Off-air recordings for week 13-19 October 2012

Please email Rich Deakin rdeakin@glos.ac.uk if you would like any of the following programmes / series recording.*

*This applies to staff members and students at the University of Gloucestershire only. Any recordings made are to be used only for educational and non-commercial purposes under the terms of the ERA Licence.
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Sunday 13th October

Arts, Culture and the Media; Children's Fiction; Films

The Golden Compass
Channel 4, 5:55-8:00pm

Young Lyra Belacqua is thrown into an adventure that takes her to the Arctic, and the company of witches and talking bears in this star-studded adaptation of the first of Philip Pullman's acclaimed trilogy


Factual; History; Documentaries

Andrew Marr's History of the World
BBC1, 9:30-10:30pm, 4/8 - Into the Light

The golden age of Islam and powerful new trading states helped to define the Middle Ages.


Drama; Biographical; Films

Howl
BBC2, 11:30pm-12:50am

Drama. When the beat poet Allen Ginsberg published his poem Howl in 1957 America, he was put on trial for obscenity. This tells his story and illustrates the poem in animation.

Drama; Classic and Period; Horror and Supernatural

Classic Serial: The Gothic Imagination: Dracula
BBC Radio 4, 3:00-4:00pm, 1/2

The original vampire horror story by Bram Stoker, in a new version by Rebecca Lenkiewicz.


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Monday 14th October

Arts, Culture and the Media

Scream Queens
BBC Radio 4, 4:00-4:30pm


'It is women who love horror,' said the screen's first Dracula, Bela Lugosi. Since the horror genre began eighty years ago, the female role has changed; the passive victims of the classic monsters of the past have become resourceful heroines competing on equal terms with their male co-stars, both human and inhuman.

In this revealing documentary, part of BBC Radio 4's gothic season, Reece Shearsmith meets a coven of female horror stars and charts the development and changing roles in the genre; from the femmes fatales of Dracula's Daughter, through Hitchcock's leading ladies, to Hammer's lesbian vampires of the 1970s and the present-day action heroines such as Buffy the Vampire-Slayer.

Shearsmith reflects on the history and roles of women in horror films such as Psycho, The Innocents and Rosemary's Baby, with archive of Deborah Kerr, Ingrid Pitt and Barbara Steele.

Shearsmith believes that women are making a greater impact in the horror genre but is it still a man's world?

Contributors include screen legends Barbara Shelley and Madeline Smith, along with television's 'Woman in Black' Pauline Moran. Shearsmith also meets Linda Hayden who stars in one of his favourite horror films 'Blood on Satan's Claw'; and we also hear from Jane Merrow who went from appearing in horror movies to producing them.


Factual; Science and Nature; Documentaries

The Digital Human

BBC Radio 4, 4:30-5:00pm, 3/7


Aleks speaks to Grandmaster of memory, Ed Cooke who thinks memory is going out of fashion because of our reliance on digital devices.

Mastermind champion and London cabbie Fred Housego explains how he relies on 'The Knowledge' to navigate London but relies on his wife's short term memory to remember dates for engagements, shopping lists, phone numbers. Psychologist Betsy Sparrow explains that this is known as transactive memory and it's exactly what we are doing with our digital devices. Cyborg Anthropologist, Amber Chase explains that in the past we had physical extensions of ourselves, for example with tools, but we now have mental extensions of ourselves, with our digital devices acting as externalised brains, changing our sense of self.

Aleks discovers that the way we remember is not only changing our perceptions of self but challenging the very concept of intelligence. Aleks hears that the smart kid of the past memorized lots of data but the smart kid of the future will know how to navigate the system and how to understand concepts. This is exactly what 15 year old US high school pupil, Jack Andraka did when he discovered a new test for pancreatic cancer using the internet. With little background knowledge and armed only with what he knew from biology classes he scoured the web for papers that helped him make connections that will potentially save thousands of lives.

The way we use our memory is changing but as Psychologist Betsy Sparrow explains we are only responding to our surroundings and evolving as we always have.



News

Panorama: Kill at Will? America On Trial
BBC1, 8|:30-9:00pm

Ahead of America's costliest-ever elections, Raphael Rowe investigates how powerful lobby groups helped create laws blamed for one of the most controversial killings in recent US history. The shooting dead of a 17-year-old teenager by a neighbourhood watchman polarised America, provoked presidential intervention and shone a light on an extreme American law, called 'Stand Your Ground'. It provides immunity from prosecution or, as some say, a 'License to Kill'. But does gun politics also show how America really works? Panorama asks: is American democracy for sale?


