BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.

Some people love a white Christmas,

so today let's take you to the South Pole,

where our correspondent is holed up in a research station eating not so festive chips.

Then to the top of the world, Greenland, snow and glaciers diminishing,

but underneath our much desired rare metals and fears of plunder too in the

Caribbean with the cruise ship industry versus pristine coral and another treasure

beneath the feet or actually the trotters as we go truffle hunting in

southwest France.

Recent events in Hong Kong are understandably causing its neighbours to be jumpy and and seeking to influence next month's elections on the island, which China still claims as part of its territory.

Running its own affairs since Changi Shek retreated from the mainland in 1949, its president this week declared that what Beijing most fears is Taiwan's

democracy.

Duncan Hewitt has just paid a visit to the island from China where he's lived for the past two decades.

Taiwan's old red brick government building is not somewhere I expected to be

confronted with radical new ideas. Last time I visited more than 20 years ago,

its musty corridors were home to aging somber gentlemen in suits

who insisted that their party, the Nationalist KMT,

was still the rightful ruler of all China.

Audrey Tang is a little different.

Dressed in a black and grey tie-dye coat over a black shirt, the 38-year-old former hacker is now Taiwan's digital minister.

As she enthusiastically pulls up pictures, charts and websites on her tablet, it's tempting

to describe her as a breath of fresh air. In fact, she's more of a volcanic

...