One to One

Novelist Nikesh Shukla started to learn to box after a racist incident on a train left him feeling vulnerable and needing to learn how protect himself. In the last of his three interviews exploring the sport - and getting personal advice - he speaks to criminologist Dr Deborah Jump. She left her desk at Manchester Metropolitan University to do an ethnographic study - immersing herself into the wor...

Nikesh Shukla continues his series of interviews on boxing. The level of violence and serious injury has always called the sport into question. Just last year it saw the tragic death of Mike Towell after a fatal head injury and Nick Blackwell retired after a bleed on the brain. These stories are familiar to Kieran Farrell, who discovered a love of boxing aged just 7, and who had 26 fights in a row...

Novelist Nikesh Shukla is learning how to box. It's gone from memories of Rocky movies and watching the big match with family as a child to being a skill he wants for himself. When he voiced his thoughts on Twitter, journalist Hayley Campbell gave him 3 key pieces of advice. She took up kickboxing three years ago and shares how the sport and the partnership with her trainer changed her physically...

Julia Bradbury talks to Laura Rutherford, a volunteer with the Samaritans, about the challenges of her work as a listener. How does she cope with the emotional demands and the need to 'step back' after challenging calls? Producer Sarah Blunt.

Julia Bradbury talks to Dr Rory Conn, a Specialist Registrar in Psychiatry. Rory works in a Mental Health In-Patient Unit for adolescents, and he discusses the challenges of regularly dealing with intense mental and emotional situations as part of your working life, and how you switch off at the end of the day.

Julia Bradbury talks to Dr Martin McKechnie, a Consultant in Emergency Medicine and Vice President of The Royal College of Emergency Medicine, about the challenges of working in an Emergency Department. Every day he is faced with intense mental and emotional situations as part of his working life. So how he does he switch off at the end of the day? Producer Sarah Blunt.

Television executive Peter Bazalgette talks to Jane Davis, founder of The Reader Organisation, about the power of shared reading in developing empathy, and how books can transform lives. Jane and her volunteers run small groups in which people meet to read books and poems aloud and talk about them. They meet in care homes, libraries, hostels, mental health centres, schools and prisons. Reading hel...

Television executive Peter Bazalgette examines empathy in doctors with Denis Pereira Gray, and the difference it makes for their patients. Professor Sir Denis Pereira Gray was a GP for 38 years and is now Patron of the National Association for Patient Participation. He believes that humanity and empathy in medicine contributes to a better outcome for all concerned, and research evidence is piling...

Television executive Peter Bazalgette examines empathy. He talks to primatologist Frans de Waal, whose pioneering work with chimpanzees has helped to illuminate how our own evolutionary history suggests a deep-rooted propensity, both emotional and cognitive, for feeling the emotions of others.

In this series of One to One, Sir Trevor McDonald explores the idea of redemption, talking to two very different people with very different ideas on what it means. This week he meets Madeleine Black who was violently attacked and raped when she was just 13, yet has found redemption through forgiving the men who did this to her. Producer: Maggie Ayre.

For his One to One series, Sir Trevor McDonald explores the idea of redemption, talking to two very different people with very different ideas on what it means. This week a former maximum security prisoner talks about finding redemption through sport. Former armed robber John McAvoy once shared a wing with convicted terrorist Abu Hamza in Belmarsh Prison. His life was going nowhere but then he dis...

Unexpected educational journeys: the journalist Datshiane Navanayagam speaks to the first female head teacher in the 500 year history of Magdalen College School in Oxford. The journalist Datshiane Navanayagam had a challenging childhood punctuated by periods of homelessness but she was always expected to achieve academically. She won a bursary to a private school which led her onto Cambridge Unive...

Unexpected stories of education: The journalist Datshiane Navanayagam speaks to the crime writer, Val McDermid, about an unusual educational experiment she was part of in the 1960s. Datshiane Navanayagam had a difficult childhood punctuated by periods of homelessness, but she was always expected to achieve educationally and won a bursary to a private school which led her onto Cambridge University....

