China has been described as the greatest threat to the World Trade Organisation, and its biggest champion. The WTO wasn’t designed to handle China, and its entry has had seismic consequences. If China won’t change, can the WTO adapt? Without reform, could China break the WTO? And finally, can the post-war rules and institutions survive in a recognisable form, or are we already witnessing the birth of a very different world? Journalist and former barrister Afua Hirsch talks to a wide range of his...
Nov 28, 2018•27 min
The World Trade Organisation was established in 1995, building on earlier global trade mechanisms. Did this represent a capture of the systems by neoliberals after the Cold War? Now President Trump is waging a trade war on China and sidelining the WTO. Does he have a point – and can the system survive?
Nov 21, 2018•27 min
Afua Hirsch examines the principle of self-determination, which Franklin Roosevelt insisted on including in the Atlantic Charter. It was a powerful force behind the liberation struggles which peaked in the 1950s and '60s as a wave of decolonisation swept the world and countries such as Tunisia, Jamaica, Nigeria and Guyana achieved independence. But it is not the same as a right to separate and form your own country, as the Catalans have recently been reminded. And it has a forgotten dark side as...
Nov 14, 2018•27 min
The UN Charter and Security Council were supposed to prevent aggressive wars. Who has broken the rules, and how much damage has that done? It is often said that the great powers have always done what they wanted and ignored international law. But will new forms of war present even more of a challenge? Presenter: Afua Hirsch Producer: Lucy Bailey (Photo: Illustration of a knitted ball resembling Earth unravelling. Credit: Nadia Akingbule)
Nov 07, 2018•27 min
In early August 1941 Franklin D Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met on a US flagship off Newfoundland and drew up The Atlantic Charter. It laid the foundations of an international system that has been in place ever since. But is it now under unbearable strain? Has the international human rights machinery worked? What about the global human rights movement? Many believe we are now at a crisis point, with populism and the rise of China both challenging the project. Others think the human rights mo...
Oct 31, 2018•27 min
Ten years ago the world financial system had a heart attack. Gripped by panic, banks stopped lending, cash ran out and the world came to the edge of a financial precipice. Professor Ian Goldin questions whether lessons have really been learned from what happened a decade ago and asks whether we are now better prepared to identify and prevent the next one? He talks about the threat that climate change might pose with Lord Nick Stern, asks Peter Piot – the man who discovered Ebola – how problemati...
Oct 24, 2018•27 min
As the world dealt with the fallout of the 2008 financial crash the hunt began for someone to blame. One group of people was suddenly thrust into the spotlight - economists. If they could not see such a catastrophe coming, had the world’s economists been asleep on the job, inept, or just blind to the crucial warning signs? As an economist himself, professor Ian Goldin thinks economists deserve a share of the blame. He looks at the ways the financial crash led to a crisis in his own profession, a...
Oct 17, 2018•26 min
In 2008 when the financial systems of the world’s richest countries crashed, others did not. Asian nations, especially China, bounced back quickly from the crisis, and were able to capitalise on their financial power to build up their reputation as global players. Professor Ian Goldin looks at how this has led to a shift in power from West to East, the ripples of which can be seen in everything from the founding of the G20, to Chinese foreign investment in Africa, to a rise in confidence in deve...
Oct 10, 2018•26 min
Did Governments’ handling of the 2008 financial crisis – when some chose to implement austerity and some didn’t - make things better or worse? Ian Goldin, professor of Globalisation and Development at Oxford University, visits Illinois in the US to find out how people were affected by the collapse in the housing market. He also talks to Christine Lagarde – the head of the International Monetary Fund – about how austerity measures were implemented in Europe. And Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the former Mi...
Oct 03, 2018•27 min
In 2008 the world financial system had a heart attack. Gripped by panic, banks stopped lending, cash ran out and the world came to the edge of a financial precipice. As millions of people lost their jobs and as the shock that started in Wall Street reverberated around the world, the crisis led to a collapse of the Greek, Spanish, Icelandic and other economies. Professor Ian Goldin looks at the origins of the crash and he examines how it affected our trust in authorities and experts. He travels t...
