Art has long promised to transport us, to enable us to step outside ourselves and encounter experiences we never would otherwise. Now Jordan Erica Webber explores a possibility only video games can offer, a way to commune with long-dead friends and relatives, sometimes years after their deaths.

This experience has a familiar ring to it – finding a photo, a video, or a loved one’s notes scrawled in the margins of a book – but it’s also profoundly different, because in video games you can get to interact with your loved one, to play with their ghost.

Sometimes this is accidental: a deceased parent’s data left as a high score, a ghostly shape that races you to the finish line, or Artificial Intelligence storing some part of the person and surprising us with them later. But some game designers have memorialised loved ones in their art intentionally, like Dan Hett, who made a series of microgames about the loss of his brother Martyn in the Manchester Arena bombing, or Ryan and Amy Green who coded their son Joel into a video game character that has already outlived him.

Can you bear to beat the high score and erase that recording forever? And when do the Greens stop playing with Joel? This programme examines profound questions that have been posed in all kinds of art from poetry to sculpture to performance, and asks what it means when the ghosts are interactive.

Producers: Giles Edwards and Patrick Cowling

For musician and poet Arlo Parks, 2020 was set to be massive. Festivals, a US tour. Then the world shifted. Her gigs were postponed, festivals cancelled. We watched Glastonbury's empty fields from our sofas where Arlo played, but only for the cows.

So instead, she did gigs online, put out new tracks to wide critical acclaim, wrote new music and published poetry on social media. Her thoughtful, intimate music has been the soundtrack to many people's life in lockdown. But still, live performing is on hold. Her fans, once singing her lyrics back at her at shows, feel very far away. She left a bit of her heart out there, on the road.

The Coronavirus pandemic has struck a huge blow to everyone involved in the music industry. While the world gets back to some kind of normal, Arlo explores what the psychological effect will be of a world with - for now - no live music in it. She asks other artists she admires like poet and hip-hop artist Kojey Radical, Ed O'Brien from Radiohead, Yannis Philippakis from the band Foals and indie singer songwriter Phoebe Bridgers, how they've dealt with the void. How have they managed the impact on their creative process and where do the silver linings lie? She asks them what lasting impact this time will have on their live performances once the world's venues are open for business again. And she connects with her fans, the people she can't wait to get back to see in the flesh, down in the auditorium.

Presented by Arlo Parks.

Photo by Adrian Lee.

Tricky is the place to discuss difficult questions away from the bear pit of social media.

Drag artist Vanity Von Glow, poet Iona Lee, relationship & sex educator, Esther De La Ford and actor Karen Bartke discuss the 'Karen' meme.

Karen is a slang term for an obnoxious, angry, entitled, and often racist middle-aged white woman, who uses her privilege to get her way or police other people's behaviours. It’s similar to the male term 'Gammon' in that they both refer to furious opinionated white people. ‘Karen’ began as shorthand in the US's black community but was popularised right across all sorts of service industries.

For the Karen on our panel it puts her off complaining about anything, in case she's accused of ‘being such a Karen' especially because that's her name! But is it now being used simply as a means to shut women down when they express an opinion that usually a man doesn't like? Who is the arbiter of when the meme is being correctly used or is that simply the nature of these things that once they're out they take on a life of their own?

Producers: Myles Bonnar and Peter McManus

'When was the first time a human felt haunted?'

Kirsty Logan travels back to the world’s earliest civilisations to uncover where tales of ghosts first emerged.

From the earliest evidence of belief in an afterlife, seen in decorated bones in early grave sites, to Ancient Egyptian letters to the dead, and predatory Chindi unleashed to wreak deadly vengeance in the snowy wastes of North America, Kirsty tells the tales of the spirits that haunted our most ancient forebears, and became the common ancestor for ghost stories across all of human history.

False Hope? Alternative Cancer Cures is a three-part investigate series into the death of young musician, Sean Walsh.

Sean was 20 when he found out his cancer was back. He’d been in remission for less than two years and was determined that this time round, he would not have conventional treatment. He turned down chemotherapy in the hope that he could cure his Hodgkin’s Lymphoma through an alternative approach, including a vegan diet, cannabis oil and coffee enemas. Throughout his treatment he used controversial thermography scans to monitor his progress and was convinced he was getting better.

Journalist Layla Wright followed Sean’s journey on social media as he attempted to heal himself, and for a while, it seemed to be working. He raised thousands of pounds to fund his treatment and beat the doctor’s prognosis. But in January 2019 Sean died, and his family believe alternative treatments cost him his life.

