Seriously...

A century ago, the Russian Revolution took place. It was a seismic event that changed the course of the 20th century. In this special, bonus episode of Seriously…, we visit four cities closely linked to the events of 1917. With Moscow correspondent Steve Rosenberg as our guide, we travel the 4000 mile journey across Russia, asking if the repercussions of Red October are still being felt today. Steve also reveals to Rhianna Dhillon more of the stories he discovered on his way from St Petersburg to Khabarovsk.

Savitri Devi-devotee of Hitler, proponent of Hindu nationalism, associate of both the British BNP and the American Nazi party-was a prolific author and energetic member of the international Nazi network after the Second World War. Now, her paeans to the mythical Aryan race and apocalyptic theories of history are circulating once again, revived by European white nationalists and the American alt-right. Born in France in 1905 to an English mother and Greek-Italian father, Savitri Devi moved to India in the 1930s, took a Hindu name, and married a prominent Brahmin. She believed that India's caste system had preserved the purity of the so-called Aryans, and that Hinduism was a living survival of the pagan religion destroyed in Europe by Judeo-Christianity. In her saffron-edged sari and large swastika earrings, she traveled the country promoting Hindutva, the Hindu nationalist ideology espoused by India's ruling party today. Devastated by the fall of the Third Reich at the end of the Second World War, she entered occupied Germany to distribute Nazi propaganda; convinced that Hitler was an avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu, she spent the rest of her life preparing for his eventual return.Maria Margaronis travels to India to meet Savitri Devi's nephews and former neighbours and explore the origins of her bizarre theories. Drawing on never-before-broadcast interviews with Savitri Devi herself and conversations with historians and activists, she asks what we can learn from this eccentric figure about today's extreme right movements, their strategies and their appeal. Produced by Shabnam Grewal Illustration inspired by photograph Courtesy of the Savitri Devi Archive.

"3 May. Bistritz. Left Munich at 8:35 P. M, on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late."The first line of Bram Stoker's Dracula makes it clear what the novel will be about: trains. As the book begins, the English solicitor Jonathan Harker is travelling across Europe by train, en route to meet his mysterious new Transylvanian client, complaining all the way about the late running of the service. "It seems to me that the further East you go the more unpunctual are the trains. What ought they to be in China?"In the Trainspotter's Guide to Dracula, Miles Jupp uses Bram Stoker's novel as it has never been used before, as a train timetable, following its references to plot a route across Europe by rail to Dracula's castle in Transylvania.Will Miles be able to reach Dracula's castle more quickly than Harker did, or will his journey be dogged by discontinued services, closed lines and delays? Produced by David Stenhouse.Readings by David Jackson Young.

The events in Charlottesville were just one example of the sharp rise in the number of violent confrontations in America between far-right white nationalists and left-wing groups known as 'antifa' - short for "anti-fascists". Those on the right claim they're fighting to defend free speech or other deeply held American principles. But their opponents say they're promoting extremism and a brand of racial division far out of line with mainstream thought.Fights that once took place between the two groups online are now spilling out onto the streets of places like Berkeley, California and Portland, Oregon - liberal enclaves where far-right activists have held rallies and which have been turned into scenes of violence, and even murder. Mike Wendling has travelled to America's west coast to talk to underground antifa organisers and find out what they want - and what they're prepared to do to achieve their aims.Producer: Anisa Subedar.

Once upon a time, total surveillance was the province of George Orwell and totalitarian states, but we now live in a world where oceans of data are gathered from us every day by the wondrous digital devices we have admitted to our homes and that we carry with us everywhere. At the same time, our governments want us to let them follow everything we do to root out evil before it can strike. If you have nothing to hide, do you really have nothing to fear? In Who's Looking At You , novelist and occasional futurist Nick Harkaway argues surveillance has reached a new pitch of penetration and sophistication and we need to talk about it before it's too late. This is our brave new world: data from pacemakers are used in criminal prosecutions as evidence, the former head of the CIA admits 'we kill people based on meta-data,' and scientists celebrate pulling a clear image of a face directly from a monkey's brain. Where does it end, and what does it mean? Surveillance used to end at our front door, now not even the brain is beyond the prying eyes of an information-hungry world. The application of big data brings many benefits and has the potential to make us wealthier, keep us healthier and ensure we are safer - but only if we the citizens are in control. The programme uses rich archive to illustrate how the 'watchers' have adapted to technology that has super-charged the opportunity to snoop. It examines the arguments of those who claim the right to keep their secrets while demanding that we the people give up more and more of ours. Transparency for the masses? Or simple necessity in a chaotic technological future? What happens to us, to our choices under the all-seeing eye? One thing is certain: if we don't make choices about surveillance, they will be made for us.

The relationship between fathers and daughters has been the subject of countless cultural explorations down the centuries, from Elektra's distress to Bonjour Tristesse. Some of them are idealised ('To Kill A Mockingbird', 'All the Lights We Cannot See'); some highly damaging and dysfunctional ('This is England', 'The Beggar's Opera'); some, as any A'Level pupil who's studied 'King Lear' can attest, are both. What is clear in all these cases is just how particular and powerful the relationship can be, and in this highly personal programme Lauren Laverne heads home to team up with her own dad, Les, to talk about their relationship and how it matches up with some of these cultural imaginings. Among anecdotes about growing up in Sunderland and later on Les playing roadie to Lauren's gigs with the likes of the Ramones, we also hear from artists who in one way or another are engaging with the dad/daughter relationship now, including Helen MacDonald, Glyn Maxwell and The Unthanks. Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Geoff Bird.

