During the early weeks of the pandemic, Tim Hayward spent 14 days in a coma. He remembers this time vividly – his days and nights filled with strange, incandescent visions and hallucinations. That experience is something he would never choose to revisit but, around the world, large numbers of people are deliberately seeking out powerfully altered states.In this ten-part series, Tim sets out to better understand a group of substances that induce altered states: psychedelics.There’s been a surge of interest in their therapeutic potential for various mental health conditions - as well as a range of other clinical possibilities. As research around the world ramps up after years of taboo and prohibition he tries to get to grips with - or at least get a clearer sense of - how science, culture, politics and business might all interact in this changing psychedelic landscape, and what it all might mean.Presenter: Tim Hayward
Producer: Richard Ward
Executive Producer: Rosamund Jones
Editor: Kirsten Lass
Written by Tim Hayward and Richard Ward
Sound Design and Mixing: Richard Ward
Researcher: Grace Revill
Commissioning Editor: Daniel Clarke
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4
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NEW in Understand - An American JourneyJames Naughtie examines the ideas tying America's founding to the modern United States.Understand from BBC Radio 4 - unravelling the complexities of the biggest stories and subjects that really matter right now.
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Folge vom 30.07.2025The Trip: Introducing The Trip
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Folge vom 21.07.2025Derailed: The Story of HS2: 6. The Only Friend that MatteredRevelations about waste and delay have left HS2 in poor shape - and ripe, in the view of its political opponents, for cancellation. But, at the opportune moment, a new Prime Minister arrives. Boris Johnson saw HS2 as a cornerstone of his “levelling up” agenda, and gave it the green light to proceed even as the country wrestled with the emergency of a global pandemic. Presenter: Kate Lamble Producer: Robert Nicholson Executive Producer: Will Yates Sound Design and Mix: Arlie Adlington A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4
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Folge vom 21.07.2025Derailed: The Story of HS2: 7. Gold PlatedCosts began to truly spiral out of control. In search of the culprit, Kate goes through the mess HS2 made of some its largest contracts. Much of HS2 was being built by massive consortiums of engineering firms. A short lived effort to unload the project’s risk to these firms saw costs continue to rise beyond the original estimates. And, as the price increased, politicians faced further pressure to curtail the project.Presenter: Kate Lamble Producer: Robert Nicholson Executive Producer: Will Yates Sound Design and Mix: Arlie Adlington A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4
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Folge vom 21.07.2025Derailed: The Story of HS2: 8. Help I’m Under a DiggerAfter successfully defeating a number of fracking projects, a wave of hardened environmentalists join the anti-HS2 protest movement. Locking themselves to fences and ancient trees, civil disobedience arrived at the frontline of building sites. But injunctions and evictions clear the protest camps, and the added cost is a drop in HS2’s very large bucket. The bigger threat to HS2’s national image arrived in the unlikely form of a notorious environmental mitigation: the Sheephouse Wood Bat Mitigation Structure - or as it’s better known, the Bat Tunnel.Presenter: Kate Lamble Producer: Robert Nicholson Executive Producer: Will Yates Sound Design and Mix: Arlie Adlington A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4