The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day Shirley Jenner, Lecturer at the University of Manchester.
DEFRA Secretary of State still supports the work of the Rural Payments Agency despite a damning report.
Forage from across the UK is being delivered to Cumbrian farmers recovering from the floods.
Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. David Attenborough presents the Grey Heron. The Grey Heron makes a loud croaking sound, often standing in an ungainly way on a tree-top which it might share with many others for nesting - the heronry.
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Yesterday in Parliament, Weather and Thought for the Day.
All the information that's needed for life is written in our DNA. But how do we get from DNA code to biological reality? That's the job of the ribosomes - those clever molecular machines that are found in every living cell. And in 2008 Venki Ramakrishnan was awarded the Nobel Prize for determining their structure. Jim talks to Venki about the frantic race to crack the structure of the ribosome, probably the most important biological molecule after DNA; why he thinks the Nobel Prize is a terrible thing for science; and his new job as President of the Royal Society.
Mark Lawson has a problem. He is writing a memoir but he's always had the habit, when writing or broadcasting, of avoiding the first person pronoun. This rather puts him at odds with modern culture where journalists and presenters are urged to use the one-letter vertical word. Bloggers, Vloggers and Tweeters lay their lives on-line, and autobiography is an ever more crowded literary form. So, in his series of One to One, Mark takes the opportunity to discuss self-revelation with artists who - in various ways - have taken themselves as their subject matter.
Seamus Heaney was working on a translation of book VI of Virgil's Aeneid in the last months of his life .
Ian McKellen reads the poet's posthumously published final work in which Aeneas travels into the underworld to meet the spirit of his father. It's a story that had captivated Seamus Heaney from his schooldays. But the work took on a special significance for him after the death of his own father, becoming a touchstone to which he would return as an adult. His noble and moving translation of Book VI bears the fruit of a lifetime's concentration upon it: he began translating passages in the 1980s, and was finalising the work right up to the summer of his death.
Given the themes of the posthumously released Book VI, there is added poignancy in this final gift to his readers - a work which marks the end of Heaney's poetic journey.
And foresuffered all. But one thing I pray for
Carrie Underwood is an American country music singer, songwriter and actress. She rose to fame as the winner of the fourth season of American Idol in 2005, and has since become one of the most successful artists in any musical genre. She performs live on the programme.
We ask how well are women's voices and interests being represented by arguments on either side of the leave/remain debate ahead of the referendum in June?
Jane speak to actor Clemence Poesy and the producer, Nikki Parrot, about a new film, The Ones Below, a psychological thriller in which maternal ambivalence is cleverly explored.
Professor Edit Morley became the first female professor at an English university when she was appointed
Professor of English Language at Reading University in 1908. Her memoir is being published for the first time on International Women's Day. We discuss her legacy and how much life has changed for women academics over the last one hundred years.
What is disruptive innovation and why does it create excellent opportunities for women? Romaney O'Malley, general manager for AIG Belgium & Luxembourg, explains.
bicentenary celebrations of Charlotte Bronte's birth.
Mr Rochester has a wife. And where is the Jane Eyre
After years of covering science in the news, Alok Jha began to wonder whether science is as rigorous as it should be, and in this two-part series, he will try to find out.
Many of us might be forgiven for assuming that the pursuit of scientific knowledge is a precise and controlled process, one that involves detailed experiments, careful analysis, peer review and demonstrable evidence. But what if it's not as simple as that?
Scientists are human beings after all, so what if they are prone to the same weaknesses, failings and uncertainties as everyone else? And what would that mean for their findings?
Alok delves into dodgy data, questionable practices and genuine ambiguity to ask if human decision making is impeding scientific progress, and if anything can be done about it.
Along the way he hears from academics who think almost all science is wrong, scientists who think the system is in crisis and those who say error and uncertainty are actually an integral part of science's creative process. He'll also talk to a former professor caught out after going to the ultimate extreme - faking his data - to find out what drives someone to betray their entire field.
In the first of two programmes telling the story of the record-playing turntable, Colleen Murphy spins through its early history and the dramatic take-up of this new technology in Edwardian society. It was an enthusiasm as spectacular as the computer's rise at the end of the same century and its impact on the music industry was profound.
Colleen talks to John Liffen of the Science Museum and Christopher Proudfoot of the British Phonograph and Gramophone Society about the earliest machines arriving from the United States by way of the German Emigre inventor Emile Berliner. She finds out why the HMV (His Master's Voice) image wasn't initially created for the Gramophone at all, and most important of all she gets to hear the sound qualities of the machines that developed in the first two decades of the 20th century.
As the Gramophone company took hold the potential for preserving singers, performers, speech makers but above all music was eagerly realised. Colleen discovers that by the outbreak of the First World War some forty percent of households had some sort of Gramophone, however primitive, and not surprisingly, travelling versions went with the troops to the bunkers behind the front lines.
That capacity to bridge the performer with the audience when the two were hundreds of miles apart was the great miracle of the early years and allowed the easy spread of musical styles from Ragtime to Jazz to the first superstars of the Turntable world - the Opera stars. And yet, as ever, it was popular culture that dominated the market and drove sales.
She also touches on the new opportunities for the Blues and Ragime musicians of African-American society to be heard beyond their geographical centres in the Southern States, and the preservation of performances which would go on to inspire British Rhythm and blues half a century later.
And Antiques Roadshow expert Paul Atterbury talks about the Gramophone as a blend of home furnishing and status symbol and why what appear to be exotic survivors of the period are actual part of a massive number of machines that were on sale from bike shops to music emporia.
The Museum of Lost Objects traces the histories of 10 antiquities or cultural sites that have been destroyed or looted in Iraq and Syria.
In 2013, Islamic militants decapitated the statue of an 11th Century Arabic poet that stood in his hometown of Maarat al-Nu’man, a city that’s seen heavy fighting during the Syrian conflict. The poet al-Ma’arri was one of the most revered in Syria, and poetry enthusiasts tell his story – he was blind, vegetarian, atheist, and some even claim that his work inspired Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Contributors: Nasser Rabbat, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Mahmoud al-Sheikh, BBC Arabic; the reading is by Susan Jameson
Picture: Statue of al-Ma'arri with the sculptor Fathi Mohammed in the 1940s, and the statue after its decapitation in 2013
Call You and Yours - Have you been nagged by the nanny state into changing for the better?
Winifred Robinson asks have you ever been nagged by the nanny state into changing for the better? Have public campaigns to live healthier, "Klunk Klick" every trip, use the "Green Cross Code", or not drink and drive had a real impact on you?
The Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney has said that Britain's membership of the EU has reinforced the "dynamism of the UK economy." His comments have been welcomed by those in favour of remaining in the EU but one leading member of the leave campaign has described them as "beneath the dignity of the Bank of England." We speak to a former deputy governor of the bank and leading Eurosceptic Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Is the new EU deal with Turkey legal? We discuss the plan to send all irregular migrants back.
Sunil Khilnani explores the life of political leader and freedom fighter Subhas Chandra Bose.
When Bose's father named his ninth child Subhas - "one of good speech" - he wasn't imagining the boy applying an oratorical gift to fervent radicalism.
Just over forty years later - after numerous stays in British jails, a daring escape followed by appeals to ally his own forces with Nazi Germany and then Japan - George Orwell wrote that the world was well rid of him. Nonetheless, in India today he rates as a national hero, his name affixed to airports, schools, and stamps. The vitality of his hold on the national imagination is manifest in other ways too: after his death he was periodically "discovered" alive, as a prisoner in a Soviet concentration camp, as a Chinese military officer, or as an Indian sadhu, a holy man with miraculous powers. It took three official commissions, the last one in 2006, to certify that Subhas Chandra Bose actually died in 1945.
His own life ended in failure, but his legacy would come to shape India's relationship with the world, in ways he could not have predicted.
Anne Reid and Vincent Franklin star as mother and son in Daniel Thurman's new comedy. It's been 30 years since they last saw each other when Ian suddenly turns up at the parental home. A man on a mission, he soon finds out that things have changed in ways he could never have imagined.
Tom Holland is joined by Professor Louise Jackson from the University of Edinburgh and journalist Sarah Ditum.
Dr Naomi Paxton explores how sex trafficking and moral panic thed to the birth of the Women's Police Service in 1914.
Dr Fiona Watson explains why 1302 is her favourite year in history - and, in particular, one day when, at a battle on the Continent, the mounted knight was rumbled.
Helen Castor explores the origins of Marriage Banns and Dr John Gallagher argues that historians should be concerned about style as well as substance.
Tom Heap visits New York to find out how the city is cleaning up its dirty waterways and bringing back oysters to the harbour.
New York is highly populated. The 8 and a half million inhabitants of the five boroughs of Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, The Bronx and Staten Island use a lot of water and create a lot of waste. As a result the myriad of waterways, streams and creeks that all flow around the city, the network of 'sewersheds' that meander below the sidewalks, not to mention the vast rivers: the Hudson and the East River have all, over several centuries become increasingly dirty, polluted with litter, oil and worst of all raw sewage. Each time rainfall exceeds around half an inch, the aged Combined Sewage Overflow systems discharge into the rivers.
But in light of 'Super Storm' events such as Sandy and Irene, New York has begun to tackle the problem.
The city's Department of Environmental Protection has embarked on on a 'Green Infrastructure Plan'. Over the next 15 or so years $2.4 billion dollars will be spent on rebuilding the city to help it deal with high rainfall. There are 'green roof' projects, tree-planting programmes, and 'bioswales' are being constructed: all measures to try and reduce the impact of a storm of a similar ferocity wreaking such havoc in the future.
Meanwhile a group of plucky scientists are attempting to bring oysters back to New York harbour: once home to the largest oyster beds in the world, New York produced more oysters than the rest of the world combined. New Yorkers rich and poor alike dined on the shellfish. The waters of the harbour became so polluted that they no longer thrive there, but scientists from the Billion Oyster Project aim to have a billion oysters living in the harbour by 2030, so convinced are they that the water quality will have improved sufficiently by then.
Recent storms in the UK have shown that basic infrastructure struggles to cope when facing a deluge of heavy rain and strong winds, and so when a major storm event hits a major urban centre the results can be devastating.
Tom Heap discovers what knowledge could be gained from the New York project and whether similar sorts of measures could be taken in towns and cities in the UK.
Britain's best-known legal journalist and broadcaster, Joshua Rozenberg, with the first of a new series of Law in Action, the UK's specialist legal affairs programme, featuring reports and discussion.
This week, after concerns voiced by pilots about drones potentially crashing into planes, how effective is the law at dealing with this new technology?
