PODCAST · society
Between the Ears
by BBC Radio 3
Innovative and thought-provoking features that make adventurous use of sound and explore a wide variety of subjects. Made by leading radio producers.
Episodes
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Sound First and Words First
Emerging talent from two BBC talent development schemes - Sound First and Words First - collaborate to create new soundworlds of spoken word and sound design. Evocative, thoughtful and challenging, new poems recorded at the BBC Contains Strong Language festival in Leeds by the Words First spoken...
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From Dusk Till Dawn
Ian Rawes (1965-2021) was a sound recordist best known for creating the London Sound Survey, a huge collection of his recordings of the sounds of London. Before his death, Ian was recording the course of the night across the wilder places of East Anglia. He made these field recordings in remote...
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Deep Listening in Japan
A sonic journey into Japan's unique culture of music cafés and listening bars. Places where people come together to indulge in deep listening in audiophile quality, with venues for fans of everything from classical, jazz, to electronic music. This culture has its origins in the time prior to the...
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Imagining the Permafrost
The permafrost is a thriving ecosystem, teaming with life, mythology, histories and futures, hidden just below the surface. Yet unlike tropical rainforests or the deep oceans, this frozen expanse rarely appears in the cultural imagination. Curator Sophie J Williamson ventures on a journey to...
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Dying Embers: The UK's last Coal Fired Power Stations
The UKs last remaining coal fired power stations are about to close, bringing to an end our use of coal to produce our electricity. West Burton is one of the last coal fired power stations still generating electricity, and Andrew Carter was able to record a soundscape there before it falls silent...
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The Beach
In this piece, the fool stands at the edge of the cliff, looking up at the sky. She asks herself, “How did I get here?” And also, “Where am I meant to go?” Part of our recurring series of miniature audio-works for Radio 3's home for adventurous radio-making - Between the Ears. In this series…
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Beyond the Box
Filling out a form, Mido is confronted with a series of boxes to tick. Two familiar boxes emerge from the crowd and stand side by side. One says ‘Male’. The other says ‘Female’. Beyond the Box is an intimate and inquisitive immersion into the nature of these boxes and what life is like living...
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feeling body
feeling body is part of a series of pieces reflecting on the physical and psychological experiences during and after an extended period of illness (long-COVID). The work draws on multiple symbolisms, from The Nine of Swords in the Minor Arcana, to the undercurrent of water, where long baths were…
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The House in a House
Marta Medvešek explores a local legend she encounters on her summer vacation in Bol, Croatia – the story of the House in a House. A magical place where imagination meets reality, and fate–possibility. The House in a House forms part of our recurring series of miniature audio-works for Radio 3's...
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Khangela
Researchers Bongani Kona and Catherine Boulle have spent the last year piecing together the story of one woman’s decades-long search to find the remains of her father, a South African political activist who died in 1966. In between visiting old prisons and sifting through archival collections,...
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The Virtual Symphony
The joys and horrors of the internet, evoked by stories, sounds and an exciting new electronic and vocal work composed by Kieran Brunt. Opens with an introduction by the composer. 30 years ago, Tim Berners-Lee created the very first website. This powerful edition of Between the Ears explores how...
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Rhythms of Remembering
A radiophonic exploration of The Gododdin, a lament for the fallen, bringing to life one of the oldest, yet enduringly relevant, treasures of European literature The Gododdin occupies a unique place in the literature of the United Kingdom. The oldest Welsh poem - a battle elegy from around 600AD…
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The Nightingales of Berlin
In early summer, as darkness descends, Berlin resonates with the sound of nightingales. You can hear their haunting, ever-changing songs in parks, woodlands and gardens across the city. From Kreuzberg to Treptower, Tempelhof to Hasenheide, Berlin has become a refuge for one of the most celebrated...
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Telling the Bees
Maria Margaronis surrenders to the life of the hive to explore the ancient folk customs around the telling the bees. The lives of bees and humans have been linked ever since the first hominid tasted a wild hive’s honey. Neither domesticated nor fully wild, honey bees are key to our survival, a...
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Sinking Feelings
Bogs have always captured the human imagination, inspiring both fear and fiction. Between the Ears wades into this treacherous netherworld in a search for the lost and found. These liminal spaces have a unique and troubling consistency: neither absolutely water, nor absolutely earth, but a...
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Flight of the Monarch
Composer and sound artist Rob Mackay traces the migratory route of the monarch butterfly, from the Great Lakes in Canada to the forests of Mexico, via the shifting coastal landscape of the eastern shores of Virginia. Along the route of this sonic road movie, Rob meets people working to protect…
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Brief Encounters
Stories of real life chance encounters, inspired by the 75th anniversary of the much-loved film Brief Encounter. Introduced by Matthew Sweet. Using different recordings of Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 2 - which famously underscores the 1945 film - Between the Ears reflects on how a chance...
