Agatha Christie is the world's most translated author, with her work being available in over 100 languages. And one of her most beloved characters, Miss Marple, is about to be resurrected with the help of 12 contemporary authors. In The Studio talks to two of those writers: Dreda Say Mitchell who specialises in a different type of crime story, the gritty gangster genre, and Kate Mosse, who is known for her historical sagas. They reveal how they rose to the challenge of reinventing one of the most famous characters in 20th Century fiction.

Miss Marple returns

Erica Whyman

Maggie O’Farrell’s historical novel Hamnet was published in 2020 to great critical acclaim, winning the Women's Prize. It tells the story of a gifted herbalist, Agnes Hathaway, who is married to a young William Shakespeare. We follow her on her journey as they meet, marry, and later come to terms with the death of their 11-year-old son, Hamnet. Now, the Royal Shakespeare Company is putting Hamnet on stage for the first time in Shakespeare’s birthplace of Stratford-upon-Avon. Presenter Dan Hardoon follows the RSC’s Acting Artistic Director Erica Whyman throughout the rehearsal process. We also hear from award-winning playwright Lolita Chakrabarti on the challenges of adapting the novel for the stage, and from cast and crew as they get ready for opening night.

Erica Whyman: Directing Hamnet

Kieran Griffiths

Beyond Belief - The Life And Mission Of John Hume is a new drama musical about the Irish politician who was one of the architects of the Northern Ireland peace process. Marie-Louise Muir goes behind the scenes of the production staged in Hume's home city of Derry with its director Kieran Griffiths. She follows his young company of actors rehearsing for a major production which will be streamed live globally on the 25th anniversary of the signing of the historic peace accord, the Good Friday Agreement.

Kieran Griffiths: telling the John Hume story

Nikita Gill

The poet Nikita Gill has written several volumes of poetry, and enjoys engaging poetically with her audience using social media. Her work often explores Greek Myths, and her latest project continues with that theme as she embarks on a series of four books, each one focusing on a single goddess. For this episode of In The Studio, we join her as she starts with Hekate, often known as the Goddess of Witchcraft, and about whom little is known, other than that she was brought up in the underworld by Styx. Nikita describes Hekate as a dark anti-feminine goddess and a protest against what is expected of women which is what appealed to her. But how do you go about creating a life for someone who is so mysterious? And as Nikita will also be illustrating her work, how will she decide how to visually portray her? Follow Nikita across several months as she works towards completing her first draft of this exciting new work.

Nikita Gill: Imagining Hekate

Nick Duncalf meets artist Theo Jansen at his studio in Delft, as he creates his latest Strandbeests, multi-legged creatures designed to walk the sands of Holland’s North Sea coast. Outside his workshop, the grass is littered with bleached plastic pipes; the skeletons of strandbeests past. He has been building these creatures for decades. Each year, new creatures - some the size of shopping trolleys, some the size of cars - are designed, tested, and allowed to run free across the sands. At a battered work table, Theo toils over sections of pipe, heating and bending and attaching pieces of what will become the skeletons of the new beests. In recent years, the Strandbeests have become internet stars, hugely popular on Instagram and Youtube. Theo began this project in 1990, when he was 42 years old. He tells Nick of his annual quest to bring these creatures to life, and to prepare them to battle the elements on the beach. Each year brings new challenges, new dreams, new failures, and new triumphs. Aged 74, Theo will not have another 33 years to continue his work. He is confronting the time limitations of this project, and his own legacy as an artist. There is a renewed sense of urgency in his work, and his boundless energy, enthusiasm and optimism mean that this year’s strandbeests will be more ambitious than ever.

Theo Jansen and the Strandbeests of Delft

Author Sofi Oksanen shares with Olga Smirnova how she begins a new novel. Olga witnesses how Sofi painstakingly gathers details for the lives of her characters, from choosing the colour of their nail varnish, to the perfumes they prefer, and the difference in the smell of Estonian and Soviet women. Olga visits Sofi’s writing studio in a bohemian quarter of Helsinki where they both listen to the silence which is so important for Sofi to write. We discover why sometimes kneading dough and chopping carrots or onions can help the process. Having an Estonian heritage, Sofi is fascinated by Soviet history. The theme of war in Ukraine is never far from Olga's conversations with Sofi as they discuss how it impacts upon the writing process.

Sofi Oksanen: Crafting a new novel

Faig Ahmed is one of Azerbaijan’s best-known contemporary artists, and has won international acclaim for his fantastical woven artworks. Based on Azerbaijan’s ancient carpet weaving traditions, his pieces explore the visual language of classic rug design to radical effect. Pieces can distort and bulge, grow deep-tufted pelts or rise off the walls into the gallery space overhead. His work has been described as psychedelic, surreal, even iconoclastic. Speaking from his weaving workshop in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, Faig Ahmed talks to broadcaster and artist Bidisha Mamata about the process of making these pieces, working with a traditionally all-female team of carpet-weavers who use centuries-old techniques to create his intricate designs. Ahmed also works in other mediums including painting, video and installation, all fed by a restless curiosity and experimental zeal. So we also hear about one of his current works-in-progress: A large-scale performance piece, through which he is exploring the fundamentals of social interaction.

