Seriously... BBC Radio 4
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- Society & Culture
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Seriously is home to the world’s best audio documentaries and podcast recommendations, and host Vanessa Kisuule brings you two fascinating new episodes every week.
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Farmers and Furious
Following wide ranging farmers' protests across Europe, now British farmers are starting to show their discontent with thousands of farmers meeting in Wales, as well as protests taking place in England.
BBC Radio 4 Farming Today's Charlotte Smith joins farmers as they are protesting and asks if the industry is now at breaking point.
Will the new promise by the prime minister to ensure food production is supported, and not just environmental work, be enough to appease English farmers? And has the Welsh First Minister's comments that farmers can not simply decide themselves what to do with millions in subsidies, just inflamed the situation further?
With so many demands on our land, from capturing carbon to reversing the biodiversity loss, is there still space for farmers to produce food profitably in the UK?
Presented by Charlotte Smith and produced by Beatrice Fenton. -
Decolonising Russia
All along Russia’s border, in former Soviet republics, the Ukrainian war has prompted a new, more assertive sense of national identity. They’re asking whether – despite independence – they’ve really overcome the legacy of 'Russian colonialism.'
Meanwhile activists from the many ethnic minorities inside Russia are increasingly describing themselves as victims of colonialism too - and demanding self-determination. The debate about the 'imperial' nature of Russia has now also been taken up by strategists, politicians and scholars in the West. Many are questioning their own previous 'Russocentric' assumptions, and asking whether 'decolonising' Russia is the only way to stop the country threatening its neighbours - and world peace.
But some also wonder whether the term 'decolonisation' is really relevant to Russia – and what it means. Is it about challenging the '0imperial mindset' of its rulers – and perhaps of every ordinary Russian? Or perhaps it means dismembering the country itself? Or, as some claim, is the very idea of 'decolonising Russia' just part of an attempt by the West to extend its own neo-colonialist influence?
Tim Whewell dissects a new and vital controversy with the help of historians, thinkers and activists from Russia and its neighbours, the West and the Global South.
Sound mixing by Hal Haines
Production coordinators: Sabine Schereck, Maria Ogundele, Katie Morrison
Editor: Richard Fenton Smith
Extract from "Winnie-the-Pooh" by A A Milne, read by Alan Bennett -
How to Build an Oil Field
In September 2023 permission was given to develop Rosebank, the UK’s largest untapped oil field. Located west of Shetland, the UK government says it will provide energy security in the UK for a whole generation, at a time where we have never felt more insecure about the source of our energy and the cost. But will it?
A feat of modern engineering, with the latest technology used to create it. Once operational, where is all this money, and oil, going to flow? And how does this fit into a commitment to transition from a dependency on fossil fuels to greener alternatives?
There’s a lot at stake with this new oil field: jobs, investment, income, and oil, of course.
There are so many questions about how oil and gas works in terms of its relationship to the UK, yet surprisingly few clear answers. This programme will help fill in the blanks. -
The Forensic Jeweller
Jewellery can tell us so much about people - the ones that wore it, and the ones that made it. It reveals something about status, or power, or belief systems - religion and relationships. There's so many interesting things that you can uncover about a person, or a group of people, by their jewellery. This makes it an incredibly useful tool for forensic analysis.
Dr Maria Maclennan, is the world's first, and currently only, Forensic Jeweller. In this show, we accompany Maria to the Evros region of Greece, where she, along with her team of Dr Jan Bikker, Professor Pavlidis Pavlos and Filmmaker Harry Lawson, are using the forensic analysis of jewellery to identify deceased migrants.
The goal is to give back a name to many of the missing and unidentified who sadly lose their lives trying to enter Europe.
A single piece of jewellery can unlock an entire identity. -
The Hidden History of the Wall
Cultural Sociologist Rachel Hurdley travels round England and Wales to uncover what walls tell us about how we live, from iron age roundhouses to Victorian mansions, medieval halls to terraced workers’ cottages, castles to the domestic interiors of today.
Rachel explores how walls, which we often take for granted, define the spaces we inhabit and make sense of everyday life and our place in the world, talking to a range of experts and academics including architectural writer Jonathan Glancey.
