Explore every episode of the podcast Understand

In the final episode of Michael Rosen’s series on masculinity and manhood, can comedian and podcaster Vittorio Angelone, following his tumultuous 20s, find his way to being a man that he actually likes. At the start of his 20s, Vittorio found himself adrift in London, unsure of who he was or who he wanted to be. He felt paralysed by the many conflicting models of maleness competing for his attention online – all of them just different costumes he was trying on. How will he find his own path?

Presenter: Michael Rosen Producer: Rich Power Executive Producer: Dave Anderson Sound Mixer: Dan King Editor: Kirsten Lass Production Manager: Emily Duffy Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

A Loftus Media Production for BBC Radio 4

What’s it like to be a man in your 30s? In Episode 6 of Michael Rosen’s series about masculinity and manhood, filmmaker and former Premier League footballer Marvin Sordell puts darkness behind him to write a new chapter in his life. By the time he was in his 20s, Marvin had clawed his way to the top level of football, playing in the Premier League and representing his country. But behind the scenes, he was battling a severe mental health crisis brought on by the pressure of the game and the hypermasculine culture that prevented him from sharing his struggles. After taking the brave decision to leave his lucrative career behind, Marvin is rebuilding himself as a man in his 30s.

Presenter: Michael Rosen Producer: Rich Power Executive Producer: Dave Anderson Sound Mixer: Dan King Editor: Kirsten Lass Production Manager: Emily Duffy Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

A Loftus Media Production for BBC Radio 4

What’s it like to be a man in your 40s? In Episode 5 of Michael Rosen’s series about masculinity and manhood, singer and author Lias Saoudi reflects on his transition from chaos to fatherhood. As the lead singer of the notoriously hedonistic band Fat White Family, Lias made a career out of chaos. But after a revelation during the covid lockdown, he makes a handbrake turn, cleaning up his life and having a baby with his best friend. But as the realities of life as a new father bite, the old instincts bubble up. How will Lias respond to his new responsibilities?

Presenter: Michael Rosen Producer: Rich Power Executive Producer: Dave Anderson Sound Mixer: Dan King Editor: Kirsten Lass Production Manager: Emily Duffy Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

A Loftus Media Production for BBC Radio 4

What’s it like to be a man in your 50s? In Episode 4 of Michael Rosen’s series about manhood and masculinity, journalist, activist and writer Matthew Todd talks about his experience. Matthew grew up feeling completely alienated from traditional masculinity. As a young gay man growing up during the HIV crisis of the 1980s, he felt the homophobia of mainstream culture deeply and developed a fear of straight men. But after decades of mental health problems and alcohol addiction, he finally was able to address his trauma. And now has found a new sense of himself as a man.

Presenter: Michael Rosen Producer: Rich Power Executive Producer: Dave Anderson Sound Mixer: Dan King Editor: Kirsten Lass Production Manager: Emily Duffy Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

A Loftus Media Production for BBC Radio 4

What’s it like being a man in your 60s? In Episode 3 of Michael Rosen’s series about manhood and masculinity, comedian and writer David Baddiel shares his experience. Like all of us, David has always ‘known’ he was going to die, but it’s only now that he truly believes it. As he considers what sort of man he wants to be in his old age and what mark he’ll leave on the world, he realises it’s family that comes above everything else. But what does being a ‘father’ really mean?

Presenter: Michael Rosen Producer: Rich Power Executive Producer: Dave Anderson Sound Mixer: Dan King Editor: Kirsten Lass Production Manager: Emily Duffy Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

A Loftus Media Production for BBC Radio 4

What is it like being a man in your 70s? In Episode 2 of Michael Rosen’s series about manhood and masculinity, celebrated author and poet Colm Tóibín shares how he feels less and less sexual energy as he ages, especially after surviving testicular cancer. But he’s far from depressed about it. In fact, he’s busy putting that energy to other uses. In this episode, Colm speaks to the visceral realities of aging, but also the new opportunities for physical and creative self-discovery.