Faig Ahmed

A poet can’t sleep. She sits at a desk in a wooden house at the heart of a palm forest, watching the night sky through the window. The full moon lights up the palm fronds, which dance in the wind. She has been tasked with writing a poem that will be sent into space, to another planet’s distant moon. What should she say? What is the message in a bottle that she should launch out into the solar system? How can she begin writing a poem that speaks of the fragile wonders of our home planet? That expresses our hope that there might be other life out there somewhere, in the stars? In the Studio follows US poet laureate Ada Limón as she crafts an original poem dedicated to NASA’s Europa Clipper mission to Jupiter’s icy moon. Her poem will be engraved on the Clipper spacecraft, which will launch in 2024 and travel 1.8 billion miles to reach Europa - a journey that will last six years. We follow Ada’s creative process over several months, from her first meetings with the NASA team, through many drafts of the poem and a visit to NASA’s jet propulsion laboratory in California to see the Europa Clipper under construction.

Ada Limón: A poem for Nasa

Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai is an award-winning Vietnamese writer whose debut novel The Mountains Sing, published in English in 2020, won the International Book Awards in 2021 and was runner-up in the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. It portrays the lives of four generations of a Vietnamese family enduring many hardships, something she understands well from her own upbringing. In conversation with presenter Felicity Finch, Quế Mai shares her writing process as she works on her second novel Dust Child, which is about Amerasians, children of American military men who were abandoned during The Vietnam War. Meetings with her New York publisher and editor Betsy Gleick help guide her through the many months of development as well as her desire to retain the Vietnamese-ness of her prose. This programme was first broadcast in May 2022, but for this version, as dust Child is about to be published, Felicity takes the opportunity to catch up with Quế Mai, to find out how that feels.

Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai - novel number two

Keith McNally

Restaurateur Keith McNally is a 71-year-old Londoner, the son of a longshoreman and office cleaner, who moved to New York in 1976. Forty-five years later, he is one of the most celebrated restaurateurs in the city. In 2004, The New York Times dubbed him “the restaurateur who invented Downtown.” In this episode of In the Studio, we get a glimpse into the mind of this unique creative talent, who used his early career in film and theatre to dominate an altogether different stage. The flagship of his New York restaurants is Balthazar, which is packed day and night and has been in operation for more than 25 years. But who is Keith McNally, and how has he created such an iconic success in such a cutthroat business?

Keith McNally's Balthazar

In the Studio takes you into the minds of the world’s most creative people, with unprecedented access.

What makes this podcast terrific is the creative and artistic vision of Tim Marlow. He bookends each episode with insightful comments, and most importantly he curated the series to take us inside the creative process. Tim has created my go-to weekly arts podcast, and I’m always eager each weekend to discover the latest episode!

Tim Marlow is a national treasure

That&#39;s the backbone of the new dreamers trying to make it through books, and this podcasts shows just that.

Always the Best

In the Studio

David Simon

Behind the scenes access to a brand new play, as it is being developed. The award winning Kwame Kwei-Armah invites the creator of The Wire to rehearsals, days before the world premiere in Baltimore. Kwame is the Artistic Director at Baltimore’s Center Stage Theatre. We watch cast and crew, as they work on the stage version of Toni Morrison’s novel, Jazz.

David Simon meets Kwame Kwei-Armah

Louise Penny

Chief Inspector Gamache, the hero of Louise Penny's books, was based on a man she could marry, very like her husband Michael, a doctor who treated children with cancer and saw life and death every day. When the Canadian crime fiction writer first began writing, she battled five years of writer’s block to bring her murder mysteries to life.

Chief Inspector Gamache, the hero of Louise Penny's books, was based on a man she could marry, very like her husband Michael, a doctor who treated children with cancer and saw life and death every day. When the Canadian crime fiction writer first began writing, she battled five years of writer’s block to bring her murder mysteries to life.

Louise Penny: Inspiration for a murder

What do you get when you put a Danish artist group together with oceanographers, material scientists, and marine biologists? The answer is an idea which might just change the way we imagine and design our environments in response to rising sea levels.As warnings about the effects of global warming escalate, Superflex – an art group founded by Jakob Fenger, Bjørnstjerne Christiansen and Rasmus Nielsen in 1993 – have been working on a long term project to imagine a world where the original function and aesthetics of our carefully designed world may be lost to the tide.Commissioned by TBA21-Academy, the project is called Deep Sea Minding and it considers whether it’s possible to design and create structures that could serve the needs and desires of both humans and marine life.So in their headquarters in Copenhagen, the team at Superflex are mixing concrete and amino acids together to see whether they can create bricks to make houses and schools which can be occupied by humans first and then fish. They’re also preparing a prototype structure to be placed on the seabed to test the responses of fish to this new material.Over the course of nine months Laura Hubber joins Rasmus Nielsen from Superflex for one leg of their epic journey – taking in California, Copenhagen and Jamaica – and meeting a Mermaid along the way.

