Seriously...

In this series, teenage boys from all over the UK talk frankly to Catherine Carr about sex, consent, life online, fun and friendship. They discuss porn, their struggles at school and becoming men.

In the first episode, they talk candidly about what it is like to be a boy in 2024. They reflect on where they get their ideas about masculinity from, and whether those might be different if they lived elsewhere in the country. They also discuss the importance of role models - if they have them. Catherine also hears from adults making a difference in boys’ lives and finds out how examples of masculinity online can put real pressure on boys thinking about what it means to be a ‘successful man’.

To listen to the rest of the series, just search for About the Boys on BBC Sounds.

Thanks to

South Dartmoor Community College Dr Martin Robb, Open University DRMZ Carmarthen Youth Project Thomas Lynch from Dad's Rock Elliott Rae Founder of MusicFootballFatherhood Cambridge St Giles Cricket Club Dance United Yorkshire Movember Rebecca Asher Author ‘Man Up How Do Boys Become Better Men?’

Producer: Catherine Carr Researcher: Jill Achineku Executive Producer: Marie Helly

A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4

With criminal gangs now controlling most of Haiti's capital and no function government, Mike Thomson explores what caused this spiralling descent to Anarchy in this predominately Christian, Caribbean country, where more than half its eleven million French and Creole speaking people live below the poverty line. Mike looks for answers with help from Haitians, experts and political leaders who’ve lived through many of their nation’s recent social upheavals and natural disasters.

Producer: Ed Prendeville BBC Audio in Cardiff

In February 2024, the NHS dental crisis hit the headlines as hundreds of people queued outside a dental practice in Bristol to register as NHS patients. It was the latest sign of the severity of the national shortage of NHS dentists.

The Nuffield Trust have declared that NHS dentistry faces its 'most perilous point' in 75-year history and the government have responded pledging to improve access and funding for dentistry.

At the centre of this crisis are the dentists who serve our communities.

A Dentist's Life follows one Cornwall based dentist, Dr Jenna Murgatroyd, as she treats patients needing vital care, manages a practice facing financial risk and trains the next generation of dentists.

As a second generation dentist, Dr Murgatroyd also reflects on the past and the future of the profession and asks what it means to be a NHS community dentist today.

Produced by Mugabi Turya

What do Artificial Intelligence and digital technology mean for actors and their relationship with audiences?

Leading acting coach Geoffrey Colman, who has spent his working life on the sets of Hollywood movies, in theatrical rehearsal spaces, and teaching in the UK's most prestigious classrooms, wants to find out.

AI, he says, may represent the most profound change to the acting business since the move from silent films to talkies. But does it, and if so how are actors dealing with it? What does that mean for the connection between actors and audiences?

Geoffrey's concern is rooted in acting process: the idea that the construction of a complex inner thinking architecture resonates with audiences in an authentic almost magical way. But if performance capture and AI just creates the outer facial or physical expression, what happens to the inner joy or pain of a character’s thinking? The implications for the actor’s technique are profound.

To get to the bottom of these questions Geoffrey visits some of those at the cutting edge of developing this new technology. On the storied Pinewood lot he visits Imaginarium Studios, and is shown around their 'volume', where actors' every movement is captured. In East London he talks to the head of another studio about his new AI actor - made up from different actors' body parts. And at a leading acting school he speaks to students and teachers about what this new digital era means for them. He discusses concerns about ethical questions, hears from an actor fresh from the set of a major new movie, quizzes a tech expert already using AI to create avatars of herself, and speaks to Star Wars fans about how this technology has allowed beloved characters to be rejuvenated, and even resuscitated.

Producer: Giles Edwards

Richard King explores the past and present of the second homes debate in Wales, revisiting the story of Meibion Glyndwr – active terrorists on British soil for almost 15 years. The proliferation of second homes is a problem in many parts of the UK. They contribute to pushing up house prices, often in low-income areas, effectively locking young people out of the housing market. It’s a problem with different characteristics in different places.

In Wales it is compounded by the fate of Cymraeg, the Welsh language.

It is felt by many that second homes contribute to the fragmentation of Welsh-speaking communities and pose a threat to the survival of the language.

It's nothing new. Beginning in 1979, Meibion Glyndwr – Sons of Glyndwr (Owain Glyndwr being a soldier who led a revolt against English rule in the 1400s) – responded to this threat by carrying out hundreds of arson attacks and fire-bombings. Initially targeting second homes and holiday cottages in Welsh-speaking areas, the campaign later expanded to target estate agents, English-owned businesses and the offices of police and politicians, accompanied by stencilled letters containing extravagant nativist threats. Hundreds of properties were damaged and destroyed. It lasted until 1994 and only one person was ever convicted of a related offence.

The Meibion Glyndwr campaign was audacious and shocking – and utterly ineffective.

In the thirty years since the last attack Wales has gained its own parliament and with it a measure of power to decide its own fate. And as elsewhere in the UK, the issues around second homes have only become more urgent. One of the newer policies enacted by the Welsh government is a council tax premium on second homes, with local authorities able to decide how much of a levy to apply, up to a possible 300%.

Writer Richard King visits Abersoch on the Llyn Peninsula, a village very much at the sharp end of the current situation and hears from some of those who lived through the Meibion Glyndwr campaign.

Featuring Robat Gruffudd, Amanda Jones, Richard Wyn Jones, Alun Lenny, Louise Overfield and Eifiona Wood.

With grateful thanks to Sian Howys, Meic Parry and Dylan Roberts.

(The programme contains an archive recording which refers to RS Thomas as a non-conformist minister. RS Thomas was a priest in the Anglican Church in Wales.)

It's 25 years since London suffered three vicious nail bomb attacks - holdalls filled with 4-inch nails and hand-made explosives planted in Brixton market, Brick Lane and in the bar of the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho, intended to cause damage to those in the immediate vicinity and to the notion of a tolerant, diverse capital city.

The attacks are recorded in photographs shared at the time by the press - of London streets strewn with damaged buildings and injured people, an x-ray of a toddler with a nail embedded in his skull, the wedding photograph of two victims (one killed, the other severely injured) and the police mugshot of the perpetrator, a far right terrorist who hoped to start a 'racial war in this country'.

Fragments looks again at these images - some taken by Chris Taylor who happened to be on assignment in Soho's market photographing vegetables - to consider what it means for an instant to be captured and to endure in our memories and understanding of traumatic events.

Including contributions from photographer Chris Taylor; Jonathan Cash, who survived the Soho attack, Emdad Talukder, who was injured in Brick Lane and business owner Leo Epstein.

Music composed by Alan Hall, with Eleanor McDowall (chimes) and Alan Hall (trumpet)

Producer: Alan Hall A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio Four

(Photo credit: ChrisTaylorPhotography.com)

How many medicines can you think of created for just one person? The likelihood is none - which is why the world hasn’t heard of milasen yet. But its creation, and the efforts behind it, could build a pathway towards some of the greatest advances in genomic medicine, and a new initiative being trialled in Britain has a huge role to play in making this happen.

At the age of seven, Mila Makovec became the first person in the world to be treated with a medicine created just for her. A bubbly young girl from Colorado, Mila suffered from a very rare genetic disorder called Batten disease, which leads to a painful early death in children. Mila’s mother, Julia Vitarello, resolutely sought out scientists to try to discover a way to save her daughter. After relentless efforts, one doctor, Timothy Yu from Boston Children’s Hospital, imagined a possible treatment for Mila. The challenge was it involved making a completely unique treatment for Mila’s specific genetic mutation. It would be novel and very expensive - but it was her only option. Julia raised the millions of dollars required through a charity she set up in her daughter’s name, and in 2018 Mila became the one patient in the world to receive the drug milasen.

Initially, it worked, and Mila’s condition stabilised and improved. However, the treatment was given after the disease had done a great deal of damage to a small child, and Mila died when she was ten years old.

There are an estimated 7,000 rare diseases in the world, affecting more than 400 million people - and most are genetic. The majority have no effective treatment. New medicines for these conditions can’t be put through clinical trials on groups of patients because they are so rare. So, currently, such novel therapeutics can only be legally given after lengthy and costly work that is uncommercial for drug firms.

Having got so achingly close to saving her daughter, Mila’s mother is now leading efforts to make these new genetic medicines available to other children with rare diseases - and Britain is where her campaign is about to take a huge step forward.

The launch of the Rare Therapies Launch Pad is bringing together efforts from Mila’s Miracle Foundation, the UK medicine’s regulator the MHRA, Genomics England and Oxford University in an world leading attempt to build a new streamlined regulatory pathway to allow one-off drugs to be designed and approved for use in individual patients with rare diseases.

Natasha Loder, Health Editor at the Economist, tells this very personal story of how one mother’s determination to try and save her daughter could lead to a revolution in personalised medicine - one that has the potential to bring hope to millions of families.

Producer: Sandra Kanthal

Take a trip around the supermarket and you'll see shelves of products claiming to be 'high in protein'. Scroll through your social media and you'll find beautiful, sculpted people offering recipes and ideas for packing more protein into your diet.

Science presenters Dr Julia Ravey and Dr Ella Hubber have noticed this too. They wanted to unpick the protein puzzle to find out what it does in our bodies and how much we really need. Can this macronutrient really help us lose weight, get fit and be healthier?

Along the way, they speak to Professor Giles Yeo from the University of Cambridge, Bridget Benelam from the British Nutrition Foundation, Paralympian hopeful Harrison Walsh, and food historian Pen Vogler.

Presenters: Dr Julia Ravey and Dr Ella Hubber Producer: Alice Lipscombe-Southwell Editor: Martin Smith

Credits: @thefitadam/@TSCPodcast/@tadhgmoody/@meg_squats/@aussiefitness

Victoria Uwonkunda makes an emotional journey back to Rwanda, where she grew up. It’s the first time she’s visited since the age of 12, when she fled the 1994 genocide with her family.

Victoria retraces her journey to safety out of the capital Kigali, to the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Along the way Victoria speaks to survivors of the violence – both victims and perpetrators – to find out how the country is healing, through reconciliation and forgiveness.

Victoria meets Evariste and Narcisse, who work together on a reconciliation project called Cows for Peace. Evariste killed Narcisse’s mother during the 1994 genocide. Cows are important in the Rwandan culture. Evariste and Narcisse explain their own journeys to forgiveness, healing and reconciliation. And Victoria meets Claudette, who suffered unimaginable horrors at the hands of a man, Jean Claude, sitting next to her as she tells her story.

Victoria Uwonkunda finds that Rwanda, and its people, are healing. There are those who say that the steps Rwanda has taken do not go far enough and question freedom of expression in Rwanda. But Victoria finds hope in the country, a desire to move on for a younger generation – and she finds her own peace with the country that she was born in.

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 the other side, because we're not hearing why they think the way they do?

In this programme, for two weeks, two people with opposite views swap Twitter news feeds. One Labour voting Remainer, and one Conservative Leaver. They’ll keep audio diaries using their smartphones documenting what they’re consuming. Are they angry at what their opposite is consuming? Will it change their viewpoint on politics and world events?

At the end of the experiment they’ll meet each other for the first time to discuss what they learned. Will they confront each other, or will they be ashamed of themselves? Will they be disappointed by how the opposite side thinks or will they learn from each other?

Presenters: Joanna Fuertes and Cameron Bradbury Producer: Lydia Thomas

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 after her initial tweet. What can be dismissed as trivial is a source of deep anxiety for many women, but that’s what female facial hair is, argues Mona, a series of contradictions. It’s something that’s common yet considered abnormal, natural for one gender and apparently freakish for another. Removing it is recognized by many women - including Mona - as a stupid social norm and yet they strictly follow it. And as well as gender demarcations, this discussion touches on the intersections of race and age, too.

As she tries to unravel this question, Mona will examine her own complicated feelings about this subject - as she takes us to her laser hair removal appointment.