Unexpected stories of education: Datshiane Navanayagam speaks to the musician and broadcaster Soweto Kinch about his experience as an inner-city child of going to a private school. The journalist Datshiane Navanayagam had a challenging childhood which involved periods of homelessness. But her parents always had high expectations of her and what she could achieve educationally. She was awarded a bu...

Tim Samuels goes in search of alternative relationships and meets women who have ditched traditional monogamy. He meets those making their own rules in a world less constrained by religion and gender norms and where we are evolving and adapting to changing times. For the second of his three programmes for One to One, Tim travels to Birmingham to meet Salma (not her real name) who chose to become t...

Tim Samuels goes in search of alternative relationships and meets women who have ditched traditional monogamy in favour of part-time, polygamous and pragmatic love. Tim recently wrote about the challenges of being a 21st century man, including how monogamy can be a struggle. He's not the first man to feel it could run counter to men's biological make-up. And these days, in heterosexual couple brea...

What does it take to be a successful runner of extreme distance and why do people do it? David Greig is the Artistic Director of the Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh and an internationally successful playwright. He's also an ultra-marathon runner who has twice completed the punishing 96 mile West Highland Way as well as many other long-distance races. He took up running fifteen years ago when he stoppe...

What does it take to be a successful runner of extreme distance, and why do people do it? David Greig is the Artistic Director of the Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh and an internationally successful playwright. He's also an ultra-marathon runner who has twice completed the punishing 96 mile West Highland Way amongst many other long-distance races. He took up running fifteen years ago when he stopped...

Sathnam Sanghera feels he has come a long way from his working class Wolverhampton background and now regards himself as firmly middle class. In this second programme for One to One, he meets Alpesh Chauhan, an Asian Brummie from a working class background, who has become an Assistant Conductor with the CBSO (City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra). As someone who has broken through so many social...

Sathnam Sanghera explores class. As the son of an illiterate factory worker who ended up going to Cambridge and working for The Times, he now regards himself as firmly middle class. In the first of his two programmes for One to One, he interviews Janice Turner, a fellow journalist from The Times, at her home in South London. She had a similar journey to Sathnam; she moved from working class Doncas...

Mark Lawson has a problem. He is writing a memoir but he's always had the habit, when writing or broadcasting, of avoiding the first person pronoun. This rather puts him at odds with modern culture where journalists and presenters are urged to use the one-letter vertical word. Bloggers, Vloggers and Tweeters lay their lives on-line, and autobiography is an ever more crowded literary form. So, in h...

Mark Lawson has a problem. He is writing a memoir but he's always had the habit, when writing or broadcasting, of avoiding the first person pronoun. This rather puts him at odds with modern culture where journalists and presenters are urged to use the one-letter vertical word. Bloggers, Vloggers and Tweeters lay their lives on-line, and autobiography is an ever more crowded literary form. So, in h...

Mark Lawson has a problem. He is writing a memoir but he's always had the habit, when writing or broadcasting, of avoiding the first person pronoun. This rather puts him at odds with modern culture, where journalists and presenters are urged to use the one-letter vertical word. Bloggers, Vloggers and Tweeters lay out their lives on-line, and autobiography is an ever more crowded literary form. So,...

Mark Lawson has a problem. He is writing a memoir but he's always had the habit, when writing or broadcasting, of avoiding the first person pronoun. This rather puts him at odds with modern culture. Journalists and presenters are urged to use the one-letter vertical word. Bloggers, Vloggers and Tweeters lay their lives on-line and autobiography is an ever more crowded literary form. So in his seri...

Actress and impressionist, Jan Ravens talks to one of her favourite subjects, the BBC's Chief International Correspondent, Lyse Doucet. They discuss how much her public image reflects her private self and how much consideration she gives to clothes and jewellery when appearing on television . Producer Lucy Lunt.