426 episodes

Award-winning current affairs documentary series investigating major issues at home and abroad

File on 4 BBC Radio 4

    • Society & Culture

Award-winning current affairs documentary series investigating major issues at home and abroad

    Long Covid: Mind Over Matter?

    Long Covid: Mind Over Matter?

    There are some two million people with long Covid in the UK - and most of them - around one and a half million - have symptoms that interfere with day to day activities. Fatigue, breathlessness, heart palpitations and severe dizziness are just some of the conditions people experience.
    Currently there’s no test for long covid and it could be years before we know for sure how best to treat the condition. This struggle to get help is leaving some very unwell people desperate - and willing to try anything to get better. There are treatments to wash your blood, high pressure oxygen chambers normally used by deep sea divers. A rainbow of supplements. All with varying degrees of evidence. And perhaps most strongly dividing opinion - programmes that claim to retrain long Covid patients' brains to stop their symptoms. They say they can help people recover from illness by rewiring the brain using techniques to influence physical changes in the body. Rachel Schraer - the BBC's health and disinformation correspondent - hears from people with long Covid who say the programmes didn't work and in some cases made them feel worse. Others say they fully recovered.

    Reporter: Rachel Schraer
    Producer: Paul Grant
    Technical producers: Cameron Ward and Nicky Edwards
    Production co-ordinator: Tim Fernley
    Editor: Carl Johnston

    • 38 min
    Teams and Regimes: Sportswashing in Football

    Teams and Regimes: Sportswashing in Football

    Manchester City are dominating English football, with a trophy cabinet full of silverware. The club’s success has been bankrolled by money from Abu Dhabi. Now Newcastle United have followed in their wake, with backing from a Saudi consortium transforming a sleeping giant of English football into perhaps the world’s richest club. But with the money comes accusations that the clubs are being used to launder the reputations of repressive regimes accused of human rights abuses, and that the cash from the two oil rich states is being used to exert political influence locally and nationally in the UK.
    Reporter: Adrian Goldberg
    Producer: Fergus Hewison
    Technical Producer: Craig Boardman
    Production coordinator: Tim Fernley
    Editor: Carl Johnston

    • 37 min
    Caught on Camera: The special school staff who abused kids

    Caught on Camera: The special school staff who abused kids

    Three years ago, dozens of memory sticks were discovered in a sealed box at a school for children with special educational needs. There was 500 hours of footage which showed children being held in so-called 'calming rooms.' The videos showed the children being hit and denied access to a toilet. File on 4 investigates why a subsequent police investigation and an independent inquiry didn't lead to staff being sacked. File on 4 reveals how staff who were filmed hitting, kicking, and leaving children sitting in urine have not been sacked or referred to the barring service.
    Reporter: Noel Titheradge
    Producer: Annabel Deas
    Technical Producer: Craig Boardman
    Production Coordinator: Tim Fernley
    Editor: Carl Johnston

    • 36 min
    Lasting Legacy: What went wrong at a Hull funeral home?

    Lasting Legacy: What went wrong at a Hull funeral home?

    The discovery of 35 bodies and an unknown quantity of unidentified human ashes at a Hull funeral home has become one of the most harrowing investigations in the history of Humberside Police. Linsey Smith investigates what went wrong and hears from some of the many families who've been left devastated by the discovery - some of whom now know the ashes they were given didn't belong to their loved ones.
    File on 4 also hears how the funeral industry is largely unregulated and how concerns raised more than three years ago by the Competition and Markets Authority about the storage and treatment of the deceased haven't been acted upon.
    Reporter: Linsey Smith
    Producers: Holly Clemens and Nicola Dowling
    Technical Producer: Craig Boardman
    Digital producer: Melanie Stewart-Smith
    Production Coordinators: Tim Fernley & Jordan King
    Editor: Carl Johnston
    Image Credit:Christopher Furlong\Getty

    • 37 min
    Slimming Groups and Eating Disorders

    Slimming Groups and Eating Disorders

    Slimming World is the leading diet organisation in the UK. It has 700,000 members and, at a time when obesity is spiralling in the UK, it has helped millions lose weight. It has contracts with the NHS and local government. If you meet the criteria, your doctor can sign you up for free. But could the Slimming World diet be encouraging disordered eating by some members?
    File on 4 hears from people who believe that Slimming World has seriously damaged their health and destroyed their relationship with food.
    Reporter: Josephine Casserly
    Producer: Immy Rhodes
    Technical Producer: Craig Boardman
    Production Coordinator: Tim Fernley
    Editor: Carl Johnston
    Image Credit: Kseniya Ovchinnikova\Getty

    • 41 min
    Degraded by Deepfakes

    Degraded by Deepfakes

    Jodie had everything - a good job, great friends and a busy social life. But her world was turned upside down when she was targeted by an online abuser who posted pornographic deepfakes of her online. Initially turned away by the police, she turned detective herself - but nothing could prepare her for what she eventually discovers. She now struggles to trust anyone. And what happened to Jodie could happen to any of us. Here she tells her story for the very first time.
    Reporter: Kate West
    Producer: Rhoda Buchanan
    Technical Producer: Nicky Edwards
    Digital Producer: Melanie Stewart-Smith
    Production Co-ordinator: Tim Fernley
    Editor: Carl Johnston
    If you’ve been a victim of harassment, stalking or revenge porn, details of organisations offering information and support are available at bbc.co.uk/actionline.

    • 41 min

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