The Six Billion Dollar Gold Scam (BBC Sounds) begins with a scene straight out of an airport adventure blockbuster. The year is 1997 and a helicopter is making a routine journey from a mining town in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, over the dense Borneo rainforest. Its destination is Busang, a remote jungle outpost where a once-in-a-generation discovery has sparked an international gold rush.
On the morning in question, the flight’s only passenger is Michael de Guzman, the Filipino geologist who foresaw in a dream where to drill. A gold-chain-wearing lothario, he is the worse for wear after a night of hard drinking and karaoke. Suddenly, the pilot hears a bang. He looks back to see a door open and his passenger gone. Suicide is presumed.
This is a business story, but not a dry one. You’re never far from the whiff of Bintang beer and male sweat here. One Australian “geo” remembers, agog, a hotel as “one vast whorehouse”.
The excellent Canadian presenter Suzanne Wilton first reported on the rise and fall of the mining firm Bre-X for the Calgary Herald. The Alberta firm’s claim to have discovered the world’s biggest gold deposit caused its shares to soar from cents to over $200. Ordinary Canadians invested. When Bre-X’s story unravelled, so did people’s futures. To this day, no one has been held responsible. Rumours about de Guzman’s fate remain rife. Was he a literal fall guy? A master fraudster? Or a victim?
From the BBC World Service and Canada’s CBC, this nine-part podcast delivers a helluva tale about cupidity that keeps delivering twists. I lapped it up, only balking at the preposterous trigger-warnings — for the most part, these events are too singular to inspire imitation.
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Gordon Corera’s Shadow War: China and the West (BBC Radio 4; BBC Sounds) also begins with a dramatic air incident, the 2001 collision between a US intelligence plane and a Chinese military jet over the South China Sea that led to 24 Americans being held for ten days. The BBC’s security correspondent asks whether today an event like that might lead to war. Certainly, East-West relations felt cuddlier in 2015, when David Cameron invited Xi Jinping to his Chequers local for a pint. “Pathetic,” opines Hong Kong’s last governor, Chris Patten. Now that pub is under Chinese ownership.
Going from Tiananmen Square to TikTok in ten brisk, information-loaded episodes, Corera investigates topics like cyber-espionage, commercial intellectual theft, the long arm of the Chinese state and how tensions about rights, especially in Hong Kong, cause friction on campuses. Have we been too supine? Should we be more confrontational? What kind of lead superpower might China be? The show impresses for its breadth and its high-calibre interviewees, who include Richard Moore, the head of MI6, Theresa May, Chris Patten and Fu Ying, a former Chinese ambassador to the UK. She argues that western negative assumptions stem from our own past as imperialist and neo-imperialist enforcers. “China has not made any rule for the world.” But critical students and academics, who say they feel decreasingly safe here, offer a cautionary note. A bracingly informative listen.
These series are a global showcase for the BBC. China is estimated to have spent more than $6 billion on external media in 2023; Russia hundreds of millions of dollars. A war of misinformation is being waged and Britain has one of the best counter-assets: the BBC World Service (budget of £352 million in 2022-23) reaches 318 million people weekly and is ranked No 1 among news providers for trust, reliability and independence. Last year, its specialist language audience gains included BBC News Chinese (up 26 per cent to 2.7 million), Russian (up 19 per cent to 5.6 million), Ukrainian (up 11 per cent, to 4.7 million) and Persian (19.2 million, up 2 per cent). In Afghanistan it has launched an educational programme for young people, including girls barred from formal education from the age of 11.
It is a soft-power strength, but it is in crisis, with its funding unclear beyond early 2025. Its director leaves in July, having expressed concerns about “the operational capability of the World Service if additional cuts continue to weaken it further”. Until 2014, it was funded by the Foreign Office. Now 70 per cent of its budget comes via the licence fee. In March, the BBC’s director-general, Tim Davie, said: “We cannot keep asking licence fee payers to invest in it when we face cuts to UK services.”