Producer: Giles Edwards

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?

Science reveals a window into the minds of different species and their temporal perceptions. Some flies have such fast vision that they can see and react to movement at four times the rate you can, and our vision works at more than six times the speed of one species of deep sea fish. This programme delves into each moment of experience to ask 'what is time, biologically?' When birds have to dodge through forests and catch flies on the wing, or when flies have to avoid birds, it would seem that a faster temporal resolution would be a huge advantage. So what is their sense of time?

Geoff meets physicist Carlo Rovelli and asks him to jump outside of physics to answer questions on biology and philosophy. Geoff explores the mind of a bat with Professor Yossi Yovel in Israel, and dissects birdsong at super slow speeds with BBC wildlife sound recordist, Chris Watson. Getting deep into the minds of animals he questions whether our seconds feel like swordfish seconds, or a beetles' or birds' or bats..?

Presenter: Geoff Marsh Producer: Rory Galloway

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 talk about their memories.

Alcoholism is by no means a one-size fits all experience. It cuts across class lines and manifests itself in many different forms. We hear stories from people across Britain. How have they been changed by their experience and what has helped get them through?

The Monster Downstairs features intimate, wrenching stories - of young people and adults - as they talk about an unpredictable existence.

Producer: Caitlin Smith

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 Cortana play with “cute talk” and female game characters still have their “tits hanging out of their blouses.”

Artificial Intelligence is now making life-changing choices for us - about our health, our loans, even bail. But it isn’t faultless; it is biased. AI is only as good as the data it’s been fed and if it’s learning from prejudice, it will only amplify it.

Apps designed by men are overlooking women’s health, algorithms are rejecting women outright and as MIT Professor Catherine Tucker explains, they aren’t even being sent jobs adverts “because their eyeballs are more expensive.”

Mary Ann looks at why women left the computer industry and what still deters them today. She hears the challenges that tech entrepreneur Steve Shirley faced in the 1960s are almost identical to those voiced by organisers of the Google walkout last year. Women are harassed, side lined and not taken seriously; they are put off by a cult of genius and techno-chauvinism.

But there is hope. Mary Ann meets campaigners trying to regulate AI gender bias and those succeeding in getting more women into tech, finding a small tweak in classroom design or style of university marking can make a real difference.

Producer: Sarah Bowen.

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.

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.

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.

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. And in this episode, Gabriel Gatehouse charts his rise from small-town Russia to the heights of power in the Kremlin.

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, surprising and surreal, ranging from the battlefield to the theatre and the Kremlin itself. The destination? The post-truth world we inhabit today.

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.

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 Mohamed, examines what’s changed since the Macpherson report was published. What difference did it really make?

The programme includes the first broadcast interview with Sir William Macpherson for nearly 20 years.

Producer: Jim Frank

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 Scott shares his wisdom about life outside the gender binary, the incredible trans community in the UK, and how best to transport a pair of breasts. And Amrou takes Caitlin to meet their best friend, artist Victoria Sin. Presented by Caitlin Benedict & Amrou Al-Kadhi Produced by Caitlin Benedict, Arlie Adlington and Georgia Catt

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 feel that they are being vilified as emerging men? Producer Emma Kingsley, herself a mother of sons, explores this delicate balancing act. She talks to one of her boys and meets boys and girls at Moreton School near Wolverhampton to hear their views. She meets developmental pyschologist Dr. Brenda Todd from City University, London to talk about how problematic ideas around boyhood can develop from an early age. She speaks to Dan Bell from the Men and Boys Coalition who has concerns about how current debates impact on boys and she also hears from feminist writer Victoria Smith about how she balances awareness of toxic masculinity with being the mother of sons. We hear how boys are being guided towards constructing new models of behaviour with a glimpse into a workshop run by David Brockway of the Good Lad Initiative at Wetherby Senior School in London. Also taking part in the programme are Dr. Michael Ward from Swansea University who has researched how place impacts on young men's identity, anthropologist Samuel Veissière from McGill University who has researched toxic masculinity and Courtney Hartman, CEO of the company Free to be Kids whose clothing reflects anxieties about the perception of boys.

Produced and presented by Emma Kingsley

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 Society of the Arts Chino Odimba, Writer Professor Michael Dobson, The Shakespeare Institute Duncan Lees, Warwick University Michael Pennington, Actor, Director, Writer and Founder of the English Shakespeare Company Alicia Maksimova, Filmmaker Wind up Will Producer: Ellie Richold.

Beanbags! Beanbags are what Millenials want from a job - along with free food and the lofty idea of ‘making an impact’. That’s what academic Simon Sinek's video about "Millennials in the Workplace", enjoyed by over 10 millions viewers, would have you believe. Everyone born between 1980 and 2000 are hobbled by a thin skinned sense of entitlement, weak education, coddling parents and an addiction to social media - and therefore, are terrible to deal with in the workplace. But does that idea of the ‘snowflake’ generation really ring true? How can it be that the most educated, most tech savvy generation to ever exist are the most incompetent in modern history? Why has the Millennial generation become the most mocked and derided in the workplace? By exploring the experiences of Millennials working in the real world, combined with expert inside on the political, economical and psychological anchor points that moulded the Millennial Generation India Rakusen explores the a fundamental clash of life experiences and values between the generations and uncovers the truth about Millennials in the working world.

At a time when we're being told we need more empathy, some experts claim that narcissism - empathy's evil twin - is on the rise. Narcissism has vaulted off the psychotherapist’s couch, sprinted away from the psychiatric ward, and is now squatting in the mainstream of popular conversation. Social media seems obsessed with "narcs", and with detecting narcissism personality disorder in people. It may or may not be a coincidence that we ended up with an apparent world-class narcissist in the White House at just the time when we seemed to be undergoing a public crisis about narcissism and narcissists. Blogs and books about narcissists are everywhere. Jolyon Jenkins talks to people who make a living from advising the public about narcissists, and a self-confessed celebrity narcissist who offers consultations to people who think they may be living with one of "his kind". The evidence that there really is more narcissism around seems thin, but that doesn't mean to say that we shouldn't take it seriously when it flips into a personality disorder.

Producer/presenter: Jolyon Jenkins

Empathy is the psycho-political buzzword of the day. President Obama said - frequently - that America's empathy deficit was more important than the Federal deficit. Bill Clinton said "I feel your pain", and Hillary urged us all "to see the world through our neighbour’s eyes, to imagine what it is like to walk in their shoes". Many people have taken up the idea of empathy with gusto, and the United Nations has poured money into virtual reality films that led us allegedly experience the world of, for example, a Syrian refugee. As we seem to be driving ourselves ever deeper into silos of mutual incomprehension, the idea of taking another person's perspective seems an obviously useful one. But what's the evidence that feeling someone else's pain, or even understanding it, actually does any good? Jolyon Jenkins speaks to one self-described intuitive empath, who says she can sense the feelings of strangers in a room or even in the street. She describes it as both a gift and a curse. For the rest of us, is there not a danger that, having felt a brief emotional engagement, we move on, our fundamental attitudes and beliefs unchanged?

Producer/presenter: Jolyon Jenkins

As she prepares to perform two roles in a new production of the classic "White ballet", La Bayadere, the Royal Ballet's charismatic Argentinian-born principal dancer, Marianela Nunez shares her life behind the scenes. Marianela Nunez is considered one of the greatest ballerinas in the world, combining passion and flare from her Argentinian background with discipline and experience from her many years with the Royal Ballet. As she celebrates 20 years dancing with the company, she takes Radio Four's Beaty Rubens behind the scenes, sharing what it means to be a Principal Dancer today. The programme focuses on her preparations to dance the two key roles in the much-loved classic, La Bayadere - the temple dancer Nikiya and the princess Gamzatti. It reveals glimpses of her at home in her native Buenos Aires over the summer, follows her as she travels into work, attends specially - designed Pilates classes and studio rehearsals with the great Russian ballerina Natalia Makarova (who recreated Marius Petipa's 1877 Indian Classic for a contemporary audience in 1989) and culminates with her triumphant opening night, leaving her in her dressing room with her feet in a bucket of ice and surrounded by vast bouquets of pink roses. Beaty Rubens also hears from Natalia Makarova, the Royal Ballet's Kevin O'Hare and the leading Russian dancer who partners Marianela, Vadim Muntagirov. Now at the very top of her game, Marinanela Nunez is also a wonderfully charismatic individual, whose love of dance and enthusiasm for life in the Royal Ballet effervesces in this lively depiction of a true artist.

Producer: Beaty Rubens ,

In 1969 Harold Wilson's Government lowered the voting age from 21 to 18. Fifty years on, with calls for votes at 16 gaining support, Professor James Tilley explores not just whether reducing it further makes sense, but if arguments could be made for raising it back to 21. As most other areas of the law restrict the rights and responsibilities of 16-year-olds, why should voting buck the trend of our rites of passage into adulthood happening increasingly late? Former Labour leader Ed Miliband offers his take on why 16-year-olds should be allowed to vote, and there's some voting mythbusting from Professor Phil Cowley, who honestly answers the question as to whether 16-year-olds really dislike him. LSE Professor of Social Policy and Sociology, Lucinda Platt offers insights into the changes in the age at which key milestones of life happen now compared to in the late 60s, and Dr Jan Eichhorn of the University of Edinburgh explains the picture in Scotland where 16-year-olds can vote. And Maisie and Lottie, campaigners from York's Youth Council, put forward their views as to why they should be allowed to vote.

Presented by Professor James Tilley

Produced by Kev Core

Six months before Neil Armstrong’s ‘one small step’ came humanity’s giant leap. It was December 1968. Faced with President Kennedy’s challenge to land a man on the Moon before the end of the decade, NASA made the bold decision to send three astronauts beyond Earth orbit for the first time. Those three astronauts spent Christmas Eve orbiting the moon. Their legendary photograph, "Earthrise" showed our planet as seen from across the lunar horizon - and was believed to have been a major influence on the nascent environmental movement. Through extraordinary NASA archive, the first British astronaut Helen Sharman goes inside the capsule to tell the story of the first time man went to another world.

Written and produced by: Chris Browning

Researchers: Diane Richardson and Colin Anderton

Two families from very different backgrounds, one street and a baby on a doorstep. This series charts the story of how a young Christian couple came to entrust the care of their little daughter to a Muslim family that lived nearby in 1990s Watford. They were strangers but the couple - Peris Mbuthia and Martin Gitonga - needed help, as immigrants from Kenya working in low paid jobs with a child to support and no family to step in. They were struggling and their relationship was under strain. Early one morning, Martin left his flat with six month old Sandra zipped inside his jacket and handed her over to the Zafars across the road while he went to work at a warehouse. This arrival at the door was an event that changed the course of all their lives - that day the baby girl became the Zafars' Doorstep Daughter. And a special, enduring bond developed between Sandra and the Zafar’s daughter Saiqa. It is a story of faith, trust and love - a modern day telling of how it takes a village to raise a child. In this first episode, Peris and Martin meet as they begin their new lives in London and Saiqa is on a gap year, deciding what will be in store for her. Then along comes a baby.

Producer: Sally Chesworth

Sound: Richard Hannaford

Editor: Gail Champion

Exec Editor: Richard Knight

How did Twitter, invented to allow friends to keep track of each other's social lives and interests, become a key forum for political debate? And what effect has the social media platform had on the nature and quality of public life? Presenter David Baker speaks to the man who taught President Trump everything he knows about Twitter, the head of President Obama's social media campaign, and Twitter's own leader on strategy for public policy, to explore the real effect that it has had on politics.

Producer: Jonathan Brunert

Young UK adults talk about the issues that matter most to them - and why they should matter to all of us.

A new podcast from Radio 4.

