Could you forgive the person who killed your child or who raped or tortured you? Some crimes, some events are so awful, so cruel, it’s impossible to imagine ever being able to say to the wrongdoer, ‘I forgive you’. Mike Williams hears the stories of those who have experienced unimaginable pain and suffering at the hands of others. And discovers what it feels like to turn anger and desire for revenge against the perpetrators into compassion and understanding for them. What does the act of forgiveness mean to the offender? Contributors include Kemal Pervanic, a survivor from the Omarska concentration camp during the Bosnian war, a rape survivor and a woman whose ex-husband killed her two children.

After two decades working in development, Claire Melamed is ready to reveal a secret about her work. Many of the numbers that lie behind life-and-death decisions in developing countries are, as she puts it, “a bit shaky”. If you don’t know how many people live somewhere and who’s dying when of what, you can’t make well-informed decisions to help them. Now she and others are working to change that by getting better data and using it smarter. We hear what that means in practice and the story of Justice Aheto, whose award-winning mathematical models could also be life-saving for malnourished children in his native Ghana.

Four of the biggest stories on the internet this year divided opinion around the world. We discuss the most popular memes of US Elections, the highlights of the EU referendum in the UK, why people around the world were scared of clowns and how live streaming made its mark on the digital world.

(Photo: Criminal man beg for forgiveness. Credit: Shutterstock)