More than 300 of its journalists work in exile, including Russians in Riga (Russia blocks the BBC) and Persians. Many have experienced threats to themselves and their families at home. They deserve more reassurance from present and future UK governments that the work they are invested in is valued.
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Which podcasts are part of your weekly routine? Let us know in the comments below
The best podcasts to check out now
The Madhouse Chronicles
Ozzy Osbourne and Billy Morrison, his best friend and a guitarist and singer-songwriter, shoot the breeze in a new series. Osbourne seems a little bit overwhelmed by his raucous family, particularly Sharon and Kelly in The Osbournes Podcast, so it’s great to hear him having a chance to be blokey and talk about the things he’s interested in. Morrison is good company and keeps the conversation on topic. Among subjects discussed by the duo are their passion for alien investigations, and Ozzy’s perspective on being a member of Black Sabbath.
How I’d Fix
Ed Vaizey, the Times Radio presenter and former arts minister, and the journalist Becca Hutson set out to solve the issues plaguing Britain with the help of a guest who outlines their three-point plan for how they’d fix Britain if they had all the power. These guests come from outside the Westminster bubble, including Andrew Hunter Murray, co-host of the No Such Thing as a Fish podcast, discussing the housing market.
Who Shat On The Floor At My Wedding?
Karen Whitehouse and Helen McLaughlin take on a less scatological investigation in this second series, again joined by Lauren Kilby. The Case of the Tiny Suit/Case has them investigate the “non-crime crime” of who left a child-sized blue corduroy suit and a tiny suitcase full of bizarre objects on the veranda of a woman in Sweden.
This Is History Presents… The Iron King
In the first spin-off from Dan Jones’s series on the Plantaganets, Danièle Cybulskie, a medievalist, examines the life of Philip IV of France. He may have had the moniker Philip the Fair, but that was due to his pretty-boy looks, not his temperament, which was psychopathic.
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Powerplay (BBC Sounds)
In the second season of the Radio 5 Live podcast, Steve Bunce and Lennox Lewis, the former world heavyweight champion, discuss the life of Don King, 92, the boxing promoter. King has killed two men and been involved with illegal gambling, arguably giving him the ruthlessness needed to go on to be a leading sports manager.
The Friendship File
This is a brilliantly simple idea. Two friends answer 17 questions about each other, recorded on their own and without knowing what the other one has said — and each episode is a mixture of these sessions. The series consists largely of “real” people’s friendships, from prosaic school pals to a refugee and the woman who greeted him on a Greek beach as he fled to freedom. Celebrities include the writer Ann Cleeves and Sue Beardshall, a friend of nearly 60 years. There’s a moving episode with a frail-sounding Tony Slattery and Helen Lederer.
Women Are Mad
The psychotherapist Jennifer Cox and the actress and writer Salima Saxton invite a woman to talk about what makes them furious. They say the podcast aims to normalise the anger that women feel, and put it to good use. Guests include Jess Phillips and Clover Stroud. Therapy For Black Girls (podcast) is hosted by the psychologist Joanne Harden Bradford.
Reviews by Clair Woodward
The best radio shows to catch this week
Sunday
Sunday Feature (Radio 3, 7.15pm)
In Everything Stops (part of the BBC’s mental wellbeing season), the composer Gavin Higgins considers how his Tourette’s syndrome and obsessive compulsive disorder have shaped his career. When he plays a musical instrument his symptoms stop. He talks to other musicians for whom performing has a similar effect, including Stephen Bryant, the leader of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and to Dr Jeremy Stern, a consultant neurologist, who explains how listening to or performing music engages many parts of the brain and possibly helps sufferers.
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The Music That Made Me (Jazz FM, 9pm)
Carlos Santana is the guest in this episode of the jazz, soul and blues series in which stars reveal the tracks that influenced them most. The choices of last week’s guest, Van Morrison, are available on the Planet Radio player. Meanwhile Steve Sumner’s The Great Guitarists podcast examines axe stars and their techniques.
