Illuminated

This is a story about a community on the north east coast of Scotland that talked to plants with miraculous results.Established in 1962, the Findhorn community gained international recognition for 40lb cabbages, 8-foot delphiniums, and roses that bloomed in snow.With seemingly no gardening experience, community founders Peter and Eileen Caddy and their friend Dorothy Maclean transformed the barren sand dunes surrounding the 30-foot caravan they were living in, into a modern-day garden of Eden.The public wanted to know how this was possible. What was the source of this horticultural miracle? People flocked to Findhorn from around the world to witness this incredible transformation first-hand.An extraordinary story began to emerge. Peter, Eileen and Dorothy - along with Scottish writer and supernatural enthusiast Robert Ogilvie Crombie (ROC) - attributed their success to one thing: collaboration with the ‘intelligence of nature’.They claimed they had pierced the veil of the nature spirit realm, and were regularly receiving guidance from fairies, floral spirits and angelic forms Dorothy called 'Devas' - the ‘architects’ of the natural world. Moreover, they had been called upon by these entities to transform the Findhorn Garden into a centre of spiritual light. What started with a single family in a caravan quickly grew into a thriving international village of hundreds of people united by shared social, spiritual and ecological values.Inspired by the media's enduring fascination with Findhorn's supernatural origins, sound designer Jonathan Webb travels to Findhorn in search of transmissions from the nature spirit realm.Trawling through the archives, in conversation with community elders, and in pursuit of sonic traces of higher elemental worlds, Jonathan brings into focus the echoes and reverberations of Findhorn’s strange and magical past.Produced, Edited & Sound Designed by Jonathan Webb Executive Producer: Carys WallA Bespoken Media Scotland production for BBC Radio 4Additional field recordings by Brenda Hutchinson.With grateful thanks to Jonathan Caddy, Judy McAllister and Karl Jay-Lewin, whose kindness and generosity made this programme possible.Thank you to the Findhorn Foundation for providing access and permission to use recordings from the Findhorn Foundation archive.The Findhorn Garden includes excerpts from ‘The River’ by Lark Batteau and ‘Love One Another’ by David Spangler and Milenko Matanovic, performing as The New Troubadours (Findhorn community band, 1970-1973)Jonathan Webb makes no claim to authorship or ownership over any of the quotations or repurposed recordings used in the production of this work, and for practical and artistic reasons it has not been possible to reference and cite them individually. Jonathan Webb’s authorship is in the overall conception, arrangement, treatment and presentation of this audio artwork in its context.

Clint Buffington spends his time where land meets sea, searching for a very specific treasure - messages in bottles that have drifted across oceans. Over the past 20 years he has recovered more than 140 of them, each carrying a clue - sometimes decades old - waiting to be discovered.Finding a bottle is only the beginning. The real mystery unfolds when Clint carefully extracts the fragile paper in his Utah home lab. He first teases out the faint, salt-blurred words, deciphering a message damaged by years at sea. Only then does Clint begin tracking down the person who sent it, often many years after they let it go. Each investigation is part detective work, part conversation across time.The messages reveal remarkable journeys - a German sailor who cast a note into the Bermuda Triangle on his birthday in 1979, three French women who paddled across the Atlantic to set a world record, Puerto Rican students at a crossroads, even a pair of tiny dolls wrapped in a spell.Join Clint on his search and the unexpected revelations it sparks - a reminder that across vast distances and years at sea, the quest for human connection is timeless. A Sound & Bones production for BBC Radio 4

On the 75th anniversary of the iconic comic strip Peanuts, psychoanalyst and author Josh Cohen shares how Charlie Brown and the Snoopy gang have become his constant companions—and how they can help us navigate the frustrating squiggle of life.Charles Schultz’s daily newspaper comic strip is perhaps the most enduring, beloved and iconic cartoon ever penned. Even if you’ve never read the strip itself, you are unlikely to have escaped its famous characters’ journeys across the decades and the globe. The round-headed, wobbly mouthed Charlie Brown and his dog Snoopy, often found snoozing atop his kennel, have been emblazoned across t shirts, crockery and pretty much every other conceivable piece of merchandise. They have inspired TV shows, pop songs, and even been the namesakes of Apollo lunar modules. Far from just a bunch of cutesy doodles, as many have come to see it, Peanuts’ cross-generational appeal is down to its spot-on depiction of the complex emotions that follow us all from childhood into adulthood. From Charlie Brown’s humiliation on the baseball field to his frenemy Lucy’s unrequited pining for her piano-playing crush, and her brother Linus’ desperate attachment to his security blanket, the strip reflects the everyday pain and frustration of being human. And, with warmth and wit, offers its readers a way to live with it. In fact, Peanuts deals so much in the intense emotional experiences of its young protagonists that one of its most recognisable recurring gags is Lucy’s booth offering ‘PSYCHIATRIC HELP 5¢’.Stepping out from behind his analytic couch and taking a seat at its cartoon simulacrum in that famous booth, Josh unpacks the psychological truths illustrated in the comic’s four main characters - Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus and Snoopy. Hooked by a copy of Peanuts Jubilee aged five, they were his contemporaries. Today, after 50 years of avid reading, he’s on the other side of the two-way channel between childhood and adulthood that Peanuts opens up. He investigates the emotional pull of the comic for him and for so many of us - including the other writers and thinkers we hear from who share his passion. Presenter and Writer: Josh Cohen Producer: Heather Dempsey Executive Producer: Samantha Psyk Editor: Kirsten Lass A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4

