Short documentaries and adventures in sound presented by Josie Long - available to download as a podcast: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01mk3f8/episodes/downloads

Short Cuts

Also available as a podcast from BBC Radio 4: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bfykqm/episodes/downloads

Tara and George

Documentary adventures that encourage you to take a closer listen.

Lights Out

Transcript: https://iremembertranscript.tiiny.site

In 1969 when the artist Joe Brainard stumbled upon a simple writing device, he had sleepless nights of frantic writing, charting out his memory in hundreds of fragments – all beginning with the words I Remember – from coldcream on his mother’s face to the experience of falling in love.

In a letter to his friend, the poet Anne Waldman, he reported ecstatically, "I feel very much like God writing the Bible. I mean, I feel like I’m not really writing it, but that it is because of me that it is being written".

Brainard was never driven by nostalgia, but found that the more precisely he described his memories, the deeper the reader could relate. In this process Joe discovered that I Remember was not about him, but about everybody. The book became a classic, used in writing classes across the world and loved by many.

For this montage of memories, radio producer and poet Pejk Malinovski interviewed ten of Brainard’s close friends and admirers - poets and novelists like Ron Padgett, Ann Lauterbach, Edmund White and Anne Waldman, whose own lives have been shaped by Brainard’s masterpiece.

First broadcast 1st October 2023, BBC Radio 3
Produced by Pejk Malinovski

I Remember Joe Brainard

“I was well aware of this synchronicity: that Cornwall was going onto lithium, or what I prefer to call ‘lithifying’, just as I was ‘delithifying’, or coming off it. This wasn’t an accidentally aligned pairing of incidents. I’d planned it that way.”

In 2022, Laura Grace Simpkins made two big life changes. She decided to stop taking lithium (a medication she was prescribed for her mental health) just as she moved to Cornwall—the only place where lithium is being mined in the UK. In 'Lithified', Laura gets ready for her future without the silvery-white metal, while exploring the landscape it will soon be coming from.

Featuring the voices of:
Marcia Bjornerud, Professor of Geology and Environmental Studies at Lawrence University
Jeremy Wrathall, Founder and CEO of Cornish Lithium
Dr Beth Simons, Cornish geologist and author of ‘Variscan Coast’

Image: ZEISS Microscopy. Lithium ion battery cathode, no beam damage of sensitive binder material, imaged at 500 V with ZEISS GeminiSEM

First broadcast 23rd October 2023, BBC Radio 4
Written and narrated by Laura Grace Simpkins
Music and sound by Alice Boyd
Produced by Alice Boyd and Laura Grace Simpkins

Lights Out: Lithified 2/6

Infamous during the Greenham Common protests of the 1980s for the recklessness of her activism and her multiple prison sentences (as heard in Lights Out: Greenham Convictions), Lyn Barlow now lives quietly in Somerset. She spends her time making textile art, huge tapestries that document the turbulence of her childhood in care and the struggles of her adulthood - both with the State and herself.

Now that her work is on display in Watchet's East Quay gallery, in an exhibition shared with Grayson Perry called Common Thread, Lyn reflects on the textures, the threads and the imagery of her life.

Photo credit Joseph Horton, from the Common Thread exhibition at East Quay, Watchet

First broadcast 30th October 2023, BBC Radio 4
Produced by Alan Hall
(with music by Alabaster DePlume, licensed courtesy of Domino Publishing Company Limited.)

Lights Out: Threads 3/6

Sahid has spent years on a relentless journey. Crossing international borders, he has confronted the harrowing realities of human trafficking, slavery, and rafting across the Mediterranean Sea. But his journey isn't over yet - Sahid is at risk of being sent back to the first European Union country he arrived in, a country where he was unlawfully imprisoned and tortured.

This is the story of one man's search for safety, from Sierra Leone to Strasbourg.

First broadcast 6th November 2023, BBC Radio 4
Produced by Phoebe McIndoe and Redzi Bernard

Lights Out: Crossings 4/6

From handfuls of dust to watching geological time mark the landscape, this documentary flows from the night skies into the deepest known point in our oceans.

"I noticed that language seems to fail us. How do you write about the foundations of our existence? That is how mythology enters very naturally into the story, because history is about ideas, religions, empires, wars and culture. Mythology is about the fundaments. Sun, moon, wind, oceans, great floods and tragic gods... We are living in mythological times, where we are shaking the fundaments." - Andri Snær Magnason

Drawing on ideas in his book, On Time and Water, the Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnason and the Scottish artist Katie Paterson explore how our imagination can help us hold the moment we live in. 

TRANSCRIPT: https://downloads.bbc.co.uk/radio4/Lights_Out/Dust_Transcript.pdf

Archive recording from Raddir - Voices: Recordings of Folk Songs courtesy of the Árni Magnússon Institute
'Vatnajökull (the sound of)' recording courtesy of Katie Paterson

Recording of the journey to Okjökull by Guðni Tómasson
Music composed and performed by Phil Smith and Zac Gvi

First broadcast 20th November 2023, BBC Radio 4
Produced by Eleanor McDowall

Lights Out: Dust 6/6

For generations, queer people have moved to London from more conservative parts of the UK, in search of community and to live as their authentic selves. Now, with housing so unstable, queer people are among the marginalised communities for which homelessness is on the rise. They continue to come to London now to find their place, but the trade off is extreme financial insecurity.

