Sweden's Green Power Struggle
In Sweden’s far north, indigenous Sami people say their culture is threatened by carbon-cutting industries. Listen at BBC Sounds.
More like this...
How do you tell the story of your life when you have no memory of the events that shaped you?
At 15, Stephen McAll was a promising musician with a head full of songs. He was booked into a studio to record an album. Then, one night walking home from his girlfriend’s house in East Kilbride, he was attacked and beaten. The assault left him with serious head injuries and diagnoses of psychosis, excruciating cluster headaches, and PTSD.
It also erased almost all of his memories. He says he could recognise faces and names of loved ones, but had lost every experience, event, or occasion in his life up to that point. He couldn't lay down new memories or hold onto information. He could read words on a page, but could not retain their meaning.
Now in his early 40s, Stephen McAll is a successful music artist, and founder of critically-acclaimed folk band Constant Follower. This episode of Illuminated charts Stephen's decades-long journey from devastating injury and memory loss, back to hope and happiness.
Producers: Katie Revell and Dave Howard
Sound design: Jonathan Webb
Executive producer: Dave Howard
Music: Stephen McAll
Excerpt of 'The Root of It' by Norman MacCaig, taken from album The Way I Say It, copyright Claddagh Records
Excerpt of 'Tourist and Landlord' by Norman MacCaig, from a film made for the Scottish Poetry Library called 'Norman MacCaig reads 2 Poems'
Thanks to Shaun Milne
A Bespoken Media Scotland production for BBC Radio 4
Click here to listen.
BBC Stockholm correspondent Maddy Savage on provocative and practical ways Swedes made menstruation less taboo. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct2zjj
This BBC Radio 4 documentary recalls how the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak affected a Herefordshire farming community: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000y6kf
We're at the Black Sea coast on the last night of June. Everything is building up to the sunrise. This is Bulgaria’s ‘July Morning’ observance - somewhere between a counter-cultural musical festival, and a secular pilgrimage marking the start of July. It revolves around reaching the coast in time to meet July’s first sunrise. This celebration has an unlikely origin story - a 1971 song, also called July Morning, by English rock band Uriah Heep.
With thanks to Kmetal Tsonko Tsonev, Alex Boreva, Katie Revell, Andrea Morán and Cicely Fell.
Producer: Carys Wall
Executive producer: Dave Howard
Sound designer: Jonathan Webb
A Bespoken Media Scotland Production
Click here to listen.