Documentaries

Sex, Death and the Meaning of Life
More4, 10:00-11:10pm


Ideas about the soul and the afterlife, of sin and God's purpose have shaped human thinking for thousands of years. Religious rituals remain embedded in the major events of our lives.

In this thought-provoking series, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins asks what happens if we leave religion behind. He explores what reason and science might offer to inspire and guide our lives in religion's place.

Can science bring understanding in the face of death, help us tell right from wrong, or reveal the point of life in the first place?

In a journey that takes him through visually stunning locations across the world, Richard Dawkins builds a powerful argument for facing up to the scientific truth about life and death - however hard that might be.

If there is no God watching us, why be good? Richard Dawkins is taking on the big questions of life and, in this opening programme, he examines sin.

He asks whether the old religious rules about what is right and wrong are helpful and explores what reason science can tell us about how to be good.

Dawkins journeys from riot-torn inner city London to America's Bible Belt, building a powerful argument that religion's absolutist moral codes fuel lies and guilt.

He finds the most extreme example in a Paris plastic surgery clinic which specialises in making Muslim brides appear to be virgins once again.

But what can science and reason tell us about morality? Through encounters with lemurs, tango dancers, the gay rights campaigner Matthew Parris and the scientist Steven Pinker, Dawkins investigates the deeper roots of moral behaviour in our evolutionary past.

He explores the rituals that surround mating and the science of disgust and taboo. Drawing on crime data and insights from neuroscience, he argues that our evolved senses of reason and empathy appear to be making us more and more moral, even as religious observance declines.



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Tuesday 15th October

Crime; Documentaries

Born to Kill? Serial Killing Saviour
Channel 5, 8:00-9:00pm


At school, Herbert William Mullin's classmates voted him 'most likely to succeed'. By the time he was 25, he had taken the lives of 13 men, women and children and spread panic throughout the coastal community of Santa Cruz.  Mullin would claim to be on an extraordinary mission to save lives through murder. Was this heinous serial killer driven by nature or nurture? We follow in the footsteps of the investigators and experts that had to unravel the mystery and ask them – and, in a unique interview, the murderer himself – was Herbert William Mullin born to kill?


Science and Nature; Documentaries

Order and Disorder with Jim Al-Khalili

BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm, 1/2 - Energy


What is energy? The excellent Jim Al-Khalili tackles one of those questions – children tend to hit upon them – that sound banal on the surface but actually took us a few centuries to answer. Scientists the layman may not have heard of, namely Leibniz, Carnot, Clausius and Boltzmann, are celebrated as we learn how they collectively gave us the first and second laws of thermodynamics.

Prof Al-Khalili’s clear explanations and juicy biographical details are bolstered by winning contributors and some nice visual touches — stark white backdrops cleansing the palate before each new segment, for instance. An entertaining hour later, you’ll finally know what entropy is…

The theoretical physicist tells the story of how the rules of the universe were discovered. In the first programme he explores energy, assessing its importance to daily existence, how it links everything together, and how it helps people make sense of the world.


Factual; Arts, Culture and the Media; Documentaries

The Goddess of Art: Marina Abramovic

BBC4, 10:45-11:45pm


During her 40-year career the grandmother of performance art has, among other things, stabbed her hand with knives and sliced her skin with razorblades. This meditative film pays homage to an artist as controversial as she is celebrated while charting the months leading up to a 2010 exhibition in New York. It was her most physically and psychologically challenging performance to date: Abramovic sat absolutely still for seven and a half hours a day, six days a week for three months.

An insight into the work of the artist as she prepares for a major new retrospective of her work, taking place at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. For nearly 40 years she has endeavoured to create innovative and challenging pieces, sometimes putting her life in danger, but now hopes the upcoming show will encourage a more open-minded approach to art.


Factual; Documentaries

Time Shift: Klezmer

BBC4, 11:45pm-12:45am

Michael Grade narrates the story of klezmer, the 'original party music'. From its origins in Jewish folk music performed at weddings and Bar Mitzvahs, klezmer has now gone global, played from Amsterdam to Australia to audiences who find its spirit and energy hard to resist. Timeshift explores the sounds, influences and shifting fortunes of this infectious music and shows that beneath its joyful strains lies an emotional appeal that you don't need to be Jewish to respond to.


