Cities

CITIES — Episode 4 The $180 Million Gamble To Rebuild a City Episode Description In August 1983, the Nervión river burst its banks during Bilbao's most beloved festival. The flood killed dozens of people and destroyed what remained of a waterfront that was already dying — steelworks silent, shipyards closed, unemployment at twenty-five percent. What came next was not a recovery in any conventional...

Episode Description In May 1497, a Venetian silk merchant named Giovanni Caboto sailed west from Bristol with a crew of eighteen and made landfall in North America. Five years after Columbus reached the Caribbean, it was Bristol that put the English flag on the continent that would eventually become the United States. That voyage wasn't an accident. Bristol's geography, its merchants, and its appe...

Episode Description At 4:48 on the morning of 1 September 1939, a German battleship opened fire on a small Polish garrison in the harbour of the Free City of Danzig. Those were the first shots of the Second World War. Forty-one years later, in the same city, a shipyard electrician climbed a wall and started the movement that brought down every communist government in Europe. Between those two even...

Cities | Episode 1: Canterbury Episode Description A 12th century murder turned a small English cathedral city into one of medieval Europe's first tourist destinations. Nine hundred years later, Canterbury is still living with the consequences. In this episode, we pull apart a city caught between its ancient identity as England's ecclesiastical capital, a student population that now outnumbers per...

Runtime: Approximately 2:00–2:15 at natural pace. Should not exceed 3:30. Mystery cities: The clues are designed to be tantalising but not immediately identifiable. Listeners familiar with the cities may guess. Everyone else gets curiosity. The clues currently hint at 6 cities, but this does not commit the series to those cities or that order. Quick-fire line: “A city split in two by a volcano. A...