Alien Worlds

Download Part 1

Download Part 2

Password: bbc4free.blogspot.com

"Slowly rotating, at the edge of deep space, one thousand kilometers beyond the atmosphere of 21st century Earth, is the Arthur C. Clark astronomical observatory Star Lab. Here, Star Lab research director Mora Cassiday, along with scientists and technicians of the International Space Authority, watch over the countless suns, planets and star systems that fill the universe."

Alien Worlds was produced and broadcast in 1979 and deals with the interplanetary peacekeepers on Star Lab. It was created by Lee Hansen, who also produced and directed all 26 broadcast episodes in two seasons. The series was syndicated and both seasons were often broadcast back-to-back.

The science fiction show was first syndicated by Watermark Inc. after Lee Hansen was hired as their creative director. After advancing the concept of an action-adventure dramatic radio series, Lee began developing the concept in the fall of 1978. Watermark premiered the first episode, "The Sun Stealers", on January 7, 1979.

The series gained popularity thanks to its relatable characters, full symphonic soundtrack, realistic sound effects, high production values and documentary style format. Eventually over 500 top-rated US FM radio stations, along with stations in New Zealand and Australia aired the series. Between 1979 and 1980, 26 half-hour programs were broadcast at various times on weekends, where they gained favorable worldwide press acclaim. Alien Worlds was soon heard on a weekly basis by millions of fans and was eventually carried by over 1500 top-rated FM radio stations worldwide. The series' sponsor was Peter Paul, Cadbury which advertised Cadbury Caramello chocolates touting their caramel centers.The ISA, or International Space Authority, is a governing body of space development and exploration. Organized by all earth nations, it advances humans into deep space. Their base is officially named "The Arthur C. Clarke Astronomical Observatory" or "Starlab." Commissioner White commands the base, and under his command aboard Starlab are Research Director Dr. Maura Cassidy along with Starlab's Director of Operations, Jerry Lyden, and two ISA Pilots affectionately know as "rocket jockies" Captains Jon Graydon and Buddy Griff.


Cast
* Roger Dressler as Narrator & Commissioner White
* Linda Gary as Maura Cassidy
* Bruce Phillip Miller as SET Captain Jon Graydon
* Cory Burton as Starlab Controller Jerry Lyden
* Chuck Olsen as SET Captain Buddy Griff

Alan Watts - Out of Your Mind

Download Here

Password: bbc4free.blogspot.com

In order to come to your senses, Alan Watts often said, you sometimes need to go "out of your mind." Perhaps more than any other teacher in the West, this celebrated author, former Anglican priest, and self-described "spiritual entertainer" was responsible for igniting the passion of countless wisdom seekers to the spiritual and philosophical delights of Asia and India. Now, with Out of Your Mind: Essential Listening from the Alan Watts Audio Archives, you are invited to immerse yourself in twelve of this legendary thinker's pinnacle teaching sessions on how to break through the limits of the rational mind and begin expanding your awareness and appreciation for "the Great Game" unfolding all around us.

Out of Your Mind brings you six complete seminars carefully selected from hundreds of recordings by Alan Watts' son and archivist Mark Watts that capture the true scope of this brilliant teacher in action. On these superb, digitally restored recordings, you will delve into Alan Watts' favorite pathways out of "the trap of conventional awareness," including:

• "The art of the controlled accident"what happens when you stop taking your life so seriously and start enjoying it with complete sincerity

• How we come to believe "the myth of myself" that we are "skin-encapsulated egos" separate from the world around us and how to transcend that illusion

• Why we must fully embrace chaos and the Void to find our deepest purpose

• Unconventional and refreshing insights into the deeper principles of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Western philosophy, plus much, much more

Whether you're completely new to Alan Watts or familiar with his work, here is a rare opportunity to experience him at his best improvising brilliantly before a live audience on Out of Your Mind: Essential Listening from the Alan Watts Audio Archives.

The Nature of Consciousness (CDs 1, 2) Have you ever seen an "inch" or touched an "hour?" Alan Watts reveals how our idea of the "self" is no more real than these abstract concepts and how to "untrain" ourselves from its limitations.

The Web of Life (CDs 3, 4) The universe is an infinite and intertwined tapestry of phenomena, yet most of us experience only a few spare threads. Look more closely at the "warp and weave" of creation, suggests Watts, and you may discover an astonishing wealth of meaning.

