Showing results by publisher "BBC Audio" in Social Sciences

Abandoned by their parents, Maya and her older brother, Bailey, are sent to live with their grandmother and uncle in the small Southern town of Stamps in Arkansas. Struggling with rejection, they endure the prejudice of their white neighbours and suffer several racist incidents. One day, their father unexpectedly returns and takes the children to live with their mother in St Louis, Missouri. Aged only eight, Maya is abused by her mother's boyfriend, an experience that haunts her for a lifetime.

Will Self takes a 1,000-mile tour of the UK by bus and coach, exploring urban Britain and British identity at a time of flux. Bus and coach windows afford him a different perspective on the nation. He eschews the bright lights of the big cities, heading instead for smaller urban centres. His objective is to speak to Britons about how they view their cities and themselves in 2018. Over 10 programmes, Will's trip takes him to Plymouth, Swansea, West Bromwich, Wolverhampton, Preston, Middlesbrough, East Kilbride and Derry-Londonderry. 

Meet Anne Lister, the 18th-century landowner, industrialist, explorer, lesbian and feminist icon. This is her story.... Anne was different from society’s expectations of a woman at the time: she not only did not wish to marry, but she also did not want to conform. Anne was interested only in women and had ‘marriage’ ceremonies with Mariana Lawton and later Ann Walker. She spent a great deal of time studying, managed her own estates, sought business opportunities, travelled widely and climbed mountains.  

The UK and Africa have had a long and complicated past. These two series look at the history of this relationship, with Daliso as our relationship guidance counsellor, helping us navigate the rocky historical waters between the two places. A Malawian comedian who grew up all over the world, Daliso straddles cultural divides. He will help us all better understand how to sort out our differences. Or not.... 

Firsthand accounts by those who planned and took part in the Normandy landings, and eyewitness reports from BBC correspondents travelling with the troops on 6 June, 1944. In 1940, after the evacuation of the British army from Dunkirk, Winston Churchill vowed that Allied Forces would return to "cleanse Europe of the Nazi Pestilence". The logistics of Operation Overlord were daunting, but an inspired campaign of deception successfully diverted Hitler’s attention away from the Normandy beaches until it was too late.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks speaks to the world's leading thinkers about morality today. In this fascinating series, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks explores what morality means, speaking with globally renowned thinkers, as well as voices from the next generation. From Steven Pinker and Robert Putnam to Melinda Gates and Jordan Peterson, the guests discuss the free market and the financial crash, selfies and social media, individuals and tribalism, artificial intelligence, role models, and rediscovering politics of the common good.

Why did almost all life go extinct 250 million years ago? Why on five other occasions in the geological history has the living world experienced sudden episodes of global mega-death with the majority of species being annihilated? And are humans causing the sixth great mass extinction event in Earth's history? These are among the questions Adam Rutherford explores in this three-part series on extinction. Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker.

Lenny Henry plays double murderer Frank Watt, who is getting ready to face life on the outside after 30 years in prison. He's looking forward to getting out, but things have changed a lot since the '80s and he's institutionalised. He quite likes his bookish, monklike life inside and the anger he was boiling over with when he went to prison is down to a manageable simmer.

In this collection, Melvyn Bragg surveys how English has evolved over 1,000 years. He starts by looking at the disappearance of old dialects like that of Cumbria, and how English has been enriched by foreign languages, from Latin and Old French to dozens more as conquest, trade and immigration played their part in recent centuries. He also examines new coinages, puns and wordplay; how accents and social class are entwined; swear words; attempts to stop the evolution of language in its tracks and, lastly, the many varieties of English that are spoken around the world today. 

Eve Best, Danny Sapani and Shaun Dooley star in this modern, riveting and magical production of The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare. The Winter's Tale treads new dramatic ground embracing tragedy, poetry, folklore, magic realism, music, comedy and the infamous stage direction 'exit pursued by a bear'. One of Shakespeare's mesmerising later productions, it is often considered a 'problem play' as it starts with a tragedy and ends in a romance. 

