“Folks started talking about the New South after the Civil War," says Tom Hanchett, staff historian at the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte, North Carolina. "Where we are now is the newest of the New Souths, the Newcomer South.” Tom speaks about the ever-evolving South, especially as it relates to food, from a booth in El Pulgarcito, a Honduran-Salvadoran-Mexican restaurant in the eastern part of the city. 

Episode 15 - The Newest New South

The moment of time before a camera shutter closes, a symphony of ums reveals a partner's untruths, and two women linked by a phantom thread reflect on their changing bodies. Josie Long presents even shorter short documentaries.

Is This An Image?
Produced by Jon Tjhia

Death from Above
Written and read by Joe Dunthorne

Body of Work
Featuring the voices of writer Marleen Kruithof and cinematographer Babette Mangolte
Music by Nicola Mecca
Produced by Georgia Walker

What's in an Um?
Produced by Talia Augustidis

Charon
Composed, produced and performed by Jamie Payne

Photo by Gabriel Pall https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crow_%28139578829%29.jpeg

First broadcast 9th January 2024, BBC Radio 4
Curated by Axel Kacoutié, Eleanor McDowall and Andrea Rangecroft
Series Producer: Eleanor McDowall

S37: Short Cuts: Minis 1/6

A pamphlet from the 1980s illuminates the world we live in now, a musical invitation for your domestic space, and some dazzling canine choreography for your ears. Josie Long presents short documentaries based around instructions.

How to Listen... including How Not To, How You Ought To, and How You Won't (Extract)
Written by Stephen Potter and Joyce Grenfell
Produced by Stephen Potter
Originally broadcast on BBC Third Programme in 1946

Hot Dogs!
Presented by Alan Smith
Produced by Steve Urquhart
Originally broadcast on Alan Smith's Mid Morning Show, BBC Radio Cumbria in 1999

Hell Rubs and Sobs
Produced by Sami El-Enany

How To Look 30 When You're 30
Produced by Jesse Lawson

Photo credit: Steve Urquhart

First broadcast 16th January 2024, BBC Radio 4
Curated by Axel Kacoutié, Eleanor McDowall and Andrea Rangecroft
Series Producer: Eleanor McDowall

S37: Short Cuts: Instructions 2/6

A couple looks for each other in their dreams, a research facility delves into the otherworldly, and a philosopher imagines a flow of time set to the rhythm of our rivers - Josie Long presents short documentaries that emerge from the dreams of others.

River Time
Featuring Jonathon Keats
Produced by Nadia Mehdi

Haunted
Featuring Linda Fleishman
Produced by Elizabeth Friend

Darling, Are You Dreaming?
Featuring Jules and Vital
Produced by Eloise Stevens

First broadcast 23rd January 2024, BBC Radio 4
Curated by Axel Kacoutié, Eleanor McDowall and Andrea Rangecroft 
Series Producer: Eleanor McDowall

S37: Short Cuts: In Dreams 3/6

Josie Long presents short documentaries that go back to the start. The musician Lucinda Chua traces the journey of a rose, a connection is forged between a young woman now and a trapeze artist on New Year's Eve 1942, and a touching personal archive illuminates the journey of a word.

Muscles and Mysteries
Produced by Teresa Kristoffersson

First Words
Produced by Kalli Anderson 
Featuring the voices of Kalli's parents, Kathy Hunt and Lance Anderson, as well as Kalli's husband, Zack Finkelstein, and their two children, aged 12 and 8.

Reclaiming The Rose 
Produced, narrated and music by Lucinda Chua
Chinese Narration by XiaoQiao
Poetry in English and Chinese by He Sun

First broadcast 30th January 2024, BBC Radio 4
Curated by Axel Kacoutié, Eleanor McDowall and Andrea Rangecroft
Series Producer: Eleanor McDowall

S37: Short Cuts: Roots 4/6

Word spirits, back rooms and a reply all-pocalypse - Josie Long presents short documentaries that emerge from the internet.

Word Spirits
With thanks to Caroline Hesse, Donovan McGrath, Mary Dolejsi, Nicole Reinsch, Nalini Kumari, Zen Priest & Buddhist Scholar John Stevens (for permission to include his Classical Aikido Kototama Chant), and Critical Sound Explorer & Artist Matt Parker (for permission to include excerpts from The People's Cloud / Field Recordings of Internet Data Centres): https://www.earthkeptwarm.com
Additional mixing by Maitreya
Produced by HJ Radia

The Back Rooms
Produced by Mae-Li Evans

The Bello Tolls for Thee
Produced by Nadia Mehdi

First broadcast 6th February 2024, BBC Radio 4
Curated by Axel Kacoutié, Eleanor McDowall and Andrea Rangecroft
Series Producer: Eleanor McDowall

S37: Short Cuts: The Net 5/6

On the final Thursday of August each year, the patrons of The Hand In Hand pub in Kemptown, Brighton, get together to remember those regulars, friends and family members who have died in the past twelve months. Landlady Jennifer Left started the night in memory of two dear friends who passed away suddenly in the space of a few weeks; and over the years since, Staggering in the Dark has become a well-loved feature in the community’s calendar and consciousness. Poets, pianists, comedians and singers crowd into the tiny space to offer performances in honour of the dearly departed. The night lurches between riotous glee and pin-drop quietude as spontaneous singsongs and bawdy odes weave around hushed sonnets of remembrance. This mosaic for radio combines the companionship of barroom scenes with forays into the reflective inner worlds of those present on the night, in a sonic exploration of what it is to grieve, collectively and in private.

