The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
The inside story of twelve years at the helm of Britain's greatest theatre. It is a story of lunatic failures and spectacular successes such as The History Boys, War Horse and One Man, Two Guvnors; of opening the doors of the National Theatre to a broader audience than ever before, and changing the public's perception of what theatre is for.
It is about probing Shakespeare from every angle and reinventing the classics. About fostering new talent and directing some of the most celebrated actors of our times. Its cast includes the likes of Alan Bennett, Maggie Smith, Mike Leigh, Daniel Day-Lewis, Michael Gambon and Helen Mirren.
Intimate, candid and insightful, Balancing Acts is a passionate exploration of the art and alchemy of making theatre.
Today Hynter looks back at the birth of NT Live and recalls The National's 50th Anniversary commemorations.
Written and read by Nicholas Hytner
Produced by Simon Richardson.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with the Revd Dr Kirsty Thorpe.
iPM is the news programme that starts with its listeners. Email ipm@bbc.co.uk. Twitter: @BBCiPM. Presented by Luke Jones and Eddie Mair.
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.
The latest weather forecast.
Terry Abraham could be likened to Alfred Wainwright in his love of the Lakeland fells. Blencathra was known by Wainwright as the 'mountaineers mountain' and he devoted more pages to this fell than any other in his pictorial guides. However, since the proposed sale of the mountain in 2014 it has become known as the 'Peoples Mountain'. The owner, the 8th Earl of Lonsdale, put the mountain up for sale at a price of £1.75 million and a community group called Friends of Blencathra was set up in a bid to raise enough money to buy the mountain. In 2015, the mountain was taken off the market but the sense of ownership felt by the local community remains. Helen Mark meets Terry and the local people who live within the shadow of this iconic peak.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
The latest weather forecast.
News and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Actor Dame Penelope Keith; interior designer Nicky Haslam; writer Alex Wheatle and conservationist Dr Amy Dickman join Aasmah Mir and the Revd Richard Coles.
Dame Penelope Keith, best known for her television roles in the Good Life and To The Manor Born, celebrates village life in the Channel 4 series Hidden Villages and is currently on a quest to find Britain's Village of the Year.
Interior designer and socialite Nicky Haslam is performing his cabaret show - featuring songs by Cole Porter, Kurt Weill and Irving Berlin - at the Pheasantry in London in May and June. His company has designed homes for Mick Jagger, Bryan Ferry, Rod Stewart, Ringo Starr, Charles Saatchi and Rupert Everett among others.
Alex Wheatle is a writer of young adult fiction who won the Guardian's children's fiction prize in 2016. His latest book, Straight Outta Crongton, is the third instalment of his Crongton series of novels.
Dr Amy Dickman is a conservation biologist with a particular interest in the maintenance of threatened wildlife populations on human-dominated land and how to resolve human-wildlife conflict. She is director of Ruaha Carnivore Project (RCP), a community-based lion conservation initiative in Tanzania.
Actor Dennis Quaid reveals his Inheritance Tracks and talks about his love of music and performing with his band, the Sharks.
Producer: Paula McGinley
Editor: Eleanor Garland.
Jay Rayner takes his panel to visit Plumpton College in East Sussex. Barry Smith, Silvana Franco, Tim Anderson and Andi Oliver answer the audience questions.
This week the panellists learn about wine tasting and how to correctly identify if a bottle has been corked. They also offer up tips on cooking with halloumi, food pairings for sparkling wine, and deciding who gets the last roast potato. And Tim and Andi square up to each other in a Banoffee Pie showdown.
Producer: Darby Dorras
Assistant Producer: Laurence Bassett
Food consultant: Anna Colquhoun
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.
Nick Robinson assesses developments in the election campaign.
Reports from writers and journalists around the world. Presented by Kate Adie.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
The latest news from the world of personal finance.
This week Miles's panel takes the form of Jeremy Hardy, Angela Barnes, Sarah Kendall and Danny Finkelstein.
The team discuss that leaky Brexit dinner, Diane Abbott's scrape with a Ferrari and the nationwide local elections. The kind of fun-packed week that might make Prince Philip reconsider and come back to the thick of the action.
Producer: Richard Morris
A BBC Studios Production.
The latest weather forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
Jonathan Dimbleby presents political debate from Hurstpierpoint Village Centre in West Sussex with a panel including the the Vice Chairman of the Conservative Party Stuart Andrew, UKIP MEP Nigel Farage, Liberal Democrat Sarah Olney and Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry.
Have your say on the issues discussed on Any Questions?
Phone Lines open at 1230 on Saturday 03700 100 444. Email any.answers@bbc.co.uk. Tweet,#BBCAQ. Follow us @bbcanyquestions.
Presenter Anita Anand
Producer: Maire Devine
Editor Eleanor Garland.
Jack Rosenthal's comedy drama
adapted for radio by Amy Rosenthal
1996 Two sets of parents plot to keep their children apart whilst they're studying to get into University. But it isn't the children they should be worrying about.....
Written by Jack Rosenthal
Adapted by Amy Rosenthal
Produced and directed by Marion Nancarrow
This is the second drama written by Jack Rosenthal and adapted for radio by his playwright daughter, Amy ("Eskimo Day" was broadcast last Saturday). Both dramas had a huge impact at the time they were originally broadcast on TV. The last drama saw Pippa and Neil arrive from Cheltenham and Blackburn respectively for their interviews at Cambridge. Now, they're working towards their A levels. And as their future looks uncertain, both sets of parents realise quite what a turning point this is in their own lives.
On Monday you can hear Amy Rosenthal's new drama, "Thin Ice", inspired by what really happened when she went to University.
Frances Fyfield is joined by the Soprano Irina Lungu and the musicologist and conductor Nigel Simeone to explore the Manuscript of Verdi's enduringly successful Opera La Traviata. The handwritten score telling the tale of Violetta's noble humility amidst the conventions and hypocrisy of 19th century Paris is held by the Ricordi Archive in Milan. With the kind permission of the Archive and their leading expert Gabriele Dotto, the team get to see the precision and brilliance of a score that contains some of the most familiar music ever to grace an Opera stage. There are also surprising omissions and examples of the striving of a perfectionist.
Producer: Tom Alban.
Shakira Martin is the new President of the National Union of Students. She discusses her rise to the top and how she is proud to be described as a Black single mother from a working class family.
What is it like raising mixed race children? How important are cultural values when your child has a duel heritage? We hear from Fariba Soetan who runs a parenting advice blog for mixed race families, her daughters are Iranian-Nigerian and Laura Kirwan-Ashman, a freelance filmmaker. Her work focuses on the experiences of young mixed race women. She is mixed white and Black Caribbean.
We hear from four women involved in street prostitution in Hull. Renatta, Porscha, Jemma and Millie tell their stories which makes up part of an anthology of work called An Untold Story.
Two couples in the US discuss embryo adoption. Rebecca and Chris Henderson from Buffalo in New York have three daughters through IVF. They donated their remaining embryos to Kelli and Dan Gassman from Oregon, and they now have a daughter and a son. They discuss how they came to this arrangement.
Seventeen crafts have been identified as being critically endangered according to the Heritage Crafts Association. We hear from paper marbler Victoria Hall, a horse collar maker Victoria Hetherington and from Greta Bertram project manager for the Red List of Endagered Crafts.
We hear from Loujean who came to the UK from Syria. She moved into the spare room of Lucy Pavia and her husband Will. Lucy and Loujean talk about what it was like to live together when they had only just met.
And we discuss how best to look after your vulval health if you are a keen cyclist. Dr Jane Sterling is a Consultant dermatologist at Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge and is involved with the elite world of British Cycling.
Presented by Jane Garvey
Producer: Rabeka Nurmahomed
Editor: Beverley Purcell.
Full coverage of the day's news.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest weather forecast.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Clive Anderson and Sara Cox are joined by Ray Winstone, Emma Donoghue, Adrian Edmondson and Stephen Unwin for an eclectic mix of conversation, music and comedy. With music from Bill Callahan and Boo Hewerdine.
Producer: Sukey Firth.
The President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, has been called 'the chief Eurocrat' by the British press and accused of looking to bully Britain during the Brexit negotiations. But what do we know about the man Theresa May has promised to be 'a bloody difficult woman' to?
One of the longest serving democratically elected leaders in the world, Juncker was Prime Minister of Luxembourg for eighteen years. A workaholic, with a famously informal greeting style that sometimes involves affectionately slapping world leaders, Juncker has developed a political reputation as a negotiator, skilled at finding compromises between two sides.
But in his spare time, he's a pinball wizard.
A revival of Tony Kushner's epic play about the US AIDS epidemic Angels In America is being staged at London's National Theatre. It's nearly 8 hours long (in two parts); is it still pertinent and is it worth sitting through?
Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem was an enormous theatrical success and his latest The Ferryman has just opened at London's Royal Court Theatre. Set during The Troubles in Northern Ireland it deals with one family's unavoidable and unwilling involvement
The family at the heart of Japanese film Harmonium seem to have a functioning but unemotional stability. And then a stranger comes into their lives and slowly things change. For the better or for the worse?
Laurent Binet's new novel The Seventh Function of Language is about the death (or was it an assassination?!) of Roland Barthes - the death of the author of "The Death Of The Author"
Eric Gill was one of the finest sculptors of the 20th Century. And also a paedophile. A new exhibition in his home village of Ditchling, tries to see if it's possible to appreciate his art as entirely separate from his biography
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Damian Barr, Maria Delgado and Gillian Slovo. The producer is Oliver Jones.
Reflections on the extraordinary impact that two landmark TV series had on Britain forty years ago.
Black journalist Gary Younge and his Jewish colleague Jonathan Freedland had two very different upbringings. Gary grew up in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, and Jonathan in suburban North London. But a strange coincidence binds them.
At the age of 10, long before they would become colleagues and friends at The Guardian, their mothers sat them down and gave them a lesson in racism. But it didn't come from a book or documentary. It was the late 1970's and, in each case, the lesson came from a blockbuster TV mini-series. Jonathan sat and watched Roots. Gary was put in front of Holocaust - with the instruction that, "this is your story too".
This was a time when the National Front struck fear into both their homes.
Now, forty years on, they recall the impact these landmark series had on them at the time, and what TV depictions of black and Jewish people looked like before those two programmes aired - populated with stereotypes from Love thy Neighbour and The Rag Trade to the Black and White Minstrel Show and Never Mind the Fabric, Feel the Width.
Joined by Lenny Henry, Maureen Lipman, Michael Grade and the original Kunta Kinte, actor LeVar Burton, Gary and Jonathan discover how TV taught them - and Britain - about history.
Producer: Sarah Peters
Executive Producer: Iain Chambers
An Open Audio and Tuning Fork production for BBC Radio 4.
Did the young Catherine foresee the consequences of staging a coup d'état against her husband the Tsar? Or did she want him dead from the start? Mike Walker's epic chronicle of the Russian Tsars continues with the story of Catherine The Great, who came to Russia as a young 15-year-old girl from Prussia and became one of Russia's most renowned monarchs, transforming the country into one of the great powers of Europe.
Director: Sasha Yevtushenko
As we approach the centenary of the Russian Revolution in October 2017, Radio 4 has an ambitious chronicle of Russian leaders; set over 11 plays, in three seasons - it began with Ivan the Terrible, contemporary of Elizabeth I, and ends with Russia's current Premier - Vladimir Putin. TSAR continues the full-blooded, rich 'more is more' tradition forged by the team that made Plantagenet and The Stuarts for Radio 4.
