DON’T SLEEP THERE ARE SNAKES
Radio 4 Book Of the Week. 17 - 21 November 2008
Written by Daniel Everett. Read by Colin Stinton.
Colin Stinton reads the extraordinary story of American linguist, Daniel Everett who lived among the Pirahã, a small tribe of Amazonian Indians in central Brazil, whose remoteness meant that their language was incomprehensible. Everett, at that time a Christian missionary, arrived with his wife and children in 1977 intending to convert them. But he became so obsessed with their language and its cultural and linguistic implications, and with the remarkable contentment with which they live, that he eventually lost his faith in the God he’d hoped to introduce to them. Over the years, he and his family encountered malaria, snakes, and a plot to kill them as they slept, - and his discoveries about how their language works led Everett to a new linguistic theory.
WHEN SILENCE SINGS, BBC Radio 3, November 22nd 2008
Tonie Flaathen, a Norwegian writer and psychologist now in her mid-fifties, has been profoundly deaf from birth. That doesn't stop her from absorbing and relishing the sounds of Venice that surround and sound through her.
TOO MANY SANTAS December 2008
What we know for certain is in northern Europe there are too many Santas. 13 in Iceland, and in Scandinavia, millions. Every family has their own. Meanwhile the whole of the rest of the world has just one to share.
We often complain about the commercialisation of Christmas but are the pagan traditions really a sign of a healthy spiritualistic adaptation of a secular culture? Who exactly came down the chimney and what do the different Santas of the Arctic circle reveal about modern Europe?
TALKING ABOUT LIONEL 06 December 2008
When the complex and troubled originator of British, working class musical theatre, Lionel Bart, died of drink inflicted, liver cancer in 1999, he was in the sober process of returning to his creative roots, and had seemingly come to terms with his previously concealed homosexuality.
Ten years after the death of composer and lyricist Lionel Bart (April 3rd 2009), Eddie Mair offers his insight into his life and work, revealed through interviews with those who worked with, and knew him intimately.
MOLE JAZZ BBC RADIO 3 Between the Ears 6th December 2008
Leni Dipple, a poet, reflects on her late husband’s jazz record shop and his varied obsessions - for collecting and with the John Ford movie ‘The Searchers’.
HOW FAR WILL YOU GO FOR A DANCE? December 2009 BBC Radio 3, 2 x 44 minutes
There is a real renaissance in dance: both choreographers and dancers seem to be pushing themselves much further and harder. It leads to the question: 'Just how far will they go for a dance?' It's creates great art - but at what cost?
Producer: Frances Byrnes
GOD.COM 09 February 2009
Every traditional religion and their denomination within have a web site, as do a fast-growing number of individual churches, mosques and synagogues. Browsers can tap into everything from the sublime (prayers broadcast from Mecca) to the ridiculous (Church of the Blind Chihuahua). Even the Pope has appeared live online at www.vatican.va.
Every morning, people of various faiths pray, meditate, perform rites - and then log off. The internet, as well as providing 'chat rooms' and social opportunities for people of different faiths to meet and share experiences, is also beginning to 'lead' people in their worship. The implications are not only spiritual. Dr Robert Beckford investigates.
FIFTY YEARS IN EXILE March 2009
In 1959 the Tibetan people started to demonstrate against the occupying Chinese forces which had entered Tibet ten years earlier. The Tibetan Uprising was violently suppressed and tens of thousands of monks, nuns and lay people died. In a dramatic sequence of events, the 14th Dalai Lama flees Lhasa in disguise. This programme tells the story his fifty years in exile.
HEAD IN THE CLOUDS April 2009 BBC Radio 3, 4 x 14 minutes
Clouds and cloudscapes are a vital part of the history of art and culture, and play a crucial part in our cloud-gazing dreams and mushrooming nightmares. These essays trace the shifting, drifting role of clouds in art, architecture and the cultural imagination. In these 4 programmes writers, cultural historians, art historians and architects engage in some blue-sky thinking.
Producer: Paul Quinn
THE SUNDAY FEATURE: LELAND'S TRAVELS April 2009 BBC Radio 3, 1 x 44 minutes
The story of how brilliant humanist scholar John Leland travelled the length and breadth of the country on the eve of the Reformation, recording its treasures, making the first authoritative geographical and cultural map of the nation. How Leland's travels led to the destruction of what he lovingly recorded; and his own descent into madness.
Producer: Paul Quinn
REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL April 2009
Three programmes presented by Lenny Henry and Peter White will challenge The Grumpy Old Men TV series notion that modern Britain has gone to hell in a handcart. They take an entertaining look at reasons to be cheerful in modern Britain: questioning some of the grumpy old buggars on the way.
SALMONELLA MEN ON PLANET PORNO - BBC Radio 3 March 2009 The Wire
On a planet where love not war governs the laws of evolution astronauts fight off the unwanted attentions of hybridised animals, birds and even plants. Their quest takes them to Newdopia where the naked inhabitants have no concept of the obscene.
WHAT`S IN YOUR HEAD Autumn 2009
Under pressure, when we are on our own, many of us hear the words we learnt by heart as a child. In this feature people talk about how these words have helped them in situations of extreme pressure and danger.
MERRY WIDOWS Autumn 2009
An antidote to soul-searching programmes about bereavement: women of a certain age talk about how happy they have been since they’ve been widowed. No meals to cook, no snoring to endure, just female friends – and freedom, for the first time in their lives.
Many older women discover a new lease of life on their own. This programme hears their stories. It’s not that they were unhappily married, but all marriages, particularly when the husband is retired and around the house, produce their constraints. For the first time in their lives, these older women are free!
THE LAST SMOKER Early 2009 Radio 4
Afternoon Play
The world’s last smoker is hounded beyond reason.
A HISTORY OF PRIVATE LIFE BBC Radio 4 Narrative History, 30 x 15 Oct – Nov 2009
Award-winning historian Amanda Vickery presents a series which reveals the hidden history of private life in Britain over 400 years.
This Landmark series for BBC Radio 4 unlocks the front door of the Englishman's castle, to peer into the privacies of life at home over the last 400 years, from around 1600 up to 1939. It will vividly recreate the texture of life at home, from bed bugs and insects breeding behind the wallpapers, to new goods, fashions and rituals, from the performances of the drawing room to the secrets of the dressing room, from the comforts of the domestic fireside to the horrors of domestic violence, home making and home breaking. Domestic life is coming out of the closet.
Producer: Elizabeth Burke
in production
