Lights Out: Dust (Radio 4) | BBC Sounds
The Bakersfield Three (Casefile Presents)
Heirs of Enslavement (Persephonica)
About halfway through Dust, the final episode in this series of Lights Out, writer Andri Snær Magnason says this. “In the year 2100, we expect the PH level of the world oceans to have dropped from 8.1 to 7.7, and this is the greatest change in the world oceans for 50 million years.” This sentence, says Magnason, is meaningless. The numbers don’t land in our heads: the 0.4 is too small, the 50 million too big. So he changes tack.
He says instead that “a single human being, born today, becoming as old as my grandmother, is witnessing a bigger change in the world oceans than not only all the ancestors of man – if man is 300,000 years old – not only all the ancestors of the homo species – if we are 5 million years old – but ten times the whole evolution of humanity”. Maybe we’re starting to comprehend the enormousness now. Still, he goes on to say, this is such a big shift – “a fundamental change in the fabric of Earth”, as opposed to “a change of religion or a fashion or a culture” – that we have to rethink everything. “The only way to express this,” he says, “is to claim a mythological status.”
So he speaks of gods dragging the stars across the sky by chariot, of humans forfeiting the existence of their children as the price of altering the Earth’s fundaments. He tells us sagas and myths in an attempt to give this enormous crisis its due epic-ness. His Icelandic accent helps, as do the sounds around him – of creaking ice, exploding volcanoes, the atmosphere around Earth’s shifting tectonic plates. Iceland is a country that sits tight to the earth, listens to its sounds while gazing at the vastness of the night sky.
The producer of this wonderful listen is, you might not be surprised to know, Eleanor McDowall, co-head of indie production house Falling Tree and one of the UK’s most admired production talents. Falling Tree make Lights Out for Radio 4, and Dust, beautiful, careful, wild, is apparently the last ever Lights Out series. The BBC is killing off the strand, and I am very sad about it. Its six series have provided so many audio highlights, examined off-centre topics, nurtured new producer talent. They require the listener to do some work, eschewing more familiar storytelling arcs for an immersive, sensory experience. And they win awards! McDowall’s A Sense of Quietness, about Ireland’s move to abortion rights, won loads, including the Prix Europa for best radio documentary. I’ve lamented the slow death of one-off radio documentaries before, but losing Lights Out seems like a tragedy to me. Perhaps a platform with money – Spotify? Audible? – will step in to continue this series, loved as it is by headphone heads. I hope so.
For those who like their thrills more straightforwardly true crime-ish, The Bakersfield Three is a classy, gripping, if long listen that’s understandably soaring up the podcast charts. Reporter Olivia LaVoice (what a name!), a local TV journalist, tells the story of three people whose fates initially seemed unconnected, but who reveal themselves to be very connected indeed.
They are 20-year-old party girl Baylee Despot; Micah Holsonbake, 34, a white-collar finance guy; and James Kulstad, 38, a wellness-type surfer dude. In California, in the space of five weeks in 2018, Micah goes missing, James is murdered and then Baylee disappears too. No one makes a connection between them until Micah’s father by chance comes across Baylee’s missing poster. He realises that Baylee and Micah knew each other. In fact, as LaVoice reports, all three of these people’s lives overlapped – they had friends in common, hung out together – and their connection was a dangerous one.
I listen to a lot of true crime shows and this is a guddun. The use of music is subtle and effective, the structure straightforward but compelling (each person gets an individual show, so we understand who they are), and LaVoice really is excellent: a proper gumshoe reporter with great hair and high heels. A Lois Lane who needs no Superman, as she’s a superwoman all on her own. In addition to LaVoice, there are the three mothers of Micah, James and Baylee. The work these women put in trying to find their children, and their honest telling of what they discover (be warned, it’s grisly), is devastating. Micah’s mum recalls their last phone conversation. “I hung up on him,” she says, tearfully. She never, ever hangs up the phone on anyone any more.
Heirs of Enslavement is a new podcast series in which Laura Trevelyan, the descendant of an enslaver, and Clive Lewis MP, the descendant of people enslaved by Trevelyan’s relative, go to Grenada to understand more about their entwined heritage. It’s an important and intensely emotive topic, especially around the area of reparations, but this show is hit and miss. It needs more context earlier on, more exact explanation of the Trevelyan/Lewis history.
Trevelyan and Lewis are nice companions, but in the first episode we miss some insightful questioning, a crisp summary of where we are and why. Still, the second episode is better, with a more detailed explanation of the brutality of slavery, and throughout there are moments of revelation. Such as when Varia Williams, a Barbadian drama therapist, recalls how her grandmother, when asked how she was, would reply, “Poor, peaceful and polite”. “We witness the aftermath of slavery all the time,” says Williams. “We feel it still.”
