Podcast by Adam Batty and BBC 6 Music DJ Afrodeutsche follows the leads to Leeds

The hunt for clues about the life of the masked rapper MF Doom had taken Adam Batty to some strange places, none more so than a remote-control car shop in the market town of Otley, West Yorkshire.

Rumour had it that Doom, who died in Leeds in 2020, had spent thousands in the shop. Other sightings placed him in the indie venue the Brudenell Social Club.

MF DOOM: Long Island to Leeds is available on BBC Sounds from Tuesday 10 February.

Who will speak out for values and rights and my fellow democracy activist now that opposition has been silenced in Hong Kong? I say Britain should

• Nathan Law is a politician and activist from Hong Kong

Waking up on Monday morning to the news of the pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai’s 20-year prison sentence for national security offences felt surreal. I could have easily been in his position if I hadn’t fled Hong Kong right before the implementation of the notorious national security law (NSL), under which Lai has faced the harshest penalty ever given. In fact, Lai chose to stay and stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Hong Kong in the face of an uncertain and repressive future. Now his family fears that he will die in prison.

A mix of emotions filled my mind. I was immensely disgusted by the audacity and malevolence of such punishment. This sentence has a transparently political end, but the Hong Kong and Chinese governments make no bones about it. Their sole purpose is to silence critics, and they have succeeded: civil society and domestic media, which should be the watchdogs of individual rights and government overreach, are dead silent on criticising the trial.

Wonder lies below the surface of this truly fantastic sitcom from the creator of Detectorists. It’s an impossible marvel of TV making

Try not to be told about the central premise of Small Prophets, the new comedy by Detectorists writer/director Mackenzie Crook, before you dive in. In a show full of gorgeous surprises, the main thing that happens is the most precious gift waiting to be unwrapped. What you should know, though, is that this is everything a Detectorists fan would wish for in its creator’s new project: the same sensibilities take on phantasmagorical new shapes. Small Prophets is a pure, pure pleasure.

Our gentle hero is the lank-haired, long-bearded Michael (Pearce Quigley), the only occupant of an overgrown semi-detached at the dead end of a south Manchester cul-de-sac. His daily routine: waking from a strange dream about birds, coaxing his battered Ford Capri into life, driving to his boring job on the shop floor of a DIY superstore, popping to his dad’s nursing home for repetitive conversation, then returning to his silent house ready to do it all again tomorrow. It has been this way since Christmas Eve seven years ago, when his girlfriend, Clea, vanished. They found her car by the Severn Bridge, but they never found her.

Our current approach to mental health labelling and diagnosis has brought benefits. But as a practising doctor, I am concerned that it may be doing more harm than good

Someone is shot, and almost dies; the fragility of life is intimately revealed to him. He goes on to have flashbacks of the event, finds that he can no longer relax or enjoy himself. He is agitated and restless. His relationships suffer, then wither; he is progressively disturbed by intrusive memories of the event.

This could be read as a description of many patients I’ve seen in clinic and in the emergency room over the years in my work as a doctor: it’s recognisably someone suffering what has in recent decades been called PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder. But it isn’t one of my patients. It’s a description of a character in the 7,000-year-old Indian epic The Ramayana; Indian psychiatrist Hitesh Sheth uses it as an example of the timelessness of certain states of mind. Other ancient epics describe textbook cases of what we now call “generalised anxiety disorder”, which is characterised by excessive fear and rumination, loss of focus, and inability to sleep. Yet others describe what sounds like suicidal depression, or devastating substance addiction.

The great topmost sheet of the mass, that where hardly a light had twinkled or moved, becomes now a sparkling field of rhythmic flashing points with trains of travelling sparks hurrying hither and thither. The brain is waking and with it the mind is returning … Swiftly the head mass becomes an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding one.

After a reckless shopping spree, I ditched contactless payments and bank cards to see how far £200 cash in hand would get me – and if I could improve my spending habits

If I’m lucky, I can just about squeeze a £20 note into the back of my phone case, which holds the device I reflexively tap to pay for almost everything. But this week was different. After a reckless coffee-and-clothing spending spree made a mighty dent in my bank account, I decided I needed to take action. Self-control was one option, but another more drastic route was blunt-force restriction. I would ditch contactless payments, along with debit and credit cards. Instead, I would spend a week relying solely on cash.

After subtracting the lavish lattes and Asos deliveries that had massively inflated my average weekly spend, I allowed myself £180 for the basics, including food and travel. For safety, I gave myself an extra £20. The first task was to take out £200 in cash from the ATM. But what the hell was my pin number? Thanks to contactless capabilities, I hadn’t used this all-important combination of digits in more than a year. Googling how to find it, I discovered I’d have to wait three to five working days to get a letter reminding me of it in the post. This wouldn’t do. I decided to head to my local bank to explain my predicament.

Born of student disquiet after the 2008 crash, the group says it is reshaping economists’ education

As the fallout from the 2008 global financial crash reverberated around the world, a group of students at Harvard University in the US walked out of their introductory economics class complaining it was teaching a “specific and limited view” that perpetuated “a problematic and inefficient system of economic inequality”.

A few weeks later, on the other side of the Atlantic, economics students at Manchester University in the UK, unhappy that the rigid mathematical formulas they were being taught in the classroom bore little relation to the tumultuous economic fallout they were living through, set up a “post-crash economics society”.

The prime minister Keir Starmer is hoping to push forward on policy following a bruising week for his leadership

Kemi Badenoch has said that Keir Starmer just received a “stay of execution” yesterday. Speaking to reporters on a visit this morning, she said:

[Starmer] is in a very dangerous place. The Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said the quiet bit out loud.

Labour MPs and the Labour party have lost confidence in their leader, but the MPs are too scared of losing their jobs, so they’re not going to call an election, and they’ve given him a stay of execution. The sad thing is that the country is suffering from not being governed at all.

Countries’ drop in scores in annual table comes amid ‘worrying trend’ of backsliding in established democracies

The UK and US have sunk to new lows in a global index of corruption, amid a “worrying trend” of democratic institutions being eroded by political donations, cash for access and state targeting of campaigners and journalists.

Experts and businesspeople rated 182 countries based on their perception of corruption levels in the public sector to compile a league table that was bookended by Denmark at the top with the lowest levels of corruption and South Sudan at the bottom.

Seamus Culleton describes conditions as ‘torture’ as he pleads with taoiseach to raise his case with Donald Trump

An Irish man who has been held by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement for five months despite having a valid work permit and no criminal record says he fears for his life and has appealed for help from Ireland’s government.

Seamus Culleton said conditions at his detention centre in Texas were akin to “torture” and that the atmosphere was volatile. “I’m not in fear of the other inmates. I’m afraid of the staff. They’re capable of anything.”

Wasserman has apologised for communicating with Ghislaine Maxwell after flirtatious emails they exchanged more than 20 years ago were released in the Epstein files

Pop star Chappell Roan said on Monday she was no longer represented by the talent agency led by Los Angeles 2028 Olympics chief Casey Wasserman, who has faced criticism for flirtatious email exchanges with convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell more than 20 years ago.

Wasserman has apologised for communicating with Maxwell, after the publication of a series of personal emails between the two.