Sep 26, 2018•27 min
Nobody ever forgets the first time that they hear or see a tiger. But as Chris Watson discovers when he travels to Corbett National Park in India this is far from easy. What he uncovers is a fascinating relationship between the people and the forest environment in which listening plays a vital role. Amongst the dense vegetation you can hear far more than you can see. As a wildlife sound recordist from North East England, Chis is immediately excited by the range of new sounds he can hear; a sound...
Aug 15, 2018•27 min
Wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson accompanies Sami Joiker, Andé Sombe, on a journey up a mountain on the Lofoten islands in Norway to explore the relationship between the sounds of the mountain, the people and the wildlife. As Chris discovers, for many Norwegians the soundscape is part of the fascination and attraction of the mountains. The mountains offer an escape from urban and man-made noise to Nature’s symphony which is composed amongst other things of the sounds of running water produc...
Aug 08, 2018•27 min
Beginning with a few solo notes from a group of birds (including sparrow doves and finches) before the first light of day and ending with the sounds of the wind in the darkness of the night, wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson presents a journey in sound from dawn to dusk in the Namib Desert in southern Africa. The Namib is dominated by two features; the sand and the wind. Both of these are constantly shifting and changing and so too are the sounds they produce. The wind is hugely significant ...
Aug 01, 2018•27 min
From the moment “you wake up in the morning ...you become aware of sounds, the sounds of Africa“ says Saba Douglas Hamilton, a conservationist who was born and brought up in the Great Rift Valley. In the first of four programmes, wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson guides us on a journey in sound across the Plains to hear the world as you’ve never heard it before and explores the relationship between the soundscape, the people and the wildlife. The great savannah wilderness of the Maasai Mara ...
Jul 27, 2018•27 min
What do we do when antibiotics don’t work? Since the discovery of Penicillin antibiotics have come to underpin all of modern medicine – birth by Cesarean section, hip replacements, organ transplantation, caring for wounds on diabetic patients. None of this would be possible without effective antibiotics. But the medicines we depend are under threat. Decades of overuse has allowed the bacteria that makes us ill to evolve to resist treatment - and this resistance is spreading. In the very near fut...
Jul 18, 2018•27 min
We all only get one body, and that has to see us through our entire lives. The idea of failing health is a very visceral fear for the majority of people in the world. It is inevitable, is it not? But with advances in medicine and technology the future might not involve simply growing old gracefully. We might upgrade in order to level up our natural abilities, extend our lives or consign pain and infirmity to history. Aleks Krotoski and Ben Hammersley find out how to future proof our actual selve...
Jul 18, 2018•26 min
Big Data has been called the new crude oil, a seemingly inexhaustible resource that can use this data to make our lives better. Data can be used to create smart cities that make life easier for all of us, or to spur on new discoveries in medical science and even stop the next pandemic in its tracks. If used correctly it will be a boom for humanity. But behind Big Data are millions of individual people - including you and me. From the most innocuous picture on Instagram, to how many steps you rac...
Jul 11, 2018•27 min
What humans do to earn a living has always evolved to suit the needs of society, and the capabilities of the technology at our disposal. But thanks to the rapid development of artificial intelligence and automation we are on the cusp of a whole new Industrial Revolution. Manual and low skilled labour are already feeling the impact of automation – Amazon is experimenting with delivery drones, the fast food industry may soon be staffed with burger-flipping bots, and driverless vehicles are already...
Jul 04, 2018•27 min
Aleks Krotoski and Ben Hammersley discover how to prepare for the social, economic and technological changes that are coming in the next few decades so we can all thrive in the future. In the past the only places you were likely to see robots was on the big screen or on the factory floor, but now they are entering the home. In fact you may already have an Alexa to play a favourite tune or settle a debate with a quick Google search. If you are lucky there is a Roomba programmed to clean the floor...
Jun 21, 2018•27 min
The series ends with Robin Lustig asking if you can have too much English. From India he hears how English can divide people as powerfully as it brings them together. In the US he meets speakers of Native American languages who want to keep their linguistic traditions alive. And in East Africa Robin asks whether a requirement to speak good English prevents millions from accessing the best jobs and universities. Some see English as a 'killer language' which threatens the existence of less widely-...
