Illuminated

In 1939, Emma Freud's mother Jill was evacuated from London to the suburbs of Oxford. After staying with Lewis Carroll's friends the Butler sisters for a few years, she arrived at her next designated accommodation clutching a small suitcase and a copy of her favourite book, The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis. It was just a few weeks later, after she spotted several copies of that book on a shelf, t...

Like so many people at a similar time of life, the poet Paul Farley is facing up to the fact that he might need hearing aids. His wife has been asking him to turn down the volume on the telly for years, and has given up shouting downstairs for him because he never hears. Out in cafes and pubs, Paul can no longer really follow what people are saying to him, and so he often turns down invitations kn...

From Rock-a-bye Baby to Brahms to AI…Has the lullaby become a lost art? Matt Edmonds is trying to sing his child to sleep. It’s not working. As his baritone produces My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean for the 19th time and his toddler says 'Dada, stop!’, he drifts into a parallel reality. Could AI do bedtime for him? Surely it would be simpler? And he would be spared lying on the floor of his child’s b...

Emily Berry leads us on an exploration of agoraphobia: a poetic journey through the lives of people who don't like going on journeys. Agoraphobia is elusive and elastic – and it's very probably not what you think it is. Poet Emily Berry was diagnosed with agoraphobia over ten years ago, a condition which limits her ability to travel. And so she's setting off in a different way: on a journey into t...

The Piano Boat, the floating concert hall where world-renowned concert pianist Masayuki Tayama played, sits empty. His wife, Rhiana, is left with a boat with no captain and a Steinway she was never allowed to play. We join her as she processes her grief and considers the future of The Piano Boat without Masa. Rhiana and Masa commissioned the boat in 2019 and planned to run concert cruises, on boar...

There are so many problems in the world. For the past three years, Estonian clown Julia Masli - armed with a microphone taped to a mannequin leg - has been trying to solve them. So far, during the performances of her live show ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, where Julia asks audience members their problem, she has recorded 1574 problems. A few people feel homesick, some worry about the collapse of society,...

This is a story about a community on the north east coast of Scotland that talked to plants with miraculous results. Established in 1962, the Findhorn community gained international recognition for 40lb cabbages, 8-foot delphiniums, and roses that bloomed in snow. With seemingly no gardening experience, community founders Peter and Eileen Caddy and their friend Dorothy Maclean transformed the barr...

Clint Buffington spends his time where land meets sea, searching for a very specific treasure - messages in bottles that have drifted across oceans. Over the past 20 years he has recovered more than 140 of them, each carrying a clue - sometimes decades old - waiting to be discovered. Finding a bottle is only the beginning. The real mystery unfolds when Clint carefully extracts the fragile paper in...

On the 75th anniversary of the iconic comic strip Peanuts, psychoanalyst and author Josh Cohen shares how Charlie Brown and the Snoopy gang have become his constant companions—and how they can help us navigate the frustrating squiggle of life. Charles Schultz’s daily newspaper comic strip is perhaps the most enduring, beloved and iconic cartoon ever penned. Even if you’ve never read the strip itse...

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,...