#bbcradio4 — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #bbcradio4, aggregated by home.social.
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Medea #Medea #Euripedes
Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics
Series 12
Episode 7 of 7Natalie tells the story of Euripides' Medea, the sorceress who enacted the ultimate revenge on the husband who betrayed her, to a rapt audience at the Hay Festival.
'Rockstar mythologist' Natalie Haynes is the best-selling author of Divine Might, Stone Blind, A Thousand Ships and No Friend to This House as well as a reformed comedian who is a little bit obsessive about ancient Greece and Rome.
Producer Beth O'Dea
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27 days left to listen28 minutes
Last onFriday
21:00
BBC Radio 4#BBCRadio4
#NatalieHaynesStandsUpForTheClassics
#NatalieHaynes -
Crossing Continents
Ukraine: Fighting Russia, Fighting Russian
Crossing ContinentsRussian is the first language of millions of Ukrainians, including many of the country’s frontline troops. But it’s also the language of their enemy. And its public use is increasingly restricted by law, with ever more measures to enforce communication in Ukrainian. Ukrainians are allowed to speak Russian in private conversations. But they can be fined for playing a Russian language song in the street, if the singer or composer is a Russian citizen. The state says Russian must be policed because Russia uses the language as a weapon to spread its influence. But in primarily Russian-speaking places such as Odesa, Ukraine’s third-largest city, many are unhappy about the language laws. One popular entertainer says they’re beyond Kafkaesque. Tim Whewell reports on the arguments dividing a city under constant Russian bombardment, as one side calls the Russian language a colonial hangover, while the other says cultural diversity is what Ukraine should be fighting for.
Producer: Tim Whewell
Sound engineer: James Beard.
Assistant producer: Serhiy Solodko
Security adviser: Jack Bleach
Production coordinators: Gemma Ashman and Keshia Agyei
Editor: Penny MurphyShow less
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00:15
BBC Radio 4 -
Great Lives
Ellen E Jones nominates Florynce Kennedy
Great LivesOne dubbed "the biggest, loudest and indisputably the rudest mouth on the battleground", Florynce Kennedy was a force to be reckoned with.
She was a lawyer, a vocal figure in the American civil rights and feminist movements of the 1960s and '70s, and a champion of numerous other causes besides; from legalising abortion to campaigning for sex-worker rights - proving that it was possible to care about and campaign for causes even if they didn't affect her directly.
Flo was famous in her own time, not only for her passionate commitment to fighting injustice and her incredible talent as a phrase-maker - delivering punchy comments peppered with colourful language - but also for her flamboyant style, notably her trademark Australian hat. And yet today Flo's reputation has dwindled; she's arguably far less well-known than she should be according to her nominator Ellen E Jones, a journalist and broadcaster focusing on film and television who co-hosts the Radio 4 programme 'Screenshot'.
Joining the discussion remotely from the United States, is Sheri Randolph, author of the biography ‘Florynce "Flo" Kennedy: The Life of a Black Feminist Radical’; also an associate professor of history at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and founder of the Black Feminist Think Tank.
Matthew and his guests also hear from Flo's friend and fellow activist Gloria Steinem, who says: "Wherever we went, somehow she created a community of our own by her presence. She was effervescent and smart and outgoing and irresistable... Flo, in her jodhurs and her Aussie hat, was just a symbol of all the movements together."
Presented by Matthew Parris and produced for BBC Studios Audio by Lucy Taylor.
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Great Lives
Ellen E Jones nominates Florynce Kennedy
Great LivesOne dubbed "the biggest, loudest and indisputably the rudest mouth on the battleground", Florynce Kennedy was a force to be reckoned with.
She was a lawyer, a vocal figure in the American civil rights and feminist movements of the 1960s and '70s, and a champion of numerous other causes besides; from legalising abortion to campaigning for sex-worker rights - proving that it was possible to care about and campaign for causes even if they didn't affect her directly.
