Illuminated

Welcome to the feast! We're invited to a traditional Georgian ‘Supra' to immerse ourselves in the magic of Georgian polyphonic singing.

The table groans with food, the wine flows, and the singing fills the heart. Led by toastmaster Levan Bitarovi, diners are guided through a narrative, weaving together their personal and collective experiences, through song.

At home in the mountains, in Georgia's 'singing village' Lakhushdi, people sing like they breathe. A lullaby, a grieving song, a song when the belly is full, a song for milking the cow. It's a part of everyday life and forms the connective tissue of the community.

For Paris-based singer Luna Silva, these songs bring her the comfort and sense of togetherness of her childhood circus home. Since first hearing the music as an ethno-musicology student in London, she has made several trips to the Georgian mountains to immerse herself in the musical tradition, and now teaches polyphonic singing to her French choir. She even took them with her to Lakhushdi. Now, the French choir has invited their Georgian hosts to attend their first Supra in Montreuil, Paris.

In the pauses during the Supra, as people talk and eat, we hear from singers and diners what makes the Supra so important in Georgia. Luna and Levan also dissect the polyphonic singing style, as voices are added and removed to demonstrate how individual pitches and harmonies are brought together. They are layered over each other, surrounding the listener in a bath of sound which touches the soul.

As the Supra draws to a close, everyone joins together to sing a song to life.

You can hear more from the musicians at https://adilei.ge/en/about-us/

You can also find Lakhushdi, the Singing Village on various music streaming websites. Search for ‘The Singing Village Lakhushdi'.

Presented by singer and ethno-musciologist Luna Silva

Featuring singers Levan Bitarovi, Madona and Ana Chamgeliani, Avto Turkia and Lasha Bedenashvili

Produced by Amanda Hargreaves

Executive producer: Carys Wall

Sound recordist: Léonard Ibañez

Sound designer: Joel Cox

With thanks to the Choeur d'Aronde in Montreuil

A Bespoken Media production for BBC Radio 4

Come to a banquet of Georgian song, food and wine.

Luna Silva invites us to a traditional Georgian Supra, where food, wine and polyphonic singing blend together.

[LISTEN NOW]

The Indri lemur, also known as the singing lemur, can be found only in Madagascar's rainforests. Famous for their eerie, melodic calls, they are one of the few primates that sing and, as it turns out, they have a surprising relationship to rhythm - one that's very similar to our own.

After hearing news of these unlikely rhythmic capabilities, Georgie Styles ventures into one of the most biodiverse yet threatened ecosystems on Earth to capture the haunting songs of this critically endangered species, as they echo through the treetops. But as she goes deeper into this tale of survival and song, she discovers a hidden female history.

So what can the Indri lemur tell us about the origins of music?

Providing us with the first-ever evidence of complex vocal abilities that exceed those of any other mammal, besides humans, the Indri reveals clues to our own evolutionary journey and offers us a rarely told perspective.

With contributions from primatologist and conservationist, Dr Sylviane Volampeno, primatologist Dr Chiara De Gregorio, researcher Irene Marchesi and a team of Madagascan research guides, A Lemur's Song connects nature's melodies to the evolution of music. Through the captivating sounds of Madagascar's rainforests, the Indris songs and the creative responses of an original score by music artist and saxophonist Laura Misch, Georgie reflects on what sounds can tell us about our world and what we are at risk of losing.

A 2 Degrees West production for BBC Radio 4

What can a critically endangered species of lemur tell us about the origins of music?

Using the songs of Madagascar's rainforests and original score by Laura Misch, Georgie Styles connects nature's melodies to the evolution of music, revealing unlikely origins.

[LISTEN NOW]

Why are all the bees dying? Simon Mitambo, an expert from Kenya's so-called 'Land of Bees', travels from his own affected community to huge industrial farms in search of answers. It is a journey both planetary and personal: without bees, can Simon's world survive?

Presenter: Simon Mitambo

Producer: Lucy Taylor

Field producer: Mel Myendo

Researcher: Georgie Styles

Exec Producer: Dan Ashby

Sound design and mixing: Jarek Zaba

A Smoke Trail Production for BBC Radio 4.

Why are all the bees dying? Simon Mitambo from Kenya's 'Land of Bees' looks for answers.

[LISTEN NOW]

When you look at the moon, what do you see?

Producer and artist Siddharth Khajuria encounters competing human imaginations for the moon. Starting with some of the earliest lunar maps, he works with moonlight to illuminate thornier questions about our own behaviour on earth. What motivates the desire to etch a name into the landscape?

The humanity woven through our modern map of the moon – Seas of Tranquility and Crises, Lakes of Death and Dreams, an Ocean of Storms – is the work of a 17th century Italian priest, Giovanni Battista Riccioli. Siddharth meets Riccioli's poetic mapmaking in the context of a heated European race to name the moon's many craters, mountains, valleys and maria.

From these celestial cartographers etching names into the first detailed lunar maps, to the Cold War era Apollo missions and commercially-fuelled landings that lie ahead of us, the story of humanity's relationship with the moon is one of a growing intimacy.

Featuring astronomer and lunar biographer David Whitehouse, librarian at the Edinburgh Royal Observatory Karen Moran, space lawyer Frans von der Dunk, and a late night, torch-lit conversation between Siddharth and his eldest son.

Photograph: Siddharth Khajuria

Music composed and performed by Phil Smith

Produced by Eleanor McDowall and Siddharth Khajuria

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4

Producer and artist Siddharth Khajuria meets competing human imaginations for the moon.

When you look at the moon, what do you see? Producer and artist Siddharth Khajuria meets competing human imaginations for the moon.

[LISTEN NOW]

Care packages are a universal love language and a way for families to stay connected across distances. We unbox four from China, India, Ireland and the Philippines, each filled with the tastes, textures and memories of home.

In Newton-le-Willows, content creator Aurora unwraps a parcel from her mother in China revealing fragrant spices, dried mushrooms and handmade gifts as a reminder of her native traditions. In Cardiff, dancer Ishika shares a tightly sealed batch of homemade bori, sun-dried lentil dumplings prepared and packed by her cousins in India. Over in Liverpool, full-time mum Sarah introduces us to a selection of snacks pulled from her nani's cabinet in Ireland for a mix of nostalgia, sweetness and comfort that bridges generations. In Norwich, multidisciplinary artist Sha opens a package from her mum in the Philippines filled with dried mangoes and polvoron, a crumbly, sugary treat that melts in your mouth and warms the heart.

Each of them shares how these packages, sent with care and packed with love, offer more than just food. They're a connection to family, culture, belonging and the best remedy for homesickness.

Presented and produced by Jay Behrouzi

Executive Producer Richard McIlroy

A BBC Audio North production for BBC Radio 4

We unbox care packages to explore flavours from China, India, Ireland and the Philippines.

Care packages connect families far apart through familiar flavours and snacks - a powerful remedy for homesickness. We unbox four from China, India, Ireland and the Philippines.

[LISTEN NOW]

What does Christmas Day mean to you?

This raw, kaleidoscopic audio portrait, made up entirely from voice notes recordings, tracks the emotional contours of the day as it unfolds.

Through midnight churchgoing and moments of quiet reflection to frenetic gift-giving, culinary chaos and karaoke, the programme evokes and questions our own multifarious experiences of what Christmas Day ‘means'.

Variously boozy, silly, sad, excited, warm, lonely, deeply spiritual and endearingly humanistic – the contributions chart a cross section of modern Britain, encompassing heartfelt-stories, accidental field recordings, impromptu songs and audio diary entries.

With special thanks to all those who recorded their Christmas Day for us in 2024. Original music and sound design by James Bonney.

Producer: James Bonney

Mix: Mike Woolley

Executive Producer: Olivia Humphreys

An Overcoat Media production for BBC Radio 4

A headlong dive into Christmas Day 2024, made up entirely from phone-recorded voice notes.

A kaleidoscopic audio portrait of Christmas Day 2024, made up entirely of crowdsourced voice note recordings from across Britain.

[LISTEN NOW]

Where do we begin to think about time without humans to count it? Chris Gasson spends every spare moment on his local beach, Seatown on the Jurassic coast of Dorset, looking out for fossils and stones that speak of a past and future too vast for us to easily imagine.

On his walks, Chris has found countless time capsules - including a mammoth tooth, plesiosaur vertebrae and the remains of an ichthyosaur 190 million years old, now under research by Craig Chivers.

'It's a fantastic find,' says Craig. 'Fossils are a snapshot in time a bit like paintings and writings. Trace fossils that show where a dinosaur once stepped and left a footprint behind, or an ammonite has rolled along the sea floor and left an impression in the sediment, really stir the imagination.'

Our walk along Seatown beach is accompanied by readings by geologist and writer, Marcia Bjornerud, Walter Schober Professor of Environmental Studies and Professor of Geosciences at Lawrence University, Wisconsin. Her essay Wrinked Time imagines humans as wandering in a vast, labyrinthine library of time.

We are like squatters living amid the remains of earlier empires, worlds defined by different geographies,' she writes in a work that first appeared in Emergence Magazine. Marcia shows us how fragments from that library still exist in the most synthetic, human-made products like phones and computers if only we have eyes to see them.

Produced by Jon Nicholls and Monica Whitlock

Sound design and music by Jon Nicholls

Photograph by Monica Whitlock

A Storyscape production for BBC Radio 4

For many more creative and surprising one-off documentaries like this, just search for Illuminated on BBC Sounds.

Human time meets earth time on the Jurassic coast of Dorset.

How should we understand time when our own span is so brief? Join fossil hunter Chris Gasson on the Jurassic coast of Dorset, with readings by geologist and author Marcia Bjornerud

[LISTEN NOW]

Electromagnetic waves fill the universe, radiating from solar storms and bursts of lightning, but also from our electronic devices and infrastructures. Using simple, DIY tools, a community of audio enthusiasts translates these waves into sound, uncovering hidden sonic worlds.

Five dedicated ‘natural radio' enthusiasts venture beyond the electromagnetic pollution of the city, tuning into the Earth's natural static to reveal a rich, textured soundscape, rarely heard.

Stephen McGreevy, a cult figure within this practice, shares stories of his recordings during the geomagnetic storm of 1989. Hannah Kemp-Welch travels to northern Norway in search of the electromagnetic waves of the aurora borealis, struggling to escape the omnipresent hum of the mains power grid. Alyssa Moxley captures the crackles of shooting stars in southern France. Matt Parker ventures into the National Radio Quiet Zone in Virginia, USA. And Anonea experiments with antennas from a remote location in northern Spain.

This audio feature encourages listeners to contemplate the vast, often invisible role electromagnetism plays in our daily lives. It invites us to look up at the sky and imagine radio waves bouncing off layers of the atmosphere, connecting us all under one magnetosphere.

Produced by Hannah Kemp-Welch and Oliver Sanders

Research & Development: Hannah Kemp-Welch

Editing & Sound Design: Oliver Sanders

Executive Producer: Lucia Scazzocchio

Special thanks to Anonea, Alyssa Moxley, Dan Tapper, Francesca Thakorlal, Matt Parker, Rob Stammes, Rebekah Breding, Ruth Stewart, Sébastien Robert and Stephen P. McGreevy.

A Social Broadcasts production for BBC Radio 4

Discover the magic of 'natural radio' - a hidden electromagnetic soundscape.

Using simple DIY tools, five audio enthusiasts from around the world tune in to electromagnetic waves that fill the universe, radiating from solar storms and bursts of lightning.

[LISTEN NOW]

In fact, it's one of the only illnesses where lying is acceptable and extends into the entire care process. Since dementia gravely impacts a person's cognitive abilities, those diagnosed won't share the same reality as their carers. To bridge this reality gap and appease disoriented patients, carers distort the truth. Entire care home facilities seek to transform a patient's surroundings into fictional settings.

In the heart of Warwick, England, lies an extraordinary experiment in dementia care - a care home transformed to look like a village. In “Am I Home? Life In A Dementia Village ?, journalist Lara Bullens takes listeners on a profound journey into a community designed to redefine the boundaries of familiarity for those navigating the fog of dementia.

At Woodside Care Village, dementia residents live a somewhat normal life. They are free to roam outside their households, visit the local shop and even get their hair done at Cutters Hair and Beauty salon. Here, the comforts of familiarity and the quiet despair of warped realities coexist, offering a window into the daily dance carers make to navigate the complexities of dementia care.

But beneath the surface of these carefully curated environments, lies a complex web of ethical considerations. Listeners will hear how Lara grapples with the implicates of creating alternative realities for those whose grip on the real world is tenuous. Is it possible to build a world that comforts without deceiving, that cares in complete honesty?

Weaving a narrative that is as personal as it is universal, Lara draws from the haunting memory of her mother's struggle with early onset fronto-temporal dementia. Her own struggles with lying bring to light the ethical labyrinth of dementia care, where therapeutic fibs become a poignant tool in bridging the chasm between the world as we know it and the world as it is perceived by someone with dementia.

Through the intimate lens of Woodside Care Village, listeners are invited to reconsider what it means to provide care in the shadow of dementia - a condition that, in its cruellest irony, often leaves individuals feeling profoundly alone in a crowd of familiar faces.

Written and Presented by Lara Bullens

Produced by Lara Bullens and Olivia Humphreys

Executive Producer: Steven Rajam

An Overcoat Media production for BBC Radio 4

How a pioneering dementia village and its constructed 'fake' reality comforts sufferers.

Is it OK to lie to people with dementia if it improves their wellbeing? Lara Bullens goes inside a Truman Show-esque 'dementia village' in Warwick, where the fake and real blur.

Andy Mycock has one of the world's worst surnames. Despite being a renowned political scientist, his life has been punctuated by friends and strangers making fun of his name.

Daily acts like meeting new people or being called in to see the doctor can be both hilarious and fraught. His surname has impacted on his professional life, meeting a partner, and forming meaningful relationships. But there are positives too - it's almost impossible to forget Dr Mycock.

As Andy learns to turn a lifetime of difficult first reactions into an opportunity to connect, he discovers he has a superpower and maybe a community too. Join him as he goes on a personal journey to find peace with Mycock.

Presenter: Andy Mycock

Producer: Olivia Swift

Executive Producer: Geoff Bird

Mixing Engineer: Steve Brooke

A Reform Radio production for BBC Radio 4

Reflections on life with a terrible surname.

After 58 years of mumbling his name, Andy Mycock is on a mission to reclaim it. Meeting others with unfortunate surnames, can he learn to love Mycock?

[LISTEN NOW]

Siblings Sam and Bon Stone are angry. Sam directs her anger inwards while Bon's anger can be explosive. Through sharing parts of their lives with each other for the first time, they explore how we process anger and whether we can change it.

With contributions from Noel Oganyan of Forrest Flowers (recorded at the New Cross Inn, London in November 2024) and Ronnie Turner, founder of The Anger Clinic.

Original music by Jennifer Walton

Produced by Sam Stone

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4

Siblings Sam and Bon Stone are angry. For the first time, they explore how they feel.

Siblings Sam and Bon Stone are angry. Sam directs her anger inwards while Bon's anger can be explosive. For the first time, they explore how they feel about their anger.

With contributions from Noel Oganyan of Forrest Flowers (recorded at the New Cross Inn, London in November 2024) and Ronnie Turner from the British Association of Anger Management.

[LISTEN NOW]

Kevin Harman is an Edinburgh artist best known for creating 'situations', such as borrowing all his neighbours' doormats to create an installation, smashing the window of an art gallery and transforming rubbish in skips into sculptures. In this programme he explores what happens when public art and people clash and gets a sense of what it's like when 'art comes in the night'. Whilst working on his own installation in Govan, he ponders what success and failure really mean in the sometimes controversial world of public art.

Some public art is loved, some even defended from packs of roving art dealers, some is brushed off with indifference, or grumbling about wasted tax money. But when art comes out of the galleries and is splashed on the wall of someone's house or stuck outside on a shared stretch of grass the community can't help but be changed by its presence, and the art is at the mercy of those surrounding it.

Kevin meets architect Lee Ivett who, in 2017, embarked on a new project in Govan, a huge sculptural installation constructed from ropes taken from the former shipyards. Within 48 hours it had been burned to ashes by local teens. Although always intended as a temporary installation, community anger at large pots of money being given to artists erupted, stoked by articles in the press. But was this destruction simply vandalism or a sign that some important local needs weren't being met? Artist Nicola Atkinson has created public art all over the world, including recently in Dunfermline. She talks to Kevin about different ways she's found to engage with communities and cautions against the scandalisation of public art which can disempower artists and undermine the idea that art should be for everybody.