We hear from two senior Judges about the digital revolution taking place in our court rooms. But is the new system working or will it be another costly public sector digital disaster?
And ahead of the first substantive hearing of Dame Lowell Goddard's Inquiry into child abuse Sir Ian Kennedy, who oversaw the inquiry into the scandal at Bristol Royal infirmary, offers her some advice on how to run a major public inquiry.
Writers Joe Dunthorne and John O'Farrell recommend great books with Harriett Gilbert.
John O'Farrell has written for Have I Got News for You, as well as novels like The Best a Man Can Get. His choice of book is less comic, a powerful memoir about life with a brother in a coma: The Last Act of Love by Cathy Rentzenbrink.
Joe Dunthorne's novel Submarine was adapted for film by Richard Ayoade, and he recommends a slim collection of evocative short stories, Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson.
Harriett introduces them both to a modern classic: Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, and asks why it is that men don't seem to read one of the greatest living novelists..
Bank of England Governor says an EU exit is the biggest financial risk facing the UK
Ed's fortunes have taken a turn for the better as he's been given an advance to write a projected television series perfect for Sunday night viewing. He has comfortable lodgings, money in his pocket and a warm glow, in fact all is going very well indeed until Suzan decides that her new assistant, Jonathan, should help Ed with 'the scripty stuff'. At which suggestion someone loses their temper, and for once it isn't Ed.
Pip and Josh drive to meet the Fairbrothers, to discuss the pastured egg business. When Pip questions the wisdom of Josh "bothering to apply" for university, he hits back that she is taking her love-life frustration out on him. Josh brings this up again in front of Toby. Josh haggles his percentage-stake in the business - he drives a hard bargain! They settle on a fifty-fifty deal, without Rex's approval.
Ursula is cooking. Helen has misplaced her maternity notes, and it transpires that Ursula has moved them. Henry questions how healthy Ursula's recipe is, and Ursula takes offence. She nips out and leaves Helen watching the dinner. Upstairs, Rob phones a prospective boarding school for Henry, which Helen overhears. She asks who he is making secret calls to, but the smell of burning interrupts them. Helen insists she set the timer and asks Rob if he touched it. Ursula implies that ruining meals is a trait of anorexics. For a second time, Helen eavesdrops. She insists that she didn't burn the dinner deliberately, and asks what they were talking about. Rob doesn't admit to Helen who he was on the phone to, but instead reiterates how concerned they are about her current state.
Anomalisa, Seamus Heaney's The Aeneid, Handel at Vauxhall, In the Age of Giorgione
Radio 4's Book of the Week is Seamus Heaney's translation of Book VI of The Aeneid, read by Ian McKellen. Samira Ahmed speaks to Catherine Heaney, the poet's daughter, and his editor, Matthew Hollis, about her father's love of the poem, the place of Latin in his life, and bringing the poet's final work out of the underworld of his study and into the light of day.
Anomalisa, the Academy Award nominated stop-motion animation from Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson is a darkly comedic and surreal journey into the mind of a self-help author who is crippled by the mundanity of his life until he meets a sales rep whilst on a business trip. Jenny McCartney reviews
Historian David Coke and conductor and harpsichordist Bridget Cunningham discuss a new recording of Handel's music by London Early Opera, focused on London's famed Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens.
The master Venetian painter Giorgione paved the way, in the early 1500s, to the golden age of luminous colour and even the first landscape in the history of art, however since he died young we actually don't know much about him. Curator Per Rumberg shows us round the Royal Academy exhibition which brings together Giorgione's key masterpieces with works by Titian, Giovanni Cariani, and Tullio Lombardo to pay tribute to his revolutionary influence.
As more and more migrants seek asylum in the UK, is the system for processing their applications reaching breaking point? Allan Urry investigates the impact of a drastic reduction in the numbers of courts hearing cases. At the same time, appeals are going up and key rulings against Home Office decisions to return people to other countries are also piling on the pressure.
With Europe now bracing itself for a fresh wave of refugees fleeing conflict, why is it taking so long and costing so much to decide who should be granted asylum here?
As part of BBC News School Report, Kelsey from Watford Boys Grammar tells us what it's like to be the only blind pupil at his school. Kelsey also interviews one of the UK's leading eye surgeons who is currently performing experimental operations which give a small amount of sight back to his patients. Kelsey discusses the pros and cons of the procedures with him but sticks to his guns that he's happy just the way he is.
Millions of anti-depressants are prescribed every year and more than half of people taking them have been doing so for two years or more. But how do you know when you're better and how can you tell that the time is right to stop taking them? Withdrawal symptoms are often confused with a return of the original depression so careful tapering of medication is crucial. Tony Kendrick, Professor of Primary Care at the University of Southampton gives Dr Mark Porter a run down of what to do, and what not to do, when it comes to coming off medication.
If you're 40 or above you're to receive dementia awareness as part of the latest Prime Minister's Challenge on Dementia 2020, just announced. The plans to include dementia education for middle aged people in future NHS Health Checks are aimed at making England - no plans as yet to replicate this in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland - the best country in the world for dementia care.
Seven thousand people in the UK are currently waiting for life saving organ transplants - and every year 1200 die because there's a critical shortage of donor organs. It's meant that the transplant community has had to consider using organs that aren't quite as perfect as they would like. Poorer quality, older or damaged organs are now being considered when they would have been rejected in the past. Mark visits Rutger Ploeg, Professor of Transplant Biology at the University of Oxford at the Oxford Transplant Centre to find out about the pioneering work to treat, heal and re-condition organs using normothermic perfusion devices - essentially mini-life support machines that work at body temperature.
Frederique Rattue was the first woman at her local hospital to use "vaginal seeding" when her fourth child was born by caesarean section a year ago. It's a practice that involves taking a swab from the mother's vagina and rubbing it over the baby's mouth, face and skin after birth and the theory is that vaginal seeding will restore the microbiota of infants born by caesarean section, boosting their gut bacteria and reducing the risk of allergies or obesity. Dr Margaret McCartney discusses the theory of vaginal seeding and the evidence that the practice leads to health benefits for the baby.
The head of the Council of Europe voices concerns over the legality of plans to exchange 'migrants' arriving in Greece for refugees in Turkey. Also what is the 'world passport' as used by Mos Def? And why did it take so long for the Mexican President to respond to Donald Trump?
(Photo: Refugees in Idomeni, Greece. AFP/Getty Images).
While Harold Fry walks from Devon to the hospice in Berwick-upon-Tweed, Queenie makes notes and Sister Mary Inconnue types them up. They won't stop until he arrrives and that is how Queenie will keep waiting.
Queenie ..... Sophie Thompson
Harold ..... Paul Venables
Sister Mary Inconnue ..... Roslyn Hill
Sister Catherine ..... Elaine Claxton
Sister Lucy ..... Hannah Genesius
Finty ..... Jane Slavin
Mr Henderson ..... Michael Bertenshaw
Napier ..... Shaun Mason
Comedian Andrew O'Neill looks at what makes up our sexual identity and why some people are so offended by homosexuality.
What lies underneath their hostility and what other sorts of sexuality there might be?
Andrew is a married, heterosexual transvestite. As such he totally confuses some people who assume he's gay, offends some who can't cope with the outfits and baffles people who aren't sure what he's all about.
The Governor of the Bank of England is quizzed on the impact of UK membership of the EU. On International Women's Day, the experience of female prisoners is considered at Justice Questions in the Commons. In the Lords, peers consider what can be done about laser pointers aimed at planes. Sean Curran reports from Westminster.
WEDNESDAY 09 MARCH 2016
WED 00:00 Midnight News (b072hlrj)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
WED 00:30 Book of the Week (b072jdqh)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:45 on Tuesday]
WED 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b072hlrl)
The latest shipping forecast.
WED 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b072hlrn)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.
WED 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b072hlrq)
The latest shipping forecast.
WED 05:30 News Briefing (b072hlrs)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
WED 05:43 Prayer for the Day (b073m7g9)
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day Shirley Jenner, Lecturer at the University of Manchester.
WED 05:45 Farming Today (b072mls7)
Future of Dairy
We talk to the new chair of the NFU's Dairy Board Michael Oakes, taking over at a time of high volatility and low prices for farmers. Suppliers on certain contracts with the processor Arla have been given 12 months' notice that their milk will no longer be needed - Anna Hill asks what chance they have of selling their milk elsewhere.
Sybil Ruscoe has been out with an access expert to get advice for dog walkers coming across livestock on farm footpaths.
And Conor McCauley reports on a project to help revive the fortunes of the secretive Corncrake bird which has seen its habitat change due to farming practices.
The producer is Sally Challoner.
WED 05:58 Tweet of the Day (b03wpzmk)
Chiffchaff
Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about the British birds inspired by their calls and songs.
Bill Oddie presents the chiffchaff. Chiffchaff are small olive warblers which sing their name as they flit around hunting for insects in woods, marshes and scrubby places. Chiffchaffs are increasing in the UK and the secret of their success is their ability to weather our winters. Many stay in the milder south and south-west of England where the insects are more active.
WED 06:00 Today (b073m7gc)
Morning news and current affairs. Includes Sports Desk, Yesterday in Parliament, Weather and Thought for the Day.
WED 09:00 Midweek (b072mls9)
Henry Blofeld, Emma Johnson, Pedro Algorta, Davis Miller
Libby Purves meets commentator Henry Blofeld; clarinettist Emma Johnson; journalist Davis Miller and Pedro Algorta who survived a notorious plane crash in 1972.
Davis Miller is a journalist who struck up a 30-year friendship with the heavyweight boxer Muhammad Ali. He is co-curator of the exhibition, I Am The Greatest, at London's O2, which showcases Muhammad Ali's life. The exhibition features more than 100 artefacts and rare personal memorabilia including a full size boxing ring and gold boxing gloves given to Elvis Presley and signed by Muhammad Ali in 1973. Davis is also the author of Approaching Ali about his friendship with Ali. I Am The Greatest is at the O2 in London.
Pedro Algorta is one of 16 people who survived a plane crash in the Andes in 1972. The Uruguayan Air Force Plane, chartered by an amateur rugby team and their friends and families, came down in the Andes and was lost without a trace. 70 days later the world discovered that 16 of the 45 passengers were still alive. In his book, Into the Mountains, Pedro Algorta gives his first-hand account of human survival. Into the Mountains is published by LID Publishing.
Henry Blofled OBE - aka Blowers - is best known as a cricket commentator. He has been a regular on Test Match Special for the last 40 years. He is famous for his love of buses and pigeons as well as his great passion for the game of cricket. He is currently touring the UK in Blofeld and Baxter - Rogues on the Road which features tales from the commentary box and beyond from TMS with his former producer, Peter Baxter. Blofeld and Baxter - Rogues on the Road is on tour.
