Last week we blogged about the surround sound and binaural versions of Private Peaceful that are available as part of an audio experiment by the R&D team. Several of you have asked for a download of the version that was broadcast. Anyway, I'm glad to say that Private Peaceful is today's Play of the Week podcast. You can download it until next Friday when a new drama will be available.

Here are some details about Private Peaceful:

Private Peaceful opens with a tick from a precious watch that Tommo's brother, Charlie, has given him in battle. Tommo holds it to his ear to listen through the night, as he awaits the dawn. Tommo relives his childhood in rural Devon. From his first days at school, through the death of his Father, his unrequited love for Molly, to the circumstances that lead him to volunteer to fight in the Trenches. His world immediately comes to fully-dramatised life, in a large-cast, action-packed adventure story.

Full details of the production can be found on the Private Peaceful programme page and you can download the podcast for free from the Play of the Week podcast page.

Paul Murphy is the editor of the Radio 4 blog

Like 2010, the government of 1940 was a coalition which also ruptured previous political alignments. New political alliances and social organisations - which had first arisen in the Bridgwater Bye-Election of 1938, but which had been ignored by the London-based political and media establishments - united in their fight against appeasement.

Suddenly and dramatically, in May of that year, this new united front rose against the government and, in the space of only three days, overthrew it. Somewhat surprisingly, the magnificent story behind this overthrow is little known. It is a story of ferocious loyalty and betrayal, outrageous media manipulation, blackmail, prejudice - and not a little courage.

Jeremy Mortimer is executive producer, BBC Audio Drama

• More on the Sea Change programme page
• Download the podcast of Sea Change - available until next Friday

Portrait Of Edith Wharton

Stephen Wakelam's play The Jinx Element follows on from last week's adaptation of Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome in that it tells the story of the author's affair with the journalist Morton Fullerton as seen through the eyes of her friend and fellow writer Henry James.

While Wharton's characters are often trapped in bad relationships or confining circumstances, her own life stands as an example of the obstacles that a woman of her time and place had to overcome to find self-realisation.

Fenella Woolgar voices Edith Wharton in both Ethan Frome and The Jinx Element.

Paul Murphy is the editor of the Radio 4 blog

• Download The Jinx Element (available until Friday) to keep and play later from the Play of the Week podcast page.
• You can read producer Sally Avens post about Ethan Frome and The Jinx Element here.
• Sign up for the Play of the Week podcast for free to make sure you don't miss any future episodes.

Portrait Of Edith Wharton

Drama producer Sally Avens writes:

I chose to adapt Ethan Frome because I was completely in love with the novella. It always struck me as different to Edith Wharton's other works and had this wonderful, slightly ghostly Tales Of The Unexpected sensibility to it. As Wharton's other books generally focused on American high society, Ethan Frome stands out as this devastating window on the poor in rural Massachusetts and is by far one of her most affecting stories.

Whilst Ethan Frome is not nearly as well known as The Age of Innocence or The House of Mirth, it grips you with the intensity of the writing and the mystery behind what has caused Ethan to be such a broken man both physically and emotionally, and dramatising it meant a chance to bring it to a wider audience.

2012 is also the 150th anniversary of Edith Wharton's birth so there seemed to be no better time to adapt Ethan Frome, and as it mirrored many themes in Edith's own life, to pair it with a play about her own difficult marriage and a passionate affair on which she embarked with a younger man.

Stephen Wakelam's play is a powerful look at the woman behind the literary figure as seen through the eyes of her friend, Henry James and is broadcast on the Saturday following this week's Woman's Hour serialisation of Ethan Frome, which has been dramatised by Lin Coghlan, who has brought a brilliant sensibility to the task.

You will notice that the brilliant Fenella Woolgar voices Edith Wharton in both Ethan Frome and The Jinx Element. In the original novella the narrator is a man who is visiting the town where the story is set, not Wharton at all, but knowing that we would be creating a Wharton theme strand for the week on Radio 4 with a tie-in biographical play, I felt it might be truly effective to have Wharton feature as narrator in the Ethan Frome adaptation as well as the lead character in The Jinx Element; this would give us a familiar voice connecting the serial to the Saturday Play, and hopefully that lovely intriguing and thematic feel we had been aiming for.

I hope you've enjoyed the programmes and do please download the podcast before next Friday if you missed any episodes or simply want to hear them again at your leisure. Make sure not to miss The Jinx Element this Saturday too.