Can you really feel at home when the four walls around you are unstable?

Jesse Lawson talks to Karen Fisch, Topher Campbell, Carla Ecola and Reggie Lennox about what it means to have to choose between one form of home over another.

Music by Femi Oriogun-Williams

First broadcast 13th November 2023, BBC Radio 4
Produced by Jesse Lawson

Lights Out: Four Walls 5/6

A look at the history and evolution of the radio documentary feature, a hybrid form which can sometimes appear closer to music or poetry than to news reporting.

The list of contributors features some of the finest feature-makers of their generation, including Chris Brookes, Berit Hedemann, Kaye Mortley, Robyn Ravlich, Edwin Brys, Simon Elmes, Mark Burman, Sarah Taylor and Piers Plowright.

First broadcast 28th June 2008 BBC Radio 4
Produced by Alan Hall

The Ballad Of The Radio Feature

Hearing Voices is a compelling and adventurous exploration of languages on the verge of extinction.

This "composed documentary" moves seamlessly between documentary and abstraction, language and music, weaving together interviews, field recordings, and Wynne’s own music made from these materials. Every sound in this half-hour piece, which features recordings of various click-language speakers from the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, is derived from the Khoisan subjects and their environment.

Hearing Voices won the Best Documentary: Silver Award in the 2005 Third Coast / Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Competition. 

First broadcast 14th June 2004 BBC Radio 3
Produced by John Wynne

Hearing Voices

Shadowplay offers a four-part 'symphony of voices' to celebrate 20 years of Between the Ears. It explores the shadows that may fall between the appearance of things and their reality. Making use of the full palette available to the radio producer - documentary, fiction, music, pure sound - four feature-makers address our values, our identities, our romantic inclinations and our sense of worth.

2. Slow Movement:
Everything, Nothing, Harvey Keitel

In the middle of one of the busiest cities in the world, the city of lights and dreams and distractions, a man sits down and tries to meditate. Learning to meditate is hard. Emptying one's mind, focusing entirely on one's breath is hard. And it gets even harder for the man with the realisation that he's sitting next to the famous actor Harvey Keitel.

Radio 3's showcase for adventurous feature-making was launched in October 1993 with a 'piece for radio', by the composer Ian Gardiner. 'Monument', which was conceived as a kind of London symphony, received the prestigious Prix Italia the following year.

First broadcast 12th October 2013 BBC Radio 3
Produced by Pejk Malinovski

Shadowplay: Slow Movement - Everything, Nothing, Harvey Keitel

Leonard Cohen's muse when he turned from poetry to song-writing was a beautiful Norwegian woman immortalised in the song So Long, Marianne - this is their story, based on the award-winning programmes made for NRK by Kari Hesthamar. 

"...both of the interviews had a dreamy quality and listening to the two voices of Leonard and Marianne all these years later made for a programme you want to hear again and again." - BBC Radio 4 Pick of the Week 3.8.08 

"...a melancholic and incredibly moving memoir."  - Radio Times

First broadcast on 2nd August 2008 BBC Radio 4
Produced by Alan Hall

Leonard And Marianne

An hour east of Dallas, you'll find the small town of Poetry, Texas. Pejk ventures out to uncover the poetry of Poetry.

"...a goosebumpy wonder, all layers of sound-texture, mesmerising voices and a lyrical narration by Malinovski as he described the town in ordinary terms elevated into something hypnotic by the key word: 'For a traveller, there's nowhere to sleep in Poetry.'" - The Guardian, 18th May 2012

First broadcast on 14th May 2012 BBC Radio 4
Produced by Pejk Malinovski

Poetry Texas

The story of the day Jeff Buckley arrived on the UK music scene, March 18th 1994, from a photo shoot with Kevin Westenberg in the morning, a live appearance on GLR in the afternoon and a gig at Bunjies folk club that was so over-booked that a second concert was arranged for later that evening at the 12 Bar.  Told by those who were there: manager Dave Lory, booking agent Emma Banks, photographer Kevin Westenberg and tour manager Steve Abbott.  With exclusive interview and music recordings featuring Jeff.

"Truly great singers all have moments at the start of their career when they were raw, pure, still within reach, yet already with one foot on another planet. That tingly intimacy courses through this memory of Jeff Buckley’s 1994 UK tour." - Radio Times, July 2014

"It was terrific, rich in detail and shot through with a melancholy of what would come later." - The Independent, 10th July 2014

First broadcast on 5th July 2014 BBC Radio 4
Produced by Alan Hall

The Grace of Jeff Buckley

A re-appraisal of the life and work of the great Swiss author of Der Steppenwolf, Siddhartha and The Glass Bead Game who inspired the counterculture generation of the 'Sixties, Hermann Hesse.

First broadcast on 20th August 2012 BBC Radio 4
Produced by Alan Hall

The Magic Theatre Of Hermann Hesse

When we think of the sound of sport on TV or radio, it's generally commentary. But what's around the commentary? Broadcast sport would be nothing without the crowds, the kicks, the thwacks and the grunts. This programme is about those sounds and why they matter.

