South Africa’s former president Jacob Zuma is convinced he’s been the target of repeated poisoning attempts. But why? In this episode we dive into the murkiest corners of the long struggle against racial apartheid to uncover Cold War paranoia, toxic underpants, and the origins of Zuma’s fixation with poison.

'Poison' is the story of one man's toxic obsession and the battle for South Africa's future.

Presenter: Andrew Harding

South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma believes he has been poisoned, repeatedly. He claims to be the victim of a long, sophisticated, and unfinished plot to assassinate him. But who would want to kill a man still celebrated for his role as a fighter in the struggle against apartheid? Could it be linked to the allegations of massive corruption against him? Or is there a broader conspiracy at work – an international plot to silence a man who claims to be speaking up for South Africa’s neglected poor? In this five-part series the BBC’s Africa correspondent, Andrew Harding, digs into a mystery that links a case of poisoned underpants, to a plot to kill Nelson Mandela, to this year’s riots that left 300 South Africans dead. In this episode, Zuma's early years.

'Poison' is the story of one man's toxic obsession and the battle for South Africa's future.

Presenter: Andrew Harding

Ten years ago, in 2011, David Aaronovitch felt like he was losing his grip on reality. He'd been placed in a coma, after a surgery gone wrong. Now he was awake and in Intensive Care.

Every time he closed his eyes the inside of his eyelids would display a kaleidoscope of red, black and yellow violent cartoon images. Faces appeared before him like odd animation of computer game avatars. That was just the beginning. For the next four days and night David experienced what he describes as a "waking nightmare".

These types of hallucinations are called delirium and are a very common side effect of being placed in an induced coma.

Now the number of people experiencing delirium is on the rise. That's because those who are critically ill with Covid often have to be ventilated. While it helps their bodies fight the virus, and will often save their lives, the mental toll can be as serious as the physical one. Increasingly, patients are leaving hospital physically healed but mentally scarred.

In this powerful and immersive documentary David Aaronovitch hears from three people who have struggled with delirium, and shares his own experience.

Producer: Caitlin Smith

With thanks to Paul Henderson, Zara Slattery, Robin Hanbury-Tenison, ICU nurse Crystal Wilson and Dr Dorothy Wade of Barking Havering and Redbridge Universities Hospital Trust and North EAst London Foundation Trust.

Image courtesy of Zara Slattery.

How do we send a warning a hundred millennia into the future?

Poet Paul Farley considers how we might warn people three thousand generations from now about the radioactive waste we’ve left in geological disposal facilities deep underground. As he does so he explores the essence of communication and storytelling and the elements of our language, art and culture which are truly universal.

In countries across the world, including the UK, USA, France and Finland, the hunt is on for underground sites which will survive shifting tectonic plates or passing ice ages and remain secure for tens of millennia - maybe a hundred thousand years - until the radioactive waste they contain is no longer a danger. And once it’s buried, how do we leave a clear, unambiguous warning message - that this site is dangerous and should not be disturbed - for a society which may be utterly different from our own?

Can we still use written language? Would pictures and symbols be more easily understood? Or could we construct a landscape of vast monuments to instil fear in anybody who saw them. Paul talks to writer Helen Gordon about her experience of visiting the Onkalo nuclear repository in Finland and the challenges of warning the future about what it contains.

He hears from Jean-Noël Dumont, Manager of the Memory for Future Generations programme for the French nuclear agency Andra. For several years Andra has asked artists to devise a warning of the existence of a nuclear repository. Stéfane Perraud and Aram Kebabdjian responded with the idea of a Zone Bleue – a forest of genetically-modified blue trees which act as a memorial rather than a warning.

In 1981 linguist Thomas Sebeok proposed the idea of a ‘nuclear priesthood’. The idea takes its inspiration from world faiths which have passed on their message for thousands of years. At an ancient Christian site in the shadow of Heysham nuclear power station Paul meets Robert Williams, Professor of Fine Art at the University of Cumbria who, with American artist Bryan McGovern Wilson, has brought to life the idea of a Nuclear Priest, imagining their vestments, their rituals and role.

There’s compelling evidence that oral traditions can carry memories of events not just for centuries but for thousands of years. Professor Patrick Nunn has been researching Indigenous Australian stories which appear to carry the folk memory of a time after the last ice age when sea levels were much lower – around ten thousand years.

So could a story, a poem or a song be the answer? As the programme unfolds, Paul devises a poem to carry a warning to distant generations.

