Beyond Today

On 4th March we heard from former gang member Jay about why he’d never leave the house without carrying a knife.

Jay has since been asked to make a Radio 4 documentary investigating the solutions to knife crime.

For the programme he met a trauma surgeon, a police commander and a local mayor. He also had a long conversation with a man called Callum, who is from Glasgow. Glasgow used to be the murder capital of Europe, but now that’s changed and the city’s seen as a model for how to stop violence. Callum got caught up in a lot of violence and was stabbed nine times in one attack.

This episode is the conversation the two of them had for Jay’s documentary, in which Jay asked Callum about how he moved away from violence.

You can find Jay’s documentary “My Name Is... Jay” on BBC Sounds. It was produced by Gaetan Portal.

Producers: Heidi Pett and Duncan Barber

The climate protest group Extinction Rebellion has been causing quite a stir. Its members recently stripped almost naked in the House of Commons. They have also shut bridges, poured buckets of fake blood on the ground outside Downing Street and blockaded the BBC. For this episode we invited Extinction Rebellion’s Clare Farrell into the Beyond Today studio to find out why they think breaking the law is key to saving the planet.

We also spoke to Phil Jones, who edits the Jeremy Vine show on Radio 2. Phil told us about the climate change phone-in that angered the nation and a mix-up that ended with Extinction Rebellion members being hauled from the Radio 2 studio by police.

Produced and mixed by Duncan Barber

South Korea is thought to be one of the more progressive countries in Asia, with its technological advancements and dominance in pop music. But the recent introduction of 5G has led to a rise in secret recordings in public areas, including women’s changing rooms and toilets. The BBC’s Seoul correspondent Laura Bicker takes us through the rise of spy cams and how it’s fuelling the global porn industry.

Producers: Seren Jones and Lucy Hancock

If it feels like politicians have been talking about Brexit forever, it’s because in a way they have. From Thatcher campaigning to stay in Europe in 1975, to her ideological successors pinning their careers to getting us out in 2016, the Conservative Party has been at odds over Europe for decades. We speak to the Today programme presenter Nick Robinson, who for years as the BBC’s political editor watched the fray.

Producers: Heidi Pett and Alva White

This is the story of Zain Qaiser. A student who made hundreds of thousands of pounds blackmailing porn users with cyber attacks from his parents’ house in East London. He spent almost £5,000 on a Rolex watch, £2,000 on a stay in a Chelsea hotel and £70,000 in a shopping centre casino. Today he was jailed for more than six years.

But for every Zain there’s a Fabian. Fabian Wosar destroys the kind of ransomware that Zain Qaiser used to extort money. Fabian is so successful that cyber gangs leave threatening messages for him in their code to try and scare him off. The BBC’s Dominic Casciani and Joe Tidy take us into the murky world of cyber criminals and the hero hackers trying to stop them.

Producer: Duncan Barber

There’s a story you won’t hear much about today — because it’s a story that didn’t really happen. The former chief executive of Barclays John Varley and three other former senior bankers were on trial accused of fraud, the first time criminal charges were brought against the head of a global bank for activities during the financial crisis. And this morning the jury was discharged. The BBC’s business editor Simon Jack has been covering the crisis and its aftermath since the beginning. He spoke to us about whether lessons have been learnt in the past decade.

Producers: Lucy Hancock and Seren Jones

There are a few moments when the podcast phenomenon really took off - and one of them is in 2009 when a comedian began interviewing people he knew in his garage. “WTF with Marc Maron” has grown to be a podcast juggernaut - each month it’s downloaded 6 million times and it’s just celebrated its 1000th episode. Some of the most famous people in the world have talked to Marc - rockstars, A-List actors, and a former president of the United States. Marc Maron sat down with Beyond Today to talk about how podcasts made the jump from the underground to the mainstream, and what it’s like when Barack Obama comes to visit.

Producer: Harriet Noble

Chelsea has come under the spotlight this season after Manchester City's Raheem Sterling was alleged to have been racially abused by some supporters during a Premier League game at Stamford Bridge last December. The incident led to four fans being suspended by the club. This was followed just a few days later by alleged anti-Semitic chanting by Chelsea fans at a match in Hungary.

The Chelsea chairman Bruce Buck responded by greeting supporters at the turnstiles before a Premier League win at Brighton on 16 December and writing an open letter condemning the actions of "a few mindless individuals". We went to speak to him at Stamford Bridge to hear about how the club is using education to clamp down on discrimination.

Producer: Duncan Barber.

Last week a story surfaced that seemed, on the face of it, a little bit odd. A far right youtuber in Austria, Martin Sellner, had his house raided by the authorities after revealing he’d received a $1500 donation to his movement Generation Identity. The money was from the suspect in the Christchurch shooting in New Zealand. This story takes us from the world of YouTubers back to the Crusades and tells us how extreme ideas spread around the world.

Donald Trump, Imran Khan, George Weah… all over the world voters have shown their dissatisfaction with politicians by voting in anti-establishment candidates, sometimes former celebrities. The next in line might be Volodymyr Zelensky, a comedian who plays a president on Ukrainian TV and won the first round of the country’s presidential elections in real life. Could electing popular celebrities overcome our distrust of unpopular politicians? Olga Robinson from BBC Monitoring and Senior Elections and Political Analyst Peter Barnes weigh in.

Producers: Harriet Noble and Seren Jones