Amazing Radio: Conversations from a Long Marriage

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Yesterday I asked the question “Does anyone listen to radio drama any more?”. And I made the point that if you don’t you should. I’ve been listening to Conversations from a Long Marriage on BBC Radio 4. It’s what you get if you have a couple of actors and a write at the top of their game and you turn them loose.

It’s exactly what it says in the title. The bickering of a married couple (probably a tiny bit older than me) about life, the universe and how they get on with each other. There’s a story of sorts, with stuff happening along the way, but for me the really great bit is the way that the actors inhabit their roles, and the delightful detail that brings it all to life.

I guess it works best for someone like me who happens to have been married for rather a long time, and can relate to a lot of the content. But I reckon it would work for anyone. It’s very funny, and you build up a real affection for the characters. It’s hugely impressive that the production can build up a whole universe out of just two people talking.

At last, I’ve found a reason to run the BBC Sounds app that they keep going on about on every TV and Radio program. Seek it out.

Rob on Radio Humberside

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The light first thing this morning was rather good

This morning I was up bright and early (oh, OK, just early) and heading into town to review the papers for the Radio Humberside breakfast program. I love doing radio. Apparently I have the perfect face for it. Anyhoo, I settled down with a pile of newsprint and started looking for some vaguely happy stories. There’s so much depressing stuff in the news at the moment that I figured folks would rather hear something a bit uplifting with their cereal.

It turns out that this was surprisingly hard to do. Papers seem to have got a lot more miserable over the years. However, I found a few things to talk about, wandered into the studio and did my bit, which was great fun.

Now, onto building some LoRa nodes….

I Robot on BBC Drama

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When I was growing up I read a lot of science fiction. And pretty much my favourite author was Isaac Asimov. If you've never read any of his stuff, I envy you. You've got some great stuff out there to discover.

His stuff is brilliant. You can say what you like about the writing style (some of it hasn't aged particularly well) but the ideas behind it were always top notch. He was particularly good when writing about robots, and will go down in history for his "Three Laws of Robotics" which is becoming increasingly relevant today. Seek out his stuff. Read it. Enjoy.

Isaac Asimov liked writing short stories and wrote a bunch of really good ones which explored the Three Laws and how they can be bent. And the BBC have just made a series of 15 minute drama presentations of the best ones.  They are really, really good.

Rob on BBC Radio 5 Live

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Well, that was exciting. I got a call on Friday to ask if I'd like to talk about floppy disks and nuclear weapons on Radio 5 Live's Hit List program which lists the top 40 internet stories of the week. I said yes.

Floppy disks came in at number 31 or so. You can find the program by clicking the image above. Then move forwards to 24 minutes 50 or so and you get five minutes of me, in which I manage to invent a new word and make my own sound effects. Awesome fun.