Category: Science & Technology

Japan: New Ways To Grow Old

When it comes to old people, Japan is a world leader. More than a quarter of its population is over the age of 65 and it currently has 66,000 centenarians, more than any other country. In this 2 part series Toshiko Katayose and Aki Maruyama Leggett explore some of the innovative ways in which Japanese people are adapting to living longer and consider what lessons other countries might learn from Japan’s super-ageing society. (2 x 27′)

Producer Mukti Jain Campion

First broadcast BBC World Service Feb 2018

Radio Choice: The Daily Mail, The Times and the Sunday Times

A Sunparched Country

 

spcCaroline Holmes discovers how Australia is facing up to its worst drought on record and meets people who are at the vanguard of innovative, practical adaptations to the new reality of climate change.  (5 x 14′)

First broadcast April – May 2008 BBC Radio 4

Producer Mukti Jain Campion

 

This series is clear, unpreachy, imaginative, positive.  – Gillian Reynolds, The Daily Telegraph

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Blogging Against Bribery

 

babIn April 2011 the web was set abuzz by the hunger protest of 72 year old Anna Hazare, demanding that the Indian Government draft a tough new anti-corruption bill. His fast in Delhi was supported by campaigners across India and the world, fuelled by Facebook and Twitter to make it the most successful use of the internet and social media in an Indian protest. Mukti Jain Campion reports from Bangalore on this new trend for click-tivism and examines an innovative anti-bribery website called ipaidabribe.com (1 x 28′)

First broadcast  June  2011 BBC Radio 4

Producer Mukti Jain Campion      Executive Producer Charles Miller

 

In top 5 most popular stories of the day on BBC World News website

Bridging the Morphine Gap

 

btmgMukti Jain Campion investigates why, despite producing most of the world’s medical morphine, India’s own people have virtually no access to it and how a hospice in Shrewsbury is helping pioneers of the Indian palliative care movement to overcome the ignorance that surrounds this vital pain relieving-drug. (1 x 28′)

First broadcast March 2008   BBC Radio 4

Producers Mukti Jain Campion and Chris Eldon Lee

Radio 4 Pick of the Week

Hearing ear

Darwin Songs

 

dsEight top folk singers from Britain and the USA are holed up for 7 days in a remote Shropshire farmhouse at the invitation of the Shrewsbury Folk Festival. Their task: to write new songs inspired by the life and work of the eminent naturalist Charles Darwin in time for a public concert at the new Theatre Severn, near where Darwin was born 200 years ago. (1 x 28′)

First broadcast  March 2009  BBC Radio 4

Contributors include: Rachel MacShane of Bellowhead, Stu Hanna of Megson, Emily Smith, Chris Wood, Mark Erelli, Krista Detor, Karine Polwart and Jez Lowe. Randall Keynes – great, great, grandson of Charles Darwin, Jon King – director, Shrewsbury Darwin Festival

Producer Chris Eldon Lee        

Radio choice: The Daily Telegraph, The Times and The Guardian

Designing The Impossible

 

dtiHow would you like to experience a volcanic eruption in your living room? Could you create dark energy in your kitchen sink? Or, perhaps you dream of becoming an astronaut?

Enter the surreal world of Nelly Ben Hayoun, acclaimed designer of fantasy experiences, who brings the thrill of cutting edge science into everyday life. (1 x 28′)

First broadcast Sept  2013   BBC Radio 4

 

Contributors: Thrill engineer Brendan Walker, Foley Artist Sue Harding, former NASA astronaut trainer Annette Rodrigues, musician Arthur Jeffes and the International Space Orchestra

Producer / Presenter Mukti Jain Campion

The Drawings on the Wall

 

dotwArchaeologist Dr George Nash of Bristol University visits five of Western Europe’s most significant prehistoric rock art sites to examine whether the modern mind can ever successfully interpret the mysterious graffiti created by our ancestors. ( 5 x 14′)

First broadcast February 2008   BBC Radio 4

Producer Chris Eldon Lee

 

 

1.The Legless Ladies of Creswell Crags  Church Hole cave  in Derbyshire has spectacular images of prehistoric animals. But who was carving them and why? And what is the modern equivalent?

2. Graffiti Gorge George Nash meets Dr Mila Simoes de Abreu, whose bitterly-fought campaign in the Côa Valley saved thousands of prehistoric tribal rock carvings from being lost under the waters of a proposed reservoir.

3. Irish Illusions Dr Muiris O’Sullivan of University College, Dublin inside Fourknocks Passage Grave, Eire

4. The Master of Paspardo Italian archaeologists Professor Angelo Fossati and Dr Andrea Arca explore the biggest rock art area in Europe.

5.Architecture of Death Mike Yates and rock art photographer Adam Stanford visit Barclodiady-Gawres Neolithic burial chamber in Anglesey

See the BBC website for the series.

Radio 4 Pick of the Week

Jugaad: The Rise of Frugal Innovation

 

jugMukti Jain Campion explores the new global interest in Indian-style ingenuity. She meets some of India’s most famous jugaad innovators and discovers how their ideas and products may soon be going global. These range from grassroots innovations such as the Royal Enfield Bullet motorbike adaptation that turns it into a plough, the clay fridge that doesn’t need electricity to products developed for cash-strapped consumers everywhere such as the Aakash, the world’s cheapest computer tablet. (1 x 28′)

First broadcast October  2013   BBC Radio 4

Producer Mukti Jain Campion    Executive Producer Charles Miller

Radio Choice: The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, The Daily Mail

Mukti Jain Campion makes really good radio programmes, ones that have an eye for a good story and an ear for the right way of telling it. – Gillian Reynolds, Daily Telegraph

e-Villages

ev

Mukti Jain Campion visits five pioneering projects that are bringing the internet to rural communities on the Indian subcontinent. (5 x 14′)

First broadcast June 2002  BBC Radio 4

Producer Mukti Jain Campion

These stories will amaze – Gillian Reynolds, The Daily Telegraph

1: Putting the I See into ICT    Telemedicine comes to a south Indian village bringing eye care to the poor.

2: Making Waves A fishing community near Pondicherry where the internet is helping to catch fish and save lives.

3: Wise Women of the Web A women’s self-help group is connecting the village to the world through an internet centre in the local temple.

4: Browsing the Horizon  Kothmale Community Radio has developed an innovative way of giving villages of Sri Lanka’s highlands access to the web.

5: Reducing Bureaucracy to Byte Size  The villagers of Dhar are discovering the power of the internet in getting better local government.

Radio Choice: The Times, The Independent, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Sunday Times,The Sunday Telegraph, The Mail on Sunday 

Radio 4 Pick of the Week

Frozen in Time

 

fitReminiscences of life on the polar ice as writer Chris Eldon Lee travels with a party of British Antarctic Survey veterans to revisit the “elaborate garden sheds” in which they spent their winters during the ’50s and ’60s. In near permanent subzero temperatures these huts have become museums, literally frozen in time. (1 x 28′)

First broadcast  December 2001 BBC Radio 4

Producer  Chris Eldon Lee

A real taste of adventure – Peter Barnard, Radio Times

 

Radio 4 Pick of the Week