LGBTQ+ venues are closing across the UK. Research from the UCL Urban Laboratory indicates that, since 2006, the number of venues in London has fallen from 125 to 53 - with some still at risk of closure. Conversely, there's been a 144% increase in hate crimes against LGBTQ+ people, with one in five experiencing a hate crime this year. Performance artist and writer Travis Alabanza asks if the venues have served the purpose they were originally built for or if now, more than ever, LGBTQ+ people nee...
Sep 17, 2019•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast We hear from one of the world’s last remaining globemakers and reflect on the globe’s cultural and symbolic currency. While Google Earth may give us intricate detail of every inch of land, there’s nothing like clutching a globe to properly comprehend our place in the world. We’ve been fascinated by replicating our planet since ancient times; an art and science that’s developed as our understanding has evolved. In this programme, we step into the studio of Bellerby & Co Globemakers, one of th...
Sep 06, 2019•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Why do you keep going back to the fridge after dinner? Fruit and vegetables, a balanced diet, low salt, low sugar and moderate exercise seem to be the silver bullets loaded into a revolver that has only ever fired blanks at the problem of Britain’s obesity crisis. More than ten years ago, the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver came to Rotherham in an effort to help combat obesity, by providing information on how to cook healthy foods. A decade on Rotherham still has a high proportion of people that are...
Aug 27, 2019•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast In an age of certainty, of assertions without facts, and sometimes assertions with facts, Mark O’Connell makes the case for a different virtue – ambivalence. Six years on from his thought-provoking, witty and charming Four Thought, he returns to make the case for ambivalence. In those six years almost every trend in public life has been away from ambivalence rather than towards it. Populist movements from the left and the right are about certainty, and even the idea of balance often ends up shar...
Aug 23, 2019•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast David Baker, contributing editor of Wired, explores the challenges Facebook must meet and overcome in order to survive after a disastrous period which has seen the reputation and the business model of the social media giant questioned like never before. Producer: Jonathan Brunert
Aug 13, 2019•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast Lucy Cooke sets out to discover why honesty is almost certainly not the best policy, be you chicken, chimp or human being. It turns out that underhand behaviour is rife throughout the animal kingdom, and can be a winning evolutionary strategy. From sneaky squid, to cheating cuckoos, some species will resort to truly incredible levels of deception and deviousness to win that mate, or get more food. And when it comes to social animals like we humans, it turns out that lying, or at least those litt...
Aug 09, 2019•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hannah Jane Walker argues that sensitivity is overlooked, dismissed and under-utilised, and argues that our society would be much better off if we embraced it instead. Two years ago, Hannah gave a Four Thought talk about sensitivity, and received hundreds of emails from strangers, reaching out to tell her the same things: that sensitivity in our society isn’t considered useful, and that, well, ‘that’s just the system that we live in, isn’t it?’ Since then, Hannah has felt slightly ashamed at hav...
Aug 06, 2019•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Anxiety has become one of the defining characteristics of our modern age, with millions of us suffering from its various damaging effects. It comes in many shapes and sizes - status anxiety, social anxiety, and more recently Brexit and Eco-anxiety. Figures indicate a big rise in its prevalence, particularly among young people and members of minority groups. In this editon of 'Archive on Four' Professor Andrew Hussey how this new age of anxiety has come about, how it compares with previous moment...
Jul 30, 2019•58 min•Transcript available on Metacast What happens when top graduates work behind bars as prison officers? Lucy Ash meets young people who have forsaken lucrative careers in the City or elsewhere, for what many see as one of the world’s worst jobs. They’re part of Graduates Unlocked, a scheme which, which is trying to replicate in the prison service the success of Teach First, the programme that sends high-flyers into inner-city schools. The aim is to raise the status and reputation of prison officers, to boost recruitment and cut r...
Jul 26, 2019•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast A tense debate is taking place in states across America. At what age should someone be allowed to marry? Currently in 48 out of 50 states a child can marry, usually with parental consent or a judge's discretion. In 17 states there's no minimum age meaning in theory a two year old could marry. But there's a campaign to change the law and raise the minimum age of marriage to 18 without exceptions across all American states. But changing the laws state by state is not as easy as one may think. Ther...
