Episodes
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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 with locked-in syndrome, unable to move or speak but fully conscious. Sixteen years on, she communicates using eye-tracking and a letter board, lives independently with 24-hour care, and remains, as ever, totally herself.
In Still Me, producer Jess Gunasekara visits Tracey in Eastbourne, joining her in everyday moments and quiet reflections. Through Tracey’s personal musings, dream diaries, text messages, and actor-read excerpts from her memoir, this intimate portrait reveals a woman living boldly, navigating the world with humour, honesty, and imagination.
A story of agency, adaptation, and the richness of inner life, from someone who’s still here, still vibrant, still herself.
Produced and presented by Jess Gunasekara Sound design and mix by Meic Parry Actor: Lizzie Stables Executive Producer: Olivia Humphreys With thanks to Tracey Okines and John Okines
An Overcoat Media production for BBC Radio 4
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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 mirrorWhistling heard in telegraph wiresUmbrellas 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 GreenOriginal music composed by Jeremy Warmsley, with additional music by Eleanor McDowallMix by Mike Woolley
Produced by Eleanor McDowallA Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4
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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 largest settlement, Longyearbyen, wait with baited breath until a single ray of sunshine appears upon the old hospital steps, warming their cheeks for a few minutes before disappearing once more behind the vast mountains that surround the town.
Journalist and producer Lara Bullens takes us with her to witness this miraculous moment, but also to understand why people have decided to make a home in a place not meant for humans.
Svalbard is a barren frozen land, devoid of trees or crops. The risk of avalanches is always lurking around the corner. Polar bears outnumber humans. Powerful winds and sub-zero temperatures engulf the landscape most of the year. Deprived of sunlight for months at a time, many residents battle depression.
The remote landscape is also experiencing vast transitions. The Arctic is warming twice as fast as any other part of the planet, banishing sea ice and opening its waters to the exploitation of natural resources. Coal mining, the industry on which Svalbard’s economy was built, is coming to an end. And non-Norwegians living in Longyearbyen are increasingly feeling less stable here.
Yet humans decide to stay, bound together by the eternal cycle of light.
Written and Presented by Lara BullensProduced by Lara Bullens and Steven RajamExecutive Producer: Leonie ThomasMix and Sound Design: Mike Woolley An Overcoat Media production for BBC Radio 4
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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, as he attended to his boat at Buckden Marina in St Neots, Cambridgeshire. With his back turned for a few minutes, she disappeared.
In this episode of Illuminated, we join a group of volunteers with St Neots Animal Search and Rescue as they seek to reunite Betty and Roger using all the experience, teamwork and technology available.
Colin Butcher is a pet detective based in West Sussex who has been recovering missing and stolen pets for over 20 years. As Colin shares his expert tips for dog-owners, through field recordings from a tiny microphone attached to a dog-collar, listeners are invited to enter the world of our missing puppy.
Producer: Peter Shevlin
A Pod60 production for BBC Radio 4
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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 MonaghanSound design and original music: Robert MoutreyExecutive producer: Bridget HarneyA Pronk production for BBC Radio 4
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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 ichthyosaur 190 million years old, now under research by Craig Chivers.
'It's a fantastic find,' says Craig. 'Fossils are a snapshot in time a bit like paintings and writings. Trace fossils that show where a dinosaur once stepped and left a footprint behind, or an ammonite has rolled along the sea floor and left an impression in the sediment, really stir the imagination.'
Our walk along Seatown beach is accompanied by readings by geologist and writer, Marcia Bjornerud, Walter Schober Professor of Environmental Studies and Professor of Geosciences at Lawrence University, Wisconsin. Her essay Wrinked Time imagines humans as wandering in a vast, labyrinthine library of time.
'We are like squatters living amid the remains of earlier empires, worlds defined by different geographies,' she writes in a work that first appeared in Emergence Magazine. Marcia shows us how fragments from that library still exist in the most synthetic, human-made products like phones and computers if only we have eyes to see them.
Produced by Jon Nicholls and Monica WhitlockSound design and music by Jon NichollsPhotograph by Monica Whitlock
A Storyscape production for BBC Radio 4
For many more creative and surprising one-off documentaries like this, just search for Illuminated on BBC Sounds.