Series One covered the reigns of Ivan IV (aka The Terrible), Boris Godunov and Peter The Great.
Series Two (Spring 2017) chronicles the reigns of Catherine the Great; Alexander I and the Napoleonic Wars; and Alexander II and the emancipation of the serfs.
Series Three (Autumn 2017) takes in Nicholas II and the Revolution, the Soviets, and Putin.
The dramas are produced by Alison Hindell and Sasha Yevtushenko.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4, followed by weather.
Does the accelerating pace of technology change the way we think about the future?
It's said that science fiction writers now spend more time telling stories about today than about tomorrow, because the potential of existing technology to change our world is so rich that there is no need to imagine the future - it's already here. Does this mean the future is dead? Or that we are experiencing a profound shift in our understanding of what the future means to us, how it arrives, and what forces will shape it?
Presenters Timandra Harkness and Leo Johnson explore how our evolving understanding of time and the potential of technological change are transforming the way we think about the future.
Producer: Jonathan Brunert.
(15/17)
With another of the four places in the 2017 Final up for grabs, today's contest once again pits three heat winners from earlier in the series against one contestant who only narrowly lost out as a high-scoring runner-up. It could be anyone's game, as the semi-finalists wrestle for every point they can pick up.
If the periodic table of the elements were listed in alphabetical order, which would come first? What are the Latin mottoes on the masthead of the Times newspaper? And which novel that caused a literary sensation in 1991 has a protagonist named Patrick Bateman? If the competitors can answer these questions they may be in with a strong chance of a place in the Final - and within sight of the 64th BBC Brain of Britain title.
Producer: Paul Bajoria.
Roger McGough celebrates the centenary of American poet Robert Lowell, and other winners of the the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, including Robert Frost, Sharon Olds and Rita Dove. Producer Sally Heaven.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
Pop star and bird lover Will Young joins Brett Westwood and a gang of unexpected bird lovers as Radio 4 throws an all-nighter in search of the Dawn Chorus. Going on air just after midnight and staying up till 7am Brett will host a night of conversation, story-telling, argument and explanation culminating in the live broadcast of the Dawn Chorus from Ham Wall Nature reserve in Somerset.
Other guests include, Jimi Goodwin, lead singer of Doves; Birds Brittania author Mark Cocker, Bird acoustics expert Dr. Jenny York, Natural Navigator Tristan Gooley and Singer Hanna Tuulikki.
Radio 4 is doing this as part of International Dawn Chorus day - a unique broadcast event hosted by Derek Mooney from RTE radio in Ireland - in which radio stations across Europe join together to track the rising sun across the continent from Moscow to Dublin. You'll hear capercaillies in from Norway, bitterns in Somerset, bluethroats in Holland - it's like the Eurovision Song contest, but with much better singing.
In our increasingly digital world Dawn Chorus provides a genuine encounter with the natural world on unmediated terms. There's a lovely sense of anticipation as you hunt and you wait and you feel the sense of being really there - of the sudden excitement of a Tawny Owl at midnight, the joy of a cuckoo at 4am. And as we wait and we listen we take the opportunity to have a series of interesting conversations about wildlife and literature, music, evolution and conservation.
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.
Sunday morning religious news and current affairs programme.
Peter Sissons makes the Radio 4 Appeal on behalf of 3H Fund - Helping Hands for Holidays.
Registered Charity Number 286306
To Give:
- Freephone 0800 404 8144
- Freepost BBC Radio 4 Appeal. (That's the whole address. Please do not write anything else on the front of the envelope). Mark the back of the envelope '3H Fund'.
- Cheques should be made payable to '3H Fund'.
The latest weather forecast.
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.
A service reflecting on the Biblical image of the Shepherd and the sheep used to describe the relationship between God and his people. What is proably the best loved psalm of all, the 23rd, begins with the idea of God the Sheoherd, in Jesus' parabvle of the lost sheep, the shepherd goes searching for it and he describes himself as the Good Shepherd.
I am the door (Edward Craig)
All people that on earth do dwell (Old 100th)
The King of Love my shepherd is (Dominus Regit Me)
1 Peter 2.19-25
Ut Vitam Habeant (Ruth Elaine Scham)
John 10.1-10
Every time I feel the Spirit (Trad. arr. Burton)
My Saviour the Good Shepherd is (Belmont)
From St John's Church, Orangefield, Belfast. Led by Canon Norman Jardine. Preacher: Rev Ross Wilson. With the Grosvenor Chorale, directed by Edward Craig. Organist Stephen Hamill. Producer: Bert Tosh.
Howard Jacobson argues that talk of the dangers of artificial intelligence is premature.
"The idea that if we feed enough lines of literature into a computer it will eventually be able to write its own Iliad", he writes, "is as preposterous as the old fancy that if a sufficient number of monkeys were given a sufficient number of Olivettis they would eventually hammer out a monkey Macbeth".
Producer: Adele Armstrong.
Tweet of the Day has captivated the Radio 4 audience with its daily 90 seconds of birdsong. But what of the listener to this avian chorus? In this new series of Tweet of the Day, we bring to the airwaves the conversational voices of those who listen to and are inspired by birds. Building on the previous series, a more informal approach to learning alongside a renewed emphasis on encounter with nature and reflection in our relationship with the natural world.
In this special programme we highlight the birds and contributors you will encounter in the first week.
Sunday morning magazine programme with news and conversation about the big stories of the week. Presented by Paddy O'Connell.
Brookfield tightens its belt, and Eddie worries about being found out.
Kirsty Young's castaway this week is Ed Sheeran. His songs have brought him two Grammys, four Brit awards and global success. Shortly after the release of his latest album, Divide, tracks from it occupied nine of the top 10 places in the UK singles chart.
Born into a creative family, Ed had piano and cello lessons as a youngster and briefly sang in a local church choir. At the age of 11, seeing Eric Clapton play Layla on TV at the Queen's Golden Jubilee concert inspired him to take up the guitar. Ten years later, Ed himself was performing at the Queen's Diamond Jubilee concert.
Ed left school and home at 16 to focus on playing gigs in London. Despite relentless performing he failed to secure a recording contract and decided to try his luck in America. During a successful stint performing in Los Angeles, he came to the attention of the Academy Award-winning actor and musician Jamie Foxx, and within months of returning to the UK he'd signed a record deal. His first single, The A Team, became a top ten hit around the world and won him an Ivor Novello award, and his second and third albums topped the UK and US charts.
In 2015 he performed at Wembley Stadium as a solo artist for three nights to capacity crowds, and this year he is headlining the Pyramid stage on the final night of Glastonbury.
Producer: Cathy Drysdale.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
David Mitchell hosts the panel game in which four comedians are encouraged to tell lies and compete against one another to see how many items of truth they're able to smuggle past their opponents.
Frankie Boyle, Holly Walsh, Elis James and Mark Steel are the panellists obliged to talk with deliberate inaccuracy on subjects as varied as ducks, words, Oliver Cromwell and astronauts.
Produced by Jon Naismith
A Random Entertainment production for BBC Radio 4.
Culinary herb grower Jekka McVicar shares her life through food with Sheila Dillon. Taking a walk through the small herb farm where Jekka grows some 600 varieties of herb (300 of them culinary), Sheila discovers a world of ancient knowledge, vivid flavours, and taste possibilities.
Having worked closely with chefs from Jamie Oliver to Raymond Blanc, and played with her band Marsupilami at the first ever Glastonbury Festival (and being paid in milk), Jekka is also inspiring a new generation of chefs including Peter Sanchez-Iglesias at the Michelin-starred restaurant Casamia. Peter shows Sheila just two of the many ways he uses herbs in his highly original cooking.
Presenter: Sheila Dillon
Producer: Rich Ward.
The latest weather forecast.
Global news and analysis.
As American President Donald Trump passes his hundredth day in office, Michael Goldfarb revisits the Trump supporters he met last year to find out if their affection has survived the honeymoon.
Every newly elected president is granted a honeymoon period. Will Donald Trump, who has proved to be the exception to every rule about running for President, be the exception on honeymoon's as well?
How will his supporters - many of whom chose him as the lesser of two evils and others who were unswayable partisans - react to the inevitable trimming of campaign pledges that the reality of office imposes on the men who take on the Presidency?
Throughout 2016, Michael Goldfarb tracked the rise and rise of Trump to office. He interviewed many supporters of the new President in the key areas of western Pennsylvania and Ohio, the Rust Belt constituencies whose votes brought him to power.
Now he resumes the conversation with them. He returns to Johnstown and Cleveland and rural areas of Ohio in January, on the eve of the inauguration, to find out their thinking and speaks to them again from time to time during the first 100 days of the administration.
Using their words, he documents the honeymoon period of Donald Trump's Presidency. It has started off well for them. Trump's approval ratings are up by almost 10 points since election day. Can it - will it - sustain?
A Certain Height production for BBC Radio 4.
Peter Gibbs and his panel of experts visit Snape in Suffolk. James Wong, Bob Flowerdew and Bunny Guinness answer this week's horticultural questions.
The panellists offer advice on growing berries in sandy soil and the cause of fleshless lemons, and they suggest the perfect plants for a dinosaur-themed garden.
Also, Anne Swithinbank visits the RHS Potted exhibition.
Produced by Dan Cocker
Assistant Producer: Laurence Bassett
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.
Fi Glover introduces conversations which examine the experience of adoption from three different angles in the Omnibus edition of 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.
Alexander never wanted to be Tsar. Before his accession he told friends that he hoped to retire into private life abroad. Life, however, had other plans. Starting with his own father's ill-fated reign, and his subsequent murder. How complicit was Alexander in all of this? And then came the greatest threat Russia had ever seen: the new French Emperor. Mike Walker's epic chronicle of the Russian Tsars continues with the story of Alexander I, the Tsar who took on Napoleon Bonaparte and won.
Director Sasha Yevtushenko.
Michael Chabon talks about The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay with James Naughtie and a group of readers.
The novel follows the story of the teenage Josef Kavalier, who makes a daring escape from the Germans in Prague in 1939, leaving his family behind. He travels across Europe and eventually arrives at his cousin Samuel Clayman's house in Brooklyn. There the pair discover a shared love of the burgeoning comic book world of Superheroes - Joe Kavalier is the artist, and Sam Clay, as he becomes, is the writer.
Together they create a hero of their own, The Escapist, a Houdini-type figure who fights the Nazis, frees the enslaved and leads them home. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2001.
Presenter : James Naughtie
Interviewed guest : Michael Chabon
Producer : Dymphna Flynn
June's Bookclub choice : Gods Without Men by Hari Kunzru (2011).
The best bits of International Dawn Chorus day when radio stations across the globe come together and broadcast the dawn chorus in real time. Like the Euro-vision Song contest but with better singing.
Pop star and bird lover Will Young joins Brett Westwood and a gang of unexpected bird lovers as Radio 4 throws an all-nighter in search of the Dawn Chorus. Going on air just after midnight and staying up till 7am Brett and Will host a night of conversation, story-telling, argument and explanation culminating in the live broadcast of the Dawn Chorus from Ham Wall Nature reserve in Somerset.
Other guests include, Jimi Goodwin, lead singer of Doves; Birds Brittania author Mark Cocker, Bird acoustics expert Dr. Jenny York, Natural Navigator Tristan Gooley and Singer Hanna Tuulikki.
Radio 4 is doing this as part of International Dawn Chorus day - a unique broadcast event hosted by RTE in Ireland - in which radio stations across Europe join together to track the rising sun across the continent from Moscow to Dublin. You'll hear capercaillies in from Norway, bitterns in Somerset, bluethroats in Holland - it's like the Eurovision Song contest, but with much better singing.