Presenter: Michael Rosen Producer: Rich Power Executive Producer: Dave Anderson Sound Mixer: Dan King Editor: Kirsten Lass Production Manager: Emily Duffy Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

A Loftus Media Production for BBC Radio 4

Michael Palin doesn’t feel like a ‘man’ anymore in his 80s. But what does that mean and does it bring a new freedom? In conversation with Michael Rosen – who has recently turned 80 himself – Palin reflects on the fading of those competitive instincts that motivated him as a young star of Monty Python. And how he has learned to embrace an entirely ‘unmale’ worldview in his later years. The two Michaels discuss how, as we age, the things that feel so important to many young men are put into stark perspective by grief. Just as he entered his 80s, Palin lost Helen, his wife of 60 years. Together they consider how to hold onto the sense of who we are in the face of such world-shaking blows.

Presenter: Michael Rosen Producer: Rich Power Executive Producer: Dave Anderson Sound Mixer: Dan King Editor: Kirsten Lass Production Manager: Emily Duffy Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

A Loftus Media Production for BBC Radio 4

What does being a ‘man’ really mean? From Michael Palin in his 80s to comedian Vittorio Angelone, just turned 30, seven men share their deeply personal experiences of manhood.

After almost dying of covid-19, our host and guide Michael Rosen has just reached the ripe old age of 80. It’s got him thinking about what kind of man he’s been so far across his long life, and what that label even means to him anyway.

Because today we’re surrounded by many conflicting ideals of manhood. Men should be strong and silent, but also in touch with their emotions. They should be aggressive and competitive, while shielding those weaker than them from harm. They should be radiating sex appeal, while setting an example as a family man. The older Michael gets, the more confusing he finds it.

So in this series he’s putting aside all the notions of what a man ‘should’ be, to look at the real thing. The awkward thing. The funny thing. The tender thing we don’t quite know how to talk about.

Michael speaks to seven men, each in a different decade of life, from wise elders Michael Palin and author Colm Tóibín, to sprightly middle-aged youngsters comedian David Baddiel and journalist Matthew Todd, right down to veritable toddlers - singer Lias Saoudi, former footballer Marvin Sordell, and comedian Vittorio Angelone.

Presenter: Michael Rosen Producer: Rich Power Executive Producer: Dave Anderson Sound Mixer: Dan King Editor: Kirsten Lass Production Manager: Emily Duffy Commissioning Editor for BBC Radio 4: Dan Clarke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4

In this episode, Ros Atkins asks whether AI is solving our ‘value crisis’, or making it worse.

He takes the optimistic case seriously - that AI could deepen our relationship with the world around us, unlock new forms of creativity, strengthen human intimacy, and help us solve big problems.

Then he tests each claim. If AI brings us closer to each other, what happens when that closeness is manufactured rather than real? If it can make us more creative, what happens when it's built on other people's work, taken without payment or consent? If it can solve our biggest problems, who benefits when the technology itself is owned by a handful of companies? And if it does our thinking for us, what becomes of the expertise we spent years building?

Featuring economist Daniel Susskind, futurist Amy Webb, businesswoman Alex Mahon, New Yorker writer Kyle Chayka, writer John Lanchester, research adviser Roberta Pierfederici, musician Holly Herndon, Baroness Beeban Kidron, digital anthropologist Caia Hegel and sociologist Sherry Turkle.

A Tempo & Talker production for BBC Radio 4

Technology is transforming what we value at breakneck speed. But is this really new?

In this episode, Ros Atkins looks to four moments when earlier technologies forced a reckoning with value: the printing press, which flooded the world with words and upended who got to claim knowledge and authority; the Luddite rebellion, a skilled workforce fighting not technology itself but their own devaluation by it; the scandalous arrival of photography in Victorian England, when images could suddenly be captured, copied and faked; and the dot-com boom and bust of the 1990s, when a generation learned how quickly value can be invented, and lost.

Featuring historian Ada Palmer, technology reporter Brian Merchant, cultural historian Tiffany Jenkins and New Yorker journalist John Cassidy.

A Tempo & Talker production for BBC Radio 4

Ros Atkins thinks technology is dramatically shifting what we value in the worlds of friendship, culture, finance and work.

In this episode, he sets out to test whether that shift amounts to a crisis - or something else.

He examines how technology has made our relationships more frictionless, and perhaps thinner as a result; whether an algorithm can tell the difference between what's good and what merely holds our attention; how in the world of finance, price has come loose from worth altogether; and how in the world of work, some of us are wondering how long our value will hold.