David Baddiel attempts to unravel an array of life's conundrums, as suggested by the public on Twitter. In each episode he speaks to experts and the general public to make sense of common, yet little understood, subjects and impart his new-found knowledge on each topic in under 15 minutes. From the global economy to electricity, much loved comedian David Baddiel gets to the heart of issues that dominate random shower musings and dinner party debates. He attempts to understand areas including fracking, rugby, hacking, The Constitution, fashion and even the Kardashians.

Why is everyone so angry nowadays, and what is it doing to the world? In the developed world we live in a blessed epoch, a time and a place where life has never been better. Infant mortality has been all but abolished, we have greater personal choice than ever before, we have access to technology that would have been seen as the stuff of science fiction little more than a decade ago. We are safer and wealthier than at any time in human history. So why are we so damn angry about everything? 

From politics to economics, from tech to the study of how we live, things are changing fast. Old certainties are crumbling, and we need new solutions to shake up the status quo and shape the future. In The Spark, Helen Lewis meets 11 radical thinkers who are bidding to change our world, and puts their ideas under the spotlight to find out what they have to offer compared to the failures of the past.

Each year, 10 pioneering scholars are selected as New Generation Thinkers and given the unique opportunity to bring their groundbreaking work to life on radio. New Generation Thinkers have explored the arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond and continue to share ideas, bring people into their world and expand horizons everywhere. To mark 10 years of this incredible scheme, this collection brings together the 100 winners from the past decade. 

Frank Delaney's language based panel quiz game series revolves around the English language. This upbeat, fun word battle sees a host of well-known contributors battling to say the word first. The series is filmed in front of a live audience at a wide range of literary festivals in the UK and live in the BBC Studios. 

An entertaining guide to some of our commonest and most curious coastal wildlife. Brett Westwood is joined by naturalist Phil Gates in this informative and entertaining guide to a variety of common coastal wildlife. Recorded in early summer along the coast of Northumberland, each programme focuses on a different habitat - rock pools, sandy beaches, sea cliffs, strandlines and mudflats adjoining saltmarshes.

John Wilson (acclaimed arts and culture reporter and journalist, and presenter of Front Row, Newsnight Review and Pick of the Week) meets up with a variety of public figures from such diverse fields as food, mathematics, politics, writing and music, and takes them back to the influential schools, teachers and early workplaces they may have forgotten, but which have not forgotten them. 

The BBC Radio 3 series exploring the meaning of the male nude in the visual arts. When we think of the nude we usually think of the female nude, and in Western art in particular, we're often contemplating an image where the artist is primarily concerned with sensuality and desire. If we spare a thought for the male nude at all, he tends to appear as a figure symbolising courage and endurance. Both perspectives are, of course, a simplification or distortion.

From the mid-1970s the humble 7-inch vinyl single was joined by a much grander relative - the 12-inch single. It reached its peak in 1983 with "Blue Monday", by New Order, probably the biggest-selling 12-inch single of all time. Music Journalist and co-founder of ZTT Records Paul Morley talks to Peter Hook of New Order about how "Blue Monday" was written, and to designer Peter Saville about the famous sleeve. Paul explores the origins of the 12-inch single as a potentially higher-quality format than the 7-inch single and visits Abbey Road studios to watch an engineer cutting a 12-inch single.

In this fascinating 10-part series, Lenny Henry traces the long and painful road that black Britons have travelled on stage and screen, from the overt racial discrimination of the 19th century, via the thinly veiled slurs that persisted through the first 70 years of the 20th, to today's more equal society. Interviewing playwrights, actors, directors and filmmakers - including Mustapha Matura, Roy Williams, Lolita Chakrabarti, Michael Buffong, Horace Ové and Steve McQueen - he tells the story of black drama and the influential artists who have shaped it over the past hundred years.