I’d never come across Something Understood before, probably because it’s broadcast at 6am and 11.30pm on Sundays, but it seems like rather a good idea, despite its new-agey premise. Every week, “the programme examines some of the larger questions of life, taking a spiritual theme and exploring it through music, prose and poetry”. This week: aging. Lovely stuff. [MP3]
A Radio 4 staple, Word of Mouth delves into two of my favourite subjects: taboo words and aphasia (MP3). Both illuminate the inner workings of the mind, the first by overuse, the latter by exclusion. There’s also a stack of malapropisms even I hadn’t heard, and the excruciatingly awful Dr Word. Sorry about that. Words good though, when unbound by snobbery.
It seems to be my job to bring you the heartbreaking stuff round here (I think I’d like to switch to the cheery shift). This is an excellent programme about the Piper Alpha oil platform disaster, in which 167 men lost their lives twenty years ago. What’s fascinating is that the most affecting stories are not those of the survivors or the bereaved but those of the secondary characters: the hospital chaplain, the helicopter pilot… The measured contribution of the oil company’s PR—whose job was to tell the media what was going on out in the North Sea that night—is somehow more moving for its detachment (MP3).
This show went out as part of the Radio 4 Choice podcast, which is definitely worth signing up for. I was also interested to read that Radio 3’s contribution to the programmes marking the anniversary of Piper Alpha was a ‘real-time drama‘ set on that terrible night that went out on 6 July but I missed it and, obviously, it’s now been replaced by the following week’s drama so it’s gone for good. Do drop me a line if you saved a copy. It would be great to feature it here.
There is plenty of video relating to Piper Alpha at bbc.co.uk too: a news piece from 1988, interviews with survivors and widows, and a piece about the anniversary,
An experiment. Listen to the MP3 and, at the beginning, you’ll hear me, reading aloud the kind of words you might have read here. A lot of Speechification users don’t read our blog entries at all, you see. They just listen to the podcast. Adding an introduction to the MP3 means they can’t escape! It’s a bit of a pain to record the intro (adding about twenty minutes of fiddling around in Garageband in my case) but it might be fun to do. What do you think? MP3.
A particularly good Moral Maze from a stage at The Cheltenham Science Festival (which sounds like a riot). Rancorous and funny by turns. And Melanie Phillips is always a laugh isn’t she? Had me shouting and grumbling at the radio throughout (MP3).
This gripping, forensic analysis of near history in post-invasion Iraq went out a few weeks ago without a Real stream, which I remember being really annoyed about. Magically, though, it just showed up in the Radio 4 Choice podcast so here it is. It’s a marvelous example of what the BBC’s news and current affairs resources can achieve, especially when in the hands of a reporter like brilliant and brave Paul Wood. Highly recommended (5 stars, 3 Speechification thumbs). Here’s the MP3 and here’s the /programmes page.
Twenty years after Nation of Millions…, Chuck D gives his thoughts on rap, filesharing, and the Nation of Islam. On the Today show. The only reason to be up at 8am on a Bank Holiday Monday.
Peace in the Balkans has brought many benefits: cheap Adriatic package holidays, several completely new countries to visit (and with them a splendid bloom of Eurovision weirdness) but for some the benefits are more substantial. Like the freedom to return home after a decade in exile. Veteran Balkan reporter Nick Thorpe travels to newly-independent Kosovo with returning refugee Fehmi Islami who’s spent the last ten years in Britain. This is emotional stuff and tells an important story about human endurance and love for home and people (MP3).
Two New York gems. A really lovely afternoon play (you don’t hear that very often round her do you?) called Imagining Them from Judith Kampfner and a glorious RadioLab. Kampfner is an unusual creature: transatlantic radio talent. She makes programmes for the BBC and for Public Radio via an independent production company grandly called The Corporation for Independent Media.
The play, which is in three parts—written and performed by Wendy Spero, Meg Wolitzer and David Cale—is so New York it hurts. It really stood out from the schedule this afternoon (it originally went out in February last year). The short RadioLab is an aural treat recorded by Ben Rubin on the open outcry trading floor at the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Now, pay attention: here’s an MP3 of Imagining Them and here’s one for the RadioLab show. Only Imagining Them will show up in the podcast and the RadioLab might go away at some point because I’ve linked to the MP3 at the WNYC web site. You could get an MP3 of your own by subscribing to RadioLab’s podcast, which I would recommend. And while you’re at it you could make a donation to WNYC funds here. And while I’m going on and on: the credits below are for Imagining Them.
Joan Armatrading loves choirs. She’s made a nice series of five programmes about her favourites. This one’s about a group in Scunthorpe that recruits young singers from the age of three and it’ll probably make you cry (MP3).
A blog of Radio 4. Not about Radio 4 but of it. We point to the bits we like, the bits you might have missed, the bits that someone might have sneakily recorded. Other speech radio from around the world will no doubt find its way here too.
Of course, one day this might turn into something else, maybe a new way of curating speech radio, or maybe it won’t.
Your hosts on this not very wild ride are Steve Bowbrick, Russell Davies, Dan Hill, Bobbie Johnson, Roo Reynolds and James Bridle. Drop us a line with your thoughts, unless you wish to complain about continuity announcers and their accents.
You might also enjoy the square-eyed sister site, Watchification.
Things tagged with 'speechification'
