If you are heading somewhere tropical this summer, or just want to protect yourself from bites in your own back garden, then which mosquito repellents can you trust?Greg Foot gets up close and personal with a box full of hungry mosquitoes to find out.Is it all about DEET or are there alternatives which are just as effective? What about citronella? And how well do bracelets, patches and candles perform? And if you do get bitten, what is the best treatment for a mosquito bite?Greg assesses the scientific evidence with Professor James Logan from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Dr Jane Wilcock, an indepedent researcher and GP. If you’ve seen an ad, trend or fad relating to another consumer product and wonder if there’s any evidence to back up a claim, drop us an email to sliced.bread@bbc.co.uk or you can send a voice note to our WhatsApp number: 07543 306807PRESENTER: Greg Foot
PRODUCER: Jon Douglas

If you are heading somewhere tropical this summer, or just want to protect yourself from bites in your own back garden, then which mosquito repellents can you trust? Greg Foot gets up close and personal with a box full of hungry mosquitoes to find out. Is it all about DEET or are there alternatives which are just as effective? What about citronella? And how well do bracelets, patches and candles perform? And if you do get bitten, what is the best treatment for a mosquito bite? Greg assesses the scientific evidence with Professor James Logan from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Dr Jane Wilcock, an indepedent researcher and GP. If you’ve seen an ad, trend or fad relating to another consumer product and wonder if there’s any evidence to back up a claim, drop us an email to sliced.bread@bbc.co.uk or you can send a voice note to our WhatsApp number: 07543 306807 PRESENTER: Greg Foot PRODUCER: Jon Douglas

Mosquito Repellents

While Sliced Bread takes a break we serve up Toast. A study of the spectacular failures of brands which had promised so much to consumers. In each episode, the presenter and BBC business journalist Sean Farrington examines one big idea. What did it promise? Why did people back it? Why did they get burnt? Some of the world’s most successful businesses have also brought us some of the world’s most remarkable failures. So, what led them to be toast? And what can we learn from their stories today? Sean unpicks all the early optimism, hype and ambition. He learns about the tremendous success of a brand before hearing how it faltered, with help from expert commentators and people who were directly involved. How do they view things now and what, if anything, could have been done differently? The self-made millionaire and serial entrepreneur, Sam White, is alongside him, analysing the missteps that changed a brand’s fortunes and reaching her own, often instructive, conclusions. From big tech to high street retail and, of course, food, Toast tackles the business ideas that, one way or another, ended up cooked. Sliced Bread returns for a new batch of investigations in January, 2026. In the new series, Greg Foot will investigate more of the latest so-called wonder products to find out whether they really are the best thing since sliced bread. In the meantime, Toast is available in the Sliced Bread feed on BBC Sounds. For this brand new series of Toast, episodes will be released weekly on Thursdays wherever you get your podcasts. But if you’re in the UK, you can listen to the latest episode on BBC Sounds first, a week earlier than anywhere else.Toast is a BBC Audio North production for BBC Radio 4.

Health & Fitness

While Sliced Bread takes a break we serve up Toast. A study of the spectacular failures of brands which had promised so much to consumers. In each episode, the presenter and BBC business journalist Sean Farrington examines one big idea. What did it promise? Why did people back it? Why did they get burnt? Some of the world’s most successful businesses have also brought us some of the world’s most remarkable failures. So, what led them to be toast? And what can we learn from their stories today? Sean unpicks all the early optimism, hype and ambition. He learns about the tremendous success of a brand before hearing how it faltered, with help from expert commentators and people who were directly involved. How do they view things now and what, if anything, could have been done differently? The self-made millionaire and serial entrepreneur, Sam White, is alongside him, analysing the missteps that changed a brand’s fortunes and reaching her own, often instructive, conclusions. From big tech to high street retail and, of course, food, Toast tackles the business ideas that, one way or another, ended up cooked. Sliced Bread returns for a new batch of investigations in January, 2026. In the new series, Greg Foot will investigate more of the latest so-called wonder products to find out whether they really are the best thing since sliced bread. In the meantime, Toast is available in the Sliced Bread feed on BBC Sounds. For this brand new series of Toast, episodes will be released weekly on Thursdays wherever you get your podcasts. But if you’re in the UK, you can listen to the latest episode on BBC Sounds first, a week earlier than anywhere else. Toast is a BBC Audio North production for BBC Radio 4.

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