Laura Heighton-Ginns

What links the lightsabre, Mrs Doubtfire mask and Wilson the volleyball? They’re all film props - objects that help bring stories to life on screen. 

In this episode, I uncover the pressures on prop departments, following the death of Halyna Hutchins, who was killed on set by a prop gun.

It is the biggest sporting event on the planet based on the millions of spectators who line roads for a fleeting view. This programme examines how a cycling race became a global money spinner - particularly for its owners, the Amaurys, one of the richest families in sport.

Sri Lanka had the world's first female Prime Minister, yet today only a third of Sri Lankan women work - well below the global average.

With shocking first-hand testimony of sexual harassment and social exclusion, this programme examines the barriers holding women back from work in what's described as a 'culture of impunity'.

Delegates descend on Saudi Arabia for perhaps the most consequential meeting in UNESCO’s history - the first World Heritage Committee meeting to be held in-person for four years.

This episode highlights the so-called ‘UNESCO effect’ and its unintended consequences, with first hand accounts of forced evictions in Cambodia's Angkor Wat.

With the cost of living crisis forcing many of us to try and limit what we spend, more and more people are looking to repair the things they own. It’s giving momentum to an international network of ‘repair cafes’ and a global campaign for manufacturers to make products fixable.

In this episode, I hear from World Service listeners about their do-it-yourself repairs - some more successful than others.

In the past year, Sri Lanka has endured political pandemonium and the worst economic crisis in its modern history. The situation has led to the highest number of people leaving the country on record.

The Sri Lankan government has secured an IMF bailout - but will that help stop the exodus?

The Liberica bean is a species of coffee that growers are hoping will make their crops sustainable in the future as the climate changes.

I speak to farmers struggling to grow the most popular coffee plants and taste test a Liberica brew.

After a big response from World Service listeners to my previous episode on train services in America, I returned to look at the network beyond the big cities.​

Routes across the US are patchy, missing out major metropolitan centres and even entire states - but do Americans want a better network, and can "Amtrak Joe" deliver it, in any case?

One by one, US states are deregulating sports #betting - just as other countries look to tighten gambling rules. 

It's a hugely lucrative industry - bringing in over a billion dollars in tax revenues for New York alone this year - but is it worth the social harm?

New York’s Penn Station is the busiest transport hub in North America - as many as 650,000 people pass through it in a day. But this intercity hub is widely agreed to be outdated and unloved.

Now there are plans to pour billions of dollars into a station facelift - in the hope it will attract Americans back to trains.

Millions of people, mainly women, sign up for jobs as domestic workers overseas. Yet much of this work is informal, with households enforcing their own terms behind closed doors - leaving the workers vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.

In this episode, I meet domestic workers who escaped modern slavery.

Approximately 6% of the Earth’s land surface is covered in National Parks – but what does it take to look after these rare and special landscapes?

We go beyond the tourist trails to hear about the challenges and opportunities facing the people managing the parks and find out about the oldest protected area in the world – and why its future is uncertain.

Meet the community groups trying to make energy more accessible and affordable.

I visit a fuel poverty workshop in the UK, meet the Director of the Energy Academy on the island of Samso in Denmark, and find out about a project in Tanzania training farmers to harness the energy from the sun.