Alan Dein takes to the road to explore the social and cultural resonances of Kraftwerk’s Autobahn. The music begins the way journeys begin: with a clunking car door and churning ignition, before rolling onwards on a warm rhythmic throb - a 23-minute conceptual road-trip of swerves and curves, gentle gradients and blaring horns, tarmac-rumbling rhythms and doppler-shift effects that simulate the sensory whoosh of passing vehicles.Kraftwerk's lyrical paean to the possibilities of freedom via the German motorway system is fifty years old. It was released in late 1974 and became popular worldwide in 1975. These were years in which a new West Germany was being created, one in which a more overt reckoning with history was possible, and in which a new characteristically German culture could be asserted, free from -- and implicitly in opposition to -- that history: new art, writing, cinema, and, with Kraftwerk, among others, music.The autobahn wasn't an innocent choice of subject for Kraftwerk. It connected them back to the 1930s, when the autobahn system was begun and became an integral part of the infrastructure of the Third Reich. After the war it became a symbol of the West German 'economic miracle'. Beginning in darkness, the autobahn could be conceived as a road that drove towards progress and optimism.'Wir fahren, fahren, fahren auf der autobahn': 'We’re driving, driving, driving on the autobahn.' Alan Dein is on the autobahn as well – driving, driving, driving – in Kraftwerk’s wake, and tuned in to the cultural world of West Germany in the 1970s.Featuring: Berthold Franke, cultural historian Daniel Miller, musician and founder of Mute records Emil Schult, artist and sometime member of KraftwerkWith grateful thanks to Dietmar Post and Uwe Schutte.Photograph shows Emil Schult and Alan Dein. Behind them is Schult's painting, used as the original cover of Kraftwerk's Autobahn album.

200 years ago, the modern railway was born. On 27th September 1825, the first ticketed passenger train, powered by steam travelled on a public line in County Durham. Katrina Porteous, a poet with generational connections to the area follows the track of that inaugural journey, accompanied by a rich aural soundscape by Joe Fowler. She also journeys through time, accelerating from the coal mines which fuelled the railway to the modern day, racing to a future of international travel and modern technologies which offer new, more sustainable rail alternatives. From the Northeast's coal mines to the sea, we capture the wonder of that inaugural journey, meeting people passionate about the Stockton and Darlington Line and the rail networks that followed: chance encounters, voices from history, retired railway men, and those who have preserved this legacy (Senior Museum Curator at Locomotion the National Railway Museum in Shildon, Anthony Coulls, and Caroline Hardie, Friends of the S&DR.) Katrina discovers how this particular railway contributed to the standardisation of time and its incredibly rapid growth in Britain and around the world, while cold digital sounds and aural disintegration reflect some of the challenges rail travel has faced in the modern era. Through landscape and time, Katrina explores what a world shrunk by technology and speed means now and what the future of the railways might be.This is a magic mosaic, capturing the place railway travel holds in so many hearts – not least the production team where family histories entwine and childhood passions now experiment with sound, or who have simply enjoyed train travel in places as far flung as India, the States or Japan. Produced by Anna Scott-Brown. An Overtone production for BBC Radio 4.

When decapitated cats start appearing in South London, animal rescue duo Boudicca Rising and Tony Jenkins spring into action. They’ll do whatever it takes to get to the bottom of this mystery.It’s 2015 and the two volunteers running the South Norwood Animal Rescue and Liberty (SNARL) Facebook page, stumble upon a vet’s poster telling locals to keep their pets safe as there have been a series of “mutilations” in the area. When Boudicca and Tony share the vet’s warning, they’re flooded with messages from pet owners saying something similar has happened to their cats.Boudicca and Tony convince the police to launch Operation Takahe, an investigation into the “Croydon Cat Killer.” Far from stepping back, Boudicca and Tony find themselves at the centre of the operation; investigating “crime scenes,” breaking bad news to pet owners and being interviewed by press. The case takes over their lives.Presented and produced by Natasha Fernandes Editor: Matt Willis Sound design: James Beard

Watchmaker Rebecca Struthers has been invited to come and examine a watch which its owners claim is the world's oldest - but is it?Until now, Rebecca had only heard rumours of this watch - about the reputation of its famous maker, about the extraordinary circumstances in which it was found, about its unbelievable valuation. It is famous, or infamous, in antiquarian horology circles. But until Rebecca wrote her book 'Hands of Time' (a Radio 4 Book of the Week), few outside that small world had heard much about it. Now, thanks to her book, a mysterious lawyer has emailed to ask if she'd like to examine the watch. So she's on her way to Switzerland with a lot of questions. Not least - is it the real deal or, as so many of the watch's detractors claim, nothing more than a forgery.Producer: Giles Edwards

