ADVICE TO THE LIVING BBC Radio 4, 3rd Jan 2008
People who know they only have a short time left to live give advice to the rest of us - about what matters and what doesn't, and about enjoying every moment.
Producers Elizabeth Burke and Kim Normanton
THANK YOU BBC Radio 4, 4th January 2008
Different people get a chance to tell how someone really made a difference to their lives and publicly thank that person.
Producer: Matt Thompson
WIDE AWAKE AT BEDTIME BBC Radio 4, 6th, 13th, 20th and 27th Jan 2008.
Children's poet and broadcaster Stewart Henderson joins five groups of children enjoying and sometimes being spooked during sleepovers in five museums around the UK. We hear the enthusiasm of children making a connection with the substance and nuance of history for the first time. But this series is not about museums, it just happens to be set in them.
Producers: Eve Streeter and Jo Coombs
MOBIUS STRIP AND THE CONFIDENCE TRICKSTER BBC Radio 3, 16th February 2008
Take a strip of paper as if you are making a paper chain. But before you join the two short ends put in a half twist. This is a Möbius strip. Mathematicians have long been fascinated with their topology - it only has one side - a piece of paper with one side.
It's also a perfect metaphor for humans who lie. We hear the concept in sound and voice. With Forensic Psychiatrist Anne MacDonald, architect Cecil Balmond and 'Rosie', the fiancé of a compulsive liar.
You will appreciate the disturbing nature of this programme if you make and hold a Möbius strip whilst listening.
Producer: Matt Thompson
THREE MEN IN A FLOAT BBC Radio 4, 27th February 2008
Relying on the kindness of strangers to recharge their battery, Ian Vince, Dan Kieran and Prasanth Visweswaran set off to travel from Lowestoft to Land’s End in a second-hand milk float. An antidote to the modern world’s fixation with speed and time.
Producer Kim Normanton
TEACHER FLOWER BBC World Service 13th, 17th March 2008
Friday documentary
In the 1980s Kathy Flower became the most famous face on Chinese television, as English teacher to millions of students long isolated from the outside world. Twenty-five years on, she returns to a very different country as it prepares to host the Beijing Olympics.
Presenter: Kathy Flower
Producer: Nigel Acheson
THE MESSAGE FROM CHINA BBC World Service 8th, 14th March 2008 Wednesday documentary
In 1989 the unthinkable happened in China when thousands of protesters clashed with the People’s Liberation Army and the Chinese Communist Party knew its propaganda had failed and had to change.
Dr Anne Marie Brady investigates the changes which make the modernised party propaganda machine in China and discovers how it is used to hold on to power and maintain today’s booming economy.
Presenter: Dr Anne Marie Brady
Producer: Kathy Flower
THE SIMULATED PATIENT BBC Radio 4 24th March 2008
In the old days doctors learnt to develop their bedside manner on the job, from older doctors. Nowadays all medical students are taught communication skills by actors. What’s the difference and what does it all mean?
Presented by Frances Byrnes.
Producer Matt Thompson
CLEARING THE HOUSE BBC Radio 4, 25th April 2008
Clearing out your parents` house is a daunting task, both emotionally and from a practical point of view. It is also part of the process of mourning. In this feature, people in the midst of it tell their stories – funny, sad, and surprising.
Producers: Elizabeth Burke and Kim Normanton
HAVENS IN A STORM BBC Radio 4, 8th April 2008
On the tenth anniversary of a far reaching plan by the OECD to abolish tax havens, File on Four presenter Allan Urry tells the inside story of the global struggle for tax regulation. Gaining official access to several tax havens, we investigate how the plan unraveled and why it's boom time for many tax havens today.
Producer: Brian King
VOICES AT 40 BBC Radio 4, 6th April 2008
Marking the 40th anniversary, Judith Palmer re-opens the pages of Voices, a series of poetry anthologies that broke the mould of how poetry was presented in the classroom in the late 1960s. The series was enormously popular when it was first published by Penguin in March 1968 and widely acclaimed for its sheer exuberance and gritty appeal to a new generation of teenagers.
Producer: Jules Wilkinson
POSTCARDS FROM THE WHITE CITY BBC Radio 4 12th May 2008
To celebrate the entente cordiale between Britain and France, 100 years ago a piece of land on the western edge of London was converted into a vast exhibition ground, The White City.
It was a dazzling white architectural fantasy of oriental palaces and lagoons that housed a bizarre combination of lofty political ideals and carnival sideshows. More than eight million visitors paid a shilling to see snakecharmers and performing elephants, Irish village girls and a captive airship, to ride the swan boats and climb 150 feet into the air on the notorious Flip Flap.
Robert Elms revisits the White City as it is now and discovers the archive of postcards that survive to tell its tales.
Producer: Tom Jackson
I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO SAY BBC Radio 4, 12th May 2008
Would you know what to say to someone who’d lost their loved one?
When the broadcaster Nick Clarke died, his widow Barbara Want discovered that most people don’t. Neighbours crossed the road rather than talk to her, parents at her children’s school averted their eyes, and many friends wouldn’t talk about what had happened. In this programme Barbara tries to find out why people are so afraid to talk about death and loss. Is it our last taboo?
Producer: Jo Coombs
* This programme is permanently available on BBC Radio 4 website on the listen again facility.
WALKING A STICK BACK HOME BBC Radio 4, 23rd May 2008
When the opium addict and writer Thomas de Quincey died he left his walking stick to his favourite landladies. Through them, eventually the poet and historian James Crowden inherited it. It’s an unassuming stick, quite plain. After much thought James has decided to donate it to Dove Cottage, in the Lake District, where De Quincey once lived with William Wordsworth’s family. But before the stick is locked away in a glass case never to be touched by bare hands again James thought he would like to take it for one last outing.
Producer: Matt Thompson
WRESTLING WITH THE IRANIANS BBC RADIO 4, 30TH June 2008
Dominic Byrne goes to Iran to try to understand the roots and passion behind their national sport, based on an ancient tradition in Persia - Wrestling.
He visits Iran’s most celebrated wrestling competition The Takhti Cup and seeks out Zurkaneh or “Houses of Strength” where wrestlers train in a ritual little changed in a thousand years. They are taught to be pure truthful and good tempered, and only then, strong in body. Dominic learns about the chivalrous nature of Iran’s national sport that informs the people’s national character.
IN PURSUIT OF THE DALAI LAMA BBC Radio 4, 13th July 2008
Charles Wheeler remembers the race to publish the story of the Dalai Lama’s flight from Lhasa in March 1959, and brings together four other journalists who waited at the foot of the Himalayas with him. They discuss their memories of reporting this remarkable escape story.
In 1959 Charles Wheeler was the BBC’s South Asia correspondent, but like the rest of the world he knew little of Tibet. When reports of the Tibetan Uprising against occupying Chinese forces and the dramatic flight of the Dalai Lama leaked out of Lhasa, the world’s press fully focused on Tibet for the first time.
Producer: Eleanor Thomas
TRAVELS ON THE DANCE FLOOR BBC Radio 4
August 11th - 14th 2008
BOOK OF THE WEEK
This week’s Book of the Week follows a retired University Professor as he wanders around South America in search of the roots of Salsa. Grevel Lindop has danced with Geldys in Cuba and in Columbia it will be a new teacher, a Latina Marilyn Monroe, Victoria. This sure beats all that university research Grevel did in the libraries.
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