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The Reith Lectures

The Four Freedoms

4. Freedom from Fear

Duration: 1 hour, 2 minutes

First broadcast: on BBC Radio 4 LWLatest broadcast: on BBC Radio 4 LW

Available for over a year

In the last in a series of four lectures examining what freedom means, the foreign affairs and intelligence expert Dr Fiona Hill gives her BBC Reith Lecture on Freedom from Fear. Dr Hill is one of the world’s leading experts on Russia, and served as director for European and Russian affairs on President Trump’s National Security Council, and in senior intelligence roles for both Presidents Bush and Obama. She will talk about the fear she felt growing up as teenager in the Cold War and living with the threat of nuclear war. Then, she says, the culture of fear was about the Soviet Union, a largely unknown enemy. 40 years later, have we come full circle? She also analyses Russia's war in Ukraine, and what it means for the world.

The programme and question-and-answer session is recorded at Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC in front of an audience. The presenter is Anita Anand.

The year's series was inspired by President Franklin D Roosevelt's four freedoms speech of 1941 and asks what this terrain means now. It features four different lecturers:
Freedom of Speech by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Freedom to Worship by Rowan Williams
Freedom from Want by Darren McGarvey
Freedom from Fear by Fiona Hill

Producer: Jim Frank
Sound Engineers: Rod Farquhar and Neil Churchill
Production Coordinator: Brenda Brown
Editor: Hugh Levinson Show less

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