Producer: Jeremy Grange

Programme image courtesy of Robert Williams and Bryan McGovern Wilson with Michael Coombs. It was taken during the Alchemical Tour of Archaeological Sites in Cumbria and North Lancashire, as part of the Cumbrian Alchemy Project.

As a society, we send close to 100,000 people to prison each year. But what happens to people while they’re behind bars?

Sally Tilt and Dr Kerensa Hocken are forensic psychologists who work in prisons.

Their role is to help people in prison look at the harm they’ve caused to other people, understand why it happened and figure out how to make changes to prevent further offending after they’ve been released.

In Behind the Crime, they take the time to understand the life of someone who’s ended up in prison, and what happened afterwards.

In this episode, they talk to 23 year-old Courtney, a mum who received a five-year sentence for her part in a series of armed robberies at the age of 17.

Through the course of the conversation, they explore some of the key events in Courtney’s life and track some of the threads that led her down a path to prison.

At the same time, Sally and Kerensa explain some of the methods they use to reach the core factors that can lead to people harming others – and how they then work with people in prison to prevent further harm from happening in the future.

Producer: Andrew Wilkie

Image: Sally Tilt and Dr Kerensa Hocken. Credit: Christopher Terry/Prison Radio Association

Why are women not used as the dramatic engines in drama more? asks double Oscar-winning, recent Tony, Bafta and Emmy Award-winning actress Glenda Jackson.

Despite improvements, the statistics concur with her theory. With great contributions from actress Adjoa Andoh, director Phyllida Lloyd (Mamma Mia, The Iron Lady), actress Harriet Walter, writer Sally Wainwright and director Richard Eyre.

Presented by Glenda Jackson

It is almost 40 years since Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys discovered genetic fingerprints in his University of Leicester laboratory. Now DNA is an integral part of criminal investigations worldwide, providing vital evidence to secure convictions and exonerate the innocent.

But the extraordinary breakthroughs in genetic science since then means a suite of new DNA tools is now available to police and law enforcement, as well as private citizens doing a spot of freelance crime fighting. How are these novel uses of forensic genetics overseen? And is there a risk of over-reach, the science running ahead of an ethical and regulatory framework?

Turi King led the genetic identification of Richard III after his body was dug up in a Leicester City carpark. She's also a Professor of Genetics at the University of Leicester (Sir Alec was her mentor) and in this programme she explores the history of forensic DNA and the unanticipated role of family tree hobbyists and recreational genealogy databases in crime fighting.

It was the recent Golden State killer case in the US where a serial murderer was eventually captured with the help of DNA, that thrust into the spotlight the use of private genealogy databases by law enforcement. Until this case hit the headlines the millions of family tree enthusiasts who had uploaded their DNA profiles in order to find their relatives, were blissfully unaware that the science in the genealogists' toolkit had been adopted by police officers hunting new leads in criminal cases.

Turi meets one of the first private DNA detectives from the US, Dr Colleen Fitzpatrick, who coined the phrase "forensic genealogy". Colleen uses her skills as a genealogist (originally this was her hobby; she trained as a rocket scientist) to help police solve scores of cold cases. She tells Turi that the DNA genie is out of the bottle, and the stopper can't be put back in.

And Turi discovers this is indeed the case. She hears about a group of private citizens, international freelance crime fighters, who, inspired by the Golden State killer case, are using DNA to track down abusive men.

Lawyer and former army officer, Andrew MacLeod, spent years working in war zones and on disaster relief and humanitarian emergencies. Frustrated by what he saw as an institutional failure to stop the rape and abuse of women and girls by aid workers, peacekeeping soldiers and sex tourists, he decided to take direct action through a charity, Hear Their Cries.

Their strategy is to match the DNA of children born from these abusive relationships, with relatives on the major genealogy databases ("we're doing family reunions" he tells Turi). Then, using classic genealogy skills, they can build the children's family tree and track down their fathers, wherever they might be in the world.

A pilot project in the Philippines led to five out of six fathers in the UK, US, Canada and Australia being confronted with their paternity obligations. The long-term aim, he tells Turi, is to send the message that with the help of DNA to identify them, there will be no escape for abusive men. If they have committed a crime, they will eventually be tracked down and made to pay.