Jun 28, 2019•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hate seems to be everywhere - whether it’s white supremacists marching on the streets of America, jihadists slaughtering Christians in Sri Lanka or the massacre of Muslims in New Zealand. In this five part series, BBC journalist Allan Little unpicks the mechanics of hatred and reveals how this dangerous emotion has been whipped up and disseminated throughout history. Allan Little begins with the hatred he witnessed on the killing fields of the Bosnian War, deconstructing how Serbian leaders like...
Jun 11, 2019•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast While the video games industry is big business, it's also breaking new ground in the arts. We're at a cultural tipping point for the industry. For the past decade the process of producing and distributing games has become easier so there's now a wider array of games than ever before. And games, which are the meeting point for so many art forms, are now at the forefront of creativity, pushing boundaries and making players think differently. In this programme, Alex Humphreys speaks to leading vide...
Jun 07, 2019•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Radio 1 Breakfast Show host Greg James digs into the BBC's archives, taking some of the week's news stories as a starting point for a trip into the past. Greg, who describes himself as a "proud radio nerd", is let loose in the vast BBC vaults, home to a treasure trove of radio and television programmes as well as some revealing documents. He says "As someone who spends too much time searching for oddities online, the opportunity to gain access to one of the greatest media resources on the planet...
May 20, 2019•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast We assume the instruments we know and love today will be around forever. What if they're not? What new forms and ideas could take their place? Hannah Catherine Jones takes you into the world of the prototype, meeting instrument inventors challenging traditions and shifting boundaries. Sarah Kenchington is an artist and inventor living on a derelict farm in the Campsies, Scotland. Her curiosity for how instruments would sound if they were freed from humans led to a life-long endeavour. Twenty yea...
May 17, 2019•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Tom Heap sets off on a guilt trip road trip to find out why people like him won't give up the things they know are destroying the planet. Tom loves his powerful car. Despite a pretty thorough knowledge of the science of climate change and the contribution that his petrol-powered Subaru makes to a warming world he doesn't want to give it up. He's not alone. Most of us have dirty pleasures we have no intention of foregoing, whether that's eating meat, buying fast fashion or flying to our favourite...
Apr 30, 2019•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Social media, especially Twitter has changed the way we consume the news. Articles, commentaries and opinions are put into our news feeds by the people we choose to follow. We tend to only follow the people we agree with and like, and block and unfollow the people we disagree with. We're creating our own echo chambers and social media bubbles. These bubbles are making us more polarised than ever, and we’re less likely to listen to views that are different from ours. Are we missing out on hearing...
Apr 26, 2019•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Mona Chalabi asks why female facial hair still seems to be a source of such shame. Last year, when she sent a lighthearted tweet about hairy women, she was deluged with replies. Hundreds of women wrote to her to describe the physical and emotional pain they experienced about their body hair. But there was one area they really wanted to talk about - their facial hair. And in this programme Mona will do just that – talk about female facial hair – including to some of the women who contacted her af...
Apr 23, 2019•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Animal senses reveal a wealth of information that humans can't access. Birds can see in ultra violet, and some fish can 'feel' electricity. But how do different species sense time? If you've ever tried to swat flies, you'll know that they seem to have super-powered reactions that let them escape before you can blink. Presenter Geoff Marsh asks whether flies have some sort of super-power to see the world in slow motion. Are they watching your hand come down at what might appear a leisurely pace? ...
Apr 12, 2019•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Life for the child of an alcoholic can be lonely, locked inside a house of secrets. A code of silence means they don't want to talk to friends, or neighbours, or even their brothers and sisters. Journalist Camilla Tominey, whose mother was an alcoholic, hears their stories. Since having her own children, Camilla has longed to travel back in time and ask her, mother to mother: "What made you start drinking before noon?" Here, she and her two brothers sit down for the first time in twenty years to...