Emma Johnson MBE is a clarinettist whose career was launched in 1984 when, at the age of 17, she won the BBC Young Musician of the Year. She is the first woman to have a portrait commissioned by the University of Cambridge's Pembroke College since the college was founded over 650 years ago. Her new album An English Fantasy features recordings of four clarinet concertos written especially for her by four English composers. An English Fantasy is released on Nimbus Records.
Producer: Paula McGinley.
WED 09:45 Book of the Week (b072mlsc)
Seamus Heaney's Aeneid Book VI
Episode 3
Seamus Heaney was working on a translation of book VI of Virgil's Aeneid in the last months of his life .
Ian McKellen reads the poet's posthumously published final work in which Aeneas travels into the underworld to meet the spirit of his father. It's a story that had captivated Seamus Heaney from his schooldays. But the work took on a special significance for him after the death of his own father, becoming a touchstone to which he would return as an adult. His noble and moving translation of Book VI bears the fruit of a lifetime's concentration upon it: he began translating passages in the 1980s, and was finalising the work right up to the summer of his death.
Given the themes of the posthumously released Book VI, there is added poignancy in this final gift to his readers - a work which marks the end of Heaney's poetic journey.
Then as her fit passed away and her raving went quiet,
Heroic Aeneas began: 'No ordeal, O Sibyl, no new
Test can dismay me, for I have foreseen
And foresuffered all. But one thing I pray for
Especially: since here the gate opens, they say,
To the King of the Underworld's realms, and here
In these shadowy marshes the Acheron floods
To the surface, vouchsafe me one look,
One face-to-face meeting with my dear father.
WED 10:00 Woman's Hour (b072mm0c)
Toilets and gender equality, Domestic violence against men, Female squash player who competed as a boy
Professor Clara Greed, a specialist in urban planning, on her belief that women's true position is society is reflected in its toilets and why inequality in their provision remains one of the last frontiers to be conquered.
The story of Maria Toorpakai, Pakistan's top female squash player, and why she competed as a boy until the age of 16.
After the conviction of Sharon Edwards for murdering her husband, we discuss domestic violence against men with Professor Marianne Hester, Chair in Gender and Violence at Bristol University and Mark Brooks, chair of trustees for the domestic violence charity Mankind.
Midwife Kim Morley, who specialises in supporting women with epilepsy through pregnancy, on her award as Royal College of Midwives 'mum's Midwife of the Year'.
Presenter: Jenni Murray
Producer: Anne Peacock.
WED 10:41 15 Minute Drama (b072mq8n)
Jane Eyre
Episode 8
Rachel Joyce's 10 part dramatisation for the
bicentenary celebrations of Charlotte Bronte's birth.
Episode Eight
Jane has run from Thornfield and Rochester. She
has barely eaten and has been sleeping on the
moors in the pouring rain. Her strength is failing fast.
Produced and Directed by Tracey Neale.
WED 10:55 The Listening Project (b072mq8q)
Jason and Kim - The Person, Not the Disability
Fi Glover with a conversation between an employer and employee about how a 6 month placement turned into a permanent job; once Kim's confidence increased her ability shone through. Another conversation in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
The Listening Project is a Radio 4 initiative that offers a snapshot of contemporary Britain in which people across the UK volunteer to have a conversation with someone close to them about a subject they've never discussed intimately before. The conversations are being gathered across the UK by teams of producers from local and national radio stations who facilitate each encounter. Every conversation - they're not BBC interviews, and that's an important difference - lasts up to an hour, and is then edited to extract the key moment of connection between the participants. Most of the unedited conversations are being archived by the British Library and used to build up a collection of voices capturing a unique portrait of the UK in the second decade of the millennium. You can learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject
Producer: Marya Burgess.
WED 11:00 Out of the Ordinary (b072mq8s)
Series 4
The Red Pill
Jolyon Jenkins reports on the men fighting a liberation war against what they see as female tyranny, and the separatist "men going their own way" - who've given up on women.
Such men take their principles from the film "The Matrix", in which only those who take the "red pill" see the true nature of reality, while those who take the "blue pill" live in ignorance of the true state of affairs - which, in this case, is that society is organised for the benefit of women, and that men are seen as disposable and worthless. We live, they think, in a "gynocracy", thanks to the remorseless march of feminism.
But the movement is split. Some of them think that there is still time to organise and fight back. They think that the system can be changed, and that relationships between men and women recalibrated. But others are more radical. They believe that male/female relationships are inherently toxic, the system is unbeatable, and that the only sane strategy for a man is to exit from the gynocracy while he still can, even if this means "living as a ghost" within broader society.
Producer/presenter: Jolyon Jenkins.
WED 11:30 A Charles Paris Mystery (b070htsr)
A Decent Interval
Episode 1
Charles, bit part actor and amateur sleuth, returns to the stage as the Ghost in Hamlet, but rehearsals are fraught as both Ophelia and Hamlet are being played by reality TV stars.
Soon it's not only Shakespeare's lines that are being murdered. As the body count rises so do Charles suspicions.
Whilst at home his ex-wife Frances fears she may have come to the end of allowing her semi-detached husband to remain as her lodger.
Jeremy Front continues his successful adaptations of Simon Brett's novels starring Bill Nighy .
Charles ...... Bill Nighy
Frances ...... Suzanne Burden
Maurice ...... Jon Glover
Geraldine ...... Amelia Bullmore
Milly ...... Rebecca Hamilton
Sam ...... George Watkins
Ned ...... Brian Protheroe
Jared ...... Leo Wan
Will ...... Caolan McCarthy
Katrina ...... Katie Redford
Director: Sally Avens
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in March 2016.
WED 12:00 News Summary (b072hlry)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
WED 12:04 Museum of Lost Objects (b072mq8v)
The Genie of Nimrud
The Museum of Lost Objects traces the histories of 10 antiquities or cultural sites that have been destroyed or looted in Iraq and Syria.
The ancient Assyrians were fond of protective spirits. They had sculptures of all manner of mythological creatures lining the walls of their palaces. One such sculpture was a stone relief of a genie. This was a powerful male figure - a bountiful beard and muscular thighs but with huge wings sprouting from his back. Three thousand years ago, it adorned the walls of Nimrud, one of the great strongholds of Mesopotamia, near Mosul in modern day Iraq. During the 1990s, this genie disappeared - believed to have been taken during the chaos of the first Gulf war - and ended up in London around 2002 - just before the mire of the second Gulf war. It’s been kept by Scotland Yard for these last 14 years - locked in legal limbo, and unlikely to ever reemerge or return to Iraq. We explore the cost of looting to a country’s cultural heritage, and tell the story of another valuable Mesopotamian antiquity that was looted, eventually uncovered, but managed to stay in Iraq. This is a tablet, and holds a new chapter from the oldest tale ever told - the Gilgamesh epic.
This episode was first broadcast on 9 March, 2016.
Presenter: Kanishk Tharoor
Producer: Maryam Maruf
Picture: Assyrian winged-genie from Nimrud
Credit: Brooklyn Museum
Contributors: Mark Altaweel, Institute of Archaeology UCL; Augusta McMahon, University of Cambridge; Mina al-Lami, BBC Monitoring; the readings are by Martin Worthington, George Watkins, and Susan Jameson
With thanks to Vernon Rapley, V&A; Sarah Collins, British Museum; Andrew George, SOAS; and John Russell Massachusetts College of Art and Design
WED 12:15 You and Yours (b072hls1)
Anti-pollution cosmetics, Fundraising Preference Service, Pitching a novel
Charities in the UK have faced huge pressure in recent months after the death of 92 year old poppy seller Olive Cooke, who took her own life after being plagued by 450 letters a year from charities. A series of reports on You & Yours and elsewhere revealed that some charities were using high pressure fundraising techniques on vulnerable people and some shared and sold donors' details. Now proposals have been released for a "Fundraising Preference Service", with an opt-out which would allow people to refuse all charity marketing. The service would be part of a new system of self-regulation by the charity sector. We ask how the proposals would affect the work of charities and if they are tough enough to restore public confidence.
Cosmetics that promise to protect your skin from the effects of air pollution are becoming big business. Research suggests that exposure to pollution can harm skin and many of the big cosmetics manufacturers are offering creams and moisturisers that promise to reduce the damage and improve how the skin looks. We ask a leading dermatologist about the effectiveness of these products and how they differ from other cosmetics.
Is it possible to sum up a novel in just a few words? Last summer, You & Yours reported how a literary agency was inviting new writers to pitch their idea for a novel in just 140 characters on Twitter. You & Yours listener Laura McVeigh did just that and she is now looking forward to the release of her first novel. She tells us about the book and how that short pitch made all the difference.
Producer: Jonathan Hallewell
Presenter: Winifred Robinson.
WED 12:57 Weather (b072hls3)
The latest weather forecast.
WED 13:00 World at One (b072w6jh)
Analysis of news and current affairs, presented by Mark Mardell.
WED 13:45 Incarnations: India in 50 Lives (b072mvvr)
Gandhi: In the Palm of Our Hands
Professor Sunil Khilnani explores the life and legacy of the Mahatma Gandhi: lawyer, politician and leader of the nationalist movement against British rule in India. He is generally admired outside India, but is the subject of heated debate and contention in his homeland. Some view him as an appeaser of Muslims, and blame him for India's partition. Others regret Gandhi's induction of Hindu rhetoric and symbols into Indian nationalism, revile him for his refusal to disavow caste, believe he betrayed the labouring classes, and are appalled at his views on women. "It's unsurprising that Gandhi provokes such a barrage of attacks," says Professor Khilnani. "His entire life was an argument - or rather, a series of arguments - with the world."
Producer: Mark Savage.
WED 14:00 The Archers (b072jmpp)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Tuesday]
WED 14:15 Drama (b072my2h)
The Reserve Rope
The Reserve Rope - Episode 1
The Matterhorn was conquered on 14th July 1865 by Edward Whymper. But four men died on the descent. Damian Lewis stars as Whymper, forever tormented by the tragedy.
Jonathan Myerson's drama speculates on what went wrong and why. The climbing team were roped together on the way down but at least two were inexperienced and - for reasons never fully explained - attached together with rope that was unsuitable for holding the weight of a man.
A swift inquest was held and Whymper was exonerated. But some people never forgave him - especially the 8th Marquess of Queensbury, father to Douglas Hadow, one of the dead.
