SATURDAY 08 JANUARY 2022

SAT 00:00 Midnight News (m00132yz)
The latest news and weather forecast from BBC Radio 4.


SAT 00:30 Viewfinders: Ways of Seeing at 50 (m00132xf)
Melissa Chemam - An Installation by Lubaina Himid

First broadcast in 1972 on BBC Two, Ways of Seeing was a collaboration between the writer John Berger and director Mike Dibb. Across a series of four half-hour episodes, Berger talked about how we look at art, and why it matters: "The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled ... The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe ... Every image embodies a way of seeing. Even a photograph ... Our perception or appreciation of an image depends also upon our own way of seeing". The programmes explored Walter Benjamin's ideas about the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction; the female nude and the male gaze; oil painting, status and ownership; advertising, art and commerce. The book published to accompany the series has never been out of print and has had a profound influence on popular understanding of art criticism and visual culture.

To mark the fiftieth anniversary of Ways of Seeing, Radio 4 invites five writers to tell us about a work of art that is important to them, and to reflect on how Ways of Seeing influenced their own ways of looking at - and thinking about - art.

In today's episode, we follow Bristol-based French writer Melissa Chemam to the island of Zanzibar, to the refugee camps of Calais and into galleries back in the UK: "I discovered Himid’s installation ‘Naming The Money’ almost by chance. I came upon it in 2017, at Spike Island, an art gallery here in Bristol. It was part of an exhibition called “Navigation Charts”, which felt fitting for this port city with its complex past, enriched by transatlantic trades… Sugar, tobacco and enslaved people".

Melissa Chemam is a writer and broadcaster. She has reported from the USA, Europe, and East and Central Africa for the BBC World Service, AFP, Reuters, CBC and more. She is the author of a book on Bristol's culture, 'Massive Attack - Out of the Comfort Zone' and has been the writer-in-residence at the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, UK since 2019.

John Berger was a storyteller, a novelist, a painter, a poet, a critic, a screenwriter, a playwright. He died in 2017, at the age of 90.

Produced by Mair Bosworth for BBC Audio

IMAGE CREDIT: LUBAINA HIMID, NAMING THE MONEY (2004). INSTALLATION VIEW, SPIKE ISLAND, BRISTOL (2017). COPYRIGHT LUBAINA HIMID. WORK COURTESY HOLLYBUSH GARDENS AND NATIONAL MUSEUMS, LIVERPOOL. IMAGE COPYRIGHT SPIKE ISLAND AND PHOTOGRAPHER STUART WHIPPS


SAT 00:48 Shipping Forecast (m00132z1)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping.


SAT 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (m00132z3)
BBC Radio 4 presents a selection of news and current affairs, arts and science programmes from the BBC World Service.


SAT 05:33 Shipping Forecast (m00132z5)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping.


SAT 05:43 Prayer for the Day (m00132z9)
SCRIPT


Good morning. It is still early in the year and while I’m not one for New Year Resolutions I am thinking about the year ahead and praying for grace. It will be a significant year for me – one of those O birthdays. Hence the prayer for grace – the grace to accept this time and grasp its opportunities.

I want to be grateful for the opportunity of another year, another birthday. Not everyone has that privilege. On this day in 1935 in Tupelo Mississippi, Elvis Presley was born along with his stillborn twin, Jesse.. Elvis was one of the heroes of my teenage years - Jailhouse Rock, Hound dog, Blue Suede Shoes – what a talent!

I remember where I was when I heard of his death in 1977 at only 42 years of age. I considered it a huge loss Elvis did not have the privilege of the new stage of life that I hope to enter this year.

So I am praying for the grace to not only accept the passing of the years but to make something of them. I am praying with the Anonymous Abbess that God will help me to be ‘reasonably gentle.’ I am also praying for courage and boldness, hanging on to the American feminist Gloria Steinem’s belief that women may be the one group that grows more radical with age.

Lord God, we pray for the grace to receive this year as a welcome gift and the wisdom to choose who we become. May our spirits be our beauty and our mark on the world worth making. Amen.


SAT 05:45 The Death of Nuance (m000qlsj)
Losing My Nuance

Oliver Burkeman has been concerned for a while that Nuance has been vanishing from public discourse. For a long time, he thought it was just other people’s problem. But now he realises that even he himself is losing the nuance that was integral to his view of the world.

In the first episode Oliver explores why our brains are primed for binary decisions, rather than nuanced thought. He finds out from Dr Kevin Dutton, author of Black and White Thinking, how natural selection has programmed us for lightning quick snap decisions and simplified categorisation of our world in order to survive. And he speaks to Professor Susan Neiman, author of Why Grow Up? About how difficult it can be to develop the skill of nuanced, critical thought, and how doing so may not just be an act of growing up, but as an act of resistance against a world designed to keep us infantilised, and our thinking simplistic.


SAT 06:00 News and Papers (m00138wh)
The latest news headlines. Including the weather and a look at the papers.


SAT 06:07 Open Country (m00132v7)
Ancient Dartmoor

Dartmoor is one of the UK's most significant archaeological landscapes. In this episode of Open Country, Ian Marchant explores some of its most interesting sites. He meets the National Park's lead archaeologist and finds out about a new research project being carried out by an academic from Leicester University, who is using cutting-edge new technology to discover structures which may have been left by Dartmoor’s earliest farming communities more than five thousand years ago. Ian also meets a present-day farmer, who tells him what it's like to farm in field systems first laid out by his predecessors from centuries gone by. Meanwhile an artist and ecologist explains how his art is inspired by Dartmoor's landscape and its wildlife, and Ian finds out why Dartmoor hill ponies may be a form of "living archaeology" themselves.

Produced by Sarah Swadling


SAT 06:30 Farming Today (m00138wl)
08/01/22 - Farming Today This Week: The Oxford Farming Conferences

At this time of year the streets of Oxford are normally thronged with farmers, in town for two big events: the Oxford Farming Conference and the Oxford Real Farming Conference. This year, both conferences were held online, with hundreds of virtual sessions covering everything from family farms to agroforestry, soils and supply chains.

Charlotte Smith brings you the highlights from both conferences.

Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Heather Simons


SAT 06:57 Weather (m00138wq)
The latest weather reports and forecast


SAT 07:00 Today (m00138wt)
Including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.


SAT 09:00 Saturday Live (m00138ft)
Ralf Little

Nikki Bedi and Rev Richard Coles are joined by actor Ralf Little who first appeared on our screens as the awkward Antony in the Royle Family, went on to star in Two Pints and a packet of crisps, and now Death in Paradise.
Legendary football manager Brian Clough took our guest Craig Bromfield under his wing as a troubled youngster but their relationship ended when Craig betrayed Brian and never saw him again. Craig has written about his experience to make sense of what he did and why he did it.
Helen Kirkham is a Saturday Live listener who had a road accident as a teen and later trained to be a nurse. She attended a lecture by the doctor who saved her life.
Sports reporter Emma John who is a cricket fan, a bluegrass fiddler and singledom advocate.
Andy Summers, guitarist with The Police, chooses his Inheritance Tracks: Manha de Carnaval from the film Black Orpheus by Luiz Bonfa and West Coast Blues by Wes Montgomery and your thank you.

Producer: Corinna Jones


SAT 10:30 The Kitchen Cabinet (m00138fx)
Series 35

Home Economics: Episode 48

Jay Rayner hosts a culinary panel show packed full of tasty titbits. This week he welcomes Sophie Wright, Tim Anderson, Sumayya Usmani and Professor Barry Smith to answer questions from a virtual audience.

After all that rich food over the festive period, you may be in need of a palette cleanser. Professor Barry Smith leads the team in an experiment to test why mackerel and horseradish work so well together. Beyond the science, the panellists cosy on down to discuss hot drinks with some spice and the unexpectedly divisive subject of slow cooking.

Producer - Dan Cocker
Assistant Producer - Bethany Hocken

A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4


SAT 11:00 The Week in Westminster (m00138g1)
Radio 4's assessment of developments at Westminster


SAT 11:30 From Our Own Correspondent (m00138g5)
Uncovering China's Internet Trolls

Plenty of journalists have had the experience of being “trolled” – attacked on social media for what they have written or said, often in terms which can be both offensive and sometimes frightening. Tessa Wong was trolled after reporting on China, but rather than simply accepting the abuse, she tried to find out why so many people had launched these attacks. What she found was that some of them were not the spontaneous outbursts of outraged citizens which they might have appeared. Rather it seems that key social media political influencers are being encouraged in their work by the Chinese authorities.

It should have been a fairly straight-forward task for our reporter in the Seychelles, Patrick Muirhead. A financial scandal has hit the island nation, and various high profile people have been accused of taking money intended for its citizens. Patrick was in court to cover the proceedings, and was also offered the chance to interview the Seychelles’ President about the affair. However, this is a small country, and he was on first name terms with both the President, and with some of those in the dock. He admits, it was quite a challenge to report on the story with detachment.

2022 has started with some speculating that this could be the year in which Covid is beaten – not that the virus will disappear completely, but that it might become endemic, and certainly not killing people on anything like the scale seen so far. Yet even if by some miracle the Coronavirus were to vanish altogether, the effects of these past two years will be with us for a long time. In Peru, for example, tens of thousands of children have lost parents to Covid, and this in a country which already suffers from widespread poverty. As Jane Chambers explains, the death of a family breadwinner can leave children facing terrible hardship, along with the grief.

Meeting a rebel leader can be difficult at the best of times, but particularly so if that leader is under arrest. Joshua Craze, was on the trail of General Simon Gatwich, from one of the factions which has been fighting in South Sudan. The country broke away from Sudan following a long battle for independence, but then itself split into different factions. Although a peace agreement has been reached, it’s considered a fragile one. General Gatwich headed north, to Sudan itself, so Joshua Craze tried to find out what exactly he was up to there.

History has seen many symbolic acts of resistance: banging saucepans, for example, was an expression of rebellion in revolutionary France, and was more recently taken up by protestors in Latin America. Pro-democracy campaigners in Thailand and Myanmar, meanwhile, have taken to given a three finger salute, taken from the film, The Hunger Games. But there is another historical act of rebellion which might have passed you by: eating cake. That is what people in Denmark did for more than a century, as Amy Guttman explains.


SAT 12:00 News Summary (m00138ww)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4


SAT 12:04 Money Box (m00138gf)
Pensions for teenagers?

There is growing support to reduce the age at which auto-enrolment pensions start. Currently, the limit is 22 years old leaving younger people missing several years of contributions. We look at what those extra years could mean in terms of financial support for later in life.

2021 was a good year for investors with the FTSE 100. It recovered from a 14.3% fall in 2020 by rising… 14.3%. The best year for the UK stock market since 2016. But with inflation on the rise what are the best options for people with some cash to invest in 2022 - and how can they best go about it? We get advice from two experts.

What are the tax implications of all those cash offers and incentives customers get to switch things like bank accounts? Does HMRC even have to know? We answer one listener’s question about just that.

And when did you last write a cheque? A generation ago they were the way we paid - apart from cash and occasionally a credit card. Even ten years ago they were still used regularly. But with the introduction of internet banking and instant online transfers and payments their use has plummeted. Last year cheques accounted for fewer than one in three hundred payments made in the UK — just 135 million out of a total of 40 billion. So what does the future hold for those small bits of paper?

Presenter: Paul Lewis
Reporter: Chris Flynn
Producer: Dan Whitworth
Researcher: Drew Miller-Hyndman
Editor: Emma Rippon

Email moneybox@bbc.co.uk or tweet @Moneybox with questions for the team.


SAT 12:30 The News Quiz (m00132yl)
Series 107

Episode 2

Andy Zaltzman and the News Quiz return to satirise the weeks news from the UK and beyond.

This week Andy is joined by Alice Fraser, Chris McCausland, Katie Perrior and Ahir Shah. They look at the smallprint on Keir Starmer's 'contract with Britain', rate Boris Johnson's new look, and discuss Novak Djokovic's double fault.

Chair's Script: Written by Andy Zaltzman
Additional Material: Written by Simon Alcock, Nathan D'Arcy Roberts, Alice Fraser, Rajiv Karia and Hannah Platt
Production Coordinator: Katie Baum
Sound Editor: Marc Willcox
Producer: Gwyn Rhys Davies

A BBC Studios Production


SAT 12:57 Weather (m00138gk)
The latest weather forecast


SAT 13:00 News and Weather (m00138gp)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4


SAT 13:10 Any Questions? (m00132yq)
Joanna Cherry QC MP, Tan Dhesi MP, Nigel Farage, Kit Malthouse MP

Chris Mason presents political debate and discussion from Reading Minster with the SNP MP Joanna Cherry QC MP, the Shadow Rail Minister Tan Dhesi MP, the President of Reform UK and GBNews Presenter Nigel Farage and the Crime and Policing Minister Kit Malthouse MP.
Producer: Camellia Sinclair
Lead broadcast engineer: Owen Bartholomew


SAT 14:00 Any Answers? (m00138gt)
Have your say on the issues discussed on Any Questions?


SAT 14:45 Drama (b06k9bz9)
Unmade Movies

Orson Welles' Heart of Darkness

The broadcast premiere of Orson Welles’ unproduced screenplay of Joseph Conrad's celebrated novel. Staring James McAvoy.

It's the 1890s and Mr Kurtz, one of the senior agents of an Ivory trading company, has disappeared.
Marlow, a skipper, is hired to take a steamship up the Congo River to find him. But the further he and the other company men travel up river, the greater the sense of impending danger, and the more disturbing the rumours that begin to circulate about Kurtz.

But truth is more terrifying than any of them imagined.

Heart of Darkness is part of Unmade Movies, a season of radio adaptions of unproduced screenplays by the major authors of the 20th century - including Harold Pinter, Arthur Miller, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock and Ernest Lehman.

Orson Welles wrote this screenplay in 1939, with the intention of directing and starring as both Marlow and Kurtz. After founding the Mercury Theatre in 1937, his celebrated production of Julius Caesar and his radio adaption of The War of The Worlds established him as a major talent. RKO Pictures then signed a deal with him to produce his first feature film. Welles intended this to be Heart of Darkness but the script proved to be too audacious for them - and his second script, Citizen Kane, was greenlit instead.

Cast:
Marlow...........James McAvoy
Kurtz..............Jonathan Slinger
Elsa................Phoebe Fox
Blauer............Jo Stone-Fewings
Eddie.............Max Bennett
De Tirpitz / Melchers........John Heffernan
Strunz............Elliott Levey
Stitzer............Gerald Kyd
Schulman / Steersman.....Seun Shote
Meus.............Jack Holden

A Screenplay by Orson Welles from the novel by Joseph Conrad
Adapted for Radio by Jamie Lloyd and Laurence Bowen
Music by Ben and Max Ringham
Sound Design by Wilfredo Acosta
Directed by Jamie Lloyd
Produced by Laurence Bowen
A Feelgood Fiction production for BBC Radio 4


SAT 16:10 Woman's Hour (m00138gz)
Weekend Woman's Hour: Putting your life on the page, Dr Lin Berwick, Poorna Bell

We explore why so many of us want to put our lives on the page. Can writing stand in for therapy? What are the ethical and moral considerations of such sharing. Julia Samuel is a psychotherapist and the author of Grief Works.

Dr Lin Berwick MBE has cerebral palsy quadriplegia and became totally blind at the age of 15. She also has partial hearing loss and is a permanent wheelchair user. Now in her seventies, she has been a fierce advocate and ambassador for people with disabilities and their carers, and has written a new book On A Count of Three all about what it's like having a carer - and what she thinks carers should know.

Military mums rally in protest at the decision to award former Prime Minister Tony Blair a knighthood. Hazel Hunt, whose son Richard died in Afghanistan, is considering sending back the Elizabeth Cross that her family had received as a mark of protest.

Many of us will be thinking about making a change for the better now that we're in a new year. Poorna Bell, author and journalist, gives us some inspiration and talks about getting stronger, both emotionally and physically. Poorna took it literally and started weight lifting after illness and bereavement.

'Collector culture' - the swapping, collating and posting of nude images of women without their consent - is on the rise. To understand why Anita is joined by Professor of Law at Durham University, Clare McGlynn and Zara Ward, senior practitioner at the Revenge Porn Helpline.