The Inevitable Ecstasy (CDs 5, 6) Pleasure and suffering, fear and exuberance Watts explores the surprising relationships among these universal experiences and the "inevitable ecstasy" they lead to.

The World As Just So (CDs 7, 8) "Any lecture on Zen will always be something of a hoax," begins Alan Watts, "because it deals with a domain of experience that by nature cannot be talked about!" Watts then proceeds to offer us a remarkably lucid and immediate explanation of this enigmatic "pathless path."

The World As Self (CDs 9, 10) At the heart of Hinduism, India's expansive spiritual world view, is the idea that we are all manifestations of one Actor "playing hide and seek" with Itself. Here, listeners explore the great unfolding drama we've cast ourselves in, and where the plot may be leading.

The World As Emptiness (CDs 11, 12) This third offering in Alan Watts' celebrated "World As" series invites us to face our fears about death -the Void that we normally run from-to discover that "we are as much the ocean as we are the individual waves on the water."

Megaupload is Dead, I'm replacing some links.

Dear Readers,

Some links to our modest audio archive were on megaupload, I'm re-uploading them to another file hosting site. It'll take more than some mildly intimidating bureaucracy to stop our enthusiasm for great broadcasts and audio stories.

Sincerely,


Your Archivist.

BBC R4 Documentary - Swing When You're Laughing

Download Here

Humphrey Lyttleton examines the links between
comedy and jazz '... two art forms that have
more in common than you might first imagine.'


The above paragraph tanslated: ZIB BAP BEDOODAP BAY ZIBBIDY BOOPAP!

Another unrelated note, my brother and I can sing all the scat in that jungle book song.

Produced by Stephen Garner
Presented by Humphrey Lyttleton
Broadcast October 21, 2003

BBC R4 - Blue Notes, Cold Nights

Download Here

Thanks to films like "Round Midnight" we all know about black American musicians escaping racism and putting down roots in Paris. But the story of the African-American and African presence in Scandinavia has been one of Europe's best-kept secrets. Country blues singer-guitarist Eric Bibb, who learned his craft in the coffee houses of Greenwich Village but has spent much of his career in Sweden and Finland, explains how jazz and blues players such as trumpeter Don Cherry - step-father of R&B star Neneh Cherry - built new lives in exile. Dexter Gordon - the star of '"Round Midnight" was one of the pioneers, settling in Copenhagen in the early 1960s. Over the decades generous state support for musicians has helped the music scene in the region to flourish. But now that the host nations are facing their own immigration crisis, will musicians continue to find a welcome? And how easy is it to sustain creativity thousands of miles from your roots?

BBC R4 - Yeti's Finger

Download Here

High up a remote Himalayan Mountain in Nepal is a Buddhist monastery. The monks say there is no doubt yeti's roam the high forest, they see and hear them and they sometimes even attack people. The tantalising prospect of being the first to prove that this mythical ape like creature actually exists has been the goal many explorers - but the beast has always evaded capture. Then the discovery of a supposed yeti's hand kept in the monastery set off a remarkable chain of events that drew in a mountain explorer, an American oil tycoon, a Hollywood film star and a high tech lab for forensic science in Scotland. But is it a yeti?

Some people will go to extraordinary lengths to be the first. Tom Slick, an American oil tycoon, had the money and the desire to try to prove that yetis really do exist. He used his vast wealth to mount expeditions, sending off climber and explorer Peter Byrne into the most remote areas of the Himalayas to follow any leads he came across, and one seemed worth investigating further - a hand of a "yeti" in Pangboche monastery in Nepal. Byrne did a deal with the monks and replaced one finger of the hand with a human finger and arranged to have the yeti finger smuggled back to London.

How the finger actually reached London is a most bizarre tale that involved Hollywood film star James Stewart concealing it in his wife's lingerie case. And then the trail went cold. Slick died, Byrne went onto other things and the finger was lost to the world until it was found by chance in a forgotten collection of curiosities in the Royal College of Surgeons in London. New scientific techniques are now applied to see if the yeti's finger really is what it claims to be - or if not - what on earth has a finger like that?

Presenter: Matthew Hill
Producer: Mary Colwell
Editor: Julian Hector

BBC R4 - Bob Kingdom's 'Dylan Thomas: Return Journey'

Download Here

Bob Kingdom's one man show about Dylan Thomas based

on Thomas' prose and verse.

