Seriously...

LGBTQ+ venues are closing across the UK.Research from the UCL Urban Laboratory indicates that, since 2006, the number of venues in London has fallen from 125 to 53 - with some still at risk of closure. Conversely, there's been a 144% increase in hate crimes against LGBTQ+ people, with one in five experiencing a hate crime this year.Performance artist and writer Travis Alabanza asks if the venues have served the purpose they were originally built for or if now, more than ever, LGBTQ+ people need these spaces. Speaking to Professor Ben Campkin from UCL, Travis finds out why individual venues are closing and the impact of their loss.Travis hears personal accounts of how these venues shapes individuals, and visits one of London’s oldest LGBTQ+ venues, The Black Cap, which closed in 2015. Campaigners have since held weekly vigils there, but developers want to turn the upper part into luxury apartments and say a new pub will have an "LGBT flavour". Travis also visits a venue being threatened with closure, The Eden

We hear from one of the world’s last remaining globemakers and reflect on the globe’s cultural and symbolic currency.While Google Earth may give us intricate detail of every inch of land, there’s nothing like clutching a globe to properly comprehend our place in the world. We’ve been fascinated by replicating our planet since ancient times; an art and science that’s developed as our understanding has evolved.In this programme, we step into the studio of Bellerby & Co Globemakers, one of the few companies remaining that are making globes by hand today. From their Stoke Newington warehouse, we follow the journey of a globe from design to dispatch. We hear about the challenges they face daily, from retraining their hands to querying geopolitical protocol, and the customers who’ve commissioned their unique bespoke worlds.Alongside this creative process, we visit installation artist Luke Jerram, who is touring his replica earth artwork, Gaia. We also hear from writer and cartography enthusiast Simon Garfield a

Why do you keep going back to the fridge after dinner? Fruit and vegetables, a balanced diet, low salt, low sugar and moderate exercise seem to be the silver bullets loaded into a revolver that has only ever fired blanks at the problem of Britain’s obesity crisis. More than ten years ago, the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver came to Rotherham in an effort to help combat obesity, by providing information on how to cook healthy foods. A decade on Rotherham still has a high proportion of people that are overweight or obese.In What’s Eating Rotherham, local resident Joanne Keeling, who is 28 stone and trying to lose weight, looks at the emotional side of overeating and examines the effect Jamie Oliver - and the spotlight he brought to Rotherham - can have on a town at the centre of media attention. With the help of Producer Jay Unger, Joanne soon discovers an uncomfortable truth about why some people emotionally eat. As well as questioning whether or not traditional methods of treating obesity, like prescribed exercis

In an age of certainty, of assertions without facts, and sometimes assertions with facts, Mark O’Connell makes the case for a different virtue – ambivalence. Six years on from his thought-provoking, witty and charming Four Thought, he returns to make the case for ambivalence.In those six years almost every trend in public life has been away from ambivalence rather than towards it. Populist movements from the left and the right are about certainty, and even the idea of balance often ends up sharing single, entrenched views, just neatly arrayed on either side.Yet in real life few decisions are truly clear-cut, there is often a case on both sides, and a reasonable person could easily reach a different conclusion with the same evidence. Most of us, much of the time, have complex and mutually contradictory views on issues small and large. And that's also true in public life: the arts and business, politics and the military are all properly in the realm of ambivalence, with complicated, messy and marginal decisions

David Baker, contributing editor of Wired, explores the challenges Facebook must meet and overcome in order to survive after a disastrous period which has seen the reputation and the business model of the social media giant questioned like never before.Producer: Jonathan Brunert

Lucy Cooke sets out to discover why honesty is almost certainly not the best policy, be you chicken, chimp or human being. It turns out that underhand behaviour is rife throughout the animal kingdom, and can be a winning evolutionary strategy. From sneaky squid, to cheating cuckoos, some species will resort to truly incredible levels of deception and deviousness to win that mate, or get more food. And when it comes to social animals like we humans, it turns out that lying, or at least those little white lies, may be the social glue that binds us all together.Lucy heads to the RSPB cliffs at Bempton, with Professor Tim Birkhead to discover why so many bird species appear to be such proficient deceivers, as well as visiting the very crafty ravens at The Tower of London. She speaks to psychologist Richard Wiseman about how to spot when someone is lying, and finds out whether she is any good at it. In fact, can we trust any of what she says in this documentary at all?Presenter Lucy Cooke Producer Alexandra Feache

Hannah Jane Walker argues that sensitivity is overlooked, dismissed and under-utilised, and argues that our society would be much better off if we embraced it instead.Two years ago, Hannah gave a Four Thought talk about sensitivity, and received hundreds of emails from strangers, reaching out to tell her the same things: that sensitivity in our society isn’t considered useful, and that, well, ‘that’s just the system that we live in, isn’t it?’ Since then, Hannah has felt slightly ashamed at having started such a powerful conversation without offering a solution. And so in this programme she sets out to do just that. She’ll be talking to several of her correspondents, as well as a psychologist, a neuroscientist, an economist and even a newly-minted activist for the highly sensitive.The programme focuses on highly sensitive people, but sensitivity is a spectrum and as Hannah hears more about it, she also finds out more about the benefits all of us can take from being in closer touch with our sensitive sides.Pro