Southall Black Sisters was founded in 1979 to address the needs of Asian, African-Caribbean and minority women and to empower them to escape violence. Pragna Patel was one of the founders of Southall Black Sisters and Wednesday was her last day as Director. We talk to Pragna about her 30 years in activism.


SAT 17:00 PM (m00138h3)
Full coverage of the day's news


SAT 17:30 Political Thinking with Nick Robinson (m00138h7)
Nick Robinson talks about what's really going on in British politics.


SAT 17:54 Shipping Forecast (m00138hb)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping.


SAT 17:57 Weather (m00138hg)
The latest weather reports and forecast


SAT 18:00 Six O'Clock News (m00138hl)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4


SAT 18:15 Loose Ends (m00138g4)
Donny Osmond, Rebecca Frecknall, James Nesbitt, Stealing Sheep and The Radiophonic Workshop, Maia Miller-Lewis, Emma Freud

Clive Anderson and Emma Freud are joined by Donny Osmond, Rebecca Frecknall and James Nesbitt for an eclectic mix of conversation, music and comedy. With music from Stealing Sheep and The Radiophonic Workshop and Maia Miller-Lewis.


SAT 19:00 Profile (m00138hs)
Oksana Lyniv

It’s been quite a year for proudly Ukrainian conductor Oksana Lyniv, becoming the first female conductor at the 145-year-old Bayreuth Festival in August and now embarking on a new role as Teatro Comunale di Bologna's first female Music Director.

Presenter Mark Coles discovers the family stories and personal challenges which have brought Oksana’s charisma and talent from Western Ukraine to classical music's world stage.

Producer: Ben Crighton
Researcher: Diane Richardson

Picture Credit: Tristram Kenton, Royal Opera House.


SAT 19:15 Rethink (m001326k)
Rethink Population

Is demography destiny?

In a new five-part Rethink series, Amol Rajan and guests challenge some of our long-held assumptions about population change. Are there really too many people in the world - or will some countries actually end up with too few?

GUESTS

Rt Hon. Lord David Willets, President of the Advisory Council and Intergenerational Centre of the Resolution Foundation

Professor Anna Rotkirch, Director, Population Research Institute, Väestöliitto, Finland

Professor Ian Goldin, Professor of Globalisation and Development at the University of Oxford

Poonam Muttreja, Executive Director, Population Foundation of India

Presenter: Amol Rajan
Producer: Rob Walker
Editor: Kirsty Reid


SAT 20:00 Archive on 4 (m0011jxq)
Jan Morris: Writing a Life

Horatio Clare examines how the pioneering writer Jan Morris authored her own life, from her nationality to her sexual identity, trying to get behind the myths and masks she created.

Jan Morris wrote more than fifty books but also constructed her life to a degree rarely seen in one individual. She created a glittering career, invented a writing style, chose her nationality and most famously, transitioned. Horatio talks to Michael Palin, travel writer Sara Wheeler, and Jan's biographer Paul Clements, and visits Jan's home in North Wales to meet her son Twm Morys. Hearing interviews she recorded throughout her long life, he attempts to find out who Jan Morris really was.

James - as she was then - Morris knew from a very young age both that he was in the wrong body and that he wanted to be a writer. Through a combination of self-confidence, determination and what Jan herself describes as her ‘insufferable ambition’, she achieved what she set out to, becoming one of the most successful journalists of her generation and then a world-famous author of books about places like Venice, Oxford, Trieste and Manhattan, which re-invented travel writing.

At the same time as these professional and literary achievements, however, Jan was also undergoing a deep crisis of personal identity. In one of her books, Conundrum, she described how the conviction she’d had as a child that she was in the wrong body had never left her, but by her thirties she was in despair and had even considered killing herself. Conundrum describes how she succeeded in making the transition from man to woman in 1972. She said the sex change brought her the happiness she’d always sought. She also claimed that her decision had made little impact on the happiness of her four children, but that claim is put to the test in the programme.

Michael Palin talks about the Jan Morris he met - witty, generous and inspirational, but also a challenging interviewee who used a variety of techniques to deflect difficult questions about her private life. Paul Clements suggests she 'played hide and seek with the facts'. Archive on Four considers how much she constructed and presented her whole life, with determination, guile and skill.

Produced by Gareth Jones for BBC Wales


SAT 21:00 Tumanbay (m0002b99)
Series 3

Tree of Sorrows

Tumanbay is recovering from a brutal occupation by the followers of Maya. Manel (Aiysha Hart), daughter of Tumanbay’s greatest commander, now sits on the throne. Her chief adviser and lover is the mysterious traveller Alkin (Nathalie Armin), who she once tried to kill. 

The city has been plundered for much of its wealth and, desperate for allies, a marriage has been arranged between Manel and Herod (Amir El-Masry), the feckless son of a powerful provincial governor.
 
Gregor (Rufus Wright), Manel’s uncle and commander of the Palace Guard, is convinced that Maya and her followers are still a threat to Tumanbay.

Cast:
Gregor........Rufus Wright
Manel........Aiysha Hart
Cadali........Matthew Marsh
Bavand........Peter Polycarpou
Alkin........Nathalie Armin
Herod........Amir El-Masry
Heaven........Olivia Popica
General Qulan........Christopher Fulford
Frog........Finn Elliot
Matilla........Humera Syed
Akiba........Akin Gazi
Selim........Farshid Rokey
Spider........Yusuf Hofri
Librarian........Antony Bunsee
Cafe Owner........Muzz Khan
Deiner........Vivek Madan
Swords trader........Nadir Khan

Tumanbay is created by John Scott Dryden and Mike Walker and inspired by the Mamluk slave rulers of Egypt.

Original Music by Sacha Puttnam

Sound Design by Eloise Whitmore
Additional Music by Jon Ouin

Produced by Emma Hearn, Nadir Khan and John Scott Dryden
Written and directed by John Scott Dryden

A Goldhawk production for BBC Radio 4


SAT 21:45 Sandi Toksvig's Hygge (m0012s8c)
Series 2

Gina Miller

Joining Sandi Toksvig in her cosy log cabin today is campaigner and wealth consultant Gina Miller. Over a mug of berry tea they explore the concept of Hygge and chat about family, country walks and free climbing, comic-book superheroes, 3am scrabble and watching classic movies.

Starring... Sandi Toksvig
Guest...Gina Miller
Additional material... Tasha Dhanraj and Rajiv Karia
Producer...Julia McKenzie
Production coordinator...Katie Baum
A BBC Studios Production


SAT 22:00 News (m00138j1)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4


SAT 22:15 Breaking History (m001329q)
Cultural historian Nandini Das explores the power of empathy to shape our political worlds, in conversation with author and academic researcher Claire Yorke.

On 28th February 1972, the US President Richard Nixon departed from the People's Republic of China aboard Air Force One. Over seven days of banquets, ballets and visits to national monuments leading figures from the USA and China had got to know each other, engaging in talks for the first time in years. By the end of the so called "week that changed the world", the two countries had issued the Joint Communique of the United States of America and the People's Republic of China, also known as the Shanghai Communique.

The communique was highly unconventional; it essentially sees both sides as agreeing to disagree. However, within its text the two sides agreed that both countries, regardless of their social systems, should conduct their relations on the principles of respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states.

It was an agreement that had far reaching consequences for world history - one that "built a bridge across 16,000 miles" and healed years of division and hostility.

So how exactly did China and the US break with years of hostility? Nandini's guest, Dr. Claire Yorke (Centre for War Studies, University of Southern Denmark) believes that a key part of the answer is empathy.

She and Nandini discuss the different ways that empathy has moulded our political landscape - drawing from examples past and present - as well as exploring in detail the ways in which President Nixon's trip to China and its aftermath provide a fascinating case study in the power of empathy to catalyse breakthroughs in not just diplomacy - but the often tricky relationship between politicians and the public.


SAT 23:00 Counterpoint (m0013279)
Series 35

Heat 2, 2022

(2/13)
Paul Gambaccini hosts the second heat of the general knowledge music quiz, with questions and extracts covering a range of music from Handel and Prokofiev to Paul Weller and the Pet Shop Boys. The competitors today will have to prove the breadth of their musical knowledge if they are to win through to the semi-finals and stand a chance of bidding for the Counterpoint champion's title in the spring.

Taking part today are
Andy Cormican from Sheffield
Jo Lawrence from Beckley in East Sussex
Richard Page from Eltham in south-east London.

The contest was recorded in London in front of a socially-distanced audience.

Assistant Producer: Stephen Garner
Producer: Paul Bajoria


SAT 23:30 Uncanny (m00138wy)
Case 12: Fatal Collision

Delivery driver Amanda is driving home in the early hours when she’s involved in a terrible, life-changing accident. Or is she? Danny investigates another eerie tale of the supernatural.

He also takes a look back at the series so far, presenting some amazing new evidence and witness accounts for previous cases.

Written and presented by Danny Robins
Editor and Sound Designer: Charlie Brandon-King
Music: Evelyn Sykes
Theme Music by Lanterns on the Lake
Produced by Danny Robins and Simon Barnard

A Bafflegab and Uncanny Media production for BBC Radio 4



SUNDAY 09 JANUARY 2022

SUN 00:00 Midnight News (m00138x0)
The latest news and weather forecast from BBC Radio 4.


SUN 00:15 The East Coast Listening Post (m0005t5l)
Series 2

Skull Run

American reporters and sisters, Jenna and Dana Johnson, return to the UK to investigate the people of Great Britain. This week Jenna and Dana meet Rhodri Williams from the village of Tregafr, who is defending his right to take part in an ancient Welsh tradition known as Ras y Benglog or The Skull Run.

The East Coast Listening Post was written and performed by Celeste Dring and Freya Parker, with performances from David Elms and Steffan Rhodri. The original score was composed by Owain Roberts. The script editor was Matthew Crosby. The East Coast Listening Post was produced by Suzy Grant and is a BBC Studios production.


SUN 00:30 Short Works (m00132yb)
Because Swiping Made My Grandson Stop Believing in Love

An original short story specially commissioned by BBC Radio 4 from the writer Emily DeDakis. As read by Carol Moore.

Emily DeDakis grew up in the southeast U.S. and now lives in north Belfast. She is a writer, producer and dramaturg currently working with Fighting Words NI (a creative writing centre for young people, where she mentors teen scriptwriting projects). Emily’s writing has appeared in Dead Housekeeping, The Vacuum, Ulster Tatler, Yellow Nib, Of Mouth and Choice Words and been broadcast by Household Belfast, the Lyric Theatre, BBC Radio 3 & BBC Three.

Writer: Emily DeDakis
Reader: Carol Moore.
Producer: Michael Shannon

A BBC Northern Ireland production.


SUN 00:48 Shipping Forecast (m00138x2)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping.


SUN 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (m00138x4)
BBC Radio 4 presents a selection of news and current affairs, arts and science programmes from the BBC World Service.


SUN 05:33 Shipping Forecast (m00138x6)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping.


SUN 05:43 Bells on Sunday (m00138sh)
St George in Dunster, Somerset.

Bells on Sunday comes from the parish church of St George in Dunster, Somerset. The predominantly 15th century building was shared for worship with the Benedictine monks of nearby Dunster Priory until the dissolution of the monasteries. The tower houses a ring of eight bells cast by John Taylor in 1968 with a tenor bell weighing twenty and a quarter hundredweight, tuned to the note of E. We hear them ringing Yorkshire Surprise Major.


SUN 05:45 Profile (m00138hs)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 on Saturday]


SUN 06:00 News Summary (m00138qq)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4


SUN 06:05 Something Understood (b00wdcmf)
The Poetry of Healing

Kenneth Steven selects poems by Edwin Muir, Robert Frost, WB Yeats and others to explore the idea of why people are drawn to poetry at moments of crisis.

With readings by Emma Fielding and Jonathan Keeble and musical extracts from Handel's Saul, Mozart's Piano Sonata in D (K.448) and the African-American spiritual 'There is a balm in Gilead'.

Producer: Alan Hall
A Falling Tree Production for BBC Radio 4


SUN 06:35 On Your Farm (m00138qt)
Kentish Town City Farm

In the 50th anniversary year of the city farm movement, Charlotte Smith visits Kentish Town City Farm in London, thought to be the first of its kind.
A lot has changed since the first pioneers rented the land in 1972 and decided to bring in the first animals, much to the bemusement of the local residents, but its essence is still the same. Charlotte hears how the farm is a place to connect with the outdoors for anyone needing respite from urban life.

Produced by Beatrice Fenton.


SUN 06:57 Weather (m00138qw)
The latest weather reports and forecast


SUN 07:00 News and Papers (m00138qy)
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.


SUN 07:10 Sunday (m00138r0)
A look at the ethical and religious issues of the week


SUN 07:54 Radio 4 Appeal (m00138r2)
Health Poverty Action

Physician, writer and journalist Dr Seema Yasmin makes the Radio 4 Appeal on behalf of Health Poverty Action.

To Give:
- UK Freephone 0800 404 8144
-You can donate online at bbc.co.uk/appeal/radio4
- 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 ‘Health Poverty Action’.
- Cheques should be made payable to ‘Health Poverty Action’.
Please note that Freephone and online donations for this charity close at 23.59 on the Saturday after the Appeal is first broadcast. However the Freepost option can be used at any time.

Registered Charity Number: 290535


SUN 07:57 Weather (m00138r4)
The latest weather reports and forecast


SUN 08:00 News and Papers (m00138r6)
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.


SUN 08:10 Sunday Worship (m00138r8)
Wonder

To mark the season of Epiphany the Reverend Canon Ann Easter leads a service reflecting on the theme of Wonder. Readings and testimonies describe both the journey of the Magi following a star to meet the new-born Messiah, and the faith journeys of Christians today experiencing wonder in different ways when walking with God.
With a sermon from author and theologian Dr Amy Orr-Ewing, and music ranging from traditional Epiphany hymns to festive worship songs. Producer: Jessie Bland


SUN 08:48 A Point of View (m00132ys)
On Rapid Home Delivery

Zoe Strimpel reflects on the impact of rapid home delivery on the way we live our lives, and asks what our human experience might lose from this democratisation of laziness.

"A whole generation is about to come of age experiencing goods and service as simply things you can have delivered to your doorstep, fast. Will their brains cease to distinguish between different types of desire and demand?...Will they lose the capacity to form plans and commit to them, plans as minor as what to cook later that night?"

Producer: Sheila Cook


SUN 08:58 Tweet of the Day (b03k5c26)
Ptarmigan

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs.

David Attenborough presents the ptarmigan. Few birds are tough enough to brave winter on the highest of Scottish mountains but Ptarmigan are well adapted to extreme conditions. They're the only British bird that turns white in winter and Ptarmigan have feathers that cover their toes, feet and nostrils to minimise heat loss.


SUN 09:00 Broadcasting House (m00138rb)
The Sunday morning news magazine programme. Presented by Paddy O'Connell


SUN 10:00 The Archers Omnibus (m00138rd)
Writer, Liz John
Director, Peter Leslie Wild
Editor, Jeremy Howe

Pat Archer ….. Patricia Gallimore
Tony Archer ….. David Troughton
Tom Archer ….. William Troughton
Jennifer Aldridge ….. Angela Piper
Lilian Bellamy ….. Sunny Ormonde
Alice Carter ….. Hollie Chapman
Chris Carter ….. Wilf Scolding
Susan Carter ….. Charlotte Martin
Alan Franks ….. John Telfer
Amy Franks ….. Jennifer Daley
Kirsty Miller ….. Annabelle Dowler
Roy Tucker ….. Ian Pepperell
Mike Tucker ….. Terry Molloy
Adam Macy ….. Andrew Wincott
Lynda Snell MBE….. Carole Boyd
Lorraine….. Dru Stephenson


SUN 11:00 Desert Island Discs (m00138rg)
Simon Reeve, broadcaster and writer

Simon Reeve is a broadcaster and writer best known for his TV documentaries which combine travel and adventure with investigations into the challenges faced by the places he visits.

His journeys have taken him across jungles, deserts, mountains and oceans, and to some of the most dangerous and remote regions of the world. He’s dodged bullets on frontlines, dived with seals and sharks, survived malaria, walked through minefields and tracked lions on foot.