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Wednesday 16th October

Factual; Documentaries

Welcome to India
BBC2, 3/3


With India destined to become the most populous nation on earth by 2026, you've got to be highly tactical in your search for a better life. It's not just about you and your dreams today - it's about the family over generations to come.

Prakash and Mangesh are brothers in their early twenties from an illegal settlement surrounded by the buzz of downtown Mumbai. Prakash is deckhand on a yacht while striving to realise his dream and launch a Bollywood career. But his family are playing the long game, and make it clear his sole purpose is to earn enough to fund in their joint future: his brother Mangesh's course in software engineering. Apparently doomed to be the underdog, an audition does finally come Prakash's way.

Swapan, a merchant in a hectic fish market, works so hard for his family's future that his wife knows he is ruining his health. When preparations for the huge Durga Puja festival - celebrating the cycle of life - adds yet more stress, it is clear that he is simply fulfilling his role in this cycle.

Sujit, who crafts disposable clay tea cups for slim margins in Kolkata, hardly dares dream of seeing his family and newly born daughter hundreds of miles away in his home village. But not prepared to give up, he conjures a business idea that allows them to come to the city - proving that with enough ingenuity, thinking long term can make dreams come true.


Factual; Documentaries

Hallucination: Through the Doors of Perception

BBC Radio 4, 9:00-10:00pm


Hallucinations aren't what they used to be. Time was when reporting a divine vision would bring fame or fortune, and have a queue of people wanting to touch your robe, receive a blessing, or recommend you for sainthood.

The Enlightenment changed all that and nowadays you'd be more at risk of being handed a prescription for a major tranquilliser or even sectioned under the Mental Health Act for reporting what you saw or heard. Hallucinating, in essence, the experience of seeing or hearing (and sometimes smelling or touching) something that by any objective measure, isn't there, has been linked to a wide variety of causes. From the use of mind-altering substances such as LSD, to the complex collection of often distressing symptoms labelled schizophrenia. Neurological damage, dementia, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, stress, narcolepsy - all these and more have been linked to hallucination. But there are also examples of otherwise 'healthy' individuals who have experienced vivid and sometimes distressing hallucinations which for most of the last century, science has largely overlooked. But with the advent of fMRI scanning, where researchers can observe the hallucinating brain in action, it is these "healthy" individuals who are beginning to open the doors of perception and which may provide new insights and treatments for psychosis and schizophrenia.

In this programme, Geoff Watts meets researchers attempting to unlock the mysteries of hallucination as well as some of those who experience the phenomenon. Geoff visits Dr Dominic Ffytche of the Institute of Psychiatry in London, and undergoes a stroboscopic experiment designed to induce hallucinations in subjects whilst their brains are being scanned. We hear some of the vivid accounts from hallucinators, including Doris, who has macular degeneration. Over the last year, her failing eyesight has resulted in an array of objects and images appearing before her with startling clarity, from relatively benign baskets of flowers to the rather more distressing sight of dark, haunting figures sitting by her bed. Her condition is known as Charles Bonnet Syndrome and Dr Ffytche estimates that over 2 million people suffer from this in the UK alone, mostly in silence, due to the fear of being labelled as 'mad'. Geoff also visits Kelly Diederen's lab at Oxford University, which is investigating the origin of auditory hallucinations - hearing voices. Common in people with schizophrenia, Dr Diederen is instead, scanning the brains of so-called "healthy hallucinators", individuals who otherwise lead perfectly functional lives save for the fact that they hear voices on a daily basis. Could they hold the key to understanding and treating a key symptom of psychosis? And Geoff talks to internationally renowned neurologist and author, Dr Oliver Sacks, about his own experience of hallucination as well as his new book on the subject.


Factual

Exposure: Driven from Home

ITV1, 10:35-11:35pm


The information contained herein is strictly embargoed from all press use, non-commercial publication, or syndication until Tuesday October 9, 2012.

This new documentary in the Exposure strand explores life on a housing estate, documenting the story of those who feel driven out by anti-social behaviour.

The programme goes undercover in the Nunsthorpe Estate in Grimsby to reveal the extent of crime and drug dealing, and exposes how a culture of fear governs some streets.