Kingdom gives what used to be called a 'tour de force'

[a useful phrase which seems to have dropped from use],

and shows that, in another life, Dylan Thomas could have

made a good living on the stand-up circuit.

.

BBC WS - Your World: Down and Out in Paris and London

Download Here

With a fierce debate raging across Europe over public finances, this documentary has gone back to basics to compare conditions for the poor today with life before the introduction of the welfare state.

We've re-traced the steps of the author George Orwell who, in 1929, stepped from his own life of privilege into a battle against dirt and hunger, for his work published as Down and Out in Paris and London.

When he lived in France, Orwell was often starving and desperate for money, but when he crossed the Channel to seek his fortune in Britain, the novelist lived the life of those who'd fallen even lower - he became a tramp on London's streets.

This of course, was more than 80 years ago - on the eve of the Great Depression - yet, as Emma Jane Kirby found out, as Europe tries to fend off another financial crisis, it's still very possible to follow Orwell's footsteps.

BBC R2 - The Devil's Christmas

Hope you had a good Christmas and New Years, hope you enjoy this little collection of stories (albeit a little late!)

The Devil's Christmas
Read by Christopher Eccleston
Produced by Frank Stirling
==============================

Download Here

Password: bbc4free.blogspot.com

Doctor Who star Christopher Eccleston reads a series of stories with a sting in the tail for Christmas

Episode 1: The Signalman
--------------------------
Charles Dickens's eerie tale of a railway tunnel haunted by the ghost of a winter's death that is yet to come.

Episode 2: The Necklace
-------------------------
In this story by Guy de Maupassant, a young wife yearns, like Cinderella, to go to the Twelfth Night ball. Her husband gets hold of a coveted invitation and she borrows a priceless necklace from a friend. What happens at the party, however, ruins their lives for ever...

Episode 3: Thurlow's Christmas
--------------------------------
John Kendrick Bangs's short story, Thurlow's Christmas, is about a demon, a mysterious stranger and a magical manuscript. Or is it..?

Episode 4: The She-Wolf
-------------------------
Munro Saki, a master of black comedy, provides tonight's final ghoulish offering, The She-Wolf. At a winter house party, one unbearable guest claims to be a master of the dark arts. But there is consternation all round when he turns his hostess into a wolf and can't turn her back again.


Duration: 60 Mins (Each episode 15 Mins)

BBC - A History of the World in 100 Objects - S1 - Making Us Human (2,000,000 - 9000 BC)

Neil MacGregor tells the story of two million years of our development through a hundred objects in the British Museum. We begin with the first that make us human.

Download Series 1 Here

Episode 1 - Mummy of Hornedjitef (18 Jan 2010)

The Director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, retells the history of human development from the first stone axe to the credit card, using 100 selected objects from the Museum.
At the age of eight, Neil visited the British Museum for the first time and came face to face with an object that fascinated and intrigued him ever since, an Egyptian mummy. Hornedjitef was a priest who died around 2,250 years ago, and he designed a coffin that, he believed, would help him navigate his way to the afterlife. Little did he know that this afterlife would be as a museum exhibit in London. This ornate coffin holds secrets to the understanding of his religion, society and Egypt's connections to the rest of the world.
Neil tells the story of Hornedjitef's mummy case with contributions from egyptologist John Taylor, Egyptian author Ahdaf Soueif and Indian economist and Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen.
Producer: Anthony Denselow.

Episode 2 - Olduvai Stone Chopping Tool (19 Jan 2010)

The Director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, retells the history of human development from the first stone axe to the credit card, using 100 selected objects from the Museum.
Neil goes back two million years to the Rift Valley in Tanzania, where a simple chipped stone marks the emergence of modern humans.
One of the characteristics that mark humans out from other animals is their desire for, and dependency on, the things they fashion with their own hands. Faced with the needs to cut meat from carcasses, early humans in Africa discovered how to shape stones into cutting tools. From that one innovation, a whole history of human development springs.
Neil tells the story of the Olduvai stone chopping tool with contributions from flint napper Phil Harding, Sir David Attenborough and African Nobel Prize winner Dr Wangeri Maathai.
Producer: Anthony Denselow.




Episode 3 - Olduvai Handaxe (20 Jan 2010)

The Director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, retells the history of human development from the first stone axe to the credit card, using 100 selected objects from the Museum.
Neil follows early humans as they slowly begin to move beyond their African homeland, taking with them one essential item - a hand axe. In the presence of the most widely-used tool humans have created, Neil sees just how vital to our evolution this sharp, ingenious implement was and how it allowed the spread of humans across the globe.
Including contributions from designer Sir James Dyson and archaeologist Nick Ashton.
Producer: Anthony Denselow.




