Author: BBC Radio 4

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Start the Week - Crossing borders and belonging

The Vietnamese American writer Viet Thanh Nguyen was awarded the Pulitzer prize for his debut novel The Sympathiser in 2016. Now he turns his attention to memoir, in A Man of Two Faces. He was four when he was forced to flee Vietnam with his family, but as he looks back at his life he explores the necessity of forgetting and remembering, and how far the promise and dream of America can be trusted.

The journalist and Deputy Editor of Harper’s Bazaar Helena Lee wants to showcase the voices and experiences of writers from the East and Southeast Asian diaspora living in the UK. East Side Voices celebrates the diversity of that experience and explores the impact on identity, community and family.

Jessica J. Lee was born in Canada to a Taiwanese mother and a Welsh father and in her collection of essays, Dispersals, she muses on the question of how plants and people become uprooted and cross borders. Combining memoir, history, and scientific research she explores how entwined our fortunes, movement and language are with the plant world.

Producer: Katy Hickman

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The Gatekeepers - 8. I Sung of Chaos

On 30th September 2022 a coroner in London finds that Molly Russell "...died from an act of self-harm while suffering from depression and the negative effects of online content."

The finding is a global first. Social media is ruled to have contributed to the death of a child.

In San Francisco, around the same time, a strange story is unfolding inside Twitter HQ.

Ever since Donald Trump's account was suspended on Twitter, tensions have been building around what is and isn't allowed on platforms.

Elon Musk shares internal staff documents with a hand-picked group of journalists. One of those journalists suspects these documents show collusion between tech platforms and the US government.

Politicians and civil groups on both the left and right from across the world, want the power and influence of these companies to be reigned in.

There's even talk of repealing section 230 - the law that created modern social media.

In this final episode, Jamie Bartlett asks if Silicon Valley's radical experiment is about to implode? And if the online world is chaotic now, what will advances in artificial intelligence mean for us all?

Presenter: Jamie Bartlett Producer: Caitlin Smith Sound design: Eloise Whitmore Story Consultant: Kirsty Williams Senior Producer: Peter McManus Composer: Jeremy Warmsley Commissioned by Dan Clarke A BBC Scotland Production

Reading by John Lightbody

Archive credits: BBC News, September 2022; CNN, 2022; C-Span, Jan 2024; BBC Archive, 1967

New episodes released on Mondays. If you’re in the UK, listen to the latest episodes of The Gatekeepers, first on BBC Sounds: bbc.in/3Ui661u

If you are suffering distress or despair and need support, a list of organisations that can help is available at bbc.co.uk/actionline

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Start the Week - Intrigue and disinformation from the Russian Revolution to Ukraine invasion

Andrey Kurkov is Ukraine’s most celebrated novelist. When Russia invaded Ukraine he turned his writing to journalism and memoir, but his latest book is a work of fiction set amid the chaos of the Russian Revolution. The Silver Bone (translated by Boris Dralyuk) is the first in a trilogy of historical mysteries in which the recently orphaned detective investigates his first case while Bolsheviks, Cossacks, and white Army Guards all vie to take control of Kyiv.

The journalist and writer Peter Pomerantsev retells the daring story of the WWII propogandist Sefton Delmer who managed to infiltrate German airwaves and skilfully question Nazi doctrine. How to Win an Information War reveals the extent of the complexity of spin and indoctrination used in the past, alongside the role of propaganda today in Putin’s Russia.

The information war is heading into a new era with the development of generative AI which makes it simple to produce fake text, audio and videos. The news editor at MIT Technology Review Charlotte Jee says the pace of change is extraordinary, and regulation is lagging behind, as deepfakes are becoming more difficult to distinguish from actual human content.

Producer: Katy Hickman

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The Gatekeepers - 7. Rest of World

Jamie Bartlett travels to Minnesota to meet Abrham Meareg Amare.

The young academic is seeking asylum in the States following the murder of his father in Ethiopia in 2021.

In December 2022, Abrham became the lead complainant in a $2 billion lawsuit against Meta. Abrham believes that company is partly responsible for the death of his dad - a renowned chemistry professor - who was slandered and doxxed on Facebook, before being shot outside his home.

Abrham says he reported the posts multiple times but they were not taken down, until eight days after the killing.

Jamie meets the Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who tells him that her decision to leak Meta's internal documents was driven by grave concerns about the way Meta operates in the Global South.

Producer: Caitlin Smith Sound Design: Eloise Whitmore Story Consultant: Kirsty Williams Composer: Jeremy Warmsley Senior Producer: Peter McManus Commissioned by Dan Clarke for BBC Radio 4.

Archive: C:Span, October 2021

New episodes released on Mondays. If you’re in the UK, listen to the latest episodes of The Gatekeepers, first on BBC Sounds: bbc.in/3Ui661u

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More or Less: Behind the Stats - Does the Russian government really spend 40% of its budget on the military?

