2ºWest

21/05/2025

Thank you to everyone involved in the making of our latest BBC World Service documentary, Malcolm X: Letter from Hajj. I know it was a bit of a labour of love for producer Marcus Smith. Malcom X's daughter Dr ILYASAH SHABAZZ gave incredible insight and we are enormously grateful to everyone else that took part in this important portrait of the man who would have turned 100 years old this month - 60 years since his assassination.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct6vns

18/04/2025

Our latest documentary for BBC World Service has been selected for BBC Radio 4 Pick of the Week. Thanks so much to Alex Baxter and Rowan Bishop for delivering a top notch piece. Hope you can tune in:

How Cambodia's Buddhist monks are working to end violence against children

07/04/2025

A couple of gorgeous docs on the way - both selected by this month's BBC History Magazine as ones to look out for. And completely fortuitously, they have the most serious of stories at their heart (one genocide, another civil rights), but both offer a message of human fortitude in the face of unfathomable pressure. If history teaches us anything at all, it's that we can overcome any injustice when we stick together...

01/04/2025

Phatry Derek Pan Presents this deeply moving portrait of trauma in Cambodian society. But at its heart, this is a story of hope and redemption. Tune in to this Heart & Soul on BBC World Service 18 April. Thanks to Alex Baxter for all his patience with the trickiest of translations and the 1am starts and also thanks to Rowan Bishop for the twiddly bits!

26/11/2024

We're back with a brand new In The Studio for BBC World Service. This time with a 2DW total hero and music legend, Brian Eno. Make sure you listen to the radio version which is currently live and contains all the good music - you have 30 days! Big thank yous to Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent for the mic bits, Rowan Bishop for original music and k**b twiddling and EarthPercent for, well, just being amazing!

Musician, composer and producer Brian Eno on technique and inspiration in nature

05/09/2024

BBC World Service has shared a lovely piece about our Art of Air Pollution documentary. Couldn't have happened without the geniuses behind Graviky Labs and Studio Roosegaarde, as well artists like raising awareness of the state of our cities.

14/08/2024

Please do join us as we meet the creatives that are turning deadly air pollution into art, ink and jewellery from Rotterdam, through Abu Dhabi and onto Delhi.

Air Pollution is responsible for around seven million deaths every year. Governments around the world have been trying to tackle it with a variety of measures. But now, the fight for the right to breathe clean air is increasingly catching the imagination of artists and designers. From diamond rings made from compressed smog, to a global art movement driven by ink that's created from pollutant particles extracted from the air and sequestered on paper, canvas and walls!

A 2 Degrees West production for BBC World Service

We meet the creatives that are turning deadly air pollution into art, ink and jewellery

05/08/2024

Our latest documentary for BBC Radio 4 is Becoming German. Pick of the week in The Sunday Times, The Observer and Radio Times to name just a few. Such a joy to work with the marvellous Lois Pryce and the legends that are Matt Lucas and Ben Elton who helped us to tackle a subject of such enormity and weight with just the right amount of levity. Thanks also, as always, to Rowan Bishop for impeccable sound design which is probably what earned the doc a "quietly beautiful" description from the Sunday Times.

British Jews are taking back the German citizenship that was stripped from their forebears

02/08/2024

An extended piece about our Yazidis story was featured on BBC Radio 4's "Sunday" programme. In it provides a beautiful portrait of this peaceful religious group which has been persecuted for millennia and the victims of countless genocides; the most recent being exactly 10 years ago in their spiritual home of Northern Iraq. You can hear the extended item from 30'

Edward Stourton looks at the ethical and religious issues of the week.

02/08/2024

Tomorrow, 3 August, is the annual national Yazidi commemoration of the tragic genocide perpetrated against this peaceful group by the brutal IS regime exactly 10 years ago. 5000 were murdered on this first day. In our most recent Witness History for BBC World Service, does a beautifully sensitive job of interviewing , the hero behind the rescue mission which saved thousands. Hope you can tune in: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct5yml

Thank you to for sound design

How Yazidis in Iraq fled to Mount Sinjar to escape genocide in August 2014

17/04/2024

Super day recording with the very charming Matt Lucas and Juliane from German Embassy London for our documentary Becoming German for BBC Radio 4. Lois Pryce in fine fettle on pres duty for what will hopefully be a very moving portrait of the conflict between Jewish identity and gaining German citizenship under Article 116 - the German government's returning of citizenship to all the descendants of those made stateless as a result of N**i persecution.