What do you get when you put a Danish artist group together with oceanographers, material scientists, and marine biologists? The answer is an idea which might just change the way we imagine and design our environments in response to rising sea levels. As warnings about the effects of global warming escalate, Superflex – an art group founded by Jakob Fenger, Bjørnstjerne Christiansen and Rasmus Nielsen in 1993 – have been working on a long term project to imagine a world where the original function and aesthetics of our carefully designed world may be lost to the tide. Commissioned by TBA21-Academy, the project is called Deep Sea Minding and it considers whether it’s possible to design and create structures that could serve the needs and desires of both humans and marine life. So in their headquarters in Copenhagen, the team at Superflex are mixing concrete and amino acids together to see whether they can create bricks to make houses and schools which can be occupied by humans first and then fish. They’re also preparing a prototype structure to be placed on the seabed to test the responses of fish to this new material. Over the course of nine months Laura Hubber joins Rasmus Nielsen from Superflex for one leg of their epic journey – taking in California, Copenhagen and Jamaica – and meeting a Mermaid along the way.

Superflex: Deep Sea Minding

Meagan Duhamel

Eric Radford

Canadian Pairs skaters going for gold at the 2018 Winter Olympics. Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford call on choreographers, costume designers and their own artistry and physical endurance to prepare for their final competitive performance together.

Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford: Skating for gold

Every year since 2000 London’s Serpentine Gallery has offered an architect who has never built in the UK a very special challenge - to design a boundary pushing temporary building to stand in the heart of Kensington Gardens, London. They have just six months, a sixth of the average amount of time it takes to design and construct a building. Architect Maria Smith follows Junya Ishigami and the pavilion team as they use their experience and ingenuity to try to construct the design. It’s a forest of slender white columns supporting a 61 ton roof of Cumbrian slate, a structure Junya refers to as 'a black bird flying through the rain'. How can they realise such a technically demanding building in such a short time and what will the public and the critics think when it’s finally complete? Featuring a diverse selection from the huge team which contribute to the building, including architect Sir David Adjaye, curator Amira Gad, Project Manager Ted Featonby, Engineer Michael Orr and Serpentine Head of Construction and Buildings Julie Burnell. With access to almost every facet of the project Maria takes us into the normally unseen corners of this complex, challenging and internationally unparalleled architectural event.

Every year since 2000 London’s Serpentine Gallery has offered an architect who has never built in the UK a very special challenge - to design a boundary pushing temporary building to stand in the heart of Kensington Gardens, London. They have just six months, a sixth of the average amount of time it takes to design and construct a building. Architect Maria Smith follows Junya Ishigami and the pavilion team as they use their experience and ingenuity to try to construct the design. It’s a forest of slender white columns supporting a 61 ton roof of Cumbrian slate, a structure Junya refers to as 'a black bird flying through the rain'. How can they realise such a technically demanding building in such a short time and what will the public and the critics think when it’s finally complete? Featuring a diverse selection from the huge team which contribute to the building, including architect Sir David Adjaye, curator Amira Gad, Project Manager Ted Featonby, Engineer Michael Orr and Serpentine Head of Construction and Buildings Julie Burnell. With access to almost every facet of the project Maria takes us into the normally unseen corners of this complex, challenging and internationally unparalleled architectural event.

Junya Ishigami: Architect of London's Serpentine Pavilion

From Picasso to Ai Weiwei, from Iris Murdoch to HG Wells, cycling has long been the inspiration for artists and creative minds. Yet the fundamental design of a bicycle has remained unchanged for over a hundred years and the material of choice to build the frames is usually metal or carbon.Top endurance cyclist Lee Craigie travels to Denmark to meet cutting edge bicycle designers Paul Harder Cohen and Mette Walsted, who are taking a very different approach and crafting bikes from a material that’s been around for millions of years: wood.Paul and Mette take Lee through their creative process in their buzzing dockside studio workshop in Copenhagen, as they design and construct their bike frames from a combination of ash and walnut. Each bike takes over two months to make and each one is unique thanks to the organic nature of the wood they are crafted from.As well as getting involved in the creation of a new bicycle, Lee finds out about ways that form and function intersect, and hops into the saddle to reflect on how this design gives a highly distinctive feeling of interaction between rider and machine. (Photo: Bike designers Mette Walsted and Paul Harder Cohen, with kind permission)

