Though audiobooks are popular, most people outside the UK don't know BBC radio produces lots of high quality drama, & has daily book readings (basically audiobooks), as well as making tons of shows/podcasts on science, comedy, history etc, which you can access free from anywhere in the world, all ad-free.
BBC radio is like NPR in the US, but with a larger output. You can listen live to stations online, or hear shows from the past month on the playback option. Best of all, most shows come as podcasts (from normal podcast sources). There's a huge archive; some shows go back decades.
There's several normal music stations- Radio 1, Radio 2, and 6music are pop/urban/hip hop, older/ MOR music, & alternative music on 6. Radio 3 is classical & some jazz, but best is Radio 4. It's more akin to NPR, & is all spoken word shows. It covers UK & global news & politics, but about 70% of its output is literature, science, history, comedy, nature, philosophy, poetry, travel, food, sociology, etc. Its an amazing place for keeping you outward looking, & for discovering new stuff.
There's often multiple shows for a given subject, & science, history & literature have tons each. Random selection of individual shows~ an amazing science show, daily 15 mins arts show Front Row, great sociology show. If you're interested in current affairs, More or Less covers stats from recent news stories, & explains how stay can be misrepresented or manipulated (its a great show, i've made it sound dull!). There's even a fair bit of American current affairs & history.
Currently there's 28 types of different history show. Especially strong is literature which has loads of stuff~ daily 15 min book readings of two different books, over one week or several weeks, Book at Bedtime- previous one read by actress Zoe Wanamaker, & a morning book (due to rights issues, book readings, drama & music aren't podcasts, but you can listen again on the website for a month). A different daily drama/ play, & a continuing classic serial drama on weekends. They often have well known actors, eg David Tennant & Alan Rickman have appeared. Radio 3 also has a different weekly drama which are great too. Some of the comedy's excellent- eg Old Harry's Game: a grumpy devil trains demons & meddles w humans, there's comedy quizzes too.
Some of the joy of it is in discovering random stuff, so try some of the lighter, more unexpected stuff, like The Listening Project: 2 people chat about something personal, or a current series, Surviving the Cost of Living, where an older person who survived eg 1970s inflation, chats to a younger person about how they managed back then, or Ramblings: recorded on a walk through the countryside, the presenter chats to a local person who's suggested that route~ we have extensive Right to Roam laws in the UK, so lots of walks everywhere.
As well as drama, there's loads of literature shows, eg Open Book discusses fiction topics, & interviews authors, & Book Club; authors do a reading, then discussion with interviewer & audience, or In Our Time is more high brow, a fairly solid discussion about different cultural subjects, this week was Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four, other recent topics- cave art, Kant, eclipses, the Bacchae, Angkor Wat, etc~ there's others two, & 2 poetry shows.
Radio 3 is mainly classical music (recordings & live broadcasts), w lots of shows about music too; inc on music in films, on music in computer games, jazz, the life & work of different composers etc. Im listening to A History of Mozart in A Dozen Objects from 2011. They do a great documentary series, too, w random stuff like jazz and Louis Armstrong in Cold War East Germany. Fascinating!
You can search by subject, too, inc in drama;sci fi, horror, relationships and romance.
Happy listening
September 16, 2022 at 11:15PM
