Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.

My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.

As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.

What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,

poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.

If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.

Welcome to the Inquiry Podcast from the BBC World Service.

Each week we bring you four expert witnesses answering one pressing question from the news.

Just after midnight in Singapore's largest cemetery, a worker is collecting bones from an open grave,

while family members watch, making sure no fragment is left behind.

It's a delicate process. Great care is taken not to

separate the soul from what remains of the body. That's why the exhumation is

being done at night in the glow of small red candles. The dead

are thought to be very sensitive to light. Singapore's ethnic Chinese traditionally believe that the welfare of the living depends on their care for the dead.

Yet 80,000 graves are now being exhumed at ChoachuKang Cemetery to make way for the expansion of a military air base.

And Singapore's not the only metropolis where the needs of the living are crowding out

the dead.

London, New York, Jerusalem, Istanbul, Sydney, Vancouver, Hong Kong, big cities where burial

was the traditional way to dispose of human remains, are all running out of room to lay the dead

to rest. On our planet, the dead to rest.

On our planet, the dead outnumber the living by about 30 to 1. As more of us are choosing to live and die in cities,

the earth around them is rapidly filling up with bones.

...