Flo was famous in her own time, not only for her passionate commitment to fighting injustice and her incredible talent as a phrase-maker - delivering punchy comments peppered with colourful language - but also for her flamboyant style, notably her trademark Australian hat. And yet today Flo's reputation has dwindled; she's arguably far less well-known than she should be according to her nominator Ellen E Jones, a journalist and broadcaster focusing on film and television who co-hosts the Radio 4 programme 'Screenshot'.
Joining the discussion remotely from the United States, is Sheri Randolph, author of the biography ‘Florynce "Flo" Kennedy: The Life of a Black Feminist Radical’; also an associate professor of history at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and founder of the Black Feminist Think Tank.
Matthew and his guests also hear from Flo's friend and fellow activist Gloria Steinem, who says: "Wherever we went, somehow she created a community of our own by her presence. She was effervescent and smart and outgoing and irresistable... Flo, in her jodhurs and her Aussie hat, was just a symbol of all the movements together."
Presented by Matthew Parris and produced for BBC Studios Audio by Lucy Taylor.
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23:00
BBC Radio 4 -
Great Lives
Ellen E Jones nominates Florynce Kennedy
Great LivesOne dubbed "the biggest, loudest and indisputably the rudest mouth on the battleground", Florynce Kennedy was a force to be reckoned with.
She was a lawyer, a vocal figure in the American civil rights and feminist movements of the 1960s and '70s, and a champion of numerous other causes besides; from legalising abortion to campaigning for sex-worker rights - proving that it was possible to care about and campaign for causes even if they didn't affect her directly.
Flo was famous in her own time, not only for her passionate commitment to fighting injustice and her incredible talent as a phrase-maker - delivering punchy comments peppered with colourful language - but also for her flamboyant style, notably her trademark Australian hat. And yet today Flo's reputation has dwindled; she's arguably far less well-known than she should be according to her nominator Ellen E Jones, a journalist and broadcaster focusing on film and television who co-hosts the Radio 4 programme 'Screenshot'.
Joining the discussion remotely from the United States, is Sheri Randolph, author of the biography ‘Florynce "Flo" Kennedy: The Life of a Black Feminist Radical’; also an associate professor of history at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and founder of the Black Feminist Think Tank.
Matthew and his guests also hear from Flo's friend and fellow activist Gloria Steinem, who says: "Wherever we went, somehow she created a community of our own by her presence. She was effervescent and smart and outgoing and irresistable... Flo, in her jodhurs and her Aussie hat, was just a symbol of all the movements together."
Presented by Matthew Parris and produced for BBC Studios Audio by Lucy Taylor.
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Last onToday
23:00
BBC Radio 4 -
Great Lives
Ellen E Jones nominates Florynce Kennedy
Great LivesOne dubbed "the biggest, loudest and indisputably the rudest mouth on the battleground", Florynce Kennedy was a force to be reckoned with.
She was a lawyer, a vocal figure in the American civil rights and feminist movements of the 1960s and '70s, and a champion of numerous other causes besides; from legalising abortion to campaigning for sex-worker rights - proving that it was possible to care about and campaign for causes even if they didn't affect her directly.
Flo was famous in her own time, not only for her passionate commitment to fighting injustice and her incredible talent as a phrase-maker - delivering punchy comments peppered with colourful language - but also for her flamboyant style, notably her trademark Australian hat. And yet today Flo's reputation has dwindled; she's arguably far less well-known than she should be according to her nominator Ellen E Jones, a journalist and broadcaster focusing on film and television who co-hosts the Radio 4 programme 'Screenshot'.
Joining the discussion remotely from the United States, is Sheri Randolph, author of the biography ‘Florynce "Flo" Kennedy: The Life of a Black Feminist Radical’; also an associate professor of history at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and founder of the Black Feminist Think Tank.
