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).

I first heard about police departments podcasting a while ago, and the Tulsa Police Department's "Street Stories" in particular, but when I had a look, the official Tulsa PD website hadn't been updated since last April, so I rather lost interest. Thank goodness for Crossing Continents then, who just reignited it with a whole half hour of absolute gems from Officer Jay Chiarito-Mazarrella.

"This midget Don King stuff happens all the time." Enjoy. [MP3]

Atlantic Public Media curates a weekly podcast of nature programmes from all around North American public radio - a pretty rich source, it turns out. Here's a lovely short feature from the 1980s about snakes, produced by Public Radio veteran Jay Allison.

Wouldn't it be great to add the BBC's radio nature programmes to the mix? I wonder if anyone's thought about that. Especially since most of them are already available in perpetuity online. Here's the MP3 and here's how to support Atlantic Public Media.

The picture, Southern Copperhead, is by Reader Walker. Used under licence.

So we have a problem. Out there in Radio Land there exist a few radio programmes that are always always good, week-after-week, show-after-show. I don't know why but—if you ask me—a disproportionately large number of these programmes comes from America, where they have no state broadcaster and precious little state funding for radio.

Why is this a problem? Of course it's not really a problem. It's just that, here at speechification, we like to bring you a variety of great speech radio. How can we do that if the producers of This American Life keep coming up with clever and beautiful shows like this one? This episode is about memory. Read about it here.

We're not linking to MP3s for This American Life since the show is self-funding so you should really get over there and pop a few quid in the collecting tin—the podcast is free. In fact, I think they're developing a pretty interesting economic model: the streaming MP3 and the podcast are free but if you want to download and keep the show you pay 95 cents. I wonder if it works.

All the historical analogies were long ago used up. Shakespearian? Check. Greek tragedy? Check. Mediaeval Popes? Check. Robber Barons? Check. He must have grown sick of that photo of he and his wife dressed as Cardinal Richelieu and Marie Antoinette (so I'm sure he won't mind me running it one more time).

I wouldn't normally pick an interview from Today for Speechification but, blimey, Conrad Black's good value. This item comes between Black's conviction and his sentencing so the interview is quite pregnant with dramatic tension. As Black says: "this is not over." We can only watch this space. (MP3)

There's also something unbearably romantic about From Our Own Correspondent on Radio 4, but perhaps especially when listening while bundled up in warm blankets during a lie-in on a grey winter weekend morning.

In case you're not familiar with the show, it describes itself as "personal reflections by BBC correspondents around the world" which is a wonderful thing indeed. It's not a travel show, but a glimpse into the quiet moments of the lives of British journalists on foreign assignments.

Personally, I can't help picture the faces and suitcases behind all these lovely British accents sitting in front of their microphones in lonely hotel rooms in distant and exotic places. This week's epdisode brings us thoughts on the impact of recent strikes in Paris, contemplations of the Commonwealth from Uganda, a glimpse into family life in rural China, a hunt for size ten shoes in Yemen and even enticing descriptions of twenty-first century Timbuktu. (MP3, Real)

The whole thing is tied together by Kate Adie, the much loved flack-jacketed BBC chief reporter who was apparently once shot at by an "irate Libyan" on one of many war assignments.

I have only just now realised that From Our Own Correspondent is available as a podcast. I'll be subscribing to that now then.

[Photo by ny156uk on Flickr]

I'm sure that many of our readers turn to speechification in order to get away from The Archers. But it would be remiss of us not to note that yesterday Radio 4 turned on The Archers podcast. You could make a very good case for The Archers being the most successful programme in speech radio's history, even if it is often completely baffling and annoying. I suspect those of us who grew up in Radio 4 households will always have a strange relationship with it, unable quite to like it but still feeling like Shula and Nigel and the Grundy's are our own neighbours. And always hoping that one day, somehow, Nelson Gabriel will turn up again.