Between the Ears - Kindertotenlied: Song on the Death of Children
BBC Radio 3, 10 to 10.30pm
Nothing touches people quite like the death of a child. Artists have long been drawn to reflect on such loss. This programme is inspired by Mahler's settings of poems on the deaths of two of the poet Ruckert's children, and ponders on how art can help confront the inexpressible.
18 January
The Food Programme
BBC Radio 4, 12.30 to 1pm
In the wake of recent Scottish land reform, Sheila Dillon traces the history and future of Highland crofting and the food culture it fostered, from crofters' crowdie cheese to salt fish, stovies and bannocks.
19 January
Book of the Week - My Life in Orange
BBC Radio 4, 9.45 to 10am each weekday
Stephen Tomkinson reads Tim Guest's memoir of his early childhood as a 'disciple by default' of Bhagwan Shree Rasneesh. In the late 1970s, when Tim was aged four, his mother began to follow Bhagwan, an Indian guru who preached an eclectic doctrine of Eastern mysticism, chaotic therapy and sexual freedom. Although they lived in communes in England, India, America and Germany, and were surrounded by people, Tim felt alone. It all ended in 1985 when the movement collapsed and Tim had to adjust to life at a London school.
20 January
Case Notes
BBC Radio 4, 9 to 9.30pm
Dr Mark Porter examines which cancer screening tests are beneficial and informative, as well as research carried out by Cancer Research UK, whose findings suggest that 5,000 lives a year could be saved by a national bowel cancer screening programme.
A Child of Our Time - The Making of Me
BBC 1, 9 to 10pm
Self-esteem is not something children are born with but something they acquire. In this programme, Professor Robert Winston examines the differing levels of self-esteem among the participating children, and how the combination of genes and environment helps give the children their sense of self-worth, in the last of this current series that is following 25 children for the first 20 years of their lives.
21 January
Education Debate
BBC Radio 4, 8 to 8.30pm
University funding is in crisis, with universities claiming they need an extra 10bn if they are to maintain international competitiveness, keep their buildings in good repair and retain high-quality staff. To coincide with the House of Commons vote on university tuition fees, education experts debate the motion that the only way to fund higher education properly is to privatise our universities.
22 January
More Or Less
BBC Radio 4, 3 to 3.30pm
Andrew Dilnot continues his weekly look at the ways numbers are used to describe, understand and argue about the world.