Cast:
Edward Whymper...................Damian Lewis
Zipporah.................................Olivia Darnley
Douglas / Guide......................Jacob Fortune Lloyd
Queensbury / Pession /
Taugwalder / McCormick.........Joseph Kloska
Josiah / Club man 3 /
Favre / Seiler..........................Christian Rodska
Hudson / Meynet.....................Dominic Rye
Wills / Croz / Robertson /
Tyndall / Club man 2 /
Macdonald..............................Tom Gordon
Hadow....................................Sean Delaney
Carrel / Peter..........................Gabriel Lo Guidice
Produced and directed by Clive Brill
A Brill production for BBC Radio 4
WED 15:00 Money Box (b072my2k)
Money Box Live: Rethinking the State Pension
The state pension is one of the cornerstones of the welfare state and we all expect to get it. In April, there'll be a brand new State Pension, running alongside the old system. In addition, the Govt has ordered a review of the State Pension Age, looking beyond the year 20-28, which could have consequences for anyone under 55. So what age is a fair age to start receiving your state pension, given that today's promises to pay pensions may turn out to be unaffordable? Will younger people end up getting a raw deal, compared to the babyboomer generation?
In this Money Box Live we're looking at some 'blue-sky' thinking about the way the pension system works - and asking you - in what ways could we, should we re-think, re-design the state pension?
Call us with your comments and questions on 03 700 100 444 - geographic charges apply.
Presenter: Lesley Curwen
Producer: Alex Lewis + Diane Richardson
Editor: Andrew Smith.
WED 15:30 Inside Health (b072hlny)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 on Tuesday]
WED 16:00 Thinking Allowed (b072my2m)
Small towns, Patient rescue and resuscitation
Small towns: Laurie Taylor talks to Steve Hanson, Associate Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Lincoln, and author of an ethnographic study of Todmorden in 'austere' times. Dr Hanson returned to his home town, on the border of Lancashire and Yorkshire, to immerse himself in the life and times of a place which has almost halved since its industrial heyday. He finds micro worlds that never encounter each other, debunking the myth that people in small towns all know each other's business. They're joined by Katherine Tyler, Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Exeter.
Rescuing 'acute' patients: what happens when patients in a hospital ward become acutely unwell? Nicola Mackintosh, Research Fellow at Kings College, London, interviewed doctors, nurses, health care assistants and managers at two UK hospitals, in order to explore the practice of 'rescue' and patient safety on the front line.
WED 16:30 The Media Show (b072hls7)
Charlotte Moore, Turkish press crackdown, Concern about BBC independence
We hear from the new Controller of BBC TV Channels (BBC 1,2 and 4) and iPlayer Charlotte Moore about her vision for the future. She also gives her response to claims (from Culture Secretary John Whittingdale and a recent report from consultants Oliver & Ohlbaum and Oxera Consulting), that BBC TV has become less distinctive.
We hear from Sevgi Akarcesme, Editor in Chief of Today's Zaman about the Turkish state takeover of the anti-government newspaper for which she works, and from the BBC's Turkey correspondent Mark Lowen on the context of this crackdown on press freedom.
A recent report by Sir David Clementi into the governance and regulation of the BBC recommended that the government appoint about half of a reformed future BBC's operational board. The Director General of the BBC, Lord Hall, said this recommendation could undermine the BBC's independence from government. So where should the balance lie between BBC freedom from government influence and the public's ability, via the democratically elected government, to have a say in how the BBC licence fee is spent? We hear from "the insider's insider" Tim Suter. He's been a BBC TV executive,worked for the broadcasting regulator Ofcom, is on the board of the Press Recognition Panel, advised the House of Lords Communications Select Committee and is one of the leaders of the European Broadcasting Union's project for developing a vision for European Public Service Broadcasting.
WED 17:00 PM (b072hls9)
Coverage and analysis of the day's news.
WED 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b072hlsc)
Buckingham Palace has formally complained about a Sun story saying the Queen backs Brexit
WED 18:30 Chain Reaction (b072my2p)
Series 11
Ian Hislop interviews Victoria Coren-Mitchell
Comedian and satirist Ian Hislop turns interviewer as he talks to the writer and presenter Victoria Coren-Mitchell about her wide and varied career in writing, quizzing and cards.
Chain Reaction is the long running hostless chat show where this week's interviewee becomes next week's interviewer.
Ian Hislop is a long-standing team captain on 'Have I Got News for You' and the editor of the satirical magazine Private Eye. As a dedicated fan and student of history, he has made several acclaimed documentaries on wide-ranging subjects including conscientious objectors and The Beeching Report.
Victoria Coren-Mitchell is a columnist for The Observer and GQ amongst other publications and has presented myriad documentaries on subjects as varied as The Bohemians and Mary Poppins. As well as a prolific writing career, she keeps order on the popular and fiendishly difficult television quiz, 'Only Connect'. She is also well-known as one of the world's top professional poker players and has achieved huge success at the card table.
Producer: Richard Morris
A BBC Radio Comedy production for BBC Radio 4 first broadcast in March 2016.
WED 19:00 The Archers (b072mz5p)
Jennifer and Susan gossip about Helen in the village shop, and a young girl enters. Elizabeth catches Jennifer on her way out and asks if she recognises the girl - because Elizabeth does, vaguely.
Elizabeth realises it is Sasha, Dr Richard Locke's daughter. Sasha was visiting her father, but he's not at home. Elizabeth says she can drive Sasha to Felpersham as the buses are infrequent, but they should check with her dad first. It transpires that Sasha ran away after a fight with her mother. Sasha arrives back home to a telling off from Richard. Later, Richard arrives at Lower Loxley with flowers for Elizabeth as a thank you. Flattered, Elizabeth reassures him that every family has their problems and invites him in for a drink. He declines.
Lilian passes by the shop, reporting she still doesn't know who to nominate for Borsetshire Businesswoman of the Year. It is an event that Justin is now sponsoring. Lilian tries to get Jennifer to write about Justin's investments on the website, and ignores Jennifer's attempts to suggest nominees. Lilian finally comes up with a nominee: Elizabeth!
WED 19:15 Front Row (b072hlsf)
Remembering George Martin, Anna Meredith, Motown the Musical, The Witch
Record producer Sir George Martin was known as the "fifth Beatle" but he also produced comedy records with the likes of Flanders and Swan and The Goons, as well as inventing creative production techniques that changed the sound of popular music. Comedian Bernard Cribbins and composer David Arnold remember the musical genius who has died, aged 90.
The Witch is a new horror film set in New England in the 1630's. When their crops fail and their new born son vanishes a devout Christian family, living on the edge of a wilderness, is enveloped by fear and paranoia. Deborah Hyde, editor of the Skeptic magazine, reviews Robert Eggers' directorial debut.
Motown the Musical, based on the American record producer Berry Gordy's memoirs, tells the story of how the music label transformed the sound of America. Featuring songs by Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, Jackson 5, and Stevie Wonder it shows how these artists came to make the uplifting and enduring popular music in history. Music journalist Jacqueline Springer reviews.
Anna Meredith is one of our most versatile composers whose work straddles the worlds of classical, pop, electronica and experimental rock. Until now, much of her time has been spent composing for commissions, but now she's recorded a debut album with her band. She explains how this was a very different working process and reveals what inspired the 11 tracks on Varmints.
Presenter: Samira Ahmed
Producer: Angie Nehring.
WED 19:45 15 Minute Drama (b072mq8n)
[Repeat of broadcast at
10:41 today]
WED 20:00 Moral Maze (b072mz5r)
Is Science Morally Neutral?
In 1816, when Mary Shelley sat down to write her Gothic novel Frankenstein, it was a time of social, political and scientific upheaval. It has given us the archetypal image of the mad scientist single-mindedly pursing his grotesque experiments whatever the cost. "Frankenstein Science" has even become its own category, especially beloved by tabloid headline writers. 200 years on and the pace of scientific development has increased exponentially; the fact that Shelley's Frankenstein still has such a hold reflects the powerful role science plays in modern life and also, perhaps, the fear that we don't understand it or know how to control it. Now the head of the Science Council has said that scientists need their own version of the Hippocratic Oath and a regulation system of ethical standards and principles similar to doctors. Would more control give us better, more ethical scientists, or just restrain creativity and academic freedom? If we control scientists more closely, is there a case for arguing that we should exercise more control over the research they carry out? Is science morally neutral? Is it just the choices about how to apply scientific knowledge that are truly moral? In a world where advances in science have the power to profoundly change our lives and the lives of future generations, can scientists still rely on that distinction? This week scientists are meeting in America to discuss the controversial "gain-of-function" research on highly infectious viruses such as avian flu. Do we need more moral, ethical and democratically accountable oversight of research? Chaired by Michael Buerk with Giles Fraser, Claire Fox, Mathew Taylor and Michael Portillo. Witnesses are Belinda Phipps, Prof Terence Kealey, Prof Andy Stirling and Bryan Roberts.
WED 20:45 Lent Talks (b072mz5t)
The Garden
Madeleine takes a night-time walk along the River Lea and the "edgelands" of the Hackney Marshes in east London as she reflects on Jesus' last night in the garden of Gethsemane for "Lent in the Landscape" a series of talks from six writers on different aspects of the passion story. Producer: Phil Pegum.
WED 21:00 Costing the Earth (b072jlgs)
[Repeat of broadcast at
15:30 on Tuesday]
WED 21:30 Midweek (b072mls9)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:00 today]
WED 22:00 The World Tonight (b072hlsh)
Why have there been "significantly high" death rates in 19 of England's NHS Trusts?
We have a special investigation.
As Commonwealth Trade Ministers gather in London, a call for Whitehall to broaden its horizons as it prepares for Brexit.
The new head of the US Environmental Protection Agency has said he doesn't believe carbon dioxide is a primary factor in global warming.
WED 22:45 15 Minute Drama (b04m0rzf)
The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy
David
By Rachel Joyce
As Harold walks, Queenie writes. She tells of how she fell in love with Harold twenty four years ago and the day she met his son, David.
Queenie ..... Sophie Thompson
Harold ..... Paul Venables
Sister Mary Inconnue ..... Roslyn Hill
David ..... Monty d'Inverno
Sister Catherine ..... Elaine Claxton
Sister Lucy ..... Hannah Genesius
Finty ..... Jane Slavin
Mr Henderson ..... Michael Bertenshaw
Directed by Tracey Neale
WED 23:00 The Croft & Pearce Show (b072mz5w)
Episode 1
A sketch show from award-winning duo Croft and Pearce, rising stars of the UK comedy scene.
These Edinburgh Fringe favourites were the break-out hit of BBC Radio 4’s Sketchorama and have performed sell-out shows in London, New York and around the UK.