Also in the programme: Gill Tully, former Forensic Science Regulator for England and Wales and Professor of Practice for Forensic Science Policy and Regulation at King's College, London; Carole McCartney, Professor of Law and Criminal Justice at Northumbria University; Dr Connie Bormans, Laboratory Director for Family Tree DNA, commercial genetic testing company in Houston, Texas; Manfred Kayser, Professor of Forensic Molecular Biology and Head of the Department of Genetic Identification, Erasmus University, the Netherlands and David Baker, former Chief Superintendent Leicestershire Police, led the double murder hunt for the killer of teenagers Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth in the 1980s.

Producer: Fiona Hill

Brexit has been a reality for seven months – long enough for fears and speculation to give way to actual experience of individual business people. How is British business faring outside the EU? Do they feel liberated, unchained from the rules of the European Union, or ensnared in a new tangle of unfamiliar red tape? How important are new trade deals in their calculations? This programme is not a definitive verdict. But amid all the wealth of commentary and speculation it is a snapshot of the experience so far of three industries. Mark Mardell looks at Scotch whisky – the country’s biggest and most profitable food and drink export, and talks to the man who prepared the giant drinks company Chivas Brothers for Brexit, and to the boss of a new small Glasgow distillery. He examines aerospace, another huge British money spinner which warned loudly of the dangers of Brexit to their pan-European business, sees how Airbus is coping now and peers in to the future to ask if entrepreneurs at the new cutting edge technology of vertical take-off drones and air taxis are finding fresh opportunities and pitfalls. And he hears from the maker of upmarket lawnmowers who says his customers are fanatical about their striped lawns. But are they taking advantage of predictions that Britain unfettered could prosper making powerful models banned by the European Union?

Producer: Caroline Bayley

Breaking, also known as break-dancing, borne in New York City in the 1970s, is set to make its debut at the Olympic Games in Paris in 2024.

Four-time breaking world champion, BoxWon (Benyaamin Barnes McGee), traces how breaking went from Bronx block parties to NYC’s downtown art scene, to the world.

Speaking to legends of breaking, such as Rock Steady Crew's Ken Swift and B-Boy Glyde from Dynamic Rockers, BoxWon reveals how punk impresario, Malcolm McLaren, helped breaking become a worldwide craze in the 1980s - before it vanished.

But when the mainstream got bored, breaking didn’t die - it just went back underground, only to re-emerge a decade later more extreme than ever.

Breaking is once again a global phenomenon, with pro dancers coming from all corners of the world – Russia, Japan, and South Korea are now home to some of the world’s very best.

But when the International Olympic Committee confirmed breaking as a new sport for the Olympic Games in Paris 2024, many people were taken by surprise.

The last time they had heard of breaking was back in the 1980s - a fad which swiftly disappeared with shoulder pads and leg warmers.

Breaking Through tells the fascinating story of how this dance-form survived and evolved outside of the media spotlight, fuelled by the scene’s die-hard devotees.

Now, as it attracts global corporate sponsorship and demands for more stringent rules and regulations, we hear about the breaking world's own internal battle to maintain its integrity.

Presenter: BoxWon (Benyaamin Barnes McGee)

Studio Mix: James Beard

Women may be caricatured as babbling chatterboxes, but in public, women speak a lot less.

Be it in conferences or committee meetings, television or parliamentary debates, women do not get a proportionate amount of air space as men.

Mary Ann takes us on a global journey to find out why women aren't speaking up and if they are being disproportionally side-lined, excluded from the world's debates.

She explores the role history and social conditioning plays: the ancient Babylonians thought if a woman spoke in public, she should have her teeth smashed with a burnt brick; in classrooms today boys get far more attention, teachers accepting their calling out of answers, while punishing girls for the same behaviour.

She hears that when women do speak, they are often spoken over regardless of their status. In the Australian High Court, women judges and even the female presiding judge were regularly interrupted by male advocates. And women aren't heard in the same way as men; many struggle to see that a woman might be the expert in the room.

So how can women be heard? In a year in which the head of the Tokyo Olympics organizing committee said women talk too much and Jackie Weaver had to assert her authority in a fuming parish council meeting, we do need solutions.

Should women be hesitant and tentative or bold and chatty? How can a slight change in the layout of a room make a fundamental difference? Mary Ann finds out how to speak up and be heard, to get your point across and influence both men and women.

Interviewees: Deborah Cameron, Professor of Language and Communication, Oxford University, Chris Karpowitz, Professor of Political Science, Brigham Young University, David Sadker, Prof Emeritus at The American University, Linda Carli, Senior Lecturer Emerita in Psychology, Wellesley College, Ioana Latu, senior lecturer in Psychology, Queens University Belfast and author and speaking coach, Patricia Seabright

Producer: Sarah Bowen