Speechification

"I was born in this City. I was going to school in this city, I went to University in Kabul, I consider myself a Kabuli girl. I love Kabul."

A heartbreaking 23:25 presented and produced by Meena Baktash, a journalist in the BBC World Service's Afghanistan Pashto and Dari Service. Her story conveys the awful, inconsolable melancholy of her home city in the years since the "golden decade" of the 1970s.

The programme is one of an excellent series of five "...made by BBC producers across the organisation's language services - from Pashto and Dari, Sinhala, Uzbek, Spanish American to Persian." You can download them all from the World Service web site. It was also selected for the World Service's Documentary Archive podcast, which is a treasure in its own right.

The photograph is from the programme's web page and shows Meena as a child. There are more pictures in this audio slideshow and here's the MP3 (23:25).

"What is it about Queenslanders (the house, not the people)? They're cold in winter, hot in summer, prone to white ant attack and in need of constant work, but many thousands of people wouldn't live in any other kind of house"

A great documentary about the unique domestic architecture of Queensland (here are a few of my photos of Queenslanders from a couple of years ago; or the Wikipedia definition if you prefer), but this is really about stories, memory, domestic life, families, Australia, and so on. Somewhat nostalgic, but that's how people feel about these things - rarely is a city, and state, so uniquely entwined with a particular kind of building. Very nice work by Tony McGregor. (Listen out for the crows, and also for Steve Godstone, with whom I have shared several good conversations about David Peace and Liverpool vs Spurs, but here talks beautifullly about building, structure, Australian hardwoods and suchlike.)

ABC Radio National: 360: An almost practical guide to living with Queenslanders [mp3]

Wow. This is special. On the face of it nothing remarkable here: another classical-model doc about the turbulent birth of the Irish Republic. But it's a thing of beauty: a layered masterpiece that builds and builds: real radio craft from Peter Woods, an RTE staff producer since 1995. There's real tension and lots of quietly recorded sadness and bitterness. A reminder too that the horror that unfolded in country lanes and back streets all over Ireland in the first decades of the Twentieth Century still haunts many, especially the old men of West Cork. Sobering and moving stuff.

The MP3's here and on the programme web page you'll find some more audio and pics of the area and of the annual ceremony remembering the Kilmichael ambush. More pics of the ambush site here.

Picture by Conor O'Neill (CC).

In this lovely Between The Ears, poet Leni Dipple sets out to find out what made her husband and Mole Jazz proprietor Ed tick.

Here's the MP3, here's a page from Fly with some more history, here's a poem by Leni and here's a page of recordings from the British Library's oral history of British Jazz that you might be able to listen to if you're at a British university or college.

Radio 2's occasional oral history strand is called Don't Start Me Talking. This one's about the second world war and it's a contribution to the BBC's remembrance season. Don't expect anything cutting edge, just old people talking about their experience of the war—no narration, no interrogation. The programme starts with Vera Lynne and ends with The Last Post... It's really good (MP3).

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.

A perfectly loopy Archive Hour from philosopher/metalhead Julian Baggini a couple of weeks ago. It's about memory and the things you hear when you're growing up and Baggini's made full use of the slot to play luxury length chunks of Slayer (actually, as a commenter points out, there's no Slayer: I must have imagined them) and Peter Sellers and the sound of a modem and a steam train and a cash register and so on. I think Baggini's premise is a bit thin actually but it's a really marvelous excuse to listen to all those lovely sounds... (MP3).

Flashing through the lanes of West Cork the other night, probably a bit too fast, on the way from Bantry to Baltimore in the dusk, I heard this beautiful programme of archive voices and music. It's a real gem: quiet and a bit old-fashioned. Ian Lee, an RTE traditional music stalwart, has made a six part series based on the field recordings of the various folklorists and collectors who tramped around the place during the Twentieth Century.

This one's about the recordings of Alan Lomax, legendary Library of Congress archivist. There's nothing like it on British radio. I suppose it's a kind of throwback—and you'll really have to concentrate: some of the voices are impenetrable. But it's wonderful. Here's the MP3 and the other programmes in the series are all here.

Here's a gorgeous, dreamy doc from RTE. It's about a teacher of Irish dance born in Britain and returning to the bottom left-hand corner of Ireland to pursue his passion, but you really don't need to know that. You could easily listen without knowing a thing about the subject matter. You could tune out and enjoy the layered mix of voice and music , memory and emotion—it's like ambient music. Or you could pay attention and enjoy the story of Timmy "The Brit" McCarthy, Irish dancer.

I'm linking to RTE's MP3 because the Irish aren't encumbered by a Trust and a bunch of service definitions that require them to delete their MP3s after a week. Let's hope they don't change their minds.

Steve recently posted an episode of the Reunion. It's a great show and the most recent episode, which reunites the creators of Withnail and I (surely one of the best British films of all time), is possibly the best yet. [MP3]

Sue MacGregor introduces and interviews Richard E Grant (Withnail), Paul McGann (Marwood), Ralph Brown (Danny) and Bruce Robinson (the writer & director) as well as an interview with Richard Griffiths (Monty).