Seriously...

The Bhopal gas tragedy was the worlds worst industrial accident. Tens of thousands of people died and many more suffered long term illnesses when lethal methyl isocyanate gas leaked from the Union Carbide plant in the city in central India on 2nd December 1984. For the previous two years one man had been predicting that Bhopal was an accident waiting to happen. Forty years ago this month the Bhopali journalist Rajkumar Keswani wrote his first article warning of the dangers posed by safety lapses at the plant. During a dogged investigation pitting him against political power, corporate money and the indifference of the media and public opinion, he never gave up. This cinematic documentary series tells his story for the first time. Episode 1. A Friend Dies Keswani is the kind of journalist who finds his stories on the ground, talking to people in his native Bhopal. One evening he learns from his friend Ashraf, a worker at the Union Carbide chemical plant, that there are regular safety lapses and leaks. Sh

Art by women is literally undervalued. The highest price achieved by a contemporary female artist is $12.4m, while it is $91m for a man. If a painting is signed by a man it goes up in value, signed by a woman it goes down. We might expect this historically, but as the majority of art students today are women, why is there such a gender value gap now? To untangle this mystery, Mary Ann Sieghart enters a thrilling world of glitzy, high-stake auctions and make-or-break gallery decisions. She lifts the lid on the opaque world of art valuation, explores how punters react to genderless AI art, and uncovers historic collusion and contemporary bias. She asks if male artists are actually better than women and why, in the bible of the art world today, there is just one woman mentioned, as a footnote. Pinning down work being done to level this playing field, Mary Ann talks to the galleries showing more works by women, discovering powerful women shifting the attention and canny investors who are realising maybe it is jus

Rima Ahmed takes the bus into Leeds and tries to find out why it is “the biggest city in Western Europe without a mass transit system”. Rima meets passengers, campaigners and history buffs as well as local politicians to delve into why the city has had so many failed attempts to improve its public transport system since its tram was abolished in 1959. Leeds was a transport pioneer - it introduced the first electric trams and trolleybuses in the country. In the 1970s and 80s, local councillors proudly declared Leeds “the motorway city” hailing the building of a massive urban motorway right through the city centre. In the 1990s, Sheffield was already building its supertram network and Leeds was also asking government to fund its own version. Despite funding being approved in 2001, £70 million had been wasted by the time Leeds’s supertram project was pulled by Transport Secretary Alastair Darling in 2005. A “trolleybus” scheme mooted in 2012 was also scrapped. Now, the citizens of Leeds have been told that, if

In homes across the UK, partition is not history but a live issue for its young descendants. Over the course of a year, Kavita Puri follows three people as they piece together parts of their complex family history and try to understand the legacy of partition and what it means to them today. She connects with a young man who goes to the Pakistani village where his Hindu grandfather was saved by Muslims; a woman who has always thought of herself as British Pakistani but a DNA test reveals she also has roots in India; a woman with Pakistani heritage and a man with Indian heritage plan their wedding and realise that their families actually originate from within an hour of each other in the Punjab. Five years after the award-winning series Partition Voices, Kavita Puri explores the 75th anniversary of the division of the Indian subcontinent through three stories from the third generation in Britain.

Can video games change lives? And, if so, how? 50 years after the arrival of Pong, gamer and writer Keza MacDonald considers what gaming has done for us. Using the rich BBC Archives, she explores how video games grew from a niche pursuit to a cultural phenomenon which stokes the imagination of, and offers agency to, those who fall for its charms. Games now influence who we are, what we think and how we act. Keza speaks to collectors, competitive gamers, psychologists, games designers and, mostly importantly, gamers young and old to find out what impact games have had on us. We hear about the deep relationships that millions cherish with Pac-Man, Space Invaders and Donkey Kong, and illustrate the entanglement of life and gaming that is increasingly impossible to sever. Presenter: Keza MacDonald Producer: Gary Milne

The government has described Rwanda, where it intends to send some people who arrive illegally in the UK, as "one of the world's safest nations". But this small, landlocked country in east Africa divides opinion. To some, it’s the Singapore of Africa, with a burgeoning economy, clean streets and gleaming skyscrapers. It’s also heralded for having the highest proportion of women parliamentarians in the world. But to others, Rwanda is a frightening and repressive place. In this programme, Victoria Uwonkunda looks at what’s happening in the country of her birth, which she fled as a child during the genocide of 1994. Is this country a developmental model for the rest of the continent – or an autocratic and ruthless state?

More than a million refugees from the war in Ukraine have ended up in the arms of the enemy, Russia. Have they been rescued? Or illegally deported in another Kremlin war crime?