Presented by Kevin Harman

Produced by Lynsey Moyes

Contributors: Ross Galbraith, Lee Ivett, Aaron Andrews, Nicola Atkinson, Rakel McMahon

Artist Kevin Harman explores what happens when public art and communities clash.

Artist Kevin Harman explores what happens when public art and people clash as he works on a new installation in Glasgow's Govan area.

[LISTEN NOW]

The value of art 'has become mysterious', to quote the critic John Berger. Artists, commentators and voices from the BBC Sound Archive consider Berger's question: 'where does this value come from?

Including extracts from:

The Moral Maze, Radio 4

Private Passions, Radio 3 (featuring Keir Starmer)

Favourite Things, BBC TV (featuring Margaret Thatcher)

Coronation Street, Granada Television

Desert Island Discs, Radio 4 (featuring Maria Balshaw)

Headliners with Nihal Arthanayake, BBC Sounds (featuring Stewart Lee)

Harry & Paul, Tiger Aspect Productions

Yes Minister, BBC TV

Lord Keynes, Home Service, The Arts Council: Its Policy and Hopes

With readings by Dorothy Spencer and Carl Cattermole, including statistics from the Campaign for the Arts/University of Warwick, the Panic! Survey and an Industria inquiry based on Artist Leaks.

Produced by Alan Hall

Archive Producer: Phoebe McIndoe

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4

Reflections on the conflicting values we invest in art.

The value of art 'has become mysterious', said the critic John Berger. Artists, commentators and voices from the Archive consider 'where does this value come from?'.

[LISTEN NOW]

Bass guitarist and record producer Jah Wobble has had a lifetime's immersion at the low end of the musical spectrum. Over four decades, his hypnotic bass riffs have powered music from punk to reggae, fusion to world music.

He relates his first experiences as a teenager attending blues dances where Jamaican sound systems played cuts of reggae dub where the bass felt like a force like gravity, and seeing Bob Marley and the Wailers where he was captivated by the playing of bassist Aston ‘Family Man' Barret., and on to his own involvement with Public Image Limited, where he brought a dub sensibility into their post-punk music. He discusses his long years as a solo artist, and collaborations with musical legends from Can's Holger Czukay to Sinead O'Connor, and Primal Scream to Pharoah Sanders.

During these years, Jah Wobble has also been interested in the Science of Bass. So, he meets up with Dr Duncan Edwards of Salford University, to ask him about the special, physical properties of Bass Notes. How do they reach our brains and, once there, what psychological, emotional effects can they have on us? To understand this, he submits to an experiment where his head is wired up, and the Wobble brain waves measured.

After years lost in drink and drugs Jah Wobble turned to Buddhism and became fascinated by alternative explanations of his bass playing that this could give him. He interviews eminent teacher of Tibetan Buddhism, Lama Jampa Thaye, to find further enlightenment. And in a south London Prayer room, he listens to the extraordinary low-pitched chanting of exiled Tibetan monks, where one mantra has the awesome power of a bass note.

Presenter: Jah Wobble

Producer: Alastair Laurence

Sound Design: Jake Wittlin

A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4

Jah Wobble explores a life immersed at the low end of the sonic spectrum.

Jah Wobble investigates the scientific properties of bass notes, and their spiritual dimension as explained by Tibetan Buddhism.

[LISTEN NOW]

For presenter Lois Pryce and her special guests, Matt Lucas and Ben Elton, it's personal. Had it not been for Britain's willingness to accept Jewish refugees in the 1930s, none of them would be here today. Lois and Ben share a direct relationship with German physicist Max Born, the Nobel prize-winning scientist and a founding father of quantum theory. He escaped Nazi Germany and fled to Britain in 1933. Descendants from this side of the family also include Olivia Newton-John as well as other luminaries in music, medicine and arts - all directly descended from German Jews seeking sanctuary.

In this programme, Lois, Ben and Matt look at this new wave of German citizens, give voice to the strong feelings on both sides, and investigate their own family's refugee story, including receiving an official apology at the German embassy in London.

By tackling the circular nature of the story, our hosts also examine the wider point that, in the 1930s, the UK benefited culturally and economically by welcoming this family and others from Germany. But now it is Germany that is restoring citizenship and welcoming refugees while the UK has become, according to some, a hostile environment. Will this shift in attitude ultimately damage the country's economy as well as its reputation on the world stage?

Contributors: Ben Elton, Matt Lucas

Producer: Louise Orchard

Sound Design: Rowan Bishop

A 2 Degrees West production for BBC Radio 4

British Jews are taking back the German citizenship that was stripped from their forebears

British Jews are taking back the German citizenship that was stripped from their forebears under the Nazi regime. Lois Pryce, Ben Elton and Matt Lucas explore the controversy.

The 2001 Foot and Mouth crisis forced North Devon farmers into a traumatic 6 month lockdown, cut off from their neighbours and living with the death and destruction of their animals. When restrictions were finally eased, the ringing of church bells signalled the end of the lockdown, bringing communities back together.

For artist and farmer Marcus Vergette it was a sound that would change his life.

Marcus was struck by the ancient power of bells to unite and resurrect a community and he embarked on a project that would span the length and breadth of the UK. His Time and Tide Bells project is a monumental work of both sculpture and social enterprise, 13 massive bells mounted along the British shoreline, each one ringing out twice a day with the tide and telling a unique story about its surrounding community. In Harwich a teacher uses the bell as a catalyst for marine biology lessons. In Aberdyfi, a town on the verge of collapse, their bell might just pull a disintegrated community back together. And in Par, their bell is facilitating conversations between generations that were once impossible.

But closer to home, Marcus faces an urgent challenge. The church bells in the village of Highampton - the ones whose sound signalled the end of the Foot and Mouth outbreak - are under threat. In a story that is common across the country, the church has seen a steep decline in use and has become redundant. The tower is crumbling, and if the tower goes, the bells go too.

Aside from their personal connection to Marcus, these bells have historic significance, dating as they do from between 1200 and 1500 AD. Marcus is determined to save them, but the forces of bureaucracy are against him.

We follow Marcus on his quest to save the Highampton Bells and learn about the lives he has touched through the bells he created.

A Sound & Bones production for BBC Radio 4

Can Marcus save the bells that changed his life?

With his local church falling into disrepair, Marcus Vergette is fighting to save the bells that changed his life and whose sound holds his community together.

[LISTEN NOW]

In the 1930s a group of researchers descended on the northern mill town of Bolton to observe the natives. They christened their chosen case-study 'Worktown'. It was a ground breaking study of working class culture - and one thing they wanted to know was what makes people happy.

The people of Bolton were asked a simple questions 'What is happiness to you and yours?' The letters written in response reveal a snapshot of the innermost thoughts and feelings of ordinary people, living ordinary lives almost a century ago.

Katharine Longworth returns to Bolton to discover whether this town still holds the secret to happiness. Exploring the town centre, markets, pasty shops and pubs; she asks the same question, bringing the original letters to life as modern day Boltonians reflect on the insights of their predecessors.

We knock on the doors of those who live in the same spot as the original correspondents, linking them to the past through the words of the letters, and hearing their own reflections on happiness. Have things changed? Is it more difficult to be happier today? And is Bolton the happiest town on earth?

Producer: Katharine Longworth

Sound Design: Michael Smith

Actors: Paul Brennan, Jasmine Hyde and Mike Rogers

Does Bolton hold the secret to happiness?

What is happiness?' The people of Bolton were asked this question in the 1930s as part of a mass observation. We return to Bolton to find out if they have the answer.

[LISTEN NOW]

Sing. Fly. Mate. Die. This is Brood X or the Great Eastern Brood. It's an event which, for the residents of a dozen or so US states, is the abiding memory of four, maybe five, summers of their lives.

In a programme that's both a natural and a cultural history of the Great Eastern Brood we re-visit four Brood X years....1970, 1987, 2004 and 2021 - to capture the stories of the summers when the cicadas came to town.

Princeton University's Class of 1970 remember the cicadas' appearance at their graduation ceremony, during a time of student unrest and protest against the Vietnam War; a bride looks back to the uninvited - but welcome - cicada guests attending her wedding; a musician recalls making al fresco music with Brood X; and an entomologist considers the extraordinary life cycle of an insect which is seems to possess both great patience and the ability to count to seventeen.

Brood X cicadas spend 17 years underground, each insect alone, waiting and listening. In 2021, as Brood X stirred and the air began to thicken with the cicadas' love songs, we all shared with them that sense of emerging from the isolation of lockdown and making a new beginning.

Featuring: Elias Bonaros, Liz Dugan, Anisa George, Ray Gibbons, Peter Kuper, Gene Kritsky, Gregg Lange, David Rothenberg, Gil Schrage and Gaye Williams

Producer: Jeremy Grange

Cicada audio recorded by Cicada Mania and David Rothenberg

Programme Image: Prof. Gene Kritsky

Stories and memories of four summers when the Brood X cicadas came to town.

Every 17 years in the eastern United States, a roaring mass of red-eyed insects emerge from the ground. These are the stories of four summers when the Brood X cicadas came to town.

In 1939, Emma Freud's mother Jill was evacuated from London to the suburbs of Oxford. After staying with Lewis Carroll's friends the Butler sisters for a few years, she arrived at her next designated accommodation clutching a small suitcase and a copy of her favourite book, The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis. It was just a few weeks later, after she spotted several copies of that book on a shelf, that she realised she was actually living with CS Lewis himself.

In this telling of Jill's fascinating story, Emma hears all about her mother's love for CS Lewis, known to her as Jack. How she cared for him, how he paid for her to go to drama school and how a big, old, wooden wardrobe became part of her story...

Illustrated with readings from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Emma captures these precious memories as she sits down with her mum, now 98, to hear her magical story.

Readings of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by Olivia Williams

Other readings by Richard Gibson

Presenter: Emma Freud

Producer: Elizabeth Foster

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis © copyright 1950 CS Lewis Pte Ltd.

Emma Freud sits down with her mother to hear the fascinating tale of her link to CS Lewis.

Emma Freud's mother Jill was evacuated during World War II and ended up living with her favourite author. Emma hears the magical story of her mother, CS Lewis and the wardrobe.

[LISTEN NOW]

Alan Hall and his siblings have a shared story from their childhoods - their mum, Jackie, describes walking through a Liverpool park with her mum, their grandma, Hettie. It must be the 1940s. Hettie is a single mum. She'd fallen pregnant, according to family mythology, while working as a domestic servant in Scotland. Jackie has had spells in foster care. 'Don't stare,' Hettie says. 'Those men over there, they're your uncles.

Years later, after Jackie's death, Alan finds an envelope labelled, 'Mum's Pics'. Inside, there are photographs of two men in military uniforms, one with 'Fred' written on the back, the other, of a soldier in a kilt, 'Brother Bill'. These are Hettie's brothers - or rather, two of them. She was the youngest of nine and the only daughter. Of the other boys, Jackie had told her children, three had been killed in the Great War. A third photograph, of the Foster family gravestone, provides their names - Harry, Sidney and Thomas, 'their duty nobly done'.

Cannon Fodder traces memory, myth and meaning within one family touched by the catastrophe of World War One.

With contributions from historian Jeremy Banning, Lynelle Howson of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, retired Salvation Army officers Lt-Cols. David and Doriel Phillips, Ruth Anders of St Anne's Church, Aigburth in Liverpool and Hettie's grandchildren - Cathy, Laureen, Alan and Robin.

With music by Robin's daughter, Leila Hall (voice), and Alan Hall (cornet).

Produced by Alan Hall

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4

Memory, myth and meaning from lives shattered in a global conflict that resonate still.

Tracing family memory, myth and meaning from lives shattered in a global conflict through waves of trauma that still resonate a century on.

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Ceefax has just reached its 50th birthday, and to celebrate this unique golden anniversary, the BBC's once-mighty teletext news service is receiving the greatest gift of all - the gift of life, courtesy of the greatest novelty politician in the omniverse, Count Binface.

For eight years, Binface has pledged in his election manifestos to bring back Ceefax and now, at last, the BBC is granting his wish. With just one small hitch - it's on the radio. Still, you've got to start somewhere.

Featuring the stellar talents of Rory Bremner, Emma Clarke and Jon Harvey, get ready for an aural event like no other, with the unlikely return to the airwaves of the much-missed Ceefax. Or should that be Hearfax?

Starring: Rory Bremner, Emma Clarke, Leah Marks and Jon Harvey

And introducing Ceefax, 4-Tel and The Oracle

Script Writers: Jon Harvey and Matthew Crosby

Sound Design: Tony Churnside

Illustration: Dan Farrimond

Executive Producer: Eloise Whitmore

Count Binface resurrects the mighty Ceefax. With one small hitch. It's on the radio.

Count Binface achieves a lifetime ambition, resurrecting the mighty Ceefax in a hilarious reboot of an unlikely national treasure. Granted it's on the radio, but it's a start.

Count Binface celebrates the BBC's quirkiest and most popular invention: CEEFAX

[LISTEN NOW]

Mike is a carpenter, a boat builder, and a keen amateur sailor. Now, in his 60s he feels the time has come for a big adventure, so he signs on as crew for a transatlantic sailing voyage. But when the skipper turns to tyranny and his only ally on board loses touch with reality, Mike is faced with his own demons.

There's no storm, no shipwreck, no sea monster - only three men trapped together, each battling for their own sanity.

With only the endless sea surrounding them, Mike soon realises he is the only one who can pull the crew and himself out of a very dangerous place. Will he surrender to the dark line that runs through all of us?

Produced by Guy Natanel

Executive Producers: Shannon Delwiche and Chris Jones

Original Music by Pat Moran

A Sound and Bones production for BBC Radio 4

A cross-Atlantic journey turns into a gripping psychological thriller.

A journey across the Atlantic goes terribly wrong. There's no storm, no shipwreck, no sea monster - only three men trapped together, each battling for their own sanity.

[LISTEN NOW]

It's the glorious summer of 1966 and Hollywood has taken over England's prettiest village. The residents of Castle Combe have made way for the cast and crew of the biggest budget musical of the decade- Doctor Dolittle.

Where sheep once grazed there are two-headed llamas, talking macaws, singing chimps and enormous catering trucks. Propping up the bar at the local pub are hot actors Anthony Newley, Richard Attenborough and one of the biggest stars of the day- the man who talks to the animals- Rex Harrison.

Locals are divided about the pros and cons of the Hollywood invasion but one thing they're all annoyed about is the destruction of the local trout stream, dammed to create a lake for filming. Native fish and plants are gone, replaced by movie props and trained ducks.

Four young chaps decide to make their feelings clear. For three of them that means fireworks and noisy protests but ring leader, Ranulph Fiennes, intends to take things a little further. He's just joined the SAS, the crack Army regiment that gives him access to high explosives- more than enough to blow the dam sky high.

Environmental historian and broadcaster, Eleanor Barraclough gathers together the protagonists to publicly share their stories of the Dolittle affair for the first time.

Producers: Alasdair Cross of BBC Audio Wales and West and Matt Dyas for Good Productions

The environmental protest that shook Hollywood and saved a village.

The environmental protest that shook Hollywood and transformed the life of Britain's greatest living explorer.

Producers: Alasdair Cross and Matthew Dyas

[LISTEN NOW]

When the Reverend Andrew Doarks took on the church of St Gregory's in Sudbury three years ago - he received no warning of what he would discover in the vestry.

There - behind a perspex screen and a wooden flap in the wall - is the severed head of the fourteenth century Archbishop of Canterbury Simon of Sudbury. Simon who was decapitated during the Peasant's Revolt in 1381 shares the same space as the church's playgroup and receives visitors by appointment only. It is an unusual arrangement for the former Archbishop who met his demise after attempting to introduce a hated poll tax.

So how did Simon's head end up in Sudbury when his body is buried in Canterbury Cathedral? And should both head and body be reunited?

Andrew takes a trip to Canterbury to see Simon's tomb with the Cathedral's Head of Estates Joel Hopkinson. Inside the tomb - Simon's head has been replaced by a cannonball. He then visits the Cathedral library with Cressida Williams who discovers a document in the archive that relays Simon's will, dictated immediately before his death and he discusses Simon's future with the Canon Treasurer Andrew Dodd. Dr Helen Lacey from the University of Oxford and the People of 1381 project provides the historical context from the days of the Revolt.

It's a journey of discovery that sheds light on Simon's past and gives Andrew ideas for his future. After all - as he reflects - managing severed heads just wasn't part of his training at theological college.