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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, Richard Attenborough and one of the biggest stars of the day- the man who talks to the animals- Rex Harrison.
Locals are divided about the pros and cons of the Hollywood invasion but one thing they’re all annoyed about is the destruction of the local trout stream, dammed to create a lake for filming. Native fish and plants are gone, replaced by movie props and trained ducks.
Four young chaps decide to make their feelings clear. For three of them that means fireworks and noisy protests but ring leader, Ranulph Fiennes, intends to take things a little further. He’s just joined the SAS, the crack Army regiment that gives him access to high explosives- more than enough to blow the dam sky high.
Environmental historian and broadcaster, Eleanor Barraclough gathers together the protagonists to publicly share their stories of the Dolittle affair for the first time.
Producers: Alasdair Cross of BBC Audio Wales and West and Matt Dyas for Good Productions
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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 Tranquility and Crises, Lakes of Death and Dreams, an Ocean of Storms – is the work of a 17th century Italian priest, Giovanni Battista Riccioli. Siddharth meets Riccioli’s poetic mapmaking in the context of a heated European race to name the moon’s many craters, mountains, valleys and maria.
From these celestial cartographers etching names into the first detailed lunar maps, to the Cold War era Apollo missions and commercially-fuelled landings that lie ahead of us, the story of humanity’s relationship with the moon is one of a growing intimacy.
Featuring astronomer and lunar biographer David Whitehouse, librarian at the Edinburgh Royal Observatory Karen Moran, space lawyer Frans von der Dunk, and a late night, torch-lit conversation between Siddharth and his eldest son.
Photograph: Siddharth Khajuria
Music composed and performed by Phil Smith Produced by Eleanor McDowall and Siddharth KhajuriaA Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4
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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 The Organ Symphony, we encounter our five vital organs – the heart, lungs, brain, kidneys and liver – through the eyes of five people, each with a special relationship to one of the five organs.
Our brain is an Emeritus Professor in Computer Science, Steve Furbar, whose work is focused on understanding the human brain via computing. Our kidney is writer Alison Moore, who donated one of her kidneys to her husband and simultaneously wrote a horror novella, based on the experience. Our liver is Dr Zhong Jiao, a Chinese Medical Doctor who focused on treating her postnatal depression by caring for her liver. Our heart is a men's group facilitator and agony uncle Kenny Mammarella-D'Cruz, who draws on his traumatic experiences of leaving his homeland and subsequent journey of self-discovery to help others foster positive relationships with their heart and emotions. Liz, our representative of the lungs, unexpectedly experienced both her lungs collapsing in the space of two years
Each representative worked with the producer, Maia Miller-Lewis to illustrate their relationship to their organ through music, creating musical sketches that capture how they imagine their organ sounds.
These sketches were then taken by composer, David Owen Norris, who turned them into individual classical scores. In this way the five organs have become five sections of an orchestra. The heart, the vocals. The lungs, the brass. The kidneys the woodwind. The brain, the percussion. The liver, the strings.
David ultimately brought the five pieces together, working them into harmony to form the completely unique Organ Symphony.
With the wonderful assistance of Simon Webb, Carolyn Hendry, Jonathan Manner and Matthew Swann at the BBC, the individual pieces and the combined symphony was played out by the BBC Concert Orchestra and the BBC Singers at Maida Vale Studios in March 2025.
You can hear the full Organ Symphony piece here: https://loftusmedia.co.uk/project/the-organ-symphony/
Producer: Maia Miller-Lewis Executive producers: Jo Rowntree and Kirsten Lass Composer and conductor: David Owen NorrisWith thanks to the BBC Concert Orchestra and the BBC Singers
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4
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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 intimate pieces of their mother? Saba starts to investigate, asking; how do you get to know your mum - from scratch - through a box of her things?
Mum in a Box follows Saba on the twists and turns of the often unacknowledged experience of a motherless child, piecing together a person through the things they’ve left behind and the revelations that unfold. We join Saba as they work through this totally uncurated box of both overwhelming and underwhelming surprises, travelling through space and time as they try to reach a mother that they never got to meet.