Featuring contributions from philosopher C. Thi Nguyen, sociologist Sherry Turkle, journalist and broadcaster Zing Tsjeng, the New Yorker's Kyle Chayka, writer John Lanchester, Financial Times columnist Jemima Kelly, translator Ruth Martin, software engineer Andrew Hamilton and economist Daniel Susskind.

A Tempo & Talker production for BBC Radio 4

Technology is changing our lives at breakneck speed. But what is it doing to what we value?

From friendship and culture to finance and work, Ros Atkins explores how technology is reshaping our ideas of worth. Has making our relationships more frictionless also made them thinner? Can an algorithm tell the difference between what's good and what simply holds our attention? What happens when price comes unstuck from value, or when the technology that makes us more productive also makes our own skills redundant?

Ros looks to previous technological revolutions for clues, from the arrival of the printing press and the Luddite rebellion to the invention of photography and the dot-com crash. And as AI promises to transform everything from creativity and intimacy to science and work, he asks whether this really amounts to a crisis, and whether AI will resolve it, or make it worse.

Producer: Nadia Mehdi

A Tempo+Talker production for BBC Radio 4

Across three episodes, author and mental health academic Nathan Filer explores neurodivergence: what it means, how children live with it, and how adults navigate its impact in work, relationships and everyday life.

Episode three turns to adulthood, asking what it means to receive a diagnosis of autism or ADHD later in life, and why increasing numbers of people are now seeking assessment. Nathan hears from clinicians managing huge waiting lists, alongside adults reflecting on how a diagnosis has shaped their understanding of themselves and their lives.

Through lived experience and expert insight, the programme asks what it would take for more neurodivergent adults to be better understood, better supported and better able to flourish.

Featuring contributions from Pete Wharmby, occuptional therapist Charlie Hobbs, Ian Ensum and Sarah Zohadi from the Bristol Autism Spectrum Service, peer mentor Ben, neurodiversity coach Emma Wee, Matthew Punter; founder of Eden, and Annie and Patricia from Project Art Works in Hastings.

Writer and presenter: Nathan Filer Producer: Eliza Lomas Assistant Producer: Robbie Wojciechowski Editor: Chris Ledgard Series Development: Nathan Filer, Eliza Lomas, Robbie Wojciechowski

Across three episodes, author and mental health academic Nathan Filer explores neurodivergence: what it means, how children live with it, and how adults navigate its impact in work, relationships and everyday life.

Episode two asks what it means to grow up neurodivergent in a school system under strain. For some children, school can be a place of learning, friendship and support. For others, it can become overwhelming: a world of sensory overload, social confusion, anxiety, burnout and absence.

Through the experiences of children, parents, educators and clinicians, the programme considers what happens when a child is labelled difficult, disruptive or unable to cope – and what changes when adults begin to see distress differently.

From autism and ADHD to school avoidance, SEND provision, sensory integration and the pressure on families and teachers, it asks how education might better meet children where they are.

Featuring contributions from Matthew Punter, Labeebah Islaam, SENDcos Georgina Smith and Stewart Dudgeon, clinical psychologist Naomi Fisher and Occupational Therapist Charlie Hobbs.

Writer and presenter: Nathan Filer Producer: Eliza Lomas Assistant Producer: Robbie Wojciechowski Editor: Chris Ledgard Series Development: Nathan Filer, Eliza Lomas, Robbie Wojciechowski

Author and mental health academic Nathan Filer explores neurodivergence: what it means, how children live with it, and how adults navigate its impact in work, relationships and everyday life.

Episode one begins with the language of difference: as terms like neurodivergent and neurotypical have moved from activist and specialist spaces into everyday life, they have brought comfort, identity and community, but also confusion.

Through lived experience and expert insight, the programme travels from autism and ADHD to self-diagnosis, TikTok, rejection sensitivity and the limits of labels.

It asks not only what we call one another, but how we listen, understand and care.

Featuring contributions from Labeebah Islaam, academic psychologist Lucy Foulkes, clinical psychologist Naomi Fisher and Alex Partridge, author of Why Does Everybody Hate Me? Living and Loving with Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria.

