Thousands died when an earthquake and tsunami struck Palu, Indonesia – but could more lives have been saved? Accusations have been made of a host of failings: alert systems that were out of action, sirens that didn’t sound, a government slow to give emergency help - even people who were too busy filming the disaster to run away. How much truth is there to this? Was everything done to warn people beforehand, and rescue people in the aftermath? We speak to experts on the ground and around the worl...
Oct 18, 2018•23 min
Delhi is one of the worst polluted cities in the world. Radical ideas like skyscraper-sized air purifiers are being proposed to clean the smog – can they work? There are lessons to be learned from other cities around the world about how to manage emissions. But will any city’s air ever be really clean? (Image: A heavily polluted street in Delhi. Photo Credit: Arvind Yadav/Getty Images)
Oct 11, 2018•23 min
Most countries in the world have signed up to the idea that no child should work at all under a certain age – but is this the best approach? This week Nicolle, a 17 year old from Peru, has been part of a delegation of child labourers visiting the UN to ask them to rethink their ban on child labour. She’s been working since she was 8 years old, and says not only did her family need the money she earned, but working brought her status and respect. Some charities and experts working with child labo...
Oct 04, 2018•24 min
DNA testing is big business. Millions of people worldwide are finding out about their ancestry and genetic health traits by sending off a spit sample to one of the big consumer genetic testing companies. But what do your genes really tell you? And could genetic testing have harmful consequences for our health and for society? Four experts chart the rise of consumer genetic testing and examine the claims made and our expectations about the results. Presenter: Helena Merriman Producer: Lucy Procto...
Sep 27, 2018•24 min
The story of how a line on a map becomes a hard state border that no one can cross. Korea was ruled as one Kingdom for a thousand years. They valued poetry and scholars helped rule the country. But their Kingdom was invaded by Japan. When Japan left, Russia and America raced to take their place. Amid frantic organising, a line dividing Korea in two was suggested. Who knew that line would become the front line in a war, eventually creating a hard border between two new countries? This is a specia...
Sep 20, 2018•24 min
This is a special edition that younger listeners aged 10 to 14 can also enjoy. If you’re no longer in that bracket, don’t worry, The Inquiry as you know and love it will be back to normal after the next two episodes. It’s an experiment and we’d love to know what you think of it. Please email us [email protected] or tweet @bbctheinquiry. What’s Killing Africa’s Elephants? Poachers, jewellery makers and angry farmers: the story behind the drop in elephant numbers across Africa. Presenters: Prisci...
Sep 13, 2018•23 min
Ever since it began, women’s sport has been beset by a fundamental question: who gets to compete as a woman? It’s a debate which is more heated now than ever. That’s because in a few months, athletics’ governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations, will introduce controversial new rules, regulating the participation of athletes with disorders of sexual development, commonly known as intersex conditions. It’s a debate that goes far beyond sport - throwing up difficult que...
Sep 06, 2018•24 min
Thousands of cyberattacks occur every single day. Some hackers steal credit card details or pilfer money from online bank accounts. Others cripple businesses, or even governments. As tensions mount in cyberspace, what are countries doing to strengthen their cyber power and build a hacking army? In this Inquiry, we delve into some of the world’s most intriguing cyber operations – including Iran, Russia and North Korea. (Black Hat DEF CON cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas, Nevada USA. Photo Cr...
Aug 30, 2018•23 min
It’s graduation day at the end of a religious summer school in Yemen’s Saada province. A class of young boys are off on a trip to a shrine. In a land of war, they are happy - jostling and full of energy on their school bus. Moments later, most of the boys are dead. A Saudi-led coalition airstrike has hit their bus. The bomb that was dropped by the Saudis was made in the United States, and Saudi Arabia is the America’s single biggest customer when it comes to buying arms. Critics argue that Donal...
Aug 23, 2018•23 min
The year 2030 was set by the UN as the world's deadline for halting the spread of HIV, stopping Aids deaths, and having the first generation since 1980 born and raised completely free from infection. But at last month’s 22nd International Aids conference the mood was less optimistic. Deaths from the disease, having stabilised, are now beginning to increase, with some people fearing the disease is now poised to add massively to its global death toll. As global funding for Aids decreases, and drug...
