The Eddie Mair Interview

How do you stop people joining radical terrorist groups? The UK government offers an intensive one-to-one mentoring programme, called Channel, to challenge violent views.

Anjum Khan is a Muslim and a therapist and sits in a room getting to know the people at the heart of the Channel programme.

Eddie Mair first spoke to David Nott in 2013. His regular job is at three hospitals in London but for the past 20 years during his holiday time, he has headed to some of the world's bleakest trouble spots where he carries out operations on injured people, on behalf of a number of charities. Most recently he has been working in Syria.

His interview was warmly received by listeners, so we spoke to him again, a year later, to hear about his most recent experiences of Syria.

Dr Samer Attar is an orthopaedic surgeon. He lives and works in Chicago, but takes time away from his day job to use his skills to help the people of Syria.

He's worked in the city of Aleppo several times. He's just back from his most recent visit.

In April 2015 a car bomb went off in Baghdad. At least ten people were killed. Karim Wasfi conductor of the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra walked to the scene of the explosion, and amidst the carnage set up a wooden chair, sat down, and began to play the cello.

39 holiday makers were killed when a gunman from so called Islamic State opened fire on a beach in Sousse, Tunisia, in June 2015.

Olivia Leathley is a head chef from Manchester and was in the hotel with her boyfriend Mike.

Will Pooley is a British nurse who became infected with Ebola in Sierra Leone, received treatment back in the UK and then went back to Sierra Leone. Eddie spoke to Will Pooley whilst he was still in Africa, and managed to put him in touch with his parents, Jackie and Robin, who came into a studio in the UK, just before Christmas that year.

Geoffrey Harris overcame years of stress and anxiety to make a bus journey from his home in Neath to Swansea. It was on Leap Day in 2012, when hundreds of PM listeners did something different for a day.

Among the people listening that day in 2012 was Claire Parrish, who hadn't touched her artwork for 20 years.

Phyllis Whitsell was adopted as a child, and was never told her mother's name, only that she had died of tuberculosis.

Phyllis eventually became a nurse and discovered that her mother was alive and an alcoholic. She spent the following nine years caring for her mum as she descended into mental decline. But, as she reveals to Eddie, Phyllis never told her mother that she was her daughter until it was too late.

Renee Rabinowitz is 81 years old, Jewish, a retired lawyer and holocaust survivor. She was asked to move seats on a flight from New York to Tel Aviv, but wasn't getting offered an upgrade. Eddie finds out what happened.

Imagine fencing blind against a sighted opponent. That's what Ruth Tolkien does. She spoke to Eddie Mair about wielding blades, archery, and being the great granddaughter of JRR Tolkien, the author of Lord of the Rings.