Writer and presenter: Nathan Filer Producer: Eliza Lomas Assistant Producer: Robbie Wojciechowski Editor: Chris Ledgard Series Development: Nathan Filer, Eliza Lomas, Robbie Wojciechowski

Nathan Filer explores the complex and shifting terrain of neurodiversity, and what it means to be different. From neurodivergence in childhood, to navigating adulthood.

Facing climate fatigue and denial, a backlash against green policy, and increasingly urgent warnings from scientists, the green movement is shifting into a new era.

Two environmentally-minded politicians spell out their opposing visions for where the movement should go next.

Zack Polanski is the leader of the Green Party, preaching a message of ‘eco-populism’. John Gummer is a Conservative Lord and former head of the Climate Change Committee; he thinks the most powerful tool to make change is the free market.

What is the future of the green movement?

Presenter: Justin Rowlatt Series Producer: Ellie House Editor: Matt Willis Sound Design and Mix: James Beard Production Coordinators: Maria Ogundele, Brenda Brown, Sabine Schereck Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

Archive: Doechii at Glastonbury, Glastonbury and Doechii filmed by BBC, 28/6/2025 Green Party Hustings at Glastonbury Speakers Forum, The Green Gathering, filmed by Zoe Broughton, 8/7/2025 Margaret Thatcher speech to the United Nations General Assembly, C-SPAN, 8/11/1989

Just Stop Oil is “hanging up the hi vis” after three years of throwing soup at paintings, interrupting theatre performances, and blocking roads. It’s 2025. They’ve been racking up arrests - and opponents - and now, the UK government has passed a string of new laws cracking down on disruptive protest.

They say they’ve achieved their aims - a ban on new oil and gas licenses - but were they policed to extinction? With their hardcore campaigning for the climate, did these activists prompt a change in law that made all green activism harder?

Presenter: Justin Rowlatt Producer: Alix Pickles Series Producer: Ellie House Editor: Matt Willis Sound Design and Mix: James Beard Production Coordinators: Maria Ogundele, Brenda Brown, Sabine Schereck Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

Archive: ‘Just Stop Oil is Hanging up the Hi Vis’, Just Stop Oil, 27/3/2025 Just Stop Oil Louise M25 protest, Just Stop Oil, 7/11/2022 Lord Deben on Just Stop Oil, ITV Robert Peston, 5/7/2023 Rupert Read talking about The Climate Majority Project, Some Dare Call It Conspiracy podcast, 24/4/2024

There are competing protests on either side of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany. It’s 2023, on the eve of the final shutdown of the country's last three remaining nuclear power plants.

On one side, anti-nuclear campaigners and politicians celebrate their victory. This is a new, clean, dawn for the German power grid, they say.

On the other side of the gate, a small but vocal group of pro-nuclear greens condemn what they believe is a grave mistake. And as other countries pledge to increase their nuclear energy capacities, this group is playing the long game. They believe they may have lost the battle here in Germany, but they will win the war.

How did the green-on-green struggle over the German energy system go nuclear?

Presenter: Justin Rowlatt Producer: Rachel Naylor Series Producer: Ellie House Editor: Matt Willis Sound Design and Mix: James Beard Production Coordinators: Maria Ogundele, Brenda Brown, Sabine Schereck Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

Archive: Saubere Energien kämpfen gegen schmutzige, Nuklearia, 13/5/2023 Footage of Fridays For Future protest in Berlin, @digitalwerber and Nuklearia, 24/9/2021

Mountain gorillas are thriving in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. The formerly ‘critically endangered’ population has blossomed, hailed around the world as a conservation success story.

But to save the gorillas, humans were shut out of the forest. An indigenous community who for centuries called this area their ancestral homeland was evicted - they say, illegally. And now they are fighting to go back.

 This struggle over land, resources, and who has a voice in conservation will go all the way to Uganda's highest court.

Presenter: Justin Rowlatt Series Producer: Ellie House Editor: Matt Willis Sound Design and Mix: James Beard Production Coordinators: Maria Ogundele, Brenda Brown, Sabine Schereck Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

“Helicopter” - an activist yells. Then gun-wielding agents in balaclavas abseil down, onto the Greenpeace ship, to tow it to Russia.