From Picasso to Ai Weiwei, from Iris Murdoch to HG Wells, cycling has long been the inspiration for artists and creative minds. Yet the fundamental design of a bicycle has remained unchanged for over a hundred years and the material of choice to build the frames is usually metal or carbon. Top endurance cyclist Lee Craigie travels to Denmark to meet cutting edge bicycle designers Paul Harder Cohen and Mette Walsted, who are taking a very different approach and crafting bikes from a material that’s been around for millions of years: wood. Paul and Mette take Lee through their creative process in their buzzing dockside studio workshop in Copenhagen, as they design and construct their bike frames from a combination of ash and walnut. Each bike takes over two months to make and each one is unique thanks to the organic nature of the wood they are crafted from. As well as getting involved in the creation of a new bicycle, Lee finds out about ways that form and function intersect, and hops into the saddle to reflect on how this design gives a highly distinctive feeling of interaction between rider and machine. (Photo: Bike designers Mette Walsted and Paul Harder Cohen, with kind permission)

Bicycles of the Future

Nii Obodai

The acclaimed Ghanaian photographer Nii Obodai is renowned for his distinctive black and white hazy silhouettes of distant landscapes and his stark compassionate portraits. As a youngster he spent time in England and now he’s back as artist-in-residence in the East Riding of Yorkshire, where he’s working on a new exhibition on environmental themes. Nii is spending time in the marshes and woodland of the nearby nature reserve, photographing wildlife and the people who tend the landscape. But he’s not using the latest digital camera to take his pictures – instead he’s interweaving the techniques of the past by learning to photograph with an old-fashioned large format Deardorff camera, shooting in black and white and making prints. The work is based on techniques used by one of the founding fathers of British photography, William Henry Fox Talbot. Felicity Finch joins Nii as he explores the marshlands and prepares to take his pictures which will be displayed in the Beverley Art Gallery. She follows him through the process – which can take hours – of waiting for the birds to come into shot, pressing the shutter and reloading the films. She also watches as he takes portraits of the workers at the reservoir. Later in the seaside town of Scarborough we hear how Nii develops the films in the total darkness of an ad hoc darkroom and uses the traditional method of salt printing to create images in a variety of monochrome tones of rich earthy browns. It’s a learning process for Nii and while most of the images turn out the way he wants, others are less successful. We hear how he begins to make his final selections and how he is influenced by the potency of memory and landscape.

The acclaimed Ghanaian photographer Nii Obodai is renowned for his distinctive black and white hazy silhouettes of distant landscapes and his stark compassionate portraits. As a youngster he spent time in England and now he’s back as artist-in-residence in the East Riding of Yorkshire, where he’s working on a new exhibition on environmental themes. Nii is spending time in the marshes and woodland of the nearby nature reserve, photographing wildlife and the people who tend the landscape. But he’s not using the latest digital camera to take his pictures – instead he’s interweaving the techniques of the past by learning to photograph with an old-fashioned large format Deardorff camera, shooting in black and white and making prints. The work is based on techniques used by one of the founding fathers of British photography, William Henry Fox Talbot. Felicity Finch joins Nii as he explores the marshlands and prepares to take his pictures which will be displayed in the Beverley Art Gallery. She follows him through the process – which can take hours – of waiting for the birds to come into shot, pressing the shutter and reloading the films. She also watches as he takes portraits of the workers at the reservoir. Later in the seaside town of Scarborough we hear how Nii develops the films in the total darkness of an ad hoc darkroom and uses the traditional method of salt printing to create images in a variety of monochrome tones of rich earthy browns. It’s a learning process for Nii and while most of the images turn out the way he wants, others are less successful. We hear how he begins to make his final selections and how he is influenced by the potency of memory and landscape.

Nii Obodai: Finding the image

John Saunderson

He’s not a singer, writer or a musician but he’s earned a reputation as a Number 1 hitmaker across the globe with credits like “Bonkers” by Dizzee Rascal. John Saunderson has been in the music business for over 40 years and has an uncanny knack of working with his team of songwriters and colleagues at Notting Hill Music to choose exactly the right song for the right artist. He’s had over 30 number 1 hits in 15 countries around the world and is always looking for the next big thing. Anna Bailey follows John to find out what the different processes are in the life of a hitmaker. She watches as his team work on composing with the former Pussycat Doll singing star Melody Thornton and hears how a song is created, often in a very short space of time. Anna also follows the initial steps of choosing a song for the South Korean pop phenomenon J.Fla who is looking for something to appeal to a Western audience. Her team have a very specific set of requirements, including wanting a “hook” or earworm that will be distinctive. Will John and the team be able to deliver?