Packed with sharply observed characters, this debut from writer-performers Hannah Croft and Fiona Pearce is not to be missed.
In the opening episode we meet June and Jean, two middle-class ladies driven to the brink by the strain of village life in the Home Counties, as well as a rowdy Geordie Brown Owl and an over-excited work experience girl.
Written and performed by Hannah Croft and Fiona Pearce
Producer: Liz Anstee
A CPL production for BBC Radio 4, first broadcast in March 2016.
WED 23:15 History Retweeted (b03w18g1)
The Premiere of Romeo and Juliet
History Retweeted sends us back in time as we hear people from the past comment on a series of major world events, in 140 characters or fewer.
It's the opening night of Romeo and Juliet and you are cordially invited to the premiere of a brand new play by the up-and-coming playwright Billy Shakespeare. Much the same as any other playwright, Shakespeare ponders how the play will be received. He needn't worry anymore as the 16th century now comes complete with wifi.
Bloggers review the show, fan-made plays are rife and the stars are interviewed on YouTube as one of Shakespeare's greatest blockbusters is 're-tweeted'.
Turning statuses into sounds, History Retweeted transports us to timelines gone by, feeding hashtags, trolls and trending topics into moments from history.
Featuring the voices of Tim Barnes and Simon Berry, Wayne Forester and Annabelle Llewellyn, Peter Temple and Jelly Macintosh - with Lucy Beaumont as the voice of The Computer.
Written by Tim Barnes and Simon Berry.
Produced by Sally Harrison
A Woolyback production for BBC Radio 4.
WED 23:30 Today in Parliament (b072mz5y)
Susan Hulme reports from Westminster, where it is a day of defeats for the government.
THURSDAY 10 MARCH 2016
THU 00:00 Midnight News (b072hlvn)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
THU 00:30 Book of the Week (b072mlsc)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:45 on Wednesday]
THU 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b072hlvq)
The latest shipping forecast.
THU 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b072hlvs)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.
THU 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b072hlvv)
The latest shipping forecast.
THU 05:30 News Briefing (b072hlvx)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
THU 05:43 Prayer for the Day (b0747d8t)
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day Shirley Jenner, Lecturer at the University of Manchester.
THU 05:45 Farming Today (b072n5x1)
Inquiry into basic payments
The head of the Rural Payments Agency Mark Grimshaw has faced a committee of MPs to answer questions about how EU payments to English farmers have been processed and paid. In Scotland the Government is paying £200 million to tide farmers over after problems with the payments system there. Conservative MSPs have demanded an inquiry.
And Anna Hill meets two ex-servicemen who have joined a scheme to help members of the armed services find jobs in farming.
Presented by Anna Hill and produced by Sally Challoner.
THU 05:58 Tweet of the Day (b03ws7gc)
Nuthatch
Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs.
Bill Oddie presents the nuthatch. Nuthatches are the only UK birds that can climb down a tree as fast they can go up and you'll often see them descending a trunk or hanging beneath a branch. Nuthatches are unmistakable: blue-grey above, chestnut under the tail and with a black highwayman's mask.
THU 06:00 Today (b072w4bf)
News and current affairs. Includes Sports Desk, Yesterday in Parliament, Weather and Thought for the Day.
THU 09:00 In Our Time (b072n5x3)
The Maya Civilization
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Maya Civilization, developed by the Maya people, which flourished in central America from around 250 AD in great cities such as Chichen Itza and Uxmal with advances in mathematics, architecture and astronomy. Long before the Spanish Conquest in the 16th Century, major cities had been abandoned for reasons unknown, although there are many theories including overpopulation and changing climate. The hundreds of Maya sites across Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico raise intriguing questions about one of the world's great pre-industrial civilizations.
With
Elizabeth Graham
Professor of Mesoamerican Archaeology at University College London
Matthew Restall
Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Latin American History and Anthropology at Pennsylvania State University
And
Benjamin Vis
Eastern ARC Research Fellow in Digital Humanities at the University of Kent
Producer: Simon Tillotson.
THU 09:45 Book of the Week (b072n5x5)
Seamus Heaney's Aeneid Book VI
Episode 4
Seamus Heaney was working on a translation of book VI of Virgil's Aeneid in the last months of his life .
Ian McKellen reads the poet's posthumously published final work in which Aeneas travels into the underworld to meet the spirit of his father. It's a story that had captivated Seamus Heaney from his schooldays. But the work took on a special significance for him after the death of his own father, becoming a touchstone to which he would return as an adult. His noble and moving translation of Book VI bears the fruit of a lifetime's concentration upon it: he began translating passages in the 1980s, and was finalising the work right up to the summer of his death.
Given the themes of the posthumously released Book VI, there is added poignancy in this final gift to his readers - a work which marks the end of Heaney's poetic journey.
Then as her fit passed away and her raving went quiet,
Heroic Aeneas began: 'No ordeal, O Sibyl, no new
Test can dismay me, for I have foreseen
And foresuffered all. But one thing I pray for
Especially: since here the gate opens, they say,
To the King of the Underworld's realms, and here
In these shadowy marshes the Acheron floods
To the surface, vouchsafe me one look,
One face-to-face meeting with my dear father.
THU 10:00 Woman's Hour (b072n5x7)
Caitlin Moran, Why men need feminism, Yasmin Kadi
Caitlin Moran: on getting political in her new book Moranifesto, her writing, her TV series, and her feminism.
Plus, men and feminism: Dr Michael Kimmel on why feminism is good for men too.
Yasmin Kadi: the Sierra Leonean singer talks to Jenni and performs live in Woman's Hour studio.
And BBC School Report: we hear from a young carer about the reality of life looking after her mother.
THU 10:45 15 Minute Drama (b072n5x9)
Jane Eyre
Episode 9
Rachel Joyce's 10 part dramatisation for the
bicentenary celebrations of Charlotte Bronte's birth.
Episode Nine
Has St John discovered Jane's secret?
Produced and Directed by Tracey Neale.
THU 11:00 From Our Own Correspondent (b072hlvz)
China's corruption clampdown
In China, customers are staying away from the pearl and jewellery shops, but lingerie sales are soaring. The strange effects that the clampdown on corruption is having on the country's economy.
Fighting elephant poachers can a dangerous business in the Democratic Republic of Congo where part of who you're up against appears to be a neighbouring country's army. We travel on the ancient Via Egnatia that used to join two great empires. Though on the modern Greek version of the route, you don't get quite as far as you hope. Though it's nothing to do with closed borders. And, with the zika virus outbreak in Brazil, would you want to try for a baby there now? What if you're at an age where you can't afford to wait too much longer?
THU 11:30 Tim Key Delves Into Daniil Kharms And That’s All (b072n5xc)
Writer Daniil Kharms (1905-1942) is one of Russia's great lost absurdists.
His world still alarms, shocks and bewitches well over half a century after he died in prison during the siege of Leningrad.
In his short, almost vignette-like writings, nothing is sacred or as it seems. His narrators dip in and out of moments, describing curious, often disturbing events before getting bored and leaving his characters to their fates.
Old ladies plummet from windows, townsfolk are bludgeoned to death with cucumbers, others wander around in search of glue, sausages or nothing. By turns pointless and harrowing, they are funny. Very funny. And they are funny now.
Comedian, Russophile and crumpled polymath Tim Key has been entranced by Kharms' beautiful, horrible, hilarious world for years. But is there more to Kharms than a series of curious happenings cooked up by an eccentric mind in a troublesome world? Key suspects there is. And he's prepared to delve.
As he delves, he encounters Noel Fielding, Alice Nakhimovsky, Matvei Yankelevich, Peter Scotto, Tony Anemone and Daniil Kharms.
Producer: Steven Rajam
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in March 2016.
THU 12:00 News Summary (b072hlw1)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
THU 12:04 Museum of Lost Objects (b072n5xf)
Armenian Martyr’s Memorial, Der Zor
The Museum of Lost Objects traces the histories of 10 antiquities or cultural sites that have been destroyed or looted in Iraq and Syria.
The Armenian martyr's memorial in Der Zor, Syria was a tribute to the Armenians who perished in the mass killings of 1915. It was consecrated in 1991 and then completely destroyed in 2014 by Islamic militants. A British-Armenian writer recalls her visits to Der Zor, and traces the harrowing journey of her ancestors through the Syrian desert.
This episode was first broadcast on 10 March, 2016.
Presenter: Kanishk Tharoor
Producer: Maryam Maruf
Contributors: Nouritza Matossian, writer; Heghnar Watenpaugh, University of California Davis
With thanks to Elyse Semerdjian of Whitman College
Picture: Armenian Martyr's Memorial, Der Zor
THU 12:15 You and Yours (b072hlw3)
Energy market report, Disability in the workplace
The Competition and Markets Authority has been investigating how well the UK's energy market works for consumers and it publishes its interim proposals this morning. It gives a strong indication of what the CMA believes should change, before it publishes its final report in June.
More and more flights arriving and departing from UK airports are delayed, in fact last summer represented a five-year low for punctuality. The Civil Aviation Authority released figures this week which show that, overall, a quarter of flights between July and September last year were delayed, with the length of the average delay creeping up by a minute compared with the same period in 2014.
Crufts gets underway today and there's a touch of celebrity this year. A new stand is being added for dogs that are famous online. Bruno the miniature daschund, for example has 66,000 followers on the photo sharing website Instagram. Mika the husky has 58,000, whilst Ramsey the blue Staffordshire bull terrier has 128,000.
Now the Kennel Club says famous dogs on social media are having an impact in the real world. In the last year, registrations of Pembroke Welsh corgis have risen significantly, so the breed has been removed from the club's "at watch" list, reserved for breeds with fewer than 300 registrations. They're putting it down, in part, to Winny the Pembroke Welsh corgi, who has 18,000 Instagram followers.
Got a spare £10? Well, you could buy a pizza with it. Or you could buy a share of a flat and reap the rewards of investing in a buy-to-let property. Until now, buy-to-let has only been possible for people with a lot of spare cash and high borrowing power. If you have enough money, buying a second property to rent out sounds like a good investment. But you have to deal with all the hassle of demanding tenants and broken boilers. Some new online companies are trying to change all that using crowdfunding to open up the property investment market to everyone who has a bit of spare cash at the end of the month.
There are six million people of working age in the UK who have a disability and the government wants to get more of them into the workplace. They launched Disability Confident back in 2013 to help employers to get rid of barriers, increase understanding and ensure that disabled people have more opportunities to get work. But is it working?
Producer: Maire Devine
Presenter: Winifred Robinson.
THU 12:57 Weather (b072hlw5)
The latest weather forecast.
