The Forum

Anthropologist, civil engineer, and historians discuss the past and future of road building. Topics include the impact of roads on society, culture, and travel in Latin America, the transformative role of tar as a binder in road construction, frustrations and challenges of potholes, historical and current approaches to financing roads, and the wide-ranging impact of roads on economic and physical transformation.

Exploring our evolving relationship with pets, this podcast discusses topics such as the emotional bond between humans and pets, changing attitudes towards pets, mourning pets, and the impact of pets on character development. It also delves into the surprising capabilities of zebrafish, the popularity of robotic cats as substitute pets, and the belief of animals having souls.

In some ways the 21st century is a very unusual time when it comes to adolescence - a study in the US found that teenagers smoke less, drink less and have less sex than the previous generation. And worldwide young people are coming of age in a digital era, with the dangers and opportunities that represents. Our expectations of teenagers vary hugely depending on the social, historical and cultural context. Paleoanthropologist Ella Al-Shamahi takes us through the big evolutionary questions about adolescence: Why do humans go through this developmental stage? What's the point of all that teenage angst? And how come every generation stubbornly repeats the same mistakes?She is joined by a panel of experts:Laurence Steinberg is one of the world's leading experts on adolescence. He is Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Temple University in Philadelphia, USA. His latest book is called, 'You and Your Adult Child'.Emily Emmott is a lecturer in biological anthropology at University College London. She's currently researching the implications of the social environment around us during our teenage years.Jon Savage is a British writer and music journalist, best known for his history of the Sex Pistols and punk music. He's the author of 'Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture'.Brenna Hassett is a bioarchaeologist at University College London and the author of 'Growing Up Human: The Evolution of Childhood'.Presented by Ella Al-Shamahi Produced by Jo ImpeyImage: Teenagers dance the twist around a radio cassette recorder in a street in the Harajuku district of Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan, 1978 (Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

From Bhutan to The Bahamas and Iceland to Indonesia, mass tourism has grown at an unprecedented rate over the last few decades. Today’s top destinations are struggling with the sheer numbers of visitors and the United Nations has called for a total rethink on how the industry operates. The origins of travel for pleasure go back centuries and package holidays in the 1960s made it accessible to many in the West but it’s only the combination of cheap flights and the advent of the internet that has led to truly global tourism on a mass scale. Whilst the industry now generates huge income for many companies and individuals around the globe, critics point to the cost to both the environment and humankind. Drawing on listeners’ questions and comments, Rajan Datar examines the way mass tourism has impacted people’s lives, both positively and negatively, and asks if the enforced pause in tourism caused by Covid was utilised as an opportunity for a re-think. He is joined by Sihle Khumalo, a popular South African travel writer; Shazia Mirza, a renowned British comedienne and writer; Qupanuk Olsen, originally a mining engineer but now Greenland’s leading travel influencer; Prof. Noel Salazar, anthropologist of tourism from KU Leuven in Belgium; Iñigo Sánchez-Fuarros, senior researcher at the Institute of Heritage Sciences of the Spanish National Research Council and Dr. Birgit Trauer, tourism consultant and educator from Australia.[Photo: El Postiguet Beach in Alicante, Spain in the summer of 2022. Credit: Marcos del Mazo/LightRocket via Getty Images.]

Are we in a new age of information warfare? The technology to create deepfakes has progressed steadily over the past decade and enables anyone to create videos of people saying and doing things they didn’t actually say or do. But the idea of manipulating video to spread misinformation is almost as old as film itself. Presenter Iszi Lawrence invites a panel of experts to tackle your questions about AI technology and the uses of deepfakes. Is this something we should be concerned or excited about? What can be done to detect and block malicious content? And what does this mean for our understanding of truth and reality?Iszi is joined by Francesca Panetta, Director of the AKO Storytelling Institute at the University of the Arts, London; Joshua Glick, Visiting Associate Professor of Film and Electronic Arts at Bard College, NY and Samantha Cole, senior Editor at Motherboard/Vice and author of 'How Sex Changed the Internet'. We also hear from artist and technologist Halsey Burgund and from listeners Brandy and Ahmad.Image: A digitised face Image Credit: Getty Images

