#bbcradio4 — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #bbcradio4, aggregated by home.social.
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(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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Last onToday
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
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
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
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
Show less
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 -
(well, this was shit. will listen to the repeat later and decide if my assessment was fair.)
#BBCRadio4 #BBCStartTheWeek
#FrancisFukiyama #GordonBrown #BronwenMaddox -
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 -
( ... there are possibly some David Sedaris fans out in Fediverseland ... )
David Sedaris
Take Four BooksPresenter James Crawford speaks to American author and humourist David Sedaris on his new collection of essays, The Land and Its People. From navigating the realities of ageing to reflecting on his personal relationships, Sedaris explores a wide range of experiences across the book's 28 essays.
He also discusses the three works that inspired the collection: Raymond Carver's Cathedral (1981), Joy Williams's Taking Care (1982), and Alan Bennett's Talking Heads (1988).
Producer: Rachael O’Neill
Editor: Gillian Wheelan
This was a BBC Audio Scotland production.Show less
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On air
Today
16:00
BBC Radio 4 -
(idiot talks shite on serious political professionals panel programme with serious political professionals)
Darren Grimes, Rachel Millward, Baroness Stowell, Anna Turley MP
Any Questions?
Alex Forsyth presents political debate from Ponteland High School near Newcastle-upon-Tyne, with Reform UK board member Darren Grimes, who is deputy leader of Durham County Council; Green Party of England & Wales deputy leader Rachel Millward, who is also deputy leader of Wealden District Council; Conservative peer Baroness Stowell; and Labour Party chair and Cabinet Office minister, Anna Turley MP.
Producer: Paul Martin
Assistant producer: Lowri Morgan
Production co-ordinator: Ishmael Soriano
Lead broadcast engineer: Chris Weightman
Editor: Glyn Tansley -
Overuse of interference in telephony service when callers are talking about Iran this week.
#BBCRadio #BBCRadio4 #BBCAnyQuestions #BBCAnyAnswers #BBCRadio5 #GCHQ
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(this programme mentions the "National Physical Laboratory" which is another of Rishi Sunak's fucked-up projects)
Is it legal for police to use live facial recognition technology?
The Law ShowThe Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood says she makes “no apology” for announcing the roll-out of Live Facial Recognition (LFR) to all the police services in England and Wales.
Under a government white paper on policing, the number of Live Facial Recognition vans will increase from 10 to 50.
Police say it’s groundbreaking technology in the fight against crime, but civil liberties groups say it’s authoritarian and a step towards a "surveillance state".
Facial recognition cameras are already used in shops; the difference with LFR is that the software used by police tracks faces against a watchlist - a specific database of faces - from a live video feed.
But the legal framework regulating the use of the technology is a patchwork of common law, human rights legislation and police guidelines, which has been challenged in the High Court.
There is also concern about a lack of oversight over how police watchlists are compiled, and why the number of people on the list now stretches into the thousands.
So is LFR legal?
Presenter: Dr Joelle Grogan
Producers: Ravi Naik and Charlotte Rowles
Editor: Tom BigwoodContributors:
Sonja Jessup, BBC London’s home affairs correspondent
Professor Karen Yeung, Interdisciplinary Professorial Fellow in Law, Ethics and Informatics, Birmingham Law School
Dr Asress Gikay, Senior Lecturer in AI, Disruptive Innovation and Law, Brunel, University of London
Richard Ryan a barrister from Blakiston’s, specialising in drone and unmanned aviation law#FacialRecognition #UKPol #BBCRadio4 #BBCTheLawShow #RishiSunak #NationalPhysicalLaboratory
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2026-03-10 2100-2130
The plans to limit jury trials in England and Wales
The Law ShowThe courts system in England and Wales is in an unprecedented crisis. The backlog has reached 80,000 cases, and some defendants are being told they won't be able to have a criminal trial until 2030.
The government has introduced the Courts and Tribunals Bill, which contains a raft of measures to tackle delays and bring down the backlog; but the Justice Secretary David Lammy has admitted that things are going to get even worse before they get better.
The most controversial change is a plan to restrict the number of jury trials. The right to judgement by your peers has existed for more than 800 years, but for some offences, that's going to end.
Defendants will lose the right to choose between a jury trial or a magistrate's hearing in so-called "either-way" offences.
Magistrates will get increased sentencing powers - up from 12 months to 18 months.
More serious criminal cases, with likely sentences of up to three years will now be heard by a single judge - and no jury.
And only the most serious "indictable" offences, like murder, manslaughter and rape and any other offence with a sentence of longer than three years will be heard by a jury.
But will the reforms make a difference?
Presenter: Dr Joelle Grogan
Producers: Ravi Naik and Charlotte Rowles
Editor: Tom BigwoodContributors:
Sarah Sackman KC, courts and legal services minister
Chris Kinch, KC, who until 2024 was a senior judge at Woolwich Crown Court in south London
David Ford, national chair of the Magistrates AssociationShow less
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#BBCRadio4 #BBCTheLawShow #DavidLammy #SingleJusticeProcedure
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Craig has slipped containment! 😱
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listener phone-in on Digital ID and Leadership
"Any Answers" hosted by Anita Anand
(sister show to "Any Questions")#BBCRadio4 #BBCAnyQuestions
#DigitalID #UKPol(available for 29 days on Sounds)
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Almost time for the hour of shouting and gnashing of teeth which I suspect will be spectacular today.