Watchmaker Rebecca Struthers has been invited to come and examine a watch which its owners claim is the world's oldest - but is it? Until now, Rebecca had only heard rumours of this watch - about the reputation of its famous maker, about the extraordinary circumstances in which it was found, about its unbelievable valuation. It is famous, or infamous, in antiquarian horology circles. But until Rebecca wrote her book 'Hands of Time' (a Radio 4 Book of the Week), few outside that small world had h...
Aug 24, 2025•29 min
The red-billed chough is the most dashing crow in the world. These rare, flamboyant, scarlet-legged, scarlet-billed denizens of Britain’s Celtic coasts are communal and comic, intelligent and daring. They’re also sublime aeronauts, riding the breeze as though they’re made of it. For writer Horatio Clare, the chough is his totem. He’s loved the bird since he first encountered it in the 1980s during childhood holidays to Pembrokeshire. And more than forty years on from that joyous first encounter ...
Aug 17, 2025•29 min
Care packages are a universal love language and a way for families to stay connected across distances. We unbox four from China, India, Ireland and the Philippines, each filled with the tastes, textures and memories of home. In Newton-le-Willows, content creator Aurora unwraps a parcel from her mother in China revealing fragrant spices, dried mushrooms and handmade gifts as a reminder of her native traditions. In Cardiff, dancer Ishika shares a tightly sealed batch of homemade bori, sun-dried le...
Aug 03, 2025•29 min
When the Reverend Andrew Doarks took on the church of St Gregory's in Sudbury three years ago - he received no warning of what he would discover in the vestry. There - behind a perspex screen and a wooden flap in the wall - is the severed head of the fourteenth century Archbishop of Canterbury Simon of Sudbury. Simon who was decapitated during the Peasant's Revolt in 1381 shares the same space as the church's playgroup and receives visitors by appointment only. It is an unusual arrangement for t...
Jul 27, 2025•29 min
“There are so many things you can’t see coming. You can’t see death. You can’t see Mount Vesuvius erupting. The carpet could be pulled out from under you at any second. But I’ll see a knife coming if it’s going to hit me.” Target Girls are the female performers in “impalement arts'', where knives, arrows and even bullets are propelled at humans. Prepare for a full body immersion in this extreme profession, as we pull back the curtain on the hidden world behind the target girl’s silent, singular ...
Jul 20, 2025•29 min
Electromagnetic waves fill the universe, radiating from solar storms and bursts of lightning, but also from our electronic devices and infrastructures. Using simple, DIY tools, a community of audio enthusiasts translates these waves into sound, uncovering hidden sonic worlds. Five dedicated ‘natural radio’ enthusiasts venture beyond the electromagnetic pollution of the city, tuning into the Earth’s natural static to reveal a rich, textured soundscape, rarely heard. Stephen McGreevy, a cult figur...
Jul 13, 2025•29 min
Tracey Okines is witty, stylish, sharp, and fiercely independent. She loves seaside strolls, spontaneous shopping trips, pub outings, and her cat, Meow. She’s a writer, a dreamer, a lover of music, and someone who refuses to be boxed in by anyone’s expectations. At 27, Tracey’s life changed overnight when a misjudged cartwheel caused a massive bleed, leading to a brainstem stroke. She was left with locked-in syndrome, unable to move or speak but fully conscious. Sixteen years on, she communicate...
Jul 06, 2025•29 min
An atmospheric gathering storm of a documentary exploring the extraordinary history of the Beaufort Scale - a system designed to help find language for the wind. Sea like a mirror Whistling heard in telegraph wires Umbrellas used with difficulty... In this programme we climb to the top of a lighthouse in the Outer Hebrides, labelled the windiest point in Britain by the Guinness Book of Records, and travel deep into the Met Office archives. With contributions from the writer Scott Huler, author o...
Jun 29, 2025•29 min
Once a year, residents of Longyearbyen gather where the steps of the old hospital used to be to witness the return of something they have not seen in months – sunlight. The Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, part of Norway, is as far north as humans can live. This dramatic polar world experiences 24-hour daylight in summer and total darkness in winter. But on March 8th, locals and visitors of its largest settlement, Longyearbyen, wait with baited breath until a single ray of sunshine appears upon t...
Jun 22, 2025•29 min
When a dog goes missing it can be devastating. It’s every dog owners worst nightmare. Social media is awash with posts about lost dogs, some of them scams, but many are genuine cries for help from distressed people who have lost an animal they love. Between January 2023 and June 2024 almost 5000 dogs were reported missing in the UK. In March 2025, Roger put a lead on his Jack Russell terrier Betty, as he attended to his boat at Buckden Marina in St Neots, Cambridgeshire. With his back turned for...
