Between the Ears

Last summer the musician Tim van Eyken had to make a distress call while afloat. He was struck by how, at the moment of greatest tension and stress, the language used was calm itself. Instructions were simple and clear. Indeed, during the crisis language itself almost disappeared through the imposition of radio silence (the call 'Seelonce, Seelonce') clearing the airwaves so rescuers could listen solely to signals from those who had called for help.

Tim van Eyken, the dramatist Joseph Wilde and radio producer Julian May trace the history, the development of the language of the call for help, from the initial Mayday procedure created by Frederick Mockford. A radio operator at East Croydon airport, in 1923 he was asked for a word that would indicate distress and would easily be understood by all in an emergency.

They gather recordings of distress calls and the conversations between those in danger (whose language is often very dramatic and heart rending - "Now. Now. Please. Come Now.") and their rescuers, terse, calm, yet urgent. Joe writes a drama for the actress Susan Jameson ; Julian uses calls, responses, instructions, and song, make a story in sound of the call for help. They delve into how we call for help: from a new born baby's first cry, then the reluctance to do so, that shameful admittance of need, to the point at which we become beyond help (forever in 'seelonce'), yet help is given.

We hear from a midwife, a psychotherapist, a coastguard, a pilot, the great undertaker poet, Thomas Lynch - and there's a song from Jackie Oates.

Producer: Julian May.

In a melting magical funnel of musical love (and the odd bit of reverb), musician David Bramwell investigates the unlikely story of how, in 1969, an amateur dramatic production of "Alice Through the Looking Glass", starring a young Martha Kearney, became one of the most sought-after psychedelic records in the world.

Sony Award-winning musician David Bramwell heads out over the Downs to Ditchling, Sussex, where Peter Howell and John Ferdinando first met as teenagers - creating the soundtrack for the Ditchling Players' performance of "Alice", using not only musical instruments, but also kitchen appliances and field recordings, utilising the possibilities of the latest domestic recording gadget - a reel-to-reel tape machine.

Bramwell travels across the Downs to meet folk chanteuse Shirley Collins and her tales of ghostly morris bells; dives beneath the waters of the Ouse with musician Isobel Anderson; is serenaded on the chalky hillsides by God of Hellfire, Arthur Brown; encounters a modern day Puck of Pook's Hill - poet Sam Walker; and finds out about the Ditchling Players from Ian Clayton, member since 1948, and his son Matthew; before enticing Martha Kearney, the young Alice, to recall the production's eccentric Englishness.

For the confused, he grapples with the term 'pastoral psych folk' with former Oz and NME journalist John May, and rare groove aficionado Richard Norris, who moved to Sussex under the influence of this strange piece of musical history.

And what became of those two young musicians? One is now a local surveyor - though he still plays in a band - whilst the other went on to re-master the Dr Who theme tune as a member of the Radiophonic Workshop.

Producer: Sara Jane Hall.

Newcastle writer David Almond investigates the story of a wild child who was said to roam the Yorkshire Dales near Crackpot Hall in the 1930s - and makes a surprising discovery.

Crackpot Hall is an ancient, ruined farmhouse near the village of Keld, which lies on the crossroads of the Pennine Way and the Coast to Coast Path in Swaledale. In its time, it has been a hunting lodge, an office for the local lead-mining industry and a family farm.

The acclaimed children's writer David Almond has long been intrigued by Crackpot Hall, and for decades has travelled west from his home near Newcastle to visit it. Recently, his curiosity was rekindled when he read about Alice, a four-year old child who was said to have been discovered roaming wild near Crackpot in the 1930s.

Led by the fabled laughter of Alice, David set out to find the wild child again and hear her story. Prepared to engage his imagination as a writer if facts alone failed, David was amazed by what Crackpot could still reveal.

With music arranged by the Leeds-based composer Emily Levy.

Producer: Beaty Rubens.

A baby sleeps.

Wake Up, Baby! is an atmospheric journey into the sometimes unsettling world of "reassuring" technology.

The media storm that surrounded the 1932 'baby Lindbergh kidnap', and the subsequent trial, planted the fear of child abduction into the public imagination. In 1937, Zenith produced the Radio Nurse, the world's first baby monitor, designed to fit well into an elegant sitting room, with a transmitting unit in baby's nursery.

The Radio Nurse was a tiny private radio station, casting baby's cries onto the electromagnetic seas. To feel the presence of baby in whichever room you occupied while she stayed safe in the nursery was a kind of magic - wonderfully reassuring to a couple in their big house. But it was prone to interference. You might hear things other than baby: a police radio, a pilot preparing to land, or even someone else's baby, picked up from a similar device nearby.

The problem of stray interference went away in the digital age. The baby monitor, now with pictures as well as sound, became wi-fi-enabled. In recent years, there have been several well-reported cases of devices being hacked. A couple in Ohio heard "Wake up, baby. Wake up, baby! screaming from their baby's monitor. Someone had taken control of the wi-fi device across the internet.

With contributions from:

Produced by Peregrine Andrews.

Monument Valley, which straddles the state lines of Arizona and Utah, is a place most of us have seen and never visited or listened to. The 'true West' of John Ford movies and endless car adverts. Mark Burman takes his microphone through the red dust of history with Navajo guide Larry Y. Holiday. Chased by the storm clouds and lightning, theirs is a trip through nature's own movie set.