The red-billed chough is the most dashing crow in the world. These rare, flamboyant, scarlet-legged, scarlet-billed denizens of Britain’s Celtic coasts are communal and comic, intelligent and daring. They’re also sublime aeronauts, riding the breeze as though they’re made of it. For writer Horatio Clare, the chough is his totem. He’s loved the bird since he first encountered it in the 1980s during childhood holidays to Pembrokeshire. And more than forty years on from that joyous first encounter he still seeks them out. It’s his annual pilgrimage. In this episode of Illuminated, we join Horatio on that pilgrimage as he tells the story of a bird with a beak and legs the colour of a saint’s blood… or perhaps a king’s blood; whose cry says its name and whose presence symbolises a nation’s identity. It’s the story of a bird which embodies myths… and creates new ones; a bird which fled into the West over two centuries ago and which is finally returning to a wider world. Horatio begins his journey on Pen Llŷn, the westernmost spur of North Wales and one of the red-billed chough’s strongholds. His guide as he walks the sea cliffs is naturalist and folklorist Twm Elias. Twm lived alongside chough as he grew up on Llŷn and remembers a childhood visit to Caernarfon Castle, where his friend Dic John made a grab for the Castle’s ‘tame’ chough – and got a painful pecking in return. Twm sees chough as a symbol of the wild coastal areas of north Wales. But it’s also wrapped up in ideas of Cornish identity too. Dr. Loveday Jenkin grew up on stories of King Arthur becoming a chough when he died. Yet, just as she heard those stories, the very last choughs were dying out in Cornwall. But then, in 2001, thirty years after the last chough disappeared, three birds from Ireland made landfall in the far west of Cornwall. The following year two of them built a nest and the population grew from there. Hilary Mitchell from Cornwall Birds tells the story of how the avian symbol and spirit of the county returned. The chough is associated now with the western Celtic coasts. But once upon a time it ranged right across the British Isles. And maybe it will again. Horatio heads in the opposite direction… east… to a place which hasn’t seen chough for at least two centuries, despite the bird being embedded in its iconography.In Dover he meets Paul Hadaway from Kent Wildlife Trust to discover how a bird which was a symbol of the martyr and saint Thomas a Becket is once again flying in Kentish skies. And Jenny Luddington from the Trust explains how she’s drawn on an old tradition of hooden creatures – carved wooden animal heads on poles – to create a hooden chough and tell the story of the bird’s return to Kent. Horatio Clare discovers that the chough’s story has come full circle as old myths rehatch and new ones take wing.Presenter: Horatio Clare Producer: Jeremy Grange Editor: Chris Ledgard A BBC Audio Wales production for BBC Radio 4

Care packages are a universal love language and a way for families to stay connected across distances. We unbox four from China, India, Ireland and the Philippines, each filled with the tastes, textures and memories of home. In Newton-le-Willows, content creator Aurora unwraps a parcel from her mother in China revealing fragrant spices, dried mushrooms and handmade gifts as a reminder of her native traditions. In Cardiff, dancer Ishika shares a tightly sealed batch of homemade bori, sun-dried lentil dumplings prepared and packed by her cousins in India. Over in Liverpool, full-time mum Sarah introduces us to a selection of snacks pulled from her Nanny's cabinet in Ireland for a mix of nostalgia, sweetness and comfort that bridges generations. In Norwich, multidisciplinary artist Sha opens a package from her mum in the Philippines filled with dried mangoes and polvoron, a crumbly, sugary treat that melts in your mouth and warms the heart. Each of them shares how these packages, sent with care and packed with love, offer more than just food. They’re a connection to family, culture, belonging and the best remedy for homesickness.Presented and produced by Jay Behrouzi Executive Producer Richard McIlroy A BBC Audio North production for BBC Radio 4

When the Reverend Andrew Doarks took on the church of St Gregory's in Sudbury three years ago - he received no warning of what he would discover in the vestry.There - behind a perspex screen and a wooden flap in the wall - is the severed head of the fourteenth century Archbishop of Canterbury Simon of Sudbury. Simon who was decapitated during the Peasant's Revolt in 1381 shares the same space as the church's playgroup and receives visitors by appointment only. It is an unusual arrangement for the former Archbishop who met his demise after attempting to introduce a hated poll tax. So how did Simon's head end up in Sudbury when his body is buried in Canterbury Cathedral? And should both head and body be reunited?Andrew takes a trip to Canterbury to see Simon's tomb with the Cathedral's Head of Estates Joel Hopkinson. Inside the tomb - Simon's head has been replaced by a cannonball. He then visits the Cathedral library with Cressida Williams who discovers a document in the archive that relays Simon's will, dictated immediately before his death and he discusses Simon's future with the Canon Treasurer Andrew Dodd. Dr Helen Lacey from the University of Oxford and the People of 1381 project provides the historical context from the days of the Revolt.It's a journey of discovery that sheds light on Simon's past and gives Andrew ideas for his future. After all - as he reflects - managing severed heads just wasn't part of his training at theological college.Produced and presented by Robin Markwell for BBC Audio in Bristol "Vice Or Virtue" is composed and performed by singer-songwriter Jonny Day