Producer: Christina HardingeCo-creator: Saba HusainSound Design & Music composition: Noémie DucimetièreA Falling Tree production for BBC Radio Four
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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 LingenfelderHallelujah Chorus – reconstruction arranged and conducted by Leon Starkerwith singers from Fezeka Secondary School in Gugulethu under the leadership of Monde Mdingi, with additional singers from across Cape TownAlso featuring: The South African Messiah, a translation of Handel’s Messiah by Michael MasoteArchival tape courtesy of UWC-Robben Island Museum Mayibuye Archives, Villon Films and the SABCWith special thanks to Marcus Solomon, Neo Lekgotla laga Ramoupi, Kutlwano Masote, Christopher Cockburn, Maraldea Isaacs and Lebohang Sekholomi
Produced by Catherine BoulleA Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4
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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 questions? In an age where antisocial behaviour has become normal — where it’s entirely acceptable to spend most of the time looking down at our phones, or ranting on social media — shouldn’t we be asking what we’re losing in the process?
Can journalist Ian Wylie, who uses the five Ws daily, reignite our curiosity and appetite for asking questions? And can he discover better questions that unlock bigger stories and deeper conversations? What will he learn from professional question-askers, including barrister Melanie Simpson, detective Steve Hibbit, philosopher Lani Watson and priest Leanne Roberts? Is artificial intelligence likely to discourage us from asking deep, open-ended questions? Or could it force us to ask clearer, sharper, more precise questions?
Can Ian create his documentary entirely from questions? Or will he slip up?
A Sparklab production for BBC Radio 4
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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's intrigued.
“Funeral notice for Miss Margaret Robertson. 11 O’Clock, Thursday. Sefton Road United Reformed Church in Morecambe. Margaret Robertson has no family. If anyone could attend, that would be lovely.”
This documentary charts his visit to that funeral. He talks to celebrant Hayley Cartwright about the hidden world of "public health funerals". Hayley's commitment to "do right by people" who die alone, compels her to seek out details about their lives, inviting mourners and ensuring these departures are more than cold, legal necessities. Kevin wants to know more about the life of the 102-year-old Margaret Robertson, and finds a story of grit and dedication - and the surprising, moving reality behind the original online appeal.
Produced and presented by Kevin Core
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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 "singing village" Lakhushdi, people sing like they breathe. A lullaby, a grieving song, a song when the belly is full, a song for milking the cow. It’s a part of everyday life and forms the connective tissue of the community.
For Paris-based singer Luna Silva, these songs bring her the comfort and sense of togetherness of her childhood circus home. Since first hearing the music as an ethno-musicology student in London, she has made several trips to the Georgian mountains to immerse herself in the musical tradition, and now teaches polyphonic singing to her French choir. She even took them with her to Lakhushdi. Now, the French choir has invited their Georgian hosts to attend their first Supra in Montreuil, Paris.
In the pauses during the Supra, as people talk and eat, we hear from singers and diners what makes the Supra so important in Georgia. Luna and Levan also dissect the polyphonic singing style, as voices are added and removed to demonstrate how individual pitches and harmonies are brought together. They are layered over each other, surrounding the listener in a bath of sound which touches the soul.
As the Supra draws to a close, everyone joins together to sing a song to life.
You can hear more from the musicians at https://adilei.ge/en/about-us/
You can also find Lakhushdi, the Singing Village on various music streaming websites. Search for ‘The Singing Village Lakhushdi’.
Presented by singer and ethno-musciologist Luna SilvaFeaturing singers Levan Bitarovi, Madona and Ana Chamgeliani, Avto Turkia and Lasha BedenashviliProduced by Amanda HargreavesExecutive producer: Carys WallSound recordist: Léonard IbañezSound designer: Joel CoxWith thanks to the Choeur d'Aronde in Montreuil
A Bespoken Media production for BBC Radio 4
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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 future of urban planning in Britain?
Travelling across south Hampshire from Fareham to Portsmouth, Chandler’s Ford to his native Southampton, Owen meets architects, planners and historians to tell the story of one of the boldest visions in the history of British urban design, discovering that some of its most important ideas might still be ahead of us.