Anxiety has become one of the defining characteristics of our modern age, with millions of us suffering from its various damaging effects. It comes in many shapes and sizes - status anxiety, social anxiety, and more recently Brexit and Eco-anxiety. Figures indicate a big rise in its prevalence, particularly among young people and members of minority groups. In this editon of 'Archive on Four' Professor Andrew Hussey how this new age of anxiety has come about, how it compares with previous moments of national stress, and also why he believes it to be a peculiarly modern phenomenon. Hussey makes the case that while pathological forms of anxiety can be crippling, anxiety can also bring with it positive benefits - and rather than attempt to destroy it we should attempt to make it a useful ally.Producer - Geoff Bird

What happens when top graduates work behind bars as prison officers? Lucy Ash meets young people who have forsaken lucrative careers in the City or elsewhere, for what many see as one of the world’s worst jobs. They’re part of Graduates Unlocked, a scheme which, which is trying to replicate in the prison service the success of Teach First, the programme that sends high-flyers into inner-city schools.The aim is to raise the status and reputation of prison officers, to boost recruitment and cut reoffending. It is hoped that youthful enthusiasm plus resilience and empathy could bring a much needed revolution to the criminal justice system.But faced with acute understaffing and assaults on prison officers at record levels, how much of a difference can the graduates make? Lucy meets a group of young men and women who are are sent to HMP Aylesbury, which holds the longest-sentenced young adult males in the English prison system. The youth offender institution in Buckinghamshire is "in a perpetual state of crisis" a

A tense debate is taking place in states across America. At what age should someone be allowed to marry? Currently in 48 out of 50 states a child can marry, usually with parental consent or a judge's discretion. In 17 states there's no minimum age meaning in theory a two year old could marry. But there's a campaign to change the law and raise the minimum age of marriage to 18 without exceptions across all American states. But changing the laws state by state is not as easy as one may think. There's resistance and raising the minimum age to 18 has often been blocked by legislators.Jane O'Brien speaks to child brides, the campaigners pushing to make it illegal and the people who say that the laws don't need to change.Producer: Rajeev Gupta Editor: Amanda Hancox

Hate seems to be everywhere - whether it’s white supremacists marching on the streets of America, jihadists slaughtering Christians in Sri Lanka or the massacre of Muslims in New Zealand. In this five part series, BBC journalist Allan Little unpicks the mechanics of hatred and reveals how this dangerous emotion has been whipped up and disseminated throughout history. Allan Little begins with the hatred he witnessed on the killing fields of the Bosnian War, deconstructing how Serbian leaders like Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic manipulated and weaponised history to inculcate a violent loathing that would lead to the massacre of thousands of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica. It's a hatred and an ideology that continues to inspire today's extreme far-right.Presenter: Allan Little Producer: Xavier Zapata Editor: Helen Grady

While the video games industry is big business, it's also breaking new ground in the arts.We're at a cultural tipping point for the industry. For the past decade the process of producing and distributing games has become easier so there's now a wider array of games than ever before. And games, which are the meeting point for so many art forms, are now at the forefront of creativity, pushing boundaries and making players think differently.In this programme, Alex Humphreys speaks to leading video games designers, composers and writers from around the world about their craft, and discovers the ongoing battle to have video games recognised on a par with other creative mediums.Produced by Glyn Tansley

Radio 1 Breakfast Show host Greg James digs into the BBC's archives, taking some of the week's news stories as a starting point for a trip into the past.Greg, who describes himself as a "proud radio nerd", is let loose in the vast BBC vaults, home to a treasure trove of radio and television programmes as well as some revealing documents. He says "As someone who spends too much time searching for oddities online, the opportunity to gain access to one of the greatest media resources on the planet was too good to miss."This audio journey uncovers some surprising moments. As the UK prepares for the state visit of President Trump, Greg discovers some of his first encounters with British broadcasters - and also finds that searching for 'trump' in the archives delivers an unexpected series from the early 1980s.The Elton John biopic Rocketman arrives in our cinemas this week and the BBC archives reveal that Elton's journey to global success had a very bumpy start. And following the announcement that Yorkshire-born Si

We assume the instruments we know and love today will be around forever. What if they're not? What new forms and ideas could take their place? Hannah Catherine Jones takes you into the world of the prototype, meeting instrument inventors challenging traditions and shifting boundaries. Sarah Kenchington is an artist and inventor living on a derelict farm in the Campsies, Scotland. Her curiosity for how instruments would sound if they were freed from humans led to a life-long endeavour. Twenty years later and she's still tinkering with her semi-mechanical orchestra, complete with hurdy-gurdy, 100-year old gramophone and ping pong machine. Savinder Bual is an artist, animator and now instrument-inventor. She's fascinated with the pineapple - a fruit that symbolises Britain's dark colonial history whilst being a fun, popular motif. By spinning the pineapple head, she realised its leaves could pluck strings and make music. That discovery led to her making a complete orchestra of pineapple instruments. The Mi.Mu gl

Tom Heap sets off on a guilt trip road trip to find out why people like him won't give up the things they know are destroying the planet.Tom loves his powerful car. Despite a pretty thorough knowledge of the science of climate change and the contribution that his petrol-powered Subaru makes to a warming world he doesn't want to give it up. He's not alone. Most of us have dirty pleasures we have no intention of foregoing, whether that's eating meat, buying fast fashion or flying to our favourite holiday destinations.So what will make Tom and people like him change their behaviour for the sake of the planet? Tom hits the road to find out, dropping in on people who have influenced his thinking on the environment. There's food writer and cook, Jack Monroe who has helped make veganism a pleasure rather than a pain. There's John Browne, the oil company CEO who tried to push BP, Beyond Petroleum, Christiana Figueres, the diplomat who persuaded Presidents and PMs to sign up to carbon reductions. And there's the Bisho

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. Wil

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 t

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 resolutio

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