Cambridge Classics professor, Mary Beard, tells the intriguing story of the history of exams and asks what are exams really for. In her quest for an answer, she scales the rooftops of King's College, Cambridge, grills a well-known comedian in Latin and discovers Charles Darwin was a terrible student more interested in finding beetles than doing his exams. Mary delves into the world of exams past and present in the company of comedian Richard Herring, roof-walker and academic, Katherine Rundell, ...
Jul 08, 2016•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast With the help of his granddaughter Sophie, Roald Dahl tells his own remarkable story in the style of one of his much-loved books. Illustrated with newly discovered archive recordings and songs and music exclusively recorded by the cast and musicians in the Royal Shakespeare Company's Matilda The Musical at the Cambridge Theatre in London, this Archive on 4 marks the centenary of the writer dubbed 'the best storyteller in the world'. The programme contains excerpts from interviews with Roald Dahl...
Jul 05, 2016•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast Football is the Welsh national sport. Yes, you read that right. Comedian and writer Elis James gives a polemical appraisal of football's role in constructing modern Welsh identity. (1/2) The story of football in Wales tells a richer, geographically-wider, more socially-inclusive national story than rugby, the country's much vaunted "national sport". The Welsh football story has long embraced crosspollination from ethnic communities, the influx and growth of industries other than coal and steel, ...
Jun 17, 2016•56 min•Transcript available on Metacast A plumber eating a mushroom, and a spiny mammal jumping on a golden ring - you'd be forgiven for thinking these actions would make pretty indistinct or ambiguous sounds. But comedian, writer and musician Isy Suttie discovers why - thanks to Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog - they're some of the most evocative sounds of the 1980s and 90s. Along with these sounds, the plinky plonky music of early video games buried itself inside a generation of ears growing up among Commodores, Ataris, Segas and...
Jun 14, 2016•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Moss Side Gym Stories - Part 1: Moss Side is a small neighbourhood just outside of Manchester's city centre. In the 19th century Elizabeth Gaskell, inspired by the area, made her literary debut with the novel Mary Barton. She described Moss Side as a place of rural charm where Victorian workers and their families came to talk, play and relax. By the later part of the 20th century, the green fields that Gaskell knew had been replaced by housing estates, and Moss Side's reputation for riots, gangs...
Jun 10, 2016•56 min•Transcript available on Metacast At Coney Island amusement park between 1903 and 1943 there was an extraordinary exhibit: tiny, premature babies. 'Dr. Martin Couney's infant incubator' facility was staffed by nurses in starched white uniforms and if you paid a quarter, you could see the babies in their incubators. Journalist Claire Prentice has been following the story and tracked down some of those babies, now in their 70s, 80s and 90s, who were put on show. She discovers how Dr. Couney brought the incubator to prominence in t...
May 31, 2016•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Does documentary ever really tell the truth? BAFTA award winning filmmaker Molly Dineen examines the concept of truth and the creation of narrative in documentary film making. Robert Flaherty's 'Nanook of the North' is considered the first documentary ever made, and much of it was specially set up for the cameras. We think that modern 'Scripted Reality' is a new phenomenon, but does it have its roots in the earliest days of documentary? We look at the making of a documentary, from idea, to casti...
May 27, 2016•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast Zoologist and broadcaster Lucy Cooke explores the science behind our seeming obsession with all things adorable. There has been an explosion in interest in cuteness, particularly online, with an ever growing number of websites dedicated to pandas, kittens, puppies and of course babies. If you are feeling a bit down in the dumps, what better way to brighten your day then looking at some cute baby animal frolicking about. But what is it that makes these creatures so darn attractive to us and can y...
May 24, 2016•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast The distinguished architectural writer Gillian Darley retraces the story of "Subtopia", one of the most significant architectural debacles of the post-war era, and considers its long shadow. Her story starts with Ian Nairn, the maverick young architectural journalist, who invented the word "Subtopia" in the mid-1950s, when the Architectural Review ran a campaign against unsightly clutter and the blurring of distinctions between town and country. Nairn drew upon a recent road journey he had made,...
May 13, 2016•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast Google dominates internet searching across most parts of the globe. The algorithm which produces its search results is highly secret and always changing, but is crucial in influencing the information we all obtain, the viewpoints we read, the people we find out about, and the products we buy. It dominates the market because it's so effective. Rivals find it difficult to compete. But however good the algorithm, however carefully crafted to give us what Google thinks we actually want, is it really...
