False Hope? Alternative Cancer Cures is a three-part investigate series into the death of young musician, Sean Walsh. Sean was 20 when he found out his cancer was back. He’d been in remission for less than two years and was determined that this time round, he would not have conventional treatment. He turned down chemotherapy in the hope that he could cure his Hodgkin’s Lymphoma through an alternative approach, including a vegan diet, cannabis oil and coffee enemas. Throughout his treatment he us...
Sep 22, 2020•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast False Hope? Alternative Cancer Cures is a three-part investigate series into the death of young musician, Sean Walsh. Sean was 20 when he found out his cancer was back. He’d been in remission for less than two years and was determined that this time round, he would not have conventional treatment. He turned down chemotherapy in the hope that he could cure his Hodgkin’s Lymphoma through an alternative approach, including a vegan diet, cannabis oil and coffee enemas. Throughout his treatment he us...
Sep 22, 2020•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast False Hope? Alternative Cancer Cures is a three-part investigative series into the death of young musician Sean Walsh. Sean was 20 when he found out his cancer was back. He’d been in remission for less than two years and was determined that this time round, he would not have conventional treatment. He turned down chemotherapy in the hope that he could cure his Hodgkin’s Lymphoma through an alternative approach, including a vegan diet, cannabis oil and coffee enemas. Throughout his treatment he u...
Sep 22, 2020•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast The final episode of Blood Lands - a true story told in five parts which takes us to the heart of modern South Africa. A group of white men are on trial accused of murdering two black South Africans, but as a long and explosive trial comes to an end, could muddled medical evidence see them walk free? Blood Lands is a murder investigation, a political drama, a courtroom thriller, and a profound exploration of the enduring racial tensions threatening the "rainbow nation". Over the course of three ...
Sep 14, 2020•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast Blood Lands is a true story told in five parts which takes us to the heart of modern South Africa. A family betrayal leads to a murder trial in a small farming town in South Africa. But who is telling the truth about a frenzied attack that left two black farm workers dead, and a community bitterly divided on racial lines? Blood Lands is murder investigation, a political drama, a courtroom thriller, and a profound exploration of the enduring tensions threatening the "rainbow nation". Over the cou...
Sep 14, 2020•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast Blood Lands is a true story told in five parts which takes us to the heart of modern South Africa. Police investigating a suspected double murder in a small South African farming community uncover crucial new evidence. But will it be enough to break the farmers’ wall of silence and solve a case that has divided a town on racial lines? Blood Lands is a murder investigation, a political drama, a courtroom thriller, and a profound exploration of the enduring tensions threatening the "rainbow nation...
Sep 14, 2020•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Blood Lands is a true story told in five parts which takes us to the heart of modern South Africa. A white farming family falls silent following the brutal deaths of two black workers. Were the dead men really thieves? Or has South Africa’s tortured past come back to haunt a racially divided community? Blood Lands is a murder investigation, a political drama, a courtroom thriller, and a profound exploration of the enduring tensions threatening the “rainbow nation". Over the course of three years...
Sep 14, 2020•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Blood Lands is a true story told in five parts which takes us to the heart of modern South Africa. At dusk on a warm evening in 2016, two men arrive, unexpectedly, at a remote South African farmhouse. The frenzy that follows will come to haunt a community, destroying families, turning neighbours into traitors, prompting street protests, threats of violence, and dividing the small farming and tourist town of Parys along racial lines. Blood Lands is a murder investigation, a political drama, a cou...
Sep 14, 2020•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast Autism is a lifelong condition, often seen as particularly ‘male’. Yet a growing number of women, and those assigned female at birth, are being diagnosed as autistic in their 30s, 40s, 50s - and beyond. Writer and performer Helen Keen is one of them, and she’s found this diagnosis has helped her make sense of many aspects of her life, from growing up with selective mutism, to struggling to fit in as a young adult. In this programme Helen asks why she, like a growing number of others, had to wait...
Sep 11, 2020•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam Gyimah, former minister for universities in Theresa May's government, asks if Britain's universities can survive the crisis they now face. Many are calling the immense challenge that Britain's universities now face an existential crisis. With access to leaders of universities from the most traditional to the most modern, Sam Gyimah explores whether the business and education models for Brtain's higher education sector are fit for purpose. The Covid pandemic is significant but when that crisi...
