Illuminated

Alan Dein takes to the road to explore the social and cultural resonances of Kraftwerk’s Autobahn. The music begins the way journeys begin: with a clunking car door and churning ignition, before rolling onwards on a warm rhythmic throb - a 23-minute conceptual road-trip of swerves and curves, gentle gradients and blaring horns, tarmac-rumbling rhythms and doppler-shift effects that simulate the se...

200 years ago, the modern railway was born. On 27th September 1825, the first ticketed passenger train, powered by steam travelled on a public line in County Durham. Katrina Porteous, a poet with generational connections to the area follows the track of that inaugural journey, accompanied by a rich aural soundscape by Joe Fowler. She also journeys through time, accelerating from the coal mines whi...

When decapitated cats start appearing in South London, animal rescue duo Boudicca Rising and Tony Jenkins spring into action. They’ll do whatever it takes to get to the bottom of this mystery. It’s 2015 and the two volunteers running the South Norwood Animal Rescue and Liberty (SNARL) Facebook page, stumble upon a vet’s poster telling locals to keep their pets safe as there have been a series of “...

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 Reb...

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...

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 nativ...

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...

“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 pr...

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’...

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 wit...

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, an...

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 lar...

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...

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 Mout...

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 ichthy...

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,...

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...

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...

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 in...

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 S...

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 question...

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...

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...

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...

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...