#bbcradio4 — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #bbcradio4, aggregated by home.social.
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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 -
2026-03-10 1530-1600
Debt and Wealth Inequality
Thinking AllowedWhat does an 18-month study of residents on a housing estate in southern England tell us about living with debt? Laurie Taylor talks to Ryan Davey from Cardiff University about his new book The Personal Life of Debt - Coercion, Subjectivity and Inequality in Britain, which tries to understand how debt affects people emotionally as well as economically.
Laurie is also joined by Sarah Kerr (LSE International Inequalities Institute), whose book, Wealth, Poverty and Enduring Inequality - Let’s Talk Wealtherty, investigates the stubborn persistence of inequality in the UK. Kerr argues that the gap between top and bottom earners has become entrenched and normalised across generations.
Producer: Natalia Fernandez
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Available now28 minutes
On radioSunday
06:05
BBC Radio 4#BBCRadio4 #BBCThinkingAllowed #LaurieTaylor #Sociology #CostOfLivingCrisis #Debt #Loans #LoanSharks #Bureacracy
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In Touch #BBCRadio4 #BBCInTouch
Leaving the Macular Society
Age Verification HelpIn Touch
Since the spring, we have been receiving a steady stream of emails from people who are deeply concerned about developments at the Macular Society. The concerns have primarily been over the plans to make a number of the Society's regional managers redundant. In the background, there have been events evolving based around a WhatsApp group chat, which included a number of the regional managers who were told they could be made redundant. In Touch speaks to one of the regional managers, following her dismissal from the charity over the WhatsApp group chat.
A few months ago, age verification checks became a requirement on certain websites under the Online Safety Act. The aim of the Act is to protect children and young people from content that is deemed to be harmful. But, In Touch heard from listeners that they are having issues with the accessibility of these age verification measures, and subsequently are struggling to access content they should be entitled to view as adults. Since we discussed this on the programme, we have heard from the The Age Verification Providers Association who offered to provide some advice on how people with visual impairments can navigate these systems. Their Executive Director Iain Corby gives some pointers.
Presenter: Peter White
Producer: Beth Hemmings
Production Coordinator: Paul Holloway
Website image description: Peter White sits smiling in the centre of the image and he is wearing a dark green jumper. Above Peter's head is the BBC logo (three separate white squares house each of the three letters). Bottom centre and overlaying the image are the words "In Touch" and the Radio 4 logo (the word ‘radio’ in a bold white font, with the number 4 inside of a white circle). The background is a bright mid-blue with two rectangles angled diagonally to the right. Both are behind Peter, one is a darker blue and the other is a lighter blue. -
BBC "In Touch" #BBCRadio4 #BBCInTouch #BlindMastodon
Online Safety Act - verification services for those with vision issues
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In Touch presented by Peter White
Natalie's Story: Being Transgender & Blind
Natalie is a blind transgender woman and she contacted In Touch wishing to highlight the intersectional impacts of the UK Supreme Court's ruling in April, that ruled that a woman is to be defined by biological sex under equality law. Natalie describes how this could have major implications for how sex-based rights are applied and how society responds to her and especially those with disabilities.
Presenter: Peter White
Producer: Beth Hemmings
Production Coordinator: Liz PooleWebsite image description: Peter White sits smiling in the centre of the image and he is wearing a dark green jumper. Above Peter's head is the BBC logo (three separate white squares house each of the three letters). Bottom centre and overlaying the image are the words "In Touch" and the Radio 4 logo (the word ‘radio’ in a bold white font, with the number 4 inside of a white circle). The background is a bright mid-blue with two rectangles angled diagonally to the right. Both are behind Peter, one is a darker blue and the other is a lighter blue.
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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 -
@davidallengreen Actually…
The fabulous BBC Radio 4 series Cabin Pressure has the definitive answer on this https://youtu.be/yl22NCgg_CU
#CabinPressure #BBCRadio4