Produced and presented by Robin Markwell for BBC Audio in Bristol

Vice Or Virtue' is composed and performed by singer-songwriter Jonny Day

A vicar takes on a church and discovers there's a decapitated head in the vestry.

A vicar takes on a church and discovers the head of the 14th-century Archbishop of Canterbury Simon of Sudbury in the vestry. Is it time to reunite his head with his body?

[LISTEN NOW]

The story of Charlotte Beradt's extraordinary and subversive dream project with a gripping struggle of ideas - between external and internal freedom; between the control of public and private space and the nightmare when the two are no longer quite distinguishable.

I awoke bathed in perspiration; my teeth clenched. Once again, as on countless previous nights, I had been hunted from pillar to post in a dream - shot at, tortured, scalped. But on this night the thought occurred to me that I might not be the only one among thousands upon thousands to be condemned to such dreams by the dictatorship.'.

This progranne takes as its starting point the dream notebooks of Charlotte Beradt, a journalist, banned twice over by the Nazis for being both Jewish and Communist. She risked her life to document her German compatriots' nocturnal experiences even as their waking freedoms were being eroded. It's been said the difference between an authoritarian and a totalitarian state is that the former is happy to control your actions and your speech - the latter aspires also to control your thoughts, your inner life. As Hannah Arednt put it, a regime becomes 'truly total - the moment it closes the iron vice of terror on its subjects' private social lives'.

The collation of the data itself reads like a thriller. Fascinated by the new science of psychoanalysis and the unconscious, as well as being remarkably brave, Beradt secretly met with hundreds of Jewish and non-Jewish Berliners to record their intimate diaries-of-the-night. She took precautions to prevent the disclosure of her project, smuggling her notes in letters to friends, hiding them inside book bindings in her apartment. As a journalist living in Berlin she was already known to the regime. She was several times imprisoned and let go, arrested and reported on.

This isn't only about how new psychoanalytic techniques illuminated the conflicted German unconscious. The Nazis had their own antagonistic relationship with the new 'Jewish' science - antisemitic, of course - but also, they thought, a danger to the national psyche and therefore the body politic. Psychoanalysis indulges in internal conflict and division of the self - what is needed are confident, unified and integrated German citizens prepared for war. Freud's work was banned, psychoanalysis demonised.

Hearing from Charlotte's friends, historians, political thinkers and and psychoanalysts, this deeply atmospheric programme tells the story of the Nazis' internal domination of the German people - the regime's psychologically invasive power as illustrated, fascinatingly, in the records of German citizens' unconscious dreaming lives - becoming almost a shared political unconscious.

Producers: Simon Hollis and Amanda Reubin Lewis

A Brook Lapping production for BBC Radio 4

The story of Charlotte Beradt's subversive dream project under Nazi rule.

The story of Charlotte Beradt's subversive dream project with a gripping struggle of ideas - between between external and internal freedom and control.

Illuminated - Radio 4's home for creative documentaries that shed light on hidden worlds.

[LISTEN NOW]

Alan Dein takes to the road to explore the social and cultural resonances of Kraftwerk's Autobahn.

The music begins the way journeys begin: with a clunking car door and churning ignition, before rolling onwards on a warm rhythmic throb - a 23-minute conceptual road-trip of swerves and curves, gentle gradients and blaring horns, tarmac-rumbling rhythms and doppler-shift effects that simulate the sensory whoosh of passing vehicles.

Kraftwerk's lyrical paean to the possibilities of freedom via the German motorway system is fifty years old. It was released in late 1974 and became popular worldwide in 1975. These were years in which a new West Germany was being created, one in which a more overt reckoning with history was possible, and in which a new characteristically German culture could be asserted, free from -- and implicitly in opposition to -- that history: new art, writing, cinema, and, with Kraftwerk, among others, music.

The autobahn wasn't an innocent choice of subject for Kraftwerk. It connected them back to the 1930s, when the autobahn system was begun and became an integral part of the infrastructure of the Third Reich. After the war it became a symbol of the West German 'economic miracle'. Beginning in darkness, the autobahn could be conceived as a road that drove towards progress and optimism.

'Wir fahren, fahren, fahren auf der autobahn': 'We're driving, driving, driving on the autobahn.'

Alan Dein is on the autobahn as well – driving, driving, driving – in Kraftwerk's wake, and tuned in to the cultural world of West Germany in the 1970s.

Featuring:

Berthold Franke, cultural historian

Daniel Miller, musician and founder of Mute records

Emil Schult, artist and sometime member of Kraftwerk

With grateful thanks to Dietmar Post and Uwe Schutte.

Photograph shows Emil Schult and Alan Dein. Behind them is Schult's painting, used as the original cover of Kraftwerk's Autobahn album.

Alan Dein takes to the road to explore the cultural resonances of Kraftwerk's Autobahn.

[LISTEN NOW]

Imagine this: 1975 and middle America coming to a standstill as almost a million people descend on Fantasy Park – for the 'greatest rock concert ever staged'. 50 years on, Bob Harris hears the story.

Broadcast coast to coast across three days, Fantasy Park was a 48 hours-long music festival aired by nearly 200 radio stations. Acts included Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Elton John, The Rolling Stones, Carly Simon, Chicago, Cat Stevens and The Who and many more. There was even a rumour that The Beatles might reform for the gig...

To celebrate Fantasy Park's half century, this behind the scenes show combines archive material with bootleg tapes and newly unearthed backstage interviews about this ultimate musical trip.

Presented by Bob Harris

Written by Henrik Persson, Gareth Ceredig, Jon Holmes.

Research and archive: Henrik Persson.

Produced and directed by Jon Holmes.

With thanks to Bart McLendon, Beau Weaver, Chris Graham, Rod Serling

An unusual production for BBC Radio 4

Fantasy Park features original recordings from the celebrated radio spoof of 1975.

The greatest rock concert ever? Bob Harris hears the story.

The greatest rock concert ever staged? Fifty years on, Bob Harris hears the story.

[LISTEN NOW]

If you ask many women in recovery from alcoholism what the term ‘functioning alcoholic' means to them, they will laugh. In truth, a large percentage of women who end up in treatment had been, to the outside world, ‘functioning'. Holding down jobs, raising children, paying their rent or mortgage. However, internally, ‘functioning' is about the last word they would use to describe their mental and emotional landscape as alcohol increasingly tightened its grip on their lives.

Here, two women share in raw and brutally honest detail their descent into alcohol dependency, which took place incrementally, behind closed doors, and, for the most part, under the radar as they continued to appear to live regular, ‘functional' lives.

​​Functioning offers a rare insight into the experience of leading a completely dual existence - the secrecy, the agility and the alchemy required in maintaining a ‘functioning' exterior, while your interior is coming apart; and a lesson in how much can go undetected when you are not what the world assumes of an alcoholic.

Sound design by Action Pyramid

Produced by Jodie Taylor

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4

Two women share a rare insight into their secret lives as 'functioning alcoholics'.

Having used alcohol to navigate anxieties, insecurities and noisy minds, women share their experience as ‘functioning alcoholics', an unravelling that happened slowly and in secret

[LISTEN NOW]

James lives in Manchester and earns his living as a landscape gardener. Since he was a child he has believed himself to be God, and is on a mission to bring peace to the world. He is part of an organisation that runs community events, fitness sessions, games evenings and he shares his ideas at regular Q&A meetings with a group of people, including many who share his belief that he is a divine figure. 

Over the last four years journalist Darryl Morris has been spending time with James and some of the members of the group, and attending some of the events they stage. He's trying to find out what it's like for James to live his life understanding himself to be God, what he is hoping to achieve, and what he offers those who consider themselves lucky enough to be among the first to recognise his presence.

Producer: Geoff Bird

Executive Producer: Jo Meek

An Audio Always production for BBC Radio 4

Meet the Manchester man who believes he is God - and the people who share his belief.

Journalist Darryl Morris meets the man who has, since childhood, considered himself to be God, and is now working to achieve world peace through a shift in human consciousness.

Over the last four years journalist Darryl Morris has been spending time with James and some of the members of the group, and attending some of the events they stage. He's trying to find out what it's like for James to live his life understanding himself to be God, what it is he is hoping to achieve, and what he offers those who consider themselves lucky enough to be among the first to recognise his presence.

[LISTEN NOW]

James lives in Manchester and earns his living as a landscape gardener. Since he was a child he has believed himself to be God, and is on a mission to bring peace to the world. He is part of an organisation that runs community events, fitness sessions, games evenings and he shares his ideas at regular Q&A meetings with a group of people, including many who share his belief that he is a divine figure. 

Over the last four years journalist Darryl Morris has been spending time with James and some of the members of the group, and attending some of the events they stage. He's trying to find out what it's like for James to live his life understanding himself to be God, what he is hoping to achieve, and what he offers those who consider themselves lucky enough to be among the first to recognise his presence.

Producer: Geoff Bird

Executive Producer: Jo Meek

An Audio Always production for BBC Radio 4

Meet the Manchester man who believes he is God - and the people who share his belief.

Journalist Darryl Morris meets the man who has, since childhood, considered himself to be God, and is now working to achieve world peace through a shift in human consciousness.

[LISTEN NOW]

John Betjeman wrote that it was 'worth cycling forty miles in a head wind to visit St Wendreda's church in March, Cambridgeshire, because of the 118 angels in the roof.

The wings of the C16th oak carvings are inspired by hen and marsh harriers. Once common locally - they are returning now. Nature writer Robert Macfarlane looks at the carvings, drawing connections between angels and harriers, what they say about of our feelings for the birds and angels.

Robert climbs to the ringing chamber to get close to the harrier angels with Ruth Clay, vicar of St Wendreda's, Edward Wilson-Lee, author of The Grammar of Angels, and Ajay Tegala, ranger at Wicken Fen. They discuss their meaning, in the C16th when they were carved, and today. The persecution and survival of the angel carvings corresponds to that of the birds. At Easter this is a resonant story.

During the Reformation iconoclasts destroyed 'idolatrous' church decorations, including carvings. Michael Rimmer, author of The Angel Roofs of East Anglia, tells of their destruction. At the same time the Tudor Vermin Acts led to a frenzy of killing of birds of prey such as harriers.

When Henry VIII's agents came to March to destroy the carvings, the people of March plied them with drink and food. They left with the church silver, but the harrier angels stayed intact.

In William Barsley's workshop the wood carver speaks about the art of the carvers who were known as 'imaginators'.

Robert visits Wickham Fen with Ajay Tegala, where hen and marsh harriers are in recovery, to observe them in angelic flight.

And musician Martin Simpson has made a special recording of his song Skydancers, about harriers, their predicament, recovery, and our role in this.

Presenter: Robert Macfarlane

Producer: Julian May

Robert Macfarlane on C16th carvings of angels based on the wings of hen and marsh harriers

Robert Macfarlane tells the story of C16th carvings of angels in the roof of St Wendreda's church, their wings based on harriers'. Carvings and raptors were persecuted, but survive

[LISTEN NOW]

Like so many people at a similar time of life, the poet Paul Farley is facing up to the fact that he might need hearing aids. His wife has been asking him to turn down the volume on the telly for years, and has given up shouting downstairs for him because he never hears.

Out in cafes and pubs, Paul can no longer really follow what people are saying to him, and so he often turns down invitations knowing he can't turn up the volume. Even worse, for Paul at least, is the fact he can no longer hear the high frequencies of his beloved birdsong.

Now, though, all that could change as he heads for a test at his local opticians to get his own NHS hearing aids fitted. He also speaks with Gabrielle Saunders, Professor of Audiology at the University of Manchester, about the past and future of hearing aids, and also the truth about the supposed connection between dementia and hearing loss.

Paul also visits the near total silence of Salford University's anechoic chamber so that he can hear himself think properly - and looks forward to a time when he might once again be able to listen to the birds.

Presented by Paul Farley

Produced by Geoff Bird

Executive Producers: Eloise Whitmore and Jo Meek

A Naked production for BBC Radio 4

Poet Paul Farley faces up to the fact that it's time to address his hearing loss.

Paul Farley is of an age where he's losing his hearing, and the world around him is shrinking. It's time for him to find out what difference hearing aids could make to his life.

[LISTEN NOW]

200 years ago, the modern railway was born. On 27th September 1825, the first ticketed passenger train, powered by steam travelled on a public line in County Durham.

Katrina Porteous, a poet with generational connections to the area follows the track of that inaugural journey, accompanied by a rich aural soundscape by Joe Fowler. She also journeys through time, accelerating from the coal mines which fuelled the railway to the modern day, racing to a future of international travel and modern technologies which offer new, more sustainable rail alternatives.

From the Northeast's coal mines to the sea, we capture the wonder of that inaugural journey, meeting people passionate about the Stockton and Darlington Line and the rail networks that followed: chance encounters, voices from history, retired railway men, and those who have preserved this legacy (Senior Museum Curator at Locomotion the National Railway Museum in Shildon, Anthony Coulls, and Caroline Hardie, Friends of the S&DR.)

Katrina discovers how this particular railway contributed to the standardisation of time and its incredibly rapid growth in Britain and around the world, while cold digital sounds and aural disintegration reflect some of the challenges rail travel has faced in the modern era. Through landscape and time, Katrina explores what a world shrunk by technology and speed means now and what the future of the railways might be.

This is a magic mosaic, capturing the place railway travel holds in so many hearts – not least the production team where family histories entwine and childhood passions now experiment with sound, or who have simply enjoyed train travel in places as far flung as India, the States or Japan.

Produced by Anna Scott-Brown.

An Overtone production for BBC Radio 4.

200 years after the birth of the modern railway we explore its impact on our modern world.

Two hundred years after the birth of the modern railway, we explore its impact on our modern world with archive, modern voices and a light poetic narration.

It is 200 years since the birth of the modern railway. On the 27th of September 1825 the first passenger train on a public line and powered by steam, travelled 26 miles between County Durham's collieries and Stockton-on-Tees.

A rich aural soundscape incorporates archive, modern voices and a light poetic narration to reflect how train travel since then has changed our concept of time and space.

Joe Fowler's composition mimics the varying gradients and tempos of that inaugural journey and accelerates from the coal mines which fuelled the railway to the modern day, racing to a future of international travel and where modern technologies and increasing technological reliance for good or ill turn the wonder of that inaugural journey into cold digital sounds.

Poet Katrina Porteous walks the old passenger route, revealing her family's connections to County Durham's mines and railways. She meets Jackson who shows her the original buffer block discovered in his mother's garden; walks the Etherley and Brusselton inclines where stationary steam first replaced pit ponies. In Shildon she sees where the first passengers boarded the train, pulled by Stephenson's Loco No. 1 and is shown Heighington Station - the world's first! In Darlington she hears the stories of retired railway workers, visits the oldest railway bridge in continuous use (Skerne) and the Good's Shed Clock Tower which enabled scheduling of S&DR trains - over 40 years before time was standardised across the country. We end at the terminus in Stockton where the coal was put on ships for London and further afield.

Participants reflect on landscape and time, and Katrina muses on what a world shrunk by technology and speed means for us now.

Overtone Productions.

200 years after the birth of the modern railway, a rich soundscape incorporates archive, modern voices and a light poetic narration, to explore its impact on our modern world.

[LISTEN NOW]

For some, burnout feels like an unravelling - a slow, creeping dissolution where the threads of your life and identity loosen and fray until you are completely undone.

For others, it's a breaking point - a sharp, sudden, collapse where everything shatters all at once. It doesn't just kill physical vitality it also guts the entire internal mechanism of us. Like lifting the hood off a car and finding no engine. There's nothing, a void, which feels very shameful and fragile to those who have defined themselves by performance and always had the ability to bounce back.

Driven by extensive rumination both burnout and shame thrive in silence.

Stories are often how we create shape from the mess, they turn shame into something softer; something shared. They are how we make sense of the world, and often how we survive it. Giving us the power to hold what feels unholdable and ultimately creating a space where someone else can say, “me too ?.

And sometimes what is required isn't the courage to keep it all together, but to surrender and come apart.

Recovery is messy, non-linear but also deeply creative.

This is where the feature maker Hana Walker-Brown finds herself in this tender and intimate programme, sifting through the fragments, the scattered pieces of a life upended, considering how to start putting it back together.

With contributions from Luca and Theo Walker-Brown, Hana's swimming companions Zoë and Gabby, Dr Sophie Mort, Dr Aaron Balick, Andrew Tobert and Services Director for Calm Wendy Robinson.