According to the head of the British military, the Russian government spends 40% of its budget on its war machine. But is it true? With the help of Professor Bettina Renz from Nottingham University and Dr Richard Connolly from The Royal United Services Institute, Olga Smirnova investigates the figure. Presenter: Tom Colls Producer: Olga Smirnova Production Co-ordinator Katie Morrison Series Producer: Tom Colls Sound Mix: Graham Puddifoot Editor: Richard Vadon

Image: Russian Military Perform Victory Day Parade Night Rehearsal in Moscow Credit: (Photo by Oleg Nikishin/Getty Images)

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Start the Week - Time passing: ageing, memory and nostalgia

The Nobel prize winning molecular biologist Venki Ramakrishnan explores how time affects our bodies, brains and emotions in his new book, Why We Die: The New Science of Ageing and the Quest for Immortality. As he explains the recent scientific breakthroughs to extend lifespan by altering our biology, he also considers the ethical questions such efforts raise.

The neuroscientist Charan Ranganath asks a different question in his book, Why We Remember. Using case studies he unveils the principles behind how the brain retains information, and what and why we forget so much. He also looks at what happens to our memories as we age.

In her new book, Nostalgia, the historian Agnes Arnold-Forster blends social history and psychology in a quest to understand this complex emotion. While it was thought of as an illness in the 17th century, it is now used as a widespread marketing tool impacting our choices from politics to food. But if nostalgia prompts us to glorify the past, Arnold-Foster asks how that impacts the present, and future.

Producer: Katy Hickman

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The Gatekeepers - 6. Arbiters of Truth

In 2018, the CEOs of our most popular social media companies are standing at a crossroad.

After political outcry over Russian interference in the 2016 election and fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, tech leaders have a decision to make.

They need to come up with ways of making their platforms safer.

One route is a radical overhaul of the entire business model. The other is the biggest digital clean-up operation ever attempted, spanning hundreds of langauges and countries.

Which path will they take?

Producer: Caitlin Smith Sound Design: Eloise Whitmore Story Consultant: Kirsty Williams Composer: Jeremy Warmsley Executive Producer: Peter McManus Commissioned by Dan Clarke

A BBC Scotland Production for BBC Radio 4.

Archive: C-Net, April 2018; CBS News, 2020; Tucker Carlson on Fox News; BBC News 2021; EU Debates Tv, 2021

New episodes released on Mondays. If you’re in the UK, listen to the latest episodes of The Gatekeepers, first on BBC Sounds: bbc.in/3Ui661u

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More or Less: Behind the Stats - Is public speaking really our biggest fear?

For over 50 years it?s been widely reported that speaking before a group is people?s number one fear. But is it really true? With the help of Dr Karen Kangas Dwyer, a former Professor in the School of Communication at the University of Nebraska-Omaha and Dr Christopher Bader, Professor of Sociology at Chapman University, Tim Harford tracks the source of the claim back to the 1970?s and explores whether it was true then, and whether it?s true today.

Presenter: Tim Harford Producer: Debbie Richford Production Co-ordinator: Katie Morrison Series Producer: Tom Colls Sound Mix: Neil Churchill Editor: Richard Vadon

Picture Credit: vchal via Getty

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Start the Week - Mysterious Plants

The plant Rafflesia has the world’s largest flowers and gives off one of the worst scents; it’s also something of a biological enigma, a leafless parasite that lives off forest vines. For the botanist Chris Thorogood, an expert in parasitic and carnivorous plants at the Oxford Botanic Garden and Arboretum, Rafflesia is also an obsession. In his book, Pathless Forest, he goes in search of this mysterious plant in some of the last wildernesses in South East Asia.

Dr Kelsey Byers is an evolutionary chemical ecologist who specialises in floral scent and its influence on the evolution of flowering plants. In her laboratory at the John Innes Centre in Norwich she studies how flowers use different smells to attract their pollinator of choice. From sweet aromas to the stink of rotting flesh, she explores how plants use con-artistry and sexual deception to thrive.

The ethnobotanist William Milliken from Kew Gardens has spent much of his career working with indigenous people in the Amazon to preserve traditional plant knowledge. Now he’s focused on collecting folklore about the use of plants to treat ailments in animals in Britain. From wild garlic treating mastitis in cows, to cabbage for flatulence in dogs, he hopes to uncover a cornucopia of plant-based veterinary medicines.

Producer: Katy Hickman

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The Gatekeepers - 5. The Vortex

One of the strange things about our new media universe, is how innocuous decisions taken in Silicon Valley - turning a dial, or adding a few lines of code to increase engagement - can change your life.

In 2016, Instagram introduced a new way of looking at content: the non-chronological feed.

Now, instead of seeing what your friends were posting in the order they were posting it, an algorithm brought you stuff based on search history, likes, and interactions.

That’s how tech engineers saw things back then - not just at Instagram, but at Pinterest, and other platforms too - if you engage with something, that must mean you want more of it.

Ian Russell believes that this algorithmic change may have altered the course of his 14 year old daughter Molly's life.

Presenter: Jamie Bartlett Producer: Caitlin Smith Sound Design: Eloise Whitmore Composer: Jeremy Warmsley Story Consultant: Kirsty Williams Execuitve Producer: Peter McManus Commissioner: Dan Clarke

A BBC Scotland Production for Radio 4.

Archive: 'Instagram implements big changes to users' feed, ditches chronologixal content' DT Daily; March 16th 2016. US Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Nov 7th 2023

If you are suffering distress or despair and need support, including urgent support, a list of organisations that can help is available at bbc.co.uk/actionline.

New episodes released on Mondays. If you’re in the UK, listen to the latest episodes of The Gatekeepers, first on BBC Sounds: bbc.in/3Ui661u