Robin talks to fellow journalists around the world who have to walk the fine line between an espousal of free speech rights and their own safety. Is there reason to be optimistic about the future? He travels to Paris to the former office of Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical magazine which saw many of its cartoonists and journalist murdered by jihadist gunmen. He meets the editor of the magazine which is currently forced to operate from a secret location for security reasons. On the streets of ...
Apr 08, 2020•27 min
Robin goes back to his own days as a young reporter when he covered the last blasphemy trial ever held in the UK. At the time it appeared archaic and the end of an era, but blasphemy still exists in many countries across the world. In many ways it is the oldest of all challenges to free speech, so can religions ever truly countenance a world in which free speech is held to be sacred? (Photo: Asia Bibi, a Christian woman sentenced to death in Pakistan for blasphemy in 2010 and acquitted by the Su...
Apr 01, 2020•24 min
Robin visits universities in Hong Kong, Oxford and Washington to establish how important free speech is to them and whether moves to block controversial speakers is compatible with what appears a fundamental freedom of expression in places where all ideas are encouraged and tested. Robin explores where the line is drawn regarding freedom of speech in universities, who draws it and what happens to those who cross it. Presenter/reporter: Robin Lustig Producer: Tom Alban and Neil McCarthy Editor: P...
Mar 25, 2020•27 min
Robin Lustig begins his journey in Washington DC where the first amendment is housed in the National Archive and serves as an almost sacred document. In this programme he asks how Courts around the world make decisions on Free speech. Can they find a line in the sand that shouldn’t be crossed? How do they decide what is, in the modern parlance, ‘hate speech’ and what is merely strongly expressed personal opinion? And can they ever be more than extensions of the political environment they inhabit...
Mar 18, 2020•27 min
Why do people who live in five communities around the world – known as Blue Zones- consistently outlive the rest of us on the planet? Professor Cregan-Reid goes in search of the secret of a long life. He visits Sardinia home to one of those long lived communities where several villages boast dozens of people aged 100 or more. What used to kill us routinely no longer does so - at least not in such numbers. By rights many, many more of us should be emulating the residents of the Blue Zones and liv...
Mar 11, 2020•28 min
Professor Cregan-Reid explores why we have all grown so fast recently. For four millennia we barely grew an extra inch but in the 20th Century pretty much every nation in the world shot up by between three and six inches. But it is not a uniform story; the Dutch have carried on growing and today their men and women tower over the world but in the US and the UK, height plateaued decades ago. And is being tall good for you? Yes, it seems, if you are a politician or industrialist; less so if you ha...
Mar 04, 2020•28 min
For two million years we evolved in synch with our environment and our bodies were perfectly adapted for a physically rigorous outdoor life. That all changed when the Industrial Revolution brought about a transformation in how we lived and worked for which our bodies were unprepared. Professor Vybarr Cregan-Reid, describes how the great move indoors to a more comfortable but sedentary experience was changing our feet, our faces and our backs. In this second series he considers how modern life ha...
Feb 26, 2020•27 min
It is a time of political change in Poland. The recent general election saw the biggest turnout since 1989 and the end of communism. And gender has become one of the most fraught political issues, with the ruling Law and Justice Party holding up LGBT rights and so-called 'gender ideology' as being enemies to the Polish way of life. Anything that goes against traditional values has the potential of being held as a threat to Polish identity. Tim Samuels and Anna Holligan travel to Warsaw and meet ...
Feb 19, 2020•27 min
Tim Samuels and Anna Holligan travel to Warsaw to find out what's on the minds of men and women. It's a time of political change in Poland. The recent general election saw the biggest turnout since 1989. Gender has become one of the most fraught political issues, with LGBT rights and so-called 'gender ideology' being held up by prominent politicians as threats to the Polish way of life. It has been a challenging time for many women, with a proposed tightening of abortion laws and many women's or...
Feb 12, 2020•27 min
Tim Samuels and Anna Holligan travel to Mexico City. As parts of the world go through something of a gender reckoning, have these forces made much of a dent in Mexico? Last time, Anna spent time with women in this sprawling metropolis, hearing how the ever-present threat of violence lingers below the surface for many. In this episode she hears from men. The first wisps of the MeToo movement have belatedly started to blow into Mexico, but this is unlikely to be fertile soil for an outburst of equ...