In our increasingly digital world Dawn Chorus provides a genuine encounter with the natural world on unmediated terms. There's a lovely sense of anticipation as you hunt and you wait and you feel the sense of being really there - of the sudden excitement of a Tawny Owl at midnight, the joy of a cuckoo at 4am. And as we wait and we listen we take the opportunity to have a series of interesting conversations about wildlife and literature, music, evolution and conservation.
Is it fair to find your own kidney donor on the internet? UK patients who need new organs are using social media to advertise their plight and appeal directly for a Good Samaritan who's willing to share their spare kidney with a stranger.
As Lesley Curwen discovers, the development of such appeals on social media has caused consternation among some in the transplant community. They fear a competition to attract donors amounts to an unsavoury beauty contest, in which only the most plugged-in and tech-savvy can participate.
But for Nicola Pietrzyk from Leicester, turning to social media and Facebook was a no-brainer. Her 11 year old son, Matthew had been spending 12 hours a day on dialysis, waiting for years for a possible donor from the NHS list. She's convinced that if she hadn't launched A Million Likes for a Kidney for Matthew, a kind-hearted stranger would never have offered her son a new kidney, potentially saving his life.
The campaign prompted several prospective donors who weren't a match for Matthew to go on to donate to others and Alison Thornhill tells Lesley Curwen why she went on to do just that.
But the likelihood that individuals, motivated by a particular story on social media, will in fact be a match for their intended recipient is slim, and Lesley hears from transplant teams frustrated that NHS resources are sucked up by high profile campaigns that attract many volunteers, all of whom need to be tested, most of whom won't turn out to be a possible match for the recipient.
Dr Adnan Sharif, consultant nephrologist at Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth Hospital, was closely involved with several high profile media campaigns and he admits that he and his team were at times completely overwhelmed by the demands that multiple volunteers, each offering to donate a kidney to a named individual, placed on the unit.
While he acknowledges that such social media campaigns are legal and after the guidelines were changed, were accepted by the transplant community, he admits to mixed feelings about the outcome. He and his team are delighted for the individual who has a new kidney, but uncomfortable about diverting resources from patients who are waiting for an organ through the traditional routes, from deceased donors or through the NHS Living Donor Scheme where altruistic donors place their trust in the transplant authorities to pick the best match for the kidney they've donated.
So the transplant community in the UK has come to terms with social media campaigns for organs from strangers, even though there's a clear preference for the NHS altruistic donor scheme. But Lesley discovers another internet innovation: websites that allow kidney patients to advertise for a prospective donor, have been frozen out as clinical teams have voted with their feet and refused to deal with them.
An American website, matchingdonors.com, launched in the UK in 2012 and sent policy makers and clinicians in the organ transplant field into multiple huddles.
The final ruling was that websites like this could operate as long as no fees were paid (matchingdonors.com didn't charge UK kidney patients a fee but they do charge $595 to USA patients for a lifetime membership). Over 100 UK patients and over 300 UK donors were registered at the site.
But as Lesley finds out, in five years, not one transplant has happened through this website. Patients told her their transplant teams simply refused to deal with it, and the former chair of the ethics committee of the British Transplantation Society, Professor Vassilios Papalois, argues that clinicians have autonomy and if they're not comfortable with the idea of a matching organ website, they're under no obligation to proceed. He finds the idea of a matching website ethically objectionable, he tells Lesley, and he wouldn't personally sanction it either.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest weather forecast.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Hardeep Singh Koli chooses his BBC Radio highlights.
Kirsty has a day to remember, and there is a family gathering at Home Farm.
Coverage of the results of the 2017 French presidential election.
Is crime rising?
Last week saw the release of the latest batch of crime statistics for England and Wales. The figures showed a shocking 21% rise in homicides and a 19% rise in violent crime. Crime Policy expert Tom Gash explains why you should always read the footnotes on statistical releases and why violence might not mean what you think it means.
Help for number-phobes
The term 'maths anxiety' has become more popular in recent times, people who are scared of or hate numbers. We found an organisation that is determined to help. Citizen Maths is a free online course designed to help adults become more confident with maths in both work and everyday life. To test this out we found a digit dodging colleague willing to give the course a try. Noel-Ann Bradshaw from Citizen Maths spoke to us about the state of maths in Britain today.
When is a cut not a cut?
This week Jeremy Corbyn sent out a Tweet stating that if elected, Labour would stop Conservative cuts of £22 billion to the NHS. The NHS is certainly facing funding difficulties over the coming years with a rising and ageing population. But we explain how it's not correct to suggest that funding is being cut.
The mathematics of mazes
Children love a maze. Adults love a maze. And it seems mathematicians love them too. We send Jordan Dunbar to Crystal Palace with maze expert Dr Ruth Dalton, to put some classic mathematical methods to the test.
But can a wooden die, some office post-it notes and a thorough understanding of mathematical probability really save Jordan when he gets lost amidst the hedges?
Presenter: Tim Harford
Producer: Charlotte McDonald.
Matthew Bannister on
Robert Pirsig, author of the best selling book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Shobha Nehru, the Hungarian woman who married into India's most powerful political dynasty - and used her position to confront Prime Minister Indira Ghandi about human rights abuses.
Michael Ballhaus, the cinematographer who worked closely with Martin Scorsese.
Leo Baxendale, the cartoonist and publisher who created the Bash Street Kids and Minnie the Minx.
And Bruce Langhorne, the guitarist on some of Bob Dylan's best known songs.
Producer: Neil George.
The Kremlin has been flexing economic and political muscles on the world stage but the Russian economy is struggling to keep up. Plunging oil prices, U.S. and European sanctions over Ukraine and military operations in Syria have all taken their toll. People across the country are feeling the pinch but rural areas are the hardest hit - much of the countryside is empty and dying. Almost 36,000 villages, or one in four, have 10 residents or fewer. Another 20,000 are abandoned, according to the latest census. Young people left long ago for cities and towns - the collective farms which once would have employed them disappeared along with the USSR.
It's a bleak picture but some young businessmen and women are trying to revive Russia's dying villages with a mixture of traditional craftsmanship, social enterprise and shrewd marketing.
In the impoverished Pskov Region, Kirill Vasilev employs 15 villagers to make Valenki -felt boots made from dried sheep's wool, the footwear of peasants and tsars for centuries. Traditionally, valenki come in brown, black, gray and white, but Vasilev produces versions in a variety of bright colours which he sells in a fashionable part of his native St Petersburg. Now he has plans to expand to London and New York. He is inspired by the world-famous UGG boots and Crocs, which also had their origins in ethnic footwear for Australian and Dutch farmers.
Will he succeed and what difference could it make to the village of Dolostsy on the Belarusian border?
Lucy Ash visits Kirill Vasilev at his Valenki workshop, meets his employees and finds out more about the challenges facing small businesses in Russia.
Produced and presented by Lucy Ash.
Carolyn Quinn and guests discuss the outcome of the French presidential election and its likely impact on the Brexit process.
With Francine Stock.
Jessica Chastain, the star of Miss Sloane, tells Francine why it's about time that we saw more women being ambitious, complicated and unlikeable on screen.
Matthew Sweet discusses the career of a screen icon who was briefly bigger than James Bond - Norman Wisdom.
The A to Z of film-makers continues with the letter G. This week it's French experimentalist Jean-Luc Godard versus English visionary Jonathan Glazer.
Journalist Remona Aly discovers the power of seclusion.
Throughout centuries, individuals of many faiths, cultures and disciplines have argued that seclusion is the key to unlock the mysteries both of the self and of the divine.
According to Remona, in today's connected world finding solitude has become a lost art. In fact, western culture tends to equate a desire for solitude with people who are lonely or anti-social, but there are many physical and psychological benefits to spending time alone.
Throughout time, seekers of all faith traditions have been drawn to solitude as a way of deepening their relationship with God. Remona offers the lives of the Prophet Muhammad and Imam al-Ghazali as leading examples of how seclusion can lead to overwhelming personal revelations and radical change in society.
The work of Beethoven is also examined as his phase of seclusion lead him to produce some of the most extraordinary symphonies of his career.
Remona also reflects on her own personal time of seclusion before dawn, leaving her bed to take part in a voluntary prayer known in Arabic as Tahajjud - a sacred time which she describes as therapy for the soul.
Presenter: Remona Aly
Producer: Jonathan O'Sullivan
A TBI Media production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
Disaster insurers: Laurie Taylor talks to Rebecca Bednarek, Senior Lecturer in Management at Birkbeck, University of London, about a study into a global re-insurance market in which 'Acts of God' provide formidable opportunities for financial markets. Also, amateur traders: why do they risk so much for so little? Alex Preda, Professor of Accounting, Accountability and Financial Management at King's College, London, explores how ordinary people take up financial trading in a world far removed from the glamour and wealth of investment bankers. They're joined by Dan Barnes, the business journalist.
Producer: Jayne Egerton.
This week's Bells on Sunday comes from Holy Trinity Church, Bradford on Avon in Wiltshire. The tower contains a peal of eight bells from various foundries. The two oldest, numbers five and seven, were cast in 1614.
The thirty hundredweight tenor was cast in Bristol in 1882 and is tuned to D Flat. We hear them now ringing Grandsire Triples.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with the Revd Dr Kirsty Thorpe.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
The latest weather forecast for farmers.
Tweet of the Day has captivated the Radio 4 audience with its daily 90 seconds of birdsong. But what of the listener to this avian chorus? In this new series of Tweet of the Day, we bring to the airwaves the conversational voices of those who listen to and are inspired by birds. Building on the previous series, a more informal approach to learning alongside a renewed emphasis on encounter with nature and reflection in our relationship with the natural world.
For this first programme, folk musician and Mercury Prize nominee Sam Lee considers the nightingale, that amazing songster which can use two voice boxes to produce over 200 different styles of phrasing; enriching the gathering darkness for those fortunate enough to hear. Having sung with nightingales in Sussex woodlands for many years, for Sam that richness of the male nightingale territorial song, is mesmeric.
Producer Maggie Ayre.
News and current affairs. Includes Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
On Start the Week Andrew Marr talks to the writer and performer Kate Tempest about her desire to bring out the epic in everyday lives, and to show the poetry in lived experience. Tracy Chevalier has taken the themes of Shakespeare's Othello and transported them to a US elementary school, while Hanif Kureishi mines the dark world of jealousy and revenge in his latest novel. Lewis Hyde looks back to mythical mischief makers from Hermes to Loki to celebrate modern day rule breakers as the shapers of culture.
Producer: Katy Hickman
Image: Kate Tempest Photographer: Hayley Louisa Brown.
Pulitzer Prize winning author Richard Ford tells us the stories of his parents, taken from a newly published memoir.
After his parents married they took to the road. Father worked at the Faultless Company, which took them to "Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, and a small part of Tennessee, a slice of Florida, a corner of Texas, all of Mississippi." On the road they stayed at motels and ate in diners. They had fun. They 'roistered'.
Abridged by Katrin Williams
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Episode One
Uplifting comedy drama about the life, loves and misadventures of wheelchair user Maz.
Maz's first day with her support worker Hayley doesn't go quite as planned.
Written by Lou Ramsden
Produced by Charlotte Riches
The drama is inspired by the adventures and experiences of Cherylee Houston.
Grace Dent follows an independent candidate in his colourful campaign to be elected mayor.
Producer: Laurence Grissell.
by Ed Harris
Comic adventures with Dot and the gals from personnel. The fellas are going squiffy over Myrtle's new gnashers, as Hollywood beckons how will Dot take the news she is no longer the star of her own show. Ed Harris' rollicking war time comedy set in the personnel department of the Cabinet Rooms. Stars Fenella Woolgar.