During the World Cup of 2010, the Vuvuzelas made many people realise that the sound of a sports event, something they took for granted, does matter.

Dennis Baxter's job is to think about the sound of sport, and he is our guide. For nearly 20 years he's worked on the Olympics, defining how the broadcast will sound, always trying to increase drama and excitement. For him, closer is generally better. If he can put a microphone on an athlete, he will.

At the Oxford-Cambridge boat race, the TV coverage is enhanced by microphones on the cox in each boat. Whilst Wimbledon has a special sonic drama all of its own, as we learn from Bill Whiston who mixed the Bafta-nominated sound of the 2008 finals.

When good sound isn't available, it's not uncommon for a prerecorded sound to be added to cover the shot. Is this cheating or merely giving us what we expect?

The experience of "live" events can be highly produced, very different from the experience of being there. Is this enhanced sound so very different from that of a film or a video game? We meet a Hollywood sound effects specialist and a video game sound designer to find out what they do to create a sense of authenticity and excitement. Are they raising our expectations of how "real" sport should sound?

As we approach the 2012 Olympics, this programme will make you think more about what you hear when you watch sport.

First broadcast on 30th April 2011 BBC Radio 4
Presented by Dennis Baxter
Produced by Peregrine Andrews

The Sound of Sport

It's said that it takes a village to raise a child, and never is that more true than for families raising children with complex disabilities. They rely on health, social care and other professionals to help keep their children healthy, happy, and living at home. But this tangled network of support has been worn thin by growing demand and dwindling resources.

Seven year-old Nora has a rare genetic disorder and complex care needs. This three-part series guides us through the concentric circles of Nora’s life, beginning in this first episode with the centre of her world - home.

Nora is now so tall she has outgrown her bed, and bathing in their small bathroom is too risky. Can her family get the support they need to adapt their home so that she can live there safely with her parents Dave and Tors, and brother Harry?

First broadcast 2nd September 2024, BBC Radio 4
Presented by Tors and Dave
Produced by Redzi Bernard
Music by Lily Sloane
Executive Producer: Rachel Hooper/Alan Hall

Complex: Home 1/3

During an Easter parade in 1929, a group of well-dressed young women marched down Fifth Avenue in New York City under a banner printed with the slogan Torches of Freedom. They were smoking cigarettes. This feminist demonstration against the "ancient prejudice" that stigmatised women smokers was, in fact, staged by the tobacco industry in a campaign to expand its market.

Since the invention of the Bonsack cigarette rolling machine in 1880 through to attempts in 2024 to roll back the legal age for buying tobacco products, our relationship with smoking has been complicated. Alan Hall, who quit smoking (mostly) in 1990, considers how a habit that's so evidently dangerous and anti-social can have been adopted by so many for so long - and to have remained for a century so, well, cool.

With Rosemary Elliot, author of Woman and Smoking Since 1890; William B. Davis, the actor who played the Cigarette Smoking (or Cancer) Man in The X Files; Stuart Evers, who wrote Ten Stories About Smoking, and Amy Westervelt, a journalist who traces parallels between the propaganda machines of Big Oil and the tobacco industry.

First broadcast on 2nd November 2024, BBC Radio 4
Presented and produced by Alan Hall
Music by Mark McCambridge

Up In Smoke

This powerful and highly personal series investigates how criminal networks systematically exploit vulnerable young people, transforming them from ordinary schoolchildren into drug dealers through manipulation, violence, and trauma. An estimated 50,000 children in Britain have been groomed into county lines drug trafficking, yet their stories remain largely hidden.

In this first episode, Phoebe McIndoe hears from those caught in the web of county lines. Between the promise of quick money and the reality of extreme violence, we reveal how Britain's drug trade is being built on the backs of traumatized children, and why the system often fails to protect them.

First broadcast 25th November 2024, BBC Radio 4
Presented by Phoebe McIndoe
Produced by Redzi Bernard and Phoebe McIndoe
With original music by Phoebe McIndoe

County Lines: Their World 1/3

Siren song, lunar eavesdroppers and the gathering dark - Josie Long presents short documentaries about venturing into the night.

Siren Song
Featuring melancholydi
Produced by Kalli Anderson

Lunar Eavesdroppers
An extract from Space Ham, first broadcast in BBC Radio 3's Between the Ears
Produced by Rose de Larrabeiti and Caroline Devine
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 3

Beneath
Produced by Sami El-Enany

Brücke
Featuring Stephen Jenkinson
Produced by Phil Smith

First broadcast 3rd December 2024, BBC Radio 4
Curated by Axel Kacoutié, Eleanor McDowall and Andrea Rangecroft
Series Producer: Eleanor McDowall

S40: Short Cuts: Into the Night 1/6

Time capsules and yesterday's dreams of tomorrow, Josie Long presents short documentaries and audio adventures exploring lost futures.