With thanks to Kenwood Ladies Pond and Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM)

Featuring the use of 'Prayer' by P J Harvey

Produced and presented by Hana Walker-Brown

Sound design and original music by Hana Walker-Brown

Executive Producer: Anishka Sharma

Mix and Mastering: Peregrine Andrews

A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 4

In this sound-rich, tender meditation, Hana Walker Brown examines burnout.

A tender meditation that examines shame, fear, hope and the idea that sometimes what's required isn't the ability to keep everything together, but to surrender and come apart.

Recovery is messy, non-linear but also deeply creative, and this is where I find myself - standing in the wreckage, wading through the fragments, the scattered pieces of a life upended, figuring out how to put it back together piece by piece in a deliberate act of faith.

Stories are how we create shape from the mess, they turn shame into something softer; something shared. They are how we make sense of the world, and sometimes, how we survive it. They give us the power to hold what feels unholdable.

Part essay, part sound-rich feature, this tender meditation examines shame, fear, active hope and the idea that sometimes what is required isn't the ability to keep everything together, but to surrender and come apart.

With contributions from Luca and Theo, Zoë, Gabby, Dr Sophie Mort, Dr Aaron Balick, Andrew Tobert, Service's Director for Calm Wendy Robinson.

Produced and presented by HWB

Sound design and original music by HWB

[LISTEN NOW]

'And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you...'

Late at night, the writer, audio artist and sleep-deprived parent of a newborn, Ross Sutherland, is staring into infinity...

'Usually, my phone becomes my window into a bigger world. Not just bigger- endless. Unmeasurably vast. You can scroll social media feeds forever and never hit the bottom of the chasm. I know it's objectively bad for me but I can't stop myself. I'm craving endlessness- I need space! Vast, endless interior space... to compensate for the smallness of my waking days.'

Sinking into the infinite scroll of his phone (a web design technique - created to encourage addiction as your webpage never ends...) he weaves a woozy, funny, adventurous audio essay through sonic experiments, illusions and mirror worlds that invite us to reckon with the infinite.

Including archive from ReThinking with Adam Grant 'Aza Raskin on why technology – and democracy– are in an imagination crisis' (courtesy of TED).

Original music composed by Jeremy Warmsley

Written and produced by Ross Sutherland

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4

The writer and sleep-deprived parent of a newborn, Ross Sutherland, stares into infinity.

Late at night, the writer, audio artist and sleep-deprived parent of a newborn, Ross Sutherland, stares into infinity.

[LISTEN NOW]

For decades, Nigerian hall parties have been the hub for communities in the UK, it was the place where they could bring a little bit of home and be transported through music, food and fashion. Full of extravagance, warmth and culture, the word Owambe, both noun and adjective, directly translates to ‘everything is there'. Now, first generation British Nigerians continue this tradition, their way.

Presenter Bisi Akins takes us on a journey through an Owambe, exploring what that “everything ? really means. We dive into the key elements of a successful Nigerian hall party, immersed in the sounds, smells, music, and traditions that bring an Owambe to life. We'll hear from those who lived it, loved it, and how the next generation are keeping the tradition alive.

Bring your big beats, bold outfits, and dancing shoes – Into the Owambe for BBC Radio 4.

A Hill 5.14 Production.

A vibrant exploration of a Nigerian party that helped a generation call Britain home.

Presenter Bisi Akins takes us inside an Owambe, a Nigerian hall party. With cultural music, food, fashion, and hearing from those who are keeping the tradition alive in Britain.

[LISTEN NOW]

The red-billed chough is the most dashing crow in the world. These rare, flamboyant, scarlet-legged, scarlet-billed denizens of Britain's Celtic coasts are communal and comic, intelligent and daring. They're also sublime aeronauts, riding the breeze as though they're made of it.

For writer Horatio Clare, the chough is his totem. He's loved the bird since he first encountered it in the 1980s during childhood holidays to Pembrokeshire. And more than forty years on from that joyous first encounter he still seeks them out. It's his annual pilgrimage.

In this episode of Illuminated, we join Horatio on that pilgrimage as he tells the story of a bird with a beak and legs the colour of a saint's blood - or perhaps a king's blood; whose cry says its name and whose presence symbolises a nation's identity. It's the story of a bird which embodies myths - and creates new ones; a bird which fled into the West over two centuries ago and which is finally returning to a wider world.

Horatio begins his journey on Pen Llŷn, the westernmost spur of North Wales and one of the red-billed chough's strongholds. His guide as he walks the sea cliffs is naturalist and folklorist Twm Elias. Twm lived alongside chough as he grew up on Llŷn and remembers a childhood visit to Caernarfon Castle, where his friend Dic John made a grab for the Castle's ‘tame' chough – and got a painful pecking in return.

Twm sees chough as a symbol of the wild coastal areas of north Wales. But it's also wrapped up in ideas of Cornish identity too. Dr. Loveday Jenkin grew up on stories of King Arthur becoming a chough when he died. Yet, just as she heard those stories, the very last choughs were dying out in Cornwall.

But then, in 2001, thirty years after the last chough disappeared, three birds from Ireland made landfall in the far west of Cornwall. The following year two of them built a nest and the population grew from there. Hilary Mitchell from Cornwall Birds tells the story of how the avian symbol and spirit of the county returned.

The chough is associated now with the western Celtic coasts. But once upon a time it ranged right across the British Isles. And maybe it will again. Horatio heads in the opposite direction - east - to a place which hasn't seen chough for at least two centuries, despite the bird being embedded in its iconography.

In Dover he meets Paul Hadaway from Kent Wildlife Trust to discover how a bird which was a symbol of the martyr and saint Thomas a Becket is once again flying in Kentish skies. And Jenny Luddington from the Trust explains how she's drawn on an old tradition of hooden creatures – carved wooden animal heads on poles – to create a hooden chough and tell the story of the bird's return to Kent.

Horatio Clare discovers that the chough's story has come full circle as old myths rehatch and new ones take wing.

Presenter: Horatio Clare

Producer: Jeremy Grange

Editor: Chris Ledgard

A BBC Audio Wales production for BBC Radio 4

Horatio Clare goes in search of the bird he's loved since childhood: the red-billed chough

Red-billed chough are communal and comic, intelligent and daring, riding the breeze as though they're made of it. Horatio Clare goes in search of a bird he's loved since childhood

In this episode of Illuminated, we join Horatio on that pilgrimage as he tells the story of a bird with a beak and legs the colour of a saint's blood - or perhaps a king's blood; whose cry says its name and whose presence symbolizes a nation's identity. It's the story of a bird which embodies myths - and creates new ones; a bird which fled into the West over two centuries ago and which is finally returning to a wider world.

In Dover meets Paul Hadaway from Kent Wildlife Trust to discover how a bird which was a symbol of the martyr and saint Thomas a Becket is once again flying in Kentish skies. And Jenny Luddington from the Trust explains how she's drawn on an old tradition of hooden creatures – carved wooden animal heads on poles – to create a hooden chough and tell the story of the bird's return to Kent.

[LISTEN NOW]

Did you ever have a recurring dream that you think might just be a memory? Or a nightmare so vivid that it could almost be real?

John Meagher has. He's been dreaming about a group of devil worshippers who may or may not have terrorised his home town of Newry, Northern Ireland since the early 90s.

John takes us on a funny, fearful and surprising journey of discovery across Northern Ireland to uncover the truth behind the story of 'The Whitehoods' of Newry and discovers that the 'Satanic Panic' wasn't exclusive to his home town.

But what was really going on? And why do so many towns in the North have a similar story?

Can John find out the truth and lay these memories to rest? Is there any truth to be found at all in this land of saints, scholars and spoofers?

For the sake of his sleeping patterns and his marriage, John is determined to find out.

A Fabel production for BBC Radio 4

Comedian John Meagher investigates his nightmares and Northern Ireland's 'satanic panic'.

Award winning comedian and champion martial artist John Meagher investigates Northern Ireland's 'satanic panic' for the surprising truth behind his own reoccurring nightmares.

[LISTEN NOW]

A farmer, a cheesemaker, a philosopher and a scientist take us on a guided tour through a cow.

Told in five acts, this programme weaves together the voices of our four guides - artist-philosopher Samar Nasrullah Khan, cheesemaker Peter Dixon, farmer Nikki Yoxall and Professor of Animal Science and Microbiology Sharon Huws.

They take us on a journey from deep in the soil, through a plant, into a cow's mouth, through her four stomach compartments – home to vast civilisations of bacteria, protozoa and fungi – and, of course, out the other end. Finally, the cow is milked and her dung is devoured by microorganisms, who turn it back into soil – starting the cycle again.

Part documentary, part creative interpretation, the programme uses field recordings to immerse us in the multi-species communities we encounter along the way. These mingle with the voice of the cow herself, and those of our human guides, who explain and reflect on the interactions and transformations occurring at each stage.

Humans and cattle have co-evolved. Over thousands of years, we have harnessed, exploited and relied on their ability to transform protein-poor plants into milk and dung, providing nourishment for people and soil. But still, what actually goes on inside a cow – and between a cow and its environment – to make these transformations possible remains a source of wonder.

Featuring Nikki Yoxall, Samar Nasrullah Khan, Professor Sharon Huws and Peter Dixon

Producer and narrator: Katie Revell

Executive producer: Carys Wall

Sound design, music and mix: Ev Buckley

Additional recordings by Gastric Mill

A Bespoken Media Scotland production for BBC Radio 4

Join a farmer, a cheesemaker, a philosopher and a scientist on a guided tour through a cow

A farmer, a cheesemaker, a philosopher and a scientist take us on a guided tour through the incredible digestive system of a cow.

[LISTEN NOW]

In 2018, Audrey Gillan sat down on a doorstep beside two rough sleepers and started documenting their lives. The Radio 4 series 'Tara and George' took us on a sometimes chaotic, often poignant journey and asked what led the couple to the streets of East London.

Last autumn, Audrey was contacted out of the blue by Tara's estranged brother. He had just been informed by ‘heir hunters' that his big sister was dead. The family did not know how, when, or where Tara had died or even if she had had a funeral. And so began another journey, this time to discover what had happened to Tara and to ask how - in death as in life - she could fall between the cracks of society.

In Last Rights, Audrey seeks answers to both questions.

Presented by Audrey Gillan

Produced by Alan Hall

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio Four

Audrey Gillian explores the death of rough sleeper Tara McKerr.

Audrey Gillian asks how, in death as in life, rough sleeper Tara McKerr could fall between the cracks of society.

[LISTEN NOW]

Alongside their A-levels, five 17 year-olds volunteer for six months at a hospice in Surrey. These are young people who hope to work in healthcare one day and, for one reason or another, feel drawn to helping others.

Their hopes and fears are similar to most people who've never been to a hospice, which includes their parents, and they have have no idea what they'll encounter. Above all, there are worries that it will be very sad, and too much for people of their age to handle.

Pretty quickly, they get to know the nurses at the hospice, who have a great sense of humour and are not in the least bit despairing. The volunteers feel awkward at first, and scared of getting things wrong, but with the nurses' encouragement, they begin talking with patients, feeding them, moving them, brushing their teeth, and helping them to the toilet.

Little by little, they get to know patients, gain confidence and maturity and start to form a new understanding of dying and death.

With many thanks to the staff of the Princess Alice Hospice and to Lizzie Leigh in particular.

Presented by Farida Abdelhamid

Produced by Tim Moorhouse

A Just Radio production for BBC Radio 4

Five 17-year-olds volunteer for six months at a hospice. How will they fare?

Alongside A-levels, five 17-year-olds volunteer for six months at a hospice. They plan careers in healthcare, but will dealing with end of life patients change their minds?

[LISTEN NOW]

When a dog goes missing it can be devastating. It's every dog owners worst nightmare. Social media is awash with posts about lost dogs, some of them scams, but many are genuine cries for help from distressed people who have lost an animal they love.

Between January 2023 and June 2024 almost 5000 dogs were reported missing in the UK.

In March 2025, Roger put a lead on his Jack Russell terrier Betty, as he attended to his boat at Buckden Marina in St Neots, Cambridgeshire. With his back turned for a few minutes, she disappeared.

In this episode of Illuminated, we join a group of volunteers with St Neots Animal Search and Rescue as they seek to reunite Betty and Roger using all the experience, teamwork and technology available.

Colin Butcher is a pet detective based in West Sussex who has been recovering missing and stolen pets for over 20 years. As Colin shares his expert tips for dog-owners, through field recordings from a tiny microphone attached to a dog-collar, listeners are invited to enter the world of our missing puppy.

Producer: Peter Shevlin

A Pod60 production for BBC Radio 4

Illuminated enters the world of a missing Jack Russell Terrier in St Neots, Cambridgeshire

Over 200 dogs are reported missing in the UK every month. We accompany a group of volunteers searching for a Jack Russell Terrier in St Neots, Cambridgeshire.

[LISTEN NOW]

From Rock-a-bye Baby to Brahms to AI - Has the lullaby become a lost art?

Matt Edmonds is trying to sing his child to sleep. It's not working. As his baritone produces My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean for the 19th time and his toddler says “Dada, stop!' ?, he drifts into a parallel reality. Could AI do bedtime for him? Surely it would be simpler? And he would be spared lying on the floor of his child's bedroom.

What is a lullaby? What gives it its magic? The tune? The words? The rhythm? The very act of delivery? In this programme, we join Matt Edmonds - writer, musician and father - as he falls down a rabbit hole, chasing the lost art of the lullaby. In this dreamy, musical 'sleeper hit', Matt encounters people with stories that explore the power of the lullaby.

During Lullaby Hour at a neonatal unit, Matt hears first-hand the impact live lullabies have on premature babies. He talks to Roxana Vilk, who is collecting lullabies from all over the world, to see if she can help. And he meets his friends, musicians Johnny and Lillie Flynn, to hear what musical tricks they use to compose and sing lullabies.

Full of fresh wisdom, Matt returns to his child's bedside, his baritone hoarse and sleep-deprived, to test if the ancient art of the lullaby still has legs.

This programme is richly designed with a soundscape woven from recordings of Matt's own attempts at lullabies, the sounds of the locations he visits, and music from Matt, Mica Bernard, Bex Ashford and from Johnny and Lillie Flynn.

A Sound & Bones production for BBC Radio 4.

When his son refuses his bedtime songs, Matt Edmonds wonders what magic lullabies hold.

Matt Edmonds' child refuses his gentle, baritone lullabies. Should he outsource bedtime to AI? Can his friend, musician and lullaby-singer Johnny Flynn offer him lyrical wisdom?

[LISTEN NOW]

MRI machines are a miracle of modern medicine. A long white tube that can scan inside our bodies, detecting all manner of illnesses. Getting into one though can leave many people anxious. Something called 'scanxiety'.

When it's his turn to lie down and be rolled inside, presenter Ciaran Tracey must confront his claustrophobia and submit to the machine that can see what's inside his body.

His scan becomes a journey through quantum physics, electromagnetism and - most surprisingly - a space age machine that can talk back. This MRI is a little different - even a little sarcastic. Not least when it comes to telling him whats actually going on inside his own body.

Writer & Presenter: Ciaran Tracey

MRI Voice: Hattie Hayridge

Sound Production: Barney Rowntree

Executive Producer: Innes Bowen

MRI sample sounds by Simon Grab & Patricia Bosshard

News clip from ABC News

With thanks to the Christie NHS Foundation Trust (Samuel Curley, Steven Jackson, Victoria Donahue, Amelia Cargo); University Of Manchester Preclinical & Clinical Imaging (Denise Ogden); and Daniel Sodickson (NYU, Function Health).

A Big City Nights production for BBC Radio 4

A hospital visit, going inside a MRI scanner - that talks back.

Told he has to go to hospital for a scan, Ciaran Tracey must confront his scanxiety and enter the big white electromagnetic tunnel. Little did he know it could talk.

[LISTEN NOW]

As their 30th birthday approaches, Saba Husain (they/them) receives an unexpected and life changing box. It contains ‘the life' of their mum; never before seen diaries, love letters, poems, photos of a person who died when Saba was born, 29 years earlier.

With no note or message, it must have been sent by Saba's father - but why now? Why not before? And what should Saba do with these incredibly intimate pieces of their mother? Saba starts to investigate, asking; how do you get to know your mum - from scratch - through a box of her things?

Mum in a Box follows Saba on the twists and turns of the often unacknowledged experience of a motherless child, piecing together a person through the things they've left behind and the revelations that unfold. We join Saba as they work through this totally uncurated box of both overwhelming and underwhelming surprises, travelling through space and time as they try to reach a mother that they never got to meet.