Simon grew up in Acton in west London. He experienced anxiety and depression as a teenager and left school with few qualifications. He eventually found a job in the post room at the Sunday Times and from there progressed to working with the news teams, filing stories on a range of subjects from organised crime to nuclear smuggling.

In the late 1990s he wrote one of the first books about Al-Qaeda and its links to Osama Bin Laden. His expertise in this area was quickly called upon after the 9/11 attacks in the USA, and he became a regular guest on American television and radio programmes.

The current pandemic put Simon’s overseas trips into abeyance and he has turned his attention to the UK, recently making programmes about Cornwall and the Lake District.

Presenter Lauren Laverne
Producer Paula McGinley


SUN 11:45 New Year Solutions (m0001tz9)
Cars

As global warming threatens the future of our society, Jo Fidgen tackles the ways in which ordinary people can make a difference.

We're often told that we could help the environment by driving less, eating less meat, or using less water.

But in the face of a challenge as significant as global warming, how big a difference can small changes really make? And what would the world look like if we took those solutions to their logical extremes?

Cars are one of the climate's biggest problems, from burning petrol to the carbon cost of manufacture. But they've also revolutionised how we get around and embedded themselves in the way our cities and societies are designed. Can people really be convinced to cut down their time behind the wheel?

Producer: Robert Nicholson

A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4


SUN 12:00 News Summary (m00138rj)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4


SUN 12:04 I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue (m001327m)
Series 76

Episode 6

The antidote to panel games pays a return visit to the Lyric Theatre in Salford. Jon Culshaw and Milton Jones take on John Finnemore and Vicki Pepperdine with Jack Dee in the chair. Colin Sell attempts piano accompaniment. Producer - Jon Naismith. It is a BBC Studios production.


SUN 12:32 The Food Programme (m00138hh)
Gabriella D'Cruz: Global Youth Champion

Gabriella D’Cruz, from Goa, wants to improve diets, transform livelihoods and protect the planet using an often-overlooked marine vegetable - seaweed.

Ruth Alexander speaks to the 29-year-old about her big plans for the underwater crop, and her hope that it could bring lasting economic and environmental change to India’s coastal communities.

Gabriella’s passion and her project’s potential saw her chosen by a panel of international judges as the winner of The Food Chain Global Youth Champion Award 2021.

Produced by Simon Tulett originally for The Food Chain on the BBC World Service


SUN 12:57 Weather (m00138rm)
The latest weather forecast


SUN 13:00 The World This Weekend (m00138rp)
Radio 4’s look at the week’s big stories from both home and around the world.


SUN 13:30 The Listening Project (m00138rr)
Jigsaw of Experience

Fi Glover presents three conversations about the shape of modern families, long lost siblings and living with flammable cladding.

Rachael and Clara share their horror and despair of living with substandard flammable cladding; Jade and Ellie reflect on the ever-changing shape modern families; and the joy of connecting with long lost siblings is at the heart of the conversation between half-sisters Brenda and Rachel.

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. The conversations are being gathered across the UK by teams of producers from local and national radio stations who facilitate each encounter. Every conversation lasts up to an hour and is then edited to extract the key moments 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 this decade of the millennium. You can learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject

Producer: Mohini Patel


SUN 14:00 Gardeners' Question Time (m00132y8)
GQT From The Archives: Sustainability Special

Peter Gibbs takes a look through the GQT archives for top tips on sustainable gardening.

Over the years the GQT panellists have shared plenty of knowledge on how to be a green gardener. They look at everything from how to make your driveway more environmentally friendly, to efficiently collecting rainwater at home.

We also hear Hafsah Haferji's "how-to" on companion planting, and head back to RHS Wisley with Matthew Pottage and Environmental Researcher Tijana Blanusa to learn how trees help us with carbon capture.

Producer - Hannah Newton
Assistant Producer - Bethany Hocken

A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4


SUN 14:45 The Seventh Test by Vikas Swarup (b043wvxj)
The Proposition

1) The Proposition

A thriller set in India from the author of "Slumdog Millionaire".

Sapna Sinha works as a sales assistant in a TV showroom in New Delhi. Being the only breadwinner in the family she works long hours to provide for her widowed mother and younger sister. But then a man walks into her life with an extraordinary proposition: pass seven tests and he will make her the CEO of his global empire. Sapna is suspicious. Dramatised from Vikas Swarup's best-selling novel "The Accidental Apprentice".

Writers:
Vikas Swarup is an Indian diplomat and a best-selling novelist. His first novel "Q & A" was made into the Oscar winning film "Slumdog Millionaire" as well as Sony Award winning radio drama serial for BBC Radio .

Ayeesha Menon dramatized Vikas Swarup's other novels SIX SUSPECTS and Q & A, which won a Sony Award for Best Drama. She also wrote for Radio 4 THE MUMBAI CHUZZLEWITS, UNDERCOVER MUMBAI, THE CAIRO TRILOGY and MY NAME IS RED. Her stage play PEREIRA'S BAKERY AT 76 CHAPEL ROAD, which was developed with the Royal Court Theatre, was recently staged by the Curve Theatre, Leicester.

John Dryden wrote the original three-part dramas series SEVERED THREADS, THE RELUCTANT SPY and PANDEMIC, which won the Writer's Guild Award for best radio drama script. His dramatisation of BLEAK HOUSE won a Sony Award for Best Drama. Other dramatisations include A SUITABLE BOY, A HANDMAID'S TALE and FATHERLAND one of the most repeated dramas on R4 Extra.

Production:
Sound Design - Steve Bond
Editing Assistant - Varun Bangera
Script Editor - Mike Walker
Assistant Producer - Toral Shah

Music - Sacha Putnam

Dramatised by Ayeesha Menon and John Dryden from the novel "ACCIDENTAL APPRENTICE" by Vikas Swarup.

Producer - Nadir Khan
Director - John Dryden
A Goldhawk Production for BBC Radio 4.


SUN 15:00 Drama (b085hpjw)
Munchausen

Alistair McGowan stars as Baron Munchausen and all the other 43 characters in David Spicer's comic drama about truth, lies and credibility, bringing the exploits of the legendary Lord of Lies right up to date.

Characters from history and fiction collide in a drama featuring radio's largest cast of characters but smallest acting company of the year.

The original stories, The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen, were the inventions of thief, swindler and satirist, Rudolph Raspe, and inspired by the notoriously tall stories of the real Baron Munchausen, a braggart soldier who spent most of his subsequent life attempting to sue Raspe. And well he might. Raspe's stories went viral and for the next two hundred years his name has become synonymous with outrageous lying - through books, television, film and even diseases.

Munchausen's previous exploits have included riding a cannonball, being swallowed by a whale and flying to the Moon. The Lord of Lies is now 231 years old, apparently alive and well and is arrested on a red carpet at the Cannes film festival.

That's what he claims. But is he really the Baron? Or is he some kind of spy, assassin or international terrorist? Could he perhaps be lying?

In a police interview room, the strange old man begins to tell the so-called story of his life to a tired, sceptical and overwrought detective. This is surely a masterclass in lying. But what if he is telling "the honest truth"? Because in this age of social networking, where increasingly the media is becoming the message and opinion passes as fact, who knows what the truth is?

These days, Munchausen finds the world far more credulous and open to bamboozlement.

Performed by Alistair McGowan
Written by David Spicer
Director: Frank Stirling

A Unique production for BBC Radio 4 first broadcast in December 2016.


SUN 16:00 Open Book (m00138rt)
Hanya Yanagihara

To Paradise is the eagerly awaited follow-up to Hanya Yanagihara’s runaway success, A Little Life. It spans two hundred years of a New York both familiar and strange: a version of 1893 where gay marriage is legal; 1993 in midst of the AIDS epidemic; 2093 in a world devastated by climate change, epidemics and pandemics. Hanya talks to Chris Power about themes of men in love, exploitation and exercise of power, and why she chose to write about a pandemic before the emergence of Covid-19.

Helen Garnons-Williams, Publishing Director at Fig Tree chooses this week’s Editor’s Pick. She puts forward a compelling case for Wahala by Nikki May – a tale of three mixed-race friends living in London, whose lives are punctuated by glamour and revenge after the arrival of the shadowy Isobel.

Critic John Self highlights the books he’s most looking forward to in the next few months, including Monica Ali’s Love Marriage, Julie Otsuka’s The Swimmers, and Lucy Caldwell's novel set during the blitz of Belfast, These Days. Plus, he brings recommendations for recent reissues such as Konstantin Paustovsky’s The Story of A Life – the so-called ‘Knausgaard for the Russian Revolution’.

And Graeme Macrae Burnet picks R.D. Laing’s The Divided Self as the Book He’d Never Lend. He explains why the depiction of people trying on different personalities resonates with him and how the author influences his own work.


SUN 16:30 Poetry Please (m00138rw)
Larry Beckett

Larry Beckett is an American poet who collaborated with singer-songwriter Tim Buckley in the 1960s and 70s. His poem Song To The Siren became a hit for Buckley. His latest work in American Cycle is drawn from American language and folklore and was written over 40 years.
His choice of poems has been picked from requests sent in by listeners to include Matthew Arnold, WB Yeats, Shakespeare and Keats. He also reads two of his own poems Blue Ridge and John Lennon.

Producer: Maggie Ayre


SUN 17:00 Pakistan's Long Game (m001325q)
Owen Bennett-Jones examines the long game Pakistan played in the US defeat in Afghanistan.

In the Radio 4 documentary 'Iran’s Long Game', Owen described how the government in Tehran had outwitted the United States in Iraq. As a result, despite the massive US expenditure there, Tehran now has more influence in Baghdad than Washington.

'Pakistan’s Long Game' examines how Islamabad pulled off much the same trick in relation to Afghanistan. But there was a difference. Whilst Iran was under US sanctions, Pakistan secured its objectives in Afghanistan whilst simultaneously receiving billions of dollars worth of US aid. As one retired Pakistan intelligence chief bragged – the US was helping secure its own defeat.

Drawing on archive and interviews the documentary highlights the occasions on which Pakistan (despite many denials) acknowledged that it did have a relationship with the Afghan Taliban. It describes the nature of that relationship and explains how Pakistan felt it had little choice. Islamabad always realised that Western forces would leave Afghanistan and that it had to prepare for the situation after the withdrawal. Owen speaks to Pakistani and US critics of Pakistan’s policy and asks whether the Pakistani strategy will backfire. It may now be enjoying a degree of control in Afghanistan, but how great is the threat from an emboldened Pakistani Taliban which wants power in Pakistan itself. And most of all how come the most powerful country on earth was outwitted by two regional powers first Iran and then Pakistan.

Presenter: Owen Bennet-Jones
Producer: Zak Brophy
Editor: Bridget Harney


SUN 17:40 Profile (m00138hs)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 on Saturday]


SUN 17:54 Shipping Forecast (m00138ry)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping.


SUN 17:57 Weather (m00138s0)
The latest weather reports and forecast


SUN 18:00 Six O'Clock News (m00138s2)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4


SUN 18:15 Pick of the Week (m00138s4)
Katie Thistleton

The best of BBC Radio this week.


SUN 19:00 The Archers (m00138h2)
Pat attempts to bite her tongue while Alice sticks her neck out.


SUN 19:15 Now You're Asking with Marian Keyes and Tara Flynn (m00138s6)
The Pink Flamingo Problem

Marian Keyes is a multi award-winning writer, with a total of over 30 million of her books sold to date in 33 languages. Her close friend Tara Flynn is an actress, comedian and writer. Together, these two friends have been through a lot, and now want to use their considerable life experience to help solve your biggest - and smallest - of their listeners' problems.

From dilemmas about life, love and grief, to the perils of laundry or knowing what to say at a boring dinner, we’ll find out what Marian and Tara would recommend - which might not solve the problem exactly, but will make us all feel a bit better.

In their first episode, Marian and Tara tackle a problem pink flamingo, a messy daughter and a contested will.

Recorded in Dublin with emails received from listeners around the world, the hosts invite you to pull up a chair at their virtual kitchen table as they read and digest their inbox.

Got a problem you want Marian and Tara to solve? Email: marianandtara@bbc.co.uk.

Producer: Steve Doherty.
A Giddy Goat production for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds


SUN 19:45 Bright Lights, Dead City (m00138s8)
Episode 1. Gone Away Girl

An American film crew descends on a Northern Irish city to make a lavish prestige drama series about the Troubles called ‘Dead City’, inspiring the locals to get involved in the production, only for filming to be halted by the mysterious disappearance of the lead actress.

The Writer
Séamas O'Reilly is a columnist for the Observer and has written about media and politics for the Irish Times, New Statesman, Guts, and VICE. His memoir 'Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?' was an Irish Times Number One Bestseller and was awarded the Dubray Biography of the Year Award at the 2021 An Post Irish Book Awards.

Reader: Dearbháile McKinney
Writer: Séamas O'Reilly
Producer: Michael Shannon
Exec Editor: Andy Martin

A BBC Northern Ireland production.


SUN 20:00 The Untold (m00114gn)
A Fisherman Caught in Two Storms

Bally, a fisherman on the West Coast of Scotland, navigates a year of Brexit, Covid, an environmental crisis and a broken down boat.

Bally fishes off Isle of Skye and has been doing so for decades, but this year has been his most challenging yet. Having survived 2020 and the global pandemic, January 2021 brought a new lockdown and the departure of the UK from the EU. This changed everything for Bally. He fishes for langoustines, or prawns, and for these shellfish there was an entirely new set of legislation to adjust to overnight. The result was confusion and crashing prices in an industry already damaged by coronavirus.

This edition follows Bally as he tries to make ends meet and adjust to the new world. He's not only got to look out for himself but also 24 year old Hayden, his crew. He's passionate about the environment and worried about the damage he has seen over his time on the water. If he can make if through a turbulent few months, what will be the future ahead of him?

Produced by Sam Peach


SUN 20:30 Last Word (m00132yd)
Lord Rogers (pictured), April Ashley MBE, Joan Didion, Ray Illingworth

Matthew Bannister on

Lord Rogers of Riverside, the influential architect who designed the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Lloyds Building in London.

April Ashley, the transgender model who partied with pop stars and aristocrats during the Swinging Sixties and campaigned for changes to the law on gender identity.

Joan Didion, the American writer best known for her memoir 'The Year of Magical Thinking' written after the deaths of her husband and daughter.

Ray Illingworth, the Yorkshire-born cricketer who captained England to two successive Ashes victories.

Producer: Neil George

Interviewed guest: Catherine Slessor
Interviewed guest: Ivan Harbour
Interviewed guest: Christine Burns MBE
Interviewed guest: Dr Gary Everett
Interviewed guest: Tracy Daughtery
Interviewed guest: Susanna Moore
Interviewed guest: Henry Blofeld

Archive clips used: BBC TV, IMAGINE - Richard Rogers Inside Out 26/02/2008; ThamesTv YouTube Channel, Good Afternoon - April Ashley Interview 1970s; Media Archive Central England, What Am I? (1980); BBC RADIO 4, KALEIDOSCOPE - California Dreaming 05/07/1979; F.P. Productions / Universal Pictures, Play It As It Lays (1972); BBC RADIO 3, Words and Music - Less is More 23/02/2020; BBC RADIO 4, Today 23/04/2008; Merlin Television, MMC Masterclass (1994); YouTube, Ray Illingworth Career Review 01/01/2022; YouTube, Ashes Tour 1970-71 7th Test SCG 17/08/2021; BBC RADIO 4, Start The Week 09/08/1980; BBC RADIO 5Live, Ian Chappell Tribute to Ray Illingworth 26/12/2021; BBC RADIO 4, It's Your Line 13/04/1971; BBC Video. Ashes '72 (1988); YouTube, The Ashes 1970-71 Australia v England 7th Test End of Match 31/10/2016.


SUN 21:00 Money Box (m00138gf)
[Repeat of broadcast at 12:04 on Saturday]


SUN 21:25 Radio 4 Appeal (m00138r2)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:54 today]


SUN 21:30 Short Cuts (m000ykqh)
Leonora Carrington

Otherworldly encounters with a painting that comes to life, a surprise connection and a magical summoning... Josie Long presents short documentaries and audio adventures inspired by the surreal worlds of the artist and writer Leonora Carrington, a decade on from her death.