THU 13:00 World at One (b073hjsy)
The Prime Minister has had his say on the row about the Queen the tabloid and Brexit. He's also saying those who want to leave think the loss of British jobs is a price worth paying -- we debate if he's right.
We'll ask the energy industry if they back plans to cut bills.
Labour MP Dan Jarvis has been setting out his vision for the party - does it mean he wants to be the next leader ?
Five years since the start of the Syrian uprising, Lyse Douset has been back to where it all began to see what people there now want:.
THU 13:45 Incarnations: India in 50 Lives (b072n5xh)
Jinnah: The Chess Player
Professor Sunil Khilnani, from the King's India Institute in London, looks at the life and legacy of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. Descriptions of his early life do not sound like someone who would go on to lead India's Muslims: he spoke English, dressed impeccably in Western clothes from Savile Row, smoked cigarettes and, according to some accounts, consumed alcohol and ate pork. Yet it was Jinnah who, along with others, publicly assented to the partition of India which, carried out in haste, would give roughly half of India's Muslims political autonomy, cause around a million deaths, displace some 14 million people and transform the geopolitics of the world.
Producer: Mark Savage
Music: Talvin Singh.
THU 14:00 The Archers (b072mz5p)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Wednesday]
THU 14:15 Drama (b072z7vp)
The Reserve Rope
The Reserve Rope - Episode 2
The Matterhorn was conquered on 14th July 1865 by Edward Whymper. But four men died on the descent. Damian Lewis stars as Whymper, forever tormented by the tragedy.
Jonathan Myerson's drama speculates on what went wrong and why. The climbing team were roped together on the way down but at least two were inexperienced and - for reasons never fully explained - attached together with rope that was unsuitable for holding the weight of a man.
A swift inquest was held and Whymper was exonerated. But some people never forgave him - especially the 8th Marquess of Queensbury, father to Douglas Hadow, one of the dead.
Cast:
Edward Whymper...................Damian Lewis
Zipporah.................................Olivia Darnley
Douglas / Guide......................Jacob Fortune Lloyd
Queensbury / Pession /
Taugwalder / McCormick.........Joseph Kloska
Josiah / Club man 3 /
Favre / Seiler..........................Christian Rodska
Hudson / Meynet.....................Dominic Rye
Wills / Croz / Robertson /
Tyndall / Club man 2 /
Macdonald..............................Tom Gordon
Hadow....................................Sean Delaney
Carrel / Peter..........................Gabriel Lo Guidice
Produced and directed by Clive Brill
A Brill production for BBC Radio 4
THU 15:00 Ramblings (b072n5xk)
Series 32
Trent, Dorset
Clare joins a lively primary school walking club as they ramble through the Dorset countryside. Pupils, teachers, local farmers and parents join the group which has been helping to draw the local community together for twelve years. Starting at a farm near the school, Trent Young's C of E near Sherborne, they walk on footpaths and over private farmland - made accessible by the farmers who help lead the walk - learning about the countryside as they go.
Producer: Karen Gregor.
THU 15:27 Radio 4 Appeal (b072hs5v)
[Repeat of broadcast at
07:54 on Sunday]
THU 15:30 Bookclub (b072htqw)
[Repeat of broadcast at
16:00 on Sunday]
THU 16:00 The Film Programme (b072n5xm)
Anomalisa, The Witch, Women in Love
With Antonia Quirke.
Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson discuss their stop-motion comedy Anomalisa, how they made a love scene with puppets and why it took 6 months.
Cinematographer Billy Williams recalls the tensions behind the scenes of the notorious naked wrestling bout between Oliver Reed and Alan Bates in Women In Love.
Director Robert Eggers reveals the difficulties of working with a goat on his supernatural horror The Witch, and why ravens are better actors.
THU 16:30 BBC Inside Science (b072hlw8)
Gain-of-function research, Mindfulness, Women in science, Snake locomotion
This week in the US, public discussions are taking place into controversial Gain of Function research. Who should decide the limits of studies where scientists make new, deadlier viruses in the laboratory? Dr Filippa Lentzos, biosecurity expert from King's College, London, lists a litany of accidental security breaches from the past. Should we stop this kind of dangerous research, or encourage it, in the interests of national security?
Mindfulness is a hot topic at the moment. As part of BBC School Report, students from Connaught School for Girls in Leytonstone have tested themselves to see whether meditation helps with their studies. Tracey Logan discusses the scientific research underpinning this trend with psychologist Claudia Hammond.
The Royal Society released a report this week entitled "Parent, Carer, Scientist." The idea is to encourage an environment in research institutions where scientists can have a life as well as a vocation. Professor Ottoline Leyser, Professor of Plant Development and Director of Cambridge University's Sainsbury Laboratory, discusses what needs to change to ensure more female scientists to stay in science.
How do snakes move across sand? BBC science reporter Jonathan Webb meets Perrin Schiebel, at the Georgia Institute of Technology. A physicist, she works with a giant sand pit and high-speed cameras, putting snakes through their paces to unpick how they can push their bodies off the sand without sinking into it.
THU 17:00 PM (b072hlwb)
Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
THU 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b072hlwd)
Markets slide after the European Central Bank announces major stimulus measures
THU 18:30 Susan Calman - Keep Calman Carry On (b072n5xp)
Series 1
Art with Phill Jupitus
Susan Calman is the least relaxed person she knows. She has no down time, no hobbies (unless you count dressing up your cats in silly outfits) and her idea of relaxation is to play Grand Theft Auto, an hour into which she is in a murderous rage with sky high blood pressure. Her wife had to threaten to divorce her to make her go on holiday last year. Her first for four years. But she's been told by the same long-suffering wife, that unless she finds a way to switch off, and soon, she's going to be unbearable.
So Susan is going to look at her options and try to immerse herself in the pursuits that her friends find relaxing, to find her inner zen and outer tranquillity. Each week she will ditch the old Susan Calman and attempt to find the new Susan Calm, in a typically British leisure pursuit.
This time, she visits the Scottish National Portrait Gallery with Phill Jupitus.
Keep Calman Carry On is an audience stand up show in which Susan reports on how successful she's been - both at relaxing and at the pursuit itself - as well as playing in and discussing a handful of illustrative clips from her efforts. It's an attempt to find out how people find solace or sanctuary in these worlds and how Susan can negotiate her own place in them.
Producer: Lyndsay Fenner
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2016.
THU 19:00 The Archers (b072n5xr)
David and Ed discuss the Brookfield Farm innovations. David explains that better quality yield should lead to greater profit, but Ed is sceptical. Ed says that quality produce was not enough to save his own farm. But now things are looking up, as Adam has provided him with a fair bit of work. They decide to go The Bull for lunch.
At The Bull, Wayne thinks they should put Tom's scotch eggs on their menu. Kenton is unenthusiastic, because it was Wayne's idea. David and Ed come in, and are complimentary about Wayne's food. Kenton doesn't want to hear it. Jolene forces him to pass on their compliments to the chef. David and Ed discuss Ed's foundation course, and hope that it will lead to better things for him, in a more specialised area.
Helen goes round to see Pat, and is offered lunch. She eats some, but not a lot. Pat offers to help out more, and encourages Helen to relax as her due date is only ten weeks away. Pat brings up the controversial issue of her decision to have a home birth. Helen insists it is what she and Rob want, in spite of her last, traumatic birth. Helen snaps and tells Pat to leave her alone, and that it is her decision: her baby, her body.
THU 19:15 Front Row (b072hlwg)
Martin Parr's exhibitions, Assemble at Tate Liverpool, Bradford Media Museum controversy, Morrissey as London's mayor
As the death is announced of production designer Sir Kenneth "Ken" Adam, director Nicholas Hytner remembers working with him on The Madness of King George III.
Martin Parr, photographer and chronicler of British culture, gives John Wilson an early preview of the new show he has curated at the Barbican in London, Strange and Familiar: Britain as Revealed by International Photographers, as well another exhibition of his own photographs, Unseen City, in which he gives an unprecedented insight into the pomp and pageantry of the City of London.
In a controversial move, Bradford's National Media Museum is transferring its collection of 400,000 photographs and exhibits to London's Victoria and Albert Museum. Colin Ford, the museum's former director, joins John in the studio.
Assemble, a collective of architects and designers, won the Turner prize last year for their urban regeneration project in Liverpool. They talk to John Wilson about Art Gym - their latest Merseyside collaboration - which has just opened at Tate Liverpool.
Presenter: John Wilson
Producer: Rebecca Armstrong.
THU 19:45 15 Minute Drama (b072n5x9)
[Repeat of broadcast at
10:45 today]
THU 20:00 Law in Action (b072jlgv)
[Repeat of broadcast at
16:00 on Tuesday]
THU 20:30 The Bottom Line (b072n66d)
Horse Racing
Horse racing is the second most popular spectator sport in the UK but it is also a business. Presenter Evan Davis and guests discuss who makes the money: the horse owners, the jockeys, the race courses or the bookmakers?
Guests:
Simon Bazalgette, Chief Executive, The Jockey Club
Rachel Hood, Director, The Horsemen's Group
Ciaran O'Brien, Group Communications Director, William Hill bookmakers
Producer: Julie Ball.
THU 21:00 BBC Inside Science (b072hlw8)
[Repeat of broadcast at
16:30 today]
THU 21:30 In Our Time (b072n5x3)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:00 today]
THU 22:00 The World Tonight (b072hlwj)
ECB move suggests Eurozone crisis is serious
The European Central Bank announces major steps to try to revive Europe's flagging economies. Also: the boss of racquet company Head on why he's standing by Maria Sharapova in the wake of doping allegations. And snooker champion turned techno DJ Steve Davis on being booked to play a festival.
THU 22:45 15 Minute Drama (b04m3ckm)
The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy
Poems
By Rachel Joyce
Harold Fry has been walking forty days and Queenie waits. She writes and Sister Mary types. Did David steal the poems and will Queenie's secret be revealed?
Queenie ..... Sophie Thompson
Harold ..... Paul Venables
Sister Mary Inconnue ..... Roslyn Hill
David ..... Monty d'Inverno
Sister Catherine ..... Elaine Claxton
Sister Lucy ..... Hannah Genesius
Finty ..... Jane Slavin
Mr Henderson ..... Michael Bertenshaw
Directed by Tracey Neale
THU 23:00 Small Scenes (b072n66g)
Series 3
Episode 2
Award-winning sketch series starring Daniel Rigby, Mike Wozniak, Cariad Lloyd, Henry Paker and Jessica Ransom. Featuring more overblown, melodramatic scenes from modern life, such as a woman who uncovers the conspiracy behind cryptic crosswords, the real reason that dairy products have pictures of cows on them and a man who's addicted to giving lifts.