Producer/Director, Jessica Mitic
Ed Harris has written extensively for radio. In 2013 he won the Radio Academy Award for Best Drama for his War time thriller, 'The Resistance of Mrs Brown'. In 2011 he won the Writer's Guild Award for 'Troll' and was nominated for the Prix Europa for his play for BBC Radio 3: 'The Wall'.
Fenella Woolgar won the Clarence Derwent Award for her role in 'Hedda Gabler' at the Old Vic and most recently played Margaret Thatcher in 'Handbagged' at the Vaudeville Theatre, London.
Kate O'Flynn has been nominated for an Olivier Award for Best actress in a supporting role in The Glass Menagerie at Duke of York's theatre. She also won the Critics Circle Award winner 2013 Most Promising Newcomer for 'Port' at the National Theatre.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
On this day in 1917, meat-free days in restaurants were revoked, following successful voluntary rationing, and Victor Lumley arrives home on leave in need of a good steak.
Written by Sebastian Baczkiewicz
Directed by Jessica Dromgoole.
A senior figure at Barclays Bank has told You & Yours that people need to take more personal responsibility to protect themselves against fraud. Several listeners have told us that banks could be more supportive and flexible in helping elderly and vulnerable people to avoid becoming victims of fraud. But Ashok Vaswani, the head of personal and corporate banking at Barclays, says customers need to do more themselves. What can ordinary customers do to stay safe and what more could banks do to help?
Food and drink manufacturers are warning that further health taxes on food could cost jobs. A "sugar tax" on soft drinks has been rushed through parliament and will come into force next April. Campaigners want more levies on sugary and fatty foods, believing they are an effective way to tackle the obesity crisis. In 1980 not even one in ten of us was obese. Now it's one in four. The Food and Drink Federation says further levies would drive companies and jobs out of the UK. We examine the arguments and ask if taxes are a reasonable way to encourage healthy eating.
Winding back the mileage on a used car is one of the oldest tricks used by unscrupulous dealers to increase how much they can get for a car. But new figures suggest that "clocking" as it's known, is increasing. Modern digital odometers are easy to adjust and there are many companies that will do it for you. It's thought that car leasing deals, with limited mileage, are partly behind the increased demand for clocking. The EU plans to ban "mileage correction" services next year, but how will it be enforced and how can motorists tell if a car has been "clocked"?
Producer: Jonathan Hallewell
Presenter: Melanie Abbott.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
Rory Sutherland explores how a three-word slogan transformed a mundane sports good into an entire lifestyle philosophy, and generated a marketer's most precious quality: cool.
In 1987, Nike's fortunes were on the slide. Overtaken by rival sports companies in market share, profits nosediving - the brand even found themselves being sued by The Beatles. Yet by the end of the decade, three little words had utterly altered their fortunes: a slogan that ditched the hi-tech athletic geekery of their previous campaigns and sold a feeling, a lifestyle, a philosophy. Just Do It.
How does a product move beyond mere utility and come to embody a zeitgeist? And should "cool" brands aim to cultivate an air - and a consumer base - of loyal specialists - or make that "cool" available to a mass market? Nike insiders Scott Bedbury and Liz Dolan tell the turbulent story of the early Just Do It campaign - featuring divorces, serial killers, and a badly-translated Maasai warrior - whilst Rory speaks to marketing guru Byron Sharp and evolutionary psychologist Nichola Raihani about our desire to, as Apple once put, "Think Different".
Producer: Steven Rajam
---
Why do certain marketing campaigns - from Nike's "Just Do It" to the MND Ice Bucket Challenge - cast such a spell over us? Rory Sutherland explores the story - and the psychology - behind ten of the most influential campaigns in history - with first-hand accounts from the creative minds that conceived them, and contributions from the worlds of evolutionary biology, behavioural psychology, socio-economics and anthropology.
Marketing. It's come to be one of the most misunderstood - and maligned - disciplines of our age: perceived variously as the Emperor's New Clothes, an emblem of the ills of capitalism, a shadowy dark art designed to steal away our hard-earned money and make us do (or buy, or vote for) things we don't want.
Yet marketing is undeniably a key part of contemporary culture. It's a science that's fundamentally about human behaviour - marketers, to some extent, understand us better than we know ourselves - and in the most successful campaigns we find our deepest emotions and urges, from altruism to shame, hope to bravado, systematically tapped into and drawn upon.
But what are these primal behaviours that the best campaigns evoke in us - and how do they harness them? Is marketing purely about commercial gain or can it underpin real common good and societal progress? And does the discipline manipulate our subconscious instincts and emotions - or simply hold a mirror to them?
Over ten episodes, senior advertising creative and Spectator writer Rory Sutherland unravels the story of some of the most powerful, brilliant and influential campaigns of our age. Set alongside personal testimonies from the brilliant minds that created them, we'll hear from a host of experts - from biologists to philosophers, novelists to economists - about how these campaigns got under our skin and proved to be so influential.
Contributors include: writer and former copywriter Fay Weldon; social behaviourist and expert on altruism Nicola Raihani; Alexander Nix, CEO of big data analysts Cambridge Analytica; philosopher Andy Martin; writer on Islamic issues and advisor to the world's first Islamic branding consultancy, Shelina Janmohamed; and evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller.
by Amy Rosenthal
To complement the last 2 Saturday Plays by her father - Jack Rosenthal's "Eskimo Day" and "Cold Enough for Snow" - this is Amy's tribute to him, inspired by an unusual pact they made when she - very reluctantly - went to university in 1993.
Produced and directed by Marion Nancarrow
This affectionate tribute from playwright Amy Rosenthal to her father - the award-winning dramatist and writer Jack Rosenthal - is part of a trilogy of plays being broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Amy has adapted 2 of his plays - "Eskimo Day" and "Cold Enough for Snow" - for radio and they were broadcast in the last 2 Saturday Drama slots (available on BBC iPlayer for a month). His plays looked at empty nest syndrome from the parents' point of view. Her play looks at it - but, as she describes it, from the point of view of the bird! Amy introduces her play and talks about how her perspective on her father's plays and stories has changed with the distance of twenty years. Jack Rosenthal died in 2004.
(16/17)
Russell Davies chairs the contest to decide who takes the last of the four places in the 2017 Final.
To jump the final hurdle the semi-finalists will need to know which languages appear on the Rosetta Stone, the year of the St Valentine's Day Massacre, and the name of the actress who played Jane to Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan - among many other questions.
As always, there's also a chance for a listener to stump the competitors with cunning questions of his or her own devising.
Producer: Paul Bajoria.
The comedian and actor Liz Carr, who plays Clarissa in Silent Witness, chooses the words and poetry that inspire her one way or another. Expect the unexpected in her choices which range from Laura Hershey's poem You Get Proud by Practicing to Peter Falk's memoir on playing Detective Columbo as well as an extract from her Dad's PHD in Chemistry and her own childhood poems on being 7 by Elizabeth Anne Carr.
She's joined on stage at the Radio Theatre by her friends Penny Pepper and Daniel Weyman who plays her on screen husband.
Producer: Maggie Ayre.
In this episode, Aleks Krotoski finds out about an online community who believe in a film that doesn't exist.
She also contemplates base reality with cognitive neuroscientist Donald Hoffman and asks if technologist Elon Musk was on to something when he declared last year that we're living in a computer simulation.
Producer: Caitlin Smith.
Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
David Mitchell hosts the panel game in which four comedians are encouraged to tell lies and compete against one another to see how many items of truth they're able to smuggle past their opponents.
Holly Walsh, Mark Steel, Elis James and Frankie Boyle are the panellists obliged to talk with deliberate inaccuracy on subjects as varied as Delia Smith, robots, rain and Facebook.
Produced by Jon Naismith
A Random Entertainment production for BBC Radio 4.
Jill has a bone to pick with David, and Pip does not want to be a burden.
Arts news, interviews and reviews.
Just two centuries ago, no one had a clue where the borders of the USA actually were. Hemmed in by the Atlantic, the Appalachian mountains and Canada to the north, early Americans could only dream of the massive territory Donald Trump and his government control today. So why is the border with Mexico where it runs today? For that matter what fixed Canadian border? The answer to both questions is war.
Misha Glenny and producer Miles Warde travel across Texas and into Mexico to find out what defined the USA in the south. This is fringeland where multiple cultures collide. Local response to the President's wall proposal is not what you'd expect. With contributions from Andres Resendez, Kate Betts of the Bullock State Museum in Austin and Clive Webb on the history of the line in the south; plus Margaret MacMillan, Kathleen Burk and Alan Taylor on the numerous wars that shaped the frontier in the north.
Since the beginning of time, man has lived in awe and fear of death, and every culture has faced its mystery through intricate and often ancient rituals. Few, however, are as extreme as those of the Torajan people on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Here, the dead are a constant presence, with corpses often kept in family homes for many years. When funerals are eventually held, they don't mean goodbye. Once every couple of years, the dead are dug back out for a big family reunion. Is this a morbid obsession? Or could it be a positive way of dealing with the grief of losing a loved one? For Crossing Continents, Sahar Zand enters these remarkable communities where the dividing line between this world and the next is like a thin veil - a place with lessons for all of us. Exploring these traditions, Sahar seeks to understand the Torajan way of death and finds it changing her own thinking towards the loss of her own father.
Producers Rebecca Henschke and Bob Howard.
Oxygen appeared on earth over 2 billion years ago, and life took off. Now it makes up just over a fifth of the air. Trevor Cox tells the story of oxygen on earth and in space.
The latest weather forecast.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
The author of the global phenomenon 'The Girl on the Train' returns with 'Into the Water', her addictive new novel of psychological suspense.
A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged.
Left behind is a lonely fifteen-year-old girl. Parentless and friendless, she now finds herself in the care of her mother's sister, a fearful stranger who has been dragged back to the place she deliberately ran from-a place to which she vowed she'd never return.
Beware a calm surface-you never know what lies beneath.
Cast: Siân Brooke, Lily Loveless, Arthur Darvill, Lynda Baron, Bryan Dick, Elizabeth Berrington, Natasha Little, Sarah Ridgeway, Kai Alexander and Sean Baker.
Michael Rosen and Dr Laura Wright interview the eminent US linguist George Lakoff about the new political words coming out of the US right now, mainly from the alt-right, and the effectiveness of Trump's use of language. George Lakoff is the former Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. His thesis is that people's lives are significantly influenced by the central metaphors they use, whatever their political beliefs, and that how information is framed is crucial in how it is received.
Producer Beth O'Dea.
Episode 1: The Script Supervisor
Film presenter Antonia Quirke reports from the set of the new Richard Eyre film The Children Act to examine the essential and often undervalued role of script supervisor. She talks with Susanna Lenton about her work and responsibilities in managing continuity for this movie including the movements of actors, props and set dressing during a scene.
Another modern day script supervisor Karen Jones whose film credits include Stage Beauty and Rush explains to Antonia some of the bizarre tasks and unique skills required to work in this area of film, along with her relationship with actors and directors and how the demands of the job envelope her life.
In the early days of Cinema the script supervisor was usually called the script girl as the role was mainly associated with women. Antonia meets with Britain's most famous script girl Angela Allen whose credits boast major films such as The African Queen and The Third Man and working with Marilyn Monroe and Clarke Gable.
Antonia also travels to Paris to meet with Allen's French equivalent Sylvette Baudrot whose career started in 1950 on the Jean Cocteau film Orpheus and is still working, providing continuity assistance for the latest Roman Polanski movie.