Jun 15, 2025•29 min
Worms are everywhere - in our soils, our seas, and our selves. Dive down a worm burrow on this sound-rich odyssey to meet our most numerous and intimate animal companion. Science writer Jack Monaghan will guide you through gardens and farms, factories and laboratories to look afresh at our wriggling, wonderful world. Producer and narrator: Jack Monaghan Sound design and original music: Robert Moutrey Executive producer: Bridget Harney A Pronk production for BBC Radio 4
Jun 08, 2025•29 min
Where do we begin to think about time without humans to count it? Chris Gasson spends every spare moment on his local beach, Seatown on the Jurassic coast of Dorset, looking out for fossils and stones that speak of a past and future too vast for us to easily imagine. On his walks, Chris has found countless time capsules - including a mammoth tooth, plesiosaur vertebrae and the remains of an ichthyosaur 190 million years old, now under research by Craig Chivers. 'It's a fantastic find,' says Crai...
Jun 01, 2025•29 min
It's the glorious summer of 1966 and Hollywood has taken over England’s prettiest village. The residents of Castle Combe have made way for the cast and crew of the biggest budget musical of the decade- Doctor Dolittle. Where sheep once grazed there are two-headed llamas, talking macaws, singing chimps and enormous catering trucks. Propping up the bar at the local pub are hot actors Anthony Newley, Richard Attenborough and one of the biggest stars of the day- the man who talks to the animals- Rex...
May 18, 2025•28 min
When you look at the moon, what do you see? Producer and artist Siddharth Khajuria encounters competing human imaginations for the moon. Starting with some of the earliest lunar maps, he works with moonlight to illuminate thornier questions about our own behaviour on earth. What motivates the desire to etch a name into the landscape? The humanity woven through our modern map of the moon – Seas of Tranquility and Crises, Lakes of Death and Dreams, an Ocean of Storms – is the work of a 17th centur...
May 11, 2025•30 min
An extraordinary one-off symphony brings to life the stories of five people and their relationship with one of their vital organs. Like a symphony orchestra, our organs work in harmony to execute the movement that is human life. We don’t often think about our relationship to these internal cogs that keep us alive. For most people, the connection remains distant. For others, it is ever present. In The Organ Symphony, we encounter our five vital organs – the heart, lungs, brain, kidneys and liver ...
May 04, 2025•29 min
As their 30th birthday approaches, Saba Husain (they/them) receives an unexpected and life changing box. It contains ‘the life’ of their mum; never before seen diaries, love letters, poems, photos of a person who died when Saba was born, 29 years earlier. With no note or message, it must have been sent by Saba’s father - but why now? Why not before? And what should Saba do with these incredibly intimate pieces of their mother? Saba starts to investigate, asking; how do you get to know your mum -...
Apr 27, 2025•29 min
In his memoir of surviving the brutal apartheid prison Robben Island, South African activist Sedick Isaacs recalls an extraordinary event about which little has been recorded - "the creation and training of the eighty-member choir [of political prisoners] for the production of Handel’s ‘Hallelujah Chorus'. The incongruous beauty of the choir’s performance – and the rich history of the Messiah in South Africa – is brought to life by former political prisoners, by musicians and academics who revea...
Apr 15, 2025•29 min
How many questions have you asked today? How many were rhetorical, “boomer-asking”, passive/aggressive or just boringly functional? Did you know that our appetites for question-asking peak at the age of five, then steadily diminish? That kids ask an average of 40,000 questions between the ages of 2 and 5, while adults ask fewer than ten questions a day? Why are we asking fewer, meaningful questions? In an age where antisocial behaviour has become normal — where it’s entirely acceptable to spend ...
Apr 13, 2025•29 min
If a person dies without friends or relatives, the authorities can instigate a 'public health funeral'. Once called pauper's funerals - the services are referred to on the administrative form with a poignant phrase: "Nobody to Call." These funerals often see online appeals for mourners to attend. And when the BBC's Kevin Core spots a particularly moving appeal on behalf of a 102 year old woman, he's intrigued. “Funeral notice for Miss Margaret Robertson. 11 O’Clock, Thursday. Sefton Road United ...
Apr 06, 2025•29 min
Welcome to the feast! We’re invited to a traditional Georgian ‘Supra’ to immerse ourselves in the magic of Georgian polyphonic singing. The table groans with food, the wine flows, and the singing fills the heart. Led by toastmaster Levan Bitarovi, diners are guided through a narrative, weaving together their personal and collective experiences, through song. At home in the mountains, in Georgia's "singing village" Lakhushdi, people sing like they breathe. A lullaby, a grieving song, a song when ...
