The First Year
A deeply personal story of guilt – how to live with it, and its power to transform us.
01 Aug 2025,·14 mins
A Further Five Numbers
1729 - The first taxicab number
1729 is the smallest number you can write as the sum of two cubes, in two different ways.
20 Sep 2005,·14 mins
Talc Tales: 5. Talc on trial
When we send off make-up for testing, the lab finds an asbestos fibre.
10 May 2024,·14 mins
Is it worth it?
With all the problems facing universities, is it still worth getting a degree?
23 Sep 2025,·28 mins
Death of Chairman Mao
Reaction to the death of Chairman Mao.
08 Aug 1996,·28 mins
Episode 5: Finding Balance
Tony Hawks tries to find a more balanced approach to the thorny issue of inheritance.
11 Jul 2025,·14 mins
Episode 5: Politics versus the Past
Misha Glenny explores the European memory wars.
04 Oct 2024,·14 mins
Series 3
Death Unexplained
Why is a sudden, yet not unexpected, death of someone old or ill, referred to a coroner?
23 Jan 2019,·43 mins
Assisted dying
Sonia Sodha explores thorny ethical questions around the beginning and the end of life.
27 Jan 2025,·42 mins
Omnibus
Exploring the fortunes of a secretive and controversial man called Vladislav Surkov.
24 May 2019,·57 mins
Christians
Examining the wealth of Christian denominations in Jerusalem
13 Oct 2007,·25 mins
Omnibus Episode 2
Anthropologist David Graeber explores the ways debt has shaped society over 5,000 years.
05 Aug 2016,·58 mins
The Trauma Victims and their Blood
Martha Milete’s life changes one night in 2006 when two masked men break into her house.
15 Sep 2024,·28 mins
10. The Jungle Book & EPCOT
Mel Giedroyc explores Walt Disney’s final film, The Jungle Book.
29 Jun 2023,·28 mins
The Sea Lion
Ben Garrod and Jess French get under the skin (and blubber) of the California sea lion.
06 Feb 2024,·27 mins
Omnibus 2
The story of the systematic doping of the 2012 and 2014 Olympics by the Russian state.
17 Jul 2020,·57 mins
Episode 5 - Winters of the Future
A guide to thriving in winter, offering advice on how to get through the darker months.
17 Oct 2025,·14 mins
The Internet Poets
Lemn Sissay explores how poets have found a new route to audiences - the smartphone.
31 Dec 2021,·14 mins
1990 to the Present Day
Miranda Sawyer explores if, in the age of cheap flights, interrailing is still popular.
20 Aug 2011,·30 mins
Green Political Thought
A look at environmental political ideas, including decentralisation and anti-consumerism
20 Mar 2002,·13 mins
The Drive to Empire - Part Five
Perestroika has unleashed a wave of nationalism among Soviet republics.
30 May 1990,·27 mins
6. Aftermath
What happens when The X Factor lights go off?
26 Jan 2024,·33 mins
2. Welshness
Cerys Matthews continues her trip down the A470, the road connecting north and south Wales
17 Jan 2014,·30 mins
Episode 3
Linda Marshall Griffiths' future-set reimagining of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
21 Jul 2024,·57 mins
Patterns of Disease
The shocking truth about patterns in global disease
23 Oct 1998,·13 mins
Episode 3: Hospice
Documenting the round-the-clock care of Nora, a non-verbal seven-year-old.
16 Sep 2024,·42 mins
The Gesar of Ling
The story of King Gesar of Ling, the central epic poem of Tibet and much of Central Asia
26 Feb 2004,·25 mins
How do refugee crises end?
Katy Long concludes her history of 100 years of refugee politics.
19 Oct 2021,·28 mins
Bhopal (Omnibus)
The story of Rajkumar Keswani, the man who foretold the world's worst industrial accident
09 Sep 2022,·57 mins
Life After War in Sarajevo - Part Three
A theatre company based in Bosnia put the feelings of a nation into a play
28 Oct 2005,·22 mins