That’s Merely an Adjective
Produced by Zara Karschay

Time Play by Chelsea Kigano, Lily Sloane, Lilia Vega, and Emily Shaw
Originally made as part of The 24-Hour Radio Race from KCRW's Independent Producer Project
Music and sound design by Lily Sloane, with Time Ain't Gonna Make Me Stay by Ed Andrews
Special thanks to David Lee

Letters
Produced by Mika Golubovsky and Sasha Borzenko
Featuring Zehnya Feldman and Natasha Zotova

Higher Ground
Produced by Leila Goldstein
Featuring Winda Safitri, Yoppi and Naya Hidayatul Alialna

First broadcast 10th December 2024, BBC Radio 4
Curated by Axel Kacoutié, Eleanor McDowall and Andrea Rangecroft
Produced by Axel Kacoutié

S40: Short Cuts: Lost Futures 2/6

Feeding the birds, sharing meals and chaotic menus - Josie Long presents short documentaries and audio adventures about eating together.

Bird Feeder
Produced by Stella Sims

And to Start...
Produced by Mae-Li Evans

Foodhall
Produced by Nadia Mehdi

First broadcast 17th December 2024, BBC Radio 4
Curated by Axel Kacoutié, Eleanor McDowall and Andrea Rangecroft
Series Producer: Eleanor McDowall

S40: Short Cuts: Feast 3/6

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, and travel deep into the Met Office archives. With contributions from the writer Scott Huler, author of Defining the Wind; Ruairidh Macrae, the retained lighthouse keeper for the Butt of Lewis and Eilean Glas lighthouses in the Outer Hebrides; Catherine Ross, the library and archive manager at the Met Office; and John Morales, a hurricane specialist and meteorologist with 40 years experience in the field.

The Beaufort scale is read by Charlotte Green
Original music composed by Jeremy Warmsley, with additional music by Eleanor McDowall
Mix by Mike Woolley

First broadcast 1st January 2025, BBC Radio 4
Produced by Eleanor McDowall

Sea Like a Mirror

A friendship forged working the land, memories of volcanic eruptions from 800,000 years ago frozen in Antarctica’s ice cores, and the importance of wild, patient gardens. Short documentaries presented by Josie Long that rise up from the earth.


Wintering
Music by Jules Bradley
Produced by Jules Bradley

Melt Tones
Featuring Dr Dieter Tetzner
Produced by Anton Spice

Sue’s Garden
Featuring Sue Trolle
Music by Sóley
Produced by Rikke Houd

First broadcast 29th December 2024, BBC Radio 4
Produced by Andrea Rangecroft
Curated by Axel Kacoutié, Eleanor McDowall and Andrea Rangecroft

S40: Short Cuts: Earth 5/6

A criminal defence lawyer finds a surprising new job foisted upon him and a son attempts to recover his joyfulness on a family holiday. Josie Long presents short festive documentaries and merry sonic adventures.

Family Yoga
Produced by Kit Callin

A Conversation with my Mum at Christmas
Featuring Rhik Samadder
A version of this story first appeared in Rhik Samadder's memoir, I Never Said I Loved You
Music by The Enchanted Cinema
Produced by Sarah Cuddon

Miracle on the George Washington Bridge
Produced by Luke Green

Santa Calls
Featuring Matt Storrs
Produced by Talia Augustidis

First broadcast 24th December 2024, BBC Radio 4
Curated by Axel Kacoutié, Eleanor McDowall and Andrea Rangecroft
Series Producer: Eleanor McDowall

S40: Short Cuts: Merry Christmas 4/6

Josie Long presents short documentaries and audio adventures as the clock slips closer to midnight.

In the last Short Cuts on BBC Radio 4, 13 years after the broadcast of our first ever episode 'Misadventures', we listen to radio waves after dark with the Shortwave Collective, tumble into a radio poem alongside a sleeping child, tune into a late night pirate radio station from the early 1960s, and raise a parting glass.

At Least
Featuring Xelis de Toro
Produced by Phil Smith

Voice of Nuclear Disarmament
With thanks to the British Library Sound Archive, and the family of John Hasted
Produced by Jonny Matfin

Perhaps at Midnight, When All Boundaries Are Lost
Produced by the Shortwave Collective

Good Company
Featuring Jesse Lawson, Izzy Yon and Femi Oriogun-Williams
Produced by Jesse Lawson

First broadcast 7th January 2025, BBC Radio 4
Curated by Axel Kacoutié, Eleanor McDowall and Andrea Rangecroft
Series Producer: Eleanor McDowall
Mix by Mike Woolley
Executive Producer: Alan Hall

S40: Short Cuts: Midnight 6/6

Siblings Sam and Bon Stone are angry. Sam directs her anger inwards while Bon’s anger can be explosive. Through sharing parts of their lives with each other for the first time, they explore how we process anger and whether we can change it.

With contributions from Noel Oganyan of Forrest Flowers (recorded at the New Cross Inn, London in November 2024) and Ronnie Turner, founder of The Anger Clinic.

Original music by Jennifer Walton

First broadcast 19th January 2025, BBC Radio 4
Produced by Sam Stone

Anger and Us

The frontline sonic journal of a Ukrainian musician-soldier.