Feb 05, 2020•28 min
Mexico has always felt like a country where men live on their own terms. A place where women strive for equality - and safety. More than nine are murdered in the country every day, according to UN Women. Tim Samuels and Anna Holligan travel to Mexico City and hear from a sports commentator, a domestic worker, journalists, newspaper editors and aspiring actresses. Mexican women are marching, calling on authorities to do more to combat the high rates of femicide - the murder of a woman because of ...
Jan 29, 2020•28 min
India and China have a complex and troubled modern history – including a fully-fledged war in 1962. Today Indian consumers seem to love all things Chinese, from the cheap plastic toys to smartphones and apps like Tik Tok. Some Indians think this success is a result of unfair trade. They think that Chinese imports are taking advantage of the relatively open Indian economy, while Indian companies are prevented from getting a foothold in China. This creates a huge trade imbalance between the two As...
Jan 22, 2020•27 min
There has been a lot of media focus on China’s investment in Africa’s physical infrastructure: but what about its play for Africa’s attention? CGTN, China’s state-run international TV station, has steadily increased its footprint on the continent from its African HQ in Nairobi – while Chinese-owned StarTimes is on its way to providing satellite TV access for 10,000 rural villages. Hundreds of African journalists have been trained in China. Does this represent a major shift in international focus...
Jan 15, 2020•27 min
Canada has been sucked into a global dispute between the US and China. It started in Vancouver, with arrest on an American warrant of Meng Wanzhou, an executive with the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei. China’s furious response caught Canada off guard. Two Canadians have been detained in China – seemingly in response, precipitating an acute foreign policy crisis. Canadian journalist Neal Razzell examines what could be the first of many tests for this nation, in which it is forced to choose between...
Jan 08, 2020•27 min
Will the rise of China help or damage Chinese-Indonesians? The ethnic Chinese minority in Indonesia have long suffered discrimination – forbidden from taking jobs in government and the military and targeted during violent riots in 1998. In the city of Yogyakarta they are still not allowed to own land. But some Chinese-Indonesians have benefited economically from the rise of China, as middlemen between the two economies. Today, 8 of the 10 richest Indonesians are thought to be ethnically Chinese....
Jan 01, 2020•27 min
As China grows in power, there are fears that it is trying to alter the course of Australian politics. The Australian government has legislated against "foreign influence operations" after allegations of Chinese spies making payments to lawmakers. More recently, there have been disputes on university campuses between students supporting the pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong and those loyal to mainland China – with allegations that the latter have the covert support of the Chinese Embassy....
Dec 25, 2019•27 min
As China grows richer and more powerful, its values are spreading. But what kind of impact is this having on the rest of the world? This mini-series, Chinese Dreams, visits Australia, Indonesia, Canada, Kenya and India to find out how the expanding reach of the most populous nation on Earth, is affecting the international community. From political policy to life on university campus, its influence is wide-reaching. Episode one features reporter Heidi Pett, investigating the concerns Australia ha...
Dec 23, 2019•3 min
In the South African town of Atlantis, a group of teenage reporters are speaking out against the rising levels of violence ripping at the fabric of their lives. Once a week, Temica Bonn, Logan Hansen and Meagan Lubbe broadcast a live show from Radio Atlantis inspiring conversations and educating the community on how gun crime is threatening the way they live. The team have been focusing on this topic for two years in the hope of steering young people away from a path which leads to guns and gang...
Dec 11, 2019•27 min
Mohamad Aljounde is an 18-year-old student in Sweden. He is a keen photographer, amateur film-maker, a Syrian refugee and winner of the 2017 International Children’s Peace Prize. When the war in Syria broke out, he and his family fled to Lebanon where they lived for years. Due to a shortage of money, and a lack of school places, Mohamad’s education came to a halt. So, when he couldn’t go to school, he did a remarkable thing - he helped build one, and that school is thriving, providing an educati...
Dec 04, 2019•27 min
Stella Bowles is a teenage environmental campaigner; one you probably haven’t heard about - yet. But she has sparked real change in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. Her school science project, and a great deal of persistence, led to a 15 million Canadian dollar project to clean up pollution in her local river. Now she is trying to show other teenagers around the world how they too can be guardians of their local waterways. Teenagers are often dismissed as too young to have an opinion and to...