This is the story of a campaign against oil drilling in the arctic that takes a dangerous turn. And the debate it sparks within the movement - should the organisers have better anticipated the risks of their campaign? Who is responsible for activists’ safety?

Presenter: Justin Rowlatt Producer: Alix Pickles Series Producer: Ellie House Editor: Matt Willis Sound Design and Mix: James Beard Production Coordinators: Maria Ogundele, Brenda Brown, Sabine Schereck Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

Archive: Prirazlomnaya Gazprom Oil Rig Protest in the Pechora Sea, Russian Investigative Committee, 18/9/2013 Other archive footage provided by Greenpeace

Hundreds of world leaders are gathered in Copenhagen, 2009, with high hopes of securing a historic climate deal. And the Chinese premier has gone missing. US President Obama rushes through the corridors of the conference centre - on a mission to gatecrash China’s secret rendez-vous with its allies.

This is just the final day of a two-week conference that has felt more like a thriller movie than an exercise in diplomacy.

How did one global conference expose the faultlines in international climate collaboration that are still seen today?

Presenter: Justin Rowlatt Producer: Rachel Naylor Series Producer: Ellie House Editor: Matt Willis Sound Design and Mix: James Beard Production Coordinators: Maria Ogundele, Brenda Brown, Sabine Schereck Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

A pair of radical activists drives east, from the West Coast of the US to a quaint skiing town in Colorado. They’ve watched as local environmental groups tried - and failed - to prevent the expansion of a ski resort into pristine forest land. And they’ve had enough. Their plan? To burn the resort down.

This group will go on be named the number one domestic terror threat in the United States. And the green movement is split about whether their actions went too far.

Presenter: Justin Rowlatt Series Producer: Ellie House Editor: Matt Willis Sound Design and Mix: James Beard Production Coordinators: Maria Ogundele, Brenda Brown, Sabine Schereck Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

It’s the 1990s - and in a tiny office in Charing Cross, a group of big thinkers is publishing some radical ideas…and about to have a very public falling out.

This is the story of an influential green magazine and the man who created it: Teddy Goldsmith. He believed the cause was so grave it stood outside of left-right politics. Not everyone agreed.

Presenter: Justin Rowlatt Producer: Rachel Naylor Series Producer: Ellie House Editor: Matt Willis Sound Design and Mix: James Beard Production Coordinators: Maria Ogundele, Brenda Brown, Sabine Schereck Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

Archive: Margaret Thatcher speech to the United Nations General Assembly, C-SPAN, 8/11/1989

Somewhere in the North Pacific, 1971. A ragbag crew of environmentalist hippies sets sail on a rickety fishing boat in a last ditch effort to stop a nuclear weapons test. Their tumultuous voyage would birth the modern green movement. The men on board wanted to save the world, but spent much of their time at each other’s throats.

Presenter: Justin Rowlatt Producer: Rachel Naylor Series Producer: Ellie House Editor: Matt Willis Sound Design and Mix: James Beard Production Coordinators: Maria Ogundele, Brenda Brown, Sabine Schereck Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

Archive: Irving Stowe announcing Greenpeace concert, provided by Robert Stowe ‘The birth of Greenpeace’, CBC Radio Canada, 11/10/1971 Argument on Greenpeace boat, AM925 , City of Vancouver Archives

We follow Extinction Rebellion on one of its first ever actions. Before the rebels shut down London, before they became a household name, they occupied an office building in Islington. Their target? Not a fossil fuel company or government, but Greenpeace - perhaps the world’s most high profile environmental campaign group.

Presenter: Justin Rowlatt Series Producer: Ellie House Editor: Matt Willis Sound Design and Mix: James Beard Production Coordinators: Maria Ogundele, Brenda Brown, Sabine Schereck Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

Archive: ‘Extinction Rebellion occupy Greenpeace HQ’, Real Media, 18/10/2018 ‘LONDON Walk TOUR - Extinction REBELLION Protest PINK BOAT at Oxford Circus - England’, Walking Tour, Walking Tour, 16/4/2019

The modern green movement has been shaped not only by protest, but by conflict within the ranks.