Wartime soundscapes recorded by Ukrainian experimental musician-turned-soldier Timur Dzhafarov: sketches on a broken piano in an abandoned house near Bakhmut, rain on a field hospital roof, dogs howling in tune to the sirens…

Before Russia's full-scale invasion, Timur made experimental electronic music in Kyiv under the name John Object. He walked through life with open ears, picking up unusual sounds to use in his compositions. Then on the third day of the invasion, he joined the Ukrainian Army. As a soldier, Timur still finds a few moments to tune into the sounds around him: the staccato firing of a rifle, the dissonant tone of air-raid sirens, a pianist playing in the mess hall. But his relationship to the aural environment is to change as the war drags on.

Location recordings by Timur Dzhafarov
Music by Timur Dzhafarov (recording as John Object)

First broadcast 2nd February 2025, BBC Radio 3
Producer: Cicely Fell

East Piano

In 2018, Audrey Gillan sat down on a doorstep beside two rough sleepers and started documenting their lives. The Radio 4 series Tara and George took us on a sometimes chaotic, often poignant journey and asked what led the couple to the streets of East London.

Last autumn, Audrey was contacted out of the blue by Tara’s estranged brother. He had just been informed by ‘heir hunters’ that his big sister was dead. The family did not know how, when, or where Tara had died or even if she had had a funeral. And so began another journey, this time to discover what had happened to Tara and to ask how - in death as in life - she could fall between the cracks of society.

In Last Rights, Audrey seeks answers to both questions.

Music by Alice Boyd

First broadcast 16th February 2025, BBC Radio 4
Presented and produced by Audrey Gillan with Alan Hall

Last Rights

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 South Africa – is brought to life by former political prisoners, by musicians and academics who reveal the power of music as it was experienced on the Island – music as escape, protest, refuge and salvation.

Original compositions, mixing and production by Charl-Johan Lingenfelder
Hallelujah Chorus – reconstruction arranged and conducted by Leon Starker
with singers from Fezeka Secondary School in Gugulethu under the leadership of Monde Mdingi, with additional singers from across Cape Town
Also featuring: The South African Messiah, a translation of Handel’s Messiah by Michael Masote
Archival tape courtesy of UWC-Robben Island Museum Mayibuye Archives, Villon Films and the SABC
With special thanks to Marcus Solomon, Neo Lekgotla laga Ramoupi, Kutlwano Masote, Christopher Cockburn, Maraldea Isaacs and Lebohang Sekholomi

First broadcast 18th February 2025, BBC Radio 4
Produced by Catherine Boulle

Robben Island's Hallelujah

The story of how a heterosexual, Indian immigrant to England, ignorant of the gay scene, ended up delivering heartfelt eulogies to 30 homosexual men at the height of the AIDS crisis.

The experiences of Suresh Vaghela take us behind the headlines of the infected blood scandal and into a transformative relationship between a hemophiliac and the people who he came to regard as his new family.

(Including extracts from the BBC Sound Archive and from the 1975 World In Action documentary Blood Money, Granada TV)
Music by Jeremy Warmsley

First broadcast 23rd February 2025, BBC Radio 4
Produced by Nicolo Majnoni
Executive Producer: Alan Hall

Thirty Eulogies

Estimates from NSPCC suggest around 1 in 20 children in the UK have been sexually abused. This documentary brings together survivors whose experiences span different backgrounds, relationships and generations - challenging misconceptions that abuse only happens in certain communities.

Through intimate conversations with Laura, Bryony, Joe, and Chris, we witness how institutional silence has allowed abuse to become endemic.

At a time when child sexual abuse is making headlines, these survivors offer crucial insight into what real justice looks like, and how society must act to protect children while supporting those whose lives have been irrevocably changed by abuse.

Voices: Laura, Bryony, Joe and Chris from IICSA Changemakers
Consultant: Natalie Dormer, Ambassador for NSPCC
Sound design and music by Phoebe McIndoe
Production Support: Clare Kelly & Denise Pringle

First broadcast 2nd March 2025, BBC Radio 4
Produced by Phoebe McIndoe assisted by Tess Davidson

The Endemic Truth

In 1931, during the Depression, an unknown young black woman took her new-born son to a Pittsburgh orphanage. And so began jazz pianist Horace Parlan´s life. At the age of five, he was struck by polio and lost the use of three fingers on his right hand, yet somehow, against the odds, he managed a long career as a professional musician. Now, aged 84, he lives in a nursing home outside Copenhagen, Denmark.

His journey through life was always guided by music – and still is. From the spirituals of his upbringing to his experiences as a musician in 1960’s New York City. Then, in 1972, he moved to Denmark and joined Ben Webster, Dexter Gordon, Oscar Pettiford and other Afro-American jazz musicians who had found a haven there during those turbulent years. Most of his colleagues left, but Horace stayed, marrying a Danish woman, Norma, with whom he shared his life for 37 years.

Despite his disability Horace found his own sound as a pianist and played with some of the biggest names – Charles Mingus and Archie Shepp among them. But now, blind for eight years, wheelchair-bound and widowed two years ago, he spends his days in a small coastal town outside Copenhagen. His long piano fingers are stiff - he no longer plays - but he spends every day surrounded by music and looks forward to regular trips to Copenhagen’s legendary Montmartre Jazz Club. Rikke Houd presents a portrait of Horace Parlan.

