The Heat Is On

Available for over a year

Stories of the struggle to survive in the face of difficult conditions - in Gaza, Alaska, South Africa and the Black Sea. Owen Bennett Jones introduces dispatches from reporters, writers and producers around the world. Yolande Knell covered the Gaza conflict in 2014 - and on a recent visit back to the Strip, she found that even though the dust of the war may have settled, daily life gets more and more challenging. The most recent turn of the screw for Gazans is an electricity crisis: as the Palestinian Authority, based in the West Bank, tries to heap up pressure on Hamas by cutting off the power supply for hours every day. Andrew Harding explains why South Africa's so obsessed with "state capture" - and what the scandals over Jacob Zuma, the Gupta family and Bell Pottinger have revealed about where the country's wealth is really going. Claire Marshall takes a deep breath and eats a bite of whalemeat during her time in Alaska, seeing what climate change is doing to traditional ways of hunting and storing food in Inuit communities. And Tim Whewell shares moonshine, nostalgia and a long ferry trip across the Black Sea with a multinational crew of truckers - who must now find ways of getting goods from Ukraine to Georgia and beyond without crossing Russian territory. Photo: A picture taken on June 13, 2017, shows Palestinian children at home reading books by candle light due to electricity shortages in Gaza City. (THOMAS COEX/AFP/Getty Images)