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Misha Glenny explores the world of rare earth metals and other critical raw materials. They are vital for the future of technology and the green transition. But some see China's monopoly on production as a major global threat.In the first of five episodes, Misha finds out what the 17 rare earth metals are and hears about their weird and wonderful applications. He also discovers how China has managed to dominate the mining and refining of them.Guests: Dr Julie Klinger, Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences at the University of Delaware and author of Rare Earth Frontiers: From Terrestrial Subsoils to Lunar Landscapes Sophia Kalantzakos, Global Distinguished Professor in Environmental Studies and Public Policy at New York University and the author of China and the Geopolitics of Rare EarthsProducer: Ben Carter Editor: Hugh Levinson Sound engineer: James Beard Production coordinator: Janet Staples

A recent visit to Taiwan by Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, has heightened tensions between the US and China. America has accused China of dangerous military provocations in the region. China has warned the US not to play with fire. Add to all that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and concerns that China could be contemplating something similar in Taiwan, and it’s time to ask the question: Will the US and China go to war over Taiwan?Contributors: James Lin from the University of Washington and expert on Taiwanese history Dr Yu Jie, Senior Research Fellow on China, Chatham House

Big money, glamorous work trips abroad, and becoming your own boss - the world of door-to-door selling and chugging on the high street has been rebooted for the social media age. The industry has been around for decades, but revenues have seen a boost over the last few years and it is now worth £2.6bn a year in the UK. Some direct selling firms in the UK are jumping on the popularity of trends such as hustle culture to recruit young, ambitious people into entry-level jobs in ‘marketing’ or ‘management’ and to work with big, well-known, clients. But as Lora Jones finds out, the reality is very different. She finds keen young people who have been sold the dream, only to find themselves working 80-hour weeks - for low rates of pay. So how exactly is that possible - and what's the set-up that can reel in so many hungry young recruits? And what protection do they really have from exploitation? Reporter: Lora Jones Producers: Jim Booth, Samantha Everett, Nalini Sivathasan Researchers: Star McFarlane, Jade Thompso

The Bhopal gas tragedy was the world's 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 5. The Fatal Night As the city slept on the night of the 2nd December 1984, a huge leak of lethal methyl isocyanate escaped from the Bhopal Union Carbide chemical plant. Keswani realises his worst fears have come to pass. All his warnings have been ignored and now people are

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 4. Bhopal on the Brink of Disaster Keswani decides he must get the attention of law makers and show them his evidence. His safety concerns are raised in the State Assembly but the labour minister at the time bats them away giving Keswani the sense that Union Carbide is unimpe

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 3. Friendly Business The more Keswani investigates the more he finds a cosy relationship between Union Carbide and local politicians and journalists. He's determined to expose the nepotism he uncovers but yet again, his written warning to the city falls on deaf ears. His frie

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 2. The Smell of Grass Keswani digs deeper and discovers that a town planning order to relocate the chemical plant to an industrial zone, away from densely populated areas, was ignored. Union leaders smuggle him into the factory where he sees first hand the lack of safety cont

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. Shortly

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 the

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?

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