'Gagging clauses' - NDAs or non-disclosure agreements - have been rarely out of the headlines in recent months. High profile cases in business, politics and celebrity life have prompted calls for an outright ban, particularly when used to cover up apparent sexual impropriety. This programme explores the rise and rise of the NDA. Who uses them, why, and when? Are they an invisibility cloak, helping the rich and powerful to silence victims of their bad behaviour? Or are they a vital tool for those looking to protect personal privacy and business interests? Tiffany Jenkins investigates.

Producer: Dave Howard

The Berlin-based Argentinian artist, Tomás Saraceno, trained as an architect. He was struck by the beauty of spider webs, their structural intricacy and began making them into sculptural works. Then he realised that every time a spider tugs a string as it spins a web, or moves along the silken strands, this causes vibrations. Using microphones and amplifiers it is possible to hear the tiny music they make. The different species create various sounds - bass, treble, percussion - and the result is an orchestra of arachnids. On Air is Saraceno's latest and most ambitious exhibition. He has filled the Palais de Tokyo in Paris with extraordinary, beautifully lit spiders' webs, some connected to microphones so their occupant's movements echo round the gallery. There is an African spider that spins large webs which lift in the wind and so they travel, gliding places new. This inspires Saraceno's light-weight sculptures that do the same, and an aeolian harp of spider silk, which sings in response to the turbulence caused by gallery visitors. In another piece, the amplified sound of a spider's movements cause dust motes in a beam of light to move, and these, too, produce sound. A whole room is strung with elaborate patterns of tensed ropes. Visitors move among them, plucking and stroking the strings which sound, the floor itself vibrating - the closest humans can get to the experience of a spider in its web. Saraceno's work is a collaboration between artist, spiders and people, a kind of jam session. He also invites musicians to to respond to them, to play along with spiders. The famous experimental composer Alvin Lucier does this in a concert, featured in this programme (and he bounces the sound of his heartbeat off the moon). In the gallery in Paris, and his Berlin studio, Saraceno reveals his thinking and observations. The Spider Orchestra captures these, and all these sounds in a sonic web, and combines them. It, too, is a collaboration, between artist, spiders, people and producer - creating a compelling composition, for radio.

Producer: Julian May

The sounds of casting, chiming, singing and clanging are fused together to make a magical sound track to the story of how meat cleavers have been used as musical instruments for over 300 years.. Growing up in Suffolk, Nathaniel Mann, heard stories passed down by his grandma about a tradition of the village Rough Band, made up of pots and pans, iron and metal implements, including meat cleavers - delivering a sort of sonic warning to anyone stepping out of line, committing adultery or behaving in way considered unacceptable. As part of the Avant-Folk trio 'Dead Rat Orchestra', Mann, a singer and composer, has long been playing music with strange percussive instruments. Coming across an old meat cleaver in his dad's garage he was inspired to make a set of cleavers to play music on - so turned to a bronze bladesmith to help turn meat cleavers into musical gold. In a chance discovery, he discovered the idea wasn't new - and so he sought out Jeremy Barlow, author of “The Enraged Musician”, to find out the coded messages of Hogarth’s musical prints, including marrow bones and meat cleavers. He also visits BathIRON 2018, as a new bandstand is being cast for the city of Bath, and gets the chance to conduct and sing with an orchestra of master smiths. The freshly cast meat cleaver is finally used in one of the Nest Collective's Campfire Concerts, where the Dead Rat Orchestra join a trio of female folk musicians from Poland - Sutari - who have developed their own parallel world of Rough Music. A joyful celebration, some nail biting forging, and some entrancing music. You've never heard cleavers like this before....

Producer: Sara Jane Hall

Artist Emma Critchley meets filmmakers, photographers, sculptors and painters who are drawn beneath the sea to create underwater art. Julie Gautier performs a graceful, lyrical ballet on the floor of the deepest pool in the world. Without a tank of air or mask, she dances magically through crystal-clear waters across a sunken stage. In the azure waters of the world, sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor uses the seabed as his canvas. He has installed hundreds of life-sized, concrete people on the sea floor. Fish weave through his couple playing on sea-saw, tourists taking photographs or migrants huddling in a raft. As Jason works towards the opening of his first cold water installation, Emma asks what draws him to the sea, the meaning of his work and how audiences can engage with underwater art. She explores the unpredictability of working with the sea, hearing stories of storms, seasickness and near drowning. Suzi Winstanley is petrified of the deep, but her passion for documenting wildlife has taken her to the remotest and coldest places in the world. With fellow artist Olly Williams, they collaborate to paint, lightning-fast, their experience of encountering white shark and leopard sea. Emma braves the wintery British waters to talk concentration, boundaries and time with artist Peter Matthews who immerses himself in the ocean for hours, sometimes days, floating with his drawing board and paper. Sunlight dances on the twisting fabrics of headless bodies in photographer Estabrak’s pictures. For her, working in Oman, underwater is the only safe space to tell stories. For some the pull of the sea is political, for others environmental, but all the artists find extraordinary freedom in this huge untapped underwater world.

Producer: Sarah Bowen

Laurie Taylor investigates the people who hear the voices of the dead in recorded sounds - and uncovers the strange and haunting world of auditory illusion. Believers in EVP, or Electronic Voice Phenomena think they're hearing the voices of the beyond - messages captured in the throb and static of white noise. Laurie Taylor's a rationalist - he doesn't go in for this mumbo-jumbo. But whilst the peculiar world of EVP may not be evidence of the afterlife, it does show how we're susceptible - far more susceptible than we might have ever believed - to be deceived by our ears. Laurie takes us on an mind-bending journey through the world of aural hallucination and illusion - revealing how the ghosthunters of EVP actually are showing off something rather profound about the flaws in our auditory perception...and they way we scrabble for meaning in the booming, buzzing confusion of the world around us. Contributors include the acclaimed expert on auditory illusion Diana Deutsch, writer and sound artist Joe Banks, neurologist Sophie Scott and parapsychologist Ann Winsper.

Producer: Steven Rajam for BBC Wales

Alex Bellos is brilliant at all things mathematical, but even he can't hold a candle to the amazing mathematical feats of the supercalculators. Alex heads to Wolfsburg in Germany to meet the contestants at this year's Mental Calculation World Cup. These men and women are the fastest human number crunchers on the planet, able to multiply and divide large numbers with no need to reach for a smart phone, computer or calculator. So how do they do it, and is it a skill that any of us can learn? Alex talks to Robert Fountain, the UK's two-time winner of this prestigious prize, about his hopes for this year's competition and the mathematical magicians of the past who have inspired him. He also meets Rachel Riley, Countdown's number queen, to find out what it takes to beat the countdown clock.

Donald Trump's pledge to build a "big beautiful wall" along the US-Mexico border has inserted a political urgency into the mainstream art world and made the Latino experience a point of inspiration for many. Seven artists working on either side of the border wall, from the Pacific Ocean in the west to the Gulf of Mexico in the east, describe their work and how recent US immigration policy has helped to shape it. From music, to sculpture, virtual reality and performance art, the Art of Now explores the diverse artistic scene thriving along the 2000 miles border. Producer: Sarah Shebbeare

How instant noodles, now 60 years old, went from a shed in Japan to global success. What is the most traded legal item in US prisons? Instant Noodles. According to the World Instant Noodles Association, 270 million servings of instant noodles are eaten around the world every day. Annually, that's 16 to 17 portions for every man, woman and child. At the turn of the millennium, a Japanese poll found that "The Japanese believe that their best invention of the twentieth century was instant noodles." The Taiwanese-Japanese man who invented them (Momofuku Ando) was convinced that real peace would only come when people have enough to eat. In the bleak wreckage of post-war Japan, he spent a year in a backyard hut, creating the world's most successful industrial food. Crucially, he wanted the noodles to be ready to eat in less than three minutes. That convenience has since become a selling point for noodles that are consumed by students, travellers and, yes, prisoners the world over. Instant noodles first went on sale in 1958, and they've changed little since. Sixty years on, Celia Hatton explores the story behind instant noodles. It's a journey that starts in Japan, at the nation's instant noodle museum, and then takes her to China, still the world's number one market for "convenient noodles" as they're known there. Chinese sales of instant noodles are falling, though, as the country becomes wealthier. But noodles are still on sale in every food store in the country. The story ends with Celia being shown how to make a "prison burrito" by an ex-prisoner from Riker's Island prison in New Jersey, in the US. We hear why instant noodles have emerged as the prisoners' currency of choice. Momofuku Ando's invention lives on.

Producer: John Murphy.

The story of knife crime, told in verse by the weapon itself. Why do teenagers carry knives? How does it feel to live in a world where that's normal? How should we respond to the moral panic generated by the current wave of youth crime? Momtaza Mehri, Young People's Poet Laureate for London, presents a verse-journey into the thoughts and feelings of those for whom knife crime is an everyday reality. Perpetrator or victim, armed or defenceless, all the lines blur in "Ballad of the Blade" - a poem told in the voice of the knife as it travels on a chilling arc out of a child's bedroom, through fear, a yearning to belong and succeed, ruin and - sometimes - redemption. First-person voices from London and Sheffield splinter through the poem, reflecting the mosaic of lives affected by youth violence - bereaved youngsters and determined parents, criminals and youth workers. "Ballad of the Blade" is scored by Jon Nicholls. The programme was devised by Andrew Efah of BBC II! Producer Monica Whitlock.

The Sound Odyssey is a new series in which Gemma Cairney takes British artists for musical collaborations in different countries around the world, hearing the musicians in a new light, and exposing their artistic process as they create something new in different and unfamiliar surroundings with an artist they have never met before. In the first of a series of journeys Nadine Shah a British Muslim artist travels to Beirut, to collaborate with Lebanese singer songwriter and musicologist Youmna Saba. The challenge will be for them to create a track together in Beirut in just two days. Both have very different musical styles and cultural heritages. Nadine was born in Whitburn, South Tyneside, to an English mother of part-Norwegian ancestry and a Pakistani father. Her music is very much inspired by conflict, immigration, and cultural and religious identity, and her latest Mercury Prize nominated album, Holiday Destination was written about the Syrian refugee crisis. Although Nadine's lyrics have been very much inspired by the conflict in Syria she has never been to the Middle East. Youmna Saba holds a master's degree in Musicology, focusing mainly on the parallels between classical Arabic music and Arabic visual art. She is a part-time instructor at the musicology department at the Antonine University. Her sound borrows elements from the Arabic music tradition, and blends them with electronic treatments, sonic textures and loops. They will meet and collaborate in Beirut, a city once ravaged by civil war that has been gaining a reputation as a burgeoning cultural hub where cultural and religious diversity sits side by side. Once dubbed "the Paris of the Middle East", the Lebanese capital is a beautiful and daringly hopeful vision of what the future of the region might hold - A city of new ideas -art, fashion, political movements, multiculturalism and a thriving music scene. Whilst in the city Gemma Cairney meets local artists including Dima Matta the host of Cliffhangers, a storytelling group and platform which offers a safe space for people to express themselves in a country where this is very problematic and censorship is very much a real thing. And we hear from Syrian rock group Tanjaret Daghet, who now live in Beirut as exiles, anxious about their families and homes.

Presented by Gemma Cairney

Produced by Jax Coombes

A BBC 6 Music Production for BBC Radio 4.

In February 2017, President Trump made a speech to his supporters. He moved on to the topic of immigration and Sweden. "You look at what's happening last night in Sweden," he told the crowd at a rally in Florida. "They took in large numbers; they're having problems like they never thought possible". This confused the Swedes because they hadn't noticed anything happening on that Friday night in their country. What Trump was referring to was a Fox News report he had seen about immigration and crime in Sweden. The report twisted a story done by Ruth Alexander for Radio 4's More or Less programme and used misleading statistics to try to show that recent immigrants were responsible for a crime wave in Sweden. More or Less debunked the report and its use of statistics but since then there has been spate of violent crime in Sweden. Ruth Alexander travels to Stockholm and Malmö to find out the truth about what's going on.