May 10, 2016•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast Writer and activist Peter McGraith married his long-term partner David in March 2014, the first gay wedding registered in the UK. Two years on he meets gay and lesbian couples and speaks with them about their relationships - why did they decide to get married? Or stay in a civil partnership? And why, for some, will marriage never be an option? Peter explores what kind of effect marriage is having on gay and lesbian couples... and how it might be affecting us as a society, for better or worse. An...
May 06, 2016•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast What does it take to succeed if you are born into poverty and neglect? Two people who have done just that explore whether it was down to personality, circumstances or plain luck. Why do so few people manage it? Byron Vincent, a writer and poet, and Dr Anna Woodhouse, a university lecturer and outreach worker, talk to experts to try and discover if their own triumph over lives that were blighted by abuse, drug addiction, homelessness and hunger could have been predicted. They talk to experts abou...
Apr 05, 2016•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast Grammy Award-Winning songwriter Amy Wadge fell in love with the harmonica after winning one in a fancy dress competition (she was dressed in a bin liner!). Now she investigates the history and potential of the diatonic instrument, a European the toy which in the hands of expert players became the iconic sound of the Mississippi Delta and the Chicago Blues. Not bad for what was originally a child's toy produced then, as now, in Germany! As music historian Christoph Wagner explains, the very first...
Apr 01, 2016•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Kate Mossman tells the story of the long-overlooked female pop and rock writers of the 1960s. As a music journalist herself, when Kate entered the profession she found herself surrounded by men - men who had very definite ideas about how it should be done... writing for monthly magazines that were aimed at men and covering artist who were mainly men. The whole industry of writing about 'serious' popular music seemed to have been established in the late 1960s and the mid-1970s with the writer-cha...
Mar 29, 2016•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast On an August bank holiday in 2014, Shiraz Maher at the International Centre for Study of Radicalisation at Kings College London received an email sent by a disillusioned British jihadist from Syria. "We came to fight the regime and instead we are involved in gang warfare. It's not what we came for but if we go back to Britain we will go to jail. Right now we are being forced to fight - what option do we have?" The man in his twenties claimed to represent dozens of other jihadists' desperate to r...
Mar 25, 2016•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast A two part Seriously following actor Tim Robbins and Rajesh Mirchandani and the theatre programme the Actors' Gang in Norco prison. Part 1: The Actors' Gang Just outside of LA in the Californian desert, presenter Rajesh Mirchandani joins 'Shawshank Redemption' star Tim Robbins as he leads acting classes with the segrgated inmates from Norco prison. Rajesh witnesses the transformation of inmates, from tough gangsters into respectable men and gains a unique insight into some of America's toughest ...
Mar 22, 2016•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast 2016 marks the 50th anniversary of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band going "professional" - kick-starting the chaos with a performance on the bastion of psychedelia and avant-garde: Blue Peter. The legendary Neil Innes looks back at the influence and influences of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band and the collision of art, humour, music, language and anarchy that permeated the band's career. Archive interviews and performances accompany new interviews with Legs Larry Smith, Rodney Slater, Vernon Dudley Bowhay...
Mar 18, 2016•59 min•Transcript available on Metacast Daniil Kharms (1905-1942) is one of Russia's great lost absurdists - a writer whose world still alarms, shocks and bewitches more than half a century after he died in prison during the siege of Leningrad. In his short, almost vignette-like writings, nothing is sacred or as it seems. His narrators dip in and out of moments, describing curious, often disturbing events before getting bored and leaving his characters to their fates. Old ladies plummet from windows, townsfolk are bludgeoned to death ...
Mar 15, 2016•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast "Oh my goodness, look at that sign over there. Keep Off The Grass. Makes me wonder who put it there. Makes me wonder why I should keep off the grass. And it makes me want to go on the grass!" American satirist Joe Queenan presents A Brief History of Disobedience, the follow up to his programmes on Blame, Shame, Anger and Irony. He travels in time from the Old Testament to Tarrytown, his home in suburban New York. He aims to discover the importance of not doing what we are told. So let your life ...
Mar 11, 2016•58 min•Transcript available on Metacast Professor Mary Beard is a distinguished Cambridge Classical scholar with a string of highly-regarded books on Ancient Rome to her name, so it's slightly irksome to her that she is almost better known for her long grey hair. In this highly-authored documentary, Mary Beard investigates a growing reluctance to embrace grey hair. Starting in the Mayfair salon of "hair colourist to the stars", Jo Hansford, she's informed that her hair is "dreadful" and given a personal consultation by Jo herself abou...