Shared ideas are forged through friction - battles over tactics, solutions, or who gets a voice.

Justin Rowlatt goes to the heart of these battles - to learn about these dramatic moments from the people who were there. Friends, or sometimes enemies, hashing out big ideas that help define what it means to be green.

Could the water industry be nationalised? Should the water industry be nationalised? And who will bear the ultimate costs for cleaning up our rivers?

Reported and presented by Kate Lamble Series Producer: Elle Scott Sound Design: Andy Fell Researchers: Isaac Fisher and Amy Woods Production Coordinator: Juliette Harvey Production Manager: Debbie Waddell Executive Producer: Joe Kent Head of Audio of Audio (BBC Studios): Richard Knight Assistant Commissioner: Chris Walsh-Heron Commissioning Executive: Tracy Williams Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

Rinsed is a BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4

As Thames Water’s finances deteriorate, “vultures” circle.

Reported and presented by Kate Lamble Producer: Elle Scott Sound Design: Andy Fell Executive Producer: Joe Kent Commissioning Executive: Tracy Williams Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

Rinsed is a BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4

New legislation promises to slash the sewage released into rivers, but will it become law?

Reported and presented by Kate Lamble Producer: Elle Scott Sound Design: Andy Fell Executive Producer: Joe Kent Commissioning Executive: Tracy Williams Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

Rinsed is a BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4

The data scientist, the ex-detective and the politician trying to clean up our rivers.

Reported and presented by Kate Lamble Producer: Elle Scott Sound Design: Andy Fell Executive Producer: Joe Kent Commissioning Executive: Tracy Williams Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

Rinsed is a BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4

The view from inside the Environment Agency, the body which enforces environmental standards for water companies in England.

Reported and presented by Kate Lamble Producer: Elle Scott Sound Design: Andy Fell Executive Producer: Joe Kent Commissioning Executive: Tracy Williams Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

Rinsed is a BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4

Rivers work when everything is in balance, but what happens when things are thrown off course?

Peter Hammond draws on his past as an academic specialising in machine learning to spot a problem everyone else has missed and expose what he believes is a national scandal.

We can all look the same picture, but what you make of it depends on who you are. Kate Lamble attempts to untangle the financial engineering that underpins parts of the water industry.

Reported and presented by Kate Lamble Producer: Elle Scott Sound Design: Andy Fell Executive Producer: Joe Kent Commissioning Executive: Tracy Williams Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

Rinsed is a BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4

The 'Dossier of Despair' that reveals what's happening to some of Britain’s rivers.

A retired police detective, a former machine learning academic, an ex-water industry insider and their neighbours join forces to dig for data. But will anyone listen to the campaigners calls for change?

Reported and presented by Kate Lamble Producer: Elle Scott Sound Design: Andy Fell Executive Producer: Joe Kent Commissioning Executive: Tracy Willimas Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

Rinsed is a BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4

The centuries old battle between public good and private profit that’s still being fought today.

Kate Lamble holds her nose and plunges into the long history of the water industry and some of the many conflicts that have shaped it.

Reported and presented by Kate Lamble Producer: Elle Scott Sound Design: Andy Fell Executive Producer: Joe Kent Commissioning Executive: Tracy Williams Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

Rinsed is a BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4

After watching their local river grow murky and lifeless, two retired neighbours decide to take on the water industry and its regulators. The unlikely sleuths begin a ten-year battle to clean up our rivers.

On the banks of the River Windrush in Oxfordshire, Kate Lamble meets campaigners Ash Smith and Peter Hammond

Reported and presented by Kate Lamble Producer: Elle Scott Sound Design: Andy Fell Executive Producer: Joe Kent Commissioning Executive: Tracy Williams Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

Rinsed is a BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4

This is the story of a sewage scandal. How a centuries old battle between public good and private profit created an almighty stink. And who pays to clean it up.

Learning to read permanently alters your brain. It changes the emotions you experience and the way you relate to others. When a society learns to read the consequences are dramatic: wars break out, revolutions erupt and new political systems spring into being. Reading made us who we are. With time spent reading - and even reading ability - starting to nosedive, Times writer James Marriott explores how reading changed humanity, and what might happen if we stop.

