Misha Glenny's final programme on Russia - what it is and where it came from - looks at the country's attitude to war. What has been the long lasting effect of the great patriotic wars against Adolf Hitler and Napoleon Bonaparte? Plus the Poles, the Mongols, and the British in Crimea. With contributions from Antony Beevor, author of Stalingrad, Robert Service, author of the Last Tsar, Kateryna Khinkulova of BBC World Service, former ambassador to Moscow Rhodric Braithwaite, and Dominic Lieven, a...
Mar 08, 2023•28 min
It was Peter the Great who created a new capital on the Baltic, and Catherine the Great who extended Russian influence south and west. Sweden, Poland, and the Ottomans all felt the Russian expansion in a century of geopolitical drama. This, says presenter Misha Glenny, is all part of the build up to today's war in Ukraine. With contributions from Virginia Rounding, biographer of Catherine the Great; Prof Simon Dixon of University College London; Prof Robert Service, author of The Last Tsar; Prof...
Mar 01, 2023•28 min
Russia's massive empire was not like that of Britain or France. It expanded across the land, making it more like the United States of America. And from very small beginnings, it became the biggest contiguous landmass in the world. Presenter Misha Glenny speaks to James Hill of the New York Times about travelling to the edges, and also to Janet Hartley, author of Siberia: A History of the People. Plus further contributions from Ukrainian academic Olesya Khromeychuk, Anna Reid, the author of Borde...
Feb 22, 2023•28 min
Countries look so cohesive on the map - sturdy borders, familiar shapes. Don't be misled. They didn't always look like this. This is the story of Russia, biggest contiguous country on the planet, told from the time when it was still very small. With contributions across the series from Janet Hartley, author of a history of the Volga; Rhodric Braithwaite, former ambassador to Moscow; historian and sociologist, Mischa Gabowitsch; Anthony Beevor; Natalia Antelava; Kateryna Khinkulova; Dominic Lieve...
Feb 15, 2023•28 min
Tel Aviv is a bustling place and for a blind person it can be a little daunting, as BBC journalist, Peter White, discovers. The narrow streets in the older parts of town are full of open air cafes, buskers and people visiting the markets and local shops. It is a lively place and Peter's first challenge comes when he tries to navigate the local busses, only to find that without being able to see them approaching, it is virtually impossible to get them to stop! Today signs of expansion are evident...
Jan 11, 2023•28 min
In a new series of Sounds of the City Peter White, who has been blind since birth, uses the sounds to guide him as he explores new parts of the globe. In Los Angeles the sea quickly beckons and although it's a struggle, Peter dons a wetsuit and prepares for his first surfing lesson! He also explores the huge metropolis by metro, comes across tales of political intrigue and meets up with a blind friend, who explains how she uses smell as well as sound to guide her on her travels. One thing that’s...
Jan 04, 2023•28 min
When one of journalist Rajkumar Keswani's friends dies at the Union Carbide plant after exposure to toxic gas, he decides to investigate. Local government officials dismiss him, but safety reports smuggled to him open his eyes to the potential for disaster. Rajkumar Keswani wrote his first article 40 years ago, warning of the dangers posed by safety lapses and poor maintenance at the chemical plant. During a dogged investigation pitting him against political power, corporate money and the indiff...
Dec 21, 2022•28 min
Giles Edwards looks inside the private clubs of former world leaders to see how they are still trying to influence global politics. (Photo: Helen Clark speaks at a 2022 meeting of the Global Leadership Foundation)
Dec 14, 2022•28 min
Giles Edwards investigates the many opportunities offered by globalisation, and speaks to some of the former presidents and prime ministers who have run, or worked for, international organisations from civil society to the United Nations. (Photo: Anders Fogh Rasmussen at the Copenhagen Democracy Summit, June 2022. Credit: Ritzau Scanpix/Philip Davali/Reuters)
Dec 07, 2022•27 min
What happens to presidents and prime ministers when they stop running their countries, and leave politics behind? Giles Edwards has spent 10 years finding out what they do next. He shares some of his conversations with former world leaders, takes us inside their organisations and helps us understand their thinking. Giles begins at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City, where he speaks to presidents and prime ministers about how they use their influence, and what they contribute when the...