In film work today a director will rewind his material very quickly to take a look digitally in the camera at who was standing where and who was doing what. In the old days of actual film, this was impossible. It was all in the script girl's head. As Antonia discovers they were, in their own way very powerful and over the years many of the leading directors have come to rely heavily on them.
Producer: Stephen Garner.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with the Revd Dr Kirsty Thorpe.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
Worcestershire lawyer Mat Waddington recounts an encounter with a long tailed tit tapping at his window, his girlfriend at the other end of the village was similarly visited by a long tailed window tapper. Was this the same bird flying between the two houses which Mat describes as being the lovebird of Hallow?
Tweet of the Day has captivated the Radio 4 audience with its daily 90 seconds of birdsong. But what of the listener to this avian chorus? In this new series of Tweet of the Day, we bring to the airwaves the conversational voices of those who listen to and are inspired by birds. Building on the previous series, a more informal approach to learning alongside a renewed emphasis on encounter with nature and reflection in our relationship with the natural world.
Producer Maggie Ayre.
News and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
For a long time Fay Dowker was mathematically precocious, but emotionally uncertain.These days, despite working in an area with few academic allies, she is more confident than ever. Fay started her Life Scientific with Stephen Hawking as her supervisor, working on the assumption that the texture of the universe was continuous and smooth. Mid-career, she changed her mind. She now works on casual set theory, a mathematical description of the universe based on the idea that there are 'atoms' of space-time. Down at the tiniest scale imaginable, the universe is granular, made of discrete entities that represent a point in space and a moment in time.
Most theoretical physicists were shocked to discover in 1998 that the expansion rate of the universe was accelerating. Not the casual set theorists who had predicted that this would be the case. And, if casual set theory right, there will be no need to explain dark energy, an idea which seems just wacky and a little bit malicious to Fay.
Producer: Anna Buckley.
BBC presenter Jane Hill's father and uncle both lived with Parkinson's disease and, in the first of two programmes about people from families with inherited genetic disorders, she meets Caroline Harding. Caroline talks about her decision whether or not to have her second and third children tested after her first child was born with the rare condition HED (hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia).
Producer: Sally Heaven.
Pulitzer Prize winning Richard Ford tells us the stories of his parents, taken from a newly published memoir.
Father's job was going well: "Near the time I was ten, in 1954, I became aware that my father had begun to crave the suburbs". Which meant a bright new house and a gleaming new car on the drive, an Oldsmobile. But darker times lie ahead..
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Tinsel Girl and the Support Worker
Episode Two
Maz wonders how to clear the air with Hayley after her early morning intrusion.
Written by Lou Ramsden
Produced by Charlotte Riches
The drama is inspired by the adventures and experiences of Cherylee Houston.
From the origins of the universe, though batteries, glass and grease to influencing the working of our brains, Neuroscientist Sophie Scott tracks the incredible power of lithium.
Its 200 years ago this year that lithium was first isolated and named, but this, the lightest of all metals, had been used as a drug for centuries before.
From the industrial revolution it proves its worth as a key ingredient in glass and grease, and as the major component in lithium ion batteries it powers every smartphone on the planet.
In mental health lithium has proved one of the most effective treatments. And its use to treat physical ailments is now making a comeback.
We explore how the chemistry of lithium links all these apparently unrelated uses together.
Amongst the welter of manuscripts by Verdi, Puccini, Rossini and Donizetti, the Ricordi Archive in Milan has several musical treasures outside the Operatic repertoire. In today's 'Tales from the Stave' the Archive's Director Pierluigi Ledda hosts Frances Fyfield and a team including musicologist Nigel Simeone and the young Italian Conductor Francesco Cilluffo as they explore the manuscript of Ottorino Respighi's Roman Trilogy. The three Symphonic Poems, The Pines, The Fountains and The Festivals of Rome are by far Respighi's most famous works. Written in the early decades of the 20th century they are full of thrilling Orchestral colours and a smattering of the very latest technology, including what may well be the first use of a Gramophone record.
They describe three quintessentially Roman scenes and events, capturing and celebrating the city's ancient heritage in a brilliant 20th century light.
The careful, neat hand of the manuscripts tells of the Respighi's influences which range from the Northern Europeans like Rimsky-Korsakov and Richard Strauss to the early Italian composers he also sought to celebrate throughout his life.
Producer: Tom Alban.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
On this day in 1917, the Stockholm Conference refused entry to anyone on the side of the German Imperialists, and Mrs Edkins thinks there's a plot against her.
Written by Sebastian Baczkiewicz
Directed by Jessica Dromgoole.
Consumer phone-in.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
From 'Mad Men' to 'Math Men'. What does Big Data mean for the future of marketing?
'Big Data' analysts Cambridge Analytica made headlines last year when they played a key role in Donald Trump's successful presidential campaign - using psycho-graphic profiling, social media surveys and vast arrays of highly-targeted demographic data to build, they say, a detailed profile of every single voter in the United States. And now, the reach of big data is beginning to extend to every corner of the marketing landscape.
Rory Sutherland meets Cambridge Analytica's CEO, Alexander Nix, to explore the ethical issues when a campaign becomes less about message and manifesto, and more about demographics and targets? And Go Compare's Marketing Director Nick Hall makes the case for old-school mass marketing in the intensely competitive world of insurance comparison sites.
Producer: Michael Surcombe
---
Why do certain marketing campaigns - from Nike's "Just Do It" to the MND Ice Bucket Challenge - cast such a spell over us? Rory Sutherland explores the story - and the psychology - behind ten of the most influential campaigns in history - with first-hand accounts from the creative minds that conceived them, and contributions from the worlds of evolutionary biology, behavioural psychology, socio-economics and anthropology.
Marketing. It's come to be one of the most misunderstood - and maligned - disciplines of our age: perceived variously as the Emperor's New Clothes, an emblem of the ills of capitalism, a shadowy dark art designed to steal away our hard-earned money and make us do (or buy, or vote for) things we don't want.
Yet marketing is undeniably a key part of contemporary culture. It's a science that's fundamentally about human behaviour - marketers, to some extent, understand us better than we know ourselves - and in the most successful campaigns we find our deepest emotions and urges, from altruism to shame, hope to bravado, systematically tapped into and drawn upon.
But what are these primal behaviours that the best campaigns evoke in us - and how do they harness them? Is marketing purely about commercial gain or can it underpin real common good and societal progress? And does the discipline manipulate our subconscious instincts and emotions - or simply hold a mirror to them?
Over ten episodes, senior advertising creative and Spectator writer Rory Sutherland unravels the story of some of the most powerful, brilliant and influential campaigns of our age. Set alongside personal testimonies from the brilliant minds that created them, we'll hear from a host of experts - from biologists to philosophers, novelists to economists - about how these campaigns got under our skin and proved to be so influential.
Contributors include: writer and former copywriter Fay Weldon; social behaviourist and expert on altruism Nicola Raihani; Alexander Nix, CEO of big data analysts Cambridge Analytica; philosopher Andy Martin; writer on Islamic issues and advisor to the world's first Islamic branding consultancy, Shelina Janmohamed; and evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miler.
While betrayals and counter-betrayals dominate Gregor's (Rufus Wright) every waking moment, and the young puppet Sultan, Madu (Danny Ashok), becomes increasingly reckless in his quest to satisfy his cravings, Gregor's niece Manel (Aiysha Hart) is sent by her rebel comrades into the desert on a mission to kill.
What she discovers there is a threat even deadlier than Tumanbay's brutal new rulers.
Tumanbay is created by John Dryden and Mike Walker and inspired by the Mamluk slave rulers of Egypt.
Original Music by Sacha Puttnam and Jon Ouin
Sound Design by Steve Bond
Sound Edited by James Morgan and Andreina Gomez
Script Edited by Abigail Youngman
Produced by Emma Hearn, Nadir Khan and John Dryden
Written by Ayeesha Menon
Directed by John Dryden
A Goldhawk production for BBC Radio 4.
The penguins of the Falkland Islands have thrived since the war of 1982, protected from human interference by Argentine landmines. Peter Gibbs finds out what happens when the mines are cleared.
Producer: Matthew Teller.
Michael Rosen and Dr Laura Wright answer listeners' questions from the Word of Mouth inbox and postbag. They're joined by guests, Katherine Fry and Rowena Kirton, authors of the book 'Grammar for Grown-Ups' to talk about everything from your grammar gripes to queries about why everyone seems to be using or abusing the word ''literally' lately.
Producer: Sarah Addezio.
For Steven Knight, the screen writer and director of Peaky Blinders and Taboo, it was easy to nominate his great life. For him there was just one choice, his all- time hero Sitting Bull. As a young boy growing up in Birmingham in the 1970s, Steven was obsessed with stories and tales of Native Indians. At the age of 13, Steven searched for pen-pals and ended up exchanging letters with the great grand-children of Sitting Bull who lived in South Dakota. The correspondence and friendship he built up has continued into his adult life.
Steven, makes his case for why Sitting Bull is a great life and to help unravel this story he is joined by Jacqueline Fear-Segal, Professor of American and Indigenous Histories at the University of East Anglia. The presenter is Matthew Parris and the producer is Perminder Khatkar.
Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
One of Britain's finest comedians, Rob Newman, is our guide on a unique audio odyssey of the brain, taking in everything from love and guilt to robot co-workers and the unlikely importance of prehistoric trousers.
It's a witty, fact-packed series mixing stand-up and sketches, challenging notions of neuroscience with a new theory that's equal parts enlightening and hilarious.
Rob offers an alternative to some of the more bizarre claims in modern popular science, as well as rejigging theories of our brains in light of what we know about nature, artificial intelligence and Belinda Carlisle.
Created by the award-winning team behind Robert Newman's Entirely Accurate Encyclopaedia of Evolution.
Written by and starring Rob Newman
Co-starring Claire Price and Richard McCabe
Producer: Jon Harvey
Executive Producer: Richard Wilson
A Hat Trick production for BBC Radio 4.
Peggy has to make a tough decision, and Brian has a sudden realisation.
Arts news, interviews and reviews.
On April 6th 1917, America finally entered the Great War on the side of the Entente powers. It seemed a stunning volte face by the progressive intellectual President Woodrow Wilson, elected for a second term on the promise of the man who 'kept us out of the war.' What followed was an even more stunning transformation of American society and its role in world affairs. This programme explores the convulsions that carried America to war and placed it centre stage in world affairs.
America was deeply divided on the issue of war. 'Over there' was both the recent past for millions of its new immigrant citizens and a no-no for the deep isolationist streak that ran through the American psyche. Foreign wars were not its affair. America boasted an army tiny by European standards, no air force and, apart from skirmishes in Latin America and the searing experience of the Civil War, precious little experience of major warfare. The U.S. was ill prepared for the transformation into a total war society, something that had begun piecemeal in Europe, would be giddily experienced in America. Civil liberties were cast aside, internal dissent was stifled and a vast and modern advertising campaign to sell the war to the public was launched with little thought to its effects, and with almost no oversight.
When the Doughboys finally arrived in the Spring of 1918 they fought for 200 days but lost more men from disease than in combat. The impact of the war at home would soon wane & President Wilson's desire for a lasting and just peace would be frustrated. Historian Adam Smith travels to Washington & Hoboken-departure point for 2 million troops and to the former battlefield & cemetery of Meuse-Argonne.
Producer: Mark Burman.
News, views and information for people who are blind or partially sighted.
