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Historian Phil Tinline explores why, 37 years ago, the Thatcher government privatised British Gas, how what followed has shaped today's energy price crisis - and what should happen next. Contributors: Professor Michael Bradshaw, Derek Davis, Dr Amy Edwards, Mathew Lawrence, Tim Lefroy, Sir John Redwood Producer: Phil Tinline
It seems like an impossible conundrum. Ukraine is valiantly defending itself against the man Boris Johnson called "a blood-stained aggressor" and fighting for survival in a war that is currently deadlocked. President Zelensky has warned that attempts at talks with The Russian Federation will fail, because Vladimir Putin cannot be trusted. So in the absence of a decisive victory or a negotiated settlement - what happens? James Naughtie investigates how other conflicts have come to a conclusion, i...
Taiwan is one of the world's youngest democracies. The first fully democratic presidential election was held as recently as 1996. But it's now being heralded as a place where digital technology is giving citizens a sense of direct engagement with political systems and law creation.They have a Minister of Digital Affairs, Audrey Tang, who has brought his computer software programming expertise learned in Silicon Valley to bear on the way in which ideas, petitions and suggested law reforms can be ...
Recently, in both Europe and the United States, there have been serious attempts to overthrow elected governments by force. History is full of examples of coups d'etat succeeding, going all the way back to Ancient Rome. But these latest coup attempts failed. And they left a strange impression: of events that were part-horrific, part-absurd. In this programme, the novelist and classicist Natalie Haynes takes three examples of power grabs from Ancient Rome - one by the military, one by senators, a...
The recent rise in migrant boat crossings between France the UK is being fuelled in part by the more sophisticated methods gangs are using to source the boats. Last year when they investigated the smuggling gangs for BBC Radio 4, reporter Sue Mitchell and former British soldier and aid worker, Rob Lawrie, were alongside border force officials as they seized all manner of dinghies used in the crossings. Today that haul looks very different: the makeshift supply has been replaced by a sophisticate...
For thousands of years we have gazed up at the stars and wondered: is anybody out there? The idea of meeting aliens has been the inspiration for countless books and films; for art and music. But today, thinking about meeting life on, or from, other planets is no longer dismissed as pure make-believe – it’s the focus of political consideration and cutting-edge space science. Farrah Jarral presents the story of the fantasy and the reality of preparing for first contact with extra-terrestrials....
2 June 1953. As the crowds line the streets to see their new Queen crowned, the news that Everest has been conquered is relayed over loudspeaker and adds to the excitement of the day. The Times prints its headline - the scoop delivered in secret code from the mountain. Edmund Hillary is knighted while the press clamour to know who was first to the summit. No better news could have reached Britain on the day of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. It was a magical day that brought together a you...
The world is waiting for news of success from the British expedition on Mount Everest. James Morris, later to become Jan Morris, is a reporter from The Times newspaper embedded with the team on the mountain. When news arrives that Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay have reached the summit, he must find a way to get the news to London without it leaking to other journalists waiting in Kathmandu. Morris delivers the news via a secret code. As the climbing team make their way down the mountain crowd...
In 1953 the 9th British expedition to the top of Mount Everest finally reaches the summit. In the final team was a New Zealander and a Nepalese Sherpa. Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay come down the mountain to a blaze of publicity. They were soon to become the most famous men in the world. To the team involved and the wider world the expedition was a British one, but Britain, New Zealand, Nepal and even India would lay claim to its success. Just as Britain was preparing Queen Elizabeth II's Co...
Britain has tried and failed to reach the top of Everest for decades. George Mallory and Sandy Irvine disappeared on the mountain in 1924. There were various British expeditions during the 1930s - all unmitigated failures. The Second World War interrupted the race to conquer Everest. But by 1951, with Tibet closed by communist China, a new unexplored route through Nepal was available. The Swiss expedition had nearly succeeded in 1952. The French are scheduled to climb in 1954. For John Hunt's Br...
