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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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The Digital Human

Factual: Science & Nature: Science & Technology

Aleks Krotoski explores the digital world

Digital Human: Series 7

The Digital Human: Series 7: Episode 1: Secrets

Factual

Factual: Science & Nature

Secrets

Episode 1

Episode 1: Secrets

Series 7

BBC Radio 4 - The Digital Human, Series 7, Secrets

Aleks Krotoski explores the impact digital technology is having on secrets.

Aleks Krotoski asks if the way we reveal or keep secrets is changing, now that we share more and more of ourselves online.

Secret holders share why and how they have used the internet to disclose their most intimate or well kept secrets - how does a compulsion to confess in a public setting effect those who the secret is about? And can this audition of secrets online naturally lead to revealing them offline?

Aleks talks to her high school friends to unravel the secrecy about SARGON, an open secret society at her high schoo,l which she was never invited to join. She discovers the power of secrets for those on the inside and outside of SARGON. Could such a society exist today in the presence of social media?

We also hear from Frank Warren the secret keeper of the online website and app PostSecret. Yorick Pheonix who used PostSecret to air a secret kept for 30 years tells us why he was happy to use such a public setting to explain that he kept his daughter a secret from his family. Aleks addresses the ownership of secrets and how the internet can impact on this. We hear from Yorick's daughter, Rachael about how she feels that her father's secret, which is also her own, is online for all to hear.

And former MI6 officer Harry Fergusson talks about context collapse and how he managed to keep his work and family life separate.

Producer: Kate Bissell

Digi Human graffiti by NOIR aka Glynn Judd.

The Digital Human: Series 7

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Aleks Krotoski explores life in the digital age.

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The Digital Human

Series 7

Episode 1: Secrets

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