Nov 30, 2022•27 min
The town of El Triunfo in Tabasco state is not far from the Mexican border with Guatemala. Translated from Spanish, ‘El Triunfo’ means ‘The Triumph’ and being miles from the nearest city, with just over 5000 inhabitants, it does not usually attract much attention. However, that changed in 2018 when Tren Maya was announced and China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) arrived to help build part of the brand new train line, connecting the ancient Mayan ruins across the Yucatán Peninsula. Se...
Nov 23, 2022•28 min
From highways to hospitals, Chinese construction firms continue to work on a number of high-profile projects across Jamaica. In the face of soaring debts they have not proceeded without controversy, with particular criticism of the use of Chinese labour for jobs that Jamaicans might do, and concerns of so-called ‘debt-trap diplomacy’. ‘Highway 2000’ is a 66 kilometre motorway connecting Kingston and Montego Bay funded by a loan of over 700 million dollars, and built by a Chinese contractor. It i...
Nov 16, 2022•28 min
The Panama Canal is a great feat of engineering and a place of huge global significance for trade and shipping. An artificial waterway that connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, literally dividing North and South America, whilst saving thousands of miles of shipping time round Cape Horn at the very southern tip of South America. The Americans built the canal and operated it for decades, but today there’s a new global superpower hoping to make their mark. In 2017, Panama became the first coun...
Nov 09, 2022•28 min
The Cordillera del Condor mountain range in the east of Ecuador is where the mountains meets the jungles and the Andes meets the Amazon. In this region a Chinese run copper mine, Mirador, has grabbed the headlines over recent years, leading to controversy, resistance and talk of impending disaster. It has become a huge challenge for a government trying their utmost to support mining projects that might help boost a fragile economy. On the other side of the country, shrimp farms line mile upon mi...
Nov 02, 2022•27 min
Tim Marshall on Narva where The EU, Europe and Nato meet the Russian Federation. It's a city in Estonia where 95% of the population are ethnically Russian. Identity crises are nothing new in Narva which has found itself on the edge of empires, kingdoms and duchies during its long history. Today residents cannot trace family here back further than the second Word War. That is when Stalin deported the locals and replaced them with Russians. Somehow however the collective memory in Narva, a border ...
Oct 26, 2022•28 min
Tim Marshall delves into the strange story of Kinshasa and Brazzaville the only capitals straddling a border. Their peoples share a common culture but were split by Empires and now kept apart by a river border which has no bridge. Presenter: Tim Marshall Producer: Kevin Mousley (Photo: Sapeurs from a group belonging to Papa Griffe, a Sapeur leader, walks on Avenue De La Democratie, in Kinshasa, DRC. Credit: Per-Anders Pettersson/Getty Images)
Oct 19, 2022•28 min
Tim Marshall considers Niagara Falls, the busiest crossing point on the world’s longest border. The fortunes of the two cities either side of the famous Falls have varied over the years as the advantages of being one side of the line, or the other, have played out. Today it is the Canadian side in ascendance but as Tim finds out, the border continues to shape the communities in different ways as it becomes a less informal, so-called ‘friendly’ border and a more of sophisticated digital one. (Pho...
Oct 12, 2022•28 min
Tim Marshall profiles Maastricht, the city where 30 years ago the European Union was born. Have these economic measures dented relations between the communities that sit on one of Europe’s linguistic and cultural fault lines? (Photo: Aerial view of the city of Maastricht. Credit: N. Bellegarde/Getty Images)
Oct 05, 2022•28 min
Writer and environmentalist Isabelle Legeron is in France to see how cultivating a healthy soil, teeming with fungi and microbes, can enhance the flavour profile of food and drink - from cheese to coffee to wine. She explores the fundamental role soil plays in the notion of “terroir’ - the conviction that the natural environment in which plants are grown, can be experienced in the taste and texture of the food and drink made from them. Isabelle speaks to a cast of soil microbiologists, land mana...
Sep 28, 2022•28 min
Isabelle Legeron travels to Giessen in Germany, to the original laboratory of Justus Von Liebig the brilliant 19th century chemist whose work made way for the 20th century Haber and Bosch process. Liebig joined the spirit of the Industrial Revolution, where technical solutions were set to end starvation; he set out to make the soil more productive, echoed through the 20th century with the Green Revolution. But at what cost to the soil? With Environmentalist, Tony Juniper and Soil Scientists: Mar...