In this episode James digs into the question of whether literacy led to the invention of democracy, asks whether reading helps us proof ourselves against misinformation, and asks what happens to our politics if reading dies out?

Contributors include - Jung Chang, author - Robert Darnton, historian - Steven Pinker, professor of psychology at Harvard University - Naomi Alderman, writer and presenter - John Burn-Murdoch, chief data reporter for the Financial Times - Nick Harris, ideas editor at the New Statesman - Professor Maryanne Wolf, Director of the Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice at UCLA

Producer - Beth Sagar-Fenton Editors - Chris Ledgard & Alasdair Cross

Reading seems an unremarkable skill. When we say something is as “easy as ABC”, we mean it is very easy indeed. In fact, learning to read has dramatic and irreversible consequences for people and for societies. Learning to read permanently alters your brain. It changes the emotions you experience and the way you relate to others. When a society learns to read the consequences are dramatic: wars break out, revolutions erupt and new political systems spring into being. Reading made us who we are. With time spent reading - and even reading ability - starting to nosedive, Times writer James Marriott explores how reading changed humanity, and what might happen if we stop.

In this programme, James asks whether the spread of novel reading in the 18th century caused a moral revolution, whether a book played a role in the abolition of slavery, and whether the rise of reading, a solitary and slightly lonely activity, was one of the factors setting us on the path to our atomized and isolated modern society.

Contributions from:

- Jung Chang, author - Steven Pinker, professor of psychology at Harvard University - Sarah Maxwell, founder of Saucy Books - Robert Darnton, historian - Naomi Alderman, writer and presenter - Joseph Henrich, professor of anthropology at Harvard University - Maryanne Wolf, professor and Director of the Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice at UCLA

Producer - Beth Sagar-Fenton Editor - Chris Ledgard

Reading seems an unremarkable skill. After all, everyone can read. Even small children. When we say something is as “easy as ABC”, we mean it is very easy indeed. In fact, learning to read has dramatic and irreversible consequences for people and for societies. Learning to read permanently alters your brain. It changes the emotions you experience and the way you relate to others. When a society learns to read the consequences are dramatic: wars break out, revolutions erupt and new political systems spring into being. Reading made us who we are. For centuries people have been reading more and more. Recently the trend has gone into reverse. The number of people who pick up a book has been falling steadily for twenty years. Now half of adults no longer read regularly. How will this change us?

Over three episodes, Times writer James Marriott explores how reading made us, and what might happen if we stop.

In this first programme, James finds out how unnatural the process of reading is, and the complex alchemy our brains create to make words on the page make sense to us, and asks what we gain - and lose - when we learn to read.

Guests include:

- Professor Maryanne Wolf, Director of the Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice at UCLA - John Burn-Murdoch, chief data reporter for the Financial Times - Naomi Alderman, writer and presenter - Dr Joseph Henrich, Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University

Producer - Beth Sagar-Fenton Editor - Chris Ledgard

The story of how reading made us and what might happen if we stop - with James Marriott.

As James Naughtie concludes his series about the ideas tying America's birth 250 years ago to the United States today, he examines freedom, asking whose freedom, and what kind?

He begins in Gettysburg, attending a re-enactment on the battlefield made famous by an address from President Abraham Lincoln in which he asked whether the United States "could long endure". That question is being asked again now, as Americans experience profound disagreements over many of the ideas in this series - economic opportunity, justice, freedom; even what it means to be an American. As he hears, American history itself has become a battlefield. And so speaking to historians with different perspectives, and senior political leaders from both parties, James assesses how dangerous this moment is for United States.

Producer: Giles Edwards

James Naughtie continues his look at the ideas tying America's founding to the modern United States, asking how 'justice' has been understood by different generations of Americans.

In this third episode, James travels to Alabama in the American South, to understand how the Civil Rights movement sought to connect American reality with the promises in its founding documents. He hears from people in Texas on both sides of the debate about abortion, revealing how a movement built to oppose abortion rights brought millions of Christians into politics and dramatically shifted the politics of America's highest court. And in Midwestern Wisconsin, he hears how political division has come to the administration of justice itself.

Producer: Giles Edwards

James Naughtie continues his look at the ideas tying America's founding to the modern United States, as he looks at what it means to be an American.