When telecoms engineer Martin Cooper first chatted in public on a mobile phone 50 years ago few would have predicted that this brief telephone call would be the start of a revolution that would change the lives of billions. Over the last half a century, the mobile has transformed not just how we communicate with each other but also how we view and interact with the world around us. However, recent research suggests that this may not all be for the best.Drawing on listeners comments and questions, Rajan Datar explores what sets the mobile phone apart from previous communication devices. Why did SMS messaging take off so quickly after a slow start in the 1990s? And how did the morphing of a portable phone into a pocket computer a decade later lead to a situation where many people now interact with their phone more than with any human? Rajan is joined by Scott Campbell, Professor of Telecommunications at the University of Michigan whose work focuses on meanings, uses and consequences of mobile communication in everyday life; behavioural psychologist Dr. Daria Kuss from Nottingham Trent University who specialises in cyberpsychology, technology use and addictive behaviours; and comedienne and PhD. candidate at Exeter University Helen Keen who is researching social connections at the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health. We also hear from educator Wong Fung Sing from Singapore and other listeners from around the world.(Photo: mobile phones in a stack on a table. Credit: iStock/Getty images)

Given the submarine's importance to many of the world's navies, it's perhaps surprising to learn that for many years it was considered an inventor's folly and of little use in maritime warfare. Indeed the submarine had a difficult birth because of the technical challenges involved in putting a moving vessel underwater, challenges that could only be overcome once the technology became available.The submarine eventually proved its potential in World War I, where its ability to pass undetected ushered in a new era of ‘unrestricted warfare’. Since then, it has never looked back and today’s submarines are capable of remaining submerged for months at a time – the ultimate stealth weapon. As navies modernise, what has traditionally been an exclusively male service is now opening up to women in some countries.Rajan Datar prowls the ocean's depths to find out more about the 'silent service', along with submarine designer Professor David Andrews from the Mechanical Engineering department of University College London; historian Axel Niestlé, author of German U-boat Losses in World War II; George Malcolmson, the curator of the British Royal Navy's submarine museum; and author Eric Wertheim, editor of the US Naval Institute’s reference book Combat Fleets of the World.Image: Karelia nuclear-powered submarine, Murmansk, Russia, 2018 Credit: Lev Fedoseyev/Getty Images

A child prodigy on the piano, then a glamorous jazz and popular music entertainer, a civil rights campaigner and the first black American woman to host her own TV show: for the first three decades of her life, Hazel Scott’s rise to fame was vertiginous.Born in Trinidad in 1920, Scott was the headliner in some of New York’s most fashionable clubs by the time she was twenty. A couple of years later she became one of Hollywood’s highest paid entertainers and then married one of the most high-profile US Congressmen of her day. Their celebrity lifestyle regularly featured on newspaper front pages, Scott’s records were selling well and her syndicated TV show was given double airtime because it was so popular. And then, almost overnight, she vanished from public view. What happened? That's one of the questions Rajan Datar discusses with Scott's biographer and actor Karen Chilton; Loren Schoenberg, saxophonist, bandleader and Senior Scholar of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem; and playwright, lyricist and broadcaster Murray Horwitz.(Image: Hazel Scott in the 1950s. Credit: Archive Photos/Getty Images)

Do you like cocoa? You are in good company: in South and Central America people have been enjoying the fruit of the cacao tree - the source of cocoa, chocolate and much else - for thousands of years. Ancient empires fought battles for the control of the best trees, cacao beans were used as currency, and being able to make a tasty cacao drink could even save your life. To trace the history of cacao in Latin America, Bridget Kendall is joined by archaeologist Cameron McNeil, chef and food historian Maricel Presilla and geneticist and cacao researcher Juan Carlos Motamayor. The reader is Joseph Balderama.(Photo: A cropped cocoa pod lies over dried cacao beans. Credit: Getty Images)

The Hoover Dam in the US, the Aswan Dam in Egypt and the recently opened, and sumptuously named, Grand Ethiopian Renaissance dam. Since modern times, huge mega dams like these to tame rivers, create water storage and hydropower, have become a symbol of nationhood used to create national pride and bolster political power, from the Cold War to today. Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, called dams the temples of modern India. But dams have also been highly controversial, displacing rural populations, disrupting local ecology and more recently it’s been shown that dams can increase the amount of greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere. So why are so many countries like China still highly involved in dam building, and will they need to change tack in the future? And, could the humble beaver offer a solution?To discuss the past, present, and future of dam building, Rajan Datar is joined by Nikita Sud, Professor of the Politics of Development at Oxford University; Donald C. Jackson the Cornelia F. Hugel Professor of History at La Fayette University in the US and author of many books on the history of dam building, including Building the Ultimate Dam: John S. Eastwood and the Control of Water in the West; and Dr Majed Akhter, a political geographer who is senior lecturer in Geography at King’s College London. With the contribution of Dr Emily Fairfax, an ecohydrologist with an expertise in beaver activity and beaver dams from California State university Channel Islands in the US. Produced by Anne Khazam for the BBC World Service.(Photo: The Hoover Dam on the Colorado River straddling Nevada and Arizona at dawn. Credit: Sean Pavone via Getty Images)