Producer: Keith Moore.

According to Charles W. Eliot - President of Harvard and cousin of T.S. - everything required for a complete, liberal education could fit on a shelf of books just 5-feet in length. In 1909 the first volume of the Harvard Classics were published - and grew to become a 51-volume anthology of great works, including essays, poems and political treatises. But what if people today from all walks of life were asked to recommend books to be included on a five foot shelf? Which books do they think might be required for a complete home education? Ian Sansom has set a course for Wigtown - Scotland's National Booktown - to find out. Local craftsman Steve has been busy creating just the shelf for the job - exactly five foot long - and fashioned from elm wood and whiskey barrels recycled from a local distillery. Ian will be playing shopkeeper at the Open Book in Wigtown - a B&B meets bookshop which allows visitors to indulge their fantasy of running their own bookstore. With Ian parked behind the counter, all that's needed is for visitors to drop by and try to persuade him of the books they think deserve a rightful place on The Five Foot Shelf. But of course not everything will make it on and as custodian of the shelf, Ian can be ruthless. Well, kind of... No academics. No critics. No nonsense. The Five Foot Shelf is a guide for readers by readers about the books which matter to them. Producer: Conor Garrett.

If you are a parent, you probably do not need an introduction to Fortnite Battle Royale. It's the online video game that's been absorbing the minds and time of millions of children and young adults since its launch last September. To the uninitiated, it's an online shooter game that has elements of The Hunger Games movies and the building video game Minecraft. In each match, 100 people are air-dropped onto a cartoon-rendered island where they run around searching for weaponry, building defensive forts and fighting to the death. The winner is the last one standing. It's free to play on multiple devices from computers to games consoles to smartphones. Presenter Kevin Fong (medical doctor, broadcaster and father of two) asks, is Fornite more like the new crack cocaine or more like the Beatles? It's estimated that more than 125 million people have played Fortnite Battle Royale and that 3 million people around the world are playing it at any one time. Its creators Epic Games have earned more than US$1 billion from Fortnite within the last year, and that is just from players buying virtual outfits and victory dances for their avatars. These dances or 'emotes' have leaked out of Fortnite's virtual world into the real one as anyone watching the World Cup will have seen. Football players now emote on scoring goals. There are also professional Fortnite players who are making millions by playing the game while vast numbers of people spectate via live streaming internet channels. Fortnite's Ronaldo is Ninja, a 26 year old man in Illinois, USA. It's said he makes US$ 500,000 from the 300 hours he spends playing the game each month. There are now Fortnite e-sports scholarships offered to students at one university in the United States. Is Fortnite a revolutionary development in video gaming and what is the formula of its undoubted success? With the World Health Organisation recently adding Gaming Disorder to its list of disease categories, how concerned should parents be about the risks of gaming addiction for their Fortnite-playing offspring? Kevin Fong explores the culture and conversation around Fornite with gamers of all ages, games creators, games culture experts, psychologists and psychiatrists. Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker.

In a special edition of the science and comedy podcast to mark the 100th episode, Brian Cox and Robin Ince reminisce about their favourite moments from the show.

Broadcaster and comedian Steve Punt scours the archives to exhume the often pretentious and opinionated philosophical outpourings of pop stars through the ages.

With the help of music journalists Paul Morley, Kate Mossman, DJ and record producer Ras Kwame and surprising soundbites from the archive, Steve explores the concept of the pop star as philosopher. From pop star hobbies, to politics and theories of aliens and the Illuminati, Steve explores the attempts of pop stars to make sense of a chaotic world.

Presenter: Steve Punt Producer: Georgia Catt.

The American satirist Joe Queenan goes in search of sovereignty. He wants to know what it is, what's it for, and how old it is

"Now I know this is a big issue for you all right now. Over here we've been fighting over sovereignty since the eighties. The 1780s. But I still don't really understand what it is, nor why it's making everyone so mad."

With contributions from Professor Richard Bourke, editor of Popular Sovereignty in Historical Perspective; and Edith Hall the author of Aristotle's Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life.

The producer in Bristol is Miles Warde

Donegal is an Irish county where silence is a virtue. You can find it in the desolate landscape, the big skies and far horizons - but silence can be found in the people too. Maybe it's discretion or reticence. It could be shyness or a kind of wisdom.

So when radical free-thinking commune, The Atlantis Foundation, set up home in the remote Donegal village of Burtonport in the mid-1970s, it seemed like an unlikely choice of location.

Led by charismatic Englishwoman Jenny James and inspired by an experimental brand of counter-cultural psychology, the foundation practised 'primal scream' therapy. This was about letting it all out, yelling; shouting; shrieking to release deep rooted fears in the most challenging and visceral way. The locals simply called them the Screamers.

Author and Donegal native Garrett Carr was a boy when he first heard of the Screamers. His family would lower their voices when mentioning them. While he found the name unnerving, Garrett was intrigued. On the coast near his home, he liked to imagine he could hear their cries echoing across the water.

Now Garrett is returning to Donegal to find out who the Screamers were, what they wanted and if they ever managed to find it. Most of all he wants to know what happened when the quiet restraint of his local community was confronted by the outward abandonment of the Atlantis Foundation.

Garrett is going home to discover what happens when silence meets scream.

Producer: Conor Garrett.

BBC political correspondent Chris Mason examines the changing accents of politics and politics of accents, with help from politicians, language experts and an impersonator.

The programme examines the ways that stereotypes and prejudices can be loaded onto accents, how the voting public responds to different voices, and what politicians can do and have done about it all.

With the help of the archive, the former Labour leader Neil Kinnock and former Conservative minister Edwina Currie reflect on the political soundtrack of their lifetimes. How have their voices, those of their contemporaries and the sound of the national political conversation changed?

How is it possible and when it is sensible to change your accent? Chris is joined by Steve Nallon, who impersonated Lady Thatcher on Spitting Image, to listen back to her as a new backbencher and later as Prime Minister.

And what about the sound of political reporting? The archive allows the former Today Programme presenter Jack Di Manio to give Chris (a son of the Yorkshire dales) a lesson in speaking 'properly'.

So are we really becoming more open minded about this aspect of political communication? The programme hears from two MPs who say they still struggle to be understood in the Commons today.

Producer: Joey D'Urso.

Michael Sheen explores Aneurin Bevan's roots in Tredegar.

A spectre is haunting Tredegar. It feels a little like that at least. This town high in the South Wales Valleys is understandably proud of its most famous son and makes the most of his memory.

Aneurin Bevan was born in Tredegar in 1897. And he was the local MP there until his death in 1960. Memories of Bevan still populate the streets.

Aneurin Bevan was a coalminer at the age of 13. He was a troublemaker with a stutter. An autodidact. He won a scholarship from his union for further study in London. He joined committees. He was a town councillor, then a district councillor, before reaching Westminster in 1929, where his greatest legacy must surely be his central role in the founding of the NHS in 1948. The civic religion of the NHS.

And he fought for it in the image of Tredegar.

It's perhaps ironic then, that it's in Aneurin Bevan's home town that the effect of the NHS was felt least of all.

By that time an estimated 96% of the town's population was covered anyway, by a voluntary scheme: the Workmen's Medical Aid Society.

This is what Aneurin Bevan was referring to when he said, "All I am doing is extending to the entire population of Britain the benefits we had in Tredegar for a generation or more. We are going to 'Tredegar-ise' you."

He said that while he was battling to establish the system nationwide. Or he said it with a jeer to Winston Churchill across the dispatch box in the Commons. Or maybe he wrote it somewhere.

Anyway, it's etched on a plaque outside the old Town Hall in Tredegar. The now dilapidated town hall, just down the street from one of Bevan's old meeting places, which is now a DWP Assessment Centre, itself just down the hill from the Medical Centre, which has been trying unsuccessfully for months and months to recruit new staff.

Those details shouldn't be the beginning or the end of anyone's image of Tredegar. It's more various and interesting - and more beautiful - than they might suggest. But those details, and others like them, do lead eager programme-makers to feel pleased with themselves when, after spending a necessarily small amount of time in the town, they reverse that old slogan of Bevan's and ask, idly it must be said: who is going to Tredegar-ise Tredegar today?

With Dr Alfazuddin Ahmed, Eryl Evans, Iwan Fox, Megan Fox, Alwyn Powell and Nick Thomas-Symonds MP

With grateful thanks to the Tredegar Brass Band and the Tredegar Local History Museum.

Producer: Martin Williams.

The writer and illustrator Judith Kerr has created some of our best-loved books for children since publishing her first, and perhaps most famous book, 'The Tiger Who Came to Tea', which celebrates its 50th birthday this year.

Judith's life has always inspired her writing, from fleeing Nazi Germany as a child, a story she told in 'When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit', to the peculiar family cats whose adventures she chronicled in the Mog series. Now 94 years old, Judith is still hard at work, still writing and drawing in the study overlooking the common where she has written all her books and in this programme Judith invites us into her study as she works on her latest classic.

Producer & Presenter: Jessica Treen.

A convent of Mexican nuns is helping to save the one of the world's most endangered and most remarkable amphibians: the axolotl, a truly bizarre creature of serious scientific interest worldwide and an animal of deep-rooted cultural significance in Mexico.

The Sisters of Immaculate Health rarely venture out of their monastery in the central Mexican town of Patzcuaro. Yet they have become the most adept and successful breeders of their local species of this aquatic salamander. Scientists marvel at their axolotl-breeding talents and are now working with them to save the animal from extinction. BBC News science correspondent Victoria Gill is allowed into the convent to discover at least some of the nun's secrets and explores why axolotls are a group of salamanders so important to protect from evolutionary oblivion.

Axolotls are able to regrow lost limbs and other body parts. As a result, the aquatic salamanders are of great interest to researchers worldwide who study them in the hope of imitating the trick: to grow tissues and organs for medicine. The nuns also began to breed and rear their axolotls for medical reasons. They use the salamander as the key ingredient in an ancient Mexican remedy for coughs and other respiratory illnesses. The Sisters of Immaculate Health sell the medicinal syrup to the public. As well as being the basis for a popular folk remedy all over Mexico, the axolotl is also the manifestation of one of the ancient Aztecs' most important gods.

The big problem is that all species of axolotl are critically endangered. The nun's species is known locally as the achoque. It only lives in nearby Lake Patzcuaro and it has been pushed to the edge of extinction because of pollution and introduced fish species. This is why the sisters began to breed the animals in the convent about 30 years ago. They were advised to do this by a friar who was also a trained biologist because the supply of achoques from Lake Patzcuaro's fishermen diminished. In the 1980s, 20 tonnes of axolotls were fished from the lake every year. Today they are very few left in the wild.

Biologists from the nearby Michoacan University discovered that the nuns are expert breeders of the species and have started to collaborate with them in a conservation programme to make the Lake Patzcuaro an axolotl-friendly habitat once more and (if necessary) to introduce convent-bred animals to restore the lake's tiny population. The project is being supported and funded by the UK's Chester Zoo. The zoo's curator of amphibians Dr Gerardo Garcia visits the convent with Victoria, and demonstrates some of the technical help being offered to the nuns. For example, he micro-chips and takes DNA samples from the nun's breeding salamanders so the sisters can refine their breeding success even further.

Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker.

So - how slow are we talking about, when it comes to art?

French anarchist vegetarian artists Elizabeth Saint-Jalmes & Cyril Leclerc rescue snails bound for the cooking pot, and display them as a sound and light installation - Slow Pixel - before setting them free.

To watch illuminated snails crawl across a concert hall for 6 hours is one way of bringing your heart beat right down!