Leonora Carrington
Interviewed by John Silver (1992)
Archive courtesy of John Silver

Down Below
Produced by Nanna Hauge Kristensen

Prim
Feat. Joanna Moorhead
Produced by Sarah Cuddon

A Summoning
Produced by Sami El-Enany

Curatorial team: Alia Cassam and Andrea Rangecroft
Series Producer: Eleanor McDowall
Executive Producer: Axel Kacoutié
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4


SUN 22:00 Westminster Hour (m00138sc)
Radio 4's Sunday night political discussion programme.


SUN 23:00 Think with Pinker (m00132v9)
Rational soothsaying

Making predictions can be hard, especially about the future. In his guide to thinking better, Professor Steven Pinker explores the cognitive flaws that hobble us as forecasters.

He’s joined by Barbara Mellers, the George I. Heyman University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and co-founder of the Good Judgement project, and by Thomas Friedman, foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times and author of “Thank You For Being Late: An optimist’s guide to living in the age of accelerations.’

Together they’ll help you evaluate your ideas, your cognitive blind spots and maybe even think a little more accurately about the future.

Producers: Imogen Walford and Joe Kent
Editor: Emma Rippon

Think with Pinker is produced in partnership with The Open University.


SUN 23:30 Something Understood (b00wdcmf)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:05 today]



MONDAY 10 JANUARY 2022

MON 00:00 Midnight News (m00138sf)
The latest news and weather forecast from BBC Radio 4.


MON 00:15 Thinking Allowed (m001329b)
Food, Identity & Nation

FOOD, IDENTITY AND NATION - At a time when many of us are feeling overstuffed by festive eating, Laurie Taylor asks why food matters. He’s joined by Paul Freedman, Chester D. Tripp Professor of History at Yale University, who explores food’s relationship to our sense of self, as well as to inequality and the environment. Joy Fraser, Adjunct Professor in the Department of Folklore at Memorial University, Newfoundland, Canada, also joins the conversation. She asks why Scottishness has so often been signified, in a derogatory way, through food - from haggis to the deep-fried Mars bar. Does it say something about the relationship between England and Scotland?

Producer: Jayne Egerton


MON 00:45 Bells on Sunday (m00138sh)
[Repeat of broadcast at 05:43 on Sunday]


MON 00:48 Shipping Forecast (m00138sk)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping.


MON 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (m00138sm)
BBC Radio 4 presents a selection of news and current affairs, arts and science programmes from the BBC World Service.


MON 05:33 Shipping Forecast (m00138sp)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping.


MON 05:43 Prayer for the Day (m00138st)
SCRIPT

Good morning.

You may be listening from home or perhaps you’re already on the road. In truth there are fewer of us on the road these days, fewer of us battling through traffic or crowds. We had hoped to leave Covid-19 arrangements in the year that has passed and learn to live with it this year but the coronavirus has other ideas. Many of us continue to work from home and some students continue to learn from home too.

Today in 1973 saw the first degrees awarded to students who had studied at home with the Open University. The Open University offered an opportunity to those who could not take time off from family life or time out from earning a wage. Working from home was and continues to be an opportunity that would open doors for many throughout the years of the University’s history.

While we are particularly conscious now of how important in-person interactions are, of shaking hands with friends and strangers, of touching the shoulder of those who are struggling we are also learning to embrace new ways of doing things. Things we never thought we could learn to do are now second nature – virtual meetings, video calls, the normality of a virtual dinner or coffee break. We humans are eternally innovative - we learn to embrace new ways of doing things just as we have learned to value the Open University.

Lord God, unlike you we are bound by time and place. We are grateful for innovation and give thanks for the changes we are embracing in work and study and human interaction. Amen.


MON 05:45 Farming Today (m00138sw)
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.


MON 05:56 Weather (m00138sy)
The latest weather forecast for farmers.


MON 05:58 Tweet of the Day (b0901fq9)
Frank Gardner on the Golden Oriole

In this Tweet of the Day, BBC's security correspondent Frank Gardner recalls the song of a golden oriole in a Bahrain date grove.

Producer Tom Bonnett
Photograph: Ashutosh Jhureley.


MON 06:00 Today (m00138fn)
News and current affairs, including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.


MON 09:00 Start the Week (m00138fq)
Finding consolation and community in reading

The historian, writer and former politician Michael Ignatieff talks to Tom Sutcliffe about how consolation offers a way to survive the anguish and uncertainties of the 21st century. In his new book, On Consolation: Finding Solace in Dark Times, he looks at how works of literature – from the Psalms to Albert Camus and Anna Akhmatova – help increase hope and resilience.

Christopher Prendergast’s Living and Dying with Marcel Proust is the result of a lifetime’s reading of Proust’s masterpiece A la Récherche du Temps Perdu. It serves as a guide to readers embarking on Proust’s colossal work, highlighting the author’s many obsessions, from insomnia and food to memory, humour and colour.

The London Literary Salon is a community built around the study of literature and ideas, with its mantra: ‘opening books, meeting minds, creating community’. During the pandemic its founder and director Toby Brothers broadened its reach, welcoming people into the salon from all over the world.

Producer: Katy Hickman


MON 09:45 Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn (m00138jk)
Episode 1

Islands of Abandonment, by Cal Flyn, explores the extraordinary places where humans no longer live - or survive in tiny, precarious numbers - to give us a glimpse of what happens when mankind’s impact on nature is forced to stop.

Flyn brings together some of the most desolate, eerie, ravaged and polluted areas in the world - and shows how, against all odds, they can offer remarkable opportunities for environmental recovery.

By turns haunted and hopeful, this luminously written and wide-ranging account shines a light in the direction of some of the answers to the big questions - what happens after we’re gone, and how far can our presence be erased and the damage be undone?

Written by Cal Flyn
Abridged by Jill Waters and Isobel Creed
Read by Morven Christie
Produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4


MON 10:00 Woman's Hour (m00138g0)
Helena Merriman, Women in Sudan, Pardons for women tried as witches

Three years ago, BBC radio broadcaster Helena Merriman received a shock diagnosis related to hearing loss after giving birth to her son. This prompted her to explore how people handle life-changing news about their health in a new radio series called Room 5 that airs on Radio 4 this week. Helena joins Emma to discuss the power of resilience.

In Sudan, thousands of people have again taken to the streets of the capital, Khartoum, to protest against military rule, following the resignation of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok. Reports from medics on the ground say more than 50 people have lost their lives since a military coup took place in October last year. For several years, there has been continued unrest in the country, and headlines around the world have shown women at the forefront of the revolution and pro-democracy movement - but is that the full story? And how are things for women there now? Raga Makawi, a Sudanese democracy activist and editor at African Arguments and Will Ross, the BBC's Africa Editor join Emma.

Almost 300 years after the Witchcraft Acts were repealed, a bill has been bought forward in the Scottish parliament to pardon those convicted. This comes after a two-year campaign to clear the names of nearly 4,000 people accused of witchcraft, of whom well over half were executed. Zoe Venditozzi co-founded the campaign and co-hosts the Witches of Scotland podcast. Marion Gibson is Professor of Renaissance and Magical Literatures at the University of Essex and author of Witchcraft: the basics.


MON 11:00 Consumed by Desire (m0012s83)
I don't think we know the difference between wants and needs

Psychotherapist and writer Philippa Perry attempts to unpick the idea of desire.

We live in a world where we get what we want. Strawberries in January, the instant Uber, new clothes, all the music we could ever want, news in our pocket and constant connection via the digital world. And all to be easy and instant. However, we're also struggling to understand the world in which we live. It's not something we seem to enjoy. Sometimes we say it's 'inhuman'.

It may be that we could benefit from a clearer understanding of desire -- and our desires.

We live in an age of desire, but also an age of discontent. The gap between the urge and its fulfilment is now shorter than ever. But rather than making us more content, this short-circuit seems often to frustrate our capacity to understand and therefore control our desires.

A desire satisfied is often merely a desire reinforced or reinvented: in Freud's phrase, desire is always in excess of any item's ability to satisfy it. In times – technological, political, personal – when we are promised satisfaction, how does the inevitable falling short affect us, and what new and strange desires does it spawn?

Featuring Michael Landy, Adam Phillips, Ash Sarkar, Rory Sutherland and John Yorke.

Readings by Catherine Dyson

Producer: Martin Williams


MON 11:30 Loose Ends (m00138g4)
[Repeat of broadcast at 18:15 on Saturday]


MON 12:00 News Summary (m00138wf)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4


MON 12:04 Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah (m00138gd)
Episode 1

Paradise is a historical novel by UK Zanzibar-born writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, first published in 1994. The novel was nominated for both the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Prize for Fiction and, this year, Gurnah was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature for his "uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents."

The novel follows the story of Yusuf, a boy born in the fictional town of Kawa in Tanzania at the turn of the 20th century. Yusuf's father is a hotelier and is in debt to a rich and powerful Arab merchant named Aziz.

Early in the story, Yusuf is pawned in exchange for his father's debt to Aziz and must work as an unpaid servant for the merchant. Yusuf joins Aziz's caravan as they travel into parts of Central Africa and the Congo Basin that have not been traded with for many generations. Here, Aziz's caravan of traders meets hostility from local tribes, wild animals and difficult terrain.

It's both a coming of age story and a poetic and powerful portrait set against the backdrop of an Africa increasingly corrupted by colonialism and violence.

Abridged by Florence Bedell
Read by Paterson Joseph
Produced by Clive Brill

A Brill production for BBC Radio 4


MON 12:18 You and Yours (m00138gl)
News and discussion of consumer affairs


MON 12:57 Weather (m00138gq)
The latest weather forecast


MON 13:00 World at One (m00138gv)
Forty-five minutes of news, analysis and comment, with Sarah Montague.


MON 13:45 Past Forward: A Century of Sound (m00138gy)
Match Point

Today's jumping off point is a slither of audio from 1935. A sports commentator, a tennis match. Greg Jenner seeks guidance from writer and inveterate tennis fan Geoff Dyer.

Marking the centenary of the BBC, Past Forward alights somewhere in the BBC's vast archive over the past 100 years. Public historian Greg Jenner hears an archive clip for the first time at the top of the programme, and uses it as a starting point in a journey towards the present day. The archive captures a century of British life in a unique way - a history of ordinary people’s lives, as well as news of the great events. Greg uncovers connections through people, places and ideas that link the archive fragment to Britain in 2022, pulling in help from experts and those who remember the time – and sometimes the speakers themselves, decades later - along the way. What he discovers are stories, big and small, that reveal how the people we were have shaped the people we have become.

Producer: Martin Williams


MON 14:00 The Archers (m00138h2)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 on Sunday]


MON 14:15 United Kingdoms (m00138h6)
Falling

A ground-breaking new series capturing contemporary life across the UK with bitesize dramas, monologues, poetry and song. Each episode features five short works by five writers from across the UK, and each episode responds to a different theme.

FALLING

SOUTHEND-ON-SEA
Meet Bev – Essex’s only female nightclub bouncer – as she takes us for a stroll of Lucy Road.

Written and performed by Anne Odeke
Sound design by Lucinda Mason Brown and David Chilton
Produced by Celia de Wolff

ST WOOLOS
Two teenage friends break into a Newport cemetery at night. But one knows more about the afterlife than he’s letting on.

Written by Connor Allen
Performed by Jailen O’Daim, Ethan Watkins and Seren Medi Davies
Sound design by Nigel Lewis
Produced by Emma Harding

WHALSAY
Shetland’s past and present merge in a poem about history and injustice.

Written by Chloe Irvine
Performed by Marnie Baxter
Sound design by Joanne Willott
Produced by Gaynor Macfarlane

ORANGEFIELD
Chip shop worker Nicole spends her days frying up fish and daydreaming about finding her one true love.

Written by Caitlin Magnall-Kearns
Performed by Ellen McCormick and Tara Thomas
Sound design by Lucinda Mason Brown and David Chilton
Produced by Celia de Wolff

SCAR TOP
Barnard Castle is literally falling down – Ben and his mum have differing views on how to save it.

Written by Naomi Sumner Chan
Performed by Aaron Smith and Rachel Stockdale
Sound design by Jon Nicholls.
Produced by Polly Thomas and Yusra Warsama

Programme illustration by Eleanor Hibbert
Original Music composed by Niroshini Thambar
Falling was curated by Emma Harding for BBC Cymru Wales, Pier Productions, BBC Scotland, BBC Northern Ireland, and Naked Productions for BBC Radio 4.


MON 15:00 Counterpoint (m00138hc)
Series 35

Heat 3, 2022

(3/13)
Paul Gambaccini puts another trio of music lovers through their paces in the eclectic music quiz. In today's programme Vaughan Williams, Dvorak, Duran Duran and Carole King all feature: can the competitors identify the extracts and win a place in the semi-finals? As always, as well as quickfire questions on all genres, the contenders will have to choose from a list of topics on which to answer individual questions - of which they've had no prior warning and no chance to prepare.

Taking part today are
John Durbin from Wiltshire
Frankie Fanko from Market Harborough in Leicestershire
Liz Walliker from Ely.

Assistant Producer: Stephen Garner
Producer: Paul Bajoria


MON 15:30 The Food Programme (m00138hh)
[Repeat of broadcast at 12:32 on Sunday]


MON 16:00 Finding Harpo's Voice (b074zdcx)
The internationally acclaimed cellist Steven Isserlis first encountered the Marx brothers as a teenager when he saw their film "The Cocoanuts". And it was the character of Harpo Marx, the silent clown of the brothers, who spoke to him the most directly. The young Steven became a huge fan, to the extent that, instead of practising, he would go to the library to read everything he could find about him and, as Harpo so famously did, instead of shaking people’s hands, he would offer his leg instead.

But Harpo wasn't always silent. There were the noises of the horns which became his voice substitute. And at most times during the films he would play the harp- the instrument that got him his stage name. As a musician, this made Steven all the more interested in him.

Steven explores how Harpo came to be the silent Marx brother- he could talk perfectly well but stopped on stage after a bad review. However, without using his voice, Harpo managed to create a unique language with the use of props, sounds and of course his harp. What were the elements of this creation that spoke so eloquently to Steven and what legacy has the silence left?

He travels to the home of Bill Marx, Harpo's eldest son who he first met decades earlier and who first showed him Harpo's raincoat and wig. Steven gets another chance to put them on and to hear the sound of the famous horns.

Steven also talks to actor Simon Callow about Harpo's use of props and the film critic Jonathan Romney about Harpo's technique.

He discusses his harp playing with the harpists Charlotte Seale and Imogen Barford.

And he discusses Harpo with the poet and critic Charlene Fix, author of the booked "Harpo Marx as Trickster".

Producer; Emma Kingsley


MON 16:30 My Name Is... (m000sgrs)
My Name Is Richard

Richard is a gamekeeper and special constable with Hertfordshire Constabulary. He is increasingly angry about the rise in rural crime - everything from dangerous fly tipping to livestock poaching and theft of valuable farm machinery.

The toll on our countryside and rural communities is profound, but often ignored, as crime leaves emotional, environmental and economic wreckage behind in places that can ill afford it.

Aware of the need for something to be done, he’s desperate to see a change in society’s attitudes and meets those also involved in tackling the issue.

Producer: Howard Shannon
Executive Producer: Robert Nicholson
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4


MON 17:00 PM (m00138hm)
Afternoon news and current affairs programme, reporting on breaking stories and summing up the day's headlines.


MON 18:00 Six O'Clock News (m00138hw)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.


MON 18:30 The Unbelievable Truth (m00138j0)
Series 27

Episode 1

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.

Alan Davies, Lucy Porter, Lou Sanders and Justin Edwards are the panellists obliged to talk with deliberate inaccuracy on subjects as varied as pigs, underwear, camels and sausages.

Produced by Jon Naismith
A Random Entertainment production for BBC Radio 4


MON 19:00 The Archers (m00138j6)
Fears are faced at Bridge Farm and Roy uncovers a secret.


MON 19:15 Front Row (m00138j8)
Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music


MON 20:00 The Untold (m0010gfk)
Finding my Resonance

March 2020, and lockdown descends on the city of Bristol. Shops shut, traffic dries up, and people stay home. The streets fall silent. Until, suddenly: SOUND.

Music, floating above the hush, cutting through the birdsong in the city centre. A haunting, ethereal song winds its way through the quiet streets. Heads pop out of windows, people emerge blinking onto balconies. But what is it? And where is it coming from?