At the turn of the 20th century, very few outsiders had penetrated its mysterious spaces. Spanish priests, American soldiers and silver-hungry prospectors had vied with warring Ute and Navajo Indians amidst the red rock. Then came isolated trading posts and the first flourishings of tourism in the 1920s - Americans eager to 'discover' what was still a largely blank space on the map but was firmly part of the Navajo Nation, who had returned to their land of rock and sand after defeat and exile.

Exactly 60 years ago, a teenage Pippa Scott made what was then an arduous journey to act in John Ford's The Searchers. In 1955, it was a remote and inaccessible place. No running water, power or telephones but it offered a towering landscape of eroded rock like no other. An ancient place, still home to a small community of Navajos who eke out a living in a place of deep spiritual significance to them, and exercising a powerful pull on all our imaginations via the words of writers like Zane Grey and Willa Cather and the films of John Ford. Lose yourself in the swirling dust.

First broadcast in 2015

Imagine a town of harmonica players; sounds a bit surreal?

Now 'Between the Ears' gives listeners a chance to hear the harmonica as a truly virtuoso instrument, always an instrument of the people - portable, affordable and playable. Acclaimed poet Kim Addonizio turns harmonica student, heading to blues school with pen, mouth, and a stack of harps at the ready, in search of the sweetest sounds.

Kim learns riffs from the world’s top ‘harp’ teachers, Dave Barrett, Steve Baker and Joe Filisko - who customizes harps for such as Neil Young, blues great Kim Wilson, and jazz phenomenon Howard Levy, and who she wants to persuade to accompany her on his magical harp.

She also dreams of being the first woman to jam on stage at the Blues conference... so will her dreams become reality?

Producer: Sara Jane Hall

Early in 2013 record producer Dan Carey bought a vintage tape machine at a charity shop in Streatham, South London. The Ferrograph recorder came with a box of 7-inch tapes containing an audio documentation of the previous owner's social life as a young man in the 1950s at a time when reel to reel tape recorders were state of the art audio technology. Among the recordings was a poetry reading event featuring an unusual selection of texts, from obscure comic verse to sections from the King James Bible and a Ministry of Transport pedestrian advice leaflet. Alan Dein goes in search of the recordist Barrie Simpson and surviving members of his circle, in this evocative and poignant story of suburban life and the Baptist church in South London over half a century ago.

A funny and moving autobiographical documentary about one of Britain's most brilliant performance poets, John Cooper Clarke; a revealing look at John's relationship with clothes, monkeys and fatherhood. John takes us to a gig, a Savile Row tailors and a journey into his mind exploring his relationship with clothes from childhood to present day, and culminating in his feelings of paternal love.

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A meditation on the cultural representation of comas through music, poetry and interviews with the families of people who have a suffered brain injury.

There are several thousand people in vegetative or minimally conscious states in the UK and, as medical interventions to save the body improve, numbers are growing. 'What is it like being in such as state?', 'Is she in there?', 'Does he recognize me?' 'What should I do for the best?' 'Is this a meaningful existence, or a state worse than death?' These are the questions that haunt families. Using new research from the York-Cardiff Chronic Disorders of Consciousness Research Centre, this programme asks the inevitable question of whether one would choose to die rather than live in such a state, trapped in a 'fate worse than death'. Not dead, but perhaps not fully alive either.

Family members talk with stark honesty about what it is like to have a relative in a coma-like state, unable to speak or do anything for themselves, year after year; their feelings at the bedside and their thoughts about the heart-breaking dilemmas they face. Using words, sounds, music and poetry, the programme explores the surreal and extraordinary situation created by modern medicine's ability to save the body, but not to restore the brain.

Produced by Llinos Jones and Professor Jenny Kitzinger. This is a Terrier Productions Ltd programme for BBC Radio 3.

Illustration: "Wordless" (detail) by Tim Sanders.

Wilfred Owen wrote that he was a 'poets' poet'. He also wrote, in the preface to 'War Poems', 'Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War'. Owen is, then, a soldiers' poet, and the people who figure in his poems are all soldiers. In this Between the Ears, soldiers, all serving when they were recorded, choose a Wilfred Owen poem, explain why, read it and speak about the impact it has on them.

They range from Barbara Ennis, a corporal, who chooses 'Dulce Et Decorum Est' because Owen's description of a gas attack matched her own experience, to General Sir Richard Dannatt, who was the Chief of the General Staff. He considers the worst fate that can befall a soldier - going mad. David Hamilton joined up as a boy, Justin Featherstone fought as a second lieutenant, Owen's rank, and one was awarded, like the poet, the Military Cross.

They reflect on killing, on boredom, the covenant between soldiers and the society they serve - and the civilian population's lack of understanding. 'The Soldiers' Poet', first broadcast in 2006, was an early catalyst to the debate about this that continues to this day. These are what Wilfred Owen's poems, written a lifetime ago, address. They speak to today's soldiers, whose readings of the poems have arresting immediacy.

Soldiers get to the point, make it quickly and move on. This, their poetry programme, cracks along, reflecting their brisk clarity. There is no presentation, just essential information - who the soldiers are and where they have served - the equivalent of giving name, rank and number.

Producer: Julian May.