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BBC World Service

Where the world and America meet, with episodes each weekday. The world is changing. Decisions made in the US and by the second Trump administration are accelerating that change. But they are also a symptom of it.

With Asma Khalid in DC, Tristan Redman in London, and the backing of the BBC’s international newsroom, The Global Story brings clarity to politics, business and foreign policy in a time of connection and disruption.

The Global Story

The US is essentially boycotting this weekend’s G20 summit in South Africa over accusations that the white Afrikaners are ‘being killed and slaughtered’ and that white farmers are having their land ‘illegally confiscated. The South African government say the claims are "widely discredited and unsupported by reliable evidence". 

Today we speak to BBC correspondent Andrew Harding, who lived and worked in South Africa for over a decade, to find out where these claims came from. 

Producers: Sam Chantarasak and Xandra Ellin

Executive producer: China Collins

Senior news editor: China Collins 

Mix: Travis Evans 

Photo: Afrikaner farmers rally to show support for President Trump in Pretoria, South Africa. Credit: Kim Ludbrook/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock

Is there a genocide of white South Africans as Trump claims?

** This episode contains some very distressing details, including of killings, sexual violence and the experiences of children in war** 

More than 150,000 people have been killed and about 12 million have been forced from their homes since Sudan's civil war began in 2023.
 
But more than two years on, the reasons for the conflict are still not clear. And there are questions about why the international community - including the United States - isn’t doing more to try and stop the supply of weapons to Sudan, and to bring the fighting to an end. 

On today’s episode, we are joined by BBC Africa correspondent Barbara Plett Usher, who has been reporting on Sudan since the 1990s, and Nawal Al-Maghafi, a senior investigations correspondent, whose recent reporting from Khartoum has brought to light the particular tragedy facing children in this war. 

Producer: Hannah Moore 

Executive producer: James Shield 

Mix: Travis Evans 

Senior News Editor: China Collins

Photo: A child who lost his leg due to artillery shelling by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), stands at a displacement camp in Al-Dabbah, Sudan. Credit: El Tayeb Siddig/Reuters.

What is Sudan’s war really about?

The American lawyer, oil lobbyist and master strategist Don Pearlman is said to have chain-smoked his way through almost every UN climate gathering from the early 1990s until his death in 2005. 

Some of those who saw Pearlman operate in Kyoto, where the first legally binding international agreement on climate change was agreed in 1997, say he created the playbook for stalling climate talks. The Kyoto protocol was never ratified by the United States, and Pearlman is now the subject of a major play, Kyoto, which has just transferred from London to the Lincoln Center in New York. 

As the COP30 climate summit takes place in Brazil, we speak to BBC climate journalist Jordan Dunbar, who’s been trying to piece together the true story of the man once nicknamed ‘the high priest of the carbon club’. 

Producers: Aron Keller and Cat Farnsworth

Eexecutive producer: James Shield 

Mix: Travis Evans 

Senior news editor: China Collins 

Photo: Don Pearlman at the Kyoto summit / BBC.

The oil lobbyist who tried to sink the first big climate deal

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – MBS – will be welcomed at the White House on his first visit to Washington since the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi led to global outrage. MBS has always denied involvement in Khashoggi’s murder. Nevertheless, both he and Saudi Arabia were ostracised after the killing. 
Tuesday’s meeting between President Trump and Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler will build on a relationship between the two leaders which has endured the scandal. But can both parties walk away from these strategic talks with what they want? On Trump’s part, some movement towards the Abraham Accords; and for MBS, a chunky defence package. 
We talk to BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner. 
 
Producers: Cat Farnsworth and Lucy Pawle 
Executive producer: James Shield 
Mix: Travis Evans 
Senior news editor: China Collins 
 
Photo: President Trump and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Brian Snyder/Reuters

The Saudi prince's long road to rehabilitation

In the last 72 hours, comments from President Trump and his administration have sparked fresh debate about whether the US could – or should – resume the kind of nuclear weapons tests that were halted over 30 years ago.

The current debate centres on whether Trump plans to test nuclear delivery systems, such as missiles, or nuclear warheads. The latter would be a major reversal of a long-standing policy, as the US has not tested a nuclear warhead since 1992, but it’s unclear what the plans involve.

Today, Tristan speaks to Serhii Plokhy, a history professor at Harvard and author of The Nuclear Age, about what it would mean to return to an era of nuclear testing.