In Chicago, he joins the Columbus Day parade - an exuberant celebration of Italian-American identity - and hears about the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to northern cities like Chicago. In Wisconsin, he visits the birthplace of the Republican Party, and in Ohio the Governor shows him the spot where Abraham Lincoln heard he had been formally confirmed as President-Elect. James considers how the social movements of the 1960s moved the centre of gravity of American politics from economic to social issues, with all that meant for political polarisation.

Producer: Giles Edwards

James Naughtie examines the ideas tying America's founding to the modern United States.

In this major new series marking America's 250th anniversary, James travels through time and across the landscape to discover how the Declaration of Independence embedded the idea of a country founded on what its authors described as 'self-evident' truths – that everyone’s inalienable rights included ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’

In this first episode James begins with the 'pursuit of happiness' – the American search for opportunity. He begins on the site of the original gold rush in northern California, before journeying to farms and factories; small towns and big cities across the American Midwest. As he does, he reveals how from Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, to President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, Americans have always seen the connection between economic and democratic freedom - the ability to choose their own fates, and the fate of the country.

Producer: Giles Edwards.

Justin Webb looks back at the five big US foreign policy shifts from the Monroe Doctrine to Donald Trump. Over five episodes he and his guests look at how America’s approach to the world has constantly changed over time. This may help answer a really big question - how radical is the way Donald Trump deals with the world? Is he really an outlier in US history? Or do his actions reflect the changing patterns of American power?

In this episode Justin discusses the Bush Doctrine with Melvyn Leffler, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Virginia and Bronwen Maddox, Director of the London based think-tank, Chatham House.

Presenter: Justin Webb Producers: Caroline Bayley and Kirsteen Knight Researcher: Helena Warwick-Cross Editor: Jon Bithrey Sound engineer: Tom Brignell

Credit: Bush’s Graduation Speech at West Point courtesy of the George W. Bush Presidential Library

Justin Webb looks back at the five big US foreign policy shifts from the Monroe Doctrine to Donald Trump. Over five episodes he and his guests look at how America’s approach to the world has constantly changed over time. This may help answer a really big question - how radical is the way Donald Trump deals with the world? Is he really an outlier in US history? Or do his actions reflect the changing patterns of American power?

In this episode Justin discusses the Reagan Doctrine with Kathleen Burk, Emeritus Professor in Modern and Contemporary History at University College London and Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King's College London.

Presenter: Justin Webb Producers: Caroline Bayley and Kirsteen Knight Researcher: Helena Warwick-Cross Editor: Jon Bithrey Sound engineer: Tom Brignell

Credit: Reagan’s State of the Union Address courtesy of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library

Justin Webb looks back at the five big US foreign policy shifts from the Monroe Doctrine to Donald Trump. Over five episodes he and his guests look at how America’s approach to the world has constantly changed over time. This may help answer a really big question - how radical is the way Donald Trump deals with the world? Is he really an outlier in US history? Or do his actions reflect the changing patterns of American power?

In this episode Justin discusses the Nixon Doctrine with Professor Douglas Brinkley, who's the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University in Texas.

Presenter: Justin Webb Producers: Caroline Bayley and Kirsteen Knight Researcher: Helena Warwick-Cross Editor: Jon Bithrey Sound engineer: Dave O'Neill

Credit: Nixon’s Silent Majority Speech/Richard Nixon Foundation

Justin Webb looks back at the five big US foreign policy shifts from the Monroe Doctrine to Donald Trump. Over five episodes he and his guests look at how America’s approach to the world has constantly changed over time. This may help answer a really big question - how radical is the way Donald Trump deals with the world? Is he really an outlier in US history? Or do his actions reflect the changing patterns of American power?

In this episode Justin discusses The Truman Doctrine with Jay Sexton, Professor of History and Director of the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy at the University of Missouri and Barbara Perry, Professor in Presidential Studies at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

Presenter: Justin Webb Producers: Caroline Bayley and Kirsteen Knight Researcher: Helena Warwick-Cross Editor: Jon Bithrey Sound engineer: Tom Brignell

Credit: Truman's address courtesy of the Harry S Truman Library and Columbia Broadcasting System.