Monitoring’s podcast debut

Krassi Twigg

The idea to “audiofy” BBC Monitoring has been an ambition for a while. Bold, daunting even, but also too good not to pursue. Several years later, after tackling the ultimate creative challenge of the blank slate, we are about to launch our own podcast, Krassi Twigg writes.

The clue is in the title: The Global Jigsaw. We set out to create a podcast that helps the listener understand the world better: we look for stories off the beaten media track, find missing pieces of the puzzle and connect the dots – to get the bigger picture.

The BBC is the only media organisation in the world with a service like Monitoring and we are aiming to make the most of our distinctiveness to stand out in the crowded podcast space. Our linguistic capabilities enable us to lift the language barrier so we can, true to our motto, explore the world through the eyes of its media.

And it is the media landscape that interests us, particularly when it is weaponised – through propaganda or disinformation – to serve powerful agendas.

We do not just report on what is happening, but how what is happening is being reported and talked about.

In Season 1, we zoom in on several Russian influence operations around the world to understand what drives Moscow’s interest in faraway places. We look at how one jihadist group in Syria is trying to rebrand itself, modelling itself consciously on Afghanistan’s Taliban in a bid for political respectability. And we ask why some powerful people in China think the country has a “boy problem”.

You might hear some familiar voices, and will definitely hear new ones from our regional experts as well as World Service colleagues.

"We are aiming to make the most of our distinctiveness"

The Global Jigsaw will launch this spring on BBC Sounds and a variety of podcast apps. We have two experienced World Service radio producers on the team: Kriszta Satori from Newsday and Lucy Bailey from Newshour. Our video producer colleague Suniti Singh has started creating some brilliant visualised versions for the World Service YouTube page which we hope will pull more listeners in. And – further down the line – we will explore opportunities to create multilingual versions of the podcast, in collaboration with the World Service.

Video producer Suniti Singh working on the podcast

Krassi Twigg is the host of The Global Jigsaw podcast