Should you be curious enough to head out, and follow the tendrils of sound as they bounce off the surrounding buildings, you might be able to find something slightly extraordinary. A sculpture around a foot high, made of conch shells, spinning gently, pumping out waves of gentle music. You share confused glances with others who've also been drawn over. Smiles, frowns, laughter. A small piece of wonder and mystery, in the height of the pandemic.

And if you look carefully, you might spot a man on the periphery of this scene. Inconspicuously dressed, tousled grey hair. There, but not really there. This is John, and the curious musical sculpture is his doing. A lifelong artist, John's spent his days battling to insert moments of wonder and creativity into his life, while also balancing the demands of a day-job, a wife and a son. Suddenly furloughed in the Spring of 2020, he found himself in a position he'd never been in before: he had time. And freedom. Space, to create. And he experienced a growing urge to do SOMETHING to help all the people trapped indoors, alone and frightened.

So began a year of an extraordinary art project; a man on a mission, armed with nothing but a bag of shells, a mini-rig and good vibrations, and a journey through dark times, back into the light.

Presented by Grace Dent
Produced by Emily Knight in Bristol for BBC Audio


MON 20:30 Crossing Continents (m00132tq)
Turkey's Crazy Project

A giant new canal for the world’s biggest ships is the most ambitious engineering plan yet proposed by Turkey’s President Erdogan, whose massive infrastructure projects have already changed the face of his country. The proposed waterway would slice through Istanbul, creating in effect a second Bosphorus, the busy shipping lane that is now the only outlet from the Black Sea. The president himself has called the project 'crazy'. But he says it would 'save the future of Istanbul', easing traffic in the Bosphorus and reducing the risk of a terrible accident there. The plan has met a storm of opposition. Istanbul’s mayor says it would “murder” the historic city. Critics claim the canal would be an environmental disaster, cost billions of dollars that Turkey can’t afford – and provoke severe tensions with Russia, which is determined to preserve existing rules on traffic into and out of the Black Sea. Tim Whewell reports from a divided city. He sails down the Bosphorus with a pilot who knows all its twists and turns, joins a marine biologist diving for coral in the Sea of Marmara, meets a woman whose Ottoman-era mansion was wrecked by a ship, has tea with a former admiral who was arrested over his opposition to the project, and visits the tranquil forests around the city, now threatened by development. Will the canal still go ahead? Who would lose – and who would benefit?


MON 21:00 The Coming Storm (m001324q)
1. The Dead Body

QAnon and the plot to break reality...

When a mob storms the Capitol in Washington DC, reporter and presenter Gabriel Gatehouse sees someone he recognises: a man draped in furs with horns on his head. He is known as the Q Shaman.

Gabriel had met him at a Trump rally in Arizona, ranting about a conspiracy theory involving Hillary Clinton and a cabal of satanic paedophiles plotting to steal the 2020 presidential election.

The search for the origins of this strange and twisted tale begins in 1993, when the suicide of a White House aide during Bill Clinton’s presidency reveals the first signs of a new information ecosystem that is starting to spill over into the mainstream. Myths about his murder proliferate on the early internet. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. In Arkansas a parallel reality is forming, in which the Clintons are a corrupt and murderous couple who will stop at nothing in their quest for power.

Producer: Lucy Proctor


MON 21:30 Start the Week (m00138fq)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:00 today]


MON 22:00 The World Tonight (m00138jc)
In depth reporting, intelligent analysis and breaking news from a global perspective


MON 22:45 Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah (m00138gd)
[Repeat of broadcast at 12:04 today]


MON 23:00 Geoff Norcott: I Would Never Be Friends With... (m00111tx)
Can you be friends with someone who’s politically very different? Are anti-vaxxers welcome in your house? Have you fallen out over anyone over Meghan Markle? What about climate change deniers? Someone who insists All Lives Matter? Someone who boos footballers taking the knee? Someone who paid to go and see Nigel Farage?

In Geoff Norcott's new Radio 4 show – I Could Never Be Friends With... - he'll be looking into the new divisions there are between us Brits. Whether they've come out of Brexit, Covid, Black Lives Matter or Meghan Markle.

He'll be talking to his audience about their own experiences and to Tom Walker (Jonathan Pie) about the criticism his comedy has had, particularly from the Left. Where are the limits of free speech, why do we all get offended so easily now and where are your own personal red lines?

His special guest is Athena Kugblenu. Additional writing by Kevin Day.

Producer Alison Vernon-Smith
Exec Producer: Caroline Raphael
Sound Engineer: David Thomas
A Pier Production for BBC Radio 4


MON 23:30 Today in Parliament (m00138jf)
News, views and features on today's stories in Parliament



TUESDAY 11 JANUARY 2022

TUE 00:00 Midnight News (m00138jh)
The latest news and weather forecast from BBC Radio 4.


TUE 00:30 Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn (m00138jk)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:45 on Monday]


TUE 00:48 Shipping Forecast (m00138jn)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping.


TUE 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (m00138jq)
BBC Radio 4 presents a selection of news and current affairs, arts and science programmes from the BBC World Service.


TUE 05:33 Shipping Forecast (m00138js)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping.


TUE 05:43 Prayer for the Day (m00138jx)
SCRIPT

Good morning.

Today in 1922 Leonard Thompson aged 14 sealed his place in history. He was the first human to have his diabetes treated with insulin. Where would we be without insulin?

Diabetes was first recognised about 3500 years ago the by an Egyptian physician. A variety of treatments were tried and by the early 1900s a mix of diet and exercise were preferred. And indeed these persist today with a focus on lifestyle changes. A breakthrough was still needed if early death from diabetes was to be avoided and so Leonard Thompson’s successful treatment was a critical advancement and led to the Nobel Prize for Medicine being awarded to the team of physicians who had worked on the trial and administered the insulin to the 14 year old.

Advancements in medicine are often taken for granted. The pandemic has jolted us into a new awareness and reminded us of the effort and skill required to bring new treatments to the point of being administered to those who need them.

I for one am grateful for advancements in medical science, for the dedication of those committed to finding new treatments and the willingness of many to participate in trials to ensure the safety of new treatments.

We give thanks to God for the skill of scientists, the dedication of those running trials and the advancements that are currently underway. Lord God we give thanks for those who work to ensure our health and wellbeing. We pray they will know our gratitude today. Amen.


TUE 05:45 Farming Today (m00138jz)
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.


TUE 05:58 Tweet of the Day (b091stsb)
Clare Jones on the Little Egret

Clare Jones recalls the inspiration of seeing a little egret and how a small event can change an entire outlook on life in this Tweet of the Day.

Producer Tom Bonnett.


TUE 06:00 Today (m00139bt)
News and current affairs, including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.


TUE 09:00 Room 5 (m00139bw)
1: Bex

‘He was interested in why I was so attached to this penguin’
Bex is at university when she starts feeling anxious and overwhelmed. As Bex deteriorates, doctors are in a race against time to diagnose her. And that’s where the penguin comes in.

In Room 5, Helena Merriman interviews people who - like her - were changed by a diagnosis.

Written, presented and produced by Helena Merriman
Composer: Jeremy Warmsley
Sound Design: Eloise Whitmore

Production Co-ordinator: Janet Staples
Editor: Emma Rippon
Commissioning Editor: Richard Knight

#Room5

With special thanks to Rachel Roberts, principal viola with the LSO
End song: Miffed by Tom Rosenthal

If you have a story you’d like to share you can email: room5@bbc.co.uk


TUE 09:30 The Political Butterfly Effect (m0012scy)
The Guardian's media editor Jim Waterson explores how different the world would look were it not for the occasional, well-timed flap of a butterfly's wings.


TUE 09:45 Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn (m00139bz)
Episode 2

Islands of Abandonment, by Cal Flyn, explores the extraordinary places where humans no longer live - or survive in tiny, precarious numbers - to give us a glimpse of what happens when mankind’s impact on nature is forced to stop.

Flyn brings together some of the most desolate, eerie, ravaged and polluted areas in the world - and shows how, against all odds, they can offer remarkable opportunities for environmental recovery.

By turns haunted and hopeful, this luminously written and wide-ranging account shines a light in the direction of some of the answers to the big questions - what happens after we’re gone, and how far can our presence be erased and the damage be undone?

Written by Cal Flyn
Abridged by Jill Waters and Isobel Creed
Read by Morven Christie
Produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4


TUE 10:00 Woman's Hour (m00139c1)
Women's voices and women's lives - topical conversations to inform, challenge and inspire.


TUE 11:00 The Coming Storm (m00139c3)
2. Sex, Lies, and… a Videotape

QAnon and the plot to break reality...

Gabriel Gatehouse discovers a real conspiracy called The Arkansas Project. The aim is to inject lurid tales about the Clintons into the mainstream American press in the 1990s. These stories spin off in different directions. Down one road lie sex scandals and eventually impeachment proceedings. But thanks to an Evangelical coalition the story goes off in another direction, involving Satan and a looming battle between good and evil. A dark fantasy has taken hold which bubbles away under the surface, ignored by the establishment.

Producer: Lucy Proctor


TUE 11:30 The Lullaby Project (m00139c5)
Felicity Finch reports on a pioneering project that sees members of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra working alongside inmates in HMP Norwich. The aim is to workshop, draft and perform personal songs that will help establish a bond between offenders and their children.

A lullaby is the most immediate of musical forms. The singer is a parent, the audience a child. The communication is intimate and helps form intangible bonds. A reality of prison life is that those bonds are, to a great or lesser extent, broken. The Lullaby Project, run by the Irene Taylor Trust, is an attempt to create all the positives of that parental link, without undermining the reality of prison life.

Felicity has been given unique access through the Irene Taylor Trust, to follow their artistic director Sara Lee. Sara and a group of musicians made three visits to Norwich prison to help the inmates write lyrics and work on ideas for melodies and rhythms that will result in lullabies that can be recorded. The process is rewarding in itself, but it also encourages inmates to reflect on the nature of their relationship with their children, and how they would like to be perceived by them.

Similar projects have been tried in both the USA and the UK, but following the pilot this is the first time the media has been given access to the process.
Felicity follows the process from the early and very nervous engagement between musicians and prisoners, through to the astonishment and delight at what emerges from the collaboration, a delight felt on both sides.


TUE 12:00 News Summary (m00139c7)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4


TUE 12:04 Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah (m00139c9)
Episode 2

Paradise is a historical novel by UK Zanzibar-born writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, first published in 1994. The novel was nominated for both the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Prize for Fiction and, this year, Gurnah was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature for his "uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents."

The novel follows the story of Yusuf, a boy born in the fictional town of Kawa in Tanzania at the turn of the 20th century. Yusuf's father is a hotelier and is in debt to a rich and powerful Arab merchant named Aziz.

Early in the story, Yusuf is pawned in exchange for his father's debt to Aziz and must work as an unpaid servant for the merchant. Yusuf joins Aziz's caravan as they travel into parts of Central Africa and the Congo Basin that have not been traded with for many generations. Here, Aziz's caravan of traders meets hostility from local tribes, wild animals and difficult terrain.

It's both a coming of age story and a poetic and powerful portrait set against the backdrop of an Africa increasingly corrupted by colonialism and violence.

Abridged by Florence Bedell
Read by Paterson Joseph
Produced by Clive Brill

A Brill production for BBC Radio 4


TUE 12:18 You and Yours (m00139cc)
News and discussion of consumer affairs


TUE 12:57 Weather (m00139cf)
The latest weather forecast


TUE 13:00 World at One (m00139ch)
Forty-five minutes of news, analysis and comment, with Sarah Montague.


TUE 13:45 Past Forward: A Century of Sound (m00139ck)
Kitty Hart-Moxon

Public historian Greg Jenner listens to an archive interview with the veteran Holocaust survivor Kitty Hart-Moxon and then speaks to Kitty, now aged 95. They reflect on human brutality, human survival and the importance of preserving Holocaust memories. Greg also speaks to the historian Zoe Waxman about the challenges of remembering and representing the Holocaust as the event itself fades into history.

Marking the centenary of the BBC, Past Forward uses a random date generator to alight somewhere in the BBC's vast archive over the past 100 years. Public historian Greg Jenner hears an archive clip for the first time at the top of the programme, and uses it as a starting point in a journey towards the present day. The archive captures a century of British life in a unique way - a history of ordinary people’s lives, as well as news of the great events. Greg uncovers connections through people, places and ideas that link the archive fragment to Britain in 2022, pulling in help from experts and those who remember the time – and sometimes the speakers themselves, decades later - along the way. What he discovers are stories, big and small, that reveal how the people we were have shaped the people we have become.

Producer: Eliane Glaser


TUE 14:00 The Archers (m00138j6)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 on Monday]


TUE 14:15 Isaac Newton: Nemesis (m000b80y)
Episode 2

By David Ashton. When a wagon of silver is stolen by the counterfeiters and his right-hand man at the Royal Mint is murdered Newton is convinced he’s been betrayed by a political insider.

Isaac Newton ..... WILLIAM GAMINARA
Hopton Haynes ..... GUNNAR CAUTHERY
Catherine Barton ..... LAURA CHRISTY
Charles Montague ..... RICK WARDEN
Thomas Carey ..... CLIVE HAYWARD
Belle Russell ..... MELODY GROVE
Jamie Wilde ..... WILL KIRK
Silas ..... NEIL MCCAUL
Gilchrist ..... GREG JONES
Other parts played by the cast.
Producer/Director: Bruce Young


TUE 15:00 The Kitchen Cabinet (m00138fx)
[Repeat of broadcast at 10:30 on Saturday]


TUE 15:30 Moving Pictures (m0012fsj)
April by Francesco del Cossa

Cathy FitzGerald invites you to discover new details in old masterpieces, using your phone, tablet or computer.

Each thirty minute episode of Moving Pictures is devoted to a single artwork - and you're invited to look as well as listen, by following a link to a high-resolution image made by Google Arts & Culture. Zoom in and you can see the pores of the canvas, the sweep of individual brushstrokes, the shimmer of pointillist dots.

This episode takes a closer look at a fresco by Francesco del Cossa that adorns the wall in the Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara. The fresco takes us from the realm of the gods - a garden of love presided over by Venus - to the city far below, where the region's ruler, Borso d'Este, shows off both his magnanimity and his elegant pins. We meet the court jester, go to the races, and discover why Renaissance princes liked to shimmer.

To see the high-resolution image, visit www.bbc.co.uk/movingpictures and follow the link to explore April.

Interviewees: Carol Plazzotta, Ita Mac Carthy, Timothy McCall, Kristen Lippincott and Giorgia Mancini.

Producer and presenter: Cathy FitzGerald

Art history consultant: Leah Kharibian
Executive producer: Sarah Cuddon
Engineer: Mike Woolley

A White Stiletto production for BBC Radio 4.

Picture credit: (c) Musei di Arte Antica di Ferrara


TUE 16:00 Word of Mouth (m00139cm)
Words from World War I

Doing your bit or shirking? Afflicted with ‘Belgian flush’? Don’t forget to BYOB.

Lynda Mugglestone, Professor of the History of English at the University of Oxford, joins Michael Rosen to talk about the new language that emerged from British experience in the First World War – from Zeppelinophobia on the Home Front to ‘watching the pyrotechnics’ in the trenches.

Jumping into an extraordinary collection put together by clergyman Andrew Clark at the time, they discover just how many words and phrases were coined to describe this brand new kind of warfare and what they mean to us today.

Professor Lynda Mugglestone is the author of Writing a War of Words: Andrew Clark and the Search for Meaning in World War One.

Produced by Sarah Goodman for BBC Audio in Bristol.


TUE 16:30 Great Lives (m0013963)
Lady Hale on Lady Rhondda

Judge and former President of the Supreme Court, Lady Hale, chooses to nominate the suffragette, businesswoman, and founder of Time and Tide magazine, Margaret Haig Thomas, also known as Lady Rhondda.

Born in 1883, Lady Rhondda was brought up an only child, in South Wales, by her feminist parents. She survived the sinking of the Lusitania and sat on the board of 33 companies, becoming, in 1926, the first and to-date only female president of the Institute of Directors. In 1927, the New York Tribune called her ‘the foremost woman of business in the British Empire’.