Episode 4 - Swimming Reindeer (21 Jan 2010)

The Director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, retells the history of human development from the first stone axe to the credit card, using 100 selected objects from the Museum.
Found in France and dating back 13,000 years, this is a carving of two swimming reindeer - and it's not just the likeness that is striking. The creator of this carving was one of the first humans to express their world through art. But why did they do it?
Neil tells the story of the Swimming Reindeer and its place in the history of art and religion with contributions from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, and archaelogist Professor Steven Mithen.
Producer: Anthony Denselow.



Episode 5 - Clovis Spear Point (22 Jan 2010)

The Director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, retells the history of human development from the first stone axe to the credit card, using 100 selected objects from the Museum.
Neil describes an object that dates from the earliest settlement of North America, around 13,000 years ago. It is a deadly hunting weapon, used by the first inhabitants of the Americas.
This sharp spearhead helps us understand how humans spread across the globe. By 11,000 BC humans had moved from north-east Asia into the uninhabited wilderness of north America; within 2,000 years they had populated the whole continent. How did these hunters live, and how does their Asian origin sit with the creation stories of modern-day Native Americans?
Including contributions from Michael Palin and American archaeologist Gary Haynes.
Producer: Anthony Denselow.

[Audiobook] [BBC Radio 4] - The House on the Borderland - by William Hope Hodgson

Download Here

In 1877, two gentlemen, Messrs Tonnison and Berreggnog, head into Ireland to spend a week fishing in the village of Kraighten. While there, they discover in the ruins of a very curious house a diary of the man who had once owned it. Its torn pages seem to hint at an evil beyond anything that existed on this side of the curtains of impossibility. 

This is a classic novel that worked to slowly bridge the gap between the British fantastic and supernatural authors of the later 19th century and modern horror fiction. Classic American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft lists this and other works by Hodgson among his greatest influences.

Author's Introduction to the Manuscript: 

Many are the hours in which I have pondered upon the story that is setforth in the following pages. I trust that my instincts are not awrywhen they prompt me to leave the account, in simplicity, as it washanded to me.
And the MS. itself--You must picture me, when first it was given into mycare, turning it over, curiously, and making a swift, jerky examination.A small book it is; but thick, and all, save the last few pages, filledwith a quaint but legible handwriting, and writ very close. I have thequeer, faint, pit-water smell of it in my nostrils now as I write, andmy fingers have subconscious memories of the soft, "cloggy" feel of thelong-damp pages.
I read, and, in reading, lifted the Curtains of the Impossible thatblind the mind, and looked out into the unknown. Amid stiff, abruptsentences I wandered; and, presently, I had no fault to charge againsttheir abrupt tellings; for, better far than my own ambitious phrasing,is this mutilated story capable of bringing home all that the oldRecluse, of the vanished house, had striven to tell.
Of the simple, stiffly given account of weird and extraordinary matters,I will say little. It lies before you. The inner story must be uncovered,personally, by each reader, according to ability and desire. And evenshould any fail to see, as now I see, the shadowed picture and conceptionof that to which one may well give the accepted titles of Heaven and Hell;yet can I promise certain thrills, merely taking the story as a story.

WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON December 17, 1907

Read by Jim Norton

Extra:

In 2003 DC Comics’ mature reader imprint Vertigo published a 96-page color graphic-novel adaptation of The House on the Borderland. The story was adapted by Simon Revelstroke and the art was done by comic book artist Richard Corben. The book is available in both soft and hardcover and contains an introduction by British comic writer and artist Alan Moore. 

If anyone has this comic, please send me a link in the comment box, I'd love to read it!

[Audiobook] [BBC Radio 4] - HP Lovecraft - The Shadow Over Innsmouth

Download Here

Password: bbc4free.blogspot.com

Coming up to All Hallows Eve, lend an ear to this great reading of Lovecraft that will CHILL YE TAE THE BONE!

Synopsis:
Young historian Robert Olmstead journeys to the mysterious, shunned town of Innsmouth in New England. Read by Richard Coyle.

 5 x 30 min episodes

First broadcast: BBC Radio 4 Extra, Mon, 3 Oct 2011