Speechification

Here’s another of Ben’s Resonance interviews - cleverly scheduled to coincide with Bill Drummond’s No Music Day. Which is today. MP3 here. (It starts a bit quietly, sorry)

In a frantic bid to keep up with Steve’s topical posts I thought I’d stick this up -  The Russell Brand Episode in Ben Thompson’s magnificent set of interviews and audio for The London Ear. (On Resonance). It’s very good and Mr Brand was caught in a pleasingly un-manic phase. Or seduced into one. Should this whet your appetite, Roo’s recent innovations mean you can sample all the extant London Ear’s merely by clicking here. MP3 here.

Nothing flashy here. No clever sound business or comedy voices. Just interesting explanatory radio - telling you why the dollar arrived as top currency, and why its reign might be over. Good old Analysis. MP3 here.

I have no idea what my wife’s mobile phone number is. My phone knows but I don’t. That worries me slightly, but not enough to do anything about it. Susan Blackmore investigates this phenomenon, and others, about memory and the technologies and things we use to help us remember. It’s especially interesting about Gordon Bell and MyLifeBits and Deb Roy and his studies of language through filming hours and hours of his children’s formative years. Programme page here. MP3 here. Excellent stuff from Radio 3.

There was a time in my life when I really wanted to go to the dentist. I used to try and get there early so I could sit and read through the huge pile of Punch magazines that used to sit in the corner. It never occurred to me that you might be able to get Punch in shops, it never seemed to make it to our local newsagents. I probably imagined that dentists had exclusive access to Punch and its odd mix of base and erudite humour. I’ve bought lots of old Alan Coren compilations off ebay and he always seems to be writing from a mythical humourous golden age; of strikes, bureaucrats, flying squads and French people with onions round their neck. And he had that thing that Hancock had - optimistic glumness. A lovely programme about a splendid man.

Anyway, for those few readers who insist on knowing what a programme is actually about, here’s a link to the programme page and here’s the MP3.

This programme is described as an Acoustic Archaeology of Elizabethan England. What could be more up speechification’s street than Acoustic Archaeology? It’s a splendid programme too. Fanciful, imaginative, slightly silly sometimes, draped in gorgeous noises, the sort of thing radio does particularly well. MP3 here.

I’ve always liked the sound of jazz, but never really liked the music. The soundscapes, the tones are perfect and inviting and lovely. And then, after the first go round with the tune it dissolves into tedious improvisatory wibbling. So when I was alerted to this programme about Miles Davis and So What by a helpful twitter I wasn’t hopeful. But, but, this almost got to me. It’s not so much the stories about why people like it, it’s the stories of what went into it, what was going on in the world. Anyway, whatever, you don’t care about that, if you think I’m a horrible philistine you’re going to like this stuff anyway. And if you’re sort of with me, and even if you don’t like the track, this is still a magnificent programme. (There’s a slight silent pause in the audio right at the beginning. Sorry.) MP3 here.

While everyone’s wibbling on about the world crashing around our ears it’s worth listening to this programme - about a time when it nearly was; when unflappable gents were parked in Vulcan bombers, only half a minute away from taking off with their nuclear payloads and various people had to make serious plans about how and where they wanted to die. MP3 here. (And thanks to Curtis for alerting us to this one.)

There have probably been programmes like this on Radio 4 since before the dawn of time (1972). I remember Enquire Within very fondly. But Questions, Questions seems particularly well-suited to the interactive world of now. It’s a simple affair - people write in about stuff they’d like to know about, and the programme makes a little feature which answers and explains some of them. And, perhaps more importantly, the programme forums are abuzz with chat and opinion. This particular issue features well-dressing in Derbyshire, Mobius strips and the design of biscuits. MP3 here.

Sometimes Radio Four is slothful and supine, lazy in a bed of licence fees. And sometimes, like on Big Bang Day it’s just the best thing in the world ever. They took the hoohah over the turning on of the LHC and built a suite of programmes around it that proved exactly why it’s such a brilliant station. From the bumbly chaos of Andrew Marr at the turning on to Quention Cooper and Adam Hart Davis doing physics administration and engineering to the silly drama of Torchwood and Woman’s Hour doing physics careers this was exemplorary stuff; a national broadcaster doing education through entertainment. For the MP3 we offer you Physics Rocks, which was a nice way of getting at the joy of physics via people like Alan Alda and Eddie Izzard. And it proves that maybe Dara O’Briain should be Stephen Fry’s Deputy Prime Minister when natural order is enacted. MP3 here. (And full marks for all the extra stuff on the website too.)