Claudia Hammond explores the latest developments in the worlds of psychology, neuroscience and mental health.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
The author of the global phenomenon 'The Girl on the Train' returns with 'Into the Water', her addictive new novel of psychological suspense.
A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged.
Left behind is a lonely fifteen-year-old girl. Parentless and friendless, she now finds herself in the care of her mother's sister, a fearful stranger who has been dragged back to the place she deliberately ran from-a place to which she vowed she'd never return.
Beware a calm surface-you never know what lies beneath.
Cast: Siân Brooke, Lily Loveless, Arthur Darvill, Lynda Baron, Bryan Dick, Elizabeth Berrington, Natasha Little, Sarah Ridgeway, Kai Alexander and Sean Baker.
Comedy's best kept secret ingredient returns with another series of his own sketch show. In this episode, Kevin Eldon and his all-important cast return with sketches about the Napoleonic Wars, boiler parts and a nice rollercoaster.
Kevin Eldon is a comedy phenomenon. He's been in virtually every major comedy show in the last fifteen years, but not content with working with the likes of Chris Morris, Steve Coogan, Armando Iannucci, Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse, Stewart Lee, Julia Davis and Graham Linehan, he's also created his own comedy series for BBC Radio 4.
After all the waiting - Kevin Eldon Will See You Now.
Also starring Amelia Bullmore (I'm Alan Partridge, Scott & Bailey), Julia Davis (Nighty Night), Paul Putner (Little Britain), Justin Edwards (The Thick Of It), David Reed (The Penny Dreadfuls) and Rosie Cavaliero (Alan Partridge, Harry and Paul).
Written by Kevin Eldon with additional material by Jason Hazeley and Joel Morris (A Touch Of Cloth and, yes, those modern Ladybird books)
Original music by Martin Bird
Produced and directed by David Tyler
A Pozzitive production for BBC Radio 4.
EP 2 How Richard Burton got his Voice
Film presenter Antonia Quirke reports from Pontrhydyfen a small village in the Afan Valley, in Neath Port Talbot Port Talbot in South Wales which is the birthplace of one of her favourite movie actors; Richard Burton. Here she uncovers the development of his cinematic voice.
In this programme Antonia uses Burton's voice to illustrate how cinematic voices have changed and she meets with leading dialect coach Penny Dyer to deconstruct it along with examining the new methods deployed in today's films
Richard Burton had a strong Welsh accent and a weak voice as a child. However when his adoptive father saw how talented he was at remembering Shakespeare and other poetry, he ironed out the Welsh accent and took him outside to the valleys to project loudly across them. For months and years the young Richard did this - literally yelling King Lear across the mountains - until he arrived at the incomparably strong almost-Welsh voice we know and love.
Burton's voice was idiosyncratic, often strange and powerful with unusual speech patterns. His public and private voice was one and the same.
Sian Phillips discusses her film roles alongside Burton, and in a new study, cultural historian Peter Stead tells how Burton's Welshness shaped his character and career.
We also hear from actor and voice over artist Simon Greenall and impressionist Jon Culshaw who dissect Burton's voice and reveal how they create their own vocal sounds and adapt their mimicry. .
Producer: Stephen Garner.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with the Revd Dr Kirsty Thorpe.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
Tweet of the Day has captivated the Radio 4 audience with its daily 90 seconds of birdsong. But what of the listener to this avian chorus? In this new series of Tweet of the Day, we bring to the airwaves the conversational voices of those who listen to and are inspired by birds. Building on the previous series, a more informal approach to learning alongside a renewed emphasis on encounter with nature and reflection in our relationship with the natural world.
In this programme young girl Gabi Mann recalls how she became friends with American crows in her suburban garden in Seattle, one of whom she named Baby Face. She and her mother began feeding the crows regularly in 2011 and soon the crows began bringing Gabi gifts. Over time these trinckets and corvid offerings amounted to a sizable hoard which Gabi treasures.
Producer Maggie Ayre.
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Series in which two artists discuss creative questions.
For the first time in his illustrious career, John Cleese tries his hand at being a BBC radio disc jockey. Which he discovers isn't as easy as it sounds.
Starring John Cleese, Harriet Carmichael and Peter Dickson, and written by John Cleese and James Peak.
Extracts used in this programme are taken from John's audiobook of his autobiography So Anyway.
Producers: James Peak and Andre Jacquemin
A Goldhawk Essential production for BBC Radio 4.
Pulitzer Prize winning Richard Ford tells us the stories of his parents, taken from a newly published memoir.
As young marrieds they lived their lives on the road. After fifteen years of marriage, the author comes along: "All first children, certainly all only children, date the beginning of their lives as notable events." Then father dies before his time..
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Tinsel Girl and the Support Worker
Episode Three
Maz struggles to draw the line between employer and friend.
Written by Lou Ramsden
Produced by Charlotte Riches
The drama is inspired by the adventures and experiences of Cherylee Houston.
Claire surprises her husband with the lists she's made so he'll know what she wants him to do when she dies. Fi Glover presents another conversation in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
Producer: Marya Burgess.
When Snoo makes an unexpected purchase, Alice has to face an old rival, some electrical cables and a very dusty dictionary.
Meet Alice (Rebecca Front) - a former child prodigy who won a place at Oxford aged 9 but, because Daddy went too, she never needed to have any friends. She's scared of everything. Everything that is except libraries and Snoo (Morwenna Banks) - a slightly confused individual with a have-a-go attitude to life, marriage, haircuts and reality. Snoo loves books, and fully intends to read one one day.
And forever popping into the library is Dr Cadogan (Michael Fenton-Stevens) - celebrity doctor to the stars and a man with his finger in every pie. Charming, indiscreet and quite possibly wanted by Interpol, if you want a discrete nip and tuck and then photos of it accidentally left on the photocopier, Dr Cadogan is your man.
Their happy life is interrupted by the arrival of Simon Nielson (Ben Willbond), a man with a mission - a mission to close down inefficient libraries. Fortunately, he hates his mission. What he really wants to do is once - just once - get even with his inexhaustible supply of high-achieving brothers.
Written by Morwenna Banks and Rebecca Front
Based on an idea developed with Armando Iannucci
Produced by David Tyler
A Pozzitive production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
On this day in 1917, St Pauls hosted its annual festival of the Sons of the Clergy, and in Folkestone, Ralph Winwood sets about trying to put together a roll of honour for St Jude's.
Written by Sebastian Baczkiewicz
Directed by Jessica Dromgoole.
Consumer affairs programme.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
Rory Sutherland explores how the 1986 AIDS campaign "Don't Die Of Ignorance" transformed social attitudes - and potentially saved the lives of tens of thousands of people.
In 1987, as the HIV/AIDS epidemic began to spread, Conservative Health Secretary Norman Fowler instigated perhaps the most profoundly influential healthcare campaigns in British history. Artfully dodging the socially-conservative wing of his party (some of whom advocated interning HIV sufferers), a maelstrom of fear and misinformation in the press, and the dubious gaze of Margaret Thatcher, he teamed up with adman Sammy Harari to create a film that would shake people out of their ignorance, and educate them purely with the facts.
Thirty years on, Lord Fowler, Sammy Harari and HIV/AIDS activist and former Chief Executive of the Terrence Higgins Trust, Sir Nick Partridge, look back on the campaign - telling the story of how politics, medicine and creativity came together to create one of the most memorable and powerful campaigns of our time.
Producer: Steven Rajam
---
Why do certain marketing campaigns - from Nike's "Just Do It" to the MND Ice Bucket Challenge - cast such a spell over us? Rory Sutherland explores the story - and the psychology - behind ten of the most influential campaigns in history - with first-hand accounts from the creative minds that conceived them, and contributions from the worlds of evolutionary biology, behavioural psychology, socio-economics and anthropology.
Marketing. It's come to be one of the most misunderstood - and maligned - disciplines of our age: perceived variously as the Emperor's New Clothes, an emblem of the ills of capitalism, a shadowy dark art designed to steal away our hard-earned money and make us do (or buy, or vote for) things we don't want.
Yet marketing is undeniably a key part of contemporary culture. It's a science that's fundamentally about human behaviour - marketers, to some extent, understand us better than we know ourselves - and in the most successful campaigns we find our deepest emotions and urges, from altruism to shame, hope to bravado, systematically tapped into and drawn upon.
But what are these primal behaviours that the best campaigns evoke in us - and how do they harness them? Is marketing purely about commercial gain or can it underpin real common good and societal progress? And does the discipline manipulate our subconscious instincts and emotions - or simply hold a mirror to them?
Over ten episodes, senior advertising creative and Spectator writer Rory Sutherland unravels the story of some of the most powerful, brilliant and influential campaigns of our age. Set alongside personal testimonies from the brilliant minds that created them, we'll hear from a host of experts - from biologists to philosophers, novelists to economists - about how these campaigns got under our skin and proved to be so influential.
Contributors include: writer and former copywriter Fay Weldon; social behaviourist and expert on altruism Nicola Raihani; Alexander Nix, CEO of big data analysts Cambridge Analytica; philosopher Andy Martin; writer on Islamic issues and advisor to the world's first Islamic branding consultancy, Shelina Janmohamed; and evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller.
Life is a balancing act. Quite literally so - for Charles Blondin, the first man to cross Niagara Falls on a tightrope. One of the famous celebrities of the Victorian period, Blondin astounded audiences throughout the world with his death defying feats.
But there were sacrifices. Things he could not balance in life.
Now, nearing the end of his days, Blondin sees a chance to make amends while reliving his glory days through new found prodigy Billy Stoker. But Blondin does not count on violent opposition from both the boy's mother and his own wife. This could be his toughest balancing act yet.
TV and film's Philip Jackson plays Charles Blondin, and is joined by two rival soap murderesses - Eastender's Charlie Brooks and, in her radio drama debut and first role since leaving Coronation Street, Paula Lane.
Tightrope, based on true events, is a spangle encrusted confection of laughter and tears, hope and regret. Now - let's get this show on the rope!
Written by Colin Bytheway
Directed by Celia de Wolff
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
Financial phone-in.
Sociological discussion programme, presented by Laurie Taylor.
Topical programme about the fast-changing media world.
Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Justin Edwards, Mel Giedroyc and Dave Mounfield have been invited by the parishioners of the sleepy rural idyll of Great Hillston-Near-Water - birthplace of the Jacobean playwright Lydia Le Provost - to perform her most famous play, The Murderous Priest.
Justin has invited the showbiz legend and serious actress, Jane Asher, to take the leading role. It has been her lifetime ambition to perform the play's famous death scene.
The Rum Bunch is Justin Edwards (The Consultants, The Odd Half Hour, Newsjack, Sorry I've Got No Head, The Thick of It), Mel Giedroyc (Mel and Sue, Bake Off, Let It Shine) and Dave Mounfield (Count Arthur Strong, This Is Jinsy).
The house band is Jason Hazeley and David Reed - The Penny Dreadfuls.
Produced by Jim North
A Top Dog production for BBC Radio 4.
Toby is keen to impress, and Alice sounds out Adam.
Arts news, interviews and reviews.
What would it really be like to live on other planets, and what are the implications of humans colonising space?
Living in space is becoming a real prospect, as plans develop for mass space travel and discoveries are made of environments that can support life on other worlds.
Presenters Timandra Harkness and Leo Johnson travel to NASA's main space habitation research facility in Virginia, USA, to find out how humans might actually colonise deep space. They also learn about the search for alien intelligence, how private industry plans to harvest the resources of other planets, and why settling in space could offer us all a very different model of society in future.
Producer: Jonathan Brunert.
Josie Appleton argues that petty rules stifle our human responses and damage society.