He’s not a singer, writer or a musician but he’s earned a reputation as a Number 1 hitmaker across the globe with credits like “Bonkers” by Dizzee Rascal. John Saunderson has been in the music business for over 40 years and has an uncanny knack of working with his team of songwriters and colleagues at Notting Hill Music to choose exactly the right song for the right artist. He’s had over 30 number 1 hits in 15 countries around the world and is always looking for the next big thing. Anna Bailey follows John to find out what the different processes are in the life of a hitmaker. She watches as his team work on composing with the former Pussycat Doll singing star Melody Thornton and hears how a song is created, often in a very short space of time. Anna also follows the initial steps of choosing a song for the South Korean pop phenomenon J.Fla who is looking for something to appeal to a Western audience. Her team have a very specific set of requirements, including wanting a “hook” or earworm that will be distinctive. Will John and the team be able to deliver?

John Saunderson: The man who makes hit records

Jack Reacher

Lee Child

Tom Cruise starred as the ex-military investigator but how are the novels written? Millions have been sold worldwide. Author Lee Child allows us to join him as he creates his next story.Image: Lee Child, Credit: BBC

Tom Cruise starred as the ex-military investigator but how are the novels written? Millions have been sold worldwide. Author Lee Child allows us to join him as he creates his next story. Image: Lee Child, Credit: BBC

Lee Child: Writing Jack Reacher

On 15 June 2019 the Museum of Modern Art in New York closed its doors ahead of a four month refurbishment and the final stage of a $400 million overhaul. When it re-opens its doors in October, MoMA will not only have reconfigured its galleries but also rehung the entire collection on show. In this special edition of In The Studio, Paul Kobrak follows Ramona Bronkar Bannayan, Senior Deputy Director of Exhibitions &amp; Collections, and Lana Hum, Director of Exhibition Design &amp; Production, as they oversee this epic feat of creativity and choreography. This time, instead of moving to a temporary space as they did for MoMA's last renovation 15 years ago, they are deinstalling and reinstalling nearly 170,000 square feet of gallery space in just under 4 months. Roughly 10,000 art moves are being undertaken between conservation, storage, and the galleries; and around 2,000 individual works of art are going into the frame shop - with 1,550 new frames having to be constructed. But it is not just the logistical nightmare that is keeping Ramona, Lana and the Museum’s curators and staff awake at night. With 40,000 square feet of additional space, as a result of expanding into a new residential skyscraper, they also aim to rethink the way the story of modern and contemporary art is presented to the public – balancing the presentation of Claude Monet’s crowd-pleasing Water Lilies and Vincent Van Gogh’s The Starry Night, with lesser known works covering the full range of MoMA’s massive collection, including photography, sound works, performance, moving image and art forms not yet imagined. With exclusive access over an eight month period, Paul Kobrak traces the team's progress as they prepare for the Museum’s closure and the subsequent re-opening on 21 October 2019. Presented by Paul Kobrak. Produced by Paul Kobrak , Ella-mai Robey and Emma Kingsley for the BBC World Service. North/south section-perspective through the new gallery spaces at The Museum of Modern Art, looking east along Fifty-third Street.

On 15 June 2019 the Museum of Modern Art in New York closed its doors ahead of a four month refurbishment and the final stage of a $400 million overhaul. When it re-opens its doors in October, MoMA will not only have reconfigured its galleries but also rehung the entire collection on show. In this special edition of In The Studio, Paul Kobrak follows Ramona Bronkar Bannayan, Senior Deputy Director of Exhibitions &amp; Collections, and Lana Hum, Director of Exhibition Design &amp; Production, as they oversee this epic feat of creativity and choreography. This time, instead of moving to a temporary space as they did for MoMA's last renovation 15 years ago, they are deinstalling and reinstalling nearly 170,000 square feet of gallery space in just under 4 months. Roughly 10,000 art moves are being undertaken between conservation, storage, and the galleries; and around 2,000 individual works of art are going into the frame shop - with 1,550 new frames having to be constructed. But it is not just the logistical nightmare that is keeping Ramona, Lana and the Museum’s curators and staff awake at night. With 40,000 square feet of additional space, as a result of expanding into a new residential skyscraper, they also aim to rethink the way the story of modern and contemporary art is presented to the public – balancing the presentation of Claude Monet’s crowd-pleasing Water Lilies and Vincent Van Gogh’s The Starry Night, with lesser known works covering the full range of MoMA’s massive collection, including photography, sound works, performance, moving image and art forms not yet imagined. With exclusive access over an eight month period, Paul Kobrak traces the team's progress as they prepare for the Museum’s closure and the subsequent re-opening on 21 October 2019. Presented by Paul Kobrak. Produced by Paul Kobrak , Ella-mai Robey and Emma Kingsley for the BBC World Service. North/south section-perspective through the new gallery spaces at The Museum of Modern Art, looking east along Fifty-third Street.

