Weekend Edition 27 July 2013: Our Past and Future

Available for over a year

Pascale Harter introduces stories from correspondents, reporters and writers around the world. In this edition there's a common theme: how the ways of the past still affect our lives today - and what impact they may have in future. In Phnom Penh, Annie Caulfield reflects on how a trip to the circus laid bare the huge gaps in memory among her Cambodian friends whose childhood was spent under the Khmer Rouge. But there are still thousands of destitute, hungry and homeless children in the country today. How long will it take for their youth to be better protected? Stephen Sackur leanrs how a vast new copper mining project might threaten the survival of traditional ways in southwestern Alaska - a land where the annual fishing and smoking of teeming salmon still keep many local people alive. John Pickford's on the beach at Rarotonga, in the Cook Islands, witnessing an extraordinary journey which helped to bring the scattered islands of Polynesia back into contact - by reviving the awe-inspiring historical methods of navigation which once guided ancient sailors across thousands of kilometres of open ocean. And Lindsay Johns takes an illuminating (if hair-raising) trIp in a South African collective taxi - as it hurtles its way from the Coloured suburb of Grassy Park, on to the city centre of Cape Town.