Illuminated

BBC BBC

Illuminated

A weekly Society and Culture podcast

Good podcast? Give it some love!
Illuminated

BBC BBC

Illuminated

Episodes
Illuminated

BBC BBC

Illuminated

A weekly Society and Culture podcast
Good podcast? Give it some love!
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Episodes of Illuminated

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As their 30th birthday approaches, Saba Husain (they/them) receives an unexpected and life changing box. It contains ‘the life’ of their mum; never before seen diaries, love letters, poems, photos of a person who died when Saba was born, 29 yea
In his memoir of surviving the brutal apartheid prison Robben Island, South African activist Sedick Isaacs recalls an extraordinary event about which little has been recorded - "the creation and training of the eighty-member choir [of political
How many questions have you asked today? How many were rhetorical, “boomer-asking”, passive/aggressive or just boringly functional?Did you know that our appetites for question-asking peak at the age of five, then steadily diminish? That kids as
If a person dies without friends or relatives, the authorities can instigate a 'public health funeral'.Once called pauper's funerals - the services are referred to on the administrative form with a poignant phrase: "Nobody to Call."These funer
Welcome to the feast! We’re invited to a traditional Georgian ‘Supra’ to immerse ourselves in the magic of Georgian polyphonic singing. The table groans with food, the wine flows, and the singing fills the heart. Led by toastmaster Levan Bita
Author Owen Hatherley goes in search of the lost future of Solent City – the extraordinary plan, devised in the mid-1960s at the height of the post-war modernisation of Britain, to join the historic city-ports of Southampton and Portsmouth with
Ian Burke was not someone who grew up riding buses. His school was in walking distance, his parents had a car.But one night in his 20s, he had a dream which began a love affair with bus travel.Any spare moment is now spent exploring undiscovere
Estimates from NSPCC suggest around 1 in 20 children in the UK have been sexually abused. This documentary brings together survivors whose experiences span different backgrounds, relationships and generations - challenging misconceptions that a
The story of how a heterosexual, Indian immigrant to England, ignorant of the gay scene, ended up delivering heartfelt eulogies to 30 homosexual men at the height of the AIDS crisis. The experiences of Suresh Vaghela take us behind the headli
The 2001 Foot and Mouth crisis forced North Devon farmers into a traumatic 6 month lockdown, cut off from their neighbours and living with the death and destruction of their animals. When restrictions were finally eased, the ringing of church b
Over 80% of people in Britain choose to be cremated rather than buried after death and the scattering of a loved one's ashes is a ritual that's increasingly familiar to many of us.In a lyrical and bittersweet meditation on grief and memory, wri
Memory is fragile. We are driven to capture it. But is this possible when the memories of the person we love have fragmented?Julian’s mother has no memory. Both her long and short term memory were destroyed by different viruses. His mother stil
Siblings Sam and Bon Stone are angry. Sam directs her anger inwards while Bon’s anger can be explosive. Through sharing parts of their lives with each other for the first time, they explore how we process anger and whether we can change it.With
For some, burnout feels like an unravelling - a slow, creeping dissolution where the threads of your life and identity loosen and fray until you are completely undone. For others, it’s a breaking point - a sharp, sudden, collapse where everythi
Distracted, privatised, enchanted - do you ever think about how you listen? For the last 20 years, sound anthropologist Dr Tom Rice has been collecting different ways of listening from the world’s leading sound experts. He’s gathered more than
What drives us? What makes us who we are? For one of the BBC’s most experienced foreign correspondents, the multi-award-winning Mike Thomson, it was a near-death experience in Australia’s worst natural disaster this century. Having been kicked
It's the most intimate moment of the Radio 4 schedule: The late-night Shipping Forecast, a prelude to the close-down of the station, read every night at 00:48. But who is really listening along, and why? Guided by Radio 4 Announcer Al Ryan, we'
Ceefax has just reached its 50th birthday, and to celebrate this unique golden anniversary, the BBC's once-mighty teletext news service is receiving the greatest gift of all - the gift of life, courtesy of the greatest novelty politician in the
Every year's end, as the days shorten and the nights grow darker, you might be fortunate enough to hear a distinctive knock at your door. Upon opening it, you'll be met with a group of Guisers - men in disguise - here to perform their mystery p
The best stories have a certain WTF factor.. a weird little fact that draws you in…something you can’t ignore because it’s so contrary to what you previously thought. So it was for Geoff Lloyd when he heard that the story that Karaoke was inv
For 2000 years beneath layer upon layer of peat, the remains of two bodies - a man and a woman - lay buried in the earth. Within 12 months of each other, they were discovered on Lindow Moss, the cut-over peat bog in Cheshire. It's now 40 years
Mike is a carpenter, a boat builder, and a keen amateur sailor. Now, in his 60s he feels the time has come for a big adventure, so he signs on as crew for a transatlantic sailing voyage. But when the skipper turns to tyranny and his only ally o
Composer Aidan Tulloch is fascinated by the physical process of making music – but fears he knows very little. He gains a unique insight from some of the most precise and gifted technicians in the country – members of the Association of Blind P
The story of Anthony Ray Hinton who spent years on death row for crimes he didn't commit, with a soundtrack composed by Harvey Brough and performed by Vox Holloway Community Choir.In June 1988, Mr Hinton was convicted of two murders, in one of
Are we ever really alone nowadays, what with the extraordinary velocity of contemporary social circulation, whether this be the madness of the crowds, or the relentless churn of social media? Does anyone really experience reclusion? A conscious
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