First broadcast 14th July 2015, BBC World Service
Produced by Rikke Houd

A Portrait of Horace Parlan

In February 1996, Trainspotting exploded onto the big screen. Twenty years on, the real-life recovering addicts who inspired the filmmakers and actors reveal their own stories.

"All the characters are so recognisable that you don't know whether to laugh or cry. You are asked to do both." Review of Trainspotting, The Guardian, February 1996.

Scotland has a massive drug problem. The number of substance-related deaths has more than doubled since 1996 - the year Irvine Welsh's novel about a group of heroin addicts became one of the UK's most successful films, directed by Danny Boyle and starring Ewan McGregor and Robert Carlyle.

Trainspotting won a string of awards for its uncompromising portrayal of drug abuse. Much of the action and emotion on screen was informed by a small group of real-life recovering addicts, who advised the filmmakers and actors.

Calton Athletic Recovery Group is credited at the end of the film for special technical advice, and thanked "for their inspiration and courage".

Now, members of the Glasgow-based charity reveal their own stories.

Davie, Willie, Peter, Colin and others from Calton Athletic Recovery Group talk candidly and intimately about their own experiences of drug addiction and recovery. They discuss the impact on loved ones, the need for honesty, and their own decisions to "Choose Life", in the famous opening words of the film.

They also talk about their involvement in the making of Trainspotting, including their cameo roles, and they consider how true to life it was - and still is.

First broadcast 19th February 2016, BBC Radio 4
Produced by Steve Urquhart

Choose Life

"A dancer dies twice", the legendary choreographer Martha Graham said, "once when they stop dancing, and this first death is the more painful."

This is a documentary about first deaths and last dances, about what happens when an instrument as finely tuned as a dancer's body begins to change.

From the music which prompts a twitch of muscle memory to the comedown which follows a burst of performance adrenaline, we hear stories of the last dances and what comes next from Gabriella Schmidt, Isabel Mortimer from Dancers' Career Development, and former principal ballerinas Natasha Oughtred and Wendy Whelan.

We eavesdrop on the training of young dancers at the Royal Ballet School as they shape muscle and bone into elegant lines, diving into the visceral excitement of pounding pointe shoes and powerful leaping bodies. And we visit Sage Dance Company and the Company of Elders as they work with dancers who move with grace and beauty in defiance of their changing bodies.

From the first anxious glance in the mirror to the last touch - how does the language of our bodies change as we age?

Produced by Eleanor McDowall
First broadcast 4th April on BBC Radio 4

A Dancer Dies Twice

"I didn't realise how physical a process grief was - like being hit by a car."

One evening in the autumn of 2013, the American financial journalist and broadcaster Sally Herships received a short email from her husband telling her he was never coming home again. At first she thought it was a joke, but when she got home he and a suitcase had gone.

As Sally's life unravels, she begins to keep an audio diary. It's a way both of processing what's happened to her and of creating a support mechanism as she tries to cope with the aftermath. From the night he left, her husband cuts off all contact and Sally, broken-hearted, is tortured by a single question. Why?

"I think this is one of the stages of heartbreak. There's the ice cream stage, the comfort food stage and the doughnut stage. Maybe they all fall under comfort food, but I'm lactose intolerant so I can't really have ice cream. I'm just making up for that with doughnuts."

Sally's vulnerability, defiance and the mundane practicalities of survival are laid bare in her recordings and in her reflections on how she strove to heal herself after this seismic betrayal.

With specially composed music by Nina Perry and Danny Keane.

First broadcast 25th November 2016, BBC Radio 4
Produced by Sally Herships

As Many Leaves

Cerys Matthews explores the life of the Yorkshire poet-singer Jake Thackray whose wry, tender and lugubrious songs earned him a cult following in the 70s and 80s.

With his rich baritone and roll neck sweaters, Jake Thackray made his name singing in folk clubs and on local radio in the 1960s before gaining weekly slots on TV programmes like The Frost Report and That's Life with Esther Rantzen.

His lyrics and storylines were bawdy and surreal - 'The North Country Noel Coward' was one title he earned. But he really aspired to be 'the Yorkshire Chansonnier', taking inspiration from the French chanson tradition and, in particular, Georges Brassens - his great idol. Cerys hears how Jake travelled to Paris to meet Brassens and persuaded him to play his only ever gig outside France, at the Sherman Theatre in Cardiff in 1974.

In Monmouth, where Jake spent much of his adult life, Cerys meets old drinking pals of Jake's and they recall Jake's early life at a Jesuit school in Leeds and later as a teacher in France and Algeria. She talks to Father David Smith at the church where Jake became an unlikely bell-ringer. And she speaks to Jake's old friends and colleagues Ralph McTell, Don Black and Esther Rantzen about Jake the private man - shy and self-effacing.

Ultimately Jake was uncomfortable with television and eventually he stopped turning up for shows. Agents gave up trying to book him slots and, as drink took over, he became more unreliable. He was happiest performing to small crowds and at folk festivals where his annual performances of Lah-Di-Dah and Sister Josephine became legendary. He died in 2002. In his song 'The Last Will and Testament' he requested "no forget-me-nots, no epitaphs - you can let my memory slip - say a prayer or two for me soul then, but make it quick, boys.".