Twenty-two ash trees, shaped and sculpted as they grow quietly for 40 years, in a secret location; an extinct volcano filled with subterranean light passages; music to play for a 1000 years; a mile of writing, and a 5 hour composition for a string quartet called 'Slow', played as slowly and quietly as possible...

As the 21st century continues at break-neck speed Lindsey Chapman brings you a moment of calm, as she meets some extraordinary musicians and artists, to find out the motivation behind creating slow art.

Lindsey - a performer herself, as well as presenter for BBC TV's 'Springwatch' - explores what added value the length of time of creation gives to an artistic idea. Does it make time shrink? Or does it distract us from our awareness of our own finite existence?

The biggest art project in progress in the world today is the Roden Crater. You may not have heard of it yet, but Leonardo DiCaprio has been booked to open it, although no one yet knows when that will be. It's the work of artist James Turrell who dreamed, in the 1960's, of sculpting an extinct volcano as a celestial viewing post. and he's spent 40 years working on it so far - Tim Marlow, artistic director of the Royal Academy, has been watching its progress.

Also in progress for 40 years, the Ash Dome - created by world acclaimed wood sculptor David Nash. he gives Lindsey is given the coordinates to find the secret circle, and she comes across it on a bluebell strewn forest floor at dawn, a magical moment of pure beauty - but one which leads her to consider where she might be in 40, or 400 years from now.

Slow art has that effect - seeing into the future, and sometime fearfully into infinity.

Jem Finer, musician and ex-Pogue bassist, has created a piece of music called 'Longplayer', which has already been playing for 18 years and which has another 982 to go - and of course he knows he won't be there to hear it end.

Tanya Shadrick knelt beside an open air swimming pool, day after day, month after month, writing a diary, line by line, a mile long. What inspired her to create "Wild Patience?" and what did she learn?

Composer Morton Feldman is well known for his long slow quiet pieces of music - but what is it like to actually hold and play the violin on stage for five hours? Darragh Morgan recounts the intensity, and how he never gets bored, and in fact falls in love with the beauty of the music - lie being wrapped in a beautiful shawl of sound.

Slow art in under half an hour - sit back and relish the moment.

Producer: Sara Jane Hall.

It is 175 years since the word "commuter" was used for the first time. (The word does not in fact describe a traveller, it describes a transaction: regular travellers on the railroad into Manhattan were given the opportunity to "commute" their individual tickets into a season pass. Ever since, commuters have been both travellers and revenue stream.) Today our great cities inhale and exhale millions of commuters, who start their journey in the darkness of winter mornings in the suburbs, resurface blearily in the heart of the city and return to long tucked-in children in darkness. It wasn't meant to be like this. Matthew Sweet looks at our imagined world of fantasy journeys and asks if driverless cars, monorails, or high speed transport systems might deliver them in the future.

Producer Mark Rickards.

Since Ireland's independence, the Catholic Church has played a preeminent role in defining morality south of the border. However in recent decades, its position as moral arbiter has come under attack. Congregation sizes have fallen dramatically, and constitutional referenda have legalised contraception, divorce and gay marriage despite the vehement opposition of the Catholic Church. As Ireland goes to the polls to vote this time on abortion, William Crawley asks could this signal further decline in the Catholic Church's authority in society and its relationship with the State. Producer: Neil Morrow.

Are plants rather cleverer than once thought? Scientists from around the world are claiming that plants cannot just sense, but communicate, learn and remember. In an experiment in Australia, plants appeared to learn to associate a sound with a food source, just as Pavlov's dogs linked the sound of a bell with dinner. In Israel they've found that plants communicated a message from one to another, and that the information was then used to survive drought. In British Columbia and the UK researchers have shown that trees pass information and nutrients to each other through an underground fungal network. This even happens more with closely related trees or seedlings than with strangers. And in California it turns out that sagebrush shrubs have "regional dialects"! Botanist James Wong explores these findings and asks whether, if plants can do all these things, and if, as one scientist says, they are a "who" and not a "what", then is it wrong to eat them?

Producer Arlene Gregorius

Contributors: Prof. Richard Karban Dr Monica Galiano Prof. Ariel Novoplansky Prof Suzanne Simard Dr Brian Pickles Prof Michael Marder.

In 2014 Polly Weston's sister Lara died. She had just turned 22. Lara and her family had never discussed organ donation, and she wasn't on the register. But when the family were asked if they would consider donation, they said yes. Out of the tragedy of her death, medics managed to donate her organs to four women, while her eyes saved the sight of three men.

In February a bill passed its second reading in Parliament to say that England would seek to move to an organ donation opt-out system - meaning citizens would be presumed to consent to their organs being donated unless they actively withdrew from the system. It seemed like there was universal support for the announcement. Labour were behind it. Newspapers rejoiced.

But having been through the process, Polly's family were unsure about whether this policy change would bring about an improvement in donations.

Now she asks what does organ donation really mean to families - and will an opt out system really make a difference?

Produced and presented by Polly Weston.

Journalist and author Sathnam Sanghera returns to his home town of Wolverhampton where a battle raged over the right to wear the turban on the buses in Enoch Powell's constituency at the time he made his Rivers of Blood speech.

In 1967 Sikh bus driver Tarsem Singh Sandhu returns from his holidays wearing a turban and a beard, both against the uniform regulations. The Wolverhampton Transport Committee insists rules are rules and there will be no exceptions, so Mr Sandhu enlists the help of a Punjabi political party, the Akali Dal, who employ radical tactics. They bus in Sikhs from around the UK for the biggest march in Wolverhampton since the war, and one of their leaders, Sohan Singh Jolly, announces that he will set himself on fire if their demands are not met.

Right in the middle of the dispute, Enoch Powell makes his infamous Rivers of Blood speech, specifically citing the Sikh campaign as a dangerous example of communalism, where religious or ethnic groups seek special rights that threaten the very fabric of society.

Sathnam Sanghera discovers the real story behind the dispute with surprising revelations that shed light on the history of race relations in the UK.

Adam Tjolle is a vet with two brains - who once starred on the BBC's Animal Hospital. His second brain - in reality a slow-growing tumour - was discovered by accident on a scan when he fell off his bike.

The presenter of the programme, his friend (and psychologist) Claudia Hammond is really interested in what's going on inside his head, so has kept a record - before and after the life-changing surgery.

Adam's biggest fear is losing his memories - so he asks friends and family to send patches of fabric to make a special hat - to remind him of them as well as keep his head warm in chilly Edinburgh.

The surgeon will operate while Adam is wide awake - being careful to cause the least damage possible to the area of his brain which controls spatial awareness, time perception and his decision-making skills, while also removing as much of the tumour as possible.

Producer: Paula McGrath Presenter: Claudia Hammond.

BBC 6 Music's Chris Hawkins listens to new music every day - and he's noticing a trend. More and more of the bands he plays on the station are writing about politics. Acts like Nadine Shah, Cabbage, Idles and Life are covering topics as diverse as The NHS, the refugee crisis of 2016, austerity and rail privatisation. Chris visits the performers to ask them what is fuelling their music, considering whether supposedly radical bands are operating in a form of musical filter bubble - singing radical songs to an audience who already agree with their point of view. From the blues to grime, music and politics have always been intertwined, but Chris Hawkins provides a snapshot of the topics which are driving a generation of rock bands right now. Presented by Chris Hawkins Producer Kevin Core

Music featured: Nadine Shah: Out the Way. Holiday Destination. Mother Fighter. Jolly Sailor. Idles: Mother. Divide and Conquer. Life: In Your Hands. Euromillions. Cabbage: Tell Me Lies About Manchester. Preach to the Converted.

Rajesh speaks with Professor David Spiegelhalter of Cambridge University who has been collecting stories of coincidence since 2011. Rajesh wants to find out why he is so prone to coincidence. Along with discovering mind blowing coincidences Rajesh sets out on an experiment to see if he can seek out coincidence and he's very surprised by the results.

David Spiegelhalter believes its not that these things occur, it's that we notice them. As well as giving an opportunity to study probability and chance David believes that coincidences are important to us, because they are uplifting and good for us. Rajesh does not disappoint and in the making of the programme hears and experiences several coincidences which will leave you thinking what are the odds of that.

Produced by Kate Bissell.

The relationship between mothers and sons as depicted in the arts is complex and, as anyone familiar with Medea's story will attest, not always terribly positive.

As Lauren Laverne discovers, however, there are many examples of stories, films and dramas in which the love between mums and sons is very much celebrated, and as a mother of two boys herself, Lauren is very keen to unpick the particular facets of the relationship as depicted on page, stage and screen.

She meets Sophie Ellis Bextor, mother of four boys, and hears about carving out a space in which she can continue her career as a singer - even if that has meant at times recording songs with a baby in her arms.

Patrick Ness is the author of the novel 'A Monster Calls' and also wrote the screenplay for the successful film. He tells Lauren how the story, about a boy dealing with the imminent death of his mum from cancer, was originally conceived by another author, Siobhan Dowd, who died before getting chance to complete it.

Madisen Ward and the Mama Bear, a highly successful mother and son band from Kansas, talk about how they came to play together and the various upsides of being together on the road.

Finally, Lauren meets Jonathan Butterell and Dan Gillespie Sells, who helped create the West End hit 'Everybody's Talking About Jamie', the musical version of a true story about a teenage boy from County Durham who is determined to go to the school prom in a dress. The story appealed to both Jonathan and Dan because each of them recognised the 'fierce and open hearted relationship' they shared with their own mothers.

Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Geoff Bird.

For thousands of years, bald men have been the subject of ridicule. As a result they've felt ashamed and have resorted to desperate measures to hide their condition. During the decades when hair style was a cultural battleground between youth and the establishment, the balding man was at the bottom of the heap. No prime minister since Clement Attlee has been bald. But increasingly, bald men are coming out of the closet and shaving their heads - and some women too. Research shows that bald men are perceived as less attractive but more dominant. Now that we are more relaxed about hair style, and more willing to tolerate tonsorial diversity, are bald men finally able to shed the stigma? And could the comb-over finally make a come back? Ian Marchant, who has shaved his head since the early 1980s, investigates.

Producer: Jolyon Jenkins.

Twenty years ago, in February 1998, one of the most serious public health scandals of the 20th century was born, when researcher, Andrew Wakefield and his co-authors published a paper in the medical journal The Lancet suggesting a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. As we know, in the years that followed, Wakefield's paper was completely discredited as "an elaborate fraud" and retracted. Attempts by many other researchers to replicate his "findings" have all failed and investigations unearthed commercial links and conflicts of interests underpinning his original work. Wakefield himself was struck off the medical register.

And yet, the ripples of that episode are still being felt today all over the world as a resurgent anti-vaccine movement continues to drive down inoculation rates, particularly in developed Western societies, where measles rates have rocketed particularly in Europe and the United States.

But the Wakefield scandal hasn't just fostered the current ant-vax movement but has played a key role in helping to undermine trust in a host of scientific disciplines from public health research to climate science and GM technology.

Through the archive, science journalist Adam Rutherford explores the continuing legacy of the anti-vaccine movement on the anniversary of one of its most notorious episodes, and explore its impact on health, on research and on culture both at home and abroad.

Dawn Walton, artistic director of Eclipse, the black theatre touring company, was bored of only ever coming across three black stories in British theatres - slavery stories, immigrant stories, and gang stories. She knew there was a far greater range of stories out there and she wanted to tell them. Revolution Mix is the result - a programme of new plays inspired by 500 years of black British history and it will be the largest ever presentation of black British stories performed in regional theatres.

In this intimate portrait of artistic director Dawn Walton, we follow her as she leads her company, Eclipse Theatre, to its premiere of the first play in her ground-breaking Revolution Mix programme - Black Men Walking. It's a new play inspired by a real-life black men's walking group in Sheffield. Not only does the play challenge clichéd representations of black people, it's also an experimental work fusing music, movement, and magic.

