Understand

A pair of radical activists drives east, from the West Coast of the US to a quaint skiing town in Colorado. They’ve watched as local environmental groups tried - and failed - to prevent the expansion of a ski resort into pristine forest land. And they’ve had enough. Their plan? To burn the resort down. This group will go on be named the number one domestic terror threat in the United States. And t...

It’s the 1990s - and in a tiny office in Charing Cross, a group of big thinkers is publishing some radical ideas…and about to have a very public falling out. This is the story of an influential green magazine and the man who created it: Teddy Goldsmith. He believed the cause was so grave it stood outside of left-right politics. Not everyone agreed. Presenter: Justin Rowlatt Producer: Rachel Naylor...

Somewhere in the North Pacific, 1971. A ragbag crew of environmentalist hippies sets sail on a rickety fishing boat in a last ditch effort to stop a nuclear weapons test. Their tumultuous voyage would birth the modern green movement. The men on board wanted to save the world, but spent much of their time at each other’s throats. Presenter: Justin Rowlatt Producer: Rachel Naylor Series Producer: El...

We follow Extinction Rebellion on one of its first ever actions. Before the rebels shut down London, before they became a household name, they occupied an office building in Islington. Their target? Not a fossil fuel company or government, but Greenpeace - perhaps the world’s most high profile environmental campaign group. Presenter: Justin Rowlatt Series Producer: Ellie House Editor: Matt Willis...

The modern green movement has been shaped not only by protest, but by conflict within the ranks. Shared ideas are forged through friction - battles over tactics, solutions, or who gets a voice. Justin Rowlatt goes to the heart of these battles - to learn about these dramatic moments from the people who were there. Friends, or sometimes enemies, hashing out big ideas that help define what it means...

Could the water industry be nationalised? Should the water industry be nationalised? And who will bear the ultimate costs for cleaning up our rivers? Reported and presented by Kate Lamble Series Producer: Elle Scott Sound Design: Andy Fell Researchers: Isaac Fisher and Amy Woods Production Coordinator: Juliette Harvey Production Manager: Debbie Waddell Executive Producer: Joe Kent Head of Audio of...

As Thames Water’s finances deteriorate, “vultures” circle. Reported and presented by Kate Lamble Producer: Elle Scott Sound Design: Andy Fell Executive Producer: Joe Kent Commissioning Executive: Tracy Williams Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke Rinsed is a BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4

New legislation promises to slash the sewage released into rivers, but will it become law? Reported and presented by Kate Lamble Producer: Elle Scott Sound Design: Andy Fell Executive Producer: Joe Kent Commissioning Executive: Tracy Williams Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke Rinsed is a BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4

The data scientist, the ex-detective and the politician trying to clean up our rivers. Reported and presented by Kate Lamble Producer: Elle Scott Sound Design: Andy Fell Executive Producer: Joe Kent Commissioning Executive: Tracy Williams Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke Rinsed is a BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4

The view from inside the Environment Agency, the body which enforces environmental standards for water companies in England. Reported and presented by Kate Lamble Producer: Elle Scott Sound Design: Andy Fell Executive Producer: Joe Kent Commissioning Executive: Tracy Williams Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke Rinsed is a BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4

Rivers work when everything is in balance, but what happens when things are thrown off course? Peter Hammond draws on his past as an academic specialising in machine learning to spot a problem everyone else has missed and expose what he believes is a national scandal.

We can all look the same picture, but what you make of it depends on who you are. Kate Lamble attempts to untangle the financial engineering that underpins parts of the water industry. Reported and presented by Kate Lamble Producer: Elle Scott Sound Design: Andy Fell Executive Producer: Joe Kent Commissioning Executive: Tracy Williams Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke Rinsed is a BBC Studios produc...

The 'Dossier of Despair' that reveals what's happening to some of Britain’s rivers. A retired police detective, a former machine learning academic, an ex-water industry insider and their neighbours join forces to dig for data. But will anyone listen to the campaigners calls for change? Reported and presented by Kate Lamble Producer: Elle Scott Sound Design: Andy Fell Executive Producer: Joe Kent C...

The centuries old battle between public good and private profit that’s still being fought today. Kate Lamble holds her nose and plunges into the long history of the water industry and some of the many conflicts that have shaped it. Reported and presented by Kate Lamble Producer: Elle Scott Sound Design: Andy Fell Executive Producer: Joe Kent Commissioning Executive: Tracy Williams Commissioning Ed...

After watching their local river grow murky and lifeless, two retired neighbours decide to take on the water industry and its regulators. The unlikely sleuths begin a ten-year battle to clean up our rivers. On the banks of the River Windrush in Oxfordshire, Kate Lamble meets campaigners Ash Smith and Peter Hammond Reported and presented by Kate Lamble Producer: Elle Scott Sound Design: Andy Fell E...

This is the story of a sewage scandal. How a centuries old battle between public good and private profit created an almighty stink. And who pays to clean it up.

Learning to read permanently alters your brain. It changes the emotions you experience and the way you relate to others. When a society learns to read the consequences are dramatic: wars break out, revolutions erupt and new political systems spring into being. Reading made us who we are. With time spent reading - and even reading ability - starting to nosedive, Times writer James Marriott explores...

Reading seems an unremarkable skill. When we say something is as “easy as ABC”, we mean it is very easy indeed. In fact, learning to read has dramatic and irreversible consequences for people and for societies. Learning to read permanently alters your brain. It changes the emotions you experience and the way you relate to others. When a society learns to read the consequences are dramatic: wars br...

Reading seems an unremarkable skill. After all, everyone can read. Even small children. When we say something is as “easy as ABC”, we mean it is very easy indeed. In fact, learning to read has dramatic and irreversible consequences for people and for societies. Learning to read permanently alters your brain. It changes the emotions you experience and the way you relate to others. When a society le...

The story of how reading made us and what might happen if we stop - with James Marriott.

As James Naughtie concludes his series about the ideas tying America's birth 250 years ago to the United States today, he examines freedom, asking whose freedom, and what kind? He begins in Gettysburg, attending a re-enactment on the battlefield made famous by an address from President Abraham Lincoln in which he asked whether the United States "could long endure". That question is being asked aga...

James Naughtie continues his look at the ideas tying America's founding to the modern United States, asking how 'justice' has been understood by different generations of Americans. In this third episode, James travels to Alabama in the American South, to understand how the Civil Rights movement sought to connect American reality with the promises in its founding documents. He hears from people in...

James Naughtie continues his look at the ideas tying America's founding to the modern United States, as he looks at what it means to be an American. In Chicago, he joins the Columbus Day parade - an exuberant celebration of Italian-American identity - and hears about the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to northern cities like Chicago. In Wisconsin, he visits the birthplace of t...

James Naughtie examines the ideas tying America's founding to the modern United States. In this major new series marking America's 250th anniversary, James travels through time and across the landscape to discover how the Declaration of Independence embedded the idea of a country founded on what its authors described as 'self-evident' truths – that everyone’s inalienable rights included ‘life, lib...

Justin Webb looks back at the five big US foreign policy shifts from the Monroe Doctrine to Donald Trump. Over five episodes he and his guests look at how America’s approach to the world has constantly changed over time. This may help answer a really big question - how radical is the way Donald Trump deals with the world? Is he really an outlier in US history? Or do his actions reflect the changin...