She was also one of the most prominent British feminists of the inter-war years, marching with the Pankhursts and setting fire to a letterbox, for which she was briefly sent to Usk prison.

Lady Rhondda was also the founder and editor of the pioneering, hugely influential weekly paper Time and Tide, which featured women’s perspectives and essays by literary greats from Orwell to Bernard Shaw and Virginia Woolf.

The Former President of the Supreme Court, Brenda Hale, believes Lady Rhondda's most important lesson is "that there are always new battles to be fought...You must never give up. You must always go on."

With expert insight from Angela V. John, Honorary Professor of History.

Produced by Ellie Richold for BBC Audio in Bristol


TUE 17:00 PM (m00139cp)
Afternoon news and current affairs programme, reporting on breaking stories and summing up the day's headlines.


TUE 18:00 Six O'Clock News (m00139cr)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.


TUE 18:30 It's a Fair Cop (b0bk1tw7)
Series 4

Hedgerow Hedge Row

Another chance to hear this episode from 2018. The third in the series in which comic and long-serving police officer recounts a real life case he's dealt with and asks the audience what decisions they would have have made in his shoes. This week – neighbour disputes. When neighbours fall out over a hedge is it really a police matter? And what do you do when disappearing pets come into the equation?

This is the fourth of this immensely popular series which provides insight into the workings of our police force whilst exposing some of the surprising and very funny quirks amongst the Radio 4 audience.

Writer and presenter ….. Alfie Moore
Script Editor ….. Will Ing
Producer ….. Alison Vernon-Smith
A BBC Studios Production


TUE 19:00 The Archers (m00139ct)
Ed makes his feelings known and Mike’s painting the town red.


TUE 19:15 Front Row (m00139cw)
Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music


TUE 20:00 File on 4 (m00139cy)
Hunting the Darknet Dealers

The high stakes cat and mouse game between police and darknet drug dealers
Police say they are finally turning the tide on drug dealers selling on the darknet – a secretive part of the internet which has been described as like “online shopping for drugs.”
The UK’s National Crime Agency says recent international takedowns of so called dark markets and arrests in multiple countries are a result of new techniques in cyber policing that is giving them the upper hand.
However, BBC research suggests that police around the world have an uphill struggle on their hands as many dealers - known as vendors - have survived multiple market place collapses by operating across many different darknet sites.
The BBC’s cyber reporter Joe Tidy and BBC data journalist Alison Benjamin journey into this hidden world to speak to vendors and buyers and uncover secrets of the trade
The programme reveals the major role played by UK dealers in the global business which is estimated to be worth more than a billion dollars a year.
Reporter: Joe Tidy
Producer: Paul Grant
Editor: Maggie Latham


TUE 20:40 In Touch (m00139d0)
Audiobooks

We're discussing three audiobooks: Cold In Hand by John Harvey and narrated by Nick Boulton, Lost for Words by Stephanie Butland and narrated by Imogen Church and The Pigeon Tunnel by John le Carré and narrated by... John le Carré. Peter reviews the stories and themes and, most importantly, the narration with guests Richard Land and Fiona Dunn.

Presenter: Peter White
Producer Beth Hemmings
Website Image Description: the image shows a stack of multicoloured books on a wooden table. Next to them is a pair of large headphones, with a wire leading into the spine of the book on top. Representing the conversion of physical books into an audiobook format.

Links to audiobooks discussed in the show:
Lost for Words: https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Lost-for-Words-Audiobook/B06XC63H14?ref=a_library_t_c5_libItem_&pf_rd_p=d5008f37-07b0-4d76-b44d-2b41ca41066e&pf_rd_r=XGHDR8RSQVC5FJ5JA55T
Cold In Hand: https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Cold-in-Hand-Audiobook/B004FTUG6K?ref=a_library_t_c5_libItem_&pf_rd_p=d5008f37-07b0-4d76-b44d-2b41ca41066e&pf_rd_r=XGHDR8RSQVC5FJ5JA55T
The Pigeon Tunnel: https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/The-Pigeon-Tunnel-Audiobook/B016E8URPE?ref=a_library_t_c5_libItem_&pf_rd_p=d5008f37-07b0-4d76-b44d-2b41ca41066e&pf_rd_r=XGHDR8RSQVC5FJ5JA55T

Audio credits:
Lost for Words ©2017 Stephanie Butland (P)2017 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd.
Cold in Hand, used by permission from W.F. Howes Ltd.
The Pigeon Tunnel, used by permission from Penguin Random House Ltd.


TUE 21:00 Inside Health (m00139d2)
A weekly quest to demystify the health issues that perplex us.


TUE 21:30 Room 5 (m00139bw)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:00 today]


TUE 22:00 The World Tonight (m00139d4)
In depth reporting, intelligent analysis and breaking news from a global perspective


TUE 22:45 Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah (m00139c9)
[Repeat of broadcast at 12:04 today]


TUE 23:00 Fortunately... with Fi and Jane (p06mf4p4)
64. Lady barnacles and toga parties with Mishal Husain

Mishal Husain comes fresh from the Today Programme studio to the Fortunately pizza where she’s lucky to catch Jane on fresh patch Thursday. They discuss the art of interrupting, Mishal’s new book on workplace skills for women, and detective dramas. Plus, coming soon, Fi and Jane’s new Emergency Advice for Young Adults Festival.


TUE 23:30 Today in Parliament (m00139d7)
News, views and features on today's stories in Parliament



WEDNESDAY 12 JANUARY 2022

WED 00:00 Midnight News (m00139d9)
The latest news and weather forecast from BBC Radio 4.


WED 00:30 Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn (m00139bz)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:45 on Tuesday]


WED 00:48 Shipping Forecast (m00139dc)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping.


WED 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (m00139df)
BBC Radio 4 presents a selection of news and current affairs, arts and science programmes from the BBC World Service.


WED 05:33 Shipping Forecast (m00139dh)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping.


WED 05:43 Prayer for the Day (m00139dm)
SCRIPT

Good morning.

Today we remember Mahatma Gandhi who on this day in 1948 began his final fast. In the years between 1913 and 1948 he had engaged in many fasts or hunger strikes some lasting for a few days and some for up to three weeks.

For Gandhi, fasting was a deeply religious experience which he believed was prayer that cleansed body, mind and soul, which strengthened his inner life. From that inner life Gandhi then drew strength for his commitment to peace and to change by non-violent means.

After the 1947 decision to partition India along religious lines, millions of people were displaced and as they oved across the sub-continent there was truly horrendous violence; estimates of those killed range from half a million to two million. On January 12th 1948 Gandhi announced his final fast to begin the following day with a focus on bringing warring religious communities into harmony. Over the days of his fast Delhi began to settle which for the almost 80-year-old meant he could break his fast when, on January 18th, Hindu, Muslim and Sikh leaders signed a pledge that they would live together peaceably. But Gandhi was himself killed by an extreme Hindu Nationalist at the end of the month.

Today I pray for leaders across society to grasp the moral character that will drive them to make decisions that will positively impact the lives of ordinary people, strengthen peace and harmony and ensure the kind of community that serves the good of all. Amen.


WED 05:45 Farming Today (m00139dp)
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.


WED 05:58 Tweet of the Day (b095qmbn)
Melissa Harrison on the Tawny Owl

Nature writer Melissa Harrison describes how the call of a tawny owl takes her back to childhood, reminding her of people and a feeling that slipped into memory.

Producer: Tom Bonnett
Picture: Jim Thurston.


WED 06:00 Today (m00139jy)
News and current affairs, including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.


WED 09:00 More or Less (m001395l)
Tim Harford explains the numbers and statistics used in everyday life


WED 09:30 The Death of Nuance (m000qlsj)
[Repeat of broadcast at 05:45 on Saturday]


WED 09:45 Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn (m00139k0)
Episode 3

Islands of Abandonment, by Cal Flyn, explores the extraordinary places where humans no longer live - or survive in tiny, precarious numbers - to give us a glimpse of what happens when mankind’s impact on nature is forced to stop.

Flyn brings together some of the most desolate, eerie, ravaged and polluted areas in the world - and shows how, against all odds, they can offer remarkable opportunities for environmental recovery.

By turns haunted and hopeful, this luminously written and wide-ranging account shines a light in the direction of some of the answers to the big questions - what happens after we’re gone, and how far can our presence be erased and the damage be undone?

Written by Cal Flyn
Abridged by Jill Waters and Isobel Creed
Read by Morven Christie
Produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4


WED 10:00 Woman's Hour (m00139k2)
Women's voices and women's lives - topical conversations to inform, challenge and inspire.


WED 11:00 The Army Girls (m0012fk3)
80 years after female conscription, the final few tell their extraordinary World War Two stories as part of the ATS.
By war's end, 290,000 women of all backgrounds had served in the Auxiliary Territorial Service. It may have had a less glamorous image than its naval and air force counterparts but the ATS was by far the biggest military service for women.
Initially the ATS had a reputation for dull demeaning work. That changed in 1941. In December of that year, for the first time in British history, young single women had to join Britain's war effort. Their choice of jobs expanded dramatically. Dr Tessa Dunlop unpacks some of the controversies that accompanied putting girls, en masse, into military uniform. With a rich cast of veterans she examines the impact and legacy of Britain's female army. Class, comrades, conflict, loss, love, work - for a generation of young women military service was life-changing.

Presenter: Dr. Tessa Dunlop
Producer: John Murphy

Archive in the programme from BFI National Archive and British Pathe


WED 11:30 Oti Mabuse's Dancing Legends (m00139k4)
Ballroom dancer Fred Astaire

In a brand new series, professional dancer, choreographer and twice winner of Strictly Come Dancing, Oti Mabuse, explores the extraordinary people who have come before her and changed the course of dance.

In the first episode, Oti sits down with the world famous choreographer, Sir Matthew Bourne, to talk about the dancer who has been his inspiration. For Matthew, that person is the ballroom dancing legend, Fred Astaire. Astaire’s career spanned more than 75 years and he is considered to be one of the greatest dancers in film history.

Sir Matthew and Oti explore this amazing story with archive clips of Fred Astaire in action and expert help from film historian, John Kenrick.

And although Oti isn't trained in tap, she wants to give it a go. So she slips on some tap shoes and meets her teacher, Claire Miller, for a dance tutorial.

Producer: Candace Wilson
Production Team: Emily Knight and Rema Mukena
Editors: Kirsten Lass and Chris Ledgard
A BBC Audio Bristol production for BBC Radio 4


WED 12:00 News Summary (m00139k7)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4


WED 12:04 Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah (m00139k9)
Episode 3

Paradise is a historical novel by UK Zanzibar-born writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, first published in 1994. The novel was nominated for both the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Prize for Fiction and, this year, Gurnah was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature for his "uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents."

The novel follows the story of Yusuf, a boy born in the fictional town of Kawa in Tanzania at the turn of the 20th century. Yusuf's father is a hotelier and is in debt to a rich and powerful Arab merchant named Aziz.

Early in the story, Yusuf is pawned in exchange for his father's debt to Aziz and must work as an unpaid servant for the merchant. Yusuf joins Aziz's caravan as they travel into parts of Central Africa and the Congo Basin that have not been traded with for many generations. Here, Aziz's caravan of traders meets hostility from local tribes, wild animals and difficult terrain.

It's both a coming of age story and a poetic and powerful portrait set against the backdrop of an Africa increasingly corrupted by colonialism and violence.

Abridged by Florence Bedell
Read by Paterson Joseph
Produced by Clive Brill

A Brill production for BBC Radio 4


WED 12:18 You and Yours (m00139kc)
News and discussion of consumer affairs


WED 12:57 Weather (m00139kf)
The latest weather forecast


WED 13:00 World at One (m00139kh)
Forty-five minutes of news, analysis and comment, with Sarah Montague.


WED 13:45 Past Forward: A Century of Sound (m00139kk)
If People Can't Let Slip

A businessman in trouble, a scandal about racist language recorded in secret: Greg seeks the help of Sathnam Sanghera to navigate his way around a short news item from 1977.

Marking the centenary of the BBC, Past Forward uses a random date generator to alight somewhere in the BBC's vast archive over the past 100 years. Public historian Greg Jenner hears an archive clip for the first time at the top of the programme, and uses it as a starting point in a journey towards the present day. The archive captures a century of British life in a unique way - a history of ordinary people’s lives, as well as news of the great events. Greg uncovers connections through people, places and ideas that link the archive fragment to Britain in 2022, pulling in help from experts and those who remember the time – and sometimes the speakers themselves, decades later - along the way. What he discovers are stories, big and small, that reveal how the people we were have shaped the people we have become.

Producer: Martin Williams


WED 14:00 The Archers (m00139ct)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 on Tuesday]


WED 14:15 Fake Heiress (m000c9s2)
Episode 2

Reporting by Vicky Baker
Drama by Chloe Moss

Anna Delvey blazed a trail through New York City, posing as multi-millionaire heiress. She was well on her way to establishing the Anna Delvey Foundation, a multi-million dollar visual-arts centre in the heart of the city. She'd scouted a location, got an architect on-board and created a glossy brochure. All she needed now was an actual fortune.

Because behind Anna Delvey, the heiress, was Anna Sorokin, the recent magazine intern. Out of nothing, this otherwise unremarkable twenty-something had reinvented herself as a multi-millionaire socialite, conning businesses and friends out of thousands of dollars in the process.

But how did she manage to live a life of luxury for so long? How did she make anyone believe her story? How did she get people to trust her enough to give her their money?

Journalist Vicky Baker and playwright Chloe Moss dig deeper into the New York scandal, and mix drama with documentary to tell the story of Anna's rise and fall.

Anna is played by Bella Dayne.
Other parts are played by Scarlett Courtney, Youssef Kerkhour, Ayo-Dele Edwards, Nokukhanya Masango, Heather Craney, Will Kirk, Neil McCaul, Clive Hayward, Ian Conningham, Lucy Reynolds, Adam Courting, Greg Jones, Laura Christy, Jessica Turner, Ikky Elyas, Sinead MacInnes.

Director: Sasha Yevtushenko

Fake Heiress will also be available as an extended six part podcast on BBC Sounds.


WED 15:00 Money Box (m00139km)
Care Leavers and Finances

Felicity Hannah is joined by care leavers and experts to discuss Carer Leavers finances.


WED 15:30 Inside Health (m00139d2)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 on Tuesday]


WED 16:00 Thinking Allowed (m00139kp)
Laurie Taylor explores the latest research into how society works.


WED 16:30 The Media Show (m00139kr)
Social media, anti-social media, breaking news, faking news: this is the programme about a revolution in media.


WED 17:00 PM (m00139kt)
Afternoon news and current affairs programme, reporting on breaking stories and summing up the day's headlines.


WED 18:00 Six O'Clock News (m00139kw)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.


WED 18:30 Ellie Taylor's Safe Space (m000ynbb)
Series 2

Exercise

Comedian Ellie Taylor (The Mash Report, Live At The Apollo) is no fan of exercise and so had taken to Radio 4 to promote this controversial opinion, with help from her regular sidekick Robin Morgan (Mock The Week) . They talk to members of the public about their own gripes and dislikes, and also they speak to fitness fan and bumbag aficionado, Mr Motivator, for his views on the virtues of moving about a bit.

Written by Ellie Taylor and Robin Morgan.

Produced by Sam Michell for BBC Studios


WED 19:00 The Archers (m00139ky)
Peggy’s kindness knows no bounds and Amy lends her shoulder.


WED 19:15 Front Row (m00139l0)
Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music


WED 20:00 Moral Maze (m00139l2)
Live debate examining the moral issues behind one of the week's news stories. #moralmaze


WED 20:45 Four Thought (m0012fsb)
Painting a different history

Tara Munroe reveals what she learned when she rescued some badly damaged paintings which were due to be thrown out.

Tara is an arts curator and researcher. Ten years ago she found a pile of paintings marked with the words 'for disposal'. She was immediately intrigued, and as she began to research them, she became more and more drawn into their story, and how it connected with her own history. Now, a decade on, she is hoping to return them to the gallery walls, where they belong.

Producer: Patrick Cowling.


WED 21:00 The Flipside with Paris Lees (p0b1jv25)
We are Family (aren’t we?)

What makes someone family?

Paris speaks to a woman who found out her father wasn't exactly her father and another woman who will probably never even meet her offspring.