Monday
Thief At The British Museum (Radio 4, 1.45pm)
Over nine episodes Katie Razzall investigates the theft of thousands of pieces from the museum’s collection, in a story that broke in August 2023. The key to the discovery was Ittai Gradel, a Danish dealer in antiquities who began buying pieces from a British man who claimed to have inherited valuable gems from his grandfather, then from an eBay seller with an identical backstory and almost identical name. Gradel then realised that some of the pieces were listed in the museum’s catalogues, and alerted the authorities.
D-Day — The Last Voices (Radio 4, 11.45am)
Paddy O’Connell presents a five-part series ahead of the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings that brings together the memories of the diminishing band of survivors who were involved, alongside archive recordings of those who were there with them. He begins with the preparations, including Operation Tiger, when 749 US servicemen were killed by the German navy.
The Girls Aloud Takeover With Rylan (Radio 2, 2pm)
Rylan hosts a get-together with Cheryl, Nicola, Kimberley and Nadine of Girls Aloud. They talk about their career from winning Popstars — The Rivals in 2002, the death of the member Sarah Harding in 2021 and their 2024 reunion tour. In the She Rocks Podcast Laura B Whitmore talks to female rockers.
Tuesday
Drama On 4 (Radio 4, 2.15pm)
Flixborough 74 by Helen Cross commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Flixborough disaster, when the Nypro chemical plant in the Lincolnshire village exploded, killing 28 and seriously injuring 36. The programme mixes moving interviews from those who were involved in the incident with recreations of events before the explosion, including two workers who spotted a dangerous rise in pressure in the plant’s reactors. Cross, who grew up in the area and remembers the aftermath of Flixborough on the local population, also narrates the docudrama.
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In The Studio (BBC World Service, 1.30pm/10.30pm)
Felicity Finch follows Constanza Hola Chamy, a Chilean director and playwright, as she creates her play Mad Women, which is inspired by the lives of three artists with bipolar disorder, including Frida Kahlo. Hola Chamy is creating two parallel versions of the piece, one with professional actors and the other with a community cast.
Wednesday
The Artificial Human (Radio 4, 3.30pm)
Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong return with a new series examining one of the most important and controversial topics of our time, artificial intelligence. Today a listener wants to know if AI will be able to look after them in their old age and safeguard their independence for longer. The AI Today podcast with Kathleen Walch and Ron Schmelzer offers an accessible view of how the developing technology is actually being implemented, including how it will impact the workforce and our communication skills, and the ethics of the business.
Hidden Treasures (BBC Radio 4 Extra, 2.30pm)
A BBC drama rediscovered by the Radio Circle group, The Slaves of Solitude is a drama adapted from Patrick Hamilton’s 1947 novel. It follows the lives of the residents of a boarding house on the outskirts of London, particularly Miss Roach (Gwen Watford), a secretary bullied by a fellow resident, the Nazi sympathiser Mr Thwaites (Raymond Huntley), and whose love rival for a US serviceman is Vicki Kugelmann (Jill Bennett).
Thursday
Drama On 4 (Radio 4, 2.15pm)
Nearly Light by Kit Withington focuses on children who refused to go to school after the Covid pandemic, inspired by real stories. Addison Aston and Ché Bradley star as Elly and Ciaran, who live in London and Manchester but are brought together by chatting on Crashpoint, an online game in which they are spending far too much time. The play portrays the problems such children face.
Friday
CrowdScience (BBC World Service, 8.30pm)
Marnie Chesterton visits Bordeaux, where research into wine ageing is being undertaken, and in the vineyards of Château Margaux meets a chemist who is mapping the molecules responsible for the aromas of a well-aged wine. Meanwhile, in the podcast Wine Times Anneka Rice and Will Lyons (the Sunday Times wine columnist) discuss wine and travel.
Saturday
Rik Mayall —Panglobal Phenomenon (Radio 4, 8pm)
Marking a decade since Rik Mayall died, Max Kinnings (the ghostwriter of his autobiography)reflects on his life through recordings made while writing the book and conversations with Ben Elton, Peter Richardson and Mayall’s children.
Clair Woodward
