2008 radio programmes
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Advice To The Living, 3rd Jan 2008. BBC Radio 4
Produced by Elizabeth Burke and Kim Normanton
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.
Thank You , 4th January 2008. BBC Radio 4.
Produced by Matt Thompson
Different people get a chance to tell how someone really made a difference to their lives and publicly thank that person.
Wide Awake At Bedtime, 6th, 13th, 20th and 27th Jan 2008. BBC Radio 4.
Produced by Eve Streeter and Jo Coombs
Children's poet and broadcaster Stewart Henderson joins groups of children enjoying sleepovers in museums around the UK. We hear the enthusiasm of children making a connection with the substance and nuance of history for the first time.
Mobius Strip And The Confidence Trickster, 16th February 2008. BBC Radio 3
Produced by Matt Thompson
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.
Producer: Matt Thompson
Three Men In A Float , 27th February 2008. BBC Radio 4.
Produced by Kim Normanton
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.
Teacher Flower , 13th, 17th March 2008. BBC World Service
Produced by Nigel Acheson
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.
The Message From China, 8th, 14th March 2008. BBC World Service
Produced by Kathy Flower
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.
The Simulated Patient, 24th March 2008. BBC Radio 4
Produced by Matt Thompson, Presented by Frances Byrnes
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?
Clearing The House, 25th April 2008. BBC Radio 4.
Produced by Elizabeth Burke and Kim Normanton
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.
Havens In A Storm, 8th April 2008. BBC Radio 4.
Produced by Brain King
On the tenth anniversary of a far reaching plan by the OECD to abolish tax havens, 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.
Voices At 40 , 6th April 2008. BBC Radio 4.
Produced by Jules Wilkinson
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.
Postcards From The White City ,12th May 2008. BBC Radio 4.
Produced by Tom Jackson
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.
I Don’t Know What To Say, 12th May 2008. BBC Radio 4.
Produced by Jo Coombs
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?
* This programme is permanently available on BBC Radio 4 website on the listen again facility.
Walking A Stick Back Home ,23rd May 2008. BBC Radio 4.
Produced by Matt Thompson
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.
Wrestling With The Iranians, 30th June 2008. BBC Radio 4.
Produced and Presented by Dominic Byrne
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, 13th July 2008. BBC Radio 4.
Produced by Eleanor Thomas, Presented by Charles Wheeler.
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.
In this programme Charles 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.
Book Of The Week:Travels On The Dance Floor, August 11th - 14th 2008.
BBC Radio 4.
Produced by Matt Thompson, Abridged by Libby Spurrier.
Written and read by: Grevel Lindop.
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.
Book Of The Week: Don’t Sleep There Are Snakes, 17 - 21 November 2008.
BBC Radio 4.
Produced by Jo Coombs
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.
Between The Ears: When Silence Sings, November 22nd 2008. BBC Radio 3.
Produced by Dinah Bird
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.
Talking About Lionel, 06 December 2008. BBC Radio 4.
Produced by Jo Coombs and Stewart Henderson
Lionel Bart was at one time the wunderkind of British musical theatre who reached dazzling heights of fame in the early 1960s with Britain's most successful post-war musical – Oliver! But, his tumultuous life went from triumph to disaster as he lost control of his fortune and his health seriously declined.
Eddie Mair tells the story of a sensitive, talented and troubled artist through interviews with those who knew him intimately.
Between The Ears: Mole Jazz, 6th December 2008. BBC Radio 3.
Produced by Matt Thompson
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?, 14 and 21 December 2008. BBC Radio 3.
Produced by Frances Byrnes, Presented by Judith Mackrell
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?
Too Many Santas 25 December 2008. BBC World Service.
Produced by Matt Thompson, Presented by Heidi Mikalson
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?