FEATURED PERFORMANCES:
This Window by Elena Stevanoska
Torch Song by Mark Campbell
Not Dead by Daisy Asquith
The Dangers Of Making Love To A Girl With A Broken Heart And A Bucket Fanny by Felix Orlo
Call When You Get Home by M. Butterfly
Half-Finished Sudokus by Bramble Wallace
My Love by Mark Campbell
Empty Chairs by Joe Bunn
Alleluia by Angus Rogers 
Sister by Elena Stevanoska

Photo by Lisa Wormsley

First broadcast 18th February 2024, BBC Radio 3
Produced by Phil Smith
With original music and arrangements by Phil Smith and Joel Whitaker

Staggering In The Dark

Doctor Gwen Adshead is a forensic psychiatrist working with the UK’s most violent offenders, many of them serving life sentences at Broadmoor Prison for murder. Gwen believes that empathy starts with a recognition that there is a capacity for evil in all of us.

"My experience is that evil states of mind can be potentially found in everyone, and evil begins on the inside with a turning away from all that is healthy and beautiful in our lives," she says. She believes that for her patients, “no matter what their history”, therapeutic treatment works.

Gwen speaks with the writer and convicted murderer Erwin James who died shortly after recording this interview. Together they reflect on Erwin’s life story and how he came to commit the crime he did. Erwin describes his own relationship with therapy in prison and he asks Gwen about her relationship with Christianity and how it has supported her. ‘Faith and grace have kept me hopeful in my work with people who seem to have abandoned all hope’ she says.

Producer: Sarah Cuddon
A Falling Tree production for BBC World Service

(Photo: Dr Gwen Adshead. Credit: Andy Vox)

The Killer's Counsel

Chrononormativity, duppies and post-colonial thought. Josie Long presents short documentaries and audio adventures exploring beyond the past, present and futures.

Language in the Land of Duppies: Exploring the origins of Jamaican folklore as a gateway to understanding the legacy of slavery on the island.
Produced by Laura Carty
Special thanks to Alexander Powell, Carmen Johnson, Natalia Downer, Kandice Thompson and Jean Smart.

All my friends are turning into Stars
Written and performed by David Amber Devereux
With Dr Matthew Temple, Research Fellow,
Universidad Diego Portales
Additional voices by Lou Sutcliffe and Alessa Catterall
Featuring quotes from De Profundus by Oscar Wilde, Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, and In A Queer Time And Place by Jack Halberstam

Interjections on the future: There is not currently any obvious path to reconstructing a popular faith in political, economic and even some social institutions but while it might not always feel like it today, the unwinding of colonial modernity is underway and accelerating.
Produced by composer and researcher, Sara Rahman.
Featuring psychiatrist Isabel Valli and writers and artists Fer Boyd and Maedeline Stack.

First broadcast 13th February 2024, BBC Radio 4
Curated by Axel Kacoutié, Eleanor McDowall and Andrea Rangecroft
Produced by Axel Kacoutié

S37: Short Cuts: Hereafter 6/6

In 1971, when experimental composer Gavin Bryars chanced upon the voice of an anonymous old man - "a tramp" - on a spool of discarded tape, he had no idea where his impulse to make a piece of minimal 'pop art' would lead.

Gavin shares the story of Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet through the original vinyl recording on Brian Eno's Obscure label and the Mercury Prize-nominated CD version featuring Tom Waits to the adoption of the piece by the homeless community.

With Vince, Dee and Brian from the homeless choirs Streetwise Opera and Choir With No Name, Pam Orchard of The Connection At St Martin's, composer Jocelyn Pook and Revd Richard Carter from St Martin-in-the-Fields church in Trafalgar Square.

First broadcast 14th April 2024, BBC Radio 3
Produced by Alan Hall

Never Failed Me Yet

It's 25 years since London suffered three vicious nail bomb attacks - holdalls filled with 4-inch nails and hand-made explosives planted in Brixton market, Brick Lane and in the bar of the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho, intended to cause damage to those in the immediate vicinity and to the notion of a tolerant, diverse capital city.

The attacks are recorded in photographs shared at the time by the press - of London streets strewn with damaged buildings and injured people, an x-ray of a toddler with a nail embedded in his skull, the wedding photograph of two victims (one killed, the other severely injured) and the police mugshot of the perpetrator, a far right terrorist who hoped to start a 'racial war in this country'.

Fragments looks again at these images - some taken by Chris Taylor who happened to be on assignment in Soho's market photographing vegetables - to consider what it means for an instant to be captured and to endure in our memories and understanding of traumatic events.

Including contributions from photographer Chris Taylor; Jonathan Cash, who survived the Soho attack, Emdad Talukder, who was injured in Brick Lane and business owner Leo Epstein.

Music composed by Alan Hall, with Eleanor McDowall (chimes) and Alan Hall (trumpet)

Photo credit: ChrisTaylorPhotography.com 

First broadcast 14th April 2024, BBC Radio 4
Producer: Alan Hall

Fragments: The London Nail Bombings

Authentic South is a sound-rich, storytelling platform that explores the South's culture through food, art, music, land, literature and characters. Hosted by writer and storyteller Tanner Latham, the episodes feature everyday people doing and wrestling with extraordinary things.

Episode 15 - The Newest New South

Authentic South

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