A new MoMA

In 1744, in the grand surroundings of London’s Royal Opera House, a musical scandal occurred. During the austere Christian season of Lent, George Frederick Handel (composer of Messiah, The Water Music, and Zadok the Priest) premiered his new opera Semele. Drawing on ancient writings by Ovid and more recent ones by playwright William Congreve, Handel’s ‘musical drama’ Semele broke the rules, social and musical – with the story of a disastrous love affair between the mortal Princess Semele and Jupiter, King of the Gods. Sir John Eliot Gardiner is one of the world’s leading musicians specialising in the ‘restoration’ of early music. With a peerless 50-year track record, he strives to recreate the sounds that composers like Handel and JS Bach would have imagined and heard. His approach combines musicology, scholarship, and an uncompromising passion for the music: rather like a picture restorer, he painstakingly strips away the layers of musical varnish and tarnish that have accumulated over generations, to present the music afresh, as its composers intended. Composer and musician Lloyd Coleman follows John Eliot Gardiner’s work to prepare a brand new 2019 production of Semele. Visiting rehearsals just across London’s Waterloo Bridge from where Semele was first heard 275 years ago, Lloyd talks to John Eliot Gardiner about his philosophy and strategies, and asks some of Gardiner’s many colleagues about how they collaborate with him to realise this ambitious and thrilling project.

In 1744, in the grand surroundings of London’s Royal Opera House, a musical scandal occurred. During the austere Christian season of Lent, George Frederick Handel (composer of Messiah, The Water Music, and Zadok the Priest) premiered his new opera Semele. Drawing on ancient writings by Ovid and more recent ones by playwright William Congreve, Handel’s ‘musical drama’ Semele broke the rules, social and musical – with the story of a disastrous love affair between the mortal Princess Semele and Jupiter, King of the Gods. Sir John Eliot Gardiner is one of the world’s leading musicians specialising in the ‘restoration’ of early music. With a peerless 50-year track record, he strives to recreate the sounds that composers like Handel and JS Bach would have imagined and heard. His approach combines musicology, scholarship, and an uncompromising passion for the music: rather like a picture restorer, he painstakingly strips away the layers of musical varnish and tarnish that have accumulated over generations, to present the music afresh, as its composers intended. Composer and musician Lloyd Coleman follows John Eliot Gardiner’s work to prepare a brand new 2019 production of Semele. Visiting rehearsals just across London’s Waterloo Bridge from where Semele was first heard 275 years ago, Lloyd talks to John Eliot Gardiner about his philosophy and strategies, and asks some of Gardiner’s many colleagues about how they collaborate with him to realise this ambitious and thrilling project.

Sir John Eliot Gardiner: Restoring early music

An internationally renowned artist from Lahore in Pakistan, Imran Qureshi is a master of the very delicate and the very brutal: combining tiny brushstrokes inspired by the 16th Century Mughal masters with large-scale installations evoking the carnage left after a bomb attack, his work has the power to shock and intrigue in equal measure. An unlikely friendship connects him with Christian Louboutin, one of the world’s best-known shoe designers, whose trademark red-soled, beautifully crafted pumps are worn by the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Rihanna. For this programme, Christian meets Imran at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, a huge warehouse turned art gallery in Paris. It is the venue of a major solo exhibition, and Christian joins Imran as crates are unpacked and last-minute changes made to individual paintings and the exhibition as a whole, with some new work inspired by the bomb attacks on two mosques in New Zealand in March 2019. “There is an element of violence in the work,” Imran says, “at the same time, when you get close to it, it becomes poetic as well.” He has even brought a piece of his studio with him from Lahore, which becomes part of his installation in its own right – and as he and Christian discuss each other’s art, it emerges that these two creative giants have a surprising amount in common.

An internationally renowned artist from Lahore in Pakistan, Imran Qureshi is a master of the very delicate and the very brutal: combining tiny brushstrokes inspired by the 16th Century Mughal masters with large-scale installations evoking the carnage left after a bomb attack, his work has the power to shock and intrigue in equal measure. An unlikely friendship connects him with Christian Louboutin, one of the world’s best-known shoe designers, whose trademark red-soled, beautifully crafted pumps are worn by the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Rihanna. For this programme, Christian meets Imran at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, a huge warehouse turned art gallery in Paris. It is the venue of a major solo exhibition, and Christian joins Imran as crates are unpacked and last-minute changes made to individual paintings and the exhibition as a whole, with some new work inspired by the bomb attacks on two mosques in New Zealand in March 2019. “There is an element of violence in the work,” Imran says, “at the same time, when you get close to it, it becomes poetic as well.” He has even brought a piece of his studio with him from Lahore, which becomes part of his installation in its own right – and as he and Christian discuss each other’s art, it emerges that these two creative giants have a surprising amount in common.