First broadcast on 18th April 2017, BBC Radio 2
Presented by Cerys Matthews
Produced by Sarah Cuddon

Jake Thackray: The Yorkshire Chansonnier

In this documentary we hear archive of the renowned American writer James Baldwin in conversation with contemporary writers and activists. Exploring the reasons behind the resonance and resurgence of his work and analysis thirty years after his death.

Baldwin was a gay African American writer whose novels including Go Tell it on the Mountain and Giovanni's Room made him a leading thinker on America, sexuality and race from the 1950s onwards.

With new documentaries, films, essays and activists explicitly using Baldwin as a touchstone - what is it about Baldwin's insight and art that has prompted such a resurgence of interest? And how might he help us understand the contemporary moment

Writers including The Good Immigrant's Musa Okwonga, Mitchell S Jackson and the New Yorker's Hilton Als, community organiser Imani Robinson, academic Robert Reid-Pharr and Baldwin biographer and academic Magdalena Zaborowska unpick his work and find moments of personal shared experience.

First broadcast 24th September 2017, BBC Radio 3
Produced by Shanida Scotland with Eleanor McDowall

Nobody Knows My Name: Notes on James Baldwin

W.H.Auden’s Paysage Moralisé [1934] in a polyphonic setting for radio, featuring voices recorded in Berlin [2015 - 2017], and original music by producer Phil Smith.   

Producer: Phil Smith
Executive Producer: Alan Hall 
A Falling Tree Production
First Broadcast: 16th May 2017, BBC Radio 4.    

TRANSCRIPT: https://www.scribd.com/document/371956742/IFC-2018-TRANSCRIPTION-AVeryDifferentTime-PhilipSmith

W.H. Auden's 1934 poem Paysage Moralisé, written in 1934, is a poem that floats across time and landscape, expressing something of that search for home, for peace, for safety and for meaning which shapes our existence on this planet. 

Berlin-based producer Phil Smith brings the poem into a contemporary light, interweaving Auden's lines with the voices of those who have chosen - for very different reasons - the German capital city as their home. The poem's images of shipwreck and sorrow reverberate with snapshots from the lives of a Syrian refugee (fleeing war) and a West-African refugee (fleeing poverty, seeking a better life), while we also hear the words of an American musician on a European tour, an Italian-German academic who spends some of her time in Berlin, and a German who moved to the city to escape small-town life. There is no presenter to introduce our protagonists; rather, they step out from the city crowd to offer fragments of their personal  stories. 

Part radio poem, part documentary ballad, part composed feature, A Very Different Time addresses the hopes and fears that surround movement and migration, timeless themes that resonate strongly in today’s Europe.

Lights Out: A Very Different Time

At sunrise, on the banks of the Ganges river, the poet and radio producer Pejk Malinovski picks out a cow at random and starts to follow her. He continues to follow her until sunset.

The cow was here long before man arrived. Does the fact that human beings have maths, space travel and doughnuts really make us superior to all other beings on earth? What does the cow have that we don't have? Four stomachs. Hooves. A lot of patience.

A meditative journey unfolds within the sonic backdrop of the ancient city of Varanasi - until suddenly the two of them find themselves on the set of a Bollywood dance film.

A consideration of the nature of radio, a pondering of inter-species relationships, Pejk's programme invites you to un-follow your digital stream and exercise your ability to be just present.

Written and produced by Pejk Malinovski.
First broadcast 24th February 2018, BBC Radio 3

A Cow A Day

Life on the streets is hard and precarious but every soul who sleeps on a pavement has a story. Tara and George is a six-part series exploring the lives of two people in their late forties who sleep rough in London's Spitalfields. It asks the simple questions - what led them there and why do they remain?

Journalist Audrey Gillan has come to know them as neighbours in this diverse and fashionable area of the capital, and has been recording her conversations with Tara and George for nearly two years.

In this first episode, More Issues than Vogue, named after the wording on one of Tara's T-shirts, the pair introduce us to their world and reveal how they are each other's anchor in a sea of chaos.

First broadcast 14th August 2018, BBC Radio 4
Written and presented by Audrey Gillan
Produced by Audrey Gillan and Johnny Miller
Original music by Francis MacDonald
Series Producer: Alan Hall

Image courtesy of Gilbert and George / White Cube

Tara and George: More Issues Than Vogue 1/6

Life on the streets is hard and precarious but every soul who sleeps on a pavement has a story. Tara and George is a six-part series exploring the lives of two people in their late forties who sleep rough in London's Spitalfields. It asks the simple questions - what led them there and why do they remain?

Journalist Audrey Gillan has come to know them as neighbours in this diverse and fashionable area of the capital, and has been recording her conversations with Tara and George for nearly two years.

In this second episode, Tara goes walkabout and George, sitting in his favourite spot on the doorstep of the house lived in by the collaborative art duo Gilbert and George, shares alarming news about his health.