Written by Benjamin Partridge, Henry Paker and Mike Wozniak, with additional material from the cast.
Produced by Simon Mayhew-Archer.
THU 23:30 Today in Parliament (b072n66j)
Sean Curran reports as the Government announces the date of the Queen's Speech. Labour says the move is a "profound mistake". And the new pubs adjudicator comes under fire.
Ministers set out what the Government is doing to improve the quality and quantity of apprenticeships in England, while the Government faces accusations in the Lords of being "outfoxed" by French energy giant, EDF, over new nuclear power stations.
FRIDAY 11 MARCH 2016
FRI 00:00 Midnight News (b072hly1)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
FRI 00:30 Book of the Week (b072n5x5)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:45 on Thursday]
FRI 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b072hly3)
The latest shipping forecast.
FRI 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b072hly5)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.
FRI 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b072hly7)
The latest shipping forecast.
FRI 05:30 News Briefing (b072hly9)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
FRI 05:43 Prayer for the Day (b073m31p)
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day Shirley Jenner, Lecturer at the University of Manchester.
FRI 05:45 Farming Today (b072n8ds)
Scottish Farmers Rally Parliamentarians
Scottish farmers and crofters demonstrate outside Holyrood to raise awareness among Members of the Scottish Parliament of the importance of the rural economy. It comes as EU subsidy payments are delayed, partly due to problems in the IT system used in Scotland. And Caz Graham reports on an art trail going on display in Cumbria - it's 60 fibreglass Herdwick Sheep, painted by artists and auctioned to raise money for a local charity.
Presented by Caz Graham and produced by Sally Challoner.
FRI 05:58 Tweet of the Day (b03x474w)
Rook
Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs.
Bill Oddie presents the rook. High in the treetops buffeted by March winds, rooks are gathering twigs to build their untidy nests. The bustle of a rookery is one of the classic sounds of the UK countryside, especially in farming areas, where rooks are in their element, probing the pastures and ploughed fields with long pickaxe bills.
FRI 06:00 Today (b072zgn0)
Morning news and current affairs. Includes Sports Desk, Yesterday in Parliament, Weather and Thought for the Day.
FRI 09:00 Desert Island Discs (b072ht0p)
[Repeat of broadcast at
11:15 on Sunday]
FRI 09:45 Book of the Week (b072n8dv)
Seamus Heaney's Aeneid Book VI
Episode 5
Seamus Heaney was working on a translation of book VI of Virgil's Aeneid in the last months of his life .
Ian McKellen reads the poet's posthumously published final work in which Aeneas travels into the underworld to meet the spirit of his father. It's a story that had captivated Seamus Heaney from his schooldays. But the work took on a special significance for him after the death of his own father, becoming a touchstone to which he would return as an adult. His noble and moving translation of Book VI bears the fruit of a lifetime's concentration upon it: he began translating passages in the 1980s, and was finalising the work right up to the summer of his death.
Given the themes of the posthumously released Book VI, there is added poignancy in this final gift to his readers - a work which marks the end of Heaney's poetic journey.
Then as her fit passed away and her raving went quiet,
Heroic Aeneas began: 'No ordeal, O Sibyl, no new
Test can dismay me, for I have foreseen
And foresuffered all. But one thing I pray for
Especially: since here the gate opens, they say,
To the King of the Underworld's realms, and here
In these shadowy marshes the Acheron floods
To the surface, vouchsafe me one look,
One face-to-face meeting with my dear father.
FRI 10:00 Woman's Hour (b072n8dx)
Uzo Aduba, Inga Beale
Two time EMMY winning actress Uzo Aduba, better known as Suzanne 'Crazy eyes' Warren, is one of the stars of Netflix series Orange is the New Black. She discusses her life and career so far, including her latest role in theatre production 'The Maids' at the Trafalgar Studios in London.
Inga Beale, Lloyd's of London's chief executive, came out as bisexual in 2008. The first woman to rise to the top of the LGBT business power list, she'll be speaking at this year's Women of the World Festival. She talks to Jenni Murray about the rebuilding trust in the insurance market, being a role model and why honesty in the work place about who you really are is part of being a good leader.
The Trials of Spring is a documentary and a series of short films that look at women involved in the Arab Spring of 2011. Four of the shorts will be shown at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival tonight. Oscar nominated film maker, Gini Reticker, joins Jenni to talk about why she made her films about women's struggle during and after the Arab Spring and what drives her as a human rights film maker.
Sue Elliott Nicholls investigates what happens when a treasured, funny family story gets 'misremembered'.
Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, the academic who coined the term 'intersectionality' and co-founder of the African American Policy Forum, discusses her work with #blacklivesmatter and the unique challenges facing women and girls of colour when it comes to the struggle for gender equality and racial justice.
FRI 10:45 15 Minute Drama (b072n8dz)
Jane Eyre
Episode 10
Rachel Joyce's 10 part dramatisation for the
bicentenary celebrations of Charlotte Bronte's birth.
Jane has to make a decision but what should
she do. As the pressure from St John grows, Jane
pleads for more time.
Produced and Directed by Tracey Neale.
FRI 11:00 Ghosts of the Tsunami (b072n8f1)
Five years after Japan's Tsunami, some survivors report seeing the ghosts of the dead.
Richard Lloyd Parry, Asia Editor of the Times, has lived in Japan for 20 years. After the 2011 Tsunami he began to hear strange stories from the survivors. One woman said she was possessed by 25 different spirits, including a chained dog which had starved within the Fukushima fallout zone. A young builder saw people, plastered in mud, walking endlessly past his house. A cab driver's fare disappeared from the back seat, as soon as the car arrived at the abandoned address.
Now, Richard revisits the region to talk to those who claim to have seen ghosts.
Their stories - sometimes frightening, sometimes beautiful - reveal deeply-held elements of Japanese faith and spirituality, such as the cult of the ancestors, and Richard quickly comes to understand the role the dead play in the lives of the living.
Almost 20,000 people died in the disaster and for many survivors it felt selfish to express their personal grief. We hear how, for those trying to help people struck by the tragedy, part of the challenge has been to prompt them to express how they feel. Perhaps this is what the ghosts are doing.
So, as well as those directly affected, Richard talks those who try to comfort them - such as publisher Masashi Hijikata, who has revived an old literary tradition of Kaidankai or weird tale parties, bringing people together to tell their ghost tales in a kind of group therapy. There's also Reverend Kaneta, a charismatic Zen priest who has performed exorcisms on the 'possessed' and travelled the coastline, encouraging people to talk about their trauma while drinking coffee and listening to the dissonant jazz of Thelonius Monk records.
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4.
FRI 11:30 Dilemma (b03xf0gm)
Series 3
Episode 6
Sue Perkins puts Bridget Christie, Michael Rosen, Laura Dockrill and Adil Ray through the moral and ethical wringer.
After a series of finely-balanced dilemmas are posed, Sue cross-examines them on their answers.
Devised by Danielle Ward.
Producer: Ed Morrish
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in March 2014.
FRI 12:00 News Summary (b072hlyc)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
FRI 12:04 Museum of Lost Objects (b072n8f3)
Looted Sumerian Seal, Baghdad
The Museum of Lost Objects traces the histories of 10 antiquities or cultural sites that have been destroyed or looted in Iraq and Syria.
This is the oldest and smallest object in the series: a tiny Sumerian cylinder seal depicting a harvest festival. It was carved in 2,600 BC and was part of the collection of ancient cylinder seals which disappeared when the Iraq Museum in Baghdad was looted during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. We tell the story of this seal and the pillaging of the country's most important museum.
This episode was first broadcast on 11 March, 2016.
Presenter: Kanishk Tharoor
Producer: Maryam Maruf
Contributors: Lamia al-Gailani, SOAS; Mazin Safar, son of Iraqi archaeologist Fuad Safar; John Curtis, Iran Heritage Foundation
With thanks to Augusta McMahon of Cambridge University, Mark Altaweel of the Institute of Archaeology UCL, and Sarah Collins of the British Museum
Picture: Sumerian harvest seal
Credit: Lamia al-Gailani
FRI 12:15 You and Yours (b072hlyf)
Secret salesman manual, Tesco, Social media break-ups
You & Yours reveals an A-Z manual used by salesmen at a company that has been convicted of tricking customers into parting with thousands of pounds for work that could have been done at a fraction of the cost. It was used by Summit Roofguard Ltd, and details how salesmen can manipulate people into believing they have a great deal. The firm's two directors have been sentenced to two and a half years in prison for offences including unfair, misleading and aggressive commercial practices.
Tesco boss Dave Lewis speaks to reporter Samantha Fenwick about the supermarket's efforts to reduce food waste, as it rolls out a scheme in which left over food is given to charity.
Plus how social media has a way of prolonging a broken heart; the man who discovered through Google's social network that his ex-girlfriend was expecting a baby.
Presented by Peter White
Produced by Natalie Donovan.
FRI 12:57 Weather (b072hlyh)
The latest weather forecast.
FRI 13:00 World at One (b0745xtj)
The US President has said that David Cameron was "distracted" in the aftermath of the revolution in Libya. Andrew Mitchell, who was International Development Secretary at the time tells us the President's remarks were unfair, and the American ambassador in London explains why the special relationship is alive and well despite it all.
The Shadow Chancellor has launched what he calls a fiscal credibility law - but how different is it from what Ed Balls and Ed Miliband offered the voters? Not different enough according to the man in charge of Labour's 2015 election campaign.
And why are those between 18 and 35 depressed about their economic future?
FRI 13:45 Incarnations: India in 50 Lives (b072n8f5)
Manto: The Unsentimentalist
Sunil Khilnani explores the life and work of India's master of the short story, Saadat Hasan Manto.
Manto didn't fuss much over his sentences. He wrote in a rush, at hack speed, for money - and often legless drunk. His raw, visceral, personal response to his experiences - including the massacre at Amritsar, cosmopolitan Bombay and the horror of Partition - matched a historical moment that needed a raw, human response. In a divided country that Manto thought possessed 'too few leaders, and two many stuntmen', his sentences asserted, plainly, the human facts - not the moral or political motives that produced them.
As Professor Khilnani says, 'for all the velocity that his economy of language creates, the pressure of a story builds slowly. You're never quite prepared for the moment that blasts off the emotional roof. His sentences etch a groove in the mind not because he saturates his truths about atrocity in lurid color, but because he delivers them off-hand, even elliptically.'
Readings by Sagar Arya.
Producer: Martin Williams.
