PODCAST

File on 4 Investigates

BBC Radio 4

News-making original journalism documentary series, investigating stories at home and abroad.

society & culture documentary

All Episodes

37:53

Firefighting's forever chemical legacy

File on 4 Investigates ·

2025/12/16

Industrial firefighting foams are an essential part of on-site safety in UK factories. But for decades some of these familiar canisters contained potentially dangerous, toxic chemicals. File on 4 Investigates discovers that 3M the multi-billion dollar chemical company responsible for producing the chemicals knew about the risks as early as the 1960s because their own internal studies on animals and tests on workers indicated a possible increase in rates of cancer. Despite this, the company failed

37:44

An unholy row over bishop accused of bullying.

File on 4 Investigates ·

2025/12/09

Anne Dyer is a trailblazer - becoming the first female Bishop in the Scottish Episcopal Church when she was appointed more than seven years ago. But since then, accusations of bullying and misconduct have dominated her period in charge - even for a time leading to her suspension and calls for her resignation. Bishop Dyer denies any wrongdoing, while the church itself acknowledges there are deep wounds within the diocese of Aberdeen and Orkney. Now File on 4 Investigates has discovered new complaints

37:50

Adoption: The Blame Game

File on 4 Investigates ·

2025/11/28

File on 4 Investigates discovers a world of lies and blame within adoption in the UK. The BBC has conducted the most extensive Freedom of Information request ever into adoptions that have broken down, finding that more than 1,000 adopted children in the UK have returned to care in the past five years. That is much higher than the figure in a recent government report - but the true number is likely to be even larger, as only a third of authorities said they collected this data as standard practice

37:39

Multi-Cancer Testing - Hype or Hope?

File on 4 Investigates ·

2025/11/25

Multi cancer detection tests or MCDs can detect many cancers through a simple blood test. Many detect fragments of cancerous DNA that have broken off a tumour and are circulating in the blood. They can often then identify where the cancer may be. The NHS is currently involved in the words largest trial of one such test. The Galleri test is made by US firm Grail and the company says its mission is to detect cancer early when it can be cured. Heavyweight investors include Jeff Bezos and Bill

37:46

The IT bug that's caused chaos in the courts

File on 4 Investigates ·

2025/11/11

An ambitious plan to digitalize the courts was meant to remove the need for hundreds of thousands of paper documents. But File on 4 Investigates has discovered an IT system, introduced as part of a £1bn project, has been plagued with technical faults - causing crucial information to go missing, be overwritten, or appear lost. The government body that runs the courts in England and Wales has now checked hundreds of thousands of benefit and child support appeals to identify if any were affected by

38:00

Chemsex: Hidden Pleasures, Hidden Harms

File on 4 Investigates ·

2025/11/04

File on Four explores the risks some gay men are taking by habitually mixing their sex lives with drug use. The practice, known as Chemsex has been on the gay scene for more than a decade. It involves taking illegal and addictive substances like Crystal Meth and GHB.While the programme hears from some who say they can manage their use and it heightens their sexual pleasure, others are falling into destructive patterns of addiction, decline and even death. Reporter Mobeen Azhar tries to assess

37:09

High Stakes: Gambling in the armed forces

File on 4 Investigates ·

2025/10/28

File on 4 Investigates examines the scale of problem gambling in the armed forces and the devastating impact on those serving, veterans and their families. A new study seen exclusively by the team reveals nearly half of naval trainees who gambled were at risk of harm. This latest research builds on a growing body of evidence that points to a hidden problem across the forces that’s on the rise. We ask if the MOD is aware of the challenge and if it’s doing enough to help those in need.Reporter:

36:40

Abused for Our Food

File on 4 Investigates ·

2025/10/22

When journalist Georgie Styles is sent unpublished videos of farm workers in Britain being ‘treated like animals’, she begins to investigate the dark side of our food system.She uncovers numerous referrals of labour exploitation, and hears allegations of workers living in moldy caravans, being trafficked, verbally abused and forced to urinate in bottles.Her year-long investigation goes from farm workers to our favourite supermarkets.With gripping first-person testimony, unheard recordings and new

37:37

Youth Justice: The project keeping young offenders...

File on 4 Investigates ·

2025/10/07

A van selling coffee and sandwiches from an office car park doesn’t sound like anything special, but there’s one in Swindon helping to keep young offenders out of custody. It’s part of an approach being deployed across the country trying to prevent young people from reoffending by encouraging a shift in their identity. The idea is to get to know the young offender, figure out what makes them tick. And then, instead of locking them up, find ways of getting them involved in whatever interests them

37:22

Swiped. Inside London's phone theft epidemic

File on 4 Investigates ·

2025/09/30

Up to 80,000 phones were stolen in London’s streets and transport network in 2024, according to the Metropolitan Police. As File on 4 Investigates discovers, gangs are targeting unlocked phones. We discover that if a phone is unlocked, criminals may be able to access online banking and cryptocurrency accounts within minutes. We hear from one victim who lost £15,000 from a phone stolen from his pocket, another who lost £40,000 in cryptocurrency and about the financial and emotional cost of trying to