She tries her hand at making wattle and daub for roundhouses at Castell Henllys in Wales, with archaeologist Dr David Howell . She climbs through the thick stone walls of the Norman castle at Conisbrough in South Yorkshire, with buildings archaeologist James Wright and English Heritage curator Kevin Booth.
From the top of the tower, Rachel explores ideas of status and wealth, where building the tallest tower was as much about impressing the neighbours, as it was about military defence and protecting the vast wealth of the aristocratic elite. She also visits St Fagans National Museum of History Wales – a living museum of vernacular buildings throughout the ages.
Rachel looks at the way walls have redefined our living spaces from medieval times, such as the longhouses where farmers lived side by side with their animals and the great medieval halls. Here, daily life carried on in one space – masters and servants - until the ruling family was wealthy enough to seek privacy by building first floor solars. Now in modern day Britain, privacy can be at a premium in warehouses and factories converted into rented accommodation to meet to housing demand in sought after areas such as Hackney in London.
She also hears stories of horror and superstition – people and animals incarcerated in walls – as well as the use of burn marks at Gainsborough Old Hall in Lincolnshire to keep evil spirits away and visits one of the oldest medieval houses to survive in England, the National Trust’s Ightham Mote in Kent, to see centuries of change through its walls with conservation architect Stuart Page and collections manager Amanda Doran,
She looks at how fashions and styles have changed with a visit the Museum of the Home where Director Dr Sonia Solicari tells Rachel more about social change through the Museum room sets. Wallpaper was a game changer, a much cheaper alternative to tapestries or rich wall paintings. She hears some surprising facts - the introduction in the 18th century of wallpaper tax, and also how the arsenic in some of the wallpaper pigments was poisoning people. Yet it was the industrial revolution which brought wallpaper and the other mass produced trappings of the home to almost everyone and a chance to curate our spaces - like those of British born Caribbean playwright and artist Michael McMillan, who remembers from his childhood the power of the front room to impress and reveal who we are.
Presenter: Rachel Hurdley
Producer: Sara Parker
Executive Producer: Samir Shah
A Juniper production for BBC Radio 4 -
The Rise of Sinn Féin
Ireland correspondent Chris Page looks at the growth of Sinn Féin across the island of Ireland over the last 30 years and explores how it has achieved that. He examines the party's current aims and policies, from housing to the economy. And he asks, given the current trend in the polls, what the implications might be of the party being in government in two jurisdictions - in Belfast and in Dublin.
Presenter: Chris Page
Producer: Camellia Sinclair
Lead broadcast engineer: Ilse Lademann
Credit: "Two Tribes", RTÉ One, 22nd December 2022
Customer Reviews
Why have we ‘evolved’ these spiritual precepts?
The show is well paced, brilliantly produced and presented in a jovial,charming and lighthearted way. My only issue with it, and this is obviously entirely personal; that being, the purely materialist exploration of these psychologies.
There is an undeniable factor that alongside cultural and societal evolution, there are also myriad beliefs in a supernatural arbiter that deemed these human behaviours as sinful and therefore rebellious in nature.
Whether you think these psychologies are purely the product of human evolution or an innate quality breathed into the design of our species, again depends on your personal belief system.
I’d say, it would be great if these episodes could be twice as long and interview biologists alongside other sources of wisdom.
Not bad.
Quite a good podcast, but the producers have a habit of making a ‘part one’ and then the part two never materialises.
My Hero
Dear Baroness, I cannot tell you how your review of the London Met Police changed my life, as I was arrested twice in my own home for harassing a pc I’ve never met. She was assigned to a burglary of £1mm from my home in 2020, and I named the names who did it. Two of them live on my street in Notting Hill. I heard nothing back, and so kept sending emails. I was arrested in 2020, and again in late March 2023. I was so frighted of the absolute silence between my reporting it to them and my second arrest that I wrote you a direct email regarding my sheer terror at what would happen next. Alas, I got your address wrong. I fully support your findings and have read all 363 pages. I encourage all, especially those involved with the London Met Police, to read every word, especially chapter five where you lay out how those reporting crimes often suffer from PTSD which is exacerbated by the force’s lack of empathy and understanding. My treatment at Charing Cross echoes your findings of bullies and predators. I applaud your efforts and continue to sing your praises. Thank you for your determination, grit, courage and strength to uncover uncomfortable truths. Most Sincerely, Gilena Simons