Sally Avens is the producer of Ethan Frome and The Jinx Element

• You can download a different BBC Radio play every week from the Play of the Week Podcast page. The Jinx Element will be the Play of The Week Podcast from Friday 27 January
• Radio 4 Extra have also been marking the anniversary a vintage adaptation of Edith Wharton's work Madame de Treymes. You can listen online for the next seven days to this tale of romance and intrigue.
• There's also a Documentary of the Week Podcast and a Comedy of the Week Podcast available to download and keep.
• There are details of all BBC Podcasts on this page.

Jim Naughtie and Hunter Davies at Bookclub

I could have seen The Beatles, but didn't.

I was 12 at the time, at home in north-east Scotland, and they were playing in our local town. The date of the gig was January 2, and it was a white-out. Their plane from Hamburg had been diverted by weather and the snowed-up roads meant they just couldn't make it to the Longmore Hall, Keith, in time. As a result their first tour of 1963 began the next night in The Two Red Shoes, Elgin, a place I subsequently came to know as a haven of mild debauchery. They were described as "The Love Me Do Boys" and were supported by the Alex Sutherland Sextet, a local band that I suppose were Elgin's equivalent of Joe Loss and his orchestra.

So I missed my chance. The truth is that I was just a few months too young - a year later and I would have been trudging through the snow to the Longmore Hall - and the fact that they were playing had passed me by. She Loves You hadn't yet catapulted them into the stratosphere.

But such memories swam back when I went down the alleyway in Liverpool that is Mathew Street, site of the Cavern Pub, where Hunter Davies came to talk about his book The Beatles with this month's group of readers - a group, I may say, who strangely seemed to be about my own age.

We had a good time, surrounded by posters on the walls that took us all back to the days when Gerry and the Pacemakers and The Searchers were vying for top billing, and The Beatles might turn up on a Sunday night just for fun.

Hunter remains the group's only authorised biographer, having spent eighteen months or so with them from 1966 - the year in which they played their last tour gig in Candlestick Park, San Francisco - and we reflected on how brief and extraordinary the phenomenon had been. When he persuaded them to agree to let him hang around - he'd met Paul McCartney in the hope that he might write some film music for an adaptation of a novel he'd written - the conventions of fame that we've come to accept as normal hadn't kicked in. There was no template from which they could learn how to handle it: no-one had seen screaming hordes of girls camped outside theatres in that way before, and no bunch of Liverpool boys had ever found their lives quite so transformed so quickly. Hunter's own account to us reflected that air of innocence that still surrounded them, even as they wrestled with worldwide fame.

He described for us his unravelling of the characters - the quiet, thoughtful George, who was always searching for something and even then wanted to escape, the book- devouring Lennon (who'd grown up with Alice in Wonderland, Robert Louis Stevenson and Just William), the prolific tunesmith Paul and Ringo - "the luckiest man alive".

There were long nights in the Abbey Road studios, where Hunter swept up scraps of paper after day and night recording sessions and years later discovered they were more valuable than his house. (It should be recorded that he has given them to the British Library.)

It's a story that hasn't lost its appeal after 45 years - and is in print again in paperback, with a reflective introduction by Hunter - and catches the spirit of an age in which class barriers were being attacked, assumptions about fame were changing, and a youth culture had been let out of its box.

Above all, Hunter was talking about characters whom we've all known, it seems all our lives - the boys themselves, and Brian Epstein, John's Aunt Mimi, Yoko Ono, and of course the Maharishi, who lured them to the Himalayas.

He tells the story well, remembering the bust up with John when he described the book as "a whitewash", to Hunter's fury. Hunter tried to protect Aunt Mimi, by cleaning up some of the stories of their off-stage antics, and had concealed (thinly) the obvious fact that Epstein was gay, and therefore still on the wrong side of the law. But he remembers so many good times too, on the road and in the studio, where he had a ringside seat at one of the great sixties' parties.

It's an enthralling conversation for New Year's Day, with a good dollop of nostalgia mixed in. I left Liverpool wondering why it was that I hadn't made it to Elgin to hear them. What a miss: but I don't think my parents would have understood. It hadn't quite happened. A few months later...well, that would have been a different story.

Happy days.

Our next recording is with Anne Enright, and we'll be talking about her Man Booker prize winning novel The Gathering. That's on Tuesday 27 March at BBC Bush House in Central London at 5.45pm. Tickets are free and available via our website.