Mar 08, 2016•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Lauren Laverne has long been a firm fan of Kenneth Grahame's classic children's book 'The Wind in the Willows', in particular that most sparky of characters Mr. Toad, whose desire to have everything and anything new makes him such a vibrant fore-runner of the modern consumer. Lauren sets about telling the story of the book and its creator, Kenneth Grahame, who came up with the adventures of Mole, Ratty and friends as bedtime stories for his headstrong young son Alistair - thought by many to be t...
Mar 04, 2016•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Is everyone in the world really connected by only six links? A famous experiment by social psychologist Stanley Milgram in the 1960s claimed that it took on average only six steps for a message to pass between two strangers in America. Since then the idea has become part of popular culture. But is it true? And if so, does it matter? Julia Hobsbawm investigates how social networks work, whether we should all pay more attention to our network connections, and whether governments can use social net...
Mar 01, 2016•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Stuart Barr uncovers the colourful career of British composer and transgender pioneer, Angela Morley. In 1972, Wally Stott's transition to Angela Morley made front page news. Wally was famous. He was composer for the Goon Show and Hancock's Half Hour, and music director to stars like Frankie Vaughan and Shirley Bassey. "TV Music Man changes his sex" screamed the headlines. Where would Angela go from here? Stuart talks to Angela's friends and colleagues to discover how she made her mark in the mu...
Feb 26, 2016•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ethan was born blind. He's now a 10 year-old boy who collects sounds on his 51 dictaphones, composes music, and performs on stage in concerts. Until now he's been home-schooled, but last year he was offered a place at St Mary's Music School in Scotland - one of the best in the country. The problem is he struggles to get around. This is where Batman comes in. His real name is Daniel Kish and like Ethan he's blind. He's a master of echolocation. He makes clicking noises - like a bat - to build a p...
Feb 19, 2016•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast "Your breasts look fantastic in that dress." From abysmal chat-up lines like this, to love at first sight in Victoria Train Station, BBC Radio Four listeners have some incredible relationship stories. Reaction Time broadcasts them to the nation, in a programme composed entirely of smartphone contributions from the public. BBC Radio Four shouted out for stories about love on social media - gave out the reactiontime@bbc.co.uk email address and received poignant, funny and downright odd tales - whi...
Feb 14, 2016•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast The writing of Carson McCullers has perhaps never been as popular or acclaimed as that of contemporaries such as Harper Lee and Tennessee Williams, but nonetheless she remains one of the most remarkable and individual writers to come out of twentieth century America. She only wrote a few works, in large part because rheumatic fever left her paralysed in her left arm, and she was beset by ill health and alcoholism for many of her fifty years. Her writing style was enormously sensuous, filled with...
Feb 09, 2016•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast Why is homosexuality still illegal in the world's so-called largest democracy? In his celebrated family memoir 'And All is Said', historian Dr Zareer Masani made no bones about his own homosexuality and the problems it posed growing up in the India of the 1950s and '60s. Much seemed to have changed in the intervening half century. But with a renewed Hindu nationalism dominant in both political and cultural life, Zareer returns to Mumbai (formerly Bombay) to find out whether growing acceptance of...
Feb 05, 2016•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast In 1915 women could neither vote, divorce nor work after marriage, yet in that same year the American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman envisaged a revolutionary world populated entirely by women who were intelligent, resourceful and brave. Her great science fiction novel Herland tells the story of three men who crash land on an island where the men have died out; women reproduce by parthenogenesis. Until Gilman's book was published, most visions of utopia, though turning the world on its head, st...
Feb 02, 2016•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast For the past few decades music teacher and pianist Francesco Lotoro has been collecting music written in concentration camps from the Second World War. Francesco's life is entirely given over to recovering the creations of composers and performers, many of them Jewish, who died in the camps. A massive amount of music was written in camps. Classical music by established composers, but also songs, symphonies, sonatas, operas, lullabies, jazz riffs often scribbled on old sacks, toilet paper or scra...
Jan 26, 2016•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast What is it really like to make decisions affecting millions of people, knowing that a mistake might be pounced upon instantly and your career left in tatters? Government ministers face this challenge every day, and now under ever-rising pressures - not just 24 hour news, but also hugely influential social media and far stronger demand for more open and accountable decision-making. Elinor Goodman finds out from senior politicians, civil service leaders and their advisors how government ministers ...
Jan 22, 2016•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
