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Genetically modified microbes could herald a new industrial revolution - but the technology also poses new dangers.Manuela Saragosa speaks to someone who used it to recreate the horsepox virus - a close cousin of smallpox - from scratch three years ago. Virologist David Evans explains why he did it, and what aspects of this rapidly evolving technology worry him most.One of the companies on the cutting edge is Boston-based Ginkgo Bioworks. It redesigns the DNA of bacteria and yeast in order to create everything from perfumes to fertilisers. Ginkgo's Patrick Boyle tells Manuela what they are doing to ensure that the microbes and DNA they create remain harmless.Producer: Laurence Knight(Picture: Anonymous vial containing a clear liquid; Credit: MirageC/Getty Images)

After several countries banned alcohol as part of their lockdown measures, we ask if prohibition ever works?Ed Butler reports from South Africa, where a recent ban on alcohol was welcomed by some healthcare professionals and those fighting violence in the country. Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron and University of California criminologist Emily Owens discuss whether limits on alcohol are ever really effective.(Photo: A man takes beers from a fridge inside a liquor shop in Soweto, Johannesburg, on June 1, 2020; Credit: Getty Images)

Journalist Peter Geoghegan describes the many ways in which private money is corrupting democratic politics, encouraging chaos and fuelling public cynicism.In an extended interview with the BBC's Ed Butler, the Irish author and broadcaster explains a Brexit campaign advert that he happened to come across in a local newspaper while visiting the city of Sunderland in the north of England led him to investigate where the money funding the Leave campaign was coming from. It led him to explore how business and political interests - often from foreign countries - were able over decades to shift the political discourse in Western liberal democracies in their favour.(Picture: US flag made out of one dollar bills; Credit: Matt Anderson Photography/Getty Images)