Producers: Viv Jones, Xandra Ellin, Aron Keller

Executive producer: James Shield

Mix: Travis Evans

Senior news editor: China Collins

Photo: Mushroom cloud rises during Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons test. Reuters

Is the world entering a new age of nuclear testing?

**This episode contains themes of sexual abuse and grooming** 

Calls to release all the Epstein files are growing, after Wednesday’s bombshell release of over 20,000 pages of documents related to the sex trafficking scandal. The private messages released by the estate of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have increased scrutiny on what President Trump may have known about Epstein’s behaviour. The White House has told the BBC the documents ‘prove literally nothing’. 

The furore continues to intensify, but there is one woman who has all the answers: Epstein’s long-time associate Ghislaine Maxwell. So who is the disgraced British socialite and what is her role in the scandal? 

Today we talk to the BBC’s New York correspondent Nada Tawfik, who has covered the case for over a decade.

Producers: Sam Chantarasak and Aron Keller

Executive producer and senior news editor: China Collins

Mix: Travis Evans

Photo: Ghislaine Maxwell with Jeffrey Epstein. US Department of Justice/PA Wire

Ghislaine Maxwell, the Epstein Files, and the scandal that won’t go away

Donald Trump has spent this year trying to negotiate a deal to end the war in Ukraine. So far, Vladimir Putin doesn’t seem interested in the US’s proposals. 

One man who has successfully negotiated with Russia – and with many of America’s adversaries – is Roger Carstens, former Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs. From 2020 to 2025 he worked to free dozens of US citizens taken hostage and wrongfully detained around the world, including in Russia. Securing their release often required complex deals that took years to put together. 

What does it take to successfully negotiate with Putin’s Russia? 

Producer: Lucy Pawle 

Executive producer: James Shield 

Senior news editor: China Collins 

Mix: Travis Evans 

Photo: Roger Carstens. Credit: BBC

The hostage negotiator’s guide to making deals with Putin’s Russia

The BBC has this week been rocked by a series of controversies, leading its Director General and Head of News to resign, and President Donald Trump threatening to sue the corporation over an edit it made to his January 6th, 2021 speech in one of its programmes, which the BBC admits was misleading. 

How did the management of the world’s most trusted news broadcaster reach crisis point, and what does this tell us about today’s media landscape? 

BBC culture and media editor Katie Razzall explains. 

Producers: Viv Jones, Xandra Ellin and Hannah Moore 

Executive producer: James Shield 

Sound engineer: Travis Evans 

Senior news editor: China Collins

This podcast was edited on 12 November 2025. We removed a reference to Donald Trump “threatening to remove BBC journalists’ access to his press conferences". This statement should have been attributed to a reported briefing by a senior White House official.

(Photo: BBC headquarters in London. Credit: Andy Rain/EPA/Shutterstock)

Why is Trump threatening to sue the BBC?

For much of the 21st century, our social lives have been shaped, at least in part, on the internet. But in an age of influencers, generative AI, complex algorithms, and politically entangled technocrats, some users say social media is growing less, well, social.
So, is social media dead? Or is it just becoming something else? We speak with New Yorker staff writer Kyle Chayka about what happened to social networks, and what their transformation suggests about the future of media.

Producers: Xandra Ellin and Aron Keller

Executive Producer: James Shield

Mix: Travis Evans

Senior News Editor: China Collins

Photo: Social media apps on a phone.Yui Mok/PA

Is social media dead?

President Donald Trump has warned that he will target Nigeria if the government there "continues to allow the killing of Christians". For months, campaigners and politicians in Washington have been alleging that Islamist militants were systematically targeting Christians in Nigeria. 
But how true are the claims that there is a persecution – or even a genocide – of Christians in the West African country? And how does Nicki Minaj come to thank him for his intervention? 

We speak to the BBC’s global religion correspondent, Lebo Diseko. 
 
Producers: Xandra Ellin and Cat Farnsworth 

Executive producer: Annie Brown 

Mix: Travis Evans 

Senior news editor: China Collins 
 
(Photo: People walk along a street flanked by St. Joseph Catholic Church and Kano Road Central Mosque in Kaduna, Nigeria, 4 November, 2025. Credit: Marvellous Durowaiye/Reuters)

The hostage negotiator’s guide to making deals with Putin’s Russia

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