Thread: I don't know about you, but staying sane recently hasn't been that easy. I've found it particularly hard to read novels - something that is usually my go-to therapy.

BUT I've always loved radio, and especially radio drama, and...

I was giving someone a few recommendations for things to listen to on BBC Sounds and realised I was getting carried away. I've heard tons of really good stuff in the past year and a lot of it is still online.

So here are some links! (stay tuned - this will take a while).
Firstly, there's Primo Levi's 'The Periodic Table' - unutterably brilliant. If you haven't heard this you've just got to stop what you're doing and do so. https://t.co/CDVfJ66XZU
Then there's Big Girl, Small Town by @michellegallen

Brilliant - probably the best thing I've heard on radio on a long time. A dark secret gradually gets revealed (or not) in small town near the British border in Ireland. https://t.co/OvNwCk7zlJ
For a bit of fun there are two Charles Paris Mysteries - A Doubtful Death / The Cinderella Killer. Bill Nighy plays a slightly louche thespian with a bent for amateur sleuthing. Funny dramas based on old radio plays by Simon Brett updated by Jeremy Front. https://t.co/TDXG8xHd8A
Then there's Orely Farm – by Anthony Trollope. I've discovered everything I like by Trollope through radio and TV adaptations, and do wonder if Dickens is a false-flag operation to obscure easily the best English 19th Century writer. Give this a go: https://t.co/gcG35UiOiU
You know that Grossman's 'Stalingrad' is on the radio already, right? If you didn't, you do now.

Vasilly Grossman's sad gorgeous glimpse of humanity in extremis. https://t.co/0sI6L0EGDe
On a lighter note, Flatshare is a nice modern drama. https://t.co/IqE04aDnNy
This is the only recommendation here that I have some qualms about. Andrew Scott takes on Joyce and spins young Dedalus in a way that is a bit unexpected. I really don't know if I like it or hate it.

But you need to decide for yourself. - https://t.co/tbKlsN90IF
I loved this Middlemarch - a standard BBC adaptation of a great novel. Completely addictive - I've listened to this one a few times all the way thorugh including one day-long marathon. https://t.co/yRZ4eUtHmX
More loveliness. Bernard Cribbins in a radio adaption of one of the most lovely novels around.

Cervantes with a touch of Guareschi's Don Camillo set in post-Franco Spain. Communist Mayor and his friend a Catholic priest find new windmills. https://t.co/Xx4atgeXA8
Radio Daze is a passable cold war thriller set in and around the BBC. If you liked the Thirty Nine Steps this will suit you. https://t.co/HQMEAegkkD
The Wuthering Heights adaption is a straight read through as far as I can see.

Everyone should read this book every few years anyway so treat this as a religious observance if you have to.
https://t.co/oW4kRkyzxi
Then there are the perfect-for-radio short stories.
Here's 100 of them.

The standouts are from de Maupassant. Joyce's Araby is there from Dubliners, & Balzac, Conan Doyle, Kipling, Poe & Ambrose Bierce also get outings.

For all tastes, a treasure trove https://t.co/bCf5V6r8Ug
... along with the master of the Irish short story, William Trevor's Last Stories.
https://t.co/4Yujs2HYM4

More from Culture

Great article from @AsheSchow. I lived thru the 'Satanic Panic' of the 1980's/early 1990's asking myself "Has eveyrbody lost their GODDAMN MINDS?!"


The 3 big things that made the 1980's/early 1990's surreal for me.

1) Satanic Panic - satanism in the day cares ahhhh!

2) "Repressed memory" syndrome

3) Facilitated Communication [FC]

All 3 led to massive abuse.

"Therapists" -and I use the term to describe these quacks loosely - would hypnotize people & convince they they were 'reliving' past memories of Mom & Dad killing babies in Satanic rituals in the basement while they were growing up.

Other 'therapists' would badger kids until they invented stories about watching alligators eat babies dropped into a lake from a hot air balloon. Kids would deny anything happened for hours until the therapist 'broke through' and 'found' the 'truth'.

FC was a movement that started with the claim severely handicapped individuals were able to 'type' legible sentences & communicate if a 'helper' guided their hands over a keyboard.

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