The Russian Revolution unleashed a brand of humour that continues to this day. In this two-part series, comedian and Russophile Viv Groskop explores a century of revolutionary comedy and asks how it continues to shape the national psyche. The series will rediscover comedy of the Revolution: Bolshevik satire, early Communist cartoons and jokes about Lenin, as writers, satirists and comedians recall the jokes and cartoons shared by their parents and grandparents. Viv will investigate the birth of the 'anekdot' and trace the development of dark humour through the purges. She will look at how dissident humour in the late 1950s influenced comedy in London and New York, and meet contemporary comedians to gain an understanding of the shape and sound of the comedy circuit in Russia today. Producer: Georgia Catt

A portrait of singer, songwriter and truck driver Will Beeley.The myth of the road is deeply rooted in America - it's the thing that delivers escape, promises freedom, fuels new hopes and, once upon a time at least, thoughts of a new nation. And it provides its own opening onto the vastness and variety of the country today.The distances can be dizzying. And these days Will Beeley spends more time on the road than he does at home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a city in the desert, with Route 66 running through its heart.In another life Will Beeley was a musician - a singer and songwriter - an anxious romantic at the end of the 1960s and a smooth-voiced folkie ten years later. He played gig after gig, made records and, for a while at least, hoped for the big time. But now, like a different road taken, a different stop along the way, he spends his life behind the wheel of a hulking truck, sharing the driving with his wife, as the highway and the days blur by.It's a unique vantage point. And as America spools past outside, framed by the huge windscreen, does he - like all of us now and then - think of times gone by, of unfinished business, of what might have been? Or is his attention fixed ahead on the road as it rolls towards him, flowing beneath his wheels?Producer: Martin Williams.

Not everyone appreciates the tonalities, lyrics or even the shrieky voice of Canadian artist and musician Joni Mitchell but in a dusty class room in 1971 Lynne Truss decided she loved the writer of Woodstock, Big Yellow Taxi and Both Sides Now. It was a bond forged in the face of the frosty indifference of fellow pupils in Miss Cheverton's music class at the Tiffin Girls School in Kingston Upon Thames.Even Lynne is slightly mystified when she was asked who was her muse that, as a person mostly famous for writing a book on punctuation, she replied; Joni Mitchell. Lynne explores why a series of albums from Ladies of the Canyon to Heijra taking in Blue, Court and Spark and The Hissing of Summer lawns' has wrought such influence over so many.For her aficionados Joni Mitchell is more than a song writer. Lynne observes that for some the attachment goes beyond the personal; its a complete identification with the struggles of dealing with high emotion and how to cope. In the programme she speaks to the poet and playwright Liz Lochhead, the author Linda Grant, Elbow's front man Guy Garvey, her latest biographer the Syracuse University academic David Yaffe and Gina Foster the singer with the UK act Joni's Soul, which she insists is not a tribute but a celebration act. Lynne contends that despite at the time being overshadowed in favour of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon and others Joni Mitchell will come to be regarded as the greatest exponent of the art of singer-song writer from that era and concludes that what makes her a muse can be found less in the brilliant lyrical summations of eternal questions like love, loss and freedom but more in her absolute commitment never to compromise her art - to remain true, above all else, to her own muse.

Tiny bathers relax in a puddle of oily water on a pavement; a galleon sails on the head of a pin, a dancer twirls next to a mote of dust under a microscope - Dr Lance Dann, lover of miniature worlds, crouches down on hands and knees to better observe the world of tiny art.Prompted by advances in technology, and the enduring wonder of things created on a really, really tiny scale, Lance Dann follows his own obsession with the miracle of miniature art. Knocking on the tiny doors of creators from street artist Slinkachu, whose mesmerising cityscapes are created, photographed and abandoned in the street, to the collection of antique miniature portraits in Sotheby's where expert Mark Griffith Jones delicately reveals the hidden treasures that span from over 500 years of art history.The 21st century has experienced a revival of the small in art Desiree De Leon has attracted hundreds of thousands of followers for her Instagram account of small doodles, whilst the 'the chewing gum man' Ben Wilson, has gathered a loyal following for his hidden gems scattered about the London streets. Every morning Ben gets up and starts creating tiny tiles on which his innermost feelings are expressed - and then he leaves them on the Underground for people to find.Then there is the barely visible - Willard Wigan MBE - the poster-boy of microscopic art, a dyslexia sufferer who has found relief in the creation of tiny art works. Recognised globally, his sculptures, which are small enough to fit on the head of a pin, sell for six-figure sums. "I work between my heartbeats. I have one-and-a-half seconds to actually move. And at the same time I have to watch I don't inhale my own work."Then there is the nearly invisible - Jonty Hurwitz - who sculpts with Nano-technology, and sometimes loses sight of it in the process. "When I found the sculpture it was one of the most moving moments of my life, you see all these grotesque pieces of dust as the microscope is moving around and suddenly there's a woman, dancing"What is the enduring appeal of the miniature in art, and where has this revival come from? To discover where it hides, why it appeals, and how the artists' work on such delicate objects, Dann plays with scale, sound and voices to bring a closer, more microscopic focus on the art world. Presenter: Lance Dann is an associate member and former sound designer of The Wooster Group, a writer and director of a range of radio dramas including podcast "Blood Culture", commissioned by The Welcome Trust, and won a Prix Marulic for his production of Moby Dick for BBC Radio 4. Producer: Sara Jane Hall iPlayer photograph: Slinkachu.