Aug 16, 2018•23 min
It was May 2013 when Cody Wilson went public with his 3D-printed handgun. An online video showed the crude plastic object fixed on top of a tripod. The trigger was pulled from a distance by someone pulling a long piece of string. Since that first successful firing, 3D printed guns and the debate around them has come a long way. The design for Cody Wilson’s plastic firearm, dubbed the ‘Liberator’ has been downloaded from the internet nearly 100,000 times. The US government has tried to block its ...
Aug 09, 2018•23 min
In India, false rumours about child kidnappers, spread on WhatsApp, have prompted fearful mobs to kill innocent people. In May 2018 a video went viral. The original, a Pakistani child safety video, had been edited to show two men on a motorbike driving up to a group of children playing cricket in the street. They swoop up a small boy in a red t-shirt and drive away. As the video spread across India people started receiving messages in their WhatsApp groups, some claiming to be from the local pol...
Aug 02, 2018•23 min
It’s a July morning in Ethiopia and Addisalem Hadigu, a journalist in his 50s, boards a flight to neighbouring Eritrea. But it’s no ordinary plane. This ‘bird of peace’ is the first commercial flight to operate between the two countries since 1998, and Addisalem is flying to see his wife and two daughters – the family he hasn’t seen in 20 years. Reunions like this are happening across Ethiopia and Eritrea, after the two countries finally agreed a peace deal and ended Africa’s longest war. But wi...
Jul 26, 2018•24 min
As relations with Iran and the West reach a new low point with the collapse earlier this year of the nuclear deal and the reintroduction of strict economic sanctions we ask: what does Iran think of the West? Pooneh Ghoddoosi explores a long and tortuous history of outside interference in the country. It dates back to the Western desire for Iran's rich oil reserves in the early 20th century, and continues through the CIA-backed coup in 1953, which strengthened the Shah's grip on the throne. The W...
Jul 19, 2018•24 min
By the time she died at the age of 46, Koko the gorilla was a global superstar. Not only could she apparently understand two thousand words of spoken English and convey her own thoughts and feelings using sign language, but she was even able to give her own pet kitten a name. Some say that it’s impossible to know whether Koko really understood what she was communicating, or whether she was just trying to please people by signing certain things. Either way, her death raises questions about animal...
Jul 12, 2018•24 min
Food production accounts for as much global greenhouse gas emissions as all forms of transport combined. That’s why many scientists think we can’t tackle climate change without addressing what we eat. So – in this week’s repeat Inquiry – we’re looking at alternative climate-friendly diets and asking what it would take to move the world towards them. Presenter: Helena Merriman (Photo: Friends having a vegetarian meal. Credit: Shutterstock)
Jul 05, 2018•23 min
The world’s two biggest economies are on the brink of a costly standoff. The US has announced tariffs of 25% on a swathe of Chinese goods, starting July 6th. China has vowed to respond in kind. ‘If someone wants a trade war,’ China’s Commerce Minister said, ‘we will fight to the end.’ President Trump is bullish, threatening further tariffs and tweeting: ‘trade wars are good, and easy to win.’ But the WTO has warned that a trade war would have a ‘severe’ impact on the global economy. We look at t...
Jun 28, 2018•23 min
Donte Robinson and Rashon Nelson were waiting to meet a business associate in Starbucks. After two minutes, the store manager called the police and the African-American men were removed from the café in handcuffs. The Starbucks CEO has described the incident as “racial profiling”, claiming that the manager acted on unconscious racial bias. In response, he closed 8,000 branches of the coffee giant so his staff could attend anti-bias training. It’s not just Starbucks - diversity training, such as ...
Jun 21, 2018•23 min
More than half the world’s countries are not producing enough babies to offset the number of deaths. Russia is the latest to experience a dip in the fertility rate, despite the government rolling out measures to encourage people to have more children. They have tried mortgage subsidies, giving couples days off to have sex, and rewarding fruitful mothers with the grand prize of a refrigerator. But the fertility rate continues to drop. It is a situation that governments in Spain, Singapore, German...
Jun 14, 2018•23 min
Last year, the world watched as Islamic State was driven from Raqqa, the city they claimed as their capital. The UN has estimated that around 80% of the city’s buildings were destroyed or damaged in the battle. Eight months later, many Raqqans are returning home. Amid the rubble, life is slowly returning to Raqqa. This week, we investigate what life is like after Islamic State. (Picture: A view of destroyed buildings at the frontline in Raqqa, Syria October 16, 2017. Credit: Reuters / Erik De Ca...
Jun 07, 2018•23 min
Chicago resident Robert McDaniel was surprised when a police commander showed up at his home to warn him that they were watching him. With only a misdemeanour conviction and arrests for a number of suspected minor offenses, he had somehow made it onto the Chicago Police Department’s so called ‘heat list’ - a list of names created by algorithm of those deemed to be most at risk of either being a victim or perpetrator of violent crime. In this Inquiry we look at whether computers can predict futur...
May 31, 2018•23 min
North Korea has been under sanctions for many years. But this isolated economy is showing signs of life that might surprise you. From hacking and counterfeit money to coffee shops in Pyongyang, we investigate what life is like in North Korea and how the state makes its money. Presenter: Celia Hatton Producer: Josephine Casserly (Photo: A woman shopping at the Kwangbok, or 'liberation', department store in Pyongyang. Credit: Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images)
May 24, 2018•23 min
Armenia's recent successful uprising is being celebrated as unprecedented for a former Soviet state. The so-called “velvet revolution” began on the last day in March with a protest walk. It ended two weeks and 100km later with the government overthrown. Yet revolutions rarely triumph. In this Inquiry we look at the factors that need to come together for such a revolution to succeed. Do they always need to be bloody and brutal or can non-violence resistance be as effective? How important are stat...
May 17, 2018•23 min
Not long ago, they were calling each other names and raising fears of a nuclear war. Now, it is feasible they could together win the Nobel Peace Prize - if they can reach a deal. The mooted meeting between America’s Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un could go wrong in many ways. Mr Trump has already talked of walking out. But in a spirit of optimism, this week’s Inquiry hears from those who have brokered some of the world’s most unlikely pacts for advice on how to strike the deal of a li...
May 10, 2018•23 min
In late December 2017, one of the world’s leading neurobiologists died of pancreatic cancer. His name was Ben Barres. He was an extraordinary scientist, advancing our understanding of how the brain works, in particular how certain cells in the brain may contribute to degenerative brain diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. He had also lived the last 20 years of his life as a transgender man. He used his unique perspective of having ‘lived in the shoes of a woman and…the shoes of a man’ to b...
May 03, 2018•23 min
Black infants in America are twice as likely to die in their first year as white infants. This stark disparity has long puzzled doctors and researchers. Why are so many African-American babies dying? (Photo: A medical assistant measures the head of a newborn baby during a check-up in the USA. Credit: John Moore / Getty Images)
Apr 26, 2018•23 min
Syria, Salisbury, Malaysia Airport – all sites of nerve agent attacks carried out in the past couple of years. Yet hundreds of countries have supposedly destroyed their stockpiles of chemical weapons. It’s also illegal to produce and use them. We look to four of the world’s most experienced chemists and researchers to tell us more about the nerve agents used in these recent attacks, how they are regulated and the ongoing problems of getting rid of them. (Photo: Members of the emergency services ...
Apr 19, 2018•23 min
China’s ivory market is now closed for business. The country has long been one of the world's biggest consumers of ivory. But as of this year, buying and selling ivory in China is illegal. Carving factories, workshops and jewellers have all shut their doors. How did this happen? And will it be enough to save the African elephant? (Photo: An African Elephant throws mud onto himself, Mpala Research Centre, Kenya. Credit: Simon Maina/Getty Images)
Apr 12, 2018•23 min
When Robert Mugabe was deposed last year, he had ruled Zimbabwe for nearly four decades. How do dictators and authoritarians stay in power? James Tilley, a professor of politics at Oxford University in the UK, finds out what's in the dictators' survival guide. How do they control ordinary people and stop revolts? How do they stop rivals from taking over? And why are elections often helpful to securing their rule? Producer: Bob Howard. (Photo: Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe looks on during hi...
Apr 05, 2018•23 min
The tide of public opinion is turning on plastic. The image of a whale with plastic stuck in its mouth on the BBC nature documentary Blue Planet 2 woke people up across the world to the reality of plastic pollution in our oceans. Experts think that by 2050, there could be more plastic than fish in the sea. Communities across the globe are saying that something must be done. But does this change in public mood spell disaster for plastic? And if so, what would replace it? We go from Europe, to the...
Mar 28, 2018•23 min