Money is tight, jobs are in short supply, crime and disorder are genuine concerns for residents. This programme shows how some are too frightened to call the police so they pack their bags, while others are determined to stay and improve life for all - including a reformed armed robber who is determined to turn his estate around.


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Thursday 17th October

Science and Technology; Documentaries

Tonight: Is Technology Taking Over Our Lives?
ITV1, 7:30-8:00pm

Forty per cent of adults in the UK now own a smartphone, and the average household has three internet-enabled devices. Such gadgets may have made many activities easier, but some argue that too much dependence on them can be harmful. Jonathan Maitland asks whether technology is changing people's lives for better or worse.


Factual; Science and Nature; Documentaries

Tails You Win: The Science of Chance
BBC4, 9:00-10:00pm


Smart and witty, jam-packed with augmented-reality graphics and fascinating history, this film, presented by Professor David Spiegelhalter, tries to pin down what chance is and how it works in the real world. For once this really is 'risky' television.

The film follows in the footsteps of The Joy of Stats, which won the prestigious Grierson Award for Best Science/Natural History programme of 2011. Now the same blend of wit and wisdom, animation, graphics and gleeful nerdery is applied to the joys of chance and the mysteries of probability, the vital branch of mathematics that gives us a handle on what might happen in the future. Professor Spiegelhalter is ideally suited to that task, being Winton Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk at Cambridge University, as well as being a recent Winter Wipeout contestant on BBC TV.

How can you maximise your chances of living till you're 100? Why do many of us experience so many spooky coincidences? Should I take an umbrella? These are just some of the everyday questions the film tackles as it moves between Cambridge, Las Vegas, San Francisco and... Reading.

Yet the film isn't shy of some rather loftier questions. After all, our lives are pulled about and pushed around by the mysterious workings of chance, fate, luck, call it what you will. But what actually is chance? Is it something fundamental to the fabric of the universe? Or rather, as the French 18th century scientist Pierre Laplace put it, 'merely a measure of our ignorance'.

Along the way Spiegelhalter is thrilled to discover One Million Random Digits, probably the most boring book in the world, but one full of hidden patterns and shapes. He introduces us to the cheery little unit called the micromort (a one-in-a-million chance of dying), taking the rational decision to go sky-diving because doing so only increases his risk of dying this year from 7000 to 7007 micromorts. And in one sequence he uses the latest infographics to demonstrate how life expectancy has increased in his lifetime and how it is affected by our lifestyle choices - drinking, obesity, smoking and exercise.

Did you know that by running regularly for half an hour a day you can expect to extend your life by half an hour a day? So all very well... if you like running.

Ultimately, Tails You Win: The Science of Chance tells the story of how we discovered how chance works, and even to work out the odds for the future; how we tried - but so often failed - to conquer it; and how we may finally be learning to love it, increasingly setting uncertainty itself to work to help crack some of science's more intractable problems.

Other contributors include former England cricketer Ed Smith, whose career was cut down in its prime through a freak, unlucky accident; Las Vegas gambling legend Mike Shackleford, the self-styled 'Wizard of Odds'; and chief economist of the Bank of England, Spencer Dale.


Documentaries

My Tattoo Addiction

Channel 4, 10:00-11:05pm


This film explores the world of tattoos; the artists, the reasons why people have them and what happens when they regret them.

From a drunken dare to tattoo obsessions, My Tattoo Addiction seeks to discover what people's tattoos say about their lives and tells some of the compelling stories that lie beneath the surface of body art.

There are over an estimated 20 million tattoos in Britain and full arm, leg, chest, back and even head tattoos are now more popular than ever.

Reflecting the changing nature of tattoos and the industry, the film follows contributors who have all developed a unique relationship with their tattoos: the ex-holiday rep with 14 tattoos, including several expletives and one of a booze cruise's website emblazoned on his chest; the tattoo addict with facial tattoos; the obsessive Miley Cyrus fan; the 67-year-old seeking to cover up the racist tattoos of his youth, and his tattooist daughter, who has her five dead cats on her back.

The film also hears about the tattoos that people have lived to regret and many tattooists explain that a substantial amount of their business - one estimates as much as 40% - is fixing badly inked or self-administered tattoos.

This uplifting, warm, and often eye-watering documentary discovers, through candid interviews, what leads people to go under the needle, and how fixing a bad tattoo can mean facing more than just the physical reminder of your past.



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