Podcast Episodes

What Can We Do With Our Dead?

Cemeteries around the world are fast running out of space. As more and more people choose to live in cities, some can't even cope with the ashes left after cremation. Deep questions about our communi…

Published on 8 years, 3 months ago

How Has The Ku Klux Klan Lasted So Long?

North America’s most notorious racist group, the Ku Klux Klan fought the end of slavery in the 19th century, opposed civil rights in the 20th century and now forms part of a new extreme-right wing mo…

Published on 8 years, 4 months ago

Are Video Games a Waste of Time?

Video games are a huge industry, bigger than Hollywood, and billions of people around the world play them for fun. But new economic research in the US suggests that young men are dropping out of work…

Published on 8 years, 4 months ago

How Do You Fix Someone Else's Election?

Smears, bots and bags of cash - we reveal some of the tricks used for fiddling elections around the world. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's security chiefs say Russian intelligence is actively tryin…

Published on 8 years, 4 months ago

Are South Africa's Police Failing?

A story of crime and often no punishment. South Africa's notoriously violent record has been getting worse. The number of murders and violent crimes is rising as public confidence in the police falls…

Published on 8 years, 4 months ago

Who Gets to Have Their Own Country?

You might think simple rules decide the creation of nation states. You'd be wrong.

There are plenty of people out there who want their own state - like in Iraqi Kurdistan and Catalonia, which both hav…

Published on 8 years, 4 months ago

What would war with North Korea look like?

Alarm about North Korea has spiked. Earlier this month, the North claimed to have successfully test-launched an intercontinental ballistic missile that could hit Alaska. Some experts estimate that No…

Published on 8 years, 5 months ago

Is it Time to Ban the Plastic Bottle?

Every single second, 20,000 single-use drinking bottles are sold around the world. That is more than a million pieces of non-biodegradable rubbish produced every minute. And as demand grows in develo…

Published on 8 years, 5 months ago

Is Gene Editing Out of Control?

"This structure has novel features, which are of considerable biological interest." It was perhaps the greatest understatement of all time - the announcement more than six decades ago of the discover…

Published on 8 years, 5 months ago

What's So Special About Qatar?

The tiny state behind a global diplomatic feud.

Qatar's landmass is so small it could fit into the UK 20 times over. Its citizen population is just a few hundred thousand. Yet this desert country find…

Published on 8 years, 5 months ago