Dr Rachel Farr shares her research into children born into diverse families, specifically those born with LGBTQ+ parents.

Hosted by Paris Lees.
Written by Hannah Varrall and Paris Lees.

Assistant Producer: Lucy Evans
Production Manager: Emily Jarvis
Audio Engineers: Chris Carter and Nick Webb
Mixed by Mau Loseto
Producer: Hannah Varrall
Executive Producer: Rubina Pabani

An ITN production for BBC Radio 4


WED 21:30 The Media Show (m00139kr)
[Repeat of broadcast at 16:30 today]


WED 22:00 The World Tonight (m00139l4)
In depth reporting, intelligent analysis and breaking news from a global perspective


WED 22:45 Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah (m00139k9)
[Repeat of broadcast at 12:04 today]


WED 23:00 Bunk Bed (m00139l6)
Series 9

A comic pillow fight between Patrick Marber and Peter Curran, with a ghostly visitation from science fiction godfather H.G Wells

Patrick Marber and Peter Curran escape from the hurly-burly of the day into their nearest faraway place - the Bunk Bed.

Recorded in the dark and on beds, this is the perfect place for letting thoughts to drift without rhyme or reason.

This time, after a top bunk malfunction, they are forced to snuggle up together in the same bed. Socks with 12 hours of wear on them, uncut toenails and grinding all bring conflict. Eventually, we hear the strange voice of science fiction pioneer HG Wells from a 1934 BBC broadcast that spookily sums up society today. This leads naturally to a discussion of national pride, Seamus Heaney, and the male orgasm.

Occasional sleepover guests for this series will include star of The Simpsons and This Is Spinal Tap, Harry Shearer, actor Jane Horrocks, cook and presenter Andi Oliver, and director Sir Richard Eyre.

Producer: Peter Curran
A Foghorn production for BBC Radio 4


WED 23:15 Sophie Willan's Guide to Normality (b09yfp68)
Series 1

Be Polite

Break out comedy star Sophie Willan is coming to Radio 4 with an exciting new stand-up series looking at what it is to be 'normal'. Sophie grew up in and out of the Care System and had an unconventional childhood. In her debut series she will get to grips with - and often challenge - our perception of 'the perfect normal life', shining a light on the reality of the British experience.

In the final episode of the series, Sophie will explore what it is to be considered 'polite' in a middle class society, and how her upbringing has changed her perception of politeness.

Sophie Willan's Guide to Normality was produced by Suzy Grant for BBC Studios.


WED 23:30 Today in Parliament (m00139l9)
News, views and features on today's stories in Parliament



THURSDAY 13 JANUARY 2022

THU 00:00 Midnight News (m00139lc)
The latest news and weather forecast from BBC Radio 4.


THU 00:30 Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn (m00139k0)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:45 on Wednesday]


THU 00:48 Shipping Forecast (m00139lf)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping.


THU 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (m00139lh)
BBC Radio 4 presents a selection of news and current affairs, arts and science programmes from the BBC World Service.


THU 05:33 Shipping Forecast (m00139lk)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping.


THU 05:43 Prayer for the Day (m00139lp)
SCRIPT

Good morning.

Today in 1943 Adolf Hitler, after serious reverses on the Eastern Front, demanded total war on the allies. He called for a fresh effort from the German people. 500,000 men were brought into the German armed forces by replacing male factory workers with women.

By 1943 war was, of course, well underway. Yet even before its outbreak in 1939 persecution of the Jewish people had begun. In 1938 Kristallnacht, when 30,000 Jews were arrested and taken to camps, had sealed the Nazi commitment to destroy the Jewish people. By the end of the war some 6 million Jews had been dehumanised, obliterated by genocide. Sadly the Shoah, the Holocaust which is perhaps the most well known of all genocides, was not the only effort to destroy a people or nation.

The impact of such events as genocide and war are far reaching. In this day and time we know more about trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder yet we remain ill equipped to support nations to recover and experience post-traumatic growth. We are in the throes of a pandemic that will leave its mark on individual lives and across the peoples of the world. This is a time to fervently work and pray for the resources and tools to support the kind of recovery that allow growth.

Lord God, we pray for the kind of recovery that unites people and shares resources for a just and fair world. Amen.


THU 05:45 Farming Today (m00139lr)
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.


THU 05:58 Tweet of the Day (b09sn13x)
Helen Moncrieff on the Black Guillemot

Helen Moncrieff, Shetland Manager for RSPB Scotland recalls some of her encounters with the Black Guillemot or Tystie as they are known locally in Shetland after their piercing whistle. These include watching one disappear into the jaws of an Orca.

Producer: Sarah Blunt
Photograph: Brian Burke.


THU 06:00 Today (m00139nt)
News and current affairs, including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.


THU 09:00 In Our Time (m00139nw)
Thomas Hardy's Poetry

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Hardy (1840 -1928) and his commitment to poetry, which he prized far above his novels. In the 1890s, once he had earned enough from his fiction, Hardy stopped writing novels altogether and returned to the poetry he had largely put aside since his twenties. He hoped that he might be ranked one day alongside Shelley and Byron, worthy of inclusion in a collection such as Palgrave's Golden Treasury which had inspired him. Hardy kept writing poems for the rest of his life, in different styles and metres, and he explored genres from nature, to war, to epic. Among his best known are what he called his Poems of 1912 to 13, responding to his grief at the death of his first wife, Emma (1840 -1912), who he credited as the one who had made it possible for him to leave his work as an architect's clerk and to write the novels that made him famous.

With

Mark Ford
Poet, and Professor of English and American Literature, University College London.

Jane Thomas
Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Hull and Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Leeds

And

Tim Armstrong
Professor of Modern English and American Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London

Producer: Simon Tillotson


THU 09:45 Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn (m00139ny)
Episode 4

Islands of Abandonment, by Cal Flyn, explores the extraordinary places where humans no longer live - or survive in tiny, precarious numbers - to give us a glimpse of what happens when mankind’s impact on nature is forced to stop.

Flyn brings together some of the most desolate, eerie, ravaged and polluted areas in the world - and shows how, against all odds, they can offer remarkable opportunities for environmental recovery.

By turns haunted and hopeful, this luminously written and wide-ranging account shines a light in the direction of some of the answers to the big questions - what happens after we’re gone, and how far can our presence be erased and the damage be undone?

Written by Cal Flyn
Abridged by Jill Waters and Isobel Creed
Read by Morven Christie
Produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4


THU 10:00 Woman's Hour (m00139p0)
Women's voices and women's lives - topical conversations to inform, challenge and inspire.


THU 11:00 Crossing Continents (m00139p2)
Insight, and analysis from BBC correspondents around the world


THU 11:30 Night Watch (m00139p4)
At night women say goodbye, telling each other "text me when you're home". We carry keys between our knuckles, avoid dark streets, cross the road, then cross back again, keep looking over your shoulder.

In Night Watch, four women from different parts of Britain share stories of street harassment. Woven through this feature is a new, specially commissioned poem by Hollie McNish.

The murders of Sarah Everard and Sabina Nessa compounded the perception of city streets as male spaces- unwelcoming and unsafe for women, and other marginalised groups. Is this the way it's always been?

In these raw and unfiltered accounts women will hear their own experiences echoed back in others' words; stories of shouted insults, rejected come-ons, intimidation.

Featuring the voices Nosisa and Alison Majuqwana, Aggie Hewitt, Katie Cuddon, Alice Jackson the co-founder of Strut Safe, author Rebecca Solnit, author and moral philosopher at Cornell University Kate Manne and design activist Jos Boys.

If you've been impacted by any of the issues raised in this documentary contact details for support organisations can be found in this link:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2MfW34HqH7tTCtnmx7LVfzp/information-and-support-victims-of-crime

Producer: Caitlin Smith
Poetry: Hollie McNish
Sound Design: Joel Cox
Executive Producer: Peter McManus


THU 12:00 News Summary (m00139p6)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4


THU 12:04 Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah (m00139p8)
Episode 4

Paradise is a historical novel by UK Zanzibar-born writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, first published in 1994. The novel was nominated for both the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Prize for Fiction and, this year, Gurnah was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature for his "uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents."

The novel follows the story of Yusuf, a boy born in the fictional town of Kawa in Tanzania at the turn of the 20th century. Yusuf's father is a hotelier and is in debt to a rich and powerful Arab merchant named Aziz.

Early in the story, Yusuf is pawned in exchange for his father's debt to Aziz and must work as an unpaid servant for the merchant. Yusuf joins Aziz's caravan as they travel into parts of Central Africa and the Congo Basin that have not been traded with for many generations. Here, Aziz's caravan of traders meets hostility from local tribes, wild animals and difficult terrain.

It's both a coming of age story and a poetic and powerful portrait set against the backdrop of an Africa increasingly corrupted by colonialism and violence.

Abridged by Florence Bedell
Read by Paterson Joseph
Produced by Clive Brill

A Brill production for BBC Radio 4


THU 12:18 You and Yours (m00139pb)
News and discussion of consumer affairs


THU 12:57 Weather (m00139pd)
The latest weather forecast


THU 13:00 World at One (m00139pg)
Forty-five minutes of news, analysis and comment, with Sarah Montague.


THU 13:45 Past Forward: A Century of Sound (m00139pj)
Traffic

Greg Jenner watches an archive clip of Ernest Marples, transport minister in the 1960s, discussing the emerging challenges of car congestion and pollution in Britain’s cities. Greg speaks to the writer Lynsey Hanley and the historian Joe Moran about the rise of car culture in Britain. What is the particular appeal of the private car, how does the rise in car ownership relate to the rise of the environmental movement, and what is their vision for how we’ll get from A to B in the future?

Marking the centenary of the BBC, Past Forward uses a random date generator to alight somewhere in the BBC's vast archive over the past 100 years. Public historian Greg Jenner hears an archive clip for the first time at the top of the programme, and uses it as a starting point in a journey towards the present day. The archive captures a century of British life in a unique way - a history of ordinary people’s lives, as well as news of the great events. Greg uncovers connections through people, places and ideas that link the archive fragment to Britain in 2022, pulling in help from experts and those who remember the time – and sometimes the speakers themselves, decades later - along the way. What he discovers are stories, big and small, that reveal how the people we were have shaped the people we have become.

Producer: Eliane Glaser


THU 14:00 The Archers (m00139ky)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 on Wednesday]


THU 14:15 Drama (m0005mm4)
Me & Robin Hood

By Shôn Dale-Jones. One man channels his childhood obsession with the mythical outlaw, Robin Hood, by making a stand against our stress-filled, unequal, consumer-driven society.

Shôn first met Robin Hood back in the autumn of 1975, as a seven-year-old-boy, living on the Isle of Anglesey. But what would it mean to be a modern day Robin Hood? How could you take the principles of robbing from the rich and giving to the poor and apply them to the complexities of our global economy? And what’s so great about Robin Hood anyway?

The latest inventive piece of sonic storytelling magic from writer/performer Shôn Dale-Jones – Me & Robin Hood is a story about the growing gap between rich and poor, radicalism and the challenge of knowing that sometimes you have to do something wrong in order to do something right. It’s a comic story about how Shôn’s childhood hero re-enters his life when he needs him most.

Me & Robin Hood began life as a one-man stage play, produced by Hoipolloi and the Royal Court.

Shôn …. Shôn Dale-Jones
The Therapist…. Clare Cage

Directed by James Robinson
A BBC Cymru Wales Production


THU 15:00 Open Country (m00139pl)
Classic Rock

Jack's Rake is a famous diagonal groove up a Lake District rock face. It's tough, but not too tough - so can a newby climber manage it?

Helping Emily Knight up the face is Anna Fleming, author of Time on Rock, plus Langdale native Bill Birkett who's made a few first ascents in the Lakes. On the way they talk about the rock, the attitude, and the kit.

The producer for BBC audio in Bristol is Miles Warde


THU 15:27 Radio 4 Appeal (m00138r2)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:54 on Sunday]


THU 15:30 Open Book (m00138rt)
[Repeat of broadcast at 16:00 on Sunday]


THU 16:00 Think with Pinker (m00139pn)
Professor Steven Pinker has spent his life thinking about thinking. Now he wants us to join him. For this series Professor Pinker has created a critical thinking toolkit which he hopes will help all of us make better decisions about – well, everything. Steven will be joined by some big thinkers, and people who have to deal with the consequences of irrationality, as he sets out to steer us away from common fallacies and logical traps set by our own animal brains.

Think with Pinker is produced in partnership with The Open University.


THU 16:30 BBC Inside Science (m00139pq)
A weekly programme that illuminates the mysteries and challenges the controversies behind the science that's changing our world.


THU 17:00 PM (m00139ps)
Afternoon news and current affairs programme, reporting on breaking stories and summing up the day's headlines.


THU 18:00 Six O'Clock News (m00139pv)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.


THU 18:30 Fags, Mags and Bags (m000khkq)
Series 9

Episode 3

More shop based shenanigans and over the counter philosophy, courtesy of Ramesh Mahju and his trusty sidekick Dave.

Set in a Scots-Asian corner and written by and starring Donald Mcleary and Sanjeev Kohli, the award winning Fags, Mags & Bags returns for a 9th series with all the regular characters and some guest appearances along the way.

In this episode, Dave introduces his new girlfriend, Margot. Love is in the air, but not everyone is convinced by her motives after it’s revealed they met on a Moving Alan fan website.

Join the staff of Fags, Mags and Bags in their tireless quest to bring nice-price custard creams and cans of coke with Arabic writing on them to an ungrateful nation. Ramesh Mahju has built it up over the course of over 30 years and is a firmly entrenched, friendly presence in the local area. He is joined by his shop sidekick Dave.

Then of course there are Ramesh’s sons Sanjay and Alok, both surly and not particularly keen on the old school approach to shopkeeping, but natural successors to the business. Ramesh is keen to pass all his worldly wisdom onto them - whether they like it or not!

Cast:
Ramesh: Sanjeev Kohli
Dave: Donald Mcleary
Sanjay: Omar Raza
Alok: Susheel Kumar
Bishop Briggs: Michael Redmond
Hilly: Kate Brailsford
Mrs Armstrong: Maureen Carr
Margot: Gabriel Quigley

Producer: Gus Beattie for Gusman Productions
A Comedy Unit production for BBC Radio 4


THU 19:00 The Archers (m0013957)
Writer, Tim Stimpson
Director, Julie Beckett
Editor, Jeremy Howe

Pip Archer ….. Daisy Badger
Josh Archer ….. Angus Imrie
Pat Archer ….. Patricia Gallimore
Tony Archer ….. David Troughton
Tom Archer ….. William Troughton
Natasha Archer ….. Mali Harries
Brian Aldridge ….. Charles Collingwood
Phoebe Aldridge ….. Lucy Morris
Alice Carter ….. Hollie Chapman
Amy Franks ….. Jennifer Daley
Ed Grundy ….. Barry Farrimond
Mike Tucker ….. Terry Molloy
Roy Tucker ….. Ian Pepperell
Peggy Woolley ….. June Spencer
Hazel Woolley ….. Annette Badland
Stella ….. Lucy Speed


THU 19:15 Front Row (m00139px)
Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music


THU 20:00 The Briefing Room (m00139pz)
David Aaronovitch presents in-depth explainers on big issues in the news.


THU 20:30 Lights Out (m000zsg3)
Series 4

Kaleidoscope

What does it feel like to be a child or teenager navigating the ups and downs of youth, under the shadow of constant media scrutiny about your identity, your choices and whether you fit into society?

Transgender kids and teenagers are often spoken about in the media, but rarely get the chance to speak for themselves. In this episode of Lights Out, three young trans people, aged 10, 15 and 16, let us into their inner worlds. Their mums share how media scrutiny of their families affects their lives and an academic in media studies and queer theory reflects on how the media constructs narratives about marginalised groups, exploring why queer people and children are easy targets for moral panic.

