Beyond Today

Boris Johnson has been elected new Conservative leader. He will take over as prime minister from Theresa May on Wednesday. He says he will deliver Brexit and unite the country. But Boris Johnson is a divisive character. This episode is about the mistakes he’s made along the way, but why in the end his ambition and sheer force of personality got him there. He’s gone from being a journalist to celebrity to now the man with the top job in the country. We hear from the Radio 2 presenter Jeremy Vine, Kulveer Ranger who worked with him at City Hall and the BBC’s political correspondent Chris Mason.

Today’s episode is all about Theresa May, but that doesn’t mean it’s all about Brexit. It’s a common argument: the main reason Theresa May failed as prime minister is that she got her whole approach to Brexit wrong and screwed up negotiations with both the EU and MPs. But there are other moments that could ultimately have caused her political demise, even before she took the top job. Her former adviser Chris Wilkins and the BBC’s Deputy Political Editor John Pienaar take a look back at Theresa May’s doomed premiership.

This is the first half of a two-part series. Tomorrow we’ll look at what drives our next prime minister.

Producer: Harriet Noble

This is part two of our interview with Eliot Higgins, the man who began investigating international crimes from his living room in Leicester after dropping out of university. Despite having no formal journalism training or experience, he quickly gained a reputation in the relatively new field of open-source citizen journalism, where people analyse publicly available materials to uncover new facts about major stories.

On yesterday’s episode we heard about his investigative website Bellingcat and how it helped discover who shot down Malaysian Airlines flight MH17. Bellingcat has also carried out important work investigating everything from chemical weapon attacks in Syria to the identities of the men accused of the Salisbury poisoning. In today’s episode Eliot talks us through Bellingcat’s techniques and how anyone can get involved in international crime-solving, using nothing more than their laptop.

If you’d like to hear the whole story of the MH17 investigation head to the Bellingcat website and listen to their new podcast: https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/podcasts/2019/07/17/mh17-episode-guide-1/.

Five years ago passenger flight MH17 was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was shot down over conflict-hit Ukraine.

Investigators blame Russian-backed separatists who they say targeted the plane with a Russian-made missile.

One of the reasons they’re sure is because of the work of Eliot Higgins. He founded the website Bellingcat, which describes itself as "the home of online investigations".

Eliot tells us how he traced the missile system from Eastern Ukraine back to Kursk in Western Russia. And how he used voice recognition software to match Russian officials to intercepted calls made by the Ukrainian secret service.

To hear the whole story of the MH17 investigation head to the Bellingcat website and listen to their new podcast: https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/podcasts/2019/07/17/mh17-episode-guide-1/.

Produced by Duncan Barber

It’s three months since the 29-year-old journalist Lyra Mckee was killed in a riot in Northern Ireland. Her death shocked the world and there were calls for politicians in Northern Ireland to unite. But since then the assembly in Stormont still hasn't sat. There has, though, been some progress on things Lyra felt passionate about – same sex marriage is likely to be made legal and abortion laws liberalised. We went to Londonderry to speak to Lyra’s partner Sara Canning, who took us on a tour and introduced us to other campaigners.

Today marks exactly 50 years since the launch of the Apollo 11 mission to put the first man on the Moon. Ever since that day in 1969 conspiracy theories have sprung up alleging that the whole thing is a hoax, and now there is a growing community of people who don’t even believe the earth is round. In this episode, Marco Silva, a reporter for BBC Trending introduces us to Dave from Sheffield, a man who is convinced that the earth is flat. He is part of a group whose false ideas have spread with the help of the YouTube algorithm. We learn about the people trying to address the misinformation problem and what YouTube is doing about conspiracy theories on its platform.

If you want to know how dangerous medical misinformation can be spread by health bloggers, you can listen to our anti-vax episode here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p072rpnk

Producers: Lucy Hancock and Alicia Burrell

The nation’s favourite documentary maker is back. This week Tina speaks to filmmaker Louis Theroux, who came in to tell us about his new documentary Surviving America’s Most Hated Family and why, 13 years on, he’s still interested in the Westboro Baptist Church. We also talk to him about nudity, why he’s not into hallucinogenic drug rituals, the problem with no-platforming and how he became the most widely meme-d journalist in Britain.

You can also listen to ‘What happens to Shamima Begum now?’ here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0739vz8

You can watch Louis’ new documentary here on iPlayer - https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0006vv7/louis-theroux-surviving-americas-most-hated-family

“Not every day, all day. But there's always a point that I think about it, and what would have been different.”

If you’re affected by the issues raised in this episode, help is out there. If you’re a veteran or you know a veteran, the starting point for help is the Ministry of Defence’s Veteran’s Gateway and these charities:

“They gave everything. And they deserved so much more.”

Producer: Heidi Pett

“I don’t think I could honestly say I’ve spoken to anyone about all the stuff that’s happened.”

If you’re affected by the issues raised in this episode, help is out there. If you’re a veteran or you know a veteran, the starting point for help is the Ministry of Defence’s Veteran’s Gateway and these charities:

Producer: Heidi Pett