Speechification

A creepy bedtime story for you: the first episode of Richard Matheson’s classic post-Apocalyptic Vampire tale I Am Legend [MP3] from BBC7. Forget the recent Will Smith remake, or even Charlton Heston’s Omega Man - this is the real thing. If I was on Watchification I’d have been adding all the British B-Movie stuff BBC4 has been featuring, but you’ll have to be satisfied with this classic pulp instead. You can catch the rest of the episodes here.

Analysis comes from the brainy end of the network, where orthodoxies are put to the test by clever academics and writers. This is the kind of journalism you find in places like The Economist or at the high end of the Sunday Papers. Self-confident, iconoclastic, open-minded: like the faculty common room at a good university (I can’t confirm this since I didn’t go to a good university).

Analysis has found room for many of the UK’s more interesting commentators over the years and they’re not always from the Beeb’s liberal heartland: free traders and market evengelists are much in evidence, for instance - I think there must be a secret tunnel between the Analysis offices and The Economist’s in St James’s.

We’ve covered Analysis here before (and I’ve often linked to it from my own blog). Hugh Levinson, an editor at Analysis, has written to tell us the new series is on and that they’ve made some changes. There’s a podcast now (hurrah!) and the programme’s pages have been expanded to include more useful background. The show’s tone appears to have changed too. The first show in the new series (MP3) is about storytelling in politics and presenter Frances Stonor Saunders is light-hearted, practically chirpy. Very good stuff.

I’m sure I’ve raved about Radio Lab (from WNYC) before, but in case you can’t take a hint, here’s another opportunity. There are two programmes here that are as good as any you’ll ever hear, especially in the tiny world of science broadcasting. The first is Space (MP3) which attempts to explain our tininess in the universe’s massiveness through devices like really affecting interviews with Carl Sagan’s widow. The second is about Musical Language, (MP3) and contains fascinating stuff about how the brain adapts to new musical sounds (using the Rite Of Spring as an example). The site also has some great links to things like Diana Deutsch’s audio illusions. Both programmes are well, well, worth listening to.

And if you’re a bit more of an audio/radio nut, you can listen to this lecture/conversation at the Apple store in New York where they talk about how they make the programme, with the helpful addition of genius film editor Walter Murch on the elements of storytelling. Makes you glad to be alive in the age of radio.