A bumper show today full of energy and great debate.

We'll be back with our first show of 2025 on 8th January. Wishing all of you a peaceful and happy Christmas and New Year.

Recommendations:

Catriona

Swiped - CH4

Emma and Matt Willis challenge a group of Year 8 pupils at the Stanway School in Colchester to give up their smartphones completely for 21 days

Angela

Irresistible -BBC2

Why are ultra-processed foods so irresistible, and how they have come to dominate food culture? This documentary by medical doctor and academic Dr Chris van Tulleken features interviews with former food industry insiders who talk openly about the way in which popular foods have been designed to be irresistible.

Food companies go to extraordinary lengths to ensure their products connect with consumers - from using brain scans to assess the deliciousness of ice cream to carefully engineering the sound of a crunch. Ultra-processed foods are hyper-delicious and super-convenient, have long shelf lives and are extremely cheap. But a growing body of evidence is linking these products to our declining health.

David

A Quiet Evening: The Travels of Norman Lewis

Collected here, from a period of nearly five decades, are thirty-six of Norman Lewis’s best articles. In each, his writing crackles with poker-faced wit and stylistic brilliance. As a witness to his times – the good, the bad and the absurd – he was unmatched, and his instinct for important events, and moments, was infallible. His range here includes Ibizan fishermen, an interview with Castro’s executioner, the genocide of the South American Indian tribes, a paean to Seville and his meeting with a tragic Ernest Hemingway. That meeting was ‘a shattering experience,’ Norman wrote to Ian Fleming who had commissioned him, ‘of the kind likely to sabotage ambition.’Fortunately it didn’t, and the articles assembled between these covers are compulsive, hilarious, tender and beautifully written, at times deeply upsetting, and always unforgettable.

The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World 

With a mind-boggling mastery of sources, Dalrymple weaves a thrilling tale of India’s cultural hegemony, not forgetting its invention of mathematics and related disciplines still in use today - Andrew Lycett, Spectator

Eamonn

Comfort and Joy

Alan Bird (Bill Paterson, Outlander, Dad's Army) thinks he has life pretty well organised. Glasgow's top DJ, with a nice apartment, and the only red BMW Cabriolet north of Manchester, he has little to worry about until his kleptomaniac girlfriend Maddy ditches him just before Christmas.