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The Rising Sea Symphony
The dramatic effects of climate change evoked in words, sounds and a powerful new musical work. Over four movements of rich and evocative music, the listener is transported to the front line of the climate crisis, with stories from coastal Ghana – where entire villages are being swept away by the...
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The Vet at the End of the World
Angry bulls, furious penguins, enraged seals! In the shadow of the volcano 'Between the Ears' gets a microphone close up to enjoy the action, as veterinarian Jonathan Hollins, gives us a taste of life with the remote animals and sea life of Tristan Da Cunha. On an island of a population of around...
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Diorama Drama
Before the magic of photography, the dazzle of cinema - there was the diorama. Frenchman Louis Daguerre is known primarily as one of the inventors of photography - but before the magic of light fixed on paper there was the diorama, which some call the precursor to the moving image, and cinema.…
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The Virtually Melodic Cave
To view the VR experience in 360 on your smartphone, either click or paste the following link into your search browser: https://youtu.be/RHt6QIJI9cU also available from the GSA SimVis YouTube channel. For the first time, a virtual reality experience and radio documentary will bring to life the...
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Container Ship Karaoke
Is karaoke the modern sea shanty? Containers are the nearly invisible carriers of 90% of the goods on earth – yet we know so little about them, or the people on board. The crew who power globalisation, are unsung heroes. Now we hear them sing, and capture something of that strange, lonely, heroic...
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The Letter
Julia Hollander, her brother Tom and father Tony tell the story of a letter from the BBC, which saved their family, spawning a rich legacy of Czech music in the UK. March 1939. Broadcaster Hans Hollander, grandfather of writer and musician Julia and actor Tom, receives a letter that becomes his...
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The In-Between Land
The magical North Pennines landscape of deaf shepherd-poet Josephine Dickinson, which inspires her life and work and is the fertile backdrop to her real and imagined sound world. Welcome to her remote hill farm near Alston – near the highest market town in England – where Josephine looks after…
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The NHS Symphony
The patterns and flows of life in the NHS captured in immersive stereo, with specially commissioned music sung by NHS staff and The Bach Choir. In the maternity unit at Birmingham's Heartlands Hospital, the heart rate of an unborn child gives cause for concern. Across town at Queen Elizabeth...
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The Mind's Eye
You can never see through someone else's eyes, but can we, by stealth, tap into people's visual imaginations? The mind's eye is something most of us take for granted - the 'secret cinema' inside our mind, turning sounds into shapes, characters into faces - it sometimes seems like a sixth sense.…
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Right Between the Ears
When Ken Hollings underwent surgery at Moorfields Hospital for a detached retina he experienced an unexpected symphony inside his head, right between the ears. The sounds have haunted him ever since. Musician Martin McCarrick also found himself in a terrifying and unsettling world of head noise...
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The Sheep of Art
What's the difference between the sheep found in art and real sheep? In a sheep bell-rich melange, we go in hunt of the real thing, with sheep farmer, author of world best-seller "Driving Over Lemons" and ex-Genesis member Chris Stewart, and academic, writer and potential Bo-Peeper Alexandra...
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Drever, Ligo
The detection of Gravitational Waves in 2015 was hailed as an astounding breakthrough in the world of physics and a triumph for the. LIGO project, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory. But the discovery was also a triumph for the men and women who had worked at LIGO during...
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The Three Second Rule
The three second rule - once more like folklore or hearsay - has been discovered to be the happiest condition for the human brain. In this imaginative journey through the synapses a work, rest and play - Susan Aldworth, Artist in Residence at York University, slips inside a scanner, under the...
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The Plot for Karl Marx
Karl Marx's penultimate journey was as a corpse in a coffin being trundled up the very steep hill of Highgate to what should have been his last resting place - a three-guinea plot in Highgate's East Cemetery - in March 1883, buried alongside his wife Jenny von Westphalen. The next year a memorial...
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The Shanty Boat
'Hey man, you're living my dream...!' The cry rings out once, twice a day from people who catch sight of the shanty boat as it wends its way down the back waters of the USA. Hand built out of reclaimed redwood by artist, anarchist, and surprisingly practical river boat captain Wes Modes - his…
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Danu - Dead Flows the Don
'The old pagan gods, when ousted by Christianity, took refuge in the rivers, where they still dwell' - Old English saying David Bramwell has a fascination and fear of water. He grew up by a water tower, close to the heart of Doncaster: a place of mystery and wonder to him, the highest building in...
