The Convex Conversation

Prison Group Director for the West Midlands Mark Greenhaf takes us behind bars at HMP Swinfen Hall in Staffordshire – a Category C prison for men aged 18-28 – to explore his forty-year career championing reform and rehabilitation.  

We’re joined by attempted murder victim Natalie Queiroz MBE who talks to some of the young lads serving life about the impact of knife crime and how they can use their time in prison to grow and change. 

Mark has been Governor of a number of UK prisons and has devised numerous initiatives like ‘Keep the Peace’ in an attempt to break the cycle of violence and create positive hooks for change. 

As Earth faces its sixth mass extinction, with a million plant and animal species at risk, Australian environmentalist & climate expert Natalie Kyriacou OAM explains how, for the first time in history, it’s being driven by human activity.

Her new book, Nature's Last Dance, is a razor-sharp, honest, witty and deeply moving look into the heart of our extinction crisis.

Natalie shares unusual tales of hope, joy, absurdity and scientific marvel to inspire us to confront and ultimately reverse what’s happening to our natural world.

Photographs of Natalie by Chloe Paul

Blood tests that can detect tiny traces of abnormal proteins which have leached from the brain into the blood are proving a real breakthrough in efforts to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease early - a thing of science fiction five years ago, according to eminent neurologist Professor Jonathan Schott.

Based at the Dementia Research Centre at UCL’s Institute of Neurology, Jon is also Chief Medical Officer for Alzheimer’s Research UK – and explains, in layman’s terms, the latest developments and research projects in the search for early diagnosis and more effective treatments for everyone. 

He talks about the Blood Biomarker Challenge, funded by ARUK and other organisiations; Insight 46 – a study of people born in the same week in 1946; and upcoming studies of those born in 1958 and 1970. 

As a clinical scientist, Jon feels privileged to be at the interface between research and seeing patients every week at his NHS clinic whose lives are devastated by Alzheimer’s

Jonathan Schott - Professor of Neurology at the UK Dementia Research Centre and the Institute at UCL and Dementia ResearchChief Medical Officer for Alzheimer's Research UK 

Popular science presenter and space expert Dallas Campbell was one of millions following NASA’s recent Artemis II mission around the Moon, with live updates by the four astronauts from space.

Dallas talks us through the significance of the mission, how it compares with Apollo, and his delight at how it’s captured public imagination at a politically divisive time on Earth. 

His brilliant new book – Space Journal: The Art and Science of Cosmic Exploration – is a history of space exploration, with people at its heart. It’s a celebration of our perception of the cosmos, and our efforts to reach it, from the seventeenth century to the present day. 

In part two of our special with multi-BAFTA and Emmy-winning wildlife and documentary film-maker Doug Allan, he discusses climate change and, in particular, the impact it’s having on the polar regions.

Doug says if the world had paid more attention to indigenous people in the Arctic and elsewhere, and listened seriously, we might have been more aware of the dangers ahead.

Doug shares more incredible stories behind capturing breathtaking material for landmark series like The Blue Planet and Frozen Planet as well as filming with Sir David Attenborough, who says cameramen don’t come much more special than Doug. 

Sir David Attenborough says cameramen don’t come much more special than Doug Allan.

The multi-BAFTA and Emmy-winning wildlife cameraman has filmed some of the most spectacular sequences for landmark programmes like Blue Planet. Orcas attacking gray whales off California; polar bears trying to catch belugas in a frozen hole in Arctic Canada and killer whales washing seals off ice floes in Antarctica. All on-screen firsts.

In part one of our two-part special, Doug recounts wonderful stories and adventures from his 60+ trips to the poles over the last five decades, filming underwater and on land. 

He also recalls how he managed to escape the terrifying clutches of a determined walrus who mistook him for a seal!

Clyde Best OBE was just 17 when he left Bermuda and came to London to play for West Ham United, becoming the first black superstar of First Division football in England.

His dad told him in 1968 that he’d be playing for those coming after him. A new documentary - Transforming the Beautiful Game: The Clyde Best Story – shows just how many world-class black players Clyde has inspired, including England stars Viv Anderson and Ian Wright.

Clyde reflects on the incredible highs, scoring more than 50 goals, as well as the devastating lows of racist chants from the terraces, and offers words of wisdom for young players today who – sixty years on – are still dealing with racism in the game

Emotional night at the premier of Transforming the Beautiful Game

 Clyde with his dad Joseph

Retired detective Ash Smith, played by David Thewlis in Channel’s 4’s shocking new docudrama Dirty Business, talks about his decade‑long investigation with neighbour Professor Peter Hammond into England's water companies and the incredible response to the programme.

It’s a dramatisation of the real-life story of how they uncovered the illegal dumping of raw sewage by water companies in Britain’s waterways and it's drawn a huge response from the public. 

Ash explains how they started to put the pieces together; used sophisticated machine learning to interpret complex data; challenged water companies and the Government’s Environment Agency with compelling proof; and ended up giving evidence in Parliament. Ash co-founded Windrush Against Sewage Pollution. 

Professor of Computational Biology Peter Hammond - co-founder of WASP - with Ash Smith

WASP's Ash Smith and Peter Hammond with their acting counterparts David Thewlis and Jason Atkins

David Thewlis in C4's Dirty Business

The world’s fastest marathon runner over 50 shares his extraordinary story of resilience, redemption and personal transformation. 

Ken Rideout grew up in a broken home in inner-city Boston, Massachusetts; became a corrections officer in a hard-core prison at 18; made millions as a trader on Wall Street but behind the financial success battled a long, dark addiction to opioids. 

Adopting a baby from an orphanage in Ethiopia and endurance running became Ken’s salvation. He won his first ever ultra-marathon in the Gobi Desert in 2023 and reveals his incredible journey in Everything You Want is on The Other Side of Hard. 

Award-winning reportage artist and TED Fellow George Butler draws in ink and watercolour in war zones, refugee camps and disaster areas all over the world telling poignant, human stories we rarely hear on the news.

His testimonies of ordinary people capture courage, resilience, strength and moments of hope, introducing us to real characters behind the headlines.

George has drawn in a leprosy clinic in Nepal; spent time with The Hazda tribe in Tanzania who work with honeyguide birds, and most recently has been sketching in Aleppo and Damascus in Syria where Action Syria - a charity he co-founded - funds doctors and teachers. 

Photograph by Mauricio Gris

Petro collecting books after a missile strike - Kramatorsk, Ukraine

Photograph by Bram Janssen

Matriarch & great-grandmother 99-year-old Madame Olga - Kyiv, Ukraine

Photography by Tim Brown