Our next programme on air, on Sunday, February 5, is with Art Spiegelman, 25 years on from his ground-breaking graphic novel about the holocaust, Maus.

Happy New Year and happy reading

Jim Naughtie presents Bookclub

• Download the Bookclub podcast or listen to Bookclub online.

Christopher Hitchens at the Hitchens v Hitchens debate, Fountain St. Church, Grand Rapids.
Pic by 1546 used under licence

The preamble

As usual I've picked out five of the many podcasts available for your weekend's listening.

You can listen online or download to keep, or put onto your phone or MP3 player. This being the Radio 4 blog I'd also like to direct you to the Radio 4 podcast page.

Some podcasts are available for only seven days (eg Comedy of the Week; Friday Night Comedy) but others do have a huge archive you can download at any time (eg Desert Island Discs; In Our Time). If you haven't used podcasts from the BBC before there's some podcast help here.

This week's selection

1. Last Word
John Wilson looks back on the life of British-born author, literary critic and journalist Christopher Hitchens. Also Jerry Robinson, the comic strip artist who created the character of Batman's faithful sidekick Robin and his arch villain The Joker.
Download here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/lastword

2. Peter Day's World of Business: Cuba Now
After 53 years of revolution, President Raul Castro is trying to change the state-controlled Cuban economy with moves to promote private employment, and an open market in second hand cars and home. Peter Day reports from Havana on an island where in many ways time has been standing still for half a century.
Download here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/worldbiz

3. The Front Row Daily
This week's Front Row has interviews with director David Fincher on The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, historian Simon Schama on his pick of works from the Government Art Collection and Kirsty Lang talks to Meryl Streep about playing Margaret Thatcher in the film The Iron Lady.
Download here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/frontrow

4. Documentary of the Week: Greece: Broken Marble, Broken Future (until Saturday) and then Pop Goes the Bible! (for the rest of the week)
Writer Maria Margaronis revisits her beloved Greece where, amidst the strikes and the tear gas, she hears from Greeks living with their country's spiraling crisis.
And from Saturday Pop Goes the Bible!
What do these all have in common - Elvis Presley ('Adam and Evil'); Bob Dylan (Highway 61 Revisited); Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice ('Joseph' and 'Jesus Christ, Superstar'); The Byrds (Turn! Turn! Turn!); Leonard Cohen ('Hallelujah'), and U2 ('40' and 'Yahweh')? They're all pop songs that have been inspired by the Old and New Testaments.
Download here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r4choice

5. Play of the Week: The Lamp
By Linda Cracknell. In a remote Scottish library, a farmer's widow and a visiting Kenyan librarian bond unexpectedly over a shared love of books. Recorded on location at Innerpeffray Library in Perthshire. Directed by Eilidh McCreadie.
Download here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/ptw

Paul Murphy is the editor of the Radio 4 blog

Ian Dury (naturally enough) chose Gene Vincent but who else's music did he pick to take to the Desert Island?

The preamble

The big news this week is the continuing expansion of the Desert Island Discs archive, now with close to a 1,000 podcasts to download. See below for more information.

As usual I've picked out a few of the many amazing BBC podcasts available for your weekend's pleasure.

You can listen online or download to keep, or put onto your phone or MP3 player. This being the Radio 4 blog I'd also like to direct you to the Radio 4 podcast page.

Some podcasts are available for only seven days (eg Comedy of the Week; Friday Night Comedy - this week The Now Show) but others do have a huge archive you can download at any time (eg Desert Island Discs; In Our Time). If you haven't used podcasts from the BBC before there's some podcast help here.

This week's selection

1. Play of the Week: Burning Both Ends: When Oliver Reed Met Keith Moon
The story of one of the most infamous, unexpected and touching of friendships between two icons of the 1970s, Oliver Reed (Sean Pertwee) and Keith Moon (Arthur Darvill). Mercurial and unpredictable, both men were at the top of their game - but the top can be a very lonely place.
Download here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/ptw

2. Desert Island Discs: The Sue Lawley Years on podcast
The Radio 4 interactive team have been beavering away and have added another 400 episodes from Sue Lawley's 18 years at the helm. New additions include Ian Dury, Petula Clark, John Lee Hooker, Julie Andrews, Paula Rego, Judi Dench, Alan Alda, Dirk Bogarde and four former Prime Ministers Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, John Major and Ted Heath.
Browse the archive here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/find-a-castaway

3. Thinking Allowed: Teenage sex in the parental home
Laurie Taylor examines research into the advice offered to parents and looks at comparative research in America and Holland into teenage sex in the parental home with sociologist Amy Schalet from the University of Massachusetts.
Download here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/ta

4. Great Lives: Philip K Dick
Actor Michael Sheen explores the life of Philip K Dick, and explains how this enigmatic science-fiction writer has influenced his recent production of Hamlet.
Download here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/greatlives

5. The Life Scientific: Uta Frith
Professor Uta Frith came from a grey post war Germany to Britain in the swinging sixties, when research into conditions such as autism and dyslexia was in its infancy. At the time many people thought there was no such thing as dyslexia and that autism was a result of cold distant parenting, but Professor Frith was convinced that the explanation for these enigmatic conditions lay in the brain.
Download here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/tls

Paul Murphy is the editor of the Radio 4 blog

Confederate Flag in Biloxi: Pic by akasped

The preamble

Here are some of the many amazing radio podcasts available from the BBC. I've picked out a selection for your weekend's pleasure.

You can listen online or download to keep, or put onto your phone or MP3 player. This being the Radio 4 blog I'd also like to direct you to the Radio 4 podcast page.

Some podcasts are available for only seven days (eg Comedy of the Week; Friday Night Comedy) but others do have a huge archive you can download at any time (eg Desert Island Discs; In Our Time). If you haven't used podcasts from the BBC before there's some podcast help here.

This week's podcast selection

1. Friday Night Comedy: The Now Show
Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis are joined by Jon Holmes, Jan Ravens, Andrew Maxwell and Mitch Benn to scour this week's news for comedy.
Download here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/fricomedy

2. Play of the Week: The Man in Black - Containment
By David Lemon. Mark Gatiss is The Man in Black in an unsettling play set in a storage facility. A lost soul clutches at hope when it's offered but there's a sinister price attached. With Clare Corbett as Helen.
Download here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/ptw

3. Documentary of the Week: Blood Stained Banner
The Confederate Flag was first flown in November 1861. 150 years on Gary Younge explores what attitudes to the flag say about American identity today.
Download here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r4choice

4. Comedy of the Week: Dilemma,episode 3 (until Sunday)
Sue Perkins puts four guests through the moral and ethical wringer in this show show in which there are no "right" answers - but there are some deeply damning ones. This edition features comedians Shappi Khorsandi and Simon Munnery, broadcaster Fi Glover, and journalist Hugo Rifkind.
Download here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/comedy

5. The Film Programme: Martin Scorsese on Hugo and the future of cinema
Martin Scorsese talks to Francine Stock about cinema's future, his passion for its history and the way he's used 3D to conjure them both to life in his new film, Hugo.
Download here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/film

Paul Murphy is the editor of the Radio 4 blog

• Thanks to akasped for the picture used under this CC licence

Oscar and Al Pacino: Pacino talks about his obsession with the work of Oscar Wilde

The preamble

Here are some of the many radio podcasts available from the BBC. I've picked out a selection for your weekend's pleasure. (Actually the eagle-eyed will notice there are six this week - it seemed better to let you choose the final five yourselves.)

You can listen online or download to keep, or put onto your phone or MP3 player. This being the Radio 4 blog I'd also like to direct you to the Radio 4 podcast page.

Some podcasts are available for only seven days (eg Comedy of the Week; Friday Night Comedy) but others do have a huge archive you can download at any time (eg Desert Island Discs; In Our Time). If you haven't used podcasts from the BBC before there's some podcast help here.

This week's selection

1. Documentary of the Week: Oscar and Al Pacino
Al Pacino talks about his obsession with the work of Oscar Wilde and his decision to stage Wilde's Salome - he first saw the play performed by Steven Berkoff, and says that he was 'bitten by the rub of love' - in Los Angeles, and to film the process of putting it on stage.
Download here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r4choice
More info: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0174dzr

2. The Media Show
The Leveson Inquiry into the culture, ethics and practices of the media started this week. Meanwhile, on Monday, print editors gathered in a hotel in Surrey to discuss how they could address the perceived problems of self-regulation, at the Society of Editors conference.
Download here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/media
More info: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0174hrr

3. Brain Culture Part 1
Matthew Taylor explores how neuroscience will change society, asking how the justice system will change now that we can scan criminal brains.
Download here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/moreorless
More info: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017n523

4. Open Book: Penelope Lively, Terry Jones, John Sessions (go to Sun, 13 Nov 11)
Ex-Python and Chaucer-enthusiast Terry Jones is joined by Professor John Mullan to discuss medieval bawdy humour. And kicking off the series, John Sessions defends his pick for Open Book's Funniest Book.
Download here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/openbook
More info: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01724z4

5. Play of the week: The Thank You Present
You can get a play every week to download and keep, usually from Radio 4 or Radio 3. There's only one available at any time and it's changed every Friday. This week from Radio 3: A drama centring on a man's search for the truth behind his old friend's suicide.
Download here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/ptw
More info: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01755p0

6. Comedy of the Week: Listen Against
Listen Against is the comedy that takes the back off your radio and television, fiddles round with the programmes inside and then puts them all back the wrong way round. Starring Jon Holmes and Alice Arnold, with Kevin Eldon (Brass Eye, Big Train), Justin Edwards (The Thick of It), Sarah Hadland (Miranda) and more.
Download here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/comedy
More info: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00fgt18

Paul Murphy is the editor of the Radio 4 blog

From @JohnWilson14 on twitter: Lou Reed on the Front Row daily podcast

The preamble

I've picked out a selection of the currently available Radio 4 BBC podcasts. This week I've included the Ouch! podcast which isn't broadcast on Radio 4 (it isn't broadcast anywhere but is available to download). The other big news is that The Moral Maze is now available as a podcast.

You can listen online or download to keep, or put onto your phone or MP3 player. There are many more available on the Radio 4 podcast page.

Some podcasts are available for only seven days (eg Comedy of the Week; Friday Night Comedy) but others do have a huge archive you can download at any time (eg Desert Island Discs; In Our Time). If you haven't used podcasts from the BBC before there's some podcast help here.

The selection

1. The Moral Maze: St Paul's Protest

This week the debate centres on the moral issues behind the Occupy London protest camp. Chaired by Michael Buerk with Melanie Phillips, Matthew Taylor, Claire Fox and Clifford Longley.
Download here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/moralmaze
Programme info: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b016x23q

2. Front Row: The charming Nile Rodgers and the grumpy Lou Reed

The Front Row daily podcast with, as presenter John Wilson puts it, "two very different interviews with legendary musicians the charming and funky Nile Rodgers, and later grumpy old Lou Reed". He's not wrong on either count.
Download (go to Wed, 9 Nov 11): http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/frontrow
Programme info: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b016x23n

3. Ouch! Disability Talk Show: Ricky Gervais and language

When is it ok to say 'crip' or the M word that Ricky Gervais used recently, Paralympic sitting volleyballers have their prosthetics taken away, and Bianca Nicholas, singer with cystic fibrosis enchants us all. With Mat Fraser and Liz Carr.
Download and more info here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/ouch

4. Bookclub: The Wasp Factory - James Naughtie with Iain Banks

Iain Banks meets James Naughtie and readers at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh to talk about his debut novel The Wasp Factory, first published in 1984.
Download here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/openbook
Programme info: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b016w0nf

5. Cook The Perfect Christmas Cake

From the weekly Woman's Hour segment it's Cook The Perfect Christmas Cake with the country's best young baker - 26 year old Edd Kimber from Thackley, West Yorkshire, the winner of the Great British Bake off 2010. This one's a little different - lighter in texture and colour. Series also features soda bread, fish pie and chicken noodle soup.
More info: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/womans-hour/
Download here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/cookperfect

Paul Murphy is the editor of the Radio 4 blog

Siva Kandiah, a Hackney shopkeeper, whose life was turned upside down by the August riots.

Ever since I produced the first ever Lives in a Landscape back in 2005, our ambition has has remained the same: to travel to every corner of the country, chasing compelling stories you'd never find elsewhere and finding people who rarely make the news.

These aren't just documentaries, they're features - that great radio tradition - but they're features which are very much rooted in Britain today.

In this series presenter Alan Dein returned to Hackney after the riots - long after the TV trucks of the 24 hour news channels had moved out - following up on the story of shopkeeper Siva Kandiah whose local store was left in ruins by looters. It highlighted the strange demographics of an area in which greasy spoons sit alongside bourgeois coffee shops, an intriguingly subtle take on the riots from producer Sara Jane Hall - one you'd be hard pressed to find elsewhere.