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Rain
Alice Oswald's radio poem Rain was commissioned by Radio 3 in 2016 as part of the 70th anniversary celebrations. Written and performed by the poet, Rain was inspired by a visit to Romford Essex, which experienced a dramatic sudden rainstorm in the early hours of June 23 that year. The poem…
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Requiem
The innovative composer and electronic music pioneer Matthew Herbert physically deconstructs the instruments of a string ensemble while they play one of Beethoven's late string quartets, considered by many to be the epitome of chamber music. In a new commission, with an original performance by…
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Seelonce, Seelonce: A Call for Help
Last summer the musician Tim van Eyken had to make a distress call while afloat. He was struck by how, at the moment of greatest tension and stress, the language used was calm itself. Instructions were simple and clear. Indeed, during the crisis language itself almost disappeared through the...
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White Rabbits in Sussex
In a melting magical funnel of musical love (and the odd bit of reverb), musician David Bramwell investigates the unlikely story of how, in 1969, an amateur dramatic production of "Alice Through the Looking Glass", starring a young Martha Kearney, became one of the most sought-after psychedelic...
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Alice at Crackpot Hall
Newcastle writer David Almond investigates the story of a wild child who was said to roam the Yorkshire Dales near Crackpot Hall in the 1930s - and makes a surprising discovery. Crackpot Hall is an ancient, ruined farmhouse near the village of Keld, which lies on the crossroads of the Pennine Way...
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Wake Up Baby
A baby sleeps. A man in another room watches her on a screen. Her loving father? No. This man does not know this baby. He's in another country, thousands of miles away. And, each night, he watches a different baby. Wake Up, Baby! is an atmospheric journey into the sometimes unsettling world of...
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Into the Valley
Monument Valley, which straddles the state lines of Arizona and Utah, is a place most of us have seen and never visited or listened to. The 'true West' of John Ford movies and endless car adverts. Mark Burman takes his microphone through the red dust of history with Navajo guide Larry Y. Holiday....
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School for Harmonicas
Imagine a town of harmonica players; sounds a bit surreal? Now 'Between the Ears' gives listeners a chance to hear the harmonica as a truly virtuoso instrument, always an instrument of the people - portable, affordable and playable. Acclaimed poet Kim Addonizio turns harmonica student, heading to...
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The Simpson Ferrograph
Early in 2013 record producer Dan Carey bought a vintage tape machine at a charity shop in Streatham, South London. The Ferrograph recorder came with a box of 7-inch tapes containing an audio documentation of the previous owner's social life as a young man in the 1950s at a time when reel to reel...
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The 21-Gun Salute Suit
A funny and moving autobiographical documentary about one of Britain's most brilliant performance poets, John Cooper Clarke; a revealing look at John's relationship with clothes, monkeys and fatherhood. John takes us to a gig, a Savile Row tailors and a journey into his mind exploring his...
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Coma Songs
A meditation on the cultural representation of comas through music, poetry and interviews with the families of people who have a suffered brain injury. There are several thousand people in vegetative or minimally conscious states in the UK and, as medical interventions to save the body improve,...
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Music in the Great War: Wilfred Owen - The Soldiers' Poet
Wilfred Owen wrote that he was a 'poets' poet'. He also wrote, in the preface to 'War Poems', 'Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War'. Owen is, then, a soldiers' poet, and the people who figure in his poems are all soldiers. In this Between the Ears,...
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Dear Mr Eliot: When Groucho Met Tom
Lenny Henry stars in a musical fantasy written by Jakko M Jakszyk and Lenny Henry, woven round the real-life 1964 dinner encounter between the greatest poet in the English language of the twentieth century, TS Eliot and the legendary star of A Night at the Opera, Duck Soup and Horse Feathers,...
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How Was Your Day Joe?
Joe is home from school. "How was your day Joe?" asks his mum Emma (the producer of the programme). But Joe, and many like him on the autistic spectrum, can't always find the words to summarise their day, or even make sense of the question. Yet later on, they may come round to offering an answer....
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Play and Record
Poet Paul Farley imagines himself a sound-recordist taping the Garden of Eden and recalls the impoverished soundscape of his childhood. Growing on the edge of Liverpool in the 1960s and given a simple cassette recorder for a birthday present he went in search of the sounds of the superbs inspired...
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Re:Union
The idea of a nation coming into being: in the track and weave of an oval ball. Owen Sheers' new sound poem explores the complex, often difficult relationship between rugby and modern Welsh identity. "Re: Union" fuses the violent, lyrical soundscape of Welsh rugby and its culture with a…
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Final Movement: Art Values
Shadowplay offers a four-part 'symphony of voices' to celebrate 20 years of Between the Ears. It explores the shadows that may fall between the appearance of things and their reality. Making use of the full palette available to the radio producer - documentary, fiction, music, pure sound - four...
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Between the Ears have?
Between the Ears currently has 59 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Between the Ears about?
Innovative and thought-provoking features that make adventurous use of sound and explore a wide variety of subjects. Made by leading radio producers.
How often does Between the Ears release new episodes?
Between the Ears has 59 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Between the Ears?
You can listen to Between the Ears on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Between the Ears?
Between the Ears is created and hosted by BBC Radio 3.
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