Wireless Nights

Jarvis Cocker's nocturnal exploration of the human condition leads him to Berlin. Walking in the shadowlands of the Wall he reflects on a once divided city and hears stories of thenacht.

Between East and West, he encounters a 1930s musical salon run by a cabaret diva; a ballroom dancing escapee from East Berlin; an underground den of iniquity and vice; and Iggy Pop, held prisoner.

Amid the street-lit ruins of the Berlin Wall, he considers the scar left behind.

Jarvis Cocker navigates the ether as he continues his nocturnal exploration of the human condition.

On a night voyage across a sea of shortwave he meets those who broadcast, monitor and harvest electronic radio transmissions after dark.

Paddy McAloon, founder of the band Prefab Sprout, took to trawling the megahertz when he was recovering from eye surgery and the world around him became dark. Tuning in at night he developed a ghostly romance with far-off voices and abnormal sounds.

Artist Katie Paterson and 'Moonbouncer' Peter Blair send Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata to the moon and back, to find sections of it swallowed up by craters.

Journalist Colin Freeman was captured by the Somali pirates he went to report on and held hostage in a cave. But when one of them loaned him a shortwave radio, the faint signal to the outside world gave him hope as he dreamed of freedom.

And "London Shortwave" hides out in a park after dark, with his ear to the speaker on his radio, slowly turning the dial to reach all four corners of the earth

Jarvis sails in and out of their stories - from the cosmic to the captive - as he wonders what else is out there, deep in the noise

Producer Neil McCarthy.

Jarvis Cocker rides in the driver's cab of a late night Tube train, hearing tales of nocturnal travellers across London.

With Beyoncé-loving Night Tube driver Kylie at the controls, Jarvis is whisked along the Victoria line late into the night. En route he hears from a cast of characters embroiled in their own dramas as they make their way around the capital in the small hours - including a late night reveller who fell sleep on the train and got more than she'd bargained for.

Producer: Laurence Grissell.

Jarvis Cocker returns to Radio 4 with his nocturnal explorations of the human condition.

In tonight's Wireless Night, Jarvis travels to a remote village in the Rif Mountains of Morocco to join the Master Musicians of Joujouka. Their ancient Sufi trance music is said to heal crazy minds. Jarvis wonders if his own troubled mind can find tranquillity there but encounters the wild living embodiment of the God Pan, half man and half goat, who has other ideas.

The Master Musicians of Joujouka were first discovered by Western ears in the 1950's when beat writers and artists like Brion Gysin and William Burroughs, living in Tangier, were lured up to the hills and had their minds blown by the healing power of the music. Rolling Stone Brian Jones also made a recording of their music shortly before his death calling it The Rites of Pan in Joujouka. This ritual lives on in the village, where somebody dressed in goatskins takes on the mythical character Bou Jeloud, enters a trance, whirls around with branches of willow and anyone he brushes with is blessed with fertility.

For one night only Jarvis joins the musicians and Bou Jeloud under a starlit sky in North Africa where unexpected things happen after dark.

This programme was recorded "Binaurally". This is a special, immersive way of recording whereby you'll hear things the way Jarvis was hearing them and can best be appreciated by listening on headphones.

Producer Neil McCarthy.

Jarvis Cocker is snowed in for tonight's nocturnal exploration of the human condition. With the snow piling high outside his farmhouse and long hours to kill, Jarvis's mind drifts to other snowbound dramas and dilemmas as he tries to distract himself from a creeping solitude. But as night draws on, can he be sure he's really alone?

Producer Neil McCarthy.

Jarvis Cocker invites you to a night out in Soho on his nocturnal exploration of the human condition. Below street level he finds drama and delirium as clubbers play out their lives after dark.

From a dimly lit ska joint to an after hours speakeasy, Jarvis is night guide to the smoke and mirrors of underground Soho - brushing shoulders with a club angel, a psychic mod and a singing waitress in among the shadows.

(Free dance lesson included)

Producer Neil McCarthy.

Jarvis Cocker continues his nocturnal exploration of the human condition.

Tonight: an unlucky trucker, a hopeful hitch-hiker and a host of Scottish ghostbusters.

As Jarvis climbs up into the Wireless Nights monster truck, he hears from a long distance lorry driver who received a nasty surprise, a hitcher trying to make it to Liverpool and he travels along the most haunted stretch of road in Scotland.

Producer: Laurence Grissell.

Jarvis Cocker's nocturnal exploration of the human condition takes him beneath the waves in this special edition of Wireless Nights.

Accompanied by the BBC Philharmonic at this year's Proms, as Jarvis drifts off to sleep he soon finds himself on an underwater voyage down to the endless night of the ocean bed. En route, he meets psychoanalyst Carl Jung, two submariners called Roger trapped in a tiny submersible and a free-diver experiencing "the rapture of the deep".

The BBC Philharmonic creates a sonic seascape as Jarvis goes deeper and deeper - but will he make it back to the surface in time to wake up?

Producers Laurence Grissell and Neil McCarthy.

In the second part of his nocturnal Icelandic adventure, Jarvis goes on a journey through the long, light summer night. He meets Megas, the island's best known poet and rock and roll legend, who warns of wandering demons as he embarks on an overnight road trip.

Along the way he stops to hear ghost stories in Reykjavik's oldest cemetery, meets an elf seer in a lava field and is led to a sacred waterfall, behind which he makes a wish. But will he make it back before the hour of the wolf?

Producer Neil McCarthy.

Jarvis Cocker wanders the lava fields of Iceland in search of the unseen forces of night. In the midnight shadow of Snaefellsjokull, the volcano featured in Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Jarvis considers the timelessness of the landscape, until he discovers sheep time. His sheep guides only lead him further into the unknown, through a hole in the lava floor and on a journey through a magma underworld, finding there a symphony orchestra, human seals and a wake.

Producer Neil McCarthy.