Producer: Christina Hardinge

Co-creator: Saba Husain

Sound Design & Music composition: Noémie Ducimetière

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio Four

Saba Husain receives an unexpected - and life-changing - box.

Saba Husain receives an unexpected - and life-changing - box. It contains ‘the life' of their mum, who they have never met.

As her 30th birthday approaches, Saba Husain receives an unexpected - and life changing - box. It contains ‘the life' of her mum; never before seen diaries, love letters, poems, photos, voice tapes and more of a person who died when Saba was born, 29 years earlier. With no note or message, it must have been sent by Saba's father - but why now? Why not before? And what should Saba do with these incredibly intimate pieces of her mother? Saba starts to investigate, asking; how do you get to know your mum - from scratch - through a box of her things?

Mum in a Box follows Saba on the twists and turns of the often unacknowledged experience of a motherless child, piecing together a person through the things they've left behind and the revelations they unfold. We join Saba as she works through this totally uncurated box of both overwhelming and underwhelming surprises and the places they take her, travelling through space and time, with no idea of what she'll find next.

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4

Saba Husain receives an unexpected - and life-changing - box. It contains ‘the life' of her mum, who she has never met.

[LISTEN NOW]

What drives us? What makes us who we are? For one of the BBC's most experienced foreign correspondents, the multi-award-winning Mike Thomson, it was a near-death experience in Australia's worst natural disaster this century. Having been kicked out of school at 17 for refusing to cut his hair, Mike opts to go travelling. With an older family friend, Mick Kendall, he journeys overland from Ivybridge in Devon to Australia's 'top end' via Turkey, Afghanistan, India, Burma and Indonesia. Mike arrives in Darwin in December 1974. However, the search for fun and adventure with Mick and their new friend, Daryl Johnson, turns to terror when an “evil wind ? known as Cyclone Tracy strikes on Christmas Eve and flattens the city in one night. For days Mike's parents think their youngest child is 'presumed dead' His name is on a list of causalities when in fact Mike was being well looked after as a refugee and evacuated to a farm in Western Australia. Why the confusion? Who is this ‘other' Thomson? Now, 50 years on, Mike returns to Darwin to answer these questions and search for the two friends who helped him through the ordeal that shaped him.

For more stories like this, search for Illuminated on BBC Sounds. It was produced by Ed Prendeville for BBC Audio Wales and Jane Ray for Cat Flap Media. Sound design is by John Wakefield, original music by Ben Goodman. This edition of ILLUMINATED was written and presented by Mike Thomson.

With thanks to Rod Louey-Gung on behalf of the Northern Territories Museum for use of their archive.

Illuminated - Radio 4's home for creative documentaries that shed light on hidden worlds.

My Night with Tracy is from Illuminated, BBC Radio 4's home for creative and surprising one-off documentaries. For more stories like this, search for Illuminated on BBC Sounds.

[LISTEN NOW]

Ian Burke celebrates the new Manchester night bus service

Ian Burke was not someone who grew up riding buses. His school was in walking distance, his parents had a car.

But one night in his 20s, he had a dream which began a love affair with bus travel.

Any spare moment is now spent exploring undiscovered routes or revisiting old favourites.

“It's about the journey, the out-of-the-way, the overheard snippets of conversation, the weird and unfamiliar place names, the people you're with, the unexpected, ? says Ian.

He's someone who can find beauty in an industrial estate or a gossip between pensioners.

But it's time for a new adventure. In a bid to boost the local economy and provide safer travel for revellers and shift workers, Manchester is trialling new bus routes at night.

Alongside the drunken students dissecting their evening exploits and the night-time workers struggling to stay awake, we join Ian as he hops aboard the night bus to experience, for the first time, the darker side of both his home city and bus travel.

Ian Burke celebrates Manchester's new night bus service.

Manchester has a new night bus – Ian is a true enthusiast who genuinely celebrates its arrival. Hop on board with him as he makes the case for the romanticism of bus travel.

[LISTEN NOW]

If a person dies without friends or relatives, the authorities can instigate a 'public health funeral'.

Once called pauper's funerals - the services are referred to on the administrative form with a poignant phrase: 'Nobody to Call.

These funerals often see online appeals for mourners to attend. And when the BBC's Kevin Core spots a particularly moving appeal on behalf of a 102 year old woman, he's intrigued.

“Funeral notice for Miss Margaret Robertson. 11 O'Clock, Thursday. Sefton Road United Reformed Church in Morecambe. Margaret Robertson has no family. If anyone could attend, that would be lovely. ?

This documentary charts his visit to that funeral.

He talks to celebrant Hayley Cartwright about the hidden world of 'public health funerals'. Hayley's commitment to 'do right by people' who die alone, compels her to seek out details about their lives, inviting mourners and ensuring these departures are more than cold, legal necessities.

Kevin wants to know more about the life of the 102-year-old Margaret Robertson, and finds a story of grit and dedication - and the surprising, moving reality behind the original online appeal.

Produced and presented by Kevin Core

A moving online post leads Kevin Core into the world of 'lonely death' funeral appeals.

A lonely death can lead to a 'public health funeral'. Kevin Core talks to a woman who officiates at them - and decides to follow up on one particularly moving appeal for mourners.

[LISTEN NOW]

Distracted, privatised, enchanted - do you ever think about how you listen? For the last 20 years, sound anthropologist Dr Tom Rice has been collecting different ways of listening from the world's leading sound experts. He's gathered more than 100 – some of these may be quite familiar, others will definitely surprise you.

We are at a critical moment when it comes to listening. The world is increasingly busy with sound, and it's placing more and more demands on our ears. There's an awareness that our culture and economic circumstances influence our perception, concern about growing pressures on our attention, and anxiety about our relationship to the environment. With the pace at which technology is developing, can we even be sure of what it is we're listening to?

We need to be skilful and agile listeners. By recognising the vast scope and extraordinary complexity of listening, we can develop our awareness and sharpen our perception, helping us to survive and even thrive in the complex sound world of the 21st century.

Contributors: Bernd Brabec, University of Innsbruck; Ruth Herbert, University of Kent and City University; Dylan Robinson, University of British Columbia.

Special thanks to: Michel Chion – semantic listening; Martin Daughtry – palimpsestic listening; Michael Gallagher, Jonathan Prior, Martin Needham and Rachel Holmes – embodied listening, expanded listening; Stefan Helmreich – soundstate; David Huron – ecstatic listening; James M. Kopf – anal listening; Pierre Schaeffer – acousmatic listening; Murray Schafer, David Toop – clairaudience; Kai Tuuri – critical listening.

Written by Tom Rice and Ben Lewis

Produced by Eve Streeter and Tom Rice

Sound design by David Thomas

Music by Max Walter

A Raconteur Studios production for BBC Radio 4

Distracted, privatised, enchanted. Tom Rice expands what it means to listen.

Sound anthropologist Tom Rice opens up how ways of listening shape our relationship to other people and the world around us. How can we listen differently?

[LISTEN NOW]

In 2018, the writer and actor Harriet Madeley found out that she was going to die.

At least, that's what she heard when a doctor diagnosed her with Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis, a progressive disease for which there is no medical treatment, no cure, poor understanding and a long list of frightening Google stats..

None of her loved-ones knew how to respond to this bombshell. Her best friend kept crying. Her parents preferred not to talk about it. And her fiancée? She took it upon herself to cure the thing.

In the midst of a confrontation with looming death, Harriet's closest relationship began disintegrating.

Harriet's response? To write a comedy about it.

This is the story of how Harriet used her creativity to come to terms with a life-changing diagnosis, and how it helped her to rebuild her relationships and decide how to face the future.

The play featured (slightly) fictionalised versions of the people closest to her. The script was a monologue, in which her own flaws and those of her loved-ones are magnified for the paying audience.

But how will those loved-ones respond? Will they be horrified? Or will the play force a meaningful conversation at last?

Harriet is still alive and kicking, facing a finite future. But then again, aren't we all?

Writer: Harriet Madeley

Producer: Andrew Wilkie

Sound Design: Micky Curling and Bella Kear

Voices of theatre team: Madelaine Moore, Mark Knightley, Jessica Clark

With heartfelt thanks to Abi Mowbray

Photo: Karla Gowlett

A PRA production for BBC Radio 4

In 2018, Harriet Madeley found out she was going to die. Then again, aren't we all?

In 2018, the writer and actor Harriet Madeley found out she was going to die. She'd always thought death was for other people. So she decided to write a comedy about it.

[LISTEN NOW]

On the 75th anniversary of the iconic comic strip Peanuts, psychoanalyst and author Josh Cohen shares how Charlie Brown and the Snoopy gang have become his constant companions—and how they can help us navigate the frustrating squiggle of life.

Charles Schultz's daily newspaper comic strip is perhaps the most enduring, beloved and iconic cartoon ever penned. Even if you've never read the strip itself, you are unlikely to have escaped its famous characters' journeys across the decades and the globe. The round-headed, wobbly mouthed Charlie Brown and his dog Snoopy, often found snoozing atop his kennel, have been emblazoned across t shirts, crockery and pretty much every other conceivable piece of merchandise. They have inspired TV shows, pop songs, and even been the namesakes of Apollo lunar modules.

Far from just a bunch of cutesy doodles, as many have come to see it, Peanuts' cross-generational appeal is down to its spot-on depiction of the complex emotions that follow us all from childhood into adulthood. From Charlie Brown's humiliation on the baseball field to his frenemy Lucy's unrequited pining for her piano-playing crush, and her brother Linus' desperate attachment to his security blanket, the strip reflects the everyday pain and frustration of being human. And, with warmth and wit, offers its readers a way to live with it.

In fact, Peanuts deals so much in the intense emotional experiences of its young protagonists that one of its most recognisable recurring gags is Lucy's booth offering ‘PSYCHIATRIC HELP 5¢'.

Stepping out from behind his analytic couch and taking a seat at its cartoon simulacrum in that famous booth, Josh unpacks the psychological truths illustrated in the comic's four main characters - Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus and Snoopy. Hooked by a copy of Peanuts Jubilee aged five, they were his contemporaries. Today, after 50 years of avid reading, he's on the other side of the two-way channel between childhood and adulthood that Peanuts opens up. He investigates the emotional pull of the comic for him and for so many of us - including the other writers and thinkers we hear from who share his passion.

Presenter and Writer: Josh Cohen

Producer: Heather Dempsey

Executive Producer: Kirsten Lass

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4

Josh Cohen shares how Peanuts can help us navigate the frustrating squiggle of life.

On the 75th anniversary of the iconic comic strip Peanuts, psychoanalyst and author Josh Cohen shares how the Snoopy gang can help us navigate the frustrating squiggle of life.

[LISTEN NOW]

There are so many problems in the world. For the past three years, Estonian clown Julia Masli - armed with a microphone taped to a mannequin leg - has been trying to solve them.

So far, during the performances of her live show ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, where Julia asks audience members their problem, she has recorded 1574 problems. A few people feel homesick, some worry about the collapse of society, and many lament their retreating hairlines. But we are not alone with our problems: Janet is not the only one with a broken fridge. Simon shares his back pain. Alexandra might feel lonely, but Aisha does too.

This clown might not be able to solve all of our problems, but she's going to try.

Photo: Cameron Whitman

Original music composed by Alessio Festuccia

Produced by Talia Augustidis and Julia Masli

Dramaturgy by Kim Noble (director of ha ha ha ha ha ha ha)

Executive producers Alan Hall and Eleanor McDowall

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4

There are so many problems in the world. Julia Masli has been trying to solve them.

[LISTEN NOW]

Bel canto' is now on UNESCO's list of Intangible Cultural Heritage. It is both a style of singing and a repertoire. It requires vocal artists to produce a penetrating yet luxuriantly smooth, and very expressive sound - often with virtuosic and dazzling runs of notes. Bel canto singing can be heard above an orchestra, without the help of amplification. It sounds effortless, but takes years to learn. It can be used for any style of music, but the repertoire most closely associated with it are operas by the nineteenth century Italian composers Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti.

Joanna joins the young singers and their teachers to find out more about bel canto and to hear how this sound is produced.

Producers: Arlene Gregorius and Joanna Robertson

Editor: Penny Murphy

Production Coordinator: Maria Ogundele

Sound mix: Andy Fell

Photo of Rebecca Gulinello by Jennifer Lorenzini

With special thanks to Jonathan Papp, Artistic Director, and all at the Solti Accademia 2024

Young artists heard in this programme:

Eva Rae Martinez - Soprano

Rebecca Gulinello - Soprano

Aebh Kelly - Soprano

Clover Kayne - Mezzo Soprano

Xavier Hetherington - Tenor

Oliver Heuzenroeder - Baritone

Young opera singers and their teachers reveal the beauty of Italian 'bel canto' singing.

We eavesdrop on young opera singers from around the world at an opera summer school in Italy, as they hone their 'bel canto' singing technique and reveal its extraordinary beauty.

[LISTEN NOW]

When Clive Hammond was 31, he had a cardiac arrest. His heart stopped for eight minutes. But he can't remember any of it.

What happens when the heart stops - and then what happens next?

Clive sets out to piece together what happened to him. He speaks to his wife Victoria about what went on while he was unconscious, and the impact it had on their lives. He compares notes with fellow cardiac arrest survivor Meg Fozzard about what it's like to have a cardiac arrest as a young person. Former head of first responders at London Ambulance Chris Hartley-Sharpe tells him what goes on in the body during a cardiac arrest, and how they can affect medical professionals afterwards. And he hears the incredible story of Steve Morris, who started carrying a defibrillator in his car after having a cardiac arrest - and then used it to help save someone else's life.

Presenter: Clive Hammond

Producer: Lucy Burns

Editor: Clare Fordham

Technical production: Richard Hannaford

What happened when Clive Hammond's heart stopped beating?

When Clive Hammond was 31, he had a cardiac arrest. Family, friends and medics help him understand what happened.

[LISTEN NOW]

Are we ever really alone nowadays, what with the extraordinary velocity of contemporary social circulation, whether this be the madness of the crowds, or the relentless churn of social media? Does anyone really experience reclusion? A conscious choice to withdraw from the social realm. What would it be like?

For decades, Will Self lived his life as a very public figure. An acerbic satirist and giant man of letters he was constantly on the move, driven by his insatiable curiosity about the world. “I once flew to Scotland, climbed Ben Lomond, and flew back to London the same day ?.

In a series of powerful soliloquies, Self reveals how he's gradually withdrawn from the social realm. He began by abandoning acquaintances and remoter colleagues, then started cutting off friends, close colleagues, and eventually family.

“It's been over a year since I've read a newspaper report, looked at a news website, or heard more than a three-minute news bulletin. Most days I see only my wife and youngest child who I live with. ?

In this powerful piece of radio, Will Self reaches down to the very bottom of how the self is socially constructed – and then dismantles that scaffolding from around it, to see what's still standing.

A half-hour that will leave the listener feeling as if they've been staring at their reflection for so long in a mirror, that this image appears totally uncanny to them.

Presenter: Will Self

Producer: Emily Williams

A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4

Will Self meditates on his withdrawal from city life and the meaning of reclusion.

The novelist Will Self, who today lives largely as a recluse in south London, delivers a searing, poetic account of what it means to be truly alone in the 21st century.

For decades, Will Self lived his life as a very public figure. An acerbic satirist and giant man of letters he was constantly on the move, driven by his insatiable curiosity about the world. “I once flew to Scotland, climbed Ben London, and flew back to London the same day ?.

New creative documentary for BBC Radio 4

[LISTEN NOW]

Clint Buffington spends his time where land meets sea, searching for a very specific treasure - messages in bottles that have drifted across oceans. Over the past 20 years he has recovered more than 140 of them, each carrying a clue - sometimes decades old - waiting to be discovered.

Finding a bottle is only the beginning. The real mystery unfolds when Clint carefully extracts the fragile paper in his Utah home lab. He first teases out the faint, salt-blurred words, deciphering a message damaged by years at sea. Only then does Clint begin tracking down the person who sent it, often many years after they let it go. Each investigation is part detective work, part conversation across time.

The messages reveal remarkable journeys - a German sailor who cast a note into the Bermuda Triangle on his birthday in 1979, three French women who paddled across the Atlantic to set a world record, Puerto Rican students at a crossroads, even a pair of tiny dolls wrapped in a spell.

Join Clint on his search and the unexpected revelations it sparks - a reminder that across vast distances and years at sea, the quest for human connection is timeless.