First broadcast 21st August 2018, BBC Radio 4
Written and presented by Audrey Gillan
Produced by Audrey Gillan and Johnny Miller
Original music by Francis Macdonald
Series Producer: Alan Hall

Image courtesy of Gilbert and George / White Cube

Tara and George: Looking For Tara 2/6

Life on the streets is hard and precarious but every soul who sleeps on a pavement has a story. Tara and George is a six-part series exploring the lives of two people in their late forties who sleep rough in London's Spitalfields. It asks the simple questions - what led them there and why do they remain?

Journalist Audrey Gillan has come to know them as neighbours in this diverse and fashionable area of the capital, and has been recording her conversations with Tara and George for nearly two years.

In this episode, Audrey travels north. Before running away to London on a National Express coach "at the age of 12", as he tells it to Audrey, George grew up in the former pit village of Nettlesworth, County Durham. Still living in a house across from George's family home, Audrey finds his aunt Lillian. In an attempt to capture a sense of what George left behind - and ran away from - Audrey goes in search of other members of his family.

First broadcast on 28th August 2018, BBC Radio 4
Written and presented by Audrey Gillan
Produced by Audrey Gillan and Johnny Miller
Original music by Francis Macdonald
Series Producer: Alan Hall

Image courtesy of Gilbert and George / White Cube

Tara and George: County Durham 3/6

Life on the streets is hard and precarious, but every soul who sleeps on a pavement has a story. Tara and George is a six-part series exploring the lives of two people in their late forties who sleep rough in London's Spitalfields. It asks simply, what led them there and why do they remain?

Journalist Audrey Gillan has come to know them as neighbours in this diverse and fashionable area of the capital, and has been recording her conversations with Tara and George for nearly two years.

In this episode, Tara opens up, little by little, about her childhood in London, missing her mum and what led to her three children being taken away from her.

First broadcast 4th September 2018, BBC Radio 4
Written and presented by Audrey Gillan
Produced by Audrey Gillan and Johnny Miller
Original music by Francis Macdonald
Series Producer: Alan Hall

Image courtesy of Gilbert and George / White Cube

Tara and George: The Life of Tara 4/6

Life on the streets is hard and precarious but every soul who sleeps on a pavement has a story. Tara and George is a six-part series exploring the lives of two people in their late forties who sleep rough in London's Spitalfields. It asks the simple questions - what led them there and why do they remain?

Journalist Audrey Gillan has come to know them as neighbours in this diverse and fashionable area of the capital, and has been recording her conversations with Tara and George for nearly two years.

In this fifth episode, Tara and George endure the hottest summer the country has experienced for years, Tara carries signs of having suffered an assault and George, his health visibly deteriorating, returns increasingly often to his hostel.

First broadcast 11th September 2018, BBC Radio 4
Written and presented by Audrey Gillan
Produced by Audrey Gillan and Johnny Miller
Original music by Francis MacDonald
Series Producer: Alan Hall

Image courtesy of Gilbert and George / White Cube

Tara and George: The Long, Hot Summer 5/6

For a man whose musical demeanour comes across as rough-hewn with a potency that's barely contained, Richard Dawson in person is gentle with a soft smile and opinions that are precisely worded though almost tentatively shared. He admits to a high level of everyday anxiety, yet has left a mark on contemporary folk music in England that testifies to an innate confidence in his musical vision. His albums (notably Nothing Important of 2014 and Peasant in 2017), as well as being critically acclaimed, have taken folk music into new territory that's at once ancient and avant-garde.

Speaking at his home in the north-east of England, Richard reflects on the particular qualities of his voice, the life that music has opened up to him and his ever-present companion, Trouble the cat.

First broadcast 29th June 2019, BBC Radio 4
Presented and produced by Alan Hall

The Voices Of... Richard Dawson

The bond between mother and child is perhaps the most natural and the most profound relationship we can experience. But for Zakia Sewell and her mother - who she's always called Amey - this relationship has been far from straight-forward.

Now, after many years of disconnection and words unspoken, they're collaborating on a theatre piece, a kind of 'curated conversation', to understand better the issues they have had to overcome.

Some are near, intimate and specific to the two of them - Amey's mental health and her own experience of motherhood - but they are entwined with stories from the past, submerged deep beneath the surface, evoking the ghosts of distant ancestors whose experiences under the brutal tyranny of slavery in the Caribbean find expression through the generations.

With contributions from theatre-maker Cathy Sloan and Sonya Welch-Moring, a specialist in trans-generational therapeutic practice.

First broadcast 12th March 2020, BBC Radio 4
Presented by Zakia Sewell
Produced by Alan Hall

My Amey And Me

We make documentaries and audio art for radio, podcasts and public spaces.

At the heart of what we do is a belief in the imaginative possibilities of radio. Sounds that can reconfigure the world around you, move you through inner landscapes, sink into your dreams.

We are an intentionally small company that considers carefully the creative, social and political aspects of the work we put out into the world.

Falling Tree has two full-time Directors – Eleanor McDowall and Alan Hall – and we work with freelancers across our projects, including the core Short Cuts production team of Alia Cassam, Axel Kacoutié and Andrea Rangecroft.

We are one of the founding signatories of the Equality in Audio pact. 

You can listen to hundreds of our documentaries in the free, online Falling Tree archive.

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