In this programme, as well as hearing from some of those involved in the production, we hear Dawn rehearsing her company, coping with a significant bereavement, discussing her life before entering the world of theatre, and finally sharing her ambitions for British theatre. Revolution Mix is an enterprising programme and in Dawn Walton it has a doughty champion.

Presenter: Ekene Akalawu Interviewed Guest: Dawn Walton Interviewed Guest: Ola Animashawun Interviewed Guest: Testament (aka Andy Brooks) Interviewed Guest: Dorcas Sebuyange Interviewed Guest: Tyrone Huggins Interviewed Guest: Trevor Laird Interviewed Guest: Tonderai Munyevu Producer: Ekene Akalawu.

How cunning is Donald Trump?

In Queenan on Cunning, the satirist Joe Queenan explores a word rarely associated with the current President of the USA.

"From Odysseus to Bismarck, via Brer Rabbit and Machiavelli's The Prince, there's a fine tradition of tricksters and hucksters, but where does the Donald fit in the mix? You need patience, intelligence, forward planning - some of these are Trump-like qualities. Stress on the some. But he's by no means a modern day Odysseus. Not much of a sailor."

With contributions from Adam MacQueen, author of The Lies of the Land; Edith Hall, who wrote a cultural history of Homer's Odyssey; and Tibor Fischer, whose forthcoming novel is called How to Rule the World.

Plus John Sergeant, Kathy Lette, Richard Nixon, Alistair McAlpine, Laura Barton ... and a campaigning American president cross-faded with a much loved song from The Jungle Book.

The producer in Bristol is Miles Warde.

The work of the entomologist very often involves the killing of insects in large numbers. This happens in the search for new species in the exploration of the planet's biodiversity and in ecological investigations to monitor the health of wild insect populations and the impact we are having on the environment. But the methods of entomologists have come under criticism.

Last August presenter and entomologist Adam Hart was involved in a citizen science project aimed at surveying the abundance and distribution of the various species of social wasp around the country. The survey entailed members of the public setting up wasp traps in their gardens for a week and then sending the dead insects to the lab running the project. Many people took part but the study also generated negative newspaper coverage and stinging criticism on social media.

The reaction got Adam Hart thinking: can his profession really defend the death of thousands and sometimes millions of insects for the sake of science, especially when there's so much concern around insect conservation? How do entomologists feel about killing their subjects, and might the insects themselves feel something akin to pain and suffering themselves?

Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker.

Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia or CLL, is the most common form of leukaemia. It's a disease which kills. The most common treatment is with chemotherapy. If that doesn't work, most patients can only expect to live for another few years at most.

But there are dramatic developments with new targeted treatments which are less toxic than conventional chemotherapy. In this programme, reporter Simon Cox follows a medical trial based at St James' hospital in Leeds which uses a unique combination of drugs designed to defeat the cancer. It's the last hope for many patients but will it work? Can researchers find a cure?

Presenter: Simon Cox Producer: Jim Frank Editor: Andrew Smith

Image: Illustration of man in a white coat looking at a test tube Credit: BBC.

Illegitimacy once meant you were a 'bastard'. The MP Caroline Flint wants to know what the word 'illegitimate' means now.

Caroline has always been open about her unmarried Mum having her when she was 17 years old and that she had her first son before she got married. Caroline describes her own family's story as a Catherine Cookson novel. There are suspicions that her widowed great-grandmother had an illegitimate child. Her grandmother's older sister had an illegitimate child during WW1 with an American soldier who was brought up as though his mother was his sister.

She explores the archives to find out if the stigma has died out with social historian Jane Robinson and discusses the issue with best-selling crime author Martina Cole and fellow MP Jess Phillips. Martina, who is also an ambassador for the single parent families' charity Gingerbread, became a single parent by choice when she was 18 and then again 20 years later. Jess conceived her son when she was 22 and had been with her boyfriend for barely a month.

Is the biggest deal today not whether a child is illegitimate but whether she bears her father's surname? Has the cloak of illegitimacy really fallen because daddy is willing to say publicly: she's mine?

This programme contains archive clips of the stories of Betty, Ada and Gina from 'The Secret World of Sex: In Disgrace' (1991), sourced from Domino Films, copyright of Testimony Films - http://www.testimonyfilms.com/

The brain - the final frontier. Radio 4 is setting out on an exploration of the creative mind.

Gerald Scarfe's drawings have intrigued and alarmed for more than fifty years but where do his ideas come from? Professor Vincent Walsh of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience has a theory he wants to pursue. Vincent is an expert in the workings of the visual brain; he thinks that two specific areas may be talking to each other in an unexpected way, resulting in recognisable faces being mixed up with recognisable objects, hence Mrs Thatcher as an axe, a handbag, and even a shark.

Now, cartoonist and neuroscientist are going to meet. "I for one would be fascinated to know what's going on in my brain - please pursue this," says Gerald Scarfe.

The producer in Bristol is Miles Warde.

From the nomads of the vast steppe - to the glamour and adulation of the stage. Kate Molleson unravels the story of Mongolia's remarkable rise to being an opera superpower. And, in this special double bill, producer Steven Rajam joins Rhianna Dhillon to discuss the making of the programmes.

Mongolia is becoming a global leader in opera singing - and completely breaking the mould. Young nomadic herders and horsemen are being plucked from the vast plains and taken to Ulaanbataar - where they're transformed into the next generation of top-flight tenors and baritones.

It's a fascinating synergy of young men with the perfect physique, often honed in a rugged, traditional outdoorsmen culture, and a superb Soviet-era music and arts education system that - just over half a century after its State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet first opened - is delivering the next generation of global singing superstars.

Radio 4 brings you a hypnotic audio portrait, taking you from the open plains, horse lullabies and throat singing of the endless Mongolian landscape to the cultural melee of Ulaanbataar - a place of stark contrasts where gleaming 21st century skyscrapers rise, yet where around half the population live in traditional gers (tents). A nation numbering just 3 million people, yet the size of Western Europe, and sandwiched between the gigantic superpowers of Russia and China - how much can Mongolia harness its cultural might to have a voice in global geopolitics?

In the first episode, journalist Kate Molleson documents the story of Ariunbaatar Ganbaatar - last year, the winner of one of the most prestigious prizes in global opera: the BBC Cardiff Singer Of The World Song Prize, whose previous winners include Bryn Terfel and Ailish Tynan. Ariunbaatar was born to a family of nomadic herders, who still live a traditional lifestyle in the immense Mongolian steppe. At his family's ger, hundreds of miles from the nearest settlement, Kate is treated to a performance of Mongolian longsong - the nation's traditional classical singing art - as well as joining Ariunbaatar on horseback to hear the songs he sang as a young boy, alone in the vast wilderness. Is Mongolia's unique traditional culture - perhaps even its landscape itself - the secret of its extraordinary vocal alchemy?

In the concluding episode, Kate explores the political value of Mongolia's musical prowess. In the Soviet era, the communist government used the people's love of traditional song to advance opera, and with it a certain idea of "civilisation"; in 2017, the current government see Mongolia's operatic might as a way of punching above its weight in global geopolitics. The buzzword on everyone's lips is "soft power" - a way for Mongolia to be part of a global conversation with nations - like its neighbours Russia and China - they could never compete with militarily or economically.

As Mongolia's foremost opera star prepares to take the stage in Ulaanbaatar, Kate explores the diversity of Mongolia's musical makeup in 2017 - from breakout indie acts and hip hop DJs to women throat singers causing ripples in the nation's venerable traditional classical singing art.

Producer: Steven Rajam Presenter: Kate Molleson A BBC Wales production for BBC Radio 4.

Before 9/11 British attitudes to partaking in faith-inspired armed combat were... different.

British Muslims travelled freely to fight in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Burma and Kashmir for a few weeks or months, and then returned home to their day jobs or studies - few questions asked.

In this programme, Mobeen Azhar sheds light on the people and organisations involved in this early wave of British involvement in Jihad - the youth organisations which helped send hundreds of young Brits to fight overseas.

The programme also reveals reports featured in magazines published in the 1990s by Lashka-e-Taiba - the terrorist group behind the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Within its pages are detailed reports on how its leader Hafiz Saeed came to Britain in the mid-90s to spread the word on fighting a holy war, find recruits and raise money. The programme hears from those who answered his call - the British Muslims who built bridges with militant groups in South Asia and beyond.

Many of these 'pioneers' came from Britain's Salafi community - followers of a strict, literal interpretation of Islam. Since 9/11 the Salafis - sometimes known as Wahhabis - have often been named as the key influencers in the global jihad, but is that accurate?

The programme also explains the nuances of Salafism and how this early period of British involvement in Jihad was itself hugely divisive within the British Salafi community, creating a schism between a peaceful pious majority, and those who chose to take up arms.

Producers: Richard Fenton-Smith & Sajid Iqbal.

Rhianna Dhillon brings you another seriously interesting story from Radio 4.

This week, luck.

Whether we believe in luck or not, we do use the word- a lot! More as a figure of speech than an article of faith perhaps but some do pray for luck, others fantasise about it - and bad luck or misfortune is a staple of comedy

Can luck be said to exist as some force in our lives and if so, what is its nature? How have people thought about luck in the past and what's changed today? Can you bring good luck upon yourself - there's a school of thought these days that thinks you can without appealing to the divine or supernatural.

In Good Luck Professor Spiegelhalter, the Winton Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk at Cambridge University looks at notions of luck in gambling, traces the origins of how we think about fate and fortune, the religious and psychological view of luck and how the emergence of theory of probability changed our view of it.

He is convinced by the philosopher Angie Hobbs that there is one form of luck it is rational to believe in and by psychologist Richard Wiseman that there is a secular solution to bringing about good fortune in your life.

Good Luck Professor Spiegelhalter, is presented by David Spiegelhalter and produced in Salford by Kevin Mousley.

Luke Jerram is that rare bird, a genuinely popular yet acclaimed contemporary artist. And he's obsessed with the moon. So he's made one: seven metres wide featuring 120dpi detailed NASA imagery, and he's taking it around the world. This is his story, as well as the moon's..

Every day Luke Jerram cycles to his studio across the river in Bristol and watches its dramatic changes. It has the second highest tidal range in the world and it's the moon that makes this happen. Luke's become fascinated with finding out everything he can about the cultural, artistic and poetic significance of the moon, and the latest scientific developments around it. It both reflects our culture and inspires it.

Being colourblind he's interested in all forms of light, and moonlight is fascinating and has very particular properties. The fact we see 'the man in the moon' is a perceptual and optical illusion. But again, different cultures see different imagery - in China they see the Hare in the Moon.

Luke presents his own story of making these works and hearing people's responses to them, woven in with the new soundtrack he's commissioned from composer Dan Jones. We talk to fellow contemporary moon obsessives James Attlee and Jay Griffiths, but it's all filtered through the very particular consciousness of one artist and his imagination, and the hard slog of his creative process.

Producer Beth O'Dea.

How do we prepare for the distant future? Helen Keen meets the people who try to.

If our tech society continues then we can leave data for future generations in huge, mundane quantities, detailing our every tweet and Facebook 'like'. But how long could this information be stored? And if society as we know it ends, will our achievements vanish with it? How do we plan for and protect those who will be our distant descendants and yet may have hopes, fears, languages, beliefs, even religions that we simply cannot predict? What if anything can we, should we, pass on?

For centuries tales were shared around the camp-fire; modern settlements share data via wi-fi. But what hasn't changed across the ages is our passion for histories and information - we shape and make sense of our lives by telling stories about what has happened to us, and relax by reading or seeing fictions about the lives of imagined characters. From cave-dwellers to millennials , stories have been organised in pretty much the same way - with a beginning, middle and end, although, in contemporary culture, now less frequently in that order.

