Daisy Dunn

This UFO testimony had me hooked

12 October 2024 9:00 am

In October 1964, a young man was driving to a dance in Hamburg, Pennsylvania, when his radio began to pick…

How Berlin nearly broke Bowie

14 September 2024 9:00 am

This week’s Archive on 4 is a treat for David Bowie fans. Francis Whately, the producer behind several of the…

A fiery examination of the damage wrought by internet culture

17 August 2024 9:00 am

Historically, when a woman was giving birth, she was attended by the women she trusted most, including her child’s prospective…

Do men and women need different podcasts?

20 July 2024 9:00 am

Do men and women need different podcasts? The notion goes against the unisex, every-sex, what-is-sex-anyway culture we have come to…

Rushdie on how the best magical realism transcends fantasy

22 June 2024 9:00 am

Ask the man in the street to quote a line from one of Salman Rushdie’s novels, and he might struggle.…

The jaw-dropping story of the British Museum thefts

25 May 2024 9:00 am

It’s August 2023 when news breaks that artefacts have gone missing, presumed stolen, from the British Museum. I’m about an…

How to live off the land for a year

27 April 2024 9:00 am

Could you live off the land for a year without buying a single thing to eat? This was the challenge…

A Radio 3 doc that contains some of the best insults I’ve ever heard

28 October 2023 9:00 am

A recent Sunday Feature on Radio 3 contained some of the best insults I have ever heard. Contributors to the…

Enjoyable and informative but where’s the drama? Political Currency reviewed

30 September 2023 9:00 am

The first episode of George Osborne and Ed Balls’s new podcast, Political Currency, opened with an old clip of the…

The rise of vampirism in Silicon Valley

2 September 2023 9:00 am

The Immortals, which begins on Radio 4 this week, is not for the faint-hearted. While it professes to be about…

The illiterate poet who produced the world’s greatest epic

12 August 2023 9:00 am

With its carefully calibrated sense of time, the Iliad is clearly the work of a single man and not a ‘rolling snowball’ of different contributions, argues Robin Lane Fox

Beautiful and illuminating: Radio 4’s the Venice Conundrum reviewed

5 August 2023 9:00 am

The playwright Carlo Gozzi marvelled at ‘The spectacle of women turned into men, men turned into women, and both men…

A comedy double act from John Cleese and Justin Welby: the Archbishop Interviews reviewed

8 July 2023 9:00 am

I’m listening to John Cleese talking to Justin Welby in the new series of The Archbishop Interviews when the thought…

Perfect radio for a nation of grumblers: Radio 4’s Room 101 with Paul Merton reviewed

10 June 2023 9:00 am

Welcome back to Room 101, which has returned to the radio – after nearly 30 years on TV – and…

Prayer for the Day is the best thing to wake up to

13 May 2023 9:00 am

As the owner of a radio alarm clock, I could theoretically start listening to the Today programme before I’m even…

Crossing Continents is the best of the BBC

15 April 2023 9:00 am

Ask a member of Generation Z where in the world they would most like to live, and chances are they…

A short introduction to the philosophy of Moomin

18 March 2023 9:00 am

One of the lesser-known schools of modern philosophy is the Philosophy of Moomin. Like Cynicism or Epicureanism, it is difficult…

Blue monkeys, bull-leaping and child sacrifice: why were the Minoans so weird?

4 March 2023 9:00 am

Daisy Dunn on the mysterious Minoans

What a voice Plath had – stern yet somehow musical, long-vowelled, bear-like: Radio 4’s My Sylvia Plath reviewed

18 February 2023 9:00 am

Can you ever truly know a poet? The question arises every time one publishes a collection that looks vaguely confessional.…

Butchered to make a Roman holiday: cruelty to animals in and out of the Colosseum

4 February 2023 9:00 am

Brutality might be expected of a people who fed each other to lions – but it extended even to the elephants the Romans regarded as soulmates

Is Matthew Parris the modern Plutarch? Radio 4’s Great Lives reviewed

18 January 2023 10:00 pm

Whenever I listen to Great Lives on Radio 4, which is often, I am reminded of the gulf between fame…