FRI 14:00 The Archers (b072n5xr)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Thursday]
FRI 14:15 Drama (b072n8f7)
Burn Baby Burn
Sean Grundy's satirical drama inspired by the Momart warehouse fire that destroyed works by Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, the Chapman Brothers and others of the Young British Artists movement.
"I think an ashtray is the most fantastically real thing."
Damien Hirst
On 24th May 2004, a fire in an East London warehouse destroys key works from the famous BritArt movement. Seminal works by Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Chris Offili and the Chapman Brothers go up in smoke. The collection is mainly owned by advertising guru Charles Saatchi. The art world is devastated. Many in the general public are highly amused.
Writer: Sean Grundy
Director: Dirk Maggs
Producer: David Morley
A Perfectly Normal production for BBC Radio 4.
FRI 15:00 Gardeners' Question Time (b072n8f9)
Northamptonshire
Eric Robson hosts the horticultural panel programme from Northamptonshire. Chris Beardshaw, Anne Swithinbank and Matthew Wilson answer questions from an audience of local gardeners.
The panellists also share their topical tips for the coming weekend and Matthew Wilson goes on a quest to mend his grandfather's dung fork.
Produced by Dan Cocker
Assistant Producer: Hannah Newton
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.
FRI 15:45 First for Radio (b072n8fc)
Series 3
Delamere's Meadow
Two sisters have to find new grazing ground for their ponies and this marks the start of horsey intrigue with Mrs Luckie-Bryant..
Amelia Bullmore reads Nina Stibbe's short story.
Readings of acclaimed novelists' first stories for radio.
Producer: Duncan Minshull
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in March 2016.
FRI 16:00 Last Word (b072n8fh)
George Martin, Nancy Reagan, Ray Tomlinson, Gillian Avery
Reeta Chakrabarti on
Sir George Martin, the legendary music producer who oversaw the Beatles' phenomenal success.
Nancy Reagan, the US First Lady, who went from actor to political wife, to campaigner against drug abuse.
Ray Tomlinson, one of the pioneers of the internet, and a founder of the email system.
And Gillian Avery, historian and award-winning author of children's literature.
FRI 16:30 Feedback (b072n8fk)
US Elections, In Tune
Roger Bolton asks if the BBC has had too much coverage of the US Presidential election - and if it is anti Donald Trump.
The long process of selecting the next President of the United States is well underway, and some listeners are already bored stiff, while others are concerned that BBC reporters have lost their objectivity when it comes to unlikely Republican frontrunner Donald Trump. Roger Bolton puts listeners' concerns and questions to the BBC North America editor Jon Sopel.
It's the second year of the scheme to let female composers take over the Radio 3 airwaves on International Women's Day. After tremendous listener response last year, Feedback goes behind the scenes at a live broadcast of the afternoon programme, In Tune, from the Southbank Centre. Why has Radio 3 made such an effort to mark the day? What do these live extravaganzas aim to bring to the listener at home?
Phil Pegum, producer on the BBC's Lent Talks, and Cristina Odone who recently recorded her talk at the Tower of London, join Roger Bolton to discuss making Christian programming appeal to non-Christians and the challenges of recording on location.
Finally, foul ups on PM and Saturday Live have listeners asking whether technical standards at the BBC are slipping.
Producer: Kate Dixon
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4.
FRI 16:55 The Listening Project (b072n8fm)
Jason and Kim - I Just Want to Be Like Everyone Else
Fi Glover introduces a conversation between an employer and a disabled employee, neither of whom expected they would be having this conversation. Another in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
The Listening Project is a Radio 4 initiative that offers a snapshot of contemporary Britain in which people across the UK volunteer to have a conversation with someone close to them about a subject they've never discussed intimately before. The conversations are being gathered across the UK by teams of producers from local and national radio stations who facilitate each encounter. Every conversation - they're not BBC interviews, and that's an important difference - lasts up to an hour, and is then edited to extract the key moment of connection between the participants. Most of the unedited conversations are being archived by the British Library and used to build up a collection of voices capturing a unique portrait of the UK in the second decade of the millennium. You can learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject
Producer: Marya Burgess.
FRI 17:00 PM (b072hlyk)
Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
FRI 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b072hlym)
In his first major speech on the referendum, Boris Johnson said an independent Britain could forge a new free trade deal with the EU, based on the example of Canada, and urged those backing an exit to hold their nerve. Tony Blair has also intervened in the debate, urging campaigners in favour of remaining in the EU to show more passion.
FRI 18:30 The Now Show (b072n8fq)
Series 48
Episode 2
Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis are joined by Suzi Ruffell, Jon Holmes, Mitch Benn and Jessica Ransom to present the week in news through stand-up and sketches.
This week the gang explore the binary nature of news reporting and discuss the implications of a future dominated by Artificial Intelligence with Dr Nick Hawes of Birmingham University.
FRI 19:00 The Archers (b072n8fs)
Lynda wants Rob to be the guest of honour at the garden's opening, after his display of heroism during last year's floods. Rob reiterates that Helen probably isn't up to attending these special events.
Clarrie, Susan and Neil are helping out hanging the new curtains at the Village Hall. Eddie and Lynda, however, are distracted by the garden. Lynda takes her eye off the ball for a second and the curtains end up hanging at different lengths! Susan proposes that they have a picnic for the Queen's birthday, but Lynda frets that another event would steal her garden's thunder. Neil reckons the two events could complement each other.
Helen is in a confused daze. She tells Rob that she thinks the time has come for Ursula to go. Rob is worried that Ursula might hear Helen's disparaging comments. Helen complains that Ursula has been stifling, and Henry doesn't feel like her son anymore. Rob calls Helen ungrateful, and says that the problem is Helen's - not Ursula's - behaviour. Rob says that he "wanted a wife and mother for his child and look what he ended up with". Helen goes to strike Rob, he stops her, and strikes her. Later, Rob manages to pass the blame to Helen: she backed him into a corner. She apologises. Rob decides that it is time Helen got some psychiatric help.
FRI 19:15 Front Row (b072hlyp)
The Ones Below, Sonita, Tate funding, Comedy Playhouse, War Horse music
The Ones Below is a dark and tense thriller, focussing on the relationship between two sets of first time expectant parents. After a tragic accident, a divide develops between them and a series of sinister clues lead to an unsettling discovery. Kate Muir, film critic for The Times, joins Kirsty Lang to discuss David Farr's big screen directorial debut.
Afghan rapper and activist Sonita shares her experience of almost being sold into a forced marriage and director Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami describes her award-winning documentary telling Sonita's story, screened at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival this evening and next week.
The BBC's Arts Editor and former Media Director at the Tate, Will Gompertz, considers the impact of BP's decision to end its sponsorship of the gallery after 26 years.
As the BBC announce a season celebrating sitcoms, Boyd Hilton takes a look at its latest comedy offering Stop/Start. The pilot episode airs tonight as part of the long running series Comedy Playhouse which gave birth to TV classics Steptoe & Son and Are You Being Served.
Joey will gallop around the West End stage for the last time when War Horse ends, after 7 years, tomorrow night. The extraordinary puppetry has attracted a lot of attention, but crucial to the play's success has been the music. This draws on folk song, which melds with classical orchestration. Director Tom Morris, and song-maker John Tams explain their approach, and Tim van Eyken, who was the original Songman in the National Theatre's production, plays and sings live in the Front Row studio.
FRI 19:45 15 Minute Drama (b072n8dz)
[Repeat of broadcast at
10:45 today]
FRI 20:00 Any Questions? (b072n8fv)
Peter Davis, Kate Hoey MP, Norman Lamb MP, Anna Soubry MP
Jonathan Dimbleby presents political debate and discussion from Spalding Grammar School in Lincolnshire, with a panel including the Lincolnshire businessman Peter Davis, Labour MP Kate Hoey, former Care Minister and Liberal Democrat MP Norman Lamb MP and the Small Business Minister Anna Soubry MP.
FRI 20:50 A Point of View (b072n8fx)
Human Hybrids
Adam Gopnik deplores the fashion for attacking so-called "cultural expropriation" as in the recent fuss over American students wearing sombreros at a Mexican theme party.
"Cultural mixing - the hybridization of hats, if you like - is the rule of civilisation not some new intrusion within our own. Healthy civilisations have always been mongrelized, cosmopolitan, hybrid, corrupted and expropriated and mixed.".
FRI 21:00 Incarnations: India in 50 Lives (b072n8fz)
Incarnations: India in 50 Lives - Omnibus
Amrita Sher-Gil, Subhas Chandra Bose, Gandhi, Jinnah, Manto
Sunil Khilnani presents an omnibus edition of Incarnations: India in 50 Lives.
FRI 21:58 Weather (b072hlyr)
The latest weather forecast.
FRI 22:00 The World Tonight (b072hlyt)
Atrocities in South Sudan
Are conditions in South Sudan crisis now worse than Syria? Picture: Soldier in South Sudan, credit: AFP.
FRI 22:45 15 Minute Drama (b04m3cf2)
The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy
The Arrival
By Rachel Joyce
Queenie is waiting for Harold Fry to arrive but she is runnng out of time. As she writes we discover why she has hidden away from him for over twenty years.
Queenie ..... Sophie Thompson
Harold ..... Paul Venables
Sister Mary Inconnue ..... Roslyn Hill
Sister Catherine ..... Elaine Claxton
Sister Lucy ..... Hannah Genesius
Finty ..... Jane Slavin
Mr Henderson ..... Michael Bertenshaw
David ..... Monty d'Inverno
Directed by Tracey Neale
FRI 23:00 A Good Read (b072jlgx)
[Repeat of broadcast at
16:30 on Tuesday]
FRI 23:30 Today in Parliament (b072n8g1)
Mark D'Arcy reports from Westminster, where peers debate gambling and Mps discuss deporting foreign criminals.
FRI 23:55 The Listening Project (b072n8g3)
Jason and Kim - A New Town, a New Life
Fi Glover introduces a conversation between an employer and a disabled employee which makes clear the prejudice she's been subjected to but also the power of new beginnings. Another in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
The Listening Project is a Radio 4 initiative that offers a snapshot of contemporary Britain in which people across the UK volunteer to have a conversation with someone close to them about a subject they've never discussed intimately before. The conversations are being gathered across the UK by teams of producers from local and national radio stations who facilitate each encounter. Every conversation - they're not BBC interviews, and that's an important difference - lasts up to an hour, and is then edited to extract the key moment of connection between the participants. Most of the unedited conversations are being archived by the British Library and used to build up a collection of voices capturing a unique portrait of the UK in the second decade of the millennium. You can learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject
Producer: Marya Burgess.