For my own programme in this series, Alan and myself travelled to Boston in Lincolnshire where an influx of migrant workers attracted by agricultural work are causing tensions among the local population. We heard from jobless 17 year old Luke, who felt the future in Boston was so bleak he'd decided to join the army. On the flipside, we heard from migrant worker Renata, working to pay for an operation for her sick daughter back in Poland. It's a complex story there, very far from black and white, and we tried hard to faithfully render the complexity of the scene.

We believe our audience crave something more than the predictable - in Kate Bissell's programme on the Craigmillar Estate in Edinburgh, it's urban decay which provides the backdrop to a portrait of life among evangelical travellers, whilst in Neil George's programme on Woodhouses, it's urban sprawl which threatens a very English way of life in this Lancashire cricketing village.

Whether it's Lancashire or Hackney, Alan Dein never arrives anywhere with an agenda - his desire to listen without prejudice is what makes him such a remarkable presenter.

The entire team care passionately about this series and we craft the programmes with great care. We very much believe they'll stand the test of time - that's why we'll be making the archive available over the coming weeks when the programme is off air.

We hope you'll enjoy listening to them - it's certainly a great privilege to produce them.

Laurence Grissell is one of the producers of Lives in a Landscape

• Series 9 of Lives in a Landscape is now available to download as a podcast from the Radio 4 podcast pages. Over the following months the team will be making earlier series available to download.
• Read producer Sara Jane Hall's blog about making the first programme in the current series on the aftermath of the Hackney riots.
• Follow Radio 4 on Twitter and Facebook.

Thinking Allowed's Laurie Taylor

The preamble

As last week I've picked out a selection of the currently available Radio 4 podcasts. You can listen online or download to keep, or put onto your phone or MP3 player. There are many more available on the Radio 4 podcast page.

Some podcasts are available for only seven days (eg Comedy of the Week; Friday Night Comedy) but others do have a huge archive you can download at any time (eg Desert Island Discs; In Our Time). If you haven't used podcasts from the BBC before there's some podcast help here.

The selection

1. Lives in a Landscape
All of the current series where award-winning presenter Alan Dein goes in search of original stories from around the country is now available as a podcast.
More programme info
Download the podcast

2. Thinking Allowed: Kissing men - Decline of violence in history Laurie Taylor explores Professor Steven Pinker's notion of a decline in human violence as well an apparent rise in heterosexual men kissing other men.
More programme info
Download the podcast

3. Four Thought: Dreda Say Mitchell
Crime novelist Dreda Say Mitchell argues that the importance of the family, faith and community has been ignored in the debate about social mobility.
More programme info
Download the podcast

4. Warhorses of Letters
Stephen Fry stars as Napoleon's horse and Daniel Rigby stars as Wellington's horse in a love story of two horses sundered by war told through their letters to each other.
More programme info
Download the podcast

5. Desert Island Discs: John Peel Archive Special
Sue Lawley's castaway is broadcaster John Peel. This episode has been made available to mark the broadcast of the first John Peel Lecture on 6 Music.
More programme info
Download the podcast

Paul Murphy is the editor of the Radio 4 blog

"Five podcasts!" Umberto Eco in a Front Row special. Picture by Jerome Weatherald

The preamble

I've picked out a selection of the currently available Radio 4 podcasts. You can listen online or download to keep, or put onto your phone or MP3 player. There are many more available on the Radio 4 podcast page.

Some podcasts are available for only seven days (eg Comedy of the Week; Friday Night Comedy) but others do have a huge archive you can download at any time (eg Desert Island Discs; In Our Time). If you haven't used podcasts from the BBC before there's some podcast help here. All quotes unless stated otherwise are from the Radio 4 website programme info.

The selection

1. Don't Start with Frank Skinner and Katherine Parkinson
"What do long term partners really argue about? Sharp new comedy from Frank Skinner. A masterclass in the great art of arguing."
More info
Podcast

2. Life Scientific: Jocelyn Bell-Burnell
"In 1974, her supervisor and head of department won the Nobel prize for Physics for a discovery which was essentially hers. Some people call it the No-Bell, Nobel prize because they feel so strongly that Jocelyn Bell-Burnell should have shared in the award."
More info
Podcast

3. Desert Island Discs: Mark Gatiss
"When Desert Island Discs excels, there's really nothing quite like it," said the Guardian. "The biggest laugh of the programme came as he introduced the fifth track. 'I was genuinely torn between the Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde,' he explained, 'or Su Pollard's Come to Me (I Am Woman).' Pollard won."
More info and the podcast

