Tequila with the bat man

After explicit faked photos of Taylor Swift went around the world, US politicians have called for new laws to criminalise the creation of deepfake images. The term ‘deepfake’ describes how artificial intelligence – AI – can be used to digitally alter pictures, audio or video and trick us into seeing or hearing something that is not real.It is not just the famous who are being targeted. Host James Reynolds hears the story of how a daughter’s voice was copied and used to make a scam phone call to her mother. “She said mom I messed up, and all of a sudden a man said ‘put your head back and lay down’ and that’s when I started to get really concerned that she was either really hurt or something more was going on,” Jennifer tells us. “And then she goes ‘mom, mom, these bad men have me, help me, help me and she starts crying and sobbing.”Thankfully her daughter, Brianna, had not been kidnapped but the call has had a lasting effect on the family.Technology has made the process of adjusting images easier but artificial intelligence provides the means to create media from scratch to generate completely fake content. We bring together two women – in the US and Australia – who have had their faces manipulated using AI to produce malicious pornographic images and videos.

10 Helmi 202424min

What does it mean to be a Buddhist today? For this last programme in a special series on religion in the 21st century, Heart and Soul on the BBC World Service brings together three global Buddhists from Singapore, the USA and the UK. Venerable Canda Theri Bhikkhuni is the only fully ordained bhikkhuni, or female Buddhist monastic, in the UK. She founded the Anukampa Bhikkhuni Project, which aims to provide the country’s first monastery where women can train towards full ordination.Heng Xuan Tio is based in Singapore and is the co-founder of Handful of Leaves, an online community which aims to show young people how Buddhism is relevant to their modern lives.And Lama Rod Owens is a Black gay Buddhist teacher and author based in the USA. His teaching focuses on social change, identity, and spiritual practice.For this special discussion programme, the BBC’s Alice Bhandhukravi brings them together to discuss Buddhism’s difference branches, how it’s been interpreted in western countries, the differences between monastic and lay Buddhism, and the unique challenges of following a 2,500-year-old faith tradition in the present day. Presented by Alice Bhandhukravi.

9 Helmi 202427min

Ireland is known as the land of a hundred thousand welcomes. But the government says the country has run out of accommodation to house all new eligible refugee arrivals. Some properties earmarked to house asylum seekers have been fire-bombed and others are subject to protests. Hundreds of people seeking asylum have been forced to sleep in tents in Dublin and elsewhere. Ireland has taken in around 100,000 people from Ukraine and the number of people seeking international protection from other countries has increased four-fold since pre-Covid times. The government has slashed benefits for new arrivals from Ukraine and limited to three months the time it will guarantee to house them. As the country leads up to local, national and European elections, migration is rising up the political agenda. Is Ireland’s reputation for tolerance under threat?

8 Helmi 202427min

Fentanyl is deadly. Thousands of Americans die every year from a drug overdose – the majority of them after using a synthetic opioid like fentanyl. It was developed as a legal, and effective, pain killer. Now, fuelled by insatiable US demand, it is illicitly produced in makeshift laboratories in Mexico by organised crime groups. In the first part, Assignment travels to the Mexican Pacific port of Manzanillo. This is one of the main entry points for the chemical ingredients required to make fentanyl. It is a town where Mexico’s powerful cartels have fought for control, and where the mayor lives under armed guard after a failed assassination attempt. In the second part, we cross the border into the US from Mexico to explore the devastation this lethal drug has left in its wake in San Diego County. Presenter / producer: Linda Pressly Producer: Tim Mansel Producer in Mexico: Ulises EscamillaThis Podcast was originally published in March 2023

7 Helmi 202453min

Over the summer, a mysterious Twitter persona published details of over 14,500 social media accounts - all of them controlled by real-life Serbian citizens, it's claimed. They stand accused of posting… whatever the President’s party tells them to.It’s long been rumoured that Serbia’s ruling SNS party commands the online activity of a small army of citizens, dubbed ‘bots’ by the opposition. But this kind of list, naming and shaming thousands of ordinary Serbians, is unprecedented.If true, their activity represents a form of political corruption according to Serbia’s public prosecutor. The government’s response has alarmed observers - it shrugged off the story, publishing instead a veiled tongue-in-cheek ‘admission’.But who is behind the list, and can it be trusted? BBC Trending has analysed the data in an attempt to establish if the ‘bots’ are indeed real people. And whether their accounts show evidence of co-ordinated activity.Featuring interviews gathered on the ground in Belgrade, we hear from opposition politicians, pro-democracy activists and a self-professed real-life ‘bot’. She tells us she trolled the President’s opponents under threat of losing her job – as a receptionist at a state-controlled electricity company in a small Serbian town.Reporter: Sam Judah

7 Helmi 202418min

Modern Cairo is a crowded metropolis. The city’s ‘thousand minarets’ are now dwarfed by a new skyline of slick tower blocks. Modern highways fly over bustling kiosks where residents gather to smoke and buy soda drinks. Inspired by the lives of their neighbours, playing out among mosques, high rise buildings and on busy streets, Egyptian writers and graphic artists, including Deena Mohamed, Shennawy and Mohamed Wahba bring their thousand-year-old capital to life.

6 Helmi 202427min

The Pakistani author, Awais Khan, is working on his latest thriller, His Sister’s Secret, a look into the dark side of dating and family life. But Awais is also struggling with a familiar challenge for many authors - writer’s block – which is stopping him finishing the book he hopes could win him a global publishing deal. Join fellow author Paul Waters as he watches Awais take a radical step to tackle this problem and try to finish his first draft. Along the way Paul meets other international authors who share how they cope when the words won’t flow. But will Awais manage to finish his own story?

5 Helmi 202427min

A bonus episode from The Global Story podcast. Elon Musk says Chinese electric vehicles could destroy competition. The Global Story brings you one big story every weekday, making sense of the news with our experts around the world. Insights you can trust, from the BBC, with Katya Adler. For more, go to bbcworldservice.com/globalstory or search for The Global Story wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

4 Helmi 202425min