In 1953 Queen Elizabeth II is crowned. It's also the year that the British expedition makes an attempt to climb to the summit of the highest mountain in the world. The story of Mount Everest spans the life of the new Queen and beyond, from the height of the British Empire to the rebirth of Britain as a nation. In this episode, Wade Davis, explorer and anthropologist, looks at events taking place in Britain in 1953 and how the nation was poised for news of an Everest success as it planned for the...
Are we entering a ‘newgenic’ age - where cutting-edge technologies and the power of personal choice could achieve the kind of genetic perfection that 20th century eugenicists were after? In 2018, a Chinese scientist illegally attempted to precision edit the genome of two embryos. It didn’t work as intended. Twin sisters - Lulu and Nana - were later born, but their identity, and the status of their health, is shrouded in secrecy. They were the first designer babies. Other technological developmen...
A key goal of eugenics in the 20th century was to eliminate genetic defects from a population. Many countries pursued this with state-led programmes of involuntary sterilisation, even murder. We unpick some of the science behind this dark history, and consider the choices and challenges opened up by the science today. In the mid-19th century, an Augustinian friar called Gregor Mendel made a breakthrough. By breeding pea plants and observing how certain traits were passed on, Mendel realised ther...
In the name of eugenics, the Nazi state sterilised hundreds of thousands against their will, murdered disabled children and embarked on a programme of genocide. Why? We like to believe that Nazi atrocities were a unique aberration, a grotesque historical outlier. But it turns out that leading American eugenicists and lawmakers like Madison Grant and Harry Laughlin inspired many of the Nazi programmes, from the mass sterilisation of those deemed ‘unfit’ to the Nuremberg laws preventing the marria...
Who should be prevented from having children? And who gets to decide? Across 20th century America, there was a battle to control birth - a battle which rages on to this day. In 1907, the state of Indiana passed the first sterilisation law in the world. Government-run institutions were granted the power to sterilise those deemed degenerate - often against their will. In the same period, women are becoming more educated, empowered and sexually liberated. In the Roaring Twenties, the flappers start...
"You will not replace us" was the battle cry of white supremacists at a rally in Charlottesville in 2017. They were expressing an old fear - the idea that immigrants and people of colour will out-breed and replace the dominant white 'race'. Exactly the same idea suffused American culture in the first decades of the 1900s, as millions of immigrants arrived at Ellis island from southern and eastern Europe. The 'old-stock' Americans - the white elite who ruled industry and government - latched on t...
In this 6-part series, we follow the story of eugenics from its origins in the middle-class salons of Victorian Britain, through the Fitter Family competitions and sterilisation laws of Gilded Age USA, to the full genocidal horrors of Nazi Germany. Episode 1: You’ve Got Good Genes Eugenics is born in Victorian Britain, christened by the eccentric gentleman-scientist Sir Francis Galton. It’s a movement to breed better humans, fusing new biological ideas with the politics of empire, and the inflex...
The Susurrations of the Sea is a collaboration between the poet Katrina Porteous, who lives right next to the North Sea in Beadnell, Northumberland; radio producer Julian May, who grew up close to the Atlantic in Cornwall; and with the sea itself. They gather the variety of its sounds, from gentle susurrations as the tide moves over mud, to the steady roar of surf and mighty waves crashing onto rocks. They weave these with the words of people who, more than most of us, listen to these sounds. Me...
A bad guy with a gun. At 09:30am on the 14th December 2012, the staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School locked the school's doors, a security precaution they took every day. At 09:35 a gunman shot his way through a glass panel and entered the school. By 09:40am twenty children and six adults were dead. Surely something so horrific must be an isolated incident? It wasn’t. Since that day there have been active shooter incidents at almost 1000 schools and colleges across the US. In 2022 alone 47 peop...
In the history of science, many individuals are honoured by having technical terms named after them. To modern sensibilities, this is sometimes regrettable. Poet Dr Sam Illingworth looks at the challenges of scientific terms named after people we perhaps wouldn't celebrate today. Who gets to choose them anyway? It's one thing to quietly change the name of a scientific prize, a research facility or a lecture theatre. But how would you rename an element or a famous equation? With a book, a record ...
