Kate Mason looks at how potential can be assessed in the world of professional football with Brentford FC player Michael Olakigbe and talent spotter Lee Dykes.

From cycling, Dan Bigham tells us how the potential of technology helped him take on the professionals.

Cricketing broadcaster and Director of women’s cricket at Surrey, Ebony Rainford Brent, discusses the Ace programme which helps young people from a range of backgrounds find their potential as cricketers.

And we also go back to the 1970s to discover a technique to help us improve our own sporting potential. That idea has now also been widely adopted in business.

Presenter: Kate Mason

American singer-songwriter Doug Levitt expected his tour to last just the six weeks printed on the face of the Greyhound pass he bought. The idea was to compose a fuller portrait of the United States by writing songs about the lives and struggles of fellow riders. That was over 15 years, 100 songs and 150,000 miles back. Travel by Greyhound is a favored lower-cost option for people who are often just scraping by on the margins of society; many living through profound challenges with employment, family relationships, addiction and incarceration. On the bus, after many hours on the road sitting next to a stranger the stories begin to flow. Maybe it’s the hypnotic rumble of the bus wheels beneath. Or sitting side-by-side staring straight ahead into darkness as passing headlights and taillights streak by.

Coming from disparate lives, our stories are where we meet, they are the crossroads of human experience. In 2018, Levitt traveled with radio producer David Goren on a cross-country trip for Greyhound Diaries, and again in 2022 and ‘23. Drawing from more than 75 hours of sound recordings we encounter riders, stations, drivers and highways from New York to California and Minnesota to Texas. We hear from Charmaine, a professional care-giver on her way to a job in Wisconsin; Ricky, a father of 6 who transcended teenage fatherhood and the gang life; Ronald, just released from prison after 15 months for drug dealing; and Melissa, who moved her sons away from a violent neighborhood in Chicago.

Presented by Doug Levitt

In 2013, broadcaster and journalist Krupa Padhy, one of the presenters for BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, lost her first child because of medical negligence in a London Hospital. Legal action was taken. Midwives and doctors were given extra training. Lessons were, apparently, learned. But Krupa's life has been changed forever. Over the last few years, systemic failures at multiple maternity units have been uncovered: at Morecambe Bay, Shrewsbury and Telford and East Kent. An investigation is currently underway in Nottingham and there are calls for a review in Leicester. Krupa wants to know what is happening in our maternity wards and how we make them safer.

Producer: Caitlin Smith

Ex-offender Ricky Gleeson has set up HoodEx, a new sustainable clothing charity in South Shields, Tyne and Wear. Ricky has a remarkable back story – a deeply troubled, chequered past. His mother was in her teens when she had him, a single parent who struggled to cope with life. She became addicted to drugs and alcohol and had a series of difficult relationships.

As a child, Ricky was moved from domestic abuse shelters to foster homes and eventually to children’s homes and hostels. He ended up homeless, at times living rough and turning to petty crime. Somehow, he managed to turn his life around. He joined the Royal Navy, took up boxing, became a husband and father and found his way to a new life. And now in his 40s, he wants to help others who are in the same place as he was in. As he struggles to find suitable premises for his charity venture, he revisits some of the keys places in his past life.

Producer: Mohini Patel

Mysterious plants appear on the Isle of Rum. Do they prove the island miraculously escaped the Ice Age? And what extraordinary lengths would one scientist go to in order to prove that it did? Dr Tori Herridge investigates.

Produced for BBC Audio Bristol by Beth Sagar-Fenton

The Great Replacement is an idea fueling far-right recruitment around the world - the idea that white communities and culture are being purposely replaced by non-white migrants.

Many far-right terrorists have referenced this theory as the driving force behind their murderous actions - but where does this idea originate from, and how seriously should we be taking its proliferation here in the UK?

Terrorism expert Raffaello Pantucci explores the roots of the Great Replacement and asks if this is just a far-right conspiracy theory as some critics claim, or is there a kernel of truth reflected in the UK's changing demography?

If so, how are communities - and the government - managing this change? Immigration is often a difficult topic of public debate, with many people concerned that any questioning of immigration policy will label them as racist.

But if we can’t talk more openly, without fear of judgement, are we at risk of handing control of the immigration narrative to extremists?

Reporter: Raffaello Pantucci, Senior Fellow at the Royal United Service Institute, Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore