Speechification

Not much to say about this, except it's bloody lovely. Naturalist Paul Evans takes us on a sound tour of Dungeness and the Romney marshes. Enjoy. [MP3]

(Dungeness pic by me. More at Flickr.)

For Radio 2, Stephen Fry looks at how Hitler's Germany pioneered many - if not most - of the recording techniques that made later music possible. This, the second episode, covers the Rock'n'Roll years and tells how the multi-track recording process changed the face of music production forever. [MP3]

Excellent and timely little doc, following the fortunes of Steve, a former Woolworths employee, as he struggles to find a new job - just one of over 27,000 former employees now looking for work. Camaraderie and reminiscence abound. [MP3]

Peter White is one of my favourite Radio 4 presenters. I find myself listening to In Touch on a regular basis, because he's always interesting and informative and, well, friendly, even when discussing issues of minority interest. He pops up elsewhere on a regular basis - I heard him recently explaining on another programme that blind people don't get jokes about horses with long faces - and it's always good to hear his voice. Here he is talking (to all of us) about Louis Braille, and the story behind his invention. As an added bonus, lots of great French accents. [MP3]

I should also say that this doc is taken from my latest exciting discovery, the World Service's awesome Documentary Archive podcast, which contains hundreds of 20 minute docs, which apparently don't go unavailable after a week. Go grab that RSS.

A perfect little programme from Hardeep Singh Kohli featuring Camus, Nabokov and Bob Wilson. And drawing a compelling parallel between drummers and goalkeepers. Also reminds us of the best football song ever: "Nayim, From The Halfway Line". 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.

Canadian radio. We sometimes do Canadian radio. Here's a lovely soundscape about Toronto, from CBC's And The Winner Is... podcast, which features Canadian shows that have won radio awards around the world. I'm linking to the MP3 on the CBC site so if it's gone away by the time you click to listen, let me know. Here's what they say on the CBC web site:

Toronto is the city the rest of Canada loves to hate. It's the largest city in the country. It's a financial hub and it is, to some, the centre of the universe. But what is Toronto really like? This week on And the Winner Is... we'll hear an award-winning portrait of the invisible Toronto - from the sounds of the city, to the stories overheard on the subway, to the tales told by the people who live there.

As far as I can tell, this version is a 35-minute edit of the one hour original, presumably trimmed to fit an on-air slot. Pity we couldn't hear the full length version online though...

Another documentary masterclass from the Irish. I'm not going to go on about it because I've said all this before but over at RTE Radio One they have a strand called Documentary on One: a long-running series of handsome, entirely artless 45-minute features on different aspects of Irish life. Here's the latest show, which is about the legendary 1995 All Ireland Hurling champions from County Clare in the West of Ireland. Ther'e nothing fancy about this: the only voices you'll hear are those of the documentary's subjects and the only other sounds are the match commentaries of the day and some gorgeous, evocative wild tracks fom the blustery West. Pure pleasure.

The thing about Randy Newman—let's be honest—is that you have to be fairly old to appreciate just how often he starts a line with "So anyway..." Something about those two melancholy words makes me want to cry every time. Why? I suppose they're about resignation, or at least acceptance. Acceptance of the sediment of missed opportunities and paths not taken that you accumulate as you get older. Newman's acknowledging the passage of time: the busy, messy, hysterical business of getting to middle age.

So anyway... NPR ran a special live performance of his latest album (which is billed as a 'song cycle') on 5 August and I grabbed the MP3 but I'm so afraid that the whole American public service media establishment might explode if I share it here that I'm going to suggest you get over there and listen to it yourself while you can. It's a mellow, thoughtful treat... but probably not for you youngsters.

Robert Krulwich is the older, funnier one from WNYC's Radio Lab, a show we've featured here quite often. He's also NPR's science specialist and makes terrific science inserts for shows like Weekend Edition and Morning Edition. We don't make science programmes like this in Britain. It's clever and funny and formally bold: Krulwich builds a short piece about neuroscience and the integrity of the self around Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway: a nicely arranged collision of science and art. The MP3 is here, there's a programme archive here and a podcast here.