Sep 21, 2022•28 min
Isabelle Legeron travels to California, a part of the world whose soil holds a complex history. She meets the indigenous Californians reviving ancestral methods of tending to the land, and the soil scientists exploring the impact of colonisation and agriculture on the soil of the Golden State. With indigenous Californian land steward Redbird (Pomo/Paiute/Wailaki/Wintu), director of the California Indian museum Nicole Lim (Pomo), indigenous ecologist Dr Melissa Nelson (Anishinaabe/Métis/Norwegian...
Sep 14, 2022•28 min
How is the world going to get to net zero by 2050 and who is paying the bill? Former governor of the Bank of England, and UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance, Mark Carney, recently put the figure we need to spend at 100 trillion dollars at least. Switching to renewable sources of energy, needs the global financial markets to pay for the necessary infrastructure. Costs will come down as the technology improves; take the example of solar panels where the last two decades have seen an as...
Aug 31, 2022•28 min
For over 100 years, Iceland has produced renewable energy from geo-thermal and hydro power to heat its homes and power industry. Iceland harnesses the volcanic hot water under the earth’s crust and the energy from damming its plentiful rivers and waterfalls that run through the island. It produces five times more green energy than its population needs. But decisions Iceland has made in how best to use this surplus energy and the environmental and moral impact on its landscape and population have...
Aug 24, 2022•28 min
Allan Little investigates the best way to capture, store and redistribute the renewable sources of energy freely available all over the world – wind, solar and hydro. The sun gives earth enough potential power in one hour to provide the total energy needs of the globe for a year – if only we could catch and store it. From a purely economic angle, the costs of renewables are now cheaper than fossil fuels. So what is holding us back from harnessing the power of the sun and wind to secure our net-z...
Aug 17, 2022•28 min
Allan Little looks at the challenges we face as we wean ourselves off gas and oil to renewable sources powering our cars, trucks, ships and aeroplanes. Green transport is crucial to a net zero future, but how transparent are the supply chains bringing the world the components we need? And how green is the electricity we are using to power electric cars anyway? Cobalt and Lithium, two essential minerals crucial for electric car batteries are mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Chile - a...
Aug 10, 2022•28 min
As the former ‘British Empire Games’ draws nearer, actor and musician Kema Sikazwe finds out what the world of museums can learn from the communities, artists and curators who are struggling to reclaim global stories about their culture and identity. Kema sees photographer Vanley Burke’s new exhibition, Blood and Fire, curated with Candice Nembhard at Soho House, former home of Matthew Bolton. At the Museum and Gallery, he meets members of We Are Birmingham who have remodelled the iconic round r...
Aug 03, 2022•28 min
Travelling from Lusaka to the Gwembe Valley and then on to Kabwe, Kema Sikazwe hears from people living in communities where artefacts were taken. In the shadow of the Kariba Dam, Kema meets people who were forced from their land when the valley was flooded who explain how promises made at the time have not been kept. Finally, at the lead-mining site where the Broken Hill Skull was discovered in Kabwe 1921, Kema meets former workers who describe how their homes remain contaminated, more than 25 ...
Jul 27, 2022•27 min
Returning to Zambia for the first time since he was three years old, Kema Sikazwe continues his journey exploring the impact of colonial legacies through museum collections. Since 1972, Zambians have campaigned to reclaim the ‘Broken Hill Skull’ from Britain. Kema learns what has led to the current stalemate, as the repatriation movement gathers pace. Kema also meets Zambian creatives who are fabricating their own interpretations of history with ‘digital repatriation’ initiatives, creating new a...
Jul 20, 2022•27 min
Actor and musician Kema Sikazwe is on a mission to uncover his own personal history as he leaves the UK to return to his homeland of Zambia for the first time since he was three years old. As Kema travels, he learns how museums are telling the uncomfortable stories behind some of the objects in their collection. He joins pupils from his old primary school learning why The Great North Museum in Newcastle is offering to return an ancient musical instrument to Nigeria. Arriving in Birmingham, Sara ...
Jul 13, 2022•27 min
The borders of the Balkans have been splintered, cracked and remade countless times over centuries. Suspicions and hatreds, ancient and modern, still scar the landscape. Travelling through the southernmost regions bisected by the Iron Curtain, Mary-Ann Ochota meets the conservationists convinced that a shared love of the region's landscape and wildlife can heal division. From Trieste in Italy, a staging post for generations of refugees- including the Ukranian exodus of 2022- she travels south-ea...
Jun 29, 2022•27 min
