Speech Radio You Have Listened To Lately

[DracoM]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000h1lf

BBC R4: How to play series: Bach /Brandenburg 2 / Dunedin Consort.

[gurnemanz]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000h1lf
BBC R4: How to play series: Bach /Brandenburg 2 / Dunedin Consort.

R4 at its diverse and insightful best here and in the following two short programmes about the English daughter of a German POW and the book reading, A Month in Siena.

[LMcD]

I might then follow you, LMcD. There is only one thing worse than an ex-smoking, anti-smoking fascist, surely, and that is an ex-leftie turned establishment reporter-commentator-presenter-apologist, Mr Marr.

You forgot to add 'former stroke victim' and 'recently bereaved'.

[Bryn]

R4 at its diverse and insightful best here and in the following two short programmes about the English daughter of a German POW and the book reading, A Month in Siena.

A real joy to listen to, though I had to make do with my little Sony portable DAB radio due to loss of one of my ring mains overnight. Time to get the original part of the house rewired (the extension ring is fairly recent but the main ring dates back to the mid-1950s.) Its insulation is now crumbling. I have sorted a temporary solution using feeds from the extension ring to 'essential' equipment but that must be a very short-term measure.

[Flay]

R4: How They Made Us Doubt Everything looks like it will be an interesting and thoughtful series, going by its first episode

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000l7q1

[johncorrigan]

R4: How They Made Us Doubt Everything looks like it will be an interesting and thoughtful series, going by its first episode

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000l7q1

I thought it was interesting too, Flay. Says you can listen to all ten episodes on Sounds.

[Rjw]

I thought it was interesting too, Flay. Says you can listen to all ten episodes on Sounds.

I just did, very good.

[johncorrigan]

On BBC Radio 4 this week, Anthony Ray Hinton told how he set up a book club while in Alabama State Pen. I loved the way he told this story...fantastic voice. Well worth half-an-hour of anybody's time, in my opinion.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000ldfl

[DracoM]

Radio 4Ex - not a station I listen to much - BUT last Sunday, they ran all five epis back-to-back of the serialisation of Robert Harris's fine thriller novel in a production of 'Fatherland', with the unrivalled Anton Lesser as Insp March and his investigation into what starts as a routine murder probe, but then gradually turns into the discovery that all those found dead were present at signing off on.....? Won't spoil it.

All this is in a post 1964 and still Nazi Germany. Won't spoil it.

[Flay]

Yesterday's From our own Correspondent was its usual high standard. It included a touching story from the Beirut correspondent's search for her lost puppy in spite of her own injuries, and the overwhelming support she received from others far and wide.

It put me in mind of Fergal Keane's 1996 Letter to Daniel, although not quite as profound.

[Flay]

Charles Paris is back on R4E: An Amateur Corpse with its excellent repartie.

There's also a series from 1984 with Francis Matthews as Charles in Cast, in order of Disappearance (what an excellent title!) which has a darker tone.

[Rjw]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000mqnl

Packing up the family home.

My father passed away last week and this was a reminder that we all have to face up to sorting out the old house.

Also a spur to sorting out your present home, I wouldn't want someone to rootle through my bits and bobs¡

[Serial_Apologist]

This coincidentally timely discussion provoker is a repeat, and is thus in compliance with the thread title, although I missed its broadcast first time around. Unfortunately I shall have to listen again tomorrow, as it clashes with Gogglebox, which I never miss.

Radio 4 - 6 November
9pm - The Problem of Leisure
Phil Tinline explores the history of a phantom fear - that automation will make work redundant. His starting point is economist John Maynard Keynes's 1930 prediction of a two-day week by 2030, but Keynes worried that we might struggle to spend our time wisely. In Depression-era America, social reformers were aghast at how people were spending their growing free time. As anxiety floods back amid stories about AI, will we finally confront the problem of leisure?

The beginnings of mass consumerism in the 1920s in America, before it had really got off the ground over here - where poor productivity arising from under investment in new technology still tied workers to long hours - and its shaping of entertainment to escapist ends, is arguably best supported from a Leftist perspective that argues that boredom is not an existential conundrum ingrained in the human condition but one preconditioned on an individualistically-orientated assumption and expectation of change, artificially driven by market desiderata, as opposed to in response to communitarian-defined needs and interests.

It will be interesting to see how this programme tackles the whole issue.
.

[Leinster Lass]

I've just listened to the first episode of the new series of 'The Cold Swedish Winter' (BBC Radio 4), which was easily of the same high standard as previous series, and included a truly brilliant joke centred on the film 'Darkest Hour'.

[Flay]

I've just listened to the first episode of the new series of 'The Cold Swedish Winter' (BBC Radio 4), which was easily of the same high standard as previous series, and included a truly brilliant joke centred on the film 'Darkest Hour'.

Thanks, I'll give it a go. The first series is available:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04f241s

Village Christmas by Laurie Lee is a pleasantly narrated well-written joy:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09kdhy2