Jun 13, 2018•27 min
Have you used the words antwacky, jarg and squinny recently? Presenter Robin Lustig examines linguistic change and continuity in British English. He visits the Oxford English Dictionary, he gets a lesson in regional slang. In Portsmouth, on the south coast of England, Robin hears some of that language on the streets as he meets young people who blend local slang with the global influence of social media and music. As he travels around the city, Robin sees how British English relates to the wider...
Jun 06, 2018•27 min
Robin Lustig explores language change and diversity, as he asks whether English is fragmenting into multiple dialects or becoming increasingly uniform. In Kampala Robin polishes up his Uglish and he finds out how Hinglish, Tamglish and Spanglish are evolving in India and the US. And everywhere he goes, Robin seeks out new words and phrases as he tracks linguistic change from social media and the streets through a California campus to the corridors of the Oxford English Dictionary. Sorting his me...
May 30, 2018•27 min
Whether you learnt it at your mother's knee, at school or from a smartphone app, more than one and a half billion of us are speakers or students of English. It is the world's most widely used language but in the 21st Century English is being transformed. To investigate its diversity, vitality and future direction, Robin Lustig travels the world to find out if English is set to dominate or decline. Robin begins his journey in the speech artificial intelligence labs of Silicon Valley and in conver...
May 23, 2018•27 min
Could abortion be banned in the United States? Since the election of President Trump the question has taken on a new urgency, for both sides of America’s abortion wars. Philippa Thomas travels to two states which perfectly capture the debate – Texas and Kentucky – to explore, the past, present and future of this most controversial debate. Finishing her journey in Washington, DC, in the third programme Philippa Thomas meets lobbyists on both sides of this issue, and visits the Supreme Court to wa...
May 16, 2018•27 min
Could abortion be banned in the United States? Since the election of President Trump the question has taken on a new urgency, for both sides of America’s abortion wars. Philippa Thomas travels to Kentucky, where a legal case is under way aimed at closing that state’s last clinic. She visits the lawyer trying to keep it open, and the opponents fervently praying for it to close. And she is invited to a smart suburb to see for herself one answer to the question often asked of anti-abortion activist...
May 09, 2018•27 min
Could abortion be banned in the United States? Since the election of President Trump the question has taken on a new urgency, for both sides of America’s abortion wars. Philippa Thomas travels to two states which perfectly capture the debate – Texas and Kentucky – to explore, the past, present and future of this most controversial debate. In the first programme Philippa visits abortion clinics in Texas to hear from women who have had abortions, and protesters who would like to stop them, about w...
May 02, 2018•27 min
Half of the world’s river systems host hydro-electric dams. They offer reliable electricity but their construction forces people from their homes and disrupts the natural life of the river. Scores of dams already span the Mekong River, the great waterway linking China to Vietnam. They’ve brought power and jobs to some of the most undeveloped parts of South-East Asia and the building boom shows no sign of ending. But the impact of the massive building programme on those living in the Mekong Delta...
Apr 25, 2018•28 min
Life in the Himalayas is tough at the best of times. Crops are dependent on the seasonal melt-water from the mountain glaciers. If climate change wipes out the glaciers then the people will be forced to move. As the global population increases and climate change tightens its grip the struggle for land intensifies. The tension over the ownership and the use of land creates new conflicts and inflames existing struggles. It also inspires creative thinking and fresh approaches to agriculture, develo...
Apr 18, 2018•28 min
An arranged marriage brought Yin Yuzhen to Inner Mongolia’s Ordos desert. Depressed by the sandstorms and poor productivity of the region, Yuzhen began to plant trees. Over 30 years she has planted a million trees in 70,000 hectares of desert. Those trees improved the soil and served as a barrier, blocking the sandstorms. She’s transformed the region, allowing a whole community to thrive in once uninhabitable conditions. Didi Akinyelure travels to the Maowusu Desert to meet Yuzhen and the local ...
Apr 11, 2018•27 min
Five of the Solomon Islands have disappeared, many more are becoming uninhabitable. For Kerry and Sally, climate change is not a theory - it is what has made them abandon their island and the graves of their ancestors. They see themselves as lucky - they had family land to move to and the skills to build new homes on stilts - but they are resigned to moving again. Award-winning journalist Didi Akinyelure visits her home city of Lagos to find out the latest solution to sea level rise in West Afri...
Apr 04, 2018•27 min
