Currently

BBC Radio 4
Currently
Latest episode

45 episodes

  • Currently

    Licence to Hate - Racism on the Front Line

    05/04/2026 | 28 mins.
    New data from the 2025 NHS Staff Survey, one of the largest workforce surveys in the world, shows that 1 in 5 minority ethnic staff report facing discrimination from patients or the public, compared with 1 in 20 of their white colleagues. The Royal College of Nursing reports that calls to their advice line about racism at work have increased by 55% in three years. This documentary listens closely to the experiences of nurses, GPs and care workers to try and understand if the current climate is different.
    Presenter: Farhana Haider
    Producers: Farhana Haider and Emma Close
    Editor: Clare Fordham
    Production Coordinator: Maria Ogundele
    Sound mix: James Beard
  • Currently

    Power to The People: Rewiring Britain

    30/03/2026 | 28 mins.
    Britain is turning electric, but the shift to renewable energy will require a major rewire. Business and Economy editor Douglas Fraser follows the journey of power generated on the north coast of Scotland to the socket in your living room, to discover the scale and the challenges of re-hauling the near century-old national grid.
    From windfarms in Caithness, pylons in the Highlands and huge undersea cables transporting power from Aberdeenshire to North Yorkshire, Douglas looks at the environmental and financial impact of the planned changes to the country's energy infrastructure. He also asks if Britain can meet a future surge in demand for electricity to power electric cars, heat pumps and AI data centres, while achieving its ambitious net zero targets.
    Presenter: Douglas Fraser
    Producer: Hayley Jarvis
    Executive Producer: Peter McManus
  • Currently

    How Not to Kill a Politician

    29/03/2026 | 30 mins.
    What is it that drives ordinary people to condone political violence, and some to commit it? As democracies increasingly exist in conditions where violence can flourish, Stanford University polarisation expert Alison Goldsworthy will scrutinise the latest research showing it is dogmatism, not just authoritarian tendencies that enable it. This means we are all susceptible - including, uncomfortably for ‘liberals’ who hold strongly to being open minded (like the ones who mused about the bullet going ‘just a few inches to the right’ after Trump's attempted assassination).
    Leveraging insights from political, behavioural and neuro sciences Alison will track the journey of the biology, instincts, emotions and actions to explain how and why a social media feed can trigger the rewiring of a brain to chuckle at, then endorse violence. She'll explain why this creating this climate increases the likelihood that some people will commit violence. And she'll examine what we can do to prevent ourselves sliding into this vice-like grip.
    Producer: Giles Edwards.
  • Currently

    Britain By Bodycam

    25/03/2026 | 28 mins.
    Every month brings a new headline about shoplifting, confrontations with retail staff and disorder on our high streets.
    As a result, more and more security guards have taken to wearing bodyworn cameras, now visible in every part of our lives, from supermarkets to coffee shops, railway stations to hospitals. For some they are a welcome deterrent and bring peace of mind. For others, they are a sign of a country that has lost its way.
    But what is the world behind these bodycams? Miles away from the high street, dotted around the country on trading estates, in business parks on the edges of cities, even in disused military bunkers, staff work round the clock to monitor live footage that feeds through from bodyworn cameras.
    Aidan Tulloch has been allowed through the bombproof doors and secure airlocks to see what it is like to work in one of these alarm receiving centres. How does it feel to spend 12-hour shifts in one of these windowless rooms watching all corners of Britain? What is the psychological impact of seeing violence unfold in real time?
    Talking to employees from a number of security companies as they sit at banks of computer screens and watch notifications ping in from across the country, he finds out how the alarm receiving centres can often be peaceful places, full of the usual office chatter...until an alarm goes off.
    And as our social media feeds are filled with videos of altercations - often caught on bodycam - alongside people claiming the country is in decline, what does it say about society that we consume this content for pleasure?
    Presenter: Aidan Tulloch
    Producer: Tim Bano
  • Currently

    Sophia v AI Slop

    08/03/2026 | 28 mins.
    While browsing online, the journalist and author Sophia Smith Galer was surprised to find a biography of herself on Amazon. She discovered that it was full of inaccuracies - and most likely written using generative AI. It's part of a new phenomenon in publishing and flooding all parts of our information landscape: AI slop, low quality content made quickly using artificial intelligence.
    While we might be used to slop on social media, what happens when it infiltrates areas where we expect fact rather than fiction? On her quest to get answers about her biography, Sophia looks at how far AI slop has polluted places we previously thought safe - from investigative journalism to academia - and asks if we can ever escape the onslaught of slop.
    Based on an idea from presenter Sophia Smith Galer
    Producer Lucy Wai

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About Currently

Reactive features from Radio 4, exploring what's really happening behind the headlines and unearthing untold stories, both at home and abroad.
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