Transmissions
The Root Of The Matter: Woodland
Mae-Li Evens for Reduced Listening (UK 2022)
Mae-Li Evans for Reduced Listening (UK 2022)
32min Episode 4 of 5
Our lives are intrinsically entangled with the plant world: through the food we eat, the medicines we use, and the spaces we inhabit. In this five-part series, writer and maker JC Niala explores what the plant world has to teach us about being human. Join JC in conversation with growers, scientists, writers and activists on a journey through five different landscapes, from the familiarity of the garden to the seemingly hostile wasteland. We’ll take a closer look at the entanglements and stories underpinning the plant world to understand how plants can provide a lens on human health, history and belonging.
We think of forests and woodlands as wild spaces where we can lose ourselves in nature. They also provide us with a wealth of resources such as food, building materials and medicines. But they are also globally under threat of destruction. In this episode, JC Niala delves into the contradictions in our relationship with woodlands, and explores different ways we can think about them, if we are to use and protect them more wisely.
Lead Producer Alannah Chance
Produced by Mae-Li Evans
Music and sound design by Alice Boyd
The Root of the Matter’ is a Reduced Listening production for Wellcome Collection.
Listen to the series
CBS Mystery Theatre: Ep 14 The Girl Who Found Things
Created by Himan Brown for CBS (US 1977)
Created by Himan Brown for CBS (US 1974)
41 min / Episode 14 of 1399
Forget true crime, these mystery dramas were reintroduced in 1974 on CBS Radio as a nostalgic hark back to old time radio. These dramas proved so popular that the series kept going for a decade.
IA young girl with criminal tendencies is taken by a couple who discover her peculiar talent for retrieving lost things - including corpses
Written by Henry Slesar
Featuring Norman Rose, Martha Greenhouse, Bryna Raeburn, Robert Dryden, Barbara Caruso, Anna Costello
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Voicing The Archive
Hannah Kemp-Welch (UK 2021)
Hannah Kemp-Welch (UK 2021)
29 min
During the pandemic, artist Hannah Kemp-Welch was in-residence at the Women’s Art Library, based at Goldsmiths. Reaching out to community groups in New Cross, Hannah photocopied and collated packs of ephemera from artists' projects documented in the library and posted these to local residents. Seven women selected an artist from the archive and responded to their work, recording personal reflections as they looked through materials. This audio essay considers access to archives, and how voices can bring the Women’s Art Library to life.
Produced by Hannah Kemp-Welch
Miss Time
Dinabird (FR/UK 2011)
Dinahbird (UK/FR 2011)
4 min
Miss Time, pays homage to the first speaking clocks born in the early 1930s, who were in fact telephone switchboard ladies, chosen for their fine elocution and stamina, who every 15 seconds, 240 times an hour, mechanically told the time to an invisible audience, regardless if anyone called or not. Each country had it's telephone diva, known for her golden voice and accurate timekeeping. Sadly these marathon performances fizzled out in the sixties when technology made these Time Ladies redundant.
Producer: Dinahbird
A Walking Scientist
Jasmina Al Qaisi (2020)
Jasmina Al Qaisi (2020)
10 min
Drawing thin lines between imagination and reality in an odd, yet common life situation- missing a flight. The monologues take the listener through different noisy layers of one voice changing tenses, presenting a possible future-past self which is just a coping mechanism for diverting racing thoughts of guilt. The play is centred around creating a new identity in a possible future: a walking scientist, a humorous being, but also an occasion for social critique from a dissident to conforming with a life ruled by capital. The piece is created with vernacular sounds: computer cooler, street shop alarms, walking sounds - mostly translated from noise to voice and back.
Written, performed and produced by Jasmina Al Qaisi
This piece was a recipient of Works for Radio from The Lake Radio and a longer version 2nd place in Burning Mic non-german speaking category for Berliner Hörspiel Festival of free Radio Plays
Not Just Any Bush
Helene Thomas (AU 2020)
Helene Thomas (AU 2020)
17 min
Randal Morrison is a third generation Huon Piner. He lives in Strahan, Tasmania. Helene met Randal at his saw mill in Queenstown and as they talked he reminisced about his times as a young boy going out with his father to the banks of the Gordon River to collect Huon Pine logs.
The Wayfinder is a mobile recording studio designed and built in Tasmania. It is a professional sound booth with acoustic insulation properties and has been carefully designed to make people feel comfortable and relaxed and conducive to conversation. It was an idea born from the imagination of its creator, Helene Thomas. Inspiration has been drawn from the US initiative StoryCorps and the BBC’s The Listening Project, where stories are preserved in order to build connections between people.
Produced by Helene Thomas
Radio Ballad: Song of a Road (1959)
Ewan McColl, Peggy Seeger, Charles Parker (1959)
Ewan McColl, Peggy Seeger, Charles Parker (UK 1959)
59 min
This new revolutionary format - radio ballad (BBC) conceived by folk musicians Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger, and the brilliant radio documentary maker Charles Parker in 1958, combining sound: songs, instrumental music, sound effects, and, most importantly, the recorded voices of those who are the subjects of the documentary. This had never been done before, and still sounds incredibly fresh today.
This Radio Ballad is a musical journey along the M1 as it was being built in the late 50’s.
Producer: Charles Parker
Music: Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger
Listen to more Radio Ballads
Everything, Nothing, Harvey Keitel
Pejk Malinovski (DK/US 2014)
Pejk Malinovski (DK/US 2014)
20 min
Finding inner peace is difficult... especially when you're sitting next to Harvey Keitel. This story was produced by Pejk Malinovski as a Falling Tree production, and originally aired on BBC Radio 3. Featured on the Truth Podcast.
Narrated and Produced by Pejk Malinovski
Selected by guest curator Cristana Marras
This amazing piece by Pejk Malinovski. “Everything, nothing, Harvey Keitel” is a crazy ride inside the head of the author. I love the apparent spontaneity of it all, the understated way of tell the story so that you feel you might as well be in the same room in which Harvey Keitel appears, completely unexpected and out of place. Amusing, compelling, beautifully written. It’s the kind of storytelling that makes me feel like dropping everything I’m doing to go producing something beautiful. :-)
In The Dark: The Everything Is Fine Forecast
Ewan Cameron (UK 2022)
Ewan Cameron (UK 2022)
7 min
The Shipping Forecast but it's you having a panic attack.
Produced and performed by Ewan Cameron as part of an ongoing podcast called Randomly Generated Thought.
Selected as part of a new producers listening event be In The Dark
In The Dark: The Covid Happiness Project
Shrikant Joshi (IN 2021)
Shrikant Joshi (IN 2021)
5 min
The first episode from “The Covid Happiness Project”, a podcast Shrikant made during lockdown. It was an honest attempt to shine a small light in the darkness that was threatening to envelop all of us during the early days of the pandemic.
Written and Produced by: Shrikant Joshi
Music: “Acoustic Breeze” from bensound.com
Selected as part of a new producers listening event be In The Dark