Through the testimony of those closest to him, and through his own words, Layla explores why Sean – and many others – took this approach. She meets the family of Linda Halliday who also relied on thermography scans for reassurance that alternative treatments were working and investigates the clinic that provided them.

Presenter and producer: Layla Wright

False Hope? Alternative Cancer Cures is a three-part investigate series into the death of young musician, Sean Walsh.

Sean was 20 when he found out his cancer was back. He’d been in remission for less than two years and was determined that this time round, he would not have conventional treatment. He turned down chemotherapy in the hope that he could cure his Hodgkin’s Lymphoma through an alternative approach, including a vegan diet, cannabis oil and coffee enemas. Throughout his treatment he used controversial thermography scans to monitor his progress and was convinced he was getting better.

Journalist Layla Wright followed Sean’s journey on social media as he attempted to heal himself, and for a while, it seemed to be working. He raised thousands of pounds to fund his treatment and beat the doctor’s prognosis. But in January 2019 Sean died, and his family believe alternative treatments cost him his life.

Through the testimony of those closest to him, and through his own words, Layla explores why Sean – and many others – took this approach. She meets the family of Linda Halliday who also relied on thermography scans for reassurance that alternative treatments were working and investigates the clinic that provided them.

Presenter and producer: Layla Wright

False Hope? Alternative Cancer Cures is a three-part investigative series into the death of young musician Sean Walsh.

Sean was 20 when he found out his cancer was back. He’d been in remission for less than two years and was determined that this time round, he would not have conventional treatment. He turned down chemotherapy in the hope that he could cure his Hodgkin’s Lymphoma through an alternative approach, including a vegan diet, cannabis oil and coffee enemas. Throughout his treatment he used controversial thermography scans to monitor his progress and was convinced he was getting better.

Journalist Layla Wright followed Sean’s journey on social media as he attempted to heal himself, and for a while, it seemed to be working. He raised thousands of pounds to fund his treatment and beat the doctor’s prognosis. But in January 2019 Sean died, and his family believe alternative treatments cost him his life.

Through the testimony of those closest to him, and through his own words, Layla explores why Sean – and many others – took this approach. She meets the family of Linda Halliday who also relied on thermography scans for reassurance that alternative treatments were working and investigates the clinic that provided them.

Presenter and producer: Layla Wright

The final episode of Blood Lands - a true story told in five parts which takes us to the heart of modern South Africa.

A group of white men are on trial accused of murdering two black South Africans, but as a long and explosive trial comes to an end, could muddled medical evidence see them walk free? Blood Lands is a murder investigation, a political drama, a courtroom thriller, and a profound exploration of the enduring racial tensions threatening the "rainbow nation". Over the course of three years, correspondent Andrew Harding has followed every twist of the police’s hunt for the killers, the betrayals that opened the door to an dramatic trial, and the fortunes of all those involved – from the dead men’s families to the handful of men controversially selected for prosecution. When a whole community is on trial who pays the price?

Presenter, Andrew Harding

Blood Lands is a true story told in five parts which takes us to the heart of modern South Africa.

A family betrayal leads to a murder trial in a small farming town in South Africa. But who is telling the truth about a frenzied attack that left two black farm workers dead, and a community bitterly divided on racial lines? Blood Lands is murder investigation, a political drama, a courtroom thriller, and a profound exploration of the enduring tensions threatening the "rainbow nation". Over the course of three years, correspondent Andrew Harding has followed every twist of the police’s hunt for the killers, the betrayals that opened the door to an explosive trial, and the fortunes of all those involved – from the dead men’s families to the handful of men controversially selected for prosecution.

Presenter, Andrew Harding

Blood Lands is a true story told in five parts which takes us to the heart of modern South Africa.

Police investigating a suspected double murder in a small South African farming community uncover crucial new evidence. But will it be enough to break the farmers’ wall of silence and solve a case that has divided a town on racial lines? Blood Lands is a murder investigation, a political drama, a courtroom thriller, and a profound exploration of the enduring tensions threatening the "rainbow nation". Over the course of three years, correspondent Andrew Harding has followed every twist of the police’s hunt for the killers, the betrayals that opened the door to an explosive trial, and the fortunes of all those involved – from the dead men’s families to the handful of men controversially selected for prosecution.

Presenter, Andrew Harding