All storytellers have used techniques of tension, delayed revelation, surprise twists. But - now - the art of narrative is being fundamentally changed by new technologies, which offer fresh ways of telling stories and different places for them to be told, redefine narrative genres, and allow audiences unprecedented opportunities to inter-act with and even co-author the content.

In this, the first part of a new three part series, Mark Lawson speaks with some of the leading figures in British TV - including showrunner Jed Mercurio (Line of Duty), producer Nicola Shindler (Red Productions) writer Paula Milne (The Politician's Wife, Angels), Charlotte Moore (BBC Director of Content) - to examine how the stories being told on television in the digital age have adapted to the advent of streaming services, binge-watching and catch-up TV. Mark also visits a cinema in Macclesfield to watch the live broadcast of 'Follies'- staged simultaneously in the West End. He talks with Kwame Kwei-Armah, soon to begin as the Young Vic's Artistic Director, about how the technology involved has brought top-level theatre to a whole new audience and redefined the idea of live spectatorship.

Presenter: Mark Lawson Producer: Geoff Bird.

Zoologist and founder of the Sloth Appreciation Society, Lucy Cooke, unleashes her inner sloth to discover why being lazy could actually be the ultimate evolutionary strategy.

The explorers of the New World described sloths as 'the lowest form of existence', but sloths are actually some of the most enduring of all tropical mammals. They make up one third of the mammalian biomass in rainforests and have survived some 64 million years - outliving far flashier animals like sabre tooth tigers.

The secret to the sloth's success is their slothful nature and their suite of energy-saving adaptations. In fact slothfulness is such a successful strategy, that there are examples all over the animal kingdom, including, surprisingly, worker ants. Recent studies in humans have shown the many health benefits of adopting a slower pace of life. Sleep itself is universal amongst the animal kingdom. All animals do it, but why remains a mystery. What is clear though, is that unleashing your inner couch potato is no bad thing, be you sloth or human.

Lucy discovers the genius behind the sloths laid back attitude and fights the corner for laziness.

Producer: Alexandra Feachem.

Dreaming of a Dark Christmas, in Iceland

At the darkest time of the year in Iceland scary creatures come out to play. Storyteller Andri Snær Magnason used to be terrified by his grandmother's Christmas tales of Gryla the 900 year old child eating hag and her thirteen troll sons - the Yule Lads - who would come down from the mountains looking for naughty children in the warmth of their homes. These dark lullabies partly hark back to a pre-Christian Christmas when people worshipped the Norse gods.

As Iceland opens up to global influences after centuries of isolation Andri travels from farmstead to lava field and reflects on these traditions: whether the elves still crash your house to throw a Christmas party or the cows still talk on New Year's Eve; and what happens when you have to spend Christmas alone, locked inside Ikea?

Featuring the Graduale Nobile Choir conducted by Árni Heiðar Karlsson

Partially recorded in Binaural Stereo. Listen on headphones for the best effect.

Additional sound design by Phil Channell

Producer Neil McCarthy.

Historian and psychoanalyst Daniel Pick of Birkbeck College, University of London tells the story of how aerial bombardment - from Zeppelins to B52s, from H-Bombs to drones - has made the unconscious mind a field of battle.

Daniel explores how, in the shadow of the First World War, Freud turned his analytical eye from desire to the 'death drive', and how psychoanalysts probed what might happen if another war came.

Would survivors of mass aerial bombardment hold up psychically, or would they collapse into infantile panic? Or would they become uncontrollably aggressive?

And why do humans come to be so aggressive in the first place?

When the war - and the bombers - did come to Britain, it appeared that survivors were much more stoical and defiant than had been expected.

But, as Daniel discovers, brave faces concealed a great deal of psychological damage.

With historian Lyndsey Stonebridge, he visits the Wellcome Library to see - courtesy of the Melanie Klein Trust - the case notes of the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein on her analysis of a troubled ten year old boy, 'Richard'.

What do Klein's notes, and Richard's extraordinary drawings, reveal about his attitude to being bombed?

Daniel examines how, with the advent of the Cold War and the distinct possibility that bombs and missiles could destroy civilisation, technocrats trying to plan for the end of the world coped with staring into the abyss.

Finally, Daniel shows how a radical new turn in aerial bombardment opens up this field anew. Nuclear weapons can destroy the planet; but what does it do to the mind to live under the threat of 'surgical' attack by unmanned drones?

With: Derek Gregory, Peter Hennessy, Dagmar Herzog, Richard Overy, Lyndsey Stonebridge

Producer: Phil Tinline.

Why do some of us do bizarre things in our sleep? Like riding a motorbike, using a shoe to 'phone for a pizza or even having sex while sleeping? These are complex behaviours and yet sleepwalkers aren't aware of what they're doing and often have no memory of their strange night-time activities.

These sleep disorders are known as non-REM parasomnias and include conditions like night terrors and sleep eating.

So why does it happen? Sleepwalking usually occurs during deep sleep, when something triggers the brain to wake - but not completely. So the areas that control walking and other movement wake up, yet other parts, involved in awareness and rational thinking, remain asleep. What's confusing is that sleepwalkers look awake - their eyes are open - but they're really not awake. They're not really asleep either. The brain is awake and asleep at the same time. We have known this happens in some animals, who can sleep with half of their brain at a time. But recently, we have learnt that similar things can happen in the human brain.

In the first of a three-part series, neurologist, Dr Guy Leschziner, talks to patients he's been treating at his sleep clinic at Guy's and St Thomas' hospitals in London. They include Jackie who began sleepwalking as a child and continued her strange night-time behaviour as an adult, riding her motorbike whilst sleeping. We hear from James whose night terrors have become so violent his wife has begged him to get help; from Alex who rescues people from floods in his sleep. And we talk to Tom, whose recent diagnosis of sexsomnia has had a significant impact on his life.

These remarkable sleepwalking experiences help us to understand the complex workings of the human brain.

Presenter: Dr Guy Leschziner Producer: Sally Abrahams.

Byron Vincent joins the Violence Reduction Unit in Glasgow to see how they turn young men away from lives of violence and chaos.

Three years ago, after he discussed his own violent and chaotic youth in a Four Thought talk on Radio 4, Byron was invited to come and speak at the VRU. Since then he has been back several times - now he experiences the unit's work directly. Byron spent two weeks embedded in two of the VRU's programmes, from watching the scheme's participants working in food trucks in the west end of Glasgow to joining the cast at the Royal Military Tattoo in Edinburgh.

After hours, and with his powerful personal connection to their lives, Byron has extraordinarily candid conversations with the young men involved in the scheme about fear, insecurity, redemption, love, hope and the real reasons for spiralling violence. But what sacrifices will be required for them to make new lives, free from chaos and violence?

Producer: Giles Edwards.

"The more we reinforce the stereotypes of who writes and who reads, the more the notion of exclusivity is reinforced. It takes balls to gatecrash a party."

Kit de Waal, published her first novel, My Name is Leon, in 2016 at the age of 55. She has already put her money where her mouth is - using part of the advance she received from Penguin to set up a creative writing scholarship in an attempt to improve working class representation in the arts.

Kit knows that - as a writer from a working class background - the success of her debut novel is a rare occurrence. Born to a Caribbean bus driver father and an Irish mother (a cleaner, foster carer and auxiliary nurse), Kit grew up in Birmingham and left school at 15 with no qualifications. She became a secretary with the Crown Prosecution Service and went on to have a career in social services and criminal law.

In this feature she explores an issue that is deeply personal to her. She looks back at her own life and trajectory, and takes the listener on a journey around the country to find out what the barriers really are to working class representation in British literature today.

"There is a difference between working class stories and working class writers. Real equality is when working class writers can write about anything they like - an alien invasion, a nineteenth century courtesan, a medieval war. All we need is the space, the time to do it - oh yes, and some way to pay the bills!"

Kit talks to a range of writers, agents and publishers about what the barriers are for writers from working class backgrounds, including Tim Lott, Andrew McMillan, Gena-mour Barrett, CEO of Penguin Random House UK Tom Weldon, Julia Bell, Julia Kingsford, Ben Gwalchmai, Nathan Connolly and Stephen Morrison-Burke (Birmingham poet laureate and the first recipient of the Kit de Waal scholarship).

Produced by Mair Bosworth.

Filmmaker Mike Figgis explores the story of edited film, audio and culture, and how the simple process of cutting and splicing has changed the way people view the world.

We are living in an age of the edit.

From the jump-cuts of Eisenstein and Hitchcock, to the fractured narratives of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, from the cut-and-paste sounds of musique concrete and hip-hop, to the sensibility of social media (to say nothing of the radio feature itself), it's the edit - the cut, the splice; montage and juxtaposition - that has ushered us into the present. To some, it's the stuff of life itself: chimps, for example, share 99% of our DNA; what matters is the sequencing, the edit.

There's a year zero to this story of the edit. From the moment we get up in the morning until we close our eyes at night, the visual reality we perceive is a continuous stream of apparently linked images. That's the way we experienced the world for millennia. Then suddenly, just over a century ago, human beings were confronted with something else: edited film.

But this isn't an exercise in cinema history. It's about our present culture. A culture in which the invisible mediating hand of the editor is ever-present. A culture of the 'creative commons' in which we can pull anything out of context and re-edit it (a gif, an internet meme, a mash-up, a parody of a political speech) and make the edit itself become an art form. Cutting, splicing, sampling -- it's all part of the way the world functions now. This is just the beginning.

With Vicki Bennett aka People Like Us, Margie Borschke, Walter Murch and Will Self.

Producer: Martin Williams.

A century ago, the Russian Revolution took place. It was a seismic event that changed the course of the 20th century. In this special, bonus episode of Seriously…, we visit four cities closely linked to the events of 1917. With Moscow correspondent Steve Rosenberg as our guide, we travel the 4000 mile journey across Russia, asking if the repercussions of Red October are still being felt today. Steve also reveals to Rhianna Dhillon more of the stories he discovered on his way from St Petersburg to Khabarovsk.

Savitri Devi-devotee of Hitler, proponent of Hindu nationalism, associate of both the British BNP and the American Nazi party-was a prolific author and energetic member of the international Nazi network after the Second World War. Now, her paeans to the mythical Aryan race and apocalyptic theories of history are circulating once again, revived by European white nationalists and the American alt-right.

Born in France in 1905 to an English mother and Greek-Italian father, Savitri Devi moved to India in the 1930s, took a Hindu name, and married a prominent Brahmin. She believed that India's caste system had preserved the purity of the so-called Aryans, and that Hinduism was a living survival of the pagan religion destroyed in Europe by Judeo-Christianity. In her saffron-edged sari and large swastika earrings, she traveled the country promoting Hindutva, the Hindu nationalist ideology espoused by India's ruling party today. Devastated by the fall of the Third Reich at the end of the Second World War, she entered occupied Germany to distribute Nazi propaganda; convinced that Hitler was an avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu, she spent the rest of her life preparing for his eventual return.

Maria Margaronis travels to India to meet Savitri Devi's nephews and former neighbours and explore the origins of her bizarre theories. Drawing on never-before-broadcast interviews with Savitri Devi herself and conversations with historians and activists, she asks what we can learn from this eccentric figure about today's extreme right movements, their strategies and their appeal.

Produced by Shabnam Grewal Illustration inspired by photograph Courtesy of the Savitri Devi Archive.

"3 May. Bistritz. Left Munich at 8:35 P. M, on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late."

The first line of Bram Stoker's Dracula makes it clear what the novel will be about: trains. As the book begins, the English solicitor Jonathan Harker is travelling across Europe by train, en route to meet his mysterious new Transylvanian client, complaining all the way about the late running of the service. "It seems to me that the further East you go the more unpunctual are the trains. What ought they to be in China?"

In the Trainspotter's Guide to Dracula, Miles Jupp uses Bram Stoker's novel as it has never been used before, as a train timetable, following its references to plot a route across Europe by rail to Dracula's castle in Transylvania.

