Global investigations from the BBC. Uncovering gripping stories from around the world and telling them episode by episode. Delve into a World of Secrets.
Latest season: The Child Cancer Scam. Your child is critically ill. It’s the worst news you can get. But to make the situation even more awful, you struggle to afford the care they need. So when someone tells you a foreign sponsor can help raise the money, you’ll do anything. You make a video: your child begs for help from strangers online. But it comes to nothing. You wait and wait for the cash that was donated. It never comes, and all the while your child is fighting for their life.
Previously on World of Secrets:
Death in Dubai. A woman falls from a tower block and her name starts trending. But behind the online rumours lies an even darker reality.
The Abercrombie Guys. Investigating sexual exploitation claims against the former CEO of fashion giant Abercrombie & Fitch.
And Al Fayed: Predator at Harrods. Women accuse Mohamed Al Fayed of rape.
A window into our world, through in-depth storytelling from the BBC. Investigating, reporting and uncovering true stories from everywhere. Award-winning journalism, unheard voices, amazing culture and global issues.
From China’s state-backed overseas spending, to on the road with Canada’s Sikh truckers, to the frontline of the climate emergency, we go beyond the headlines.
Every week, we take you into the minds of the world's most creative people and explore personal approaches to spirituality. And we bring together people from around the globe to discuss how news stories are affecting their lives.
A new episode most days, all year round. From our BBC World Service teams at: Assignment, Heart and Soul, In the Studio, OS Conversations and The Fifth Floor.
From ghostly phantoms to UFOs, Danny Robins investigates real-life stories of paranormal encounters. So, are you Team Believer or Team Sceptic?
Written and presented by Danny Robins Editor and Sound Designer: Charlie Brandon-King Music: Evelyn Sykes Theme Music by Lanterns on the Lake Produced by Danny Robins and Simon Barnard
A Bafflegab and Uncanny Media production for BBC Radio 4
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News-making original journalism documentary series, investigating stories at home and abroad.
Three years ago travel writer Lydia Gard discovered freediving almost by accident. It’s an extreme and beautiful sport defined by one simple objective: to dive as deep as you can on one single breath. Record holders are now routinely diving to more than 120 metres, pushing the sport and their bodies to find out what’s humanly possible.
Through her coach, Lydia was drawn into a small but fanatical community of competition athletes all united in their drive for depth, and that’s where she stumbled on a darker side of the sport. Rumours swirled that a group of top divers were doping to get deeper, faster.
As the community began to turn on each other over the allegations, one prominent diver decided to take the law into his own hands. A secret sting operation was meant to put an end to the problem by bringing the alleged dopers out of the dark, and into the light. But the issue hasn't gone away. And now, a lot of people who’ve been too scared to speak up, are ready to talk.
Episodes 1-4 are available to listen now.
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America through the looking glass - enter a world where nothing is as it seems.
As America heads into a presidential election, Gabriel Gatehouse dives back into the labyrinthine rabbit warren of American conspiracy culture. Whilst liberals across the world worry about a possible return of Donald Trump, millions of Americans are convinced that their democracy has already been highjacked - by a sinister Deep State cabal. How did this happen? And who is behind it? That's the story that Gabriel Gatehouse is investigating in this series of The Coming Storm.
The search for the origins of this story takes Gabriel inside a paranoid political group that tried to build its own Deep State during the Cold War, now back in fashion in the conservative backwaters of western mountain states. Gabriel meets the January 6 rioters running for office who see their detention as political imprisonment in gulags, and the militia men convinced the CIA and FBI are working against the American people. In the background lurk the tech utopian ideologues, using their vast wealth and power to fund conspiracy flavoured content as they work to create sovereign states free of all government control. And online, amateur finance bros foment distrust of government, central banks and giant financial institutions to millions of followers.
What were once fringe ideas have burst into the mainstream. Conspiracy theories have become central planks of Trump's Republican Party, while Democrats run on dark warnings about the end of democracy. With both sides convinced the other is an existential threat, what are the prospects for the survival of the American political system?