Produced by Arlie Adlington
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4


THU 21:00 BBC Inside Science (m00139pq)
[Repeat of broadcast at 16:30 today]


THU 21:30 In Our Time (m00139nw)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:00 today]


THU 22:00 The World Tonight (m00139q2)
In depth reporting, intelligent analysis and breaking news from a global perspective


THU 22:45 Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah (m00139p8)
[Repeat of broadcast at 12:04 today]


THU 23:00 The Nether Regions (m00139q5)
Series 1

Episode 2

Creators of the hit Radio 4 Sci Fi comedy Quanderhorn, Rob Grant (Son of Cliché, Spitting Image, Red Dwarf) and Andrew Marshall (Burkiss Way, Whoops Apocalypse, 2point4children) invite you back for a deeper glimpse into the steaming primordial swamps of their hideously contorted imaginations, known only as The Nether Regions.

Trapped with them in the dank basements of their fetid minds are sparkling young talents Helen Cripps, Edward Rowett and Holly Morgan.

The Nether Regions is our dystopian present – it’s now, but not now, and then, but now. Not.

Past, present and future merge into one writhing tortured tangle, where the Naked Truth climbs out of the window, because Fake News has come home unexpectedly early.

Continuing the mirth, mayhem and something else beginning with M of the highly acclaimed pilot show. Scream in terror. Then listen to the show. Then scream in terror again, as you witness:

Our classic serial, adapted from the long-lost manuscript of Jane Austen’s Love Island
The smash hit Seventies Cop show, Oh My God – A Woman’s in Charge!
1920s English Batman, having trouble with his new hotline
Priceless Life Hacks in Nether Regions Clickbait.

These and other mind-munching experiences await the unwary listener. Make sure you book a return ticket.

Created and Written by Rob Grant and Andrew Marshall
Performed by Rob Grant, Andrew Marshall, Helen Cripps, Edward Rowett and Holly Morgan
Studio Engineered and Edited by Jerry Peal
Original Music Composed by Pete Baikie
Programme Managed by Sarah Tombling
Recorded at The Shaw Theatre, London

Produced and Directed by Gordon Kennedy, Rob Grant and Andrew Marshall
An Absolutely production for BBC Radio 4


THU 23:30 Today in Parliament (m00139q9)
News, views and features on today's stories in Parliament



FRIDAY 14 JANUARY 2022

FRI 00:00 Midnight News (m00139qf)
The latest news and weather forecast from BBC Radio 4.


FRI 00:30 Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn (m00139ny)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:45 on Thursday]


FRI 00:48 Shipping Forecast (m00139ql)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping.


FRI 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (m00139qq)
BBC Radio 4 presents a selection of news and current affairs, arts and science programmes from the BBC World Service.


FRI 05:33 Shipping Forecast (m00139qv)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping.


FRI 05:43 Prayer for the Day (m00139r3)
SCRIPT

Good morning.

If you’re celebrating a birthday today, you share your birth date with Albert Schweitzer born on this day in 1875 in the Alsace region of Germany., Schweitzer was the eldest son of Lutheran pastor and studied philosophy and theology at the University of Strasbourg.

One of the most striking things about Schweitzer is how he put the full gambit of his skills to work to make his own mark on history. He is known for his book The Quest for the Historical Jesus, influential in shaping the direction of theological discourse. As an organist in Strasbourg he was known as an interpreter of the work of JS Bach and wrote a study of the composer.

In 1905 Schweitzer began medical studies and became a doctor. His wife trained as a nurse to assist him and together they worked in what was then the Gabon region of French Equatorial Africa where they built a hospital. During the First World War Schweitzer was a prisoner of war and later returned to Africa to rebuild his hospital and add a place for those who had leprosy to live in safety.

In 1953 he received the Nobel Prize for his altruism, reverence for life and tireless humanitarian work. In a world where there is considerable need, suffering and conflict Schweitzer inspires as an individual who put all that he to good use because he reverenced life.

Loving God, may we reverence life by our words and actions and inspire others to do the same. Equip us and help us in this task we pray. Amen.


FRI 05:45 Farming Today (m00139r7)
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.


FRI 05:58 Tweet of the Day (b03k5bgq)
Gadwall

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs.

Chris Packham presents the gadwall. Gadwall were rare ducks until a few decades ago, now though, gadwall are spreading fast in the UK. Gadwall can be sneaky thieves, exhibiting what scientists call klepto-parasitic tendencies. They often wait for birds such as coot and mute swans to bring up aquatic vegetation beyond their reach and seize it before their victims can eat it themselves.


FRI 06:00 Today (m001394j)
News and current affairs, including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.


FRI 09:00 Desert Island Discs (m00138rg)
[Repeat of broadcast at 11:00 on Sunday]


FRI 09:45 Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn (m001394l)
Episode 5

Islands of Abandonment, by Cal Flyn, explores the extraordinary places where humans no longer live - or survive in tiny, precarious numbers - to give us a glimpse of what happens when mankind’s impact on nature is forced to stop.

Flyn brings together some of the most desolate, eerie, ravaged and polluted areas in the world - and shows how, against all odds, they can offer remarkable opportunities for environmental recovery.

By turns haunted and hopeful, this luminously written and wide-ranging account shines a light in the direction of some of the answers to the big questions - what happens after we’re gone, and how far can our presence be erased and the damage be undone?

Written by Cal Flyn
Abridged by Jill Waters and Isobel Creed
Read by Morven Christie
Produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4


FRI 10:00 Woman's Hour (m001394n)
Women's voices and women's lives - topical conversations to inform, challenge and inspire.


FRI 11:00 Fungi: The New Frontier (m001394q)
The biggest show on Earth

It all started with rumours of an 800-meter underground organism hidden under the streets of Cambridge and a plate of mushrooms on toast. With cream. In this three-part series, Tim Hayward falls down a rabbit hole into kingdom (or as some call it queendom) Fungi. Along the way he starts to question pretty much everything he thought he knew about the world, discovering scientists doing pioneering research that’s changing how we understand life on Earth and offering solutions to some of our biggest challenges.

In this second episode Tim heads to the Kew Fungarium - the biggest collection of dried fungal specimens in the world, tries to get his head around fungal sex and peers into a world of zombies and snakes in the form of microscopic fungi. He gets a kind of vertigo as he learns more about the fungal world underneath our feet, in our own guts, and, basically - everywhere. He then learns a word that could help to save fungal biodiversity - and why this matters more than he ever could have realised... and finally there’s the possibility of fungal intelligence.

Features:
Giuliana Furci, founder of the Fungi Foundation
Merlin Sheldrake, biologist and writer
Justin Stewart, researcher into microbial networks
Kristin Aleklett Kadish, microbial ecologist
Lee Davies, curator at the Kew Fungarium.

Presenter: Tim Hayward
Producer and Sound Designer: Richard Ward
Executive Producer: Miranda Hinkley
Image courtesy of Carolina Magnasco
A Loftus Media production for Radio 4


FRI 11:30 The Train at Platform 4 (m001394s)
Cat

Episode Two of Punt and Dennis's new sitcom, set in the claustrophobic carriages of a cross-country rail service.

It's Friday night and everyone's looking forward to their weekend plans. But the journey home is struck with disaster when a celebrity cat goes missing on the train - Artemis Montmorency Wolfhandle the Third is potentially the new face of Kitty Krunch Cat Food but is set to miss a crucial audition if the train crew can't track her down. Meanwhile, Dev's plans for a hot date are thrown into turmoil when he learns the bitter truth about his receding hairline.

Our heroes are the long-suffering train crew who manage to scrape through every shift like a dysfunctional family – Train Manager, Sam (Rosie Cavaliero; Inside No. 9) First Class Steward, Gilbert (Kenneth Collard; Cuckoo), Catering Manager, Dev (Ali Shahalom; Muzlamic) and Trolley Operator Tasha (Amy Geldhill; Life). The passengers are made up of a rolling roster of guest stars, which includes the odd cameo from Punt and Dennis themselves.

Sam…. Rosie Cavaliero
Gilbert…. Kenneth Collard
Dev….. Ali Shahalom
Tasha….. Amy Gledhill
Cat Lady.... Freya Parker
American.... Hugh Dennis
Passenger.... Steve Punt

Written by....Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis
Producer… James Robinson
A BBC Studios Production


FRI 12:00 News Summary (m001394v)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4


FRI 12:04 Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah (m001394x)
Episode 5

Paradise is a historical novel by UK Zanzibar-born writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, first published in 1994. The novel was nominated for both the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Prize for Fiction and, this year, Gurnah was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature for his "uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents."

The novel follows the story of Yusuf, a boy born in the fictional town of Kawa in Tanzania at the turn of the 20th century. Yusuf's father is a hotelier and is in debt to a rich and powerful Arab merchant named Aziz.

Early in the story, Yusuf is pawned in exchange for his father's debt to Aziz and must work as an unpaid servant for the merchant. Yusuf joins Aziz's caravan as they travel into parts of Central Africa and the Congo Basin that have not been traded with for many generations. Here, Aziz's caravan of traders meets hostility from local tribes, wild animals and difficult terrain.

It's both a coming of age story and a poetic and powerful portrait set against the backdrop of an Africa increasingly corrupted by colonialism and violence.

Abridged by Florence Bedell
Read by Paterson Joseph
Produced by Clive Brill

A Brill production for BBC Radio 4


FRI 12:18 You and Yours (m001394z)
News and discussion of consumer affairs


FRI 12:57 Weather (m0013951)
The latest weather forecast


FRI 13:00 World at One (m0013953)
Forty-five minutes of news, analysis and comment, with Jonny Dymond.


FRI 13:45 Past Forward: A Century of Sound (m0013955)
England v Argentina 1998

On 30th June 1998 the news featured the build up to a certain FIFA World Cup football match – England v Argentina – on which the life and career of a young David Beckham would turn. Greg talks to Liza Betts and Jonathan Hirshler about the aftermath.

Marking the centenary of the BBC, Past Forward uses a random date generator to alight somewhere in the BBC's vast archive over the past 100 years. Public historian Greg Jenner hears an archive clip for the first time at the top of the programme, and uses it as a starting point in a journey towards the present day. The archive captures a century of British life in a unique way - a history of ordinary people’s lives, as well as news of the great events. Greg uncovers connections through people, places and ideas that link the archive fragment to Britain in 2022, pulling in help from experts and those who remember the time – and sometimes the speakers themselves, decades later - along the way. What he discovers are stories, big and small, that reveal how the people we were have shaped the people we have become.

Producer: Dan Potts


FRI 14:00 The Archers (m0013957)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 on Thursday]


FRI 14:15 Limelight (p0b8cfs4)
SteelHeads

Steelheads – Episode 3: Shiny Happy People

When young British tennis pro, Joleen Kenzie (Jessica Barden), is diagnosed with a rare terminal illness, she has herself cryogenically frozen at an experimental lab in Seattle, in the hope that one day – perhaps hundreds of years into the future - there will be a cure and she can be revived.

She wakes up to a world divided. Having escaped captivity, Joleen arrives by sea in Seattle with her companions, Remi, an escaped convict and Luther, a blind captain…

From the creators of The Cipher and Passenger List, a chilling new medical thriller inspired by true events starring Jessica Barden.

Cast:
JOLEEN – Jessica Barden
LUTHER – Bruce Lester Johnson
REMI – Khalid Laith
SUMMER – Gianna Kiehl
LESTER – Christopher Ragland
WAYNE – Daniel Ryan
LUCINDA – Annabelle Dowler
OSCAR – Jason Forbes
KIT – Symera Jackson

All other parts played by: Kerry Shale, Earl R Perkins, Andrew Byron and Eric Meyers

Original Theme composed by Pascal Wyse

Written and Created by Brett Neichin and John Scott Dryden
Script Editing by Mike Walker
Sound Design by Steve Bond
Sound Editor: Adam Woodhams
Assistant Producer: Eleanor Mein
Additional casting by Janet Foster
Trails by Jack Soper
Produced by Emma Hearn
Director and Executive Producer: John Scott Dryden

A Goldhawk production for BBC Radio 4


FRI 14:45 New Year Solutions (m0001v7f)
Clothes

As global warming threatens the future of our society, Jo Fidgen explores the ways in which ordinary people can make a difference.

We're often told that we could help the environment by driving less, eating less meat, or using less water.

But in the face of a challenge as significant as global warming, how big a difference can small changes really make? And what would the world look like if we took those solutions to their logical extremes?

Our wardrobes are a surprisingly massive contributor to environmental damage and climate change, as fast fashion habits encourage more and more reckless consumption. But what would the world look like if we decided to stamp out fashion's carbon footprint?

Producer: Robert Nicholson

A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4


FRI 15:00 Gardeners' Question Time (m001395d)
Horticultural programme featuring a group of gardening experts.


FRI 15:45 The Poet and the Echo (m001395g)
Lines, 1933

Writers choose poems as inspiration for new stories.

Episode 1/3

Lines, 1933

A young woman at the heart of her community weighs up the joys and perils of companionship.

A humorous story inspired by Orcadian poet Ann Scott-Moncrieff's bold declaration of independence. By Duncan McLean.

Credits

Writer ..... Duncan McLean
Reader ..... Eilidh Fisher
Producer ..... Eilidh McCreadie

A BBC Scotland Production for BBC Radio 4.


FRI 16:00 Last Word (m001395j)
Matthew Bannister tells the life stories of people who have recently died, from the rich and famous to unsung but significant.


FRI 16:30 More or Less (m001395l)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:00 on Wednesday]


FRI 17:00 PM (m001395n)
Afternoon news and current affairs programme, reporting on breaking stories and summing up the day's headlines.


FRI 18:00 Six O'Clock News (m001395q)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.


FRI 18:30 The News Quiz (m001395s)
Series 107

Episode 3

Andy Zaltzman presents a look back at the week's headlines


FRI 19:00 Past Forward: A Century of Sound (m0013255)
1984 - Comrade Dad

Public historian Greg Jenner watches a BBC sitcom from the 1980s, Comrade Dad, which imagines that the British government has been taken over by Soviet Communists. He speaks to television producer and historian Taylor Downing and author Naomi Alderman about Cold War panic, Thatcher’s Britain and what fictional dystopias reveal about our concerns – past and present.

Marking the centenary of the BBC, Past Forward uses a random date generator to alight somewhere in the BBC's vast archive over the past 100 years. Public historian Greg Jenner hears an archive clip for the first time at the top of the programme, and uses it as a starting point in a journey towards the present day. The archive captures a century of British life in a unique way - a history of ordinary people’s lives, as well as news of the great events. Greg uncovers connections through people, places and ideas that link the archive fragment to Britain in 2022, pulling in help from experts and those who remember the time – and sometimes the speakers themselves, decades later - along the way. What he discovers are stories, big and small, that reveal how the people we were have shaped the people we have become.

Produced by Eliane Glaser for BBC Wales


FRI 19:15 Screenshot (m001395v)
Nightmare Alley and film noir

Film noir Nightmare Alley is released next week. It's director Guillermo del Toro's remake of the 1947 film - a baroque tale of carnival hucksters, psychiatrists and betrayal.

Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode explore the connections sparked by Nightmare Alley and film noir.

Mark speaks to Guillermo del Toro about his five favourite classic noir films, including Fallen Angel and Born to Kill.

And Ellen looks at how neo-noir movies subverted and reframed the genre from the 1970s onwards, with the help of critics Imogen Sara Smith and Amon Warmann.

Screenshot is Radio 4’s guide through the ever-expanding universe of the moving image. Every episode, Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode journey through the main streets and back roads connecting film, television and streaming over the last hundred years.

Producer: Jane Long
A Prospect Street production for BBC Radio 4


FRI 20:00 Any Questions? (m001395x)
Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones

Chris Mason presents political debate and discussion from St Mary's Church, Handsworth which includes the businessman and farmer Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones.
Producer: Camellia Sinclair
Lead broadcast engineer: Phil Booth


FRI 20:50 A Point of View (m001395z)
Weekly reflections on topical issues from a range of contributors.


FRI 21:00 The Northern Bank Job (m000v3r4)
Omnibus 2

Belfast writer Glenn Patterson explores the background to the biggest bank heist in British and Irish criminal history - the 2004 Northern Bank robbery.


FRI 22:00 The World Tonight (m0013961)
In depth reporting, intelligent analysis and breaking news from a global perspective


FRI 22:45 Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah (m001394x)
[Repeat of broadcast at 12:04 today]


FRI 23:00 Great Lives (m0013963)
[Repeat of broadcast at 16:30 on Tuesday]


FRI 23:30 Today in Parliament (m0013965)
News, views and features on today's stories in Parliament