Sep 04, 2020•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast Like many young black people, Lucrece Grehoua is an expert in code-switching - used to changing her voice, accent and mannerisms when she enters white-majority spaces. But should she really have to? In this programme, Lucrece reveals the cost of hiding who we really are in the workplace and explores the mechanics of code-switching, a term first used to describe the experience of African-American students in the 1970s. She shares her own story of being taught to become “a palatable black girl wit...
Aug 26, 2020•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic the UK government has stated that its decisions have been “led by the science”. This pithy phrase implies there is a fixed body of knowledge from a consensus of scientists that provides a road map of what to do to stop the pandemic. But there isn’t. And if decisions made by politicians turn out not to work, then who gets the blame? Is it the science? While some scientists have willingly appeared in support of the actions announced, many researchers are furious wi...
Aug 14, 2020•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast James Naughtie examines Joe Biden's chances in the forthcoming US election as he tries to beat president Donald Trump at the polls this November. Donald Trump was elected on the promise to 'drain the swamp' in Washington, and in response the Democrats have chosen a candidate who is from the heart of the political establishment. As a state senator for 36 years and then president Obama's VP for eight more, Joe Biden now carries the standard in the strangest American presidential election of modern...
Aug 11, 2020•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast When Belfast poet Gail McConnell's son was growing in her partner's womb, Gail was writing poems exploring what it means to be a non-biological parent in a same-sex relationship. Gail's poem 'Untitled/Villanelle' lets go of the binaries of motherhood and fatherhood and imagines these roles in more fluid terms as a parent with a bit of both...a Fothermather. We meet Gail, her partner Beth and their son Finn as Gail tries to find language for a family structure we don't have words for yet. Produce...
Aug 07, 2020•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Simon had been sleeping in shop doorways in Manchester for three years when the coronavirus pandemic reached the UK. Suddenly, as the government released emergency funding to get people sleeping rough off the streets during lockdown, Simon found himself being offered an en suite room at the Holiday Inn. This is the story of the unprecedented operation to get the country’s street homeless inside - told through one hotel in Manchester. The experience has been transformational for some, including S...
Aug 04, 2020•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast From climate change to smoking and cancer, this is the story of how doubt has been manufactured. In this episode we take you to an oil company’s boardroom as they plan their response to the ‘crisis mentality’ that was emerging after the long hot summer of 1988. 5,000 people died in the heat wave, coinciding with the moment NASA scientist Jim Hansen announced that a ‘greenhouse effect’ was ‘changing our climate now’. This looked like a battle for the survival of the oil industry. This 10 part ser...
Jul 29, 2020•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast The bodies of 39 Vietnamese men and women discovered in a lorry container in Essex highlighted the growing problem of illegal and dangerous journeys into the UK. With police and governments pledging to do more to uncover illegal smuggling operations Radio 4 speaks to refugees, lorry drivers and to some of the smugglers behind this deadly trade Recent coverage from Greece has highlighted the pressures on borders as desperate people risk everything to cross from Turkey. Dangerous Trade starts by t...
Jul 21, 2020•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Everywhere she goes, people ask for selfies and tell her how wonderful she is. But what’s it really like to be the world’s most famous climate campaigner when you’re still a teenager? In this revelatory personal essay which she wrote for Swedish Radio, Greta Thunberg describes her journey to deliver a speech at the UN General Assembly, observing the effects of climate change first-hand, her encounters with both powerful and ordinary people and a terrifying trip in a yacht across the Atlantic. Th...
Jul 10, 2020•1 hr 20 min•Transcript available on Metacast Nearly two million people are now known to have applied for Universal Credit since the start of the Coronavirus lockdown. For many of them it’s their first time, and is in sharp contrast to how they expected their lives to be. To make a claim, many start off by calling the Universal Credit Hotline, a process that can take hours. Once they start their claim it's likely they'll need to wait five weeks for their first payment. As they wait, in isolation in their homes, we discover more about their ...
Jul 07, 2020•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Shark, bear and crocodile attacks tend to make the headlines but humans fall prey to a much wider variety of predators every year, from big cats and snakes, to wolves, hyenas and even eagles that’ve been known to snatch the odd child. The details can be grim and gory as many predators have developed specific techniques for hunting us humans down. But it was always so, as biologist Professor Adam Hart discovers. Archaeological evidence suggests early hominins in Africa were more hunted than hunte...