Will Miles be able to reach Dracula's castle more quickly than Harker did, or will his journey be dogged by discontinued services, closed lines and delays?

Produced by David Stenhouse.

Readings by David Jackson Young.

The events in Charlottesville were just one example of the sharp rise in the number of violent confrontations in America between far-right white nationalists and left-wing groups known as 'antifa' - short for "anti-fascists".

Those on the right claim they're fighting to defend free speech or other deeply held American principles. But their opponents say they're promoting extremism and a brand of racial division far out of line with mainstream thought.

Fights that once took place between the two groups online are now spilling out onto the streets of places like Berkeley, California and Portland, Oregon - liberal enclaves where far-right activists have held rallies and which have been turned into scenes of violence, and even murder.

Mike Wendling has travelled to America's west coast to talk to underground antifa organisers and find out what they want - and what they're prepared to do to achieve their aims.

Producer: Anisa Subedar.

Once upon a time, total surveillance was the province of George Orwell and totalitarian states, but we now live in a world where oceans of data are gathered from us every day by the wondrous digital devices we have admitted to our homes and that we carry with us everywhere. At the same time, our governments want us to let them follow everything we do to root out evil before it can strike. If you have nothing to hide, do you really have nothing to fear? In Who's Looking At You , novelist and occasional futurist Nick Harkaway argues surveillance has reached a new pitch of penetration and sophistication and we need to talk about it before it's too late. This is our brave new world: data from pacemakers are used in criminal prosecutions as evidence, the former head of the CIA admits 'we kill people based on meta-data,' and scientists celebrate pulling a clear image of a face directly from a monkey's brain. Where does it end, and what does it mean? Surveillance used to end at our front door, now not even the brain is beyond the prying eyes of an information-hungry world. The application of big data brings many benefits and has the potential to make us wealthier, keep us healthier and ensure we are safer - but only if we the citizens are in control. The programme uses rich archive to illustrate how the 'watchers' have adapted to technology that has super-charged the opportunity to snoop. It examines the arguments of those who claim the right to keep their secrets while demanding that we the people give up more and more of ours. Transparency for the masses? Or simple necessity in a chaotic technological future? What happens to us, to our choices under the all-seeing eye? One thing is certain: if we don't make choices about surveillance, they will be made for us.

The relationship between fathers and daughters has been the subject of countless cultural explorations down the centuries, from Elektra's distress to Bonjour Tristesse. Some of them are idealised ('To Kill A Mockingbird', 'All the Lights We Cannot See'); some highly damaging and dysfunctional ('This is England', 'The Beggar's Opera'); some, as any A'Level pupil who's studied 'King Lear' can attest, are both. What is clear in all these cases is just how particular and powerful the relationship can be, and in this highly personal programme Lauren Laverne heads home to team up with her own dad, Les, to talk about their relationship and how it matches up with some of these cultural imaginings. Among anecdotes about growing up in Sunderland and later on Les playing roadie to Lauren's gigs with the likes of the Ramones, we also hear from artists who in one way or another are engaging with the dad/daughter relationship now, including Helen MacDonald, Glyn Maxwell and The Unthanks.

Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Geoff Bird.

The Russian Revolution unleashed a brand of humour that continues to this day. In this two-part series, comedian and Russophile Viv Groskop explores a century of revolutionary comedy and asks how it continues to shape the national psyche.

The series will rediscover comedy of the Revolution: Bolshevik satire, early Communist cartoons and jokes about Lenin, as writers, satirists and comedians recall the jokes and cartoons shared by their parents and grandparents.

Viv will investigate the birth of the 'anekdot' and trace the development of dark humour through the purges. She will look at how dissident humour in the late 1950s influenced comedy in London and New York, and meet contemporary comedians to gain an understanding of the shape and sound of the comedy circuit in Russia today.

Producer: Georgia Catt

A portrait of singer, songwriter and truck driver Will Beeley.

The myth of the road is deeply rooted in America - it's the thing that delivers escape, promises freedom, fuels new hopes and, once upon a time at least, thoughts of a new nation. And it provides its own opening onto the vastness and variety of the country today.

The distances can be dizzying. And these days Will Beeley spends more time on the road than he does at home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a city in the desert, with Route 66 running through its heart.

In another life Will Beeley was a musician - a singer and songwriter - an anxious romantic at the end of the 1960s and a smooth-voiced folkie ten years later. He played gig after gig, made records and, for a while at least, hoped for the big time.

But now, like a different road taken, a different stop along the way, he spends his life behind the wheel of a hulking truck, sharing the driving with his wife, as the highway and the days blur by.

It's a unique vantage point. And as America spools past outside, framed by the huge windscreen, does he - like all of us now and then - think of times gone by, of unfinished business, of what might have been? Or is his attention fixed ahead on the road as it rolls towards him, flowing beneath his wheels?

Producer: Martin Williams.

Not everyone appreciates the tonalities, lyrics or even the shrieky voice of Canadian artist and musician Joni Mitchell but in a dusty class room in 1971 Lynne Truss decided she loved the writer of Woodstock, Big Yellow Taxi and Both Sides Now. It was a bond forged in the face of the frosty indifference of fellow pupils in Miss Cheverton's music class at the Tiffin Girls School in Kingston Upon Thames.

Even Lynne is slightly mystified when she was asked who was her muse that, as a person mostly famous for writing a book on punctuation, she replied; Joni Mitchell. Lynne explores why a series of albums from Ladies of the Canyon to Heijra taking in Blue, Court and Spark and The Hissing of Summer lawns' has wrought such influence over so many.

For her aficionados Joni Mitchell is more than a song writer. Lynne observes that for some the attachment goes beyond the personal; its a complete identification with the struggles of dealing with high emotion and how to cope.

In the programme she speaks to the poet and playwright Liz Lochhead, the author Linda Grant, Elbow's front man Guy Garvey, her latest biographer the Syracuse University academic David Yaffe and Gina Foster the singer with the UK act Joni's Soul, which she insists is not a tribute but a celebration act.

Lynne contends that despite at the time being overshadowed in favour of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon and others Joni Mitchell will come to be regarded as the greatest exponent of the art of singer-song writer from that era and concludes that what makes her a muse can be found less in the brilliant lyrical summations of eternal questions like love, loss and freedom but more in her absolute commitment never to compromise her art - to remain true, above all else, to her own muse.

Tiny bathers relax in a puddle of oily water on a pavement; a galleon sails on the head of a pin, a dancer twirls next to a mote of dust under a microscope - Dr Lance Dann, lover of miniature worlds, crouches down on hands and knees to better observe the world of tiny art.

Prompted by advances in technology, and the enduring wonder of things created on a really, really tiny scale, Lance Dann follows his own obsession with the miracle of miniature art. Knocking on the tiny doors of creators from street artist Slinkachu, whose mesmerising cityscapes are created, photographed and abandoned in the street, to the collection of antique miniature portraits in Sotheby's where expert Mark Griffith Jones delicately reveals the hidden treasures that span from over 500 years of art history.

The 21st century has experienced a revival of the small in art Desiree De Leon has attracted hundreds of thousands of followers for her Instagram account of small doodles, whilst the 'the chewing gum man' Ben Wilson, has gathered a loyal following for his hidden gems scattered about the London streets. Every morning Ben gets up and starts creating tiny tiles on which his innermost feelings are expressed - and then he leaves them on the Underground for people to find.

Then there is the barely visible - Willard Wigan MBE - the poster-boy of microscopic art, a dyslexia sufferer who has found relief in the creation of tiny art works. Recognised globally, his sculptures, which are small enough to fit on the head of a pin, sell for six-figure sums. "I work between my heartbeats. I have one-and-a-half seconds to actually move. And at the same time I have to watch I don't inhale my own work."

Then there is the nearly invisible - Jonty Hurwitz - who sculpts with Nano-technology, and sometimes loses sight of it in the process. "When I found the sculpture it was one of the most moving moments of my life, you see all these grotesque pieces of dust as the microscope is moving around and suddenly there's a woman, dancing"

What is the enduring appeal of the miniature in art, and where has this revival come from? To discover where it hides, why it appeals, and how the artists' work on such delicate objects, Dann plays with scale, sound and voices to bring a closer, more microscopic focus on the art world.

Presenter: Lance Dann is an associate member and former sound designer of The Wooster Group, a writer and director of a range of radio dramas including podcast "Blood Culture", commissioned by The Welcome Trust, and won a Prix Marulic for his production of Moby Dick for BBC Radio 4.

Producer: Sara Jane Hall

iPlayer photograph: Slinkachu.

Lots of people wear wigs, and go to great lengths to keep them secret - but why? Perhaps it's because the hair on top of our heads means so much to us. It's a crucial part of our identity, the person we see when we look in the mirror, so what happens when it's not there?

It's a question Brian Kernohan has asked himself. Yes, his hair's thinning a bit on top, but it's his secret - until his hairdresser points it out. Brian wouldn't dare suggest a wig - even though he's always wondered if he could try one?

Brian investigates the secret world of wigs with the help of alopecia sufferer Geraldine, who runs a secret wig shop which ensures discretion for all her customers. He explores the stigma attached to wig wearing, and finds out how tastes have changed since the 17thcentury when Louis XIV put wigs at the cutting edge of fashion.

He meets cancer patients who have learnt to "embrace your inner bald", as 16-year-old Sophie puts it, the wig shop owner who surprises customers by wearing her own stock, and meets the opera singer who loves to wear wigs on stage.

But still, Brian is nervous when he is fitted for a wig, and is even more terrified when he has to wear it in public. What if someone realises he's wearing a secret wig - and why does he care so much?

Producer: Freya McClements.

With more than 30 million presentations being given around the world every day, PowerPoint has become the single most ubiquitous tool for presenting ideas. Yet it's the software many of us love to hate - vilified for simplifying the complex and complicating the simple.

30 years on from its commercial launch, Ian Sansom asks, 'What's the real point of PowerPoint?' as he embarks on what surely must be a world first - a PowerPoint presentation for the radio.

How do I move this on to the next slide? There we are. Thanks.

Armed only with an auto-content wizard, some zippy graphics and a hefty set of bullet points, Ian ventures forth to assess the true impact of this revolution in communication. He speaks with the software's pioneers, meets some of its notable detractors and asks how PowerPoint has influenced corporate life and spilled out into some improbable areas of our culture.

As he discovers how science-fiction is helping to inform the next generation of presentation technology, Ian asks if PowerPoint has empowered the individual - or if our boardrooms, lecture halls and even our spiritual affairs are to be forever condemned to the fate that has come to be known as 'Death By PowerPoint.'

What do I do now? Press escape? No, I want to bring it back to the start. F6 I think. Where's the remote thingy..?

Producer: Conor Garrett.

After the violence directed at black people in Nottingham and Notting Hill in the 1950s, and the naked racism expressed in Smethwick during the 1964 general election, a group of pioneering West Indians came up with a simple and defiant riposte: Carnival.

In Queens of Chapeltown, Colin Grant goes behind the scenes of Carnival to its Leeds West Indian HQ in Chapeltown - amidst the glue guns, sequins and feathers - to capture that moment of extraordinary transformation, 50 years on: the birth of a tradition which, for one weekend in August, would wash away the bad taste of anti immigrant sentiment with a burst of colour and flash of exuberance that would forever change Britain.

Grant travels to Leeds to talk with the pioneers and celebrate the endurance and growth of Carnival.

Produced and presented by Colin Grant.

Suicide is the number one killer of men under-50 in England and Wales. A 'zero suicide' approach to prevention first devised in Detroit is now changing attitudes to care in the UK. Merseyside is leading the way. Radio 4 gains exclusive access to a healthcare authority being transformed from the inside-out in a bid to treat suicide as a preventable condition and to bring lives lost down to 0% by 2020.