Mar 23, 2025•29 min
Author Owen Hatherley goes in search of the lost future of Solent City – the extraordinary plan, devised in the mid-1960s at the height of the post-war modernisation of Britain, to join the historic city-ports of Southampton and Portsmouth with a vast, Los-Angeles style grid. The plan was finally rejected, but why? - and what were the consequences of its defeat, not only for the region but for the future of urban planning in Britain? Travelling across south Hampshire from Fareham to Portsmouth, ...
Mar 16, 2025•29 min
Ian Burke was not someone who grew up riding buses. His school was in walking distance, his parents had a car. But one night in his 20s, he had a dream which began a love affair with bus travel. Any spare moment is now spent exploring undiscovered routes or revisiting old favourites. “It’s about the journey, the out-of-the-way, the overheard snippets of conversation, the weird and unfamiliar place names, the people you’re with, the unexpected,” says Ian. He’s someone who can find beauty in an in...
Mar 09, 2025•29 min
Estimates from NSPCC suggest around 1 in 20 children in the UK have been sexually abused. This documentary brings together survivors whose experiences span different backgrounds, relationships and generations - challenging misconceptions that abuse only happens in certain communities. Through intimate conversations with Laura, Bryony, Joe, and Chris, we witness how institutional silence has allowed abuse to become endemic. At a time when child sexual abuse is making headlines, these survivors of...
Mar 02, 2025•29 min
The story of how a heterosexual, Indian immigrant to England, ignorant of the gay scene, ended up delivering heartfelt eulogies to 30 homosexual men at the height of the AIDS crisis. The experiences of Suresh Vaghela take us behind the headlines of the infected blood scandal and into a transformative relationship between a hemophiliac and the people who he came to regard as his new family. (Including extracts from the BBC Sound Archive and from the 1975 World In Action documentary Blood Money, G...
Feb 23, 2025•29 min
The 2001 Foot and Mouth crisis forced North Devon farmers into a traumatic 6 month lockdown, cut off from their neighbours and living with the death and destruction of their animals. When restrictions were finally eased, the ringing of church bells signalled the end of the lockdown, bringing communities back together. For artist and farmer Marcus Vergette it was a sound that would change his life. Marcus was struck by the ancient power of bells to unite and resurrect a community and he embarked ...
Feb 09, 2025•28 min
Over 80% of people in Britain choose to be cremated rather than buried after death and the scattering of a loved one's ashes is a ritual that's increasingly familiar to many of us. In a lyrical and bittersweet meditation on grief and memory, writer and producer Tim Dee reflects on a West Country road trip to scatter his father’s mortal remains in places of significance to both of them. Each stop has a unique story and forms part of a revealing and poignant commemoration. In the car, the cardboar...
Feb 02, 2025•29 min
Memory is fragile. We are driven to capture it. But is this possible when the memories of the person we love have fragmented? Julian’s mother has no memory. Both her long and short term memory were destroyed by different viruses. His mother still has an emotional memory of Julian. She recognises him - his personality, his manner. But she doesn’t know how old he is, what he does for a living, or that he has a partner. And she doesn’t realise that she can’t remember. So their relationship is stuck...
Jan 26, 2025•29 min
Siblings Sam and Bon Stone are angry. Sam directs her anger inwards while Bon’s anger can be explosive. Through sharing parts of their lives with each other for the first time, they explore how we process anger and whether we can change it. With contributions from Noel Oganyan of Forrest Flowers (recorded at the New Cross Inn, London in November 2024) and Ronnie Turner, founder of The Anger Clinic. Original music by Jennifer Walton Produced by Sam Stone A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4...
Jan 19, 2025•29 min
For some, burnout feels like an unravelling - a slow, creeping dissolution where the threads of your life and identity loosen and fray until you are completely undone. For others, it’s a breaking point - a sharp, sudden, collapse where everything shatters all at once. It doesn’t just kill physical vitality it also guts the entire internal mechanism of us. Like lifting the hood off a car and finding no engine. There’s nothing, a void, which feels very shameful and fragile to those who have define...
Jan 12, 2025•29 min
Distracted, privatised, enchanted - do you ever think about how you listen? For the last 20 years, sound anthropologist Dr Tom Rice has been collecting different ways of listening from the world’s leading sound experts. He’s gathered more than 100 – some of these may be quite familiar, others will definitely surprise you. We are at a critical moment when it comes to listening. The world is increasingly busy with sound, and it’s placing more and more demands on our ears. There’s an awareness that...
Jan 05, 2025•29 min