With contributions from Nicholas Phelps, Chair of Urban Planning at the university of Melbourne; architecture historian and author Gillian Darley; Kate Macintosh, former senior architect at Hampshire County Architects; urban historian Otto Saumarez Smith; writer and software engineer Naomi Christie; city planner and architecture blogger Adrian Jones; Southampton Hackney Carriage taxi driver Perry McMillan; Charlotte Gerada, councillor for Central Southsea and social historian of modern place, John Grindrod.
Produced by Simon Hollis
A Brook Lapping production for BBC Radio 4
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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 names, the people you’re with, the unexpected,” says Ian.
He’s someone who can find beauty in an industrial estate or a gossip between pensioners.
But it’s time for a new adventure. In a bid to boost the local economy and provide safer travel for revellers and shift workers, Manchester is trialling new bus routes at night.
Alongside the drunken students dissecting their evening exploits and the night-time workers struggling to stay awake, we join Ian as he hops aboard the night bus to experience, for the first time, the darker side of both his home city and bus travel.
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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 ChangemakersConsultant: Natalie Dormer, Ambassador for NSPCCSound design and music by Phoebe McIndoeProduction Support: Clare Kelly & Denise Pringle Produced by Phoebe McIndoe assisted by Tess Davidson A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4
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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 WarmsleyProduced by Nicolo MajnoniExecutive Producer: Alan HallA Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4
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The 2001 Foot and Mouth crisis forced North Devon farmers into a traumatic 6 month lockdown, cut off from their neighbours and living with the death and destruction of their animals. When restrictions were finally eased, the ringing of church bells signalled the end of the lockdown, bringing communities back together.
For artist and farmer Marcus Vergette it was a sound that would change his life.
Marcus was struck by the ancient power of bells to unite and resurrect a community and he embarked on a project that would span the length and breadth of the UK. His Time and Tide Bells project is a monumental work of both sculpture and social enterprise, 13 massive bells mounted along the British shoreline, each one ringing out twice a day with the tide and telling a unique story about its surrounding community. In Harwich a teacher uses the bell as a catalyst for marine biology lessons. In Aberdyfi, a town on the verge of collapse, their bell might just pull a disintegrated community back together. And in Par, their bell is facilitating conversations between generations that were once impossible.
But closer to home, Marcus faces an urgent challenge. The church bells in the village of Highampton - the ones whose sound signalled the end of the Foot and Mouth outbreak - are under threat. In a story that is common across the country, the church has seen a steep decline in use and has become redundant. The tower is crumbling, and if the tower goes, the bells go too.
Aside from their personal connection to Marcus, these bells have historic significance, dating as they do from between 1200 and 1500 AD. Marcus is determined to save them, but the forces of bureaucracy are against him.
We follow Marcus on his quest to save the Highampton Bells and learn about the lives he has touched through the bells he created.
A Sound & Bones production for BBC Radio 4
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Over 80% of people in Britain choose to be cremated rather than buried after death and the scattering of a loved one's ashes is a ritual that's increasingly familiar to many of us.
In a lyrical and bittersweet meditation on grief and memory, writer and producer Tim Dee reflects on a West Country road trip to scatter his father’s mortal remains in places of significance to both of them. Each stop has a unique story and forms part of a revealing and poignant commemoration.
In the car, the cardboard tube of John Dee's cremated remains travels in the passenger seat, safely buckled up. Then at each place, some of the contents are decanted into an recycle Indian Takeaway container for the act itself.
They are cast into the wind from the top of Dunkery Beacon on Exmoor, from a bridge over the River Horner nearby. A pot of ashes is put into a paper boat as an attempt to sail John out to sea from Madbrain Sands in Minehead.
Then to Bristol. To the family home on Sion Hill to remember domestic rancour between father and mother. And below the bridge over the Avon Gorge, a place of profound early trauma for son Tim.
All this is set to a soundtrack of remembrance on the car stereo with songs from The Beach Boys, Julie Andrews, Taylor Swift and the recorded memories of Tim's father from a conversation they had 20 years before his death.
Presenter: Tim DeeProducer: Alastair LaurenceExecutive Producer: David PrestA Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4
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