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BBC Radio 4
Seriously is home to the world’s best audio documentaries and podcast recommendations. Introduced by Vanessa Kisuule. This feed is no longer being updated. Thanks for listening.
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Jan 21, 2020 • 29min
The People's Pyramid
The KLF aka The Jams aka The Timelords aka The K Foundation aka K2 Plant Hire aka The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu... it's complicated. Whatever name or weird mythology they happened to be operating under at the time, Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty managed to top the UK pop charts in the early nineties with songs about love and ice-cream vans - often with plastic horns strapped to their heads. Then they turned their backs on the music industry, deleted their entire back catalogue and cremated £1 million of their own earnings on a remote Scottish island. Scroll forward 23 years and Drummond and Cauty re-emerge to announce they're building a pyramid in Liverpool out of bricks containing the cremated remains of just under 35,000 people. As more bricks are added to The People's Pyramid at the 2019 Toxteth Day of the Dead, Conor Garrett tries to work out what's going on...Produced and presented by Conor Garrett.

Jan 17, 2020 • 29min
The Last Exposure
Photographer Garry Fabian-Miller has spent much of the last 30 years either in his dark room, or out walking on Dartmoor. That is about to end. Fabian-Miller began his career in the 1960’s but quickly tired of the typical black and white verite’ style that was then so much in vogue. Rejecting both the city streets, black and white film, and eventually the camera itself - his camera-less photography gives his work an utterly unique and other worldly quality - light pulses from deep yellow circles; the flicker of a naked flame peers through a slashed curtain of deep blue. His inspiration the moors he walks twice daily, passing through his eyes, his imagination and onto the photosensitive paper. The result is a body of work which plays with light and dark, exposure and developing – producing an acclaimed body of work recognised by both buyers and museums as like no other - collectors range from Sir Elton John to the V & A. But the onslaught of digital has signalled to him that things are changing – both the resources, and the techniques he has developed over time, are threatened, and with the near disappearance of dark rooms, he feels it time to make his last print and close his dark room for ever. His photographs are unconventional, dazzling, and use techniques honed over decades. He abandoned using cameras long ago, opting instead to use techniques based on early 19th century prints - long exposures, tone, and images funneled into shapes made by the sun. Always dazzlingly coloured, he uses a developing substance which is no longer in production. Occasionally he gets a phone call from a dealer in London…. “Garry, I’ve just been offered 11 litres of CibaChrome, you want it? We join him as he uses up the very last of the chemistry which enable him to use the techniques he has spent a lifetime perfecting, before his dark room is closed forever. Reflecting a change out of his studio and in the world - in 2007 there were 204 professional dark rooms in London, by 2010 there were 8. We hear his story of printing - a physical, technical skill, as well as a dangerous and smelly one. We envisage the end of the analogue era of photography, and celebrate the alchemical eclipse. Curator of photography from the V&A Martin Barnes salutes his work, and how it harks back to the very start of photography, just as this chapter is coming to an end. From the spooky mists of Hound Tor to making pictures in the dark, Fabian-Miller takes us one step closer to the end of an era. Producer: Sara Jane Hall

Jan 14, 2020 • 28min
The Diagnosis
For most of her life, Janice Wilson suffered from strange and terrifying attacks at night. She would wake up, suddenly, feeling as though she was being choked or strangled. The next day, there would be blood on her pillow. Sometimes she’d have up to 50 of these attacks a night. It left her terrified and exhausted. For years, doctors put it down to psychological problems due to a trauma in her past. Then she met a doctor who found the astonishing, true cause. In “The Diagnosis”, Janice and the doctor who diagnosed her come together in a studio, to tell this remarkable story. The programme is presented and produced by Helena Merriman, who was inspired to tell other people’s stories of diagnosis after receiving her own surprise diagnosis a few years ago. Editor: Emma Rippon

Jan 3, 2020 • 28min
A Small Matter of Hope
Life is getting better. Child mortality rates have tumbled worldwide, more girls are in education, malaria is in decline and hunger is a thing of the past for most of us. So why don't we believe it? Why are so many of us convinced that we're heading for hell in a handcart? It's a question that really bothers the editor of the Spectator, Fraser Nelson. Is it the fault of journalists like him, peddling conflict and disaster rather than tales of human progress? Or are we all born with a negativity bias? Do we seek out stories of death and danger just as our ancestors listened out for sabre-toothed tigers padding ever closer to our cave? In search of answers Fraser meets some of the best-selling thinkers on human happiness- Harvard psychology professor, Steven Pinker, author of Notes on a Nervous Planet, Matt Haig and co-author of Factfulness, Anna Rosling Ronnlund. Armed with the combined intellectual heft of these purveyors of positivity Fraser returns to his Whitehall office to persuade his cynical staff that the world is crying out for a new Spectator with a positive spin. Producer: Alasdair Cross

Dec 17, 2019 • 38min
A Guide to Disagreeing Better
Why do we hold our opponents in contempt? Former politician Douglas Alexander believes that disagreement is good, it's how the best arguments get refined. But, today, public discourse has become so ill-tempered, snide and lacking in respect that we are no longer engaged in a battle of ideas but a slanging match. He talks to people with personal tales about how we might all raise our game and disagree better, among them a relationship counsellor, an ex-soldier, a peace broker and a foster mother. Their tips? Civility is not enough. And knowledge is essential, as well as radical honesty, fierce intimacy and openness. So, dial down the rhetoric, rein in the insults - they will persuade no-one that your opinion is worth listening to - and pay attention.Producer: Rosamund JonesResearchers: Kirsteen Knight and Gabriela Jones