Apr 09, 2019•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Women once made up 80% of the computer industry. They are now less than 20%. Mary Ann Sieghart explores the hidden and disturbing consequences of not having women at the heart of the tech. Who is the in room today when technology is designed determines how society is being shaped. Justine Cassell, from Carnegie Mellon University, says young men in Silicon Valley are told, “Design for you. Design what you would want to use” and so virtual assistants, such as the ever-female Siri, Alexa and Cortan...
Apr 02, 2019•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast Effigies, aliases, and a 'golden cage': it all comes down to this in the series finale about Vladislav Surkov, the most powerful man you’ve never heard of. Presented by Gabriel Gatehouse.
Mar 25, 2019•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Is it all getting too much for the hero – or is he the villain of our series? His name is Vladislav Surkov and his enemies are circling. Gabriel Gatehouse continues the story of the most powerful man you've never heard of.
Mar 25, 2019•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast The story of Vladislav Surkov, the most powerful man you’ve never heard of, continues. His background is in theatre and PR, but his profession is politics. And in this episode, Gabriel Gatehouse tells the story of how it all comes together in a bold statement of Surkov's power and confidence.
Mar 25, 2019•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast This is the story of the most powerful man you’ve never heard of. He can spot an ex-spy with presidential potential and help turn him into a world leader. He creates opposition movements out of thin air. He’s got a nation’s news directors on speed dial. Billionaires seek his advice. He’s even got his own little war. He’s at the heart of the standoff between East and West. Some even credit him with pioneering the concept of post-truth politics. Yet few even know his name. He is Vladislav Surkov. ...
Mar 25, 2019•19 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Puppet Master is a series that gets to the bewildering heart of contemporary Russia by exploring the fortunes of a secretive, complicated and controversial man called Vladislav Surkov. Reporter Gabriel Gatehouse speaks fluent Russian and has access to a vast cache of leaked emails from Surkov’s Kremlin office. Using these, plus archive and sources gained over a decade of covering Russia and its wars, Gatehouse goes in search of the man pulling the strings. The journey is by turns dramatic, s...
Mar 25, 2019•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast On the 14th floor of Grenfell Tower, firefighters moved eight residents into flat 113. Only four would survive. Using evidence from stage 1 of the Grenfell Tower Public Inquiry, Katie Razzall pieces together what went wrong that night in flat 113. The answer reveals a catalogue of errors which may help to explain the wider disaster.
Mar 22, 2019•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast In April 1993, a black teenager, Stephen Lawrence was murdered in a racist attack in the London suburb of Eltham. The Metropolitan Police bungled the investigation into his killers. The Inquiry which followed by Sir William Macpherson produced one of the most damning documents ever to emerge from the heart of the British establishment. Most famously, he concluded the force was “institutionally racist” issuing wide ranging recommendations for reform. 20 years on, barrister and broadcaster Hashi M...
Mar 15, 2019•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast What do you do when you realise you’re non-binary? How do you come out to yourself? How do you find people like you? Caitlin Benedict is coming out. But before they begin, they need to really understand what it’s like to live as non-binary: to exist as neither completely male nor completely female in a world usually confined to two options. So Caitlin has enlisted the help of their friend and mentor Amrou, and together they set off for Brighton, and the Museum of Transology where curator EJ Scot...
Mar 04, 2019•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast With “toxic masculinity” high on the agenda, are we are now viewing boys as potential perpetrators of sexism and violence? Is this fair - and what should we be teaching them? After #MeToo with phrases like “toxic masculinity” on everyone's lips, are we now beginning to view boys as potential perpetrators of sexism and violence? If so, what effect is it having on them? How do we teach boys positive behaviour and prevent them repeating the mistakes of previous generations, without also making them...
Mar 01, 2019•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Who owns Shakespeare? The English? The tourist industry? The world? Branding and Graphic Designer Teresa Monachino goes in search of the 21st century phenomenon that is William Shakespeare and uncovers his contradictory brand values, with the help of a distinguished cast: Rev Dr Paul Edmondson from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Nick Eagleton and Katharina Tudball from SuperUnion Greg Doran, Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company Vikki Heywood, Outgoing Chairman of the Royal Socie...
Feb 22, 2019•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