Nov 27, 2019•28 min
Andrew Harding travels to Angola, and the site of Africa’s largest battlefield in the Cold War. When Portugal relinquished its colonies in 1975, it looked as though a Communist-backed government would take over in Angola. Instead, there followed nearly 30 years of fighting: American and South African-backed rebels on one side, Cuban and Soviet-backed forces on the other. Nearly half a million Cubans – soldiers, doctors, teachers and technicians – made the six thousand mile journey to play their ...
Nov 20, 2019•27 min
Oslo is now the fastest-growing major city in all of Europe. Its growth is attributed to high birth rates and migration. Oslo is keenly aware that as the city expands, it is important to do so in a sustainable way. As a result, they have made a commitment to reducing carbon use and emissions while they grow, which some would say is an impossible challenge. Can Oslo’s plans work? And can it avoid urban pitfalls that may lead to segregation and inequality? For cities that grow beyond their histori...
Nov 17, 2019•50 min
Divya Arya looks at what happened in India at the height of the Cold War, and afterwards as the Berlin Wall came down, 30 years ago. She explores the rich politics of a country which chose not to pick a side during the Cold War. Where realpolitik and clever diplomacy have been key components for Indian leaders on the world stage from Jawaharlal Nehru in the 1940s to Narendra Modi today. As two superpowers fought for power and influence during the Cold War, India played a game of diplomacy, movin...
Nov 13, 2019•28 min
In 1965, in a little known chapter of the Cold War, at least half a million people died in organised military-led killings of suspected communist sympathisers in Indonesia, with the blessing of the United States. For almost 50 years speaking about that time has been taboo, and school history books gloss over the killings. Attempts by the current government to start a process of truth-telling and reconciliation are reopening old wounds and have met fierce resistance from the military and old guar...
Nov 06, 2019•27 min
Brazil’s controversial new President, Jair Bolsonaro, has praised the country’s military dictatorship, which took power in 1964 and ruled for 21 years. In an echo of the language used by the generals back then, President Bolsonaro claims he is saving his country from Communism and he has vowed to wipe the reds off the map. His critics say he is a threat to democracy. In this sharply divided country, some say Brazil is reliving the Cold War. Through history, culture and the classroom, the BBC’s S...
Oct 30, 2019•28 min
Thirty years ago, communism suddenly collapsed across central and eastern Europe. Soviet rule, that had seemed ruthless and permanent, was ended by people power. And nowhere did change seem more miraculous than in Czechoslovakia. A ‘velvet revolution’ replaced a stony faced politbureau with a beaming playwright, President Vaclav Havel. There was much talk of democracy, prosperity, and a full embrace of Western values. Three decades on, Chris Bowlby, who knew Czechoslovakia before and after its r...
Oct 23, 2019•27 min
Amidst birds passing over or nesting by the Solway Firth in southern Scotland, writer Kayo Chingonyi explores the role of poetry in bringing humans and non-human animals closer. He asks why we turn to poetry to fill the space between human and animal life and discovers ways in which poetry is a powerful human form for entering into the unstructured, more instinctive world of non –human animals. He walks through the wetlands with poet Isabel Galleymore and poetry scholar Sam Solnick. He also talk...
Oct 16, 2019•28 min
Environmental journalist Gayathri Vaidyanathan considers the impact of Philosophy and Religion on animals as food. In and around Chennai in India, she reveals how India is managing a terrible dilemma in the massive rise of buffalo meat production next to the catastrophe of animal welfare and environmental pollution. She talks to Jains, Hindus and Buddhists and visits fast food restaurants where young people associate eating burgers with independence and modernity. She also spends time at a pione...
Oct 09, 2019•27 min
Zimbabwean author and essayist Panashe Chigumadzi asks what part Language plays in our regard for other animals. In wild animal reserves in the south of the country, she talks to ethologists to understand lions, rhinos and vultures. She asks if our greatest problem in entering the mind of another animal has been its inability to communicate as we do? She looks to her ancestral culture of animal totems and praise poems, and the relatively recent explosion of scientific interest in the animal’s po...
Oct 02, 2019•28 min
Science writer Heidi Ledford travels to the Hague, centre of political power in the Netherlands and home to the Party for the Animals. She’s shown around the House of Representatives by Marianne Thieme, leader of the party, who describes the resistance to her work, and the terrible impact of factory farming on climate change. She is passionate to represent the voiceless in society: “Once you have them covered, everyone is protected.” Along with exploring ways in which laws protect animals collec...
Sep 25, 2019•28 min