Imran Qureshi: Beauty and Carnage

Imagine huge searchlights which can be seen over a ten mile, 15 kilometer radius talking to one another across two countries. This is exactly what electronic media artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is creating this November between Ciudad Juárez in Mexico and El Paso in Texas.Called Border Tuner, the project will see enormous bridges of light connecting the US-Mexico border for the first time.When lights from the stations (three on each side) are directed at each other and they manage to make a connection, a massive bridge of light is formed. This activates microphones and speakers allowing participants to communicate with one another across the border. The “light bridge” flickers like morse code as the participants listen and speak to one another. If they don’t like what they are hearing they can retune to a different light beam.This is not the first time Rafael Lozano-Hemmer has used search lights in his art but he’s never done anything on this scale or with this complexity before. Born in Mexico City in 1967, he first produced a remote-controlled searchlight project in 1999 for the Zócalo Square in Mexico City. Since then he has created installations in dozens of cities around the world where the public controls the searchlights using the internet, mobile phones, megaphones or heart rate sensors.

Imagine huge searchlights which can be seen over a ten mile, 15 kilometer radius talking to one another across two countries. This is exactly what electronic media artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is creating this November between Ciudad Juárez in Mexico and El Paso in Texas. Called Border Tuner, the project will see enormous bridges of light connecting the US-Mexico border for the first time. When lights from the stations (three on each side) are directed at each other and they manage to make a connection, a massive bridge of light is formed. This activates microphones and speakers allowing participants to communicate with one another across the border. The “light bridge” flickers like morse code as the participants listen and speak to one another. If they don’t like what they are hearing they can retune to a different light beam. This is not the first time Rafael Lozano-Hemmer has used search lights in his art but he’s never done anything on this scale or with this complexity before. Born in Mexico City in 1967, he first produced a remote-controlled searchlight project in 1999 for the Zócalo Square in Mexico City. Since then he has created installations in dozens of cities around the world where the public controls the searchlights using the internet, mobile phones, megaphones or heart rate sensors.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Border Tuner

Iris van Herpen

This May the musical superstar Björk has been performing a series of concerts in New York, entitled Cornucopia. One of the costumes she appears in is a dress specially created for her by the pioneering Dutch designer Iris van Herpen. Iris is renowned for her fluid designs and pioneering use of techniques such as 3D printing and has  dressed many international celebrities. This new dress for Björk will be made of many different parts, blending design, art and science to create something truly unique.Anik See visits Iris in her Amsterdam studio to observe the garment being created and worked on. We also hear from Björk herself in a special interview for this episode. Iris has worked with Björk several times before, but with this project, the pressure is on as there’s a tight timescale and logistics to sort out of getting the dress fitted and shipped in time. Anik watches as the different components are made separately and sees the team at work assembling and fitting. As well as being striking, the dress must be able to move in the way Björk requires for the show - and be durable enough to withstand many nights of wear.

This May the musical superstar Björk has been performing a series of concerts in New York, entitled Cornucopia. One of the costumes she appears in is a dress specially created for her by the pioneering Dutch designer Iris van Herpen. Iris is renowned for her fluid designs and pioneering use of techniques such as 3D printing and has dressed many international celebrities. This new dress for Björk will be made of many different parts, blending design, art and science to create something truly unique. Anik See visits Iris in her Amsterdam studio to observe the garment being created and worked on. We also hear from Björk herself in a special interview for this episode. Iris has worked with Björk several times before, but with this project, the pressure is on as there’s a tight timescale and logistics to sort out of getting the dress fitted and shipped in time. Anik watches as the different components are made separately and sees the team at work assembling and fitting. As well as being striking, the dress must be able to move in the way Björk requires for the show - and be durable enough to withstand many nights of wear.

Iris van Herpen: Wearable works of art

Christian Louboutin

The world-famous shoe designer with the Oscar-nominated actress Dame Kristin Scott Thomas. The secrets behind the red-soled, stratospherically high-heeled shoes. Travelling the world for inspiration, anything that catches his eye can be transformed into a detail on a shoe: from a Parisian cake decoration to an exotic Portuguese rock garden. And he discusses what makes a high heel incontrovertibly sexy.

Christian Louboutin: Ingenious wizard of shoes

For this special Christmas episode, In the Studio goes on a journey with one of the world's most renowned iconographers. Not just to witness the creation of a beautiful painting - but to witness a transformation. The moment a physical image becomes a religious icon - a prayer in paint that, for the faithful, acts as a door between heaven and earth.Aidan Hart, a former hermit and Greek Orthodox monk whose icons you will find all over the world in churches and private collections - including that of Prince Charles - will paint an icon to celebrate the season of Advent.  Phil Pegum joins Aidan in rural England for five days as he paints a Christmas icon, and shares the secrets of the art form by explaining their symbolism and strange perspectives.