Matthew and his guests also hear from Flo's friend and fellow activist Gloria Steinem, who says: "Wherever we went, somehow she created a community of our own by her presence. She was effervescent and smart and outgoing and irresistable... Flo, in her jodhurs and her Aussie hat, was just a symbol of all the movements together."
Presented by Matthew Parris and produced for BBC Studios Audio by Lucy Taylor.
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Choose your file
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Available now30 minutes
Last onToday
23:00
BBC Radio 4 -
Great Lives
Ellen E Jones nominates Florynce Kennedy
Great LivesOne dubbed "the biggest, loudest and indisputably the rudest mouth on the battleground", Florynce Kennedy was a force to be reckoned with.
She was a lawyer, a vocal figure in the American civil rights and feminist movements of the 1960s and '70s, and a champion of numerous other causes besides; from legalising abortion to campaigning for sex-worker rights - proving that it was possible to care about and campaign for causes even if they didn't affect her directly.
Flo was famous in her own time, not only for her passionate commitment to fighting injustice and her incredible talent as a phrase-maker - delivering punchy comments peppered with colourful language - but also for her flamboyant style, notably her trademark Australian hat. And yet today Flo's reputation has dwindled; she's arguably far less well-known than she should be according to her nominator Ellen E Jones, a journalist and broadcaster focusing on film and television who co-hosts the Radio 4 programme 'Screenshot'.
Joining the discussion remotely from the United States, is Sheri Randolph, author of the biography ‘Florynce "Flo" Kennedy: The Life of a Black Feminist Radical’; also an associate professor of history at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and founder of the Black Feminist Think Tank.
Matthew and his guests also hear from Flo's friend and fellow activist Gloria Steinem, who says: "Wherever we went, somehow she created a community of our own by her presence. She was effervescent and smart and outgoing and irresistable... Flo, in her jodhurs and her Aussie hat, was just a symbol of all the movements together."
Presented by Matthew Parris and produced for BBC Studios Audio by Lucy Taylor.
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23:00
BBC Radio 4 -
(Irvine swears throughout this then beats up Jim ...)
Irvine Welsh
BookclubThe award-winning Scottish writer Irvine Welsh speaks to Bookclub, presented by James Naughtie, about his era-defining 1993 debut, Trainspotting.
Following a non-linear plot and written in Scots and Scots English, the novel is more of a collection of interconnected stories told from multiple viewpoints, all centred around a group of friends, who have become household names - Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie - as they battle, among other things, heroin addiction, poverty, and a burgeoning HIV/AIDS crisis. The novel had sold well over a million copies in the UK by the year 2015 and has been translated into thirty languages. The novel was turned into a 1996 film, often described as a modern classic, directed by Danny Boyle and starring Ewan McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller, Robert Carlyle, Ewen Bremner and Kelly Macdonald. This episode was recorded at the Edinburgh International Books Festival in August 2026.Producer: Dominic Howell
Editor: Gillian Wheelan
This was a BBC Audio Scotland production.Show less
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00:15
BBC Radio 4 -
(boils down to nuclear or renewables)
Can Britain’s Broken Energy System Be Fixed?
CurrentlyBritain has some of the highest electricity prices in the world. As of last year, nearly two and half million people live in fuel poverty, and it’s crippling our industries too. How did we get here?
In 2024, a record 50.4% of our electricity came from renewable sources. We don’t need to pay for the wind to blow and the sun to shine, and solar panels have been getting less expensive every year. But creating an electricity grid that can cope with the challenges of renewable energy isn’t cheap – and it’s certainly not straightforward either.
Yet as we emerge from another summer of record temperatures, wild fires and global fossil fuel price shocks, the question of how we manage our transition to clean energy has never been more important or more complicated.
Journalist Jonathan Ford speaks to economists, policy makers and industry leaders who shed light on the past, present and potential future of the UK’s electricity system, and finds out what can be done.