Nov 22, 2019 • 28min
Hurting
Sally Marlow talks to some of the men and women who have self-harmed, and the experts who treat them, to find out what is driving so many people to self-harm.Clinical guidelines define self-harm as any act of self-poisoning or self-injury carried out by a person irrespective of their motivation. However, research reveals a worrying association between self-harm and the risk of suicide.While rates of self-harm are particularly high among teenage girls, the true picture is far more nuanced. Rates have gone up in all age groups and both genders and, more recently, in groups such as middle-aged men.So what is driving so many people to hurt themselves, and what can be done to help them? The media is quick to point the finger at social media, but Sally discovers that the reasons behind this question are as varied and complex as the people who do it.Producer: Beth Eastwood

Nov 15, 2019 • 30min
Art of Now: Playing Well - Frightened Rabbit
In the first of the three-part series "Playing Well" Chris Hawkins has an intimate conversation with the band mates of Scott Hutchison, who took his own life in May 2018.In conversation with Scott's brother Grant, drummer in Frightened Rabbit, and guitarist Andy Monaghan, Chris discovers more about the anxious child who reframed his family nickname as a band name - and how he channeled a rare lyrical talent, determination and energy into the creation of one of Scotland's most important and influential rock bands.Charting the rise of the band and Scott's intense, occasionally hilarious approach to live performance, Grant frankly addresses the pressures his brother faced - and the structural pressures faced by anyone in the music industry. Charting the exhausting aftermath of suicide, Grant talks about defining Scott as a songwriter, in the hope that the existence of works which appear to presage his death don't create a misleading impression of Scott's life.It's a moving portrait of a fascinating artist, and an attempt to reclaim Scott's musical legacy from the inaccurate assumption that the combination of musical celebrity and mental illness can only end in tragedy.Details of organisations offering information and support with mental health are available at bbc.co.uk/actionline, or you can call for free, at any time to hear recorded information on 08000 155 998.Presented by Chris Hawkins
Produced by Kevin Core

Nov 12, 2019 • 30min
The 21st Century Curriculum
As a teenager, the writer Varaidzo lost interest in school. She investigates the so-called "educational dip" and talks to teenagers about ways they think the school curriculum might be made more appealing and useful to them in later life. She also meets Lord Baker, the minister responsible for setting up the national curriculum more than thirty years ago; and she talks to futurists and those researching the future of work, to find out what they think the students of today should be learning.Producer: Ellie Richold

Nov 8, 2019 • 29min
Welcome Money
Between the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 and the policy's hastily enforced end on 29 December 1989, East German citizens claimed an estimated four billion Deutschmarks in so-called ‘Begrüßungsgeld’ or ‘welcome money’ from the West German authorities.Tens of thousands stood in line at banks and town halls up and down West Germany, waiting to collect their state-sanctioned gift of 100DM (around €80 today). For most East Germans, shortages of basic goods were a fact of daily life and luxuries were all but non-existent, this modest windfall represented the first true spending money that they had ever possessed, and in spending it they would have their first encounters with modern-day capitalism and consumerism.
In this programme, journalist and teutonophile Malcolm Jack heads to Berlin to find out what East Germans bought with their Begrüßungsgeld and, 30 years on, what became of those purchases.In Berlin, Malcolm meets Jens ‘Tasso’ Muller from Saxony, who, on his first trip west, travelled with friends to Kreuzberg in Berlin. It was the first time he had ever seen graffiti tags, on every corner in every place. Having never seen graffiti tags before, he worked out it must be done with a marker so that was the first thing he bought. As it cost an exorbitant 11DM, he just bought one, but it would be the first of many. Today Jens is better known by the alias 'Tasso' and his tag is recognised all over the world - as a professional graffiti artist he has visited 31 different countries and counting; all thanks to one black ink Edding marker, igniting a passion for street art he didn't even know existed.Amongst other East Germans and East Berliners, Malcolm meets fashion designer and former international model Grit Seymour. Grit’s welcome money was spent on fresh exotic fruit and a copy of Italian Vogue which was previously inaccessible to her in the GDR. Malcolm also visits a former Stasi prison with tour guide and former inmate Peter Kreup, whose welcome money provided a sense of power and freedom that he had previously been denied after spending 10 months incarcerated by the regime. Performance artist and lecturer Else Gabriel shares her unorthodox approach to the welcome money, and the bounty it brought her which she still keeps in her studio. Nicole Hartmann was just 11 years old when the wall fell, and remembers the feeling of solidarity that she felt when her East German village banded together to look after the people in the streams of cars, all travelling to Berlin to collect their Begrüßungsgeld. We also hear from Professor of German History at University College, London about the reasons for the introduction of the welcome money itself, and its impact on the process of reunification.

Nov 5, 2019 • 38min
Into the Manosphere
Young men are facing a crisis of masculinity. To deal with it, they have options - the manosphere, a mainly online world where the challenges facing 21st century men are exclusively the fault of women, or the anti-manosphere.Philip Tanzer is a Men Rights Activist (or MRA) and manosphere convert who lives in Scotland. He’s already a keyboard warrior, fighting the ‘feminist establishment’ from the highlands of Scotland and giving motivational talks to the young men who come to his salon and art gallery. He allows producers to follow him as he attends the International Conference on Men’s Issues in Chicago where many of the main leaders and thinkers that together form the nebulous community congregate, including a British MP, far-right YouTubers and a surprising number of women. Along the way, he gives a unique insight into the individual stories behind the growing group of men in the UK and US who find their tribe in the online forums dedicated to reversing the feminist agenda.He also meets and debates with men and women who believe the manosphere is a dangerous and misogynist place and looks at alternative ways to address the growing levels of mental ill health and suicide in young men – could drumming around a campfire be a better way for men to connect?Produced by Lucy Proctor and Alvaro Alvarez