate and helps form intangible bonds. A reality of prison life is that those bonds are, to a great or lesser ...
How a simple DNA test turned a world upside down, leading to profound questions of identity. When 71-year-old Philip was given a genetic testing kit for Christmas, he assumed he would stumble across an ancient line of nobility or a novel identity to latch onto. Instead, he found himself unravelling a mystery with more twists and turns than a spiralling strand of DNA. David Reid meets an extraordinary group of people who sent in DNA samples and tested negative to the question: “Who am I?” Join th...
80 years after female conscription, the final few tell their extraordinary World War Two stories as part of the ATS. By war's end, 290,000 women of all backgrounds had served in the Auxiliary Territorial Service. It may have had a less glamorous image than its naval and air force counterparts but the ATS was by far the biggest military service for women. Initially the ATS had a reputation for dull demeaning work. That changed in 1941. In December of that year, for the first time in British histo...
At the start of 2021 and the implementation of Brexit, a trade border was created between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. What does this mean for ordinary people who cross the Irish Sea? And where exactly is this border anyway? Neil McCarthy boards Stena Line's ferry 'Embla" which plies a daily and nightly course between Birkenhead and Belfast. He talks to passengers, and crew, lorry drivers and historians, crossing this body of water that both separates and binds the two islands on a search...
100 years ago the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed, bringing to a formal end the Irish War of Independence and ending centuries of British colonial control. During the war members of the IRA were pitted against the Royal Irish Constabulary, the British Army and the notorious Black and Tans and Auxiliaries. It's a story of divided loyalties and the unresolved traumas of war, with resonance today as Britain and Ireland struggle to address the legacy of the more recent violence of the Troubles in Nort...
Will Self tells the story of his black bin bag... from his back door... to its final destination. It's the story of a modern-day dump - an extraordinary, alien, nauseating world - where, instead of being buried, the rubbish will go up in smoke. Voices of waste workers intermingle with the rubbish in a go-round of garbage, scored by Jon Nicholls. There are the bin men who believe 'you just gotta get in the groove' as they walk ten miles a day, to 'pick up a bit of crap, sling it in the back of th...
Regenerative Farming is gaining traction around the world as a means of increasing biodiversity, improving soil quality, sequestering carbon, restoring watersheds and enhancing the ecosystems of farms. The shepherd James Rebanks, author of English Pastoral, is on a quest to find out if it is possible to adopt these methods on his farm in the Lake District. He meets leading proponents of these methods in the UK, US and Europe and discovers how mimicking natural herd movements, stopping ploughing ...
Horatio Clare examines how the pioneering writer Jan Morris authored her own life, from her nationality to her sexual identity, trying to get behind the myths and masks she created. Jan Morris wrote more than fifty books but also constructed her life to a degree rarely seen in one individual. She created a glittering career, invented a writing style, chose her nationality and most famously, transitioned. Horatio talks to Michael Palin, travel writer Sara Wheeler, and Jan's biographer Paul Clemen...
Twenty years ago - in the mind-numbing aftermath of the terrorist attacks on America - the immediate, mind-numbing response of the media was to ban laughter. All laughter, including jokes, chuckles and guffaws. This is the story of what happened next. With contributions from Private Eye to The Onion, via David Letterman, the News Quiz and Have I Got News for You. As well as 9/11 and the death of Bin Laden, Joe Queenan explores the pandemic and the US retreat from Afghanistan. "What a year 2021 h...
Who was behind the 2009 hack and leak of emails that fuelled climate change sceptics? Gordon Corera tracks down some of the sceptics engaged in a long-running battle with the climate scientists over data, and he considers the legacy of the events of 2009. Producer: Sally Abrahams Editor: Richard Vadon
Who was behind the 2009 hack and leak of emails that fuelled climate change sceptics? Who benefited most from the ‘Climategate’ hack? Powerful corporate interests have been fighting an acceptance of climate change for years. Could they have been behind the hack? Presenter: Gordon Corera. Producer: Sally Abrahams Editor: Richard Vadon
Who was behind the 2009 hack and leak of emails that fuelled climate change sceptics? The investigation turns East – towards Russia. Could the mystery hacker have come from there, or was Russian intelligence behind the attack? Where does the evidence lead? Presented by Gordon Corera. Producer: Sally Abrahams Editor: Richard Vadon
Who was behind the 2009 hack and leak of emails that fuelled climate change sceptics? Tracking down the police officer in charge of the original investigation into ‘Climategate’, Gordon Corera hears about the list of suspects and meets with Britain’s top cyber spy. Producer: Sally Abrahams Editor: Richard Vadon
In 2009, someone broke into the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia and stole emails. The material was distributed online - mainly on blogs linked to climate change sceptics. It was used to make the case that scientists were surreptitiously twisting the facts to exaggerate climate change. That was not the case. But before that became clear, events would take on a life of their own, sparking a global media storm. This is a story that matters - firstly because it may have set b...
The remarkable story of how plastic became such a major player in the worlds of industry, medicine and design (among many others) before becoming persona-non-grata thanks to its intimate involvement in our current ecological plight is Shakespearean in its scale and one of the great tales of the last century. Laura Barton sets out to create a biography of this most multi-faceted and fluid titan of the manufacturing world, using the fabulously rich archive from TV, radio, advertising and film - as...