4. The Film Programme: A celebration of 1971 American Cinema
"Francine Stock and guests travel back four decades to what might be the most extraordinary year in American cinema - 1971. The year that saw the release of such films as Klute, The Last Picture Show, The French Connection and Carnal Knowledge."
NB: There's an archive of 56 episodes including the recent interview with Woody Allen.
More info
Podcast

5. Front Row: The daily podcast
Front Row is now available as a daily podcast as well as a weekly "best of". "Kirsty Lang meets Italian intellectual and novelist Umberto Eco, now nearly 80, at his home in Milan. The writer looks back at the surprise success of his first novel The Name of the Rose, published when he was 48, which has sold 50 million copies."
More info
Podcast

Paul Murphy is the editor of the Radio 4 blog

• Browse all the Radio 4 podcasts

Laura Marling and Front Row's John Wilson (picture by Jerome Weatherald)

For the last three weeks Front Row has been offering daily programme downloads, audio clips and topical highlights of its extensive archive. This has been part of pilot looking at how we could improve our online service for the programme.

We're keen to hear what you think of what we've done, either by replying to this post or via Front Row's contact us page.

You may have already downloaded one of the Front Row Daily podcasts, where we offered the whole of that night's programme to download for free. Previously we offered a weekly highlights podcast. We received a lot of emails and tweets about the daily version, so we know this is popular.

We've curated a week's worth of reviews on the Front Row homepage for an easy, one stop shop to the Front Row verdict on the latest openings and releases, including Stephen Merchant's stand up and the film adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy.

With Tinker Tailor in mind, author John le Carré was one of our selected interviews from the archive. He joins Leonard Cohen, Jo Brand, Anjelica Huston and Tony Bennett who've all resurfaced on the Front Row homepage.

And we've created some slideshows to illustrate some of our features, including our review of the Degas exhibition at the Royal Academy and our interview with Roger Moore. Mark Kermode talks about the five favourite films you won't have seen in a piece we couldn't squeeze into the programme. And there's a video of Laura Marling performing live in the Front Row studio.

You may have noticed some of the programme segments broken up into a new style on our programme pages - clips as we call them - which are more readily shareable and look neater on the page. And you may have seen Front Row tweeting from @BBCRadio4 using the tag #bbcfrontrow.

Do let us know what you think of anything we've done - what should we keep? What could we do better? And anything we should have tried? All feedback gratefully received.

Ben Toone is a content producer for Radio 4 interactive

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Every episode of Life and Fate will be available as a podcast for 14 days after broadcast to download and keep

Another big Radio 4 moment has arrived: every drama slot across eight days (apart from The Archers, rest assured!) is being commandeered to bring you a dramatisation of an epic historical novel. The title alone is both compelling and a little daunting: Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman.

So how best to support this on air event online?

Inspiration

I've been assured by several people I respect that this is a 20th-century masterpiece. But if you still need to be convinced that this is worth giving up a number of hours of your life to, then I hope you'll be inspired by some of the people we've asked to advocate the work to you. Two leading actors from the cast - Kenneth Branagh and David Tennant - have recorded their thoughts, and Andrew Marr has written an introduction on the Radio 4 Blog. For a more in depth discussion of the life and work of Vasily Grossman, I recommend last Monday's special edition of Start the Week.

Ready when you are

Let's assume you're in! But while you're already likely to be a loyal Radio 4 listener if you're reading this blog, you may find it hard to make time for a whole week's worth of drama, however enticing. Here's where the digital offer plays its key role: enabling you to catch up at a convenient time. Every part of the drama will be available on the Radio 4 website after broadcast until a week after the final part is broadcast. And we're podcasting every episode too, meaning that you have 14 days after broadcast to download and keep each edition for free.

Guiding you through

I'm assured by the drama's producer, amongst others, that a family tree is an essential aide memoire to help us keep track of the novel's large number of characters. So download this friendly guide before you start.

There are synopses on the programme pages and more background to the production on this blog post.

However you listen, I hope you enjoy it.

Leigh Aspin is Interactive Editor at BBC Radio 4

• Access the Life and Fate programmes, podcasts, blog posts and the visual character via the Life and Fate feature page on the Radio 4 website.
• More podcasts from Radio 4 including Play of the Week podcast and the National Short Story Award podcast.
• Follow Radio 4 on Twitter or Facebook.