Speechification

Get lost in this marvelous 45 minutes of classical radio documentary-making from Newfoundler Chris Brookes, brought to you via RTE’s Documentary on One slot which I’m always going on about here because it’s one of the few places you can hear this kind of quiet, understated documentary feature every week. Subscribe to the podcast for lots more like this, most of it made by RTE in Ireland (like this one about the 1995 All Ireland Hurling champions) but some (like this one adapted from a Finnish original about Amos Oz) brought from all over the world. Here’s the MP3, here’s the programme’s page at the RTE web site and here are some other RTE shows we’ve featured here.

Well, it looks like Woolworths has finally gone. Damn. This splendid documentary from Radio 2 reminds us how great Woolworths once was, in its pomp. Specifically the brilliant contribution they made to popular music by making cheap but decent covers available to everyone. Lovely. MP3 here.

Continuing my attempt to disorientate the Northern hemisphere - or at least its Speechification listeners - with tales of dry, distant lands, here’s another fine ABC Radio National doco. This one follows in the footsteps of W.O Hodgkinson, who led the last government funded expedition into Australia’s Simpson Desert in 1876, attempting to find the source of ‘Pituri’, a valuable native narcotic. Tracing the journals of Victorian explorers is a well-worn format, but almost always fascinating. This one no exception, and pitched in front of an evocative soundscape.

Hindsight: Along the Pituri Trail [mp3]

Last Christmas post for me I think. Adam Hart-Davis exploring the inventions that make Christmas work (not flying reindeer, though. Still a mystery). A special edition of his Eureka Years show. Lovely (MP3).

I was slightly dreading this. Paul Morley dances frequently on the line between smart and arch, and in contact with Mr Forsyth it could all have been a bit horrible. But this is actually lovely stuff. Mr Morley’s enthusiasm defeats (or enhances) his pretension, he asks all sorts of questions that no-one ever asks someone like Brucie and the interview is just deconstructed enough to let you catch some original glimpses. Fantastic stuff. MP3 here.

Three things you could do if you were feeling charitable (and not just broke or depressed) here on the wrong side of Christmas:

You could give some money to Chicago Public Radio, the station that makes This American Life. We’ve featured the show four or five times here but never included it in the podcast because public radio in the States is funded almost entirely from donations so nicking it would feel wrong. They’re already laying people off in response to the recession (so is NPR) so they could evidently do with the help. Make a donation here.

You could support Radio 4’s annual Christmas appeal which, for the last 82 years, has been for the work of St-Martin-in-the-Fields with homeless and needy people in London and all over the country. Make a donation here.

You could pass a few dollars in Jimmy Wales’ direction, if you think Wikipedia’s important. I can’t count the number of links I’ve made to Wikipedia from Speechification. Imperfect it may be but it’s becoming the backbone of the emerging ‘semantic web‘ and a lot of people, including the BBC, have begun to use it as a ‘controlled vocabulary‘ for other organised content. We evidently can’t live without it. Make a donation here.

My offering for the Christmas season at Speechification may be a little different to that of my friends in the North, though I’m sure a few ex-pat listeners have also experienced Christmas in Australia and found the experience enjoyably surreal. Padding through a mall in shorts and flip-flops, past a queue for Santa, while ‘Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow …’ plays over the tannoy. The last time in snowed in the centre of Sydney was 1836.

It’s wonderfully hot over the festive season in Australia, and much of the place shuts down for a couple of months, as the peculiar circumstance of an imported European culture introduced to the local climate means that summer holidays coincides with Christmas. Most civilised. So I’m writing this from Brisbane, where I’ve decamped for the week from Sydney, and the overwhelming experience ‘up here’ is sub-tropical heat and humidity. (As I type, its still 28 degrees at 11pm and a rather well-fed cockroach just scuttled past the keyboard.) ABC Radio National broadcast a great documentary about the cultural experience of heat as part of the Australian landscape about a year ago, which I’m reposting here as my belated contribution to the Christmas week at Speechification. Hope you all have a bloody hot New Year.

ABC Radio National: Hindsight: The long hot summer - heat [mp3]

In Iceland they have thirteen Santas—and some of them are quite naughty, even frightening. 22 lovely minutes from the World Service Boxing Day morning (also available as part of The World Service’s excellent documentaries podcast, I think). More info on the programme page.

And James, I’ll see your ridiculous baubles and raise you a magnificent animated Santa’s sleigh!

We’re supposed to be doing Christmas posts here at Speechification. I have failed. This is not one. But it’s a splendid listen; stories of 70’s bedsits, Cambridge studenthood, procrastination, long baths, unexpected success and early computers. Really nicely presented by Andrew McGibbon, and excellent use of music throughout. More radio should sound like this. MP3 here.

Tim Bodett’s small town stories could easily slip into folksiness, but that’s not the root of his writing. As he writes on his website: “I’m not a more decent person because of rural life, but I act more decently than I probably would if I didn’t have to see these people again.” BBC7 is broadcasting his series of Alaskan Christmas stories, Christmastime at the End of the Road, and their gentle, Keillor-esque drollery seems like a pretty good expression of the season to me. [MP3]

P.S. How do you like them Christmas decorations? The animated gif throwdown starts here.