Josie is Director of The Manifesto Club, which campaigns against state intrusion into everyday life. In this Four Thought, recorded at the Design Museum in London, she argues that it isn't just the state which is coming up with rules, but many other parts of civil society. She thinks we need to rally against this trend, arguing that we need to respond as normal human beings should, not according to a set of rules or policies. Our rallying cry, she said, should be simply "behave normally".
Producer: Giles Edwards.
The latest weather forecast.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
The author of the global phenomenon 'The Girl on the Train' returns with 'Into the Water', her addictive new novel of psychological suspense.
A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged.
Left behind is a lonely fifteen-year-old girl. Parentless and friendless, she now finds herself in the care of her mother's sister, a fearful stranger who has been dragged back to the place she deliberately ran from-a place to which she vowed she'd never return.
Beware a calm surface-you never know what lies beneath.
Cast: Siân Brooke, Lily Loveless, Arthur Darvill, Lynda Baron, Bryan Dick, Elizabeth Berrington, Natasha Little, Sarah Ridgeway, Kai Alexander and Sean Baker.
Psychotherapist divorcee Spencer Pandy attempts to reassert his parental credentials through the medium of a Banqueté Mexicano - though ex-wife Tina is bemused at his request for the children to arrive at 6:30 for 7.
Spencer's search for authentic corn chips and guacamole leads to him being forcibly ejected from a supermarket, arrested at Chalk Farm station and close to being reported for humiliating a distraught female client.
Children Dylan and Tilly arrive for the meal dressed as Zapatistas with huge, magic marker moustaches. Discovering the disguises have been applied by Tina's boyfriend Owen, Spencer is incensed and proceeds to have a fight with the supermarket delivery driver for being early.
A Big Talk production for BBC Radio 4.
The number one podcast for those involved or just interested in the production of beef animals and dairy herds.
This episode is a yoghurt special. We interview former child star Wendy Axminster about her time as the Rosington's Yoghurt Gooseberry Girl, and speak to GP Dr Sam Archer about how safe it is to eat a yoghurt past its sell-by date.
The original Beef And Dairy Network Podcast series can be found at www.maximumfun.org
Performed by Benjamin Partridge, Mike Wozniak, Tom Neenan and Katy Wix
Written by Benjamin Partridge, Tom Neenan and Katy Wix
Produced by Benjamin Partridge.
Poet Gillian Clarke joins presenter Verity Sharp to create and curate the festival of her wildest dreams.
It's a chance for her to set the festival's agenda - chose the guests, pick the acts, dictate the weather, the food and the ambience. A festival where anyone - dead or alive - can be summoned to perform and nothing is unimaginable.
Gillian outlines her dream festival which she's entitled "Voice in a Space". It takes place in a cave in Wales and celebrates great poetry as well as ideas around building and ambiguity. Seamus Heaney, Shakespeare and Leonard Cohen are on the bill, alongside Welsh soprano Elin Manahan Thomas and architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
Producer: Rosie Boulton
A Monty Funk production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with the Revd Dr Kirsty Thorpe.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
David Lindo, otherwise known as the urban birder, recalls his first encounter with the ring ouzel on his local patch near to Wormwood Scrubs in London.
Tweet of the Day has captivated the Radio 4 audience with its daily 90 seconds of birdsong. But what of the listener to this avian chorus? In this new series of Tweet of the Day, we bring to the airwaves the conversational voices of those who listen to and are inspired by birds. Building on the previous series, a more informal approach to learning alongside a renewed emphasis on encounter with nature and reflection in our relationship with the natural world.
Producer Maggie Ayre.
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and works of Emily Dickinson, arguably the most startling and original poet in America in the C19th. According to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, her correspondent and mentor, writing 15 years after hear death, "Few events in American literary history have been more curious than the sudden rise of Emily Dickinson into a posthumous fame only more accentuated by the utterly recluse character of her life and by her aversion to even a literary publicity." That was in 1891 and, as more of Dickinson's poems were published, and more of her remaining letters, the more the interest in her and appreciation of her grew. With her distinctive voice, her abundance, and her exploration of her private world, she is now seen by many as one of the great lyric poets.
With
Fiona Green
Linda Freedman
and
Paraic Finnerty
Producer: Simon Tillotson.
Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Ford tells us the stories of his parents, taken from a newly published memoir.
After the death of father, the family dynamics will change: "I, in fact, felt more fully in charge of myself. A sole partnership with my mother." They are close, yes, but the son must forge his own way ahead.
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Episode Four
Events come to a head with Maz and Hayley.
Written by Lou Ramsden
Produced by Charlotte Riches
The drama is inspired by the adventures and experiences of Cherylee Houston.
Reports from around the world.
Fashion historian Amber Butchart discovers what happens to the clothes we give to charity shops. Some of them can end up travelling thousands of miles and affect people's lives in ways that goes well beyond raising money for worthy causes.
In the second and concluding episode, Amber travels to Senegal, via London and Yorkshire, to trace the process that our charity clothes go through and hears about the positive and negative impacts our donations are having globally.
Producer: Phill Brown
An Alfi Media production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
On this day in 1917, British forces bombed Zeebrugge, loud enough to be heard in Folkestone, and Dorothea and Cynthia swap quiet confidences.
Written by Sebastian Baczkiewicz
Directed by Jessica Dromgoole.
Consumer affairs programme.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
Rory Sutherland looks at how certain brands, from Tupperware to Ann Summers, harness the power of social proofing: our desire to align our consumer purchases with "people like us".
Forget Facebook. Some brands have been using the power of social networks and peer-proofing for decades.
In the halcyon post-war days of the 1950s, the likes of Avon and Tupperware created the party plan concept - consumers (almost always women) coming together en masse to socialise and revel collectively, away from a societal gaze, in a desirable product. Empowering? Possibly. Effective? Certainly. And as wholesome and all-American as Mom's apple pie. At least until 1981 - and a revolutionary remix of the concept to sell a very different consumer good...
Ann Summers CEO Jacqueline Gold explains how she used ideas of social proofing to help emancipate women to buy "taboo" goods - lingerie and sex toys - in a safe, empowering social setting. Meanwhile Rory talks to psychologists Nichola Raihani and Geoffrey Miller about how our consumer decisions are influenced by our sense of collective identity.
----
Why do certain marketing campaigns - from Nike's "Just Do It" to the MND Ice Bucket Challenge - cast such a spell over us? Rory Sutherland explores the story - and the psychology - behind ten of the most influential campaigns in history - with first-hand accounts from the creative minds that conceived them, and contributions from the worlds of evolutionary biology, behavioural psychology, socio-economics and anthropology.
Marketing. It's come to be one of the most misunderstood - and maligned - disciplines of our age: perceived variously as the Emperor's New Clothes, an emblem of the ills of capitalism, a shadowy dark art designed to steal away our hard-earned money and make us do (or buy, or vote for) things we don't want.
Yet marketing is undeniably a key part of contemporary culture. It's a science that's fundamentally about human behaviour - marketers, to some extent, understand us better than we know ourselves - and in the most successful campaigns we find our deepest emotions and urges, from altruism to shame, hope to bravado, systematically tapped into and drawn upon.
But what are these primal behaviours that the best campaigns evoke in us - and how do they harness them? Is marketing purely about commercial gain or can it underpin real common good and societal progress? And does the discipline manipulate our subconscious instincts and emotions - or simply hold a mirror to them?
Over ten episodes, senior advertising creative and Spectator writer Rory Sutherland unravels the story of some of the most powerful, brilliant and influential campaigns of our age. Set alongside personal testimonies from the brilliant minds that created them, we'll hear from a host of experts - from biologists to philosophers, novelists to economists - about how these campaigns got under our skin and proved to be so influential.
Contributors include: writer and former copywriter Fay Weldon; social behaviourist and expert on altruism Nicola Raihani; Alexander Nix, CEO of big data analysts Cambridge Analytica; philosopher Andy Martin; writer on Islamic issues and advisor to the world's first Islamic branding consultancy, Shelina Janmohamed; and evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller.
by Ming Ho. A mother. A daughter. A lifetime. But what becomes of that bond, when one of you knows only the present moment - Monday, 15.36?
'You said you'd never forget me, but you have.' 'You said you'd love me forever, but you don't know who I am...'
Writer .... Ming Ho
Director .... Abigail le Fleming
Ming has written for TV series EastEnders, Casualty, Heartbeat, The Bill. Her previous stage play, Exhumation, was workshopped at the Royal Court Theatre, London, 2015. She also writes and speaks on dementia and carer issues and blogs at (Dementia Just Ain't) Sexy: http://dementiajustaintsexy.blogspot.co.uk.
Lough Neagh is the largest lake by area in the British Isles. It supplies 40% of Northern Ireland's water and today it is home to the Lough Neagh wild eel fishery. The Lough Neagh Fishermen's Co-operative sell most of the eels they catch here to markets in Holland or London but they also try to encourage local people to enjoy this delicacy. Helen Mark joins the crew onboard for the first fishing trip of the season and discovers the history and folklore which surround this stunning but sometimes treacherous piece of water.
Francine Stock talks Alien: Covenant with Ridley Scott.
Adam Rutherford explores the science that is changing our world.
Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
For the second show in the new series stand-up Alex Horne and his band explore the theme of home and leisure through live music and comedy, with songs about radiators, a pork pie and Wayne Rooney amongst others. They're joined by guest comedian Tom Basden.
Host...Alex Horne
Band...Joe Auckland, Mark Brown, Will Collier, Ben Reynolds, Ed Sheldrake
Guest... Tom Basden
Producer... Julia McKenzie.
Matt extends his network, and Usha works her magic.
Arts news, interviews and reviews.
Series looking at important issues in the news. Presented by David Aaronovitch.
We spend hours in meetings at work so what can we do to love them more? Tanya Beckett looks at the art of the meeting and asks how can we make them more productive and enjoyable.
The latest weather forecast.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
The author of the global phenomenon 'The Girl on the Train' returns with 'Into the Water', her addictive new novel of psychological suspense.
A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged.
Left behind is a lonely fifteen-year-old girl. Parentless and friendless, she now finds herself in the care of her mother's sister, a fearful stranger who has been dragged back to the place she deliberately ran from-a place to which she vowed she'd never return.
Beware a calm surface-you never know what lies beneath.
Cast: Siân Brooke, Lily Loveless, Arthur Darvill, Lynda Baron, Bryan Dick, Elizabeth Berrington, Natasha Little, Sarah Ridgeway, Kai Alexander and Sean Baker.
Jules ..... Siân Brooke
Lena ..... Lily Loveless
Erin ..... Sarah Ridgeway
Sean ..... Bryan Dick
Helen ..... Natasha Little.
Hit comedy about three marriages in various states of disrepair. Starring Jack Docherty, Kerry Godliman, John Thomson, Fiona Allen, Charlie Higson and Sally Bretton.
This week the three couples are inevitably preparing for Christmas...With all the bitterness and twistedness this time of year brings. Offensive presents. Boastful Christmas cards. And sledging accidents. What more could you possibly ask for?
Barney.... Jack Docherty
Cathy ..... Kerry Godliman
Fiona ..... Fiona Allen
Evan ..... John Thomson
David ..... Charlie Higson
Alice ..... Sally Bretton
Producer ..... Claire Jones.
Folk musician Eliza Carthy joins presenter Verity Sharp to create and curate the festival of her wildest dreams. It's a chance for Eliza to set the festival's agenda, chose the guests, pick the acts, dictate the weather, the food and the ambience. A festival where anyone - dead or alive - can be summoned to perform, and nothing is unimaginable.