Rory Stewart explores the strange human phenomenon of arguing and why it matters so deeply to our lives in a new series on BBC Radio 4. Argument became the way in which we answered the deepest questions of philosophy, established scientific rules, and made legal decisions. It was the foundation of our democracies and the way in which we chose the policies for our state. Rory grew up believing that the way to reach the truth was through argument. He was trained to argue in school, briefly taught classical rhetoric and he became a member of parliament. But the experience of being a politician also showed him how dangerous arguments can be, and how bad arguments can threaten our democracies, provoke division and hide the truth. In this episode, Rory explores why our democracy and humanity may depend on rediscovering how to argue well. Producer: Dan Tierney.

Rory Stewart explores the strange human phenomenon of arguing and why it matters so deeply to our lives. Argument became the way in which we answered the deepest questions of philosophy, established scientific rules, and made legal decisions. It was the foundation of our democracies and the way in which we chose the policies for our state. Rory grew up believing that the way to reach the truth was through argument. He was trained to argue in school, briefly taught classical rhetoric and he became a member of parliament. But the experience of being a politician also showed him how dangerous arguments can be, and how bad arguments can threaten our democracies, provoke division and hide the truth. In this episode, Rory explores how modern Europe turned against argument and where arguments go wrong today. Producer: Dan Tierney.

Rory Stewart explores the strange human phenomenon of arguing and why it matters so deeply to our lives. Argument became the way in which we answered the deepest questions of philosophy, established scientific rules, and made legal decisions. It was the foundation of our democracies and the way in which we chose the policies for our state. Rory grew up believing that the way to reach the truth was through argument. He was trained to argue in school, briefly taught classical rhetoric and he became a member of parliament. But the experience of being a politician also showed him how dangerous arguments can be, and how bad arguments can threaten our democracies, provoke division and hide the truth. In this episode, Rory explores why speaking and arguing well were seen for millennia as the key to a good education and the cornerstone of civilisation. Producer: Dan Tierney.

Film and theatre producer Anwar Akhtar, Director of the educational charity Samosa Media, visits schools exploring diversity and the curriculum and asking questions about difficult topics such as segregation and the importance of an inclusive education. A Mancunian and first generation son of Pakistani immigrants, Anwar traces his career development to his school days at Loreto College in the 1980s. Educated with students from a range of multicultural backgrounds, he developed a sense of belonging. But he worries that some second and third generation youngsters from minority backgrounds have not had the same positive, inclusive experience. He has watched as many struggle, feeling marginalised and isolated. He considers why their experience has been so different from his own, exploring the problem of communities living and schooling apart from each other, focusing on the Pennine mill town of Oldham, a few miles from where he grew up. Anwar wants to explore solutions, how schools can help divided communities co

Today, the actor Ionica Adriana lives with her family in the North Yorkshire countryside - but her life could have turned out wildly different. Until the age of two-and-a-half, Ionica lived in an orphanage, in Transylvania, north-western Romania. From 1965-1989, the Communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu enforced a strict set of policies to set about vastly increasing the Romanian population. But widespread poverty meant it was impossible for many Romanian parents to look after their newborn children - and so many ended up in state-run institutions, where they received little care and attention, and where they were left in dirty clothes, to feed and fend for themselves. Ionica returns to Romania to uncover her past and the history of Ceaușescu’s barbaric orphanages. She explores what childcare and protection looks like in Romania today, meets someone who grew up in the state system his entire childhood and has an emotional encounter of her own. Producer: Sasha Edye-Lindner A Just Radio production for BBC Radio

This summer marks a decade since the 2012 Olympics - a moment of national pride when London represented Britain on the global stage. Ten years on from those Olympian heights, the capital is struggling. Scarred by the pandemic and entrenched inequality, London faces challenges which are often overlooked or ignored. Meanwhile a cultural backlash, an anti-Londonism, threatens a crisis of confidence - at a time when the city's success looks far from guaranteed. London expert Dr Jack Brown, who was born and still lives in the Olympic borough of Waltham Forest, talks to fellow residents about life in the capital. He hears from those who defy the 'liberal metropolitan elite' stereotypes - those who stay local and rarely, if ever, venture into Zone One, those of deep faith, and the gentrifiers who now can't afford their rent. He asks why London has attracted, magnet-like, so many negative associations, and how views of the city might change. Can London recapture the spirit of 2012? Can capital and country be at ease

A dancer at the top of her career can't do her job without the skill and attention to detail of their shoemaker. Francesca Hayward is a principal dancer for the Royal Ballet and Bob Martin is her shoemaker. It’s a very personal choice for a dancer to settle on the perfect shoe - each maker is different - and so once they've found one, they rely on the maker of that shoe for their whole career. Pointe shoe making is a dying craft which has recently been given heritage craft status in the UK. There are not many people left like Bob. This programme takes you behind the curtain to peep into a world of craft, sweat and determination. Rich in ballet music, this is an uplifting real life fairy tale of two people connected by a shoe. Producer: Catherine Robinson for BBC Audio Wales and West