Presenter: Jonathan Ford
Producer: Artemis Irvine
Executive Producer: Robert Nicholson
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4Show less
28 minutes
On airToday
13:30
BBC Radio 4 -
(i'm not (yet) a fan of this show but the last 6 maybe 8 minutes of this episode are good)
2. Something for Everyone
Unspeakable
Series 4 Episode 2 of 6In this episode we hear Jenny Eclair’s word for pride-induced highs, Charlie Higson's description for the sense of relief when your personal trainer cancels your class, and Ria Lina’s newly invented word for throwing someone under the bus.
Ever struggled to find the right word for a feeling or sensation? Unspeakable sees comedian Phil Wang and lexicographer Susie Dent invite celebrity guests to invent new linguistic creations, to solve those all too relatable moments when we're lost for words.
Hosts: Phil Wang and Susie Dent
Guests: Jenny Eclair, Charlie Higson and Ria Lina
Created by Joe Varley
Writers: Matt Crosby and Katie Storey
Recorded by Jerry Peal
Producer: Jon Harvey
Executive Producers: Joe Varley and Akash LockmunA Brown Bred production for BBC Radio 4
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Ray Winstone
This Cultural LifeActor Ray Winstone talks to John Wilson about his formative cultural influences and inspirations. A schoolboy boxing champion, he built a reputation playing tough, working class characters after being cast in the borstal drama Scum at the age of 17. Winstone won huge acclaim for his performance as an alcoholic abusive husband in the film Nil By Mouth, directed by Gary Oldman, and Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast in which he played a bank robber forced out of retirement. Other big screen roles include the Martin Scorsese gangland drama The Departed, and Anthony Mingehella’s American civil war film Cold Mountain. On television, he’s played Henry the Eighth, Magwitch in Great Expectations and most recently, an imprisoned crime boss in the Netflix series The Gentlemen.
Producer: Edwina Pitman
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Available now43 minutes
Last onYesterday
19:15
BBC Radio 4 -
Ray Winstone
This Cultural LifeActor Ray Winstone talks to John Wilson about his formative cultural influences and inspirations. A schoolboy boxing champion, he built a reputation playing tough, working class characters after being cast in the borstal drama Scum at the age of 17. Winstone won huge acclaim for his performance as an alcoholic abusive husband in the film Nil By Mouth, directed by Gary Oldman, and Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast in which he played a bank robber forced out of retirement. Other big screen roles include the Martin Scorsese gangland drama The Departed, and Anthony Mingehella’s American civil war film Cold Mountain. On television, he’s played Henry the Eighth, Magwitch in Great Expectations and most recently, an imprisoned crime boss in the Netflix series The Gentlemen.
Producer: Edwina Pitman
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Available now43 minutes
Last onYesterday
19:15
BBC Radio 4 -
Ray Winstone
This Cultural LifeActor Ray Winstone talks to John Wilson about his formative cultural influences and inspirations. A schoolboy boxing champion, he built a reputation playing tough, working class characters after being cast in the borstal drama Scum at the age of 17. Winstone won huge acclaim for his performance as an alcoholic abusive husband in the film Nil By Mouth, directed by Gary Oldman, and Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast in which he played a bank robber forced out of retirement. Other big screen roles include the Martin Scorsese gangland drama The Departed, and Anthony Mingehella’s American civil war film Cold Mountain. On television, he’s played Henry the Eighth, Magwitch in Great Expectations and most recently, an imprisoned crime boss in the Netflix series The Gentlemen.
Producer: Edwina Pitman
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Available now43 minutes
Last onYesterday
19:15
BBC Radio 4 -
Ray Winstone
This Cultural LifeActor Ray Winstone talks to John Wilson about his formative cultural influences and inspirations. A schoolboy boxing champion, he built a reputation playing tough, working class characters after being cast in the borstal drama Scum at the age of 17. Winstone won huge acclaim for his performance as an alcoholic abusive husband in the film Nil By Mouth, directed by Gary Oldman, and Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast in which he played a bank robber forced out of retirement. Other big screen roles include the Martin Scorsese gangland drama The Departed, and Anthony Mingehella’s American civil war film Cold Mountain. On television, he’s played Henry the Eighth, Magwitch in Great Expectations and most recently, an imprisoned crime boss in the Netflix series The Gentlemen.