Jun 30, 2020•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Gordon Corera asks if the West is losing the technological race with China. Why did the decision to let the Chinese company Huawei build the UK’s 5G telecoms network turn into one of the most difficult and consequential national security decisions of recent times? A decision which risks undermining the normally close special relationship between the US and UK? The answer is because it cuts to the heart of the greatest fear in Washington – that China is already ahead in the global competition to ...
Jun 19, 2020•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast When football introduced the Video Assistant Referee, better known as VAR, fans thought it would cut out bad refereeing decisions but, as we limp toward some conclusion of this Covid-19 interrupted season, many now want to see the pitch referee back in charge. In 'Life, Uncertainty and VAR', the writer, blogger and journalist Tom Chivers argues that as in football, so in life and society; promises to eliminate uncertainty are liable to end in disappointment. Worse, the better we get at revealing...
Jun 12, 2020•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today there's a booming wellness industry, including luxury spas and hotels as well as personal trainers and supplements, claimed to be worth over $4 trillion a year. Online at least, self-care seems to revolve around buying stuff – luxury oils, face creams, scented candles, face rollers, bath bombs, silk pillows, cleansing soaps and stress-relieving teas. Or we can cherish ourselves by paying someone else for a service, from a yoga session to a delivery of artisan chocolates. With the help of t...
Jun 05, 2020•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast The coronavirus outbreak revealed an international shortage of ventilators. Across the world, govenrments scrambled to acquire new ones, not just from traditional manufacturers, but from anyone who though they could design a simple yet functional device. As a result, hundreds of teams and individuals have risen to the challenge, including university students and hobbyists. Jolyon Jenkins set out to design and build a ventilator himself, drawing on the wealth of shared informationi and designs th...
May 26, 2020•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Susan Bright gets bloody and fleshy with sculptors, performance artists and filmmakers who use animal parts as their raw material. Images of meat in still life paintings have been a staple in art for centuries, but why are artists now incorporating animal flesh, offal and skin into their work. What draws them to this macabre material and what does it enable them to say? Photographer Pinar Yolacan makes meat dresses for her models, frills from raw chicken, bodices from placenta and sleeves from t...
May 12, 2020•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Tracking the virus hunters who race to understand and extinguish new pathogens. Sars Cov 2 is the virus responsible for the pandemic of 2020. But there are millions of other viruses living around the world, any one of which could mutate and infect us at any time. Scientists are in a never-ending race to identify these viruses and contain their dangerous effects. Oxford Professor Trudie Lang, director of the Global Health Network, hears from some of the virus hunters who work against the clock to...
May 05, 2020•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast The World Health Organisation calls it an “infodemic” – a flood of information about the coronavirus pandemic. Amid the good advice and the measured uncertainty, there’s a ton of false claims, conspiracy theories and health tips which are just plain wrong. We’ve been working to fight the tide of bad info, and in this programme BBC Trending reporters Marianna Spring and Mike Wendling trace the story of one specific viral post. It's a list of supposed facts about the virus and what you can do to p...
Apr 24, 2020•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Edward Stourton tells the story of the BBC in the ”phoney war” of 1939-1940 and the period’s strange echoes of Covid-19 today. When war was declared in September 1939, everyone in Britain expected a catastrophic bombing campaign. Theatres and cinemas were closed and children were evacuated to the countryside. What followed instead was a hiatus when tensions remained high but the bombs did not fall. How does the experience of the Home Front at the start of the Second World War echo the Covid-19 c...
Apr 21, 2020•58 min•Transcript available on Metacast To survive and thrive in an uncertain world, our children need to be creative and resilient. But how do you build these things? What does it take to make creativity a life skill and where might such a skill take a child in later life? These are the questions at the heart of an ambitious new project underway in Leicester on behalf of the Arts Council. It's called Talent 25 and will track hundreds of babies and their families from birth to their twenty fifth birthdays. Academics from De Montfort U...
Apr 10, 2020•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Whilst most men become fathers, and men make up roughly half the parental population, the vast majority of scientific research has focused on the mother. But studies have started to reveal the impact of fatherhood on both dads themselves and on their children. We're seeing how fathers play a crucial role in children's behaviour, happiness, and even cognitive skills. Oscar Duke, a doctor, new dad and author of How To Be A Dad, discovers how pregnancy, birth and childcare affect the father, bringi...
Apr 03, 2020•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