For this special Christmas episode, In the Studio goes on a journey with one of the world's most renowned iconographers. Not just to witness the creation of a beautiful painting - but to witness a transformation. The moment a physical image becomes a religious icon - a prayer in paint that, for the faithful, acts as a door between heaven and earth. Aidan Hart, a former hermit and Greek Orthodox monk whose icons you will find all over the world in churches and private collections - including that of Prince Charles - will paint an icon to celebrate the season of Advent. Phil Pegum joins Aidan in rural England for five days as he paints a Christmas icon, and shares the secrets of the art form by explaining their symbolism and strange perspectives.

Creating an Icon

Grammy nominated Jamaican reggae star Protoje gives us an exclusive insight into his creative and thought process as he begins to produce his fifth studio album. Following on the heels of the Grammy nominated A Matter of Time album, we visit Jamaica to catch up with the man who is being heralded as spearheading a new movement in the Caribbean with a new wave of young, energetic and passionate artists. Protoje has helped the likes of Chronixx, Lila Ike and Koffee by giving them a platform to develop their talents and present the emerging sound of Jamaica to a global audience. We delve into the success of his previous album, his approach to the new set, why he felt having his own studio would aid his creativity as well as visiting the new space. We focus on his lyrical ability, and the importance he places on being lyrically astute and rhythmically different from what would be expected from a Jamaican artist. Presented by award winning BBC reggae DJ Seani B, this is a rarely seen insight into a highly anticipated piece of work from Protoje.

Grammy nominated Jamaican reggae star Protoje gives us an exclusive insight into his creative and thought process as he begins to produce his fifth studio album. Following on the heels of the Grammy nominated A Matter of Time album, we visit Jamaica to catch up with the man who is being heralded as spearheading a new movement in the Caribbean with a new wave of young, energetic and passionate artists. Protoje has helped the likes of Chronixx, Lila Ike and Koffee by giving them a platform to develop their talents and present the emerging sound of Jamaica to a global audience. We delve into the success of his previous album, his approach to the new set, why he felt having his own studio would aid his creativity as well as visiting the new space. We focus on his lyrical ability, and the importance he places on being lyrically astute and rhythmically different from what would be expected from a Jamaican artist. Presented by award winning BBC reggae DJ Seani B, this is a rarely seen insight into a highly anticipated piece of work from Protoje.

Protoje: Jamaican reggae star

Alain Boublil

Audience participation will shape the new musical Manhattan Parisienne. How can Alain Boublil, Les Miserables co-creator, incorporate this idea into rehearsals and the performance itself?

Alain Boublil: Master of musical theatre

World renowned Chinese artist and activist in his bunker. Imprisoned in China, Ai Weiwei’s views and life are reflected in his work. Discover the mind behind the art. Now living and working in Germany, he reveals the one thing he believes all artists are trying to find.

Ai Weiwei: China’s dissident artist

Since 2009, the XYZ Show has been holding Kenyan politicians and other global figures to account, with a hilarious and cutting form of satire, starring... puppets! The brainchild of widely syndicated political cartoonist Gado, the XYZ Show aims to get people talking about issues through humour – in the tradition of famous satirical puppet shows like the UK’s Spitting Image and France’s Les Guignols. From President Uhuru Kenyatta to Donald Trump – a latex avatar is ready and waiting to spring into life. After a break of over a year, the XYZ Show is back on air for its 13th season, and the BBC’s Anthony Irungu has gained exclusive access to go behind the scenes. Follow him as he meets the puppet masters and makers, scriptwriters, directors, producers and voice artists that create each carefully crafted episode from scratch in just 10 days – and asks why puppets are so effective in satire.

Since 2009, the XYZ Show has been holding Kenyan politicians and other global figures to account, with a hilarious and cutting form of satire, starring... puppets! The brainchild of widely syndicated political cartoonist Gado, the XYZ Show aims to get people talking about issues through humour – in the tradition of famous satirical puppet shows like the UK’s Spitting Image and France’s Les Guignols. From President Uhuru Kenyatta to Donald Trump – a latex avatar is ready and waiting to spring into life. After a break of over a year, the XYZ Show is back on air for its 13th season, and the BBC’s Anthony Irungu has gained exclusive access to go behind the scenes. Follow him as he meets the puppet masters and makers, scriptwriters, directors, producers and voice artists that create each carefully crafted episode from scratch in just 10 days – and asks why puppets are so effective in satire.

The XYZ Show: Kenya’s satirical puppets

The best podcast episodes on parenting. Interviewing experts and talking through common issues surrounding parenting. This topic is filled with important lessons and insights for anyone listening. Add episodes you're interested into your queue below!

OwlTail

Best Parenting Podcasts

The best podcast episodes of anyone with an interesting story. With famous guests like Obama, LeBron James, Drake, Oprah Winfrey, Richard Branson, Michelle Obama, Serena Williams, to anyone who has a unique and interesting story to tell. Add episodes you're interested into your queue below!