Speechification

A disturbing little tale from the disturbingly recent past. In the 1960s and 1970s Dr William Sargant developed the controversial Deep Sleep Treatment in the Sleep Room of St Thomas's Hospital in London. James Maw talks to some of those who worked under Sargant in the late-1960s and to some of his former patients, who all say that they are still suffering from his treatment to this day. Visions of Cyphermen come to mind, but it's a bit more serious and sad than that. [MP3]

Simple and clever news radio from The Today Programme. Mike Leigh just made a film about happiness and Professor Richard Layard has been researching happiness for years. In fact Layard recently wrote an important report for the UK Government in which he proposed that we spend a lot more money on the kinds of psychotherapy that have been shown to produce happiness. He's a happiness guy. So, anyway, the Today people put them together for an eight minute interview and it's not polished or deliberate but just really interesting stuff (MP3).

The whole set of Am I Normal? programmes is well worth a listen. There's one on Social Phobia, another on Dyslexia,  a third on Maths and another on Sleep. That's the one that I thought would resonate most with our listeners (though Social Phobia is a contender too) so that's the one I've stuck on the podcast by linking  to an MP3 here.  All the shows are there to be listened to though, and there's a nice bunch of links too.  Excellent work. And you've got to listen  right to the end of this show, to hear a sports reporter fall asleep live on air, while reading out some football scores. Brilliant.

It doesn't matter how much you think you know about Jack "Dr Death" Kervorkian, the man's still full of surprises - and not least because his 'vocation' asks us all sorts of tough questions: about the limits of humanity, about being human in general. Late in this interview Fergal Keane asks the Doctor: "are you an arid rationalist?" and Kervorkian says: "sometimes I'm not so rational." (MP3).