Illuminated

“There are so many things you can’t see coming. You can’t see death. You can’t see Mount Vesuvius erupting. The carpet could be pulled out from under you at any second. But I’ll see a knife coming if it’s going to hit me.”Target Girls are the female performers in “impalement arts'', where knives, arrows and even bullets are propelled at humans. Prepare for a full body immersion in this extreme profession, as we pull back the curtain on the hidden world behind the target girl’s silent, singular image.Your ringleader for this event is world-famous target Ula The Painproof Rubbergirl! Also starring!! Yana Hanson, Annabelle Holland and Amanda Jane ... With a special guest appearance from The Great Throwdini!Producer: Jude Shapiro Executive Producer: Jack Howson Sound Designer: Louis BlatherwickA Peanut & Crumb production for BBC Radio 4

Electromagnetic waves fill the universe, radiating from solar storms and bursts of lightning, but also from our electronic devices and infrastructures. Using simple, DIY tools, a community of audio enthusiasts translates these waves into sound, uncovering hidden sonic worlds.Five dedicated ‘natural radio’ enthusiasts venture beyond the electromagnetic pollution of the city, tuning into the Earth’s natural static to reveal a rich, textured soundscape, rarely heard.Stephen McGreevy, a cult figure within this practice, shares stories of his recordings during the geomagnetic storm of 1989. Hannah Kemp-Welch travels to northern Norway in search of the electromagnetic waves of the aurora borealis, struggling to escape the omnipresent hum of the mains power grid. Alyssa Moxley captures the crackles of shooting stars in southern France. Matt Parker ventures into the National Radio Quiet Zone in Virginia, USA. And Anonea experiments with antennas from a remote location in northern Spain.This audio feature encourages listeners to contemplate the vast, often invisible role electromagnetism plays in our daily lives. It invites us to look up at the sky and imagine radio waves bouncing off layers of the atmosphere, connecting us all under one magnetosphere. Produced by Hannah Kemp-Welch and Oliver Sanders Research & Development: Hannah Kemp-Welch Editing & Sound Design: Oliver Sanders Executive Producer: Lucia Scazzocchio Special thanks to Anonea, Alyssa Moxley, Dan Tapper, Francesca Thakorlal, Matt Parker, Rob Stammes, Rebekah Breding, Ruth Stewart, Sébastien Robert and Stephen P. McGreevy. A Social Broadcasts production for BBC Radio 4

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 OkinesAn Overcoat Media production for BBC Radio 4

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 WoolleyProduced by Eleanor McDowall A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4

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 Bullens Produced by Lara Bullens and Steven Rajam Executive Producer: Leonie Thomas Mix and Sound Design: Mike Woolley An Overcoat Media production for BBC Radio 4

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 ShevlinA Pod60 production for BBC Radio 4

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 Monaghan Sound design and original music: Robert Moutrey Executive producer: Bridget Harney A Pronk production for BBC Radio 4

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 Whitlock Sound design and music by Jon Nicholls Photograph by Monica WhitlockA Storyscape production for BBC Radio 4For many more creative and surprising one-off documentaries like this, just search for Illuminated on BBC Sounds.

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

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 KhajuriaMusic composed and performed by Phil Smith Produced by Eleanor McDowall and Siddharth Khajuria A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4