Producer: Edwina Pitman
Show less
Available now43 minutes
Last onYesterday
19:15
BBC Radio 4 -
Ray Winstone
This Cultural LifeActor Ray Winstone talks to John Wilson about his formative cultural influences and inspirations. A schoolboy boxing champion, he built a reputation playing tough, working class characters after being cast in the borstal drama Scum at the age of 17. Winstone won huge acclaim for his performance as an alcoholic abusive husband in the film Nil By Mouth, directed by Gary Oldman, and Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast in which he played a bank robber forced out of retirement. Other big screen roles include the Martin Scorsese gangland drama The Departed, and Anthony Mingehella’s American civil war film Cold Mountain. On television, he’s played Henry the Eighth, Magwitch in Great Expectations and most recently, an imprisoned crime boss in the Netflix series The Gentlemen.
Producer: Edwina Pitman
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Available now43 minutes
Last onYesterday
19:15
BBC Radio 4 -
First Contact
Archive on 4Horatio Clare explores the idea of First Contact.
It begins with a news item.
A group of indigenous people living around the border between Brazil and Peru emerge from the depths of the forest, cross a river and make what is described as first contact with the outside world.
The film of this encounter is fascinating and uncanny.
Within it we can discern a dim shadow of encounters that stretch back through history. James Cook in Botany Bay, Hernan Cortez in Mexico, Christopher Columbus in the Caribbean. Centuries of history seem to show us first contact as conquest – a prelude to catastrophe for the contacted people.
But what do we mean by “first contact” anyway? Can there really still be uncontacted people in this day and age? Uncontacted by whom?
The news clip that fascinates Horatio Clare cuts off as the indigenous people seemingly return back across the river to the edge of the forest – a border of sorts, between one world and another.
But what happened next? And what should happen next?
Is there always a winner and a loser when we make first contact?
Featuring Mark Anstice, Julia Blackburn, Wade Davis, Felipe Milanez and Sarah Shenker.
Readings by Sagar Arya and Sumaiya Chaudhary.
Producer: Martin Williams
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Available now57 minutes
Last onYesterday
20:00
BBC Radio 4 -
Writing Our Mothers
Archive on 4‘Mothers have such a weight of idealisation and expectation landed upon their bodies and their minds and what women writers can do is to take that apart and explore
its underbelly,’ says feminist writer Jacqueline Rose.Whether worshipped or vilified, treated as lifetime confidantes or rarely trusted, the mothers we meet when we write them are re-inventions. Some may be closer to the
truth than others. Many of them will have roots in the life experiences of the daughter-writer. Virginia Woolf, who lost her mother at the age of 13, said she was obsessed with writing her mother. Eventually she also argued that it was ‘the occupation of the woman writer to kill’ what she called ‘The Angel in the House’ – the perfect, self-sacrificing mother – who may well have been her own maternal influence.Drawing on interviews with Maya Angelou, we hear how for her to write her mother was to ‘write about a hurricane in its perfect power’. She describes how the influence of a mother who ‘abandoned’ her as a child forced her most urgent examinations of class, race and, importantly love. In another frank interview with Marguerite Duras from 1968, she describes writing as a search for connection with her raging and ‘mad’ mother. For Sylvia Plath, the process of writing about becoming a mother herself in the 1950s produced work of a psychic intensity rarely seen before.
What the archive ultimately reveals is that a mother, whether present or absent, loving or cruel, might be as formative an influence on a writer’s work, as in life. ‘When I read about motherhood, I want to be shaken loose from whatever limitations I have when I think about what that means,’ says the writer Siri Hustvedt.