A Sound & Bones production for BBC Radio 4

Join Clint Buffington on his hunt for messages in bottles and the people who sent them.

Clint Buffington combs the world's shorelines for messages in bottles, each one carrying secrets from other places and times, revealing the lengths we go to for human connection.

[LISTEN NOW]

In his memoir of surviving the brutal apartheid prison Robben Island, South African activist Sedick Isaacs recalls an extraordinary event about which little has been recorded - 'the creation and training of the eighty-member choir [of political prisoners] for the production of Handel's ‘Hallelujah Chorus'.

The incongruous beauty of the choir's performance – and the rich history of the Messiah in South Africa – is brought to life by former political prisoners, by musicians and academics who reveal the power of music as it was experienced on the Island – music as escape, protest, refuge and salvation.

Original compositions, mixing and production by Charl-Johan Lingenfelder

Hallelujah Chorus – reconstruction arranged and conducted by Leon Starker

with singers from Fezeka Secondary School in Gugulethu under the leadership of Monde Mdingi, with additional singers from across Cape Town

Also featuring: The South African Messiah, a translation of Handel's Messiah by Michael Masote

Archival tape courtesy of UWC-Robben Island Museum Mayibuye Archives, Villon Films and the SABC

With special thanks to Marcus Solomon, Neo Lekgotla laga Ramoupi, Kutlwano Masote, Christopher Cockburn, Maraldea Isaacs and Lebohang Sekholomi

Produced by Catherine Boulle

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4

The story of Handel's famous chorus performed on Robben Island.

The story of an extraordinary performance by political prisoners on Robben Island of Handel's famous chorus.

[LISTEN NOW]

Over 80% of people in Britain choose to be cremated rather than buried after death and the scattering of a loved one's ashes is a ritual that's increasingly familiar to many of us.

In a lyrical and bittersweet meditation on grief and memory, writer and producer Tim Dee reflects on a West Country road trip to scatter his father's mortal remains in places of significance to both of them. Each stop has a unique story and forms part of a revealing and poignant commemoration.

In the car, the cardboard tube of John Dee's cremated remains travels in the passenger seat, safely buckled up. Then at each place, some of the contents are decanted into an old yoghurt pot for the act itself.

They are cast into the wind from the top of Dunkery Beacon on Exmoor, from a bridge over the River Horner nearby. A pot of ashes is put into a paper boat as an attempt to sail John out to sea from Madbrain Sands in Minehead.

Then to Bristol. To the family home on Sion Hill to remember domestic rancour between father and mother. And below the bridge over the Avon Gorge, a place of profound early trauma for son Tim.

All this is set to a soundtrack of remembrance with songs of music of evocation and present grief - Mozart, Nina Simone, Jelly Roll Morton, Van Morrison and even Taylor Swift.

Presenter: Tim Dee

Producer: Alastair Laurence

Executive Producer: David Prest

A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4

Tim Dee reflects on the scattering of his father's ashes.

A poignant West Country road trip for Tim Dee, as he scatters the ashes of his father at places of significance to them both.

In the car, the cardboard tube of John Dee's cremated remains travels in the passenger seat, safely buckled up. Then at each place, some of the contents are decanted into an recycle Indian Takeaway container for the act itself.

All this is set to a soundtrack of remembrance on the car stereo with songs from The Beach Boys, Julie Andrews, Taylor Swift and the recorded memories of Tim's father from a conversation they had 20 years before his death.

[LISTEN NOW]

An atmospheric gathering storm of a documentary exploring the extraordinary history of the Beaufort Scale - a system designed to help find language for the wind.

Whistling heard in telegraph wires

Umbrellas used with difficulty...

In this programme we climb to the top of a lighthouse in the Outer Hebrides, labelled the windiest point in Britain by the Guinness Book of Records, and travel deep into the Met Office archives. With contributions from the writer Scott Huler, author of Defining the Wind; Ruairidh Macrae, the retained lighthouse keeper for the Butt of Lewis and Eilean Glas lighthouses in the Outer Hebrides; Catherine Ross, the library and archive manager at the Met Office; and John Morales, a hurricane specialist and meteorologist with 40 years experience in the field.

The Beaufort scale is read by Charlotte Green

Original music composed by Jeremy Warmsley, with additional music by Eleanor McDowall

Mix by Mike Woolley

Produced by Eleanor McDowall

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4

An atmospheric gathering storm of a documentary explores our language for naming the wind.

[LISTEN NOW]

It's almost 60 years since 11-year-old Martyn Stewart made his first recording near his house in Birmingham using a reel-to-reel machine borrowed from his older brother. From that day forward, he set out to capture all the natural sounds of the world, amassing nearly one hundred thousand recordings.

Now, musician and sound artist Alice Boyd retraces his steps to three locations in Britain to document how these environmental soundscapes have changed, revealing vanishing ecosystems, amplified human noise and the return of endangered species.

(Photograph courtesy of Tom Bright.)

With archive from Martyn Stewart's library, The Listening Planet.

Location recordings and original music by Alice Boyd.

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4

Sound artist Alice Boyd retraces the steps of legendary field recordist Martyn Stewart.

Musician and sound artist Alice Boyd retraces the steps of legendary field recordist Martyn Stewart, capturing the changing sounds of our environments.

Tracey Okines is witty, stylish, sharp, and fiercely independent. She loves seaside strolls, spontaneous shopping trips, pub outings, and her cat, Meow. She's a writer, a dreamer, a lover of music, and someone who refuses to be boxed in by anyone's expectations.

At 27, Tracey's life changed overnight when a misjudged cartwheel caused a massive bleed, leading to a brainstem stroke. She was left with locked-in syndrome, unable to move or speak but fully conscious. Sixteen years on, she communicates using eye-tracking and a letter board, lives independently with 24-hour care, and remains, as ever, totally herself.

In Still Me, producer Jess Gunasekara visits Tracey in Eastbourne, joining her in everyday moments and quiet reflections. Through Tracey's personal musings, dream diaries, text messages, and actor-read excerpts from her memoir, this intimate portrait reveals a woman living boldly, navigating the world with humour, honesty, and imagination.

A story of agency, adaptation, and the richness of inner life, from someone who's still here, still vibrant, still herself.

Produced and presented by Jess Gunasekara

Sound design and mix by Meic Parry

Actor: Lizzie Stables

Executive Producer: Olivia Humphreys

With thanks to Tracey Okines and John Okines

An Overcoat Media production for BBC Radio 4

Tracey Okines - locked-in, not locked down - living boldly with humour, honesty and spirit

Tracey Okines lives with locked-in syndrome but remains fiercely herself. A moving portrait of inner life, agency, and humour. Still here, still vibrant, still Tracey.

[LISTEN NOW]

The best stories have a certain WTF factor.. a weird little fact that draws you in - something you can't ignore because it's so contrary to what you previously thought.

So it was for Geoff Lloyd when he heard that the story that Karaoke was invented in Stockport, by a charismatic shopkeeper called Roy Brooke who claimed the Japanese adopted his discovery and marketed it around the world.

Geoff's a massive Karaoke fan and remembers his halcyon days in the 90s, judging karaoke competitions in the town with his friend Caroline Aherne, so he sets off on a quest to get to the bottom of this tale; a quest that sees him chat to Stockport hitmakers Blossoms, comedy writing legend Craig Cash and a Japanese academic said to have backed up Roy's crazy claim.

On the way he discovers a town so in love with Karaoke that it's home to the country's only dedicated league, a secretive world jampacked with big voices and human drama. 12 pub teams meet every Monday for chance to be champions of the New Stockport Fun Karaoke League. But have some of the teams starting taking it too seriously and forgotten about the fun?

Will Geoff track down Roy Brooke and hear his side of the story and find out why Karaoke has taken root so strongly in Stockport?

Presenter: Geoff Lloyd

Producer: Catherine Murray

Additional recording by George Herd

Production Co-ordination: Mica Nepomuceno

Studio mix: Nat Stokes

Executive Producer: Richard McIlroy

Featuring Blossoms, Craig Cash, Professor Hiroshi Ogawa, and Matt Alt, author of Pure Invention: How Japanese Culture Conquered the World.

Special thanks to the Blossoms Bees and The Barnhouse teams and all the members of the New Stockport Karaoke Fun League

The crazy tale that Karaoke was invented in Stockport and stolen by the Japanese.

Geoff Lloyd hears a crazy tale that Karaoke was invented in Stockport. On his quest to track down the truth, he discovers an underground pub league devoted to competitive karaoke.

On the way he discovers a town so in love with Karaoke that it's home to the country's only dedicated league, a secretive world jampacked with big voices and human drama. 12 pub teams meet every Monday for chance to be champions of the Stockport Fun Karaoke League. But have some of the teams starting taking it too seriously and forgotten about the fun?

Featuring Blossoms, Craig Cash, Professor Hiroshi Ogawa, Dr William Kelly and Matt Alt, author of Pure Invention: How Japanese Culture Conquered the World.

Special thanks to the Blossoms Bees and The Barnhouse teams and all the member of the New Stockport Karaoke Fun League

[LISTEN NOW]

According to the Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme, there are approximately 550-800 strandings of whales, dolphins and porpoises in the UK every year. Although no one is completely certain why this happens, we do know they've been doing it for thousands of years.

For as long as there have been stranded whales, there have been humans drawing meaning from their arrival - a warning, a symbol of hope, endings or new beginnings. So what news might they be bringing us now?

In our current state of unprecedented abundance and advancement, in our pandemic of isolation and individual “strandedness ?, the whales seem to be calling us again. As Peter speaks with cetacean experts, chases down whale remains and witnesses a whale stranding himself, he discovers what these magical creatures might be revealing about who we are, what we've become and where we might be headed.

A Sound & Bones production for BBC Radio 4

We've always drawn meaning from the arrival of stranded whales. What's their message now?

Pursuing whale remains across the UK, author Peter Riley unravels what these magical creatures might be revealing about who we are, what we've become and where we might be headed.

‘Do nothing'.

So exhorts Jimmy as he overhauls the strokes, kicks and breathing of his adult swim learners at Cardiff International Pool.

They plunge, roll, extend. As they learn to let go and glide, they're overcome with a sense of joy, freedom and bodily ease.

For journalist Selma Chalabi, Jimmy's classes have been a lifeline. She joined the class to improve her swimming technique, but what she found was something so much more profound. Jimmy's unique and philosophical style of teaching taught her not only how to move at one with the water, but also how to live her life - when to move and when to rest and how to breathe.

It's in the pool that Selma meets a community of learners - all ages, shapes and cultures - who are doing so much more than learning to swim. There's Maggs, who is determined to face her worst fear and overcome a deep childhood trauma, and working mum Doris, whose moment of peace is when she submerges into the water. As for Darius, he has transformed from absolute beginner to potential competitor.

This is a world you might find in any leisure centre around the country. A place so familiar to us, and yet in its depths and shallows, in its pools of chlorine and azure light, are stories of courage, determination, bliss and finding new meaning in the water.

Producer and presenter: Selma Chalabi

Executive Producer: Leonie Thomas

Sound Designer: Mike Woolley

Sound engineers: Meic Parry and Katie Hill

With deepest gratitude to Jimmy, his students, and the staff at Cardiff International Pool.

An Overcoat Media production for BBC Radio 4

There's joy and peace in the depths of a swimming pool, if only you can learn to let go.

Dive in with Jimmy's adult swim learners, as they master how to move at one with the water. There's joy, peace and liberation to be found, if only they can learn to let go.

[LISTEN NOW]

The years after Sybil Phoenix's arrival in England from British Guiana in 1956 follow a not unfamiliar pattern - trying to find a home and secure a livelihood, learning how to manage the endemic racism in Britain and, above all things, building a community.

Fostering countless children, setting up the famous Moonshot youth club in south-east London and dealing with the reaction from right-wing extremists bound together her personal and public lives. In 1972 she accepted - not without controversy - an MBE, the first black woman to do so. With her new status she set up a hostel for young women, the Marsha Phoenix Memorial Trust.

Now aged 97, Sybil's story is shared by her son Woodrow and daughter Loraine, the activist Eric Huntley, who's known her for over 80 years, and through previously not heard recordings that touch on her troubled early life, the death of her daughter Marsha, the New Cross Fire and much else.

Produced by Cherise Hamilton-Stephenson and Alan Hall

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4

A radio portrait of Sybil Phoenix, the first black woman to receive an MBE, in 1972.

A radio portrait of Sybil Phoenix, the first black woman to receive an MBE, in 1972, and a key figure in the black community in London during challenging times.

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio Four.

[LISTEN NOW]

“There are so many things you can't see coming. You can't see death. You can't see Mount Vesuvius erupting. The carpet could be pulled out from under you at any second. But I'll see a knife coming if it's going to hit me. ?

Target Girls are the female performers in “impalement arts', where knives, arrows and even bullets are propelled at humans. Prepare for a full body immersion in this extreme profession, as we pull back the curtain on the hidden world behind the target girl's silent, singular image.

Your ringleader for this event is world-famous target Ula The Painproof Rubbergirl!

Also starring!! Yana Hanson, Annabelle Holland and Amanda Jane ...

With a special guest appearance from The Great Throwdini!

Producer: Jude Shapiro

Executive Producer: Jack Howson

Sound Designer: Louis Blatherwick

A Peanut & Crumb production for BBC Radio 4

[LISTEN NOW]

Historian Maurice Casey reveals the story of an anti-Nazi resistance network and the family at its heart, told through a newspaper crafted by two young girls.

In the dusty corners of a Galician villa on Spain's northern coast, Casey uncovered a forgotten archive of revolution, resistance and love. Among the documents was something extraordinary. The Alpenpost - a newspaper lovingly hand-crafted by Elisa and Alida Leonhard, two girls raised on Europe's 1930s refugee routes.

Created every fortnight from late 1935 until 1940, The Alpenpost charted the activities of the two Leonhard girls and their mother Emmy, a veteran of the repressed world of Weimar German communism. With a mixture of cartoons, light stories and precocious political analyses, the girls charted their unusual upbringing as the children of an anti-fascist father and an exiled revolutionary mother.

Each issue was posted to the girls' ‘papa' Edo Fimmen, separated from his family, constantly travelling to maintain a network of activists and informants. Fimmen led the powerful International Transport-Workers' Federation in continual resistance to fascism. Reading The Alpenpost, Edo could chart his daughters' flight through 1930s Europe. Both a love letter to a father seperated from his family by dangerous work and a remarkable document of a childhood lived in flight from totalitarianism.

This is a tale of survival against the odds - not only the survival of a family that lived under grave political threats, but an archive that survived a journey across countries and generations.

Contributions from Pedro Ewald, Dieter Nelles, Rene Dumont, Bob Reinalda

Voices of The Alpenpost: Hannah Nehb, Juno Nehb, Neva Nehb with Arjan Schipper

Producer: Mark Burman

A Storyscape production for BBC Radio 4

The Alpenpost: both a love letter to a distant father and a chronicle of European darkness

Historian Maurice Casey turns the pages of The Alpenpost, a child's newspaper he discovered. A love letter to a distant father and a chronicle of Europe's slide towards fascism.

[LISTEN NOW]

A few hours later, four police officers knocked at her door and took her away. She didn't return home for six months.

Scout was released from prison wearing a 'sobriety tag' – a tool increasingly being used to help people control their problematic alcohol use.

This is the story of Scout's relationship with alcohol, and with the tag that monitors her, told through Scout's dazzling poetry.

Scout has a long history of psychosis combined with alcoholism. This was the first time she had been sent to prison. The lead-up was a prolonged psychotic episode, characterised by 'grandiose' behaviour. Scout believed she was a famous celebrity. She would wear ballgowns and walk up and down the high street. Everyone was looking at her – because, she believed, she was famous. In the grocery store, she believed she was making an action scene in a film. She'd called up friends to tell them it was going to be a great day's filming.

Scout needed help. She found it in prison.

For the first time ever, Scout had an extended conversation with a forensic psychiatrist who got to grips with her complex needs.

Sobriety tags take a sweat sample every 30 minutes. The data is automatically sent to probation. There are currently around 3,000 people in England and Wales with sobriety tags as part of their probation conditions.

Music and words: Scout Yzofiya Bolton

Producers: Andrew Wilkie and Ellen Orchard

Sound design: Micky Curling

Executive Producer: Phil Maguire

A PRA production for BBC Radio 4

A poetic meditation on alcohol, psychosis, crime and prison.

Scout is a poet who has just been released from prison fitted with an alcohol tag to monitor her drinking. Will she make it? And what does her tag think?