38:26

Inside the Migrant Hotel

File on 4 Investigates ·

2025/09/22

It's a familiar story from the outside. Around 32,000 people are housed in migrant hotels around the UK and protests outside them have been violent and vocal.Sue Mitchell has spent the summer getting to know a different side of the story - what life is like Inside the migrant hotels - and she's seen and heard some striking things:Families who have been seeking asylum for nearly a decade;, a stream of prepaid taxis taking migrants to medical appointments and transporting them across the UK, families

37:16

A Prison Inspector Calls

File on 4 Investigates ·

2025/09/16

In a broadcasting first, the BBC has followed a team from His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons as it investigates conditions in a prison near Rugby in Warwickshire. The result is a unique insight into the problems faced by the prison system. This portrait of a prison on trial reveals how under-resourced prison staff are failing to stop copious amounts of drugs being brought in, and are struggling to provide a safe and productive environment in which prisoners can be prepared for release back

36:40

Sex Offenders:The Long Way Back

File on 4 Investigates ·

2025/09/02

Alison Holt, BBC social affairs editor, has been given exceptional access to the clients of a Nottingham charity that works to reintegrate men who have been convicted of sexual offences. 'John, Matt, Dan and Liam', not their real names, are determined to turn their lives around after prison sentences. We hear how they work towards this with the help of the staff and volunteers at the Safer Living Foundation, the only charity of its sort in the country. Always mindful of the victims of sexual crime,

37:56

Domestic Abuse: Beyond the Checklist

File on 4 Investigates ·

2025/08/26

Leila Nathoo investigates the risk assessment system for domestic abuse, and asks whether it is any longer fit for purpose.The DASH form is the gateway for victims and survivors of domestic abuse - used by the police, charities and social workers to assess people who may be at risk of domestic abuse. It is deeply embedded in the whole system and plays a central role in deciding what further support victims receive. But Leila reveals troubling evidence that DASH too often incorrectly identifies those

37:04

Rivers of Lead

File on 4 Investigates ·

2025/08/19

There are over 6,000 abandoned lead mines across the UK leaking hundreds of tons of metals into our rivers each year. With climate change causing an increase in flooding, contamination is likely to get worse. Is this lead ending up in our food chain, water system and blood?Presented by Lucy Taylor and Dan AshbyProducers: Pūlama Kaufman and Kelly Windsor Burgin Researcher: Charlie WestA Bite Your Tongue production for BBC Radio 4

37:55

My Faulty Knee Replacement

File on 4 Investigates ·

2025/08/12

File on 4 Investigates reveals how surgeons had raised concerns about a faulty replacement knee eight years before its US manufacturer finally decided to withdraw it from use.Knee replacement surgery is one of the most common operations carried out by the NHS, with over 100,000 procedures carried out each year. It’s a surgical success story - but things can go wrong. Around 10,000 problematic 'NexGen' knee implants, made by the US medical tech giant Zimmer Biomet, were fitted into UK patients over

37:17

Trip Shocked

File on 4 Investigates ·

2025/08/05

Psychedelics are having a moment — hailed as miracle cures for depression, PTSD and addiction. But what happens when the trip doesn’t end?In Trip Shocked, writer and researcher Ed Prideaux takes a hard look at the risks lurking in the psychedelic renaissance. Drawing on his own long-term side effects from LSD, Ed explores a hidden history of harms: from persistent hallucinations and underground support groups to therapy sessions that crossed the line.As billionaires, biotech firms and media stars

37:36

We Are Not a Conspiracy School

File on 4 Investigates ·

2025/07/29

In We Are Not A Conspiracy School, Darryl Morris sets out to meet the people behind HOPE Sussex, a community of home educators founded during the pandemic. On a sprawling site in the East Sussex countryside, a number of families gather to learn together, away from the mainstream. What’s taught there is contested. The media has called it a “conspiracy school", but the founders say it’s a community centre that encourages critical thinking. What are people actually doing there? And in a world where

37:25

Hospital abuse caught on camera

File on 4 Investigates ·

2025/07/15

When the parent of a patient in a psychiatric hospital questioned why he couldn’t see CCTV footage of an incident involving his son it led to a series of extraordinary discoveries.Glynn Brown was told that cameras had never been switched on despite being present throughout wards at Muckamore Abbey Hospital, in Northern Ireland. In fact, the cameras had been recording for six months without staff knowing. In all, they captured 300,000 hours of footage which is reported to show appalling abuse and

37:46

Car finance

File on 4 Investigates ·

2025/07/08

Nine in ten people in the UK who buy a car use finance. The sector is the second largest lender to consumers in the UK after mortgages. But the industry is bracing itself for a Supreme Court judgement which could see lenders forced to pay out tens of billions in compensation for selling deals with 'secret' commissions. File on 4 Investigates hears from industry insiders and those who tried to raise the alarm on a scandal that some believe could rival PPI.Reporter: Helen CattProducer: Phil

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