With contributions from Susie Orbach, Jacqueline Rose, Kit de Waal and Siri Hustvedt, and narration from Amaka Okafor.
Produced by Sarah Cuddon
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4Archive sources:
Desert Island Discs with Arundhati Roy (2017)
A Chance to Meet ... Edna O'Brien (1971)
Sylvia Plath, Peter Orr interview (1962)
Audre Lorde, Pacifica Radio Archives and Academy of American Poets www.poets.org
Maya Angelou, BBC News (1985)
Jeannette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (BBC, 1990) and Face To Face (BBC, 1994)
Marguerite Duras, Worn Out With Desire To Write (1985)
Toni Morrison, Brief Encounters (BBC, 2001)
Jackie Kay, Book of the Week (The Waters Company for BBC R4, 2015)
Elena Ferrante, Lying Lives of Adults (BBC, 2020)
Available now57 minutes
#ArundhatiRoy #EdnaOBrien
#SylviaPlath #AudreLorde
#MayaAngelou #JeannetteWinterson
#MargueriteDuras #ToniMorrison
#JackieKay #ElenaFerrante -
Now listening: Crossing Continents - Getting Gaza back online
How amid the tents and the rubble Gaza is developing once again as an unlikely tech hub.
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Mr Jefferson's Library (5 part series)
Michael Goldfarb visits the Library of Congress and Thomas Jefferson's home at Monticello in Virginia to see how Jefferson's reading shaped the beginnings of American history.
#MichaelGoldfarb
#LibraryOfCongress
#ThomasJefferson
#Monticello#BBCRadio4 #BookOfTheWeek #BBCBOTW #BBCBookOfTheWeek
(15 minute episodes) (very fast reading presentation style)
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Interesting episode of More or Less this week, particularly factchecking the greenwash around the “carbon capture” from restoring whale populations (which we should do because it is good to do regardless, not for bullshit financial/monetised benefits).
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(a bit of pro-FreeMason propaganda just before noon -- guilds, mystery plays, freemasons)
Arts & Mysteries
A History of Mystery by Cal Flyn
Episode 2 of 5Cal Flyn explores the profound power of mystery and the provocation of the unknown.
Today the award-winning writer uncovers the links between the unknown and the medieval guilds that developed to protect artisanal secrets.
Written and read by Cal Flyn
Produced by Eilidh McCreadie
A BBC Audio Scotland production for BBC Radio 4Show less
30 days left to listen14 minutes
Today
11:45
BBC Radio 4(... she wants to be a brother ...)
#BBCRadio4 #BookOfTheWeek #BBCBookOfTheWeek #BBCRadio4BookOfTheWeek
#BBCR4BookOfTheWeek
#R4BookOfTheWeek
#Freemasons #Freemasonry #CalFlyn #BBCCalFlyn #FreemasonBrotherCalFlyn -
The completely brilliant and lovely lovely lovely Alice Roberts on Desert Island Discs:
https://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/6/redir/version/2.0/mediaset/audio-nondrm-download/proto/https/vpid/p0hls17r.mp3
#AliceRoberts #DiD #DesertIslandDiscs #DiggingForBritain #Archaeology #Osteology #Anatomy #Humanism #BBC #BBCRadio4 #BBCRadio4Extra #medicine #rollerblades #education #biology -
Really enjoyed this #BBCRadio4 #BookOfTheWeek episode of “The West - a new history of an old idea”
by Naoise MacSweeney. It was about #Njinga, Queen of Ndongo in #Angola who defied Portuguese imperialists; and about #PhyllisWheatley an #AfricanAmerican enslaved as a 7yo in West Africa, who at 18yo published a book of #poetry that challenged all ideas of Western (white) superiority and claims to a classical heritage.#Slavery #West #USHistory #BlackHistory
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001m5pn?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile