In February 2024, the NHS dental crisis hit the headlines as hundreds of people queued outside a dental practice in Bristol to register as NHS patients. It was the latest sign of the severity of the national shortage of NHS dentists. The Nuffield Trust have declared that NHS dentistry faces its 'most perilous point' in 75-year history and the government have responded pledging to improve access and funding for dentistry. At the centre of this crisis are the dentists who serve our communities....

What do Artificial Intelligence and digital technology mean for actors and their relationship with audiences? Leading acting coach Geoffrey Colman, who has spent his working life on the sets of Hollywood movies, in theatrical rehearsal spaces, and teaching in the UK's most prestigious classrooms, wants to find out. AI, he says, may represent the most profound change to the acting business since the move from silent films to talkies. But does it, and if so how are actors dealing with it? What...

Richard King explores the past and present of the second homes debate in Wales, revisiting the story of Meibion Glyndwr – active terrorists on British soil for almost 15 years. The proliferation of second homes is a problem in many parts of the UK. They contribute to pushing up house prices, often in low-income areas, effectively locking young people out of the housing market. It’s a problem with different characteristics in different places. In Wales it is compounded by the fate of...

It's 25 years since London suffered three vicious nail bomb attacks - holdalls filled with 4-inch nails and hand-made explosives planted in Brixton market, Brick Lane and in the bar of the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho, intended to cause damage to those in the immediate vicinity and to the notion of a tolerant, diverse capital city. The attacks are recorded in photographs shared at the time by the press - of London streets strewn with damaged buildings and injured people, an x-ray of a toddler...

How many medicines can you think of created for just one person? The likelihood is none - which is why the world hasn’t heard of milasen yet. But its creation, and the efforts behind it, could build a pathway towards some of the greatest advances in genomic medicine, and a new initiative being trialled in Britain has a huge role to play in making this happen. At the age of seven, Mila Makovec became the first person in the world to be treated with a medicine created just for her. A...

Take a trip around the supermarket and you'll see shelves of products claiming to be 'high in protein'. Scroll through your social media and you'll find beautiful, sculpted people offering recipes and ideas for packing more protein into your diet. Science presenters Dr Julia Ravey and Dr Ella Hubber have noticed this too. They wanted to unpick the protein puzzle to find out what it does in our bodies and how much we really need. Can this macronutrient really help us lose weight, get fit and...

Victoria Uwonkunda makes an emotional journey back to Rwanda, where she grew up. It’s the first time she’s visited since the age of 12, when she fled the 1994 genocide with her family. Victoria retraces her journey to safety out of the capital Kigali, to the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. Along the way Victoria speaks to survivors of the violence – both victims and perpetrators – to find out how the country is healing, through reconciliation and forgiveness. Victoria meets...

One baffling online scam – involving a £138 dehumidifier – and a humiliated BBC producer who will not rest until she has a return address for it. January 2024. Polly Weston’s toddler has a terrible cough, no one in the house is getting any sleep, and, as is traditional for Bristol Victorian Terraces, her house has a lot of damp patches. So she decides to invest in a dehumidifier. A very convincing review online, by a real consumer journalist called Luke Edwards, recommends one company. The...

To mark the centenary of the Greenwich Time Signal on the BBC, Paddy O'Connell asks the unaskable - Do We Still Need the Pips? First broadcast at 9.30pm on Feb the 5th 1924, the six pips of the Greenwich Time Signal have become synonymous with Radio 4. But today digital broadcasting has rendered this time signal delayed and inaccurate. Plus their immovable presence can cause accidents on-air, and no-one wants to crash the Pips. So after 100 years, should Radio 4 just get rid of them? What is...

Following on from the success of Green Inc and with the same bold, provocative and entirely un-switchoffable energy, writer, comedian and satirist Heydon Prowse turns his tongue-in-cheek attention corporate Wokewashing. From a razor company talking about #MeToo to an LGBT sandwich and a burger chain tackling depression, writer and satirist Heydon Prowse unpacks how some of the world's biggest corporations are falling over themselves to appear socially conscious, progressive. And he lifts the...

Since it gained Independence in 1956 Sudan has had at least 2 major civil wars. The last one resulted in Southern Sudan becoming an Independent state in 2011. The latest civil war broke out last April between two rival factions of the military government, the Sudanese Army Force (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF. Thousands have been killed and the country is on the verge of a humanitarian crisis. Why aren't we hearing more about it? James Copnall, former BBC Sudan Correspondent finds...

Four years ago, one of America’s most progressive states passed the country’s boldest approach to drug policy reform yet. Measure 110 came after a spirited campaign targeting the country’s failed war on drugs. The new law decriminalised possession of all illicit substances, including heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine . The reformers accurately predicted that the new law would result in fewer people of colour being locked up, but it also coincided with the new spread of the deadly drug...

A century ago, businessmen from around the world gathered in Geneva, Switzerland, to form a shadowy international organisation called the Phoebus Cartel. Their purpose? To control the production and distribution of lightbulbs across the world - and also, it's alleged, to deliberately shorten their lifespans to make them burn out quicker in order to sell more. It's a manufacturing tactic called planned obsolescence and it's claimed the Phoebus Cartel invented it. In this documentary, Shaun...

Following wide ranging farmers' protests across Europe, now British farmers are starting to show their discontent with thousands of farmers meeting in Wales, as well as protests taking place in England. BBC Radio 4 Farming Today's Charlotte Smith joins farmers as they are protesting and asks if the industry is now at breaking point. Will the new promise by the prime minister to ensure food production is supported, and not just environmental work, be enough to appease English farmers? And...

All along Russia’s border, in former Soviet republics, the Ukrainian war has prompted a new, more assertive sense of national identity. They’re asking whether – despite independence – they’ve really overcome the legacy of 'Russian colonialism.' Meanwhile activists from the many ethnic minorities inside Russia are increasingly describing themselves as victims of colonialism too - and demanding self-determination. The debate about the 'imperial' nature of Russia has now also been taken up by...

In September 2023 permission was given to develop Rosebank, the UK’s largest untapped oil field. Located west of Shetland, the UK government says it will provide energy security in the UK for a whole generation, at a time where we have never felt more insecure about the source of our energy and the cost. But will it? A feat of modern engineering, with the latest technology used to create it. Once operational, where is all this money, and oil, going to flow? And how does this fit into a...

Jewellery can tell us so much about people - the ones that wore it, and the ones that made it. It reveals something about status, or power, or belief systems - religion and relationships. There's so many interesting things that you can uncover about a person, or a group of people, by their jewellery. This makes it an incredibly useful tool for forensic analysis. Dr Maria Maclennan, is the world's first, and currently only, Forensic Jeweller. In this show, we accompany Maria to the Evros...

Cultural Sociologist Rachel Hurdley travels round England and Wales to uncover what walls tell us about how we live, from iron age roundhouses to Victorian mansions, medieval halls to terraced workers’ cottages, castles to the domestic interiors of today. Rachel explores how walls, which we often take for granted, define the spaces we inhabit and make sense of everyday life and our place in the world, talking to a range of experts and academics including architectural writer Jonathan Glancey....

Ireland correspondent Chris Page looks at the growth of Sinn Féin across the island of Ireland over the last 30 years and explores how it has achieved that. He examines the party's current aims and policies, from housing to the economy. And he asks, given the current trend in the polls, what the implications might be of the party being in government in two jurisdictions - in Belfast and in Dublin. Presenter: Chris Page Producer: Camellia Sinclair Lead broadcast engineer: Ilse Lademann Credit:...

We’re a nation obsessed with genealogy. Millions of us are gripped by TV shows like 'Who Do You Think You Are', where genealogists show celebrities their famous ancestors - like Danny Dyer being descended from Edward III, the first Plantagent King! But what if Danny doesn’t get exclusive bragging rights? With the help of mathematician Hannah Fry and Habsburg Royal Historian professor Martyn Rady, population geneticist Dr Adam Rutherford sets out to prove that we're all descended from royalty,...

In 2018, within a few months of each other, Katie Allan and William Lindsay took their own lives at Polmont Young Offenders Institution in Scotland. There have been nine suicides at Polmont since 2012 and the overall suicide rate in Scottish prisons is at a record high. Katie's mum Linda believes many of these deaths were avoidable. She was told by the Crown Office that there were sufficient grounds for prosecuting the Scottish Prison Service for potential failures of duty of care to both...

When journalists tell stories, they rarely start at the beginning but instead with the latest development. Context comes towards the end. It’s called the ‘inverted pyramid’. When scandal at the Confederation of British Industry hit the newspapers and boss Tony Danker was dismissed, he complained that articles didn’t state right at the start that he was not accused of the worst misconduct. If you didn’t make it much past the headlines, you might not realise that. We discover why journalists...

In 2019, Elvis Presley Enterprises threatened to deconstruct Graceland and move it to Saudi Arabia, Tokyo, or whoever was the highest bidder. Artist, writer, KLF member and money burner - Bill Drummond - realised something had to be done. Bill's relationship with Northern Ireland began before his relationship with Elvis - but at some junction, these two relationships were bound to collide. It seems the Curfew Tower at the junction of the crossroads in the village of Cushendall in the Glens...

Ronnie Helvy is on his way for a screening test. He's in his sixties and wants an assessment to check for a variety of cancers. He isn't currently displaying any symptoms but is seeking reassurance. His blood will undergo a series of tests in exchange for over a thousand pounds. The outcome might be able to determine whether he is susceptible to cancers that some of his family have died from. It sounds like a good thing. Or is it? Advances in health screening have allowed us to see far into...