How many questions have you asked today? How many were rhetorical, “boomer-asking ?, passive/aggressive or just boringly functional?

Did you know that our appetites for question-asking peak at the age of five, then steadily diminish? That kids ask an average of 40,000 questions between the ages of 2 and 5, while adults ask fewer than ten questions a day? Why are we asking fewer, meaningful questions? In an age where antisocial behaviour has become normal — where it's entirely acceptable to spend most of the time looking down at our phones, or ranting on social media — shouldn't we be asking what we're losing in the process?

Can journalist Ian Wylie, who uses the five Ws daily, reignite our curiosity and appetite for asking questions? And can he discover better questions that unlock bigger stories and deeper conversations? What will he learn from professional question-askers, including barrister Melanie Simpson, detective Steve Hibbit, philosopher Lani Watson and priest Leanne Roberts? Is artificial intelligence likely to discourage us from asking deep, open-ended questions? Or could it force us to ask clearer, sharper, more precise questions?

Can Ian create his documentary entirely from questions? Or will he slip up?

A Sparklab production for BBC Radio 4

How many questions have you asked today? Were any of your questions meaningful?

Can journalist Ian Wylie reignite our curiosity and appetite for asking questions? Can he discover the ‘next level' questions that unlock bigger stories and deeper conversations?

[LISTEN NOW]

When decapitated cats start appearing in South London, animal rescue duo Boudicca Rising and Tony Jenkins spring into action. They'll do whatever it takes to get to the bottom of this mystery.

It's 2015 and the two volunteers running the South Norwood Animal Rescue and Liberty (SNARL) Facebook page, stumble upon a vet's poster telling locals to keep their pets safe as there have been a series of “mutilations ? in the area.

When Boudicca and Tony share the vet's warning, they're flooded with messages from pet owners saying something similar has happened to their cats.

Boudicca and Tony convince the police to launch Operation Takahe, an investigation into the “Croydon Cat Killer. ?

Far from stepping back, Boudicca and Tony find themselves at the centre of the operation; investigating “crime scenes, ? breaking bad news to pet owners and being interviewed by press. The case takes over their lives.

Presented and produced by Natasha Fernandes

Editor: Matt Willis

Sound design: James Beard

A couple from London find themselves caught up in the search for the Croydon cat killer

When decapitated cats start appearing on people's doorsteps, animal rescue duo Boudicca Rising and Tony Jenkins find themselves on the hunt for the Croydon cat killer.

[LISTEN NOW]

Estimates from NSPCC suggest around 1 in 20 children in the UK have been sexually abused. This documentary brings together survivors whose experiences span different backgrounds, relationships and generations - challenging misconceptions that abuse only happens in certain communities.

Through intimate conversations with Laura, Bryony, Joe, and Chris, we witness how institutional silence has allowed abuse to become endemic.

At a time when child sexual abuse is making headlines, these survivors offer crucial insight into what real justice looks like, and how society must act to protect children while supporting those whose lives have been irrevocably changed by abuse.

Voices: Laura, Bryony, Joe and Chris from IICSA Changemakers

Consultant: Natalie Dormer, Ambassador for NSPCC

Sound design and music by Phoebe McIndoe

Production Support: Clare Kelly & Denise Pringle

Produced by Phoebe McIndoe assisted by Tess Davidson

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4

As reports of child sexual abuse rise, survivors unite for meaningful action.

As reports of child sexual abuse rise, survivors unite their voices to explore why recent media attention must lead to meaningful action.

Estimates from NSPCC suggest around 1 in 20 children in the UK have been sexually abused. This documentary brings together survivors whose stories span different backgrounds, experiences, and generations - challenging misconceptions that abuse only happens in certain communities.

Documentary adventures that encourage you to take a closer listen.

[LISTEN NOW]

Hilik Magnus is Israel's foremost search and rescue specialist. He has performed missions, public and private, for over 30 years across six continents. He has worked under the radar during disasters such as 2004's tsunami and 2008's Mumbai attacks. He has worked with everyone, from grieving families to cartels and the Taliban, all for the simple purpose of returning people to where they belong.

Now, he opens up about this secretive world, and talks frankly about his origins and values.

The start, in the 1990s, was simple. His operating base was an abandoned train carriage in the southern desert of Israel with three telephones and a dial-up connection.

Hilik did not know what awaited him. All he knew was that he felt a ‘shlichut' – ‘higher purpose' in Hebrew – to help save lives, to return the unburied to their grieving families.

Yet the business grew and now employs 80 people in a hi-tech hub in Tel Aviv. There is GPS, GSM, fibre-optic, and over 2,500 calls for help every year.

In the midst of this change, Hilik is finding it hard to connect the now and then. For him, the purity of the work was in shepherding lost souls, alive or dead, to their rightful place. Strange, mystical encounters at 6,000m above sea-level, exposing national corruption in Bolivia - not board meetings and touchscreens. He hates the city and all it implies. Yet the world moves on, and the work means everything to him. When he lets himself stop, his 76 years catch up with him, leading to days laid up in bed.

Producer: Jeremy Neumark Jones

Assistant Producer, Additional Research: Robert Neumark Jones

Executive Producer: David Prest

A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4

Hilik Magnus reflects on the values that inspire him to rescue people for a living.

Hilik Magnus is a world-renowned search and rescue specialist. Even now, at 76, he cannot stop saving people.

[LISTEN NOW]

This is a story about a community on the north east coast of Scotland that talked to plants with miraculous results.

Established in 1962, the Findhorn community gained international recognition for 40lb cabbages, 8-foot delphiniums, and roses that bloomed in snow.

With seemingly no gardening experience, community founders Peter and Eileen Caddy and their friend Dorothy Maclean transformed the barren sand dunes surrounding the 30-foot caravan they were living in, into a modern-day garden of Eden.

The public wanted to know how this was possible. What was the source of this horticultural miracle?

People flocked to Findhorn from around the world to witness this incredible transformation first-hand.

An extraordinary story began to emerge. Peter, Eileen and Dorothy - along with Scottish writer and supernatural enthusiast Robert Ogilvie Crombie (ROC) - attributed their success to one thing: collaboration with the ‘intelligence of nature'.

They claimed they had pierced the veil of the nature spirit realm, and were regularly receiving guidance from fairies, floral spirits and angelic forms Dorothy called 'Devas' - the ‘architects' of the natural world. Moreover, they had been called upon by these entities to transform the Findhorn Garden into a centre of spiritual light.

What started with a single family in a caravan quickly grew into a thriving international village of hundreds of people united by shared social, spiritual and ecological values.

Inspired by the media's enduring fascination with Findhorn's supernatural origins, sound designer Jonathan Webb travels to Findhorn in search of transmissions from the nature spirit realm.

Trawling through the archives, in conversation with community elders, and in pursuit of sonic traces of higher elemental worlds, Jonathan brings into focus the echoes and reverberations of Findhorn's strange and magical past.

Produced, Edited & Sound Designed by Jonathan Webb

Executive Producer: Carys Wall

A Bespoken Media Scotland production for BBC Radio 4

Additional field recordings by Brenda Hutchinson.

With grateful thanks to Jonathan Caddy, Judy McAllister and Karl Jay-Lewin, whose kindness and generosity made this programme possible.

Thank you to the Findhorn Foundation for providing access and permission to use recordings from the Findhorn Foundation archive.

The Findhorn Garden includes excerpts from ‘The River' by Lark Batteau and ‘Love One Another' by David Spangler and Milenko Matanovic, performing as The New Troubadours (Findhorn community band, 1970-1973)

Jonathan Webb makes no claim to authorship or ownership over any of the quotations or repurposed recordings used in the production of this work, and for practical and artistic reasons it has not been possible to reference and cite them individually. Jonathan Webb's authorship is in the overall conception, arrangement, treatment and presentation of this audio artwork in its context.

In search of sonic transmissions from the nature spirit realm.

Sound designer Jonathan Webb listens out for audio evidence of fairies, fauns and nature spirits at the Findhorn settlement on the north east coast of Scotland.

[LISTEN NOW]

Once a year, residents of Longyearbyen gather where the steps of the old hospital used to be to witness the return of something they have not seen in months – sunlight.

The Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, part of Norway, is as far north as humans can live. This dramatic polar world experiences 24-hour daylight in summer and total darkness in winter.

But on March 8th, locals and visitors of its largest settlement, Longyearbyen, wait with baited breath until a single ray of sunshine appears upon the old hospital steps, warming their cheeks for a few minutes before disappearing once more behind the vast mountains that surround the town.

Journalist and producer Lara Bullens takes us with her to witness this miraculous moment, but also to understand why people have decided to make a home in a place not meant for humans.

Svalbard is a barren frozen land, devoid of trees or crops. The risk of avalanches is always lurking around the corner. Polar bears outnumber humans. Powerful winds and sub-zero temperatures engulf the landscape most of the year. Deprived of sunlight for months at a time, many residents battle depression.

The remote landscape is also experiencing vast transitions. The Arctic is warming twice as fast as any other part of the planet, banishing sea ice and opening its waters to the exploitation of natural resources. Coal mining, the industry on which Svalbard's economy was built, is coming to an end. And non-Norwegians living in Longyearbyen are increasingly feeling less stable here.

Yet humans decide to stay, bound together by the eternal cycle of light.

Written and Presented by Lara Bullens

Produced by Lara Bullens and Steven Rajam

Executive Producer: Leonie Thomas

Mix and Sound Design: Mike Woolley

An Overcoat Media production for BBC Radio 4

The world's northernmost community celebrates the sun's return after months of darkness.

After months of darkness, the community of Longyearbyen on the remote archipelago of Svalbard gathers to celebrate the sun's return. Lara Bullens explores a dramatic polar world.

[LISTEN NOW]

Every year's end, as the days shorten and the nights grow darker, you might be fortunate enough to hear a distinctive knock at your door. Upon opening it, you'll be met with a group of Guisers - men in disguise - here to perform their mystery play, part of the ancient Mumming tradition. There's the Enterer In, Saint George, The Prince of Paradise, The King, The Old Woman, The Quack Doctor, Beelzebub, Little Johnny Jack with his wife on his back, Little Devilly Doubt, The Groom, and The Horse.

And it's the vision of The Horse At The Door that has stayed with Isy since childhood.

Isy hasn't seen the Guisers for over 30 years, but that horse and the clack of its jaw frightened her so much, she thinks of it often.

In The Horse At The Door, Isy will see if she can come face to face with her fears and see whether that black painted skull still holds the same magic and power. She will speak to local pub owners and residents about The Guisers habit of bursting in, to the folklorist Richard Bradley about the Derbyshire traditions of mumming and guising, to the psychotherapist Jane Watson about why we enjoy being scared, and to The Winster Guisers themselves about the traditions they are keeping alive – and the children they are scaring.

Can Isy finally look that horse in its red bulging eyes?

The Horse At The Door is written and presented by Isy Suttie

The Music is by Jane Watkins and Isy Suttie

The Sound Design is by Jane Watkins

It is produced by Laura Grimshaw

It's a Mighty Bunny production for BBC Radio 4.

With thanks to The Winster Guisers, Richard Bradley, Jane Watson, Colette Dewhurst at The Barley Mow, The Miners Standard and - especially - The Old Horse.

Why is Isy Suttie haunted by the memory of a creepy old horse knocking at her door?

Isy Suttie goes home to Derbyshire to face her childhood fear and experience the unsettling festive performance by The Winster Guisers and their Old Horse.

[LISTEN NOW]

Composer Aidan Tulloch is fascinated by the physical process of making music – but fears he knows very little. He gains a unique insight from some of the most precise and gifted technicians in the country – members of the Association of Blind Piano Tuners. Aidan traces their journey into this field, goes along to their annual curry lunch, and finds out why the highly skilled craft of piano tuning was once a popular career for blind and partially sighted people: now their numbers are dwindling. They also reflect on how we listen to and perceive sound and music, and the joy it brings.

Presenter: Aidan Tulloch

Producers: Maryam Maruf and Emily Webb

Editor: John Goudie

Mix: Giles Aspen

(Photo: Piano tuner Martin Locke tuning a piano. Credit: Maryam Maruf)

A sonic portrait of a disappearing craft through the lives of four blind piano tuners.

[LISTEN NOW]

Emily Berry leads us on an exploration of agoraphobia: a poetic journey through the lives of people who don't like going on journeys.

Agoraphobia is elusive and elastic – and it's very probably not what you think it is.

Poet Emily Berry was diagnosed with agoraphobia over ten years ago, a condition which limits her ability to travel. And so she's setting off in a different way: on a journey into the life of the mind, guided by a chorus of fellow agoraphobics. What does it mean to come up against the boundaries of the self and how might those limits be breached through the power of the imagination – in the words of poet Vasko Popa, 'the little box which contains the world.

Featuring Graham Caveney, Charlotte Levin and Peter Ruppert.

Includes extracts from a BBC interview with Dr Claire Weekes.

Graham Caveney's memoir is called On Agoraphobia (Picador)

Charlotte Levin's most recent novel is If I Let You Go (Mantle)

Peter Ruppert's on-line community is anxietyfitness.com

Emily Berry's exploration of agoraphobia.

Poet Emily Berry leads us on an exploration of agoraphobia: a poetic journey through the lives of people who don't like going on journeys.

[LISTEN NOW]

Memory is fragile. We are driven to capture it. But is this possible when the memories of the person we love have fragmented?

Julian's mother has no memory. Both her long and short term memory were destroyed by different viruses. His mother still has an emotional memory of Julian. She recognises him - his personality, his manner. But she doesn't know how old he is, what he does for a living, or that he has a partner. And she doesn't realise that she can't remember. So their relationship is stuck in a loop, consisting of repeated conversations and activities.

But Julian's found a way to connect with his mother. He is a photographer and he is constantly trying to capture his mother's image. His sister thinks he's trying to catch glimpses of their mum as she would have been had she not got ill. Julian isn't so sure. For him, taking photographs of his mum is simply a way for them to pass time together - to connect.

Chatting in her care home, going to the café for tea and cake, listening to music in the car, celebrating a birthday - the lens of Julian's camera brings us into the relationship between a mother and a son, divided by a loss but bound together by love.

The Memory Catcher takes us on a journey into their relationship but also our relationship with memory. Who are we when we cannot make memories, even as simple as who has just said hello? When memory is faulty, fading, or lost altogether, what can be captured by another?

Recorded by artist and writer Julian Lass

Produced by Maia Miller-Lewis and Jo Rowntree

Composer Maia Miller-Lewis

With thanks to Kirsten and Monika and the wonderful staff at Monika's care home.

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4

Can taking a photograph keep hold of the person you love even when they have no memory?

Can taking a photograph keep hold of the person you love even when they have no memory? For Julian, his camera is always with him when he visits his mother.

But Julian's found a way to connect with his mother. He is a photographer and he is constantly trying to capture his mother's image. His sister thinks he's trying to catch glimpses of their mum as she would have been had she not got ill. Julian isn't so sure. For him, taking photographers of his mum is simply a way for them to pass time together - to connect.

With thanks to Julian, Kirsten and Monika and the wonderful staff at Monika's care home.

[LISTEN NOW]

Time is a journey - the future ahead of us, the past behind.

Our burdens are a weight that we carry, our problems are a puzzle that we solve.

Metaphor is at the heart of how we understand our existence. In a period of huge change and global uncertainty, are we outgrowing the metaphors we have lived by?

The poet Jack Underwood is offering his services as a metaphor consultant, for a very reasonable fee.

Featuring conversations with poet and psychoanalyst Nuar Alsadir; Dr Stephen Flusberg, the Director of the Framing, Reasoning And Metaphor (FRAME) Lab at Vassar College; computer scientist Melanie Mitchell; the philosopher Dr Julia Ng; and the linguist and author of Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff.

Produced by Eleanor McDowall

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4

The poet Jack Underwood offers his services as a metaphor consultant, for a reasonable fee

The poet Jack Underwood offers his services as a metaphor consultant, for a very reasonable fee.

[LISTEN NOW]

An extraordinary one-off symphony brings to life the stories of five people and their relationship with one of their vital organs.

Like a symphony orchestra, our organs work in harmony to execute the movement that is human life. We don't often think about our relationship to these internal cogs that keep us alive. For most people, the connection remains distant. For others, it is ever present.

In The Organ Symphony, we encounter our five vital organs – the heart, lungs, brain, kidneys and liver – through the eyes of five people, each with a special relationship to one of the five organs.

Our brain is an Emeritus Professor in Computer Science, Steve Furbar, whose work is focused on understanding the human brain via computing. Our kidney is writer Alison Moore, who donated one of her kidneys to her husband and simultaneously wrote a horror novella, based on the experience. Our liver is Dr Zhong Jiao, a Chinese Medical Doctor who focused on treating her postnatal depression by caring for her liver. Our heart is a men's group facilitator and agony uncle Kenny Mammarella-D'Cruz, who draws on his traumatic experiences of leaving his homeland and subsequent journey of self-discovery to help others foster positive relationships with their heart and emotions. Liz, our representative of the lungs, unexpectedly experienced both her lungs collapsing in the space of two years

Each representative worked with the producer, Maia Miller-Lewis to illustrate their relationship to their organ through music, creating musical sketches that capture how they imagine their organ sounds.

These sketches were then taken by composer, David Owen Norris, who turned them into individual classical scores. In this way the five organs have become five sections of an orchestra. The heart, the vocals. The lungs, the brass. The kidneys the woodwind. The brain, the percussion. The liver, the strings.

David ultimately brought the five pieces together, working them into harmony to form the completely unique Organ Symphony.

With the wonderful assistance of Simon Webb, Carolyn Hendry, Jonathan Manner and Matthew Swann at the BBC, the individual pieces and the combined symphony was played out by the BBC Concert Orchestra and the BBC Singers at Maida Vale Studios in March 2025.

You can hear the full Organ Symphony piece here: https://loftusmedia.co.uk/project/the-organ-symphony/

Executive producers: Jo Rowntree and Kirsten Lass

Composer and conductor: David Owen Norris

With thanks to the BBC Concert Orchestra and the BBC Singers

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4

Five peoples' stories about their relationship with an internal organ - set to music.

Five peoples' stories about their relationship with one of their internal organs - set to specially composed music.

An extraordinary one-off symphony brings to life the stories of five people and their relationship with one of their primary organs.

In The Organ Symphony, we encounter our five primary organs – the heart, lungs, brain, kidneys and liver – through the eyes of five people, each with a special relationship to one of the five organs.

Five peoples' stories about their relationship with a primary organ - set to music.

Bringing five peoples' stories of their relationship with one of the five primary organs to life through music.

[LISTEN NOW]

The Piano Boat, the floating concert hall where world-renowned concert pianist Masayuki Tayama played, sits empty. His wife, Rhiana, is left with a boat with no captain and a Steinway she was never allowed to play. We join her as she processes her grief and considers the future of The Piano Boat without Masa.

Rhiana and Masa commissioned the boat in 2019 and planned to run concert cruises, on board the boat, along the inland waterways. It was a dream project for both of them – a life designed for two.

But, in 2021 Masa was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and although the chemotherapy turned his fingers numb, he relearned his technique and kept playing. In August 2023, a week after what would be their final round of cruises, Masa was hospitalized for the last time. He died two weeks later.

Will Greenwood, who has seen the boat from creation to present day, journeys with Rhiana on the waterways and as she rebuilds her dreams while coping with her grief. She shares her honest audio diaries, the highs and lows. She is surprised by sorrow and joy as she starts to fill the boat with music once more. Beginning with playing Masa's piano – something she had never done before.

Craig Terry, Director of Steinway & Sons UK, tells us about the piano and meeting Rhiana and Masa for the first time. Concert Pianist and one of Masa's former colleagues, Graham Caskey, and music academic, Kris Worsley, talk on the intimacy of The Piano Boat, and show us how the pieces we hear don't need words to tell a story.

Presented by Will Greenwood

Produced by Will Greenwood and Anna Scott-Brown

An Overtone production for BBC Radio 4

The Piano Boat: navigating grief in music and water.

Navigating grief through music and water aboard a floating concert hall, in The Piano Boat.

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As Jaz movingly explores his own feelings, he meets others who have also discovered that their loved ones are leading double lives. A wife who, after years of being happily married, discovered on social media that her husband was married to another woman. A daughter whose father had an entirely separate family and children - but whose existence was only revealed after he died.

Jaz tries to understand the psychology of these second lives, asking what drives people to weave such complicated webs of deception. How do they manage to deceive so entirely? And how can those who have been betrayed forgive and heal?

Producer: Helen Clifton

Executive Producer: Jo Meek

Sound Design: Craig Edmondson

An Audio Always production for BBC Radio 4

Broadcaster Jaz Singh explores the psychology behind secret second lives.

Secret second lives have long been a source of fascination. But what is the reality for those impacted by the devastating betrayal of those they love and trust?

It's the most intimate moment of the Radio 4 schedule: The late-night Shipping Forecast, a prelude to the close-down of the station, read every night at 00:48. But who is really listening along, and why? Guided by Radio 4 Announcer Al Ryan, we'll cross the world to meet the people who find comfort in this unique broadcast for a variety of reasons.

Produced by Luke Doran

Discovering who really listens to the Shipping Forecast at 00:48 every day.

It's the most intimate moment of the Radio 4 schedule: The late-night Shipping Forecast, read every night at 00:48. But who is really listening along, and why?

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Author Owen Hatherley goes in search of the lost future of Solent City – the extraordinary plan, devised in the mid-1960s at the height of the post-war modernisation of Britain, to join the historic city-ports of Southampton and Portsmouth with a vast, Los-Angeles style grid.

The plan was finally rejected, but why? - and what were the consequences of its defeat, not only for the region but for the future of urban planning in Britain?

Travelling across south Hampshire from Fareham to Portsmouth, Chandler's Ford to his native Southampton, Owen meets architects, planners and historians to tell the story of one of the boldest visions in the history of British urban design, discovering that some of its most important ideas might still be ahead of us - needed more than ever in 2025.

A Brook Lapping production for BBC Radio 4

Owen Hatherley presents the extraordinary story of the Solent City plan.

Owen Hatherley presents the story of the extraordinary Solent City plan, to join the rivalrous port cities of Southampton and Portsmouth in a vast Los Angeles style grid.

With contributions from Nicholas Phelps, Chair of Urban Planning at the university of Melbourne; architecture historian and author Gillian Darley; Kate Macintosh, former senior architect at Hampshire County Architects; urban historian Otto Saumarez Smith; writer and software engineer Naomi Christie; city planner and architecture blogger Adrian Jones; Southampton Hackney Carriage taxi driver Perry McMillan; Charlotte Gerada, councillor for Central Southsea and social historian of modern place, John Grindrod.

Produced by Simon Hollis

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On their last tour, the award-winning folk band The Young'uns took with them an old suitcase, some blank luggage tags and marker pens, and asked audience members to fill the case with ideas for songs. Hundreds poured in with stories of hope, remembrance, love, grief and joy. In this programme, singer-songwriter Sean Cooney opens the case to find a myriad of voices all waiting...wanting to be heard.

He follows three stories of love... from a couple who found each other in their 70s through their shared passion of Middlesbrough Football Club, to a story of love, loss and renewal on the banks of the Thames. He meets up with Angela to hear a tale of how some borrowed boots outside a disco led to several dates, a marriage and three children. Inspired by this wonderful story, Sean writes a song to surprise the man with the borrowed boots - Angela's now-husband.

Presenter: Sean Cooney

Producer: Elizabeth Foster

Folk singer Sean Cooney opens his special suitcase full of stories of love, hope and joy.

The folk band The Young'uns took a special suitcase on their recent tour which the audience filled with ideas for songs. Singer Sean Cooney opens the case to find stories of love.

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The story of Anthony Ray Hinton who spent years on death row for crimes he didn't commit, with a soundtrack composed by Harvey Brough and performed by Vox Holloway Community Choir.

In June 1988, Mr Hinton was convicted of two murders, in one of the most shockingly cynical miscarriages of justice in US history. He spent the next 28 years on death row, before all charges were dropped and he was finally released in April 2015.

The Sun Does Shine is the title of his memoir, in which he tells how he found life and freedom on death row. His story reflects the compassion, faith and heroic courage of a remarkable man. In prison he befriended Henry Hays, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, who was convicted and eventually executed for a racist murder.

The unlikely friendship of Hinton and Hays lies at the heart of this story.

The Sun Does Shine features an extended interview with Hinton, in which he talks about how he survived years of imprisonment, facing the constant threat of execution, and how the multiple appeals launched by his lawyer Bryan Stevenson ultimately led to his release.

His words are accompanied by an oratorio composed by Harvey Brough, based on Hinton's memoir and performed by the Vox Holloway Community Choir. Vox Holloway's work on The Sun Does Shine was supported by Arts Council England

Since leaving prison, Anthony Ray Hinton has worked tirelessly, alongside Bryan Stevenson, campaigning for the abolition of the death penalty and for reforms to the criminal justice and prison systems in America

PRESENTER: Christina Gill

PRODUCERS: Abigail Morris and Sam Liebmann with Osman Teezo Kargbo

COMPOSER: Harvey Brough

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Andrew Wilkie and Tricia Zipfel

A Vox Holloway / Prison Radio Association production for BBC Radio 4

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Watchmaker Rebecca Struthers has been invited to come and examine a watch which its owners claim is the world's oldest - but is it?

Until now, Rebecca had only heard rumours of this watch - about the reputation of its famous maker, about the extraordinary circumstances in which it was found, about its unbelievable valuation. It is famous, or infamous, in antiquarian horology circles. But until Rebecca wrote her book 'Hands of Time' (a Radio 4 Book of the Week), few outside that small world had heard much about it.

Now, thanks to her book, a mysterious lawyer has emailed to ask if she'd like to examine the watch. So she's on her way to Switzerland with a lot of questions. Not least - is it the real deal or, as so many of the watch's detractors claim, nothing more than a forgery.

Producer: Giles Edwards

Watchmaker Rebecca Struthers has come to see the world's oldest watch - but is it real?

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The story of how a heterosexual, Indian immigrant to England, ignorant of the gay scene, ended up delivering heartfelt eulogies to 30 homosexual men at the height of the AIDS crisis.

The experiences of Suresh Vaghela take us behind the headlines of the infected blood scandal and into a transformative relationship between a hemophiliac and the people who he came to regard as his new family.

(Including extracts from the BBC Sound Archive and from the 1975 World In Action documentary Blood Money, Granada TV)

Music by Jeremy Warmsley

Produced by Nicolo Majnoni

Executive Producer: Alan Hall

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4

The story of haemophiliac Suresh Vaghela.

The story of haemophiliac Suresh Vaghela who delivered eulogies to 30 gay men at the height of the Aids crisis.

The experiences of Suresh Vaghela take us behind the headlines of the infected blood scandal and into a transformative relationship between a haemophiliac and the people who he came to regard as his new family.

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For 2000 years beneath layer upon layer of peat, the remains of two bodies - a man and a woman - lay buried in the earth. Within 12 months of each other, they were discovered on Lindow Moss, the cut-over peat bog in Cheshire.

It's now more than 40 years since the remains of Lindow Man were found, the best-preserved bog body ever discovered in the UK. A year before that, the skull of Lindow Woman was found, with major ramifications for a modern-day mystery. We still don't know who these people were or in the case of Lindow Man, why he met his violent death. Was it ritual sacrifice to the gods, private scores settled or a public execution?

Their spirits remain in the place of their burial - a small corner of Cheshire filled with myth, mystery and history. Together with one of the original peat cutters at that time, the first journalist on the site, a professor of pre-history, a conservator and material from archive, we tell the story of this remarkable archaeological discovery.

And a slight twist - listening in on proceedings are Lindow Man and Lindow Woman. What might they make of the celebrations around the discovery of the bodies in the bog?

Contributors: Melanie Giles Professor in European Prehistory, University of Manchester; Stephen Dooley, former peat cutter; Rachel Pugh, writer and journalist; Velson Horie, conservation consultant and the late Rick Turner (archive) former County Archaeologist, Cheshire. Lindow Man is played by Fisayo Akinawe and Lindow Woman by Eve Shotton.

Produced and written by Geoff Bird

Executive Producer: Mel Harris

Sound Engineer: Eloise Whitmore

Music composed & performed by Laetitia Stott & mixed and mastered by Geoff Southall

A Sparklab production for BBC Radio 4

Old voices offer new perspectives on the discovery of Lindow Man and Woman, 40 years on.

The story of the discovery of Lindow Man and Lindow Woman, unearthed 40 years ago from a Cheshire peat bog. Voices from the bog bodies themselves offer a surprising perspective.

It's now 40 years since the remains of Lindow Man were found, the best-preserved bog body ever discovered in the UK. A year before that, the skull of Lindow Woman was found, with major ramifications for a modern-day mystery. We still don't know who these people were or in the case of Lindow Man, why he met his violent death. Was it ritual sacrifice to the gods, private scores settled or a public execution? In approaching the story we enter a very different world, when Roman invaders were colonising Celtic Britain.

The remains of the bodies have been carefully moved and Lindow Man is now much visited at the British Museum. But their spirits remain in the place of their burial - a small corner of Cheshire filled with myth, mystery and history. Together with one of the original peat cutters at that time, the first journalist on the site, a professor of pre-history, a conservator and some archive, we tell the story of this remarkable archaeological discovery.

And a slight twist - listening in on proceedings are Lindow Man and Lindow Woman. What might they make of the celebrations around the anniversary of the bodies in the bog?

Music: Laetitia Stott

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In 1980, Prestonwood Mall in Dallas contacted the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) with a unique request. It was the opening weekend of The Empire Strikes Back, and the mall's marketing team wanted an additional attraction. Sensing an opportunity, John P Timmerman, the owner of a family air-conditioning business in Ohio and a dedicated volunteer at CUFOS, packed his car with an eye-catching collection of UFO photographs and embarked on a cross-country journey for the weekend.

What began as a simple photography exhibit turned into a 12year research expedition across the malls of America.

In front of plexiglass panels, between the skylights and shiny floors, Timmerman interviewed curious shoppers with stories to tell. What he captured on his small tape recorder was the “raw material of ufology ? - candid, first-hand accounts of strange lights, silver discs, and close encounters.

Between 1980 and 1992, Timmerman recorded 1,179 witness reports across 120 tapes that cover every aspect of the UFO phenomena. The collection is considered one of the largest ever put together by a single investigator.

John P Timmerman spent years travelling far from his quiet family life in the Midwest searching for insights into our place in the universe. What he found, among the hum of escalators and muzak, was connection - or ‘contact' - with thousands of ordinary people, all searching for the same thing.

Produced, Edited & Sound Designed by Oliver Sanders

Archive Digitisation & Co-Production by James Timmerman

Executive Producer: Lucia Scazzocchio

Special thanks to Dr Mark Rodeghier, Dr Michael Swords, Dr Michael West, The Center For UFO Studies, The Timmerman Family, Dominic De Vere, Francesca Thakorlal, Ben Plumb, Hannah Kemp-Welch.

A Social Broadcasts production for BBCRadio 4

In 1980s America, John P Timmerman recorded thousands of UFO stories in shopping malls.

In 1980s America, John P Timmerman travelled from mall to mall, recording thousands of UFO stories. His journey reveals not just sightings, but a profound search for meaning.

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Forty years ago, Route 66, the highway that ran the 2448 miles from Chicago, Illinois to Santa Monica, California, was formally decommissioned, usurped by a more modern, high-speed interstate. But the road has lived on in the collective imagination — a symbol of freedom, adventure, and new beginnings, of America's concept of itself.

In this meditation on the Mother Road, as John Steinbeck christened it, Laura Barton explores 66's shifting identity, from migratory route to America's Main Street.

With contributions from Angel (the 'Angel of Route 66') and his daughter Clarissa Delgadillo in Seligman, Arizona; Mike Cowen who set up his own Historic Route 66 museum in Williams, Arizona; Leigh Anne Isbell of the Devil's Rope Museum in Texas and Candacy Taylor, who's written about Route 66 in relation to The Green Book.

Written and presented by Laura Barton

Location recording producer, Diane Hope

Produced by Alan Hall

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4

Laura Barton reflects on the shifting identity of Route 66.

Forty years since the road was formally decommissioned, Laura Barton reflects on the shifting identity of Route 66, from migratory route via America's Main Street to Historic Route

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Worms are everywhere - in our soils, our seas, and our selves. Dive down a worm burrow on this sound-rich odyssey to meet our most numerous and intimate animal companion.

Science writer Jack Monaghan will guide you through gardens and farms, factories and laboratories to look afresh at our wriggling, wonderful world.

Producer and narrator: Jack Monaghan

Sound design and original music: Robert Moutrey

Executive producer: Bridget Harney

A Pronk production for BBC Radio 4

Sink into the dirt to meet the hidden worms that squelch through the darkness.

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