2ºWest

05/09/2025

BBC News long form feature InDepth has focussed on our latest documentary for Radio 4, The Body Shop. You can read it here. Engagement has been excellent. Thanks to Luke Mintz for a fantastic piece 🙏

Human remains can mean profits. But there is an emotional debate about the ethics of the industry.

03/09/2025

Our latest for BBC Radio 4 has been garnering lots of attention. It's a powerful exposé of the American companies involved in the unregulated international trade of human bodies and body parts for research. Advocates of the trade point to the necessity for human bodies in the world of medical research, but from funeral homes, morgues and the murky peripheries of the dark web come grisly and deeply disturbing testimony from relatives of victims. Speaking with industry insiders and experts, Cherise Silvestri narrates, produced by Jacob Dabb. Thanks to all involved.

How an unregulated US market is changing our relationship to death, dying and the dead.

08/08/2025

Another BBC Radio 4 production in the can. This one has turned out brilliantly thanks to the superb research by Jacob Dabb aka Dabbsy who unearthed a clutch of remarkable stories about the international trade of human body parts. Powerful testimony (indeed, "hair-raising" as described by the commissioner!) coupled with industry insiders and experts. Not going out for a while but we'll let you know when it does. Thank you so much for the fantastic narration by Cherise Silvestri - cool and calm against a shocking and grisly backdrop.

30/07/2025

Wonderful music artist and composer Laura Misch with radio producer Georgie Styles in the studio creating beautiful content for our upcoming piece on BBC Radio 4. It's where we explore the evolution of music, tracing it all the way back to the singing Indri lemurs of Madagascar. Thank you Laura for an incredible score and thank you Georgie for The Lemur's Song 🐒 Broadcast dates coming soon!

Also, shout out to studio producer Oli and one of my favourite indie labels of all time One Little Independent Records - thanks to all on the team for making this one happen.

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