Growing up in Canada, her father's delusions and paranoia gave Julia Shaw a front-row seat into an alternate reality Believing "they” were out to get him – including everyone from aliens to the Bin Laden family – he would later email her, warning that she too was targeted by those monitoring him. He believed that doctors too were part of the conspiracy - so has never had a diagnosis from a psychiatrist. Witnessing her father experiencing a parallel "reality" inspired Julia to look into the mind ...
You may not know who he is - but you should. Under Donald Trump Ron DeSantis rode the MAGA wave to to the governor job in Florida. For some, he's a "smart Trump". For others, a "troll" who, with a series of eye-catching stunts and pronouncements, has dominated headlines and is now viewed as a serious contender for the Republican nomination in 2024. From transporting migrants to the millionaires' playground of Martha's Vineyard to taking on Disney over so-called "Don't Say Gay" legislation, this ...
Curse of the Werewolf, The Brides of Dracula, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell – films from the height of Hammer Films’ prolific output in the late 1950s and 1960s. Many of the horrific music soundtracks, carefully calibrated to set the pulse racing, were composed by leading British modernists of the late 20th century. Hammer’s music supervisor Philip Martell hired the brightest young avant-garde composers of the day – the likes of Malcolm Williamson (later Master of the Queen’s Music), El...
Lauren shares handpicked gems from the Desert Island Discs back-catalogue with Radio 1 presenter Vick Hope, including Bob Mortimer, Maya Angelou, Joe Wicks, Sophia Loren, Tom Hanks, Dame Pat McGrath and Sinéad Burke.
Jack Fenwick explores how the think tanks and pressure groups behind the black door of an anonymous building in Westminster have shaped the last decade of British politics - and asks how they might shape the next few years. For this programme Jack has spoken to more than 50 current and former government insiders about how the organisations based at 55 Tufton Street have influenced British public life. He reveals how organisations including the Taxpayers Alliance, Brexit Central and the Global Wa...
General Idi Amin seized power in in Uganda in 1971. His brutal dictatorship is synonymous with the deportation of the country's 80,000-strong Asian population fifty years ago this year. As the popular story goes, Asians built the economy and the country. Then a brutish African leader exiled them from their adopted homeland. Some 28,000 arrived in the UK in the summer of 1972. The story of industrious, virtuous Asian families being thrown out for no reason and succeeding against all odds, has bee...
Misha Glenny explores the world of rare earth metals. In this final episode he hears how Russia's interest in Ukraine might be partially motivated by its huge mineral deposits. Guests: Rob Muggah is a co-founder of SecDev, a Canadian data, science and open intelligence company focused on mitigating risks and strengthening resilience. Dr Samuel Ramani teaches politics and international relations at Oxford University and is the author of two upcoming books on Wagner’s activities. Dr Julie Klinger,...
Misha Glenny explores the world of rare earth metals. He asks whether the EU can end its dependency on China's supply of critical raw materials to fuel the green transition. Guests: Olivia Lazard, fellow at Carnegie Europe. Maros Sefcovic, Vice President of the European Commission Dr Julie Klinger, author of Rare Earth Frontiers: From Terrestrial Subsoils to Lunar Landscapes Producer: Ben Carter Editor: Hugh Levinson Sound engineer: James Beard Production coordinator: Janet Staples...
Misha Glenny explores the world of rare earth metals. Neodymium is vital for wind turbines and electric motors but can the world become less dependent on China to supply it? Guests: Dr Julie Klinger, Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences at the University of Delaware and author of Rare Earth Frontiers: From Terrestrial Subsoils to Lunar Landscapes. Ian Higgins, managing director of Less Common Metals. Paul Atherley, chairman of Pensana. Producer: Ben Carter Edit...
Misha Glenny explores the world of rare earth metals. Reducing CO2 emissions requires critical raw materials like lithium, cobalt and nickel but mining and processing them can pose a serious threat to the environment. Can we solve the paradox? Guests: Dr Julie Klinger, Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences at the University of Delaware and author of Rare Earth Frontiers: From Terrestrial Subsoils to Lunar Landscapes Teresa Ponce De Leao, chief executive of the P...