Eliza outlines her dream festival which takes place at Robin Hood's Bay. Finnish folk musicians Värttinä, Italian folk group Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino and Dreadzone are on the bill alongside Freddie Mercury, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Joe Venuti, Professor Brian Cox and Abba. Everyone's there and everything's possible in Eliza's feel good festival.
Producer Rosie Boulton
A Monty Funk production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with the Revd Dr Kirsty Thorpe.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
Since a small boy, Fermanagh based bird blogger Dara Mcanulty has been enthralled by birds. For this Tweet of the Day Dara recalls the magic the surrounds the arrival of the whooper swans in winter.
Tweet of the Day has captivated the Radio 4 audience with its daily 90 seconds of birdsong. But what of the listener to this avian chorus? In this new series of Tweet of the Day, we bring to the airwaves the conversational voices of those who listen to and are inspired by birds. Building on the previous series, a more informal approach to learning alongside a renewed emphasis on encounter with nature and reflection in our relationship with the natural world.
Producer Maggie Ayre.
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Pulitzer Prize winning Richard Ford narrates the stories of his parents, taken from a newly published memoir.
It's only mother and son from now on. He moves from college graduate to established novelist and teacher, and she has some advice for him: "Richard, I'm never going to be ecstatic. It's not in my nature. Concentrate on your life. I'll take care of me." Later they talk about where she will live. With him?
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Tinsel Girl and the Support Worker
Episode Five
Maz has to deal with the fall-out of her bust up with Hayley.
Written by Lou Ramsden
Produced by Charlotte Riches
The drama is inspired by the adventures and experiences of Cherylee Houston.
The story of how one woman offered refuge to leading intellectuals fleeing from the Nazis, helping transform the cultural and intellectual landscape of Britain and the United States. Shortly after Hitler came to power, an organisation was set up in Britain to help academics who were being thrown out of their jobs in Nazi Germany. It was called the Academic Assistance Council. The council's assistant secretary, Esther Simpson, became its dynamic force. She called all the refugees she assisted her 'children'. Sixteen of them ended up as Nobel Prize winners. Many would later admit that they owed their lives to her. David Edmonds tells the unknown story of Esther Simpson and the brilliant minds she saved.
Producer Mark Savage.
(Photo credit: The Lotte Meitner-Graf Archive).
Ginny Fox and Vera Sackcloth-Vest go to Venice in search of inspiration for Ginny's new book - but unfortunately they are accompanied by their husbands, neither of whom is particularly enamoured of the place.
Apart from the smell and his fear of water, Lionel is worried about money and is anxious about the cost of the trip while Henry is worried about the cost of replacing a figurine that he inadvertently smashes whilst swatting a mosquito on their first night in the Grotti Palace Hotel.
They meet Dave Lollipop and his pneumatic German wife Frieda on the Rialto and Ginny is whisked off to see his paintings. He too has money problems and is planning to sell them to Art Connoisseur and man-eating American, Peggy Googleheim.
Meanwhile Lionel has despatched Henry and Vera to see Peggy as well, with the aim of getting her to put money into his avant garde publishing house. Peggy takes a shine to Henry's moustache and attempts to seduce him on the steps of the Campanile. But when Vera gets to hear of their kiss she explodes and tells Peggy what she thinks of her, which swiftly puts an end to Dave or Lionel extracting any cash. The trip is nothing more or nothing less than a disaster.
A Little Brother production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
On this day in 1917, the War Office announced that it would open voluntary attestation to men up to the age of 50, and Isabel assembles a mixed choir.
Singers ..... Nancy Cole, Ksynia Loeffler, Stephen Jeffes, Tom Raskin, Charles Gibbs
Organ ..... David Smith
Written by Sebastian Baczkiewicz
Singers conducted by Sam Evans
Directed by Jessica Dromgoole.
Consumer news and issues.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
Rory Sutherland explores how marketing harnesses our sense of guilt and shame to influence our consumer decisions.
Producer: Steven Rajam
---
Why do certain marketing campaigns - from Nike's "Just Do It" to the MND Ice Bucket Challenge - cast such a spell over us? Rory Sutherland explores the story - and the psychology - behind ten of the most influential campaigns in history - with first-hand accounts from the creative minds that conceived them, and contributions from the worlds of evolutionary biology, behavioural psychology, socio-economics and anthropology.
Marketing. It's come to be one of the most misunderstood - and maligned - disciplines of our age: perceived variously as the Emperor's New Clothes, an emblem of the ills of capitalism, a shadowy dark art designed to steal away our hard-earned money and make us do (or buy, or vote for) things we don't want.
Yet marketing is undeniably a key part of contemporary culture. It's a science that's fundamentally about human behaviour - marketers, to some extent, understand us better than we know ourselves - and in the most successful campaigns we find our deepest emotions and urges, from altruism to shame, hope to bravado, systematically tapped into and drawn upon.
But what are these primal behaviours that the best campaigns evoke in us - and how do they harness them? Is marketing purely about commercial gain or can it underpin real common good and societal progress? And does the discipline manipulate our subconscious instincts and emotions - or simply hold a mirror to them?
Over ten episodes, senior advertising creative and Spectator writer Rory Sutherland unravels the story of some of the most powerful, brilliant and influential campaigns of our age. Set alongside personal testimonies from the brilliant minds that created them, we'll hear from a host of experts - from biologists to philosophers, novelists to economists - about how these campaigns got under our skin and proved to be so influential.
Contributors include: writer and former copywriter Fay Weldon; social behaviourist and expert on altruism Nicola Raihani; Alexander Nix, CEO of big data analysts Cambridge Analytica; philosopher Andy Martin; writer on Islamic issues and advisor to the world's first Islamic branding consultancy, Shelina Janmohamed; and evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller.
Jessica Pidsley was in perfect health, enjoying a career as an actress, comedian and writer at the end of a straightforward pregnancy with her husband Matthew Bannister.
"I describe Albert's first weeks as 'peace and war'. I delivered Albert myself in a pool in our dining room," she says.
But what happened next, nobody could have predicted.
"I am the most unreliable of narrators to report what actually happened next. The birth was gentle and I remember feeling such love. Then came a tidal wave of terror."
During the subsequent eleven days, Jessica had only nine hours sleep.
This is her story about Post Partum Psychosis.
Writers: Jessica Pidsley and Matthew Bannister
Producer: Karen Rose
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4.
Peter Gibbs and the panel travel to Paxton near Berwick-upon-Tweed. Matt Biggs, Anne Swithinbank and Bob Flowerdew answer this week's audience questions.
Produced by Dan Cocker
Assistant producer: Laurence Bassett
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.
A journey through the weird fields of East Anglia, into the very heart of Scarecrow Country. The Mawkin is an original short work for radio by Tom Cox about uncanny landscapes,an awkward first date and getting well weathered.
Since quitting his job as The Guardian newspaper's Rock Critic in 2000,Tom Cox has written eight books, including the Sunday Times top ten bestseller The Good, The Bad And The Furry, and the follow-up Close Encounters Of The Furred Kind. He is also the creator of the much-loved @mysadcat and @myswearycat Twitter accounts. His new nature book, 21st Century Yokel, will be published in autumn by Unbound.
Written & Performed by Tom Cox
Produced by Mair Bosworth.
Obituary series, analysing and celebrating the life stories of people who have recently died.
Investigating the numbers in the news.
Carolyn found that playing a part in her friend's plans for her death helped Carolyn come to terms with her loss. Fi Glover presents another conversation in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
Producer: Marya Burgess.
Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Susan Calman , Zoe Lyons, Lloyd Langford and Hugo Rifkind are all corralled into a newsy formation by Miles Jupp
Producer: Richard Morris
A BBC Studios Production.
Toby cannot believe what he is hearing, while Lilian wants Justin to be less hard-line.
News, reviews and interviews from the worlds of art, literature, film and music.
Jonathan Dimbleby presents political debate from Scarborough YMCA Theatre in North Yorkshire with a panel including the Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott, The Co Leader of the Green Party in Enland and Wales Jonathan Bartley and the SNP's Joanna Cherry.
A reflection on a topical issue.
The fourth omnibus of Season 10, Our Daily Bread, set in Folkestone, in the week, in 1917, when the Stockholm Conference refused entry to anyone on the side of the German Imperialists
Cast
Kitty Lumley ..... Ami Metcalf
Joan Edkins ..... Rachel Davies
Ralph Winwood ..... Nick Murchie
Cynthia Hamilton ..... Fenella Woolgar
Isabel Graham ..... Keely Beresford
Lilian Frost ..... Alex Tregear
Mrs Grimes ..... Amelda Brown
Reg Roach ..... Arthur Smith
Switchboard ..... Chetna Pandya
Florrie Wilson ..... Claire Rushbrook
Hilary Pearce ..... Craige Els
Noah Hamilton ..... Finn Monteath
Sylvia Graham ..... Joanna David
Victor Lumley ..... Joel MacCormack
Forsyth ..... John Dougall
Walter Hamilton ..... Joseph Kloska
Ruby Pearce ..... Katie Redford
Juliet Cavendish ..... Lizzie Bourne
May Arnold ..... Lois Chimimba
Nancy Parker ..... Jane Whittenshaw
Gabriel Graham ..... Michael Bertenshaw
Oscar Hendrickx ..... Pierre Elliot
Dorothea Winwood ..... Rachel Shelley
Evelina White ..... Rosie Cavaliero
Norman Harris ..... Sean Baker
Carson Martindale ..... Stephen Critchlow
Alec Poole ..... Tom Stuart
Written by Sebastian Baczkiewicz
Directed by Jessica Dromgoole
Story-led by Sarah Daniels
Sound: Martha Littlehailes
Composer: Matthew Strachan
Consultant Historian: Maggie Andrews.
The latest weather forecast.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
The author of the global phenomenon 'The Girl on the Train' returns with 'Into the Water', her addictive new novel of psychological suspense.
A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged.
Left behind is a lonely fifteen-year-old girl. Parentless and friendless, she now finds herself in the care of her mother's sister, a fearful stranger who has been dragged back to the place she deliberately ran from-a place to which she vowed she'd never return.
Beware a calm surface-you never know what lies beneath.
Cast: Siân Brooke, Lily Loveless, Arthur Darvill, Lynda Baron, Bryan Dick, Elizabeth Berrington, Natasha Little, Sarah Ridgeway, Kai Alexander and Sean Baker.
Author ..... Paula Hawkins
Abridger ..... Doreen Estall
Producer ..... Gemma McMullan.
Garden designer Chris Beardshaw joins presenter Verity Sharp to create and curate the festival of his wildest dreams. It's a chance for Chris to set the festival's agenda, chose the guests, pick the acts, dictate the weather, the food and the ambience. A festival where anyone - dead or alive - can be summoned to perform, and nothing is unimaginable.
Chris outlines his dream festival which takes place in an Egyptian Death Garden. It's a festival for a tiny audience and it happens in a small space and short time frame. He wants to take time out with his loved ones to reconsider the detail of life, celebrate craftsmanship and wonder at our place in the universe. He's bringing music from Pachelbel, Brian Eno and Green Day and poetry from Theo Dorgan. He's created a Paradise and, when his festival is over, the Death Garden will be handed over to another festival goer to invite their loved ones to experience their own 24 hour festival in this very special, walled space. And so the festival will be handed ever onwards.
Producer: Rosie Boulton
A Monty Funk production for BBC Radio 4.
Mother and daughter ponder the uncertainties of cancer treatment and the final certainty. Fi Glover presents another conversation in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
Producer: Marya Burgess.