Why are people with mental illness committing themselves in advance, when well, to treatment that they know they may want to refuse when they become unwell? Sally Marlow investigates. Juan was diagnosed with bipolar in his late teens. In the decade that followed, he suffered an episode of severe mental illness once nearly every year, plagued by intense paranoid thoughts that distorted his thinking. Each time this happened, it got to the point that he could no longer care for himself and he was detained or ‘sectioned’ under the Mental Health Act for his own safety. Juan has enjoyed good mental health for the past three years and he hopes that it will stay that way. But, as a precaution, he has joined a pilot study taking place at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. It's part of the reforms to the Mental Health Act which are underway to give service users more control, when well, over what happens to them when they become seriously ill. Sally Marlow talks to Juan who, as part of the pilot, has writt

What do we want the synthetic future to look like? It’s seeping into our everyday lives, but are we ready? We need a conversation about the legal, policy and ethical implications for society. Deepfakes’ murky origins are in a form of sexual image abuse that is being used against hundreds of thousands of people, most of them women. Presenter and synthetic media expert Henry Ajder speaks to journalist Sam Cole, who first reported on deepfakes in 2018. She uncovered a Reddit forum sharing pornographic videos with the faces of famous Hollywood actresses transposed on to the bodies of porn performers. Since then the technology has become much more accessible and ordinary women have become the target. Henry interviews a woman who was targeted with deepfake image abuse, and considers what we can do to protect citizens from synthetic media’s malicious uses. Interviewees: Sam Cole, Vice; Noelle Martin, campaigner; Jesselyn Cook, NBC

If anything can be a deepfake, perhaps nothing can be trusted - and politicians can take advantage of the so called "Liars' dividend" by dismissing real media as fake. In satire, deepfakes have already had a controversial impact, targeting politicians, business leaders, and celebrities. Meanwhile, convincing deepfake audio and video have the potential to create a new wave of fraud where faces, voices and bodies can be stolen. These malicious uses of deepfake technology started out targeting celebrities and people in the public eye, but have become a mainstream challenge for cyber security professionals and ordinary individuals whose images have been used without their consent. Deepfakes can be used to defame or discredit people - but on the flip side, the cry of ‘deepfake’ could undermine trust in the use of video evidence in the justice system. What can we do to protect citizens from synthetic media’s malicious uses? And might there be some positive applications for deepfakes in politics? Interviewees: S

If anything can be a deepfake, perhaps nothing can be trusted - and politicians can take advantage of the so called "Liars' dividend" by dismissing real media as fake. In satire, deepfakes have already had a controversial impact, targeting politicians, business leaders, and celebrities. Meanwhile, convincing deepfake audio and video have the potential to create a new wave of fraud where faces, voices and bodies can be stolen. These malicious uses of deepfake technology started out targeting celebrities and people in the public eye, but have become a mainstream challenge for cyber security professionals and ordinary individuals whose images have been used without their consent. Deepfakes can be used to defame or discredit people - but on the flip side, the cry of ‘deepfake’ could undermine trust in the use of video evidence in the justice system. What can we do to protect citizens from synthetic media’s malicious uses? And might there be some positive applications for deepfakes in politics? Interviewees: Sa

Ever since the 2018 mid-term elections in the US, people have been sounding the alarm that a deepfake could be used to disrupt or compromise a democratic process. These fears have not yet come to pass, but recently deepfakes of Zelensky and Putin were deployed as the Ukrainian conflict escalated. How much disruption did these deepfakes cause? How convincing were they? And are they an omen of things to come? Could deepfakes enhance disinformation campaigns that already cause significant harm? Presenter and synthetic media expert Henry Ajder unpicks the most recent deepfake video and speaks to a journalist who reported on an unusual news report which used a deepfake news presenter to attempt to spread disinformation in Mali. Interviewees: Kateryna Fedotenko, Ukraine 24; Sam Gregory, Witness; Catherine Bennett, Le Monde/ France 24

What do we want the synthetic future to look like? It’s seeping into our everyday lives, but are we ready? We need a conversation about the legal, policy and ethical implications for society. Deepfakes’ murky origins are in a form of sexual image abuse that is being used against hundreds of thousands of people, most of them women. Presenter and synthetic media expert Henry Ajder speaks to journalist Sam Cole, who first reported on deepfakes in 2018. She uncovered a Reddit forum sharing pornographic videos with the faces of famous Hollywood actresses transposed on to the bodies of porn performers. Since then the technology has become much more accessible and ordinary women have become the target. Henry interviews a woman who was targeted with deepfake image abuse, and considers what we can do to protect citizens from synthetic media’s malicious uses. Interviewees: Sam Cole, Vice; Noelle Martin, campaigner; Jesselyn Cook, NBC