Cast Iron Productions
124 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 3 years ago -Established in 2011 Cast Iron’s mission is to make life enhancing, important, informative, inspiring, imaginative and memorable productions.
The company is an affiliation of producers, directors, writers, composers and engineers. We work with experts and artists in all fields and collaborate with recordists in far flung places, to bring the voices and sounds of the world to bear.
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Episodes
Alice Is Still In Wonderland
September 20, 2019 09:42 - 27 minutes - 63.7 MBAlice's Adventures in Wonderland has become an icon of British culture - the bizarre story and flamboyant illustrations have inspired all kinds of imagery, fashion, architecture, theatre, decoration and events. But its sinister undercurrents and dreamscape have also impressed artists and musicians. On the 150th anniversary of the publication of Lewis Carroll's book, lead singer and song writer of alternative rock band Siouxsie and the Banshees, Siouxsie Sioux, explores its strange allure. Pr...
Antony Gormley: Missing Continents At The British Museum
September 20, 2019 09:42 - 27 minutes - 63.8 MBWhen it was founded in the 18th century from the collections of Sir Hans Sloane, the British Museum aspired to being not just a national museum, but a world collection, accessible to a global audience. Produced for BBC Radio 4
Isaac Julien's Guide To Artist Filmmaking
September 20, 2019 09:42 - 27 minutes - 25.3 MBWe hear from leading artists working with the moving image - Christian Marclay whose celebrated 24 hour film Clock, is a play on time. Tacita Dean, committed to the traditional medium of film, describes her roots in pictorial image making and her love of celluloid. Gillian Wearing discusses her ambivalence to narrative and acting in her new cinema film Self Made. We capture the spirit of artist filmmaking at a screening of films on the platform of Hackney Downs station, where the context of t...
Epiphanies
September 20, 2019 09:42 - 27 minutes - 63.5 MBAL Kennedy goes in search of epiphanies - those powerful revelations, the Aha! Instant in cognitive science, the Eureka moment among theorists and inventors. Epiphanies are not found, they come to us. Produced for BBC Radio 4
AA: America's Gift To The World
September 20, 2019 09:42 - 27 minutes - 63.6 MBAuthor AL Kennedy tells the story of Alcoholics Anonymous and its methods. Produced for BBC Radio 4
AA America's Gift To The World
September 20, 2019 09:42 - 27 minutes - 63.6 MBAuthor AL Kennedy tells the story of Alcoholics Anonymous and its methods. Eighty years ago, Bill Wilson and Doctor Bob Smith created a route to recovery from a fatal addiction along with an enduring organisation. With more than two million members worldwide, AA is still considered by the majority to be the most effective rehabilitation treatment available to alcoholics. In an age of heavily commercialised recovery programmes, "The Fellowship" continues to work with no active promotion and a...
AL Kennedy: Holding Hands
September 20, 2019 09:42 - 27 minutes - 44.4 MBThere is something uniquely intimate and comforting about holding someone's hand. Perhaps because it's something that begins in childhood - our small hand enveloped in that of other, stronger, larger hands. We associate it with comfort, concern, care. And then, for a while, we abandon it - not holding your parents' hands is a sign that you have grown up - only to have the joy of rediscovering new shades of meaning in the gesture. Produced for BBC Radio 4
AL Kennedy's Migraine
September 20, 2019 09:41 - 27 minutes - 63.5 MBAL Kennedy talks to migraineurs and neurologists to explore the history and experience of a serious, though often misunderstood, condition which affects a billion people worldwide. Produced for BBC Radio 4
Racial Equality Enshrined
September 20, 2019 09:41 - 56 minutes - 129 MBOn the 50th anniversary this month of Britain's first Race Relations Act, Ritula Shah considers the role of legislation in ending racial discrimination. She is joined by Lord Lester of Herne Hill who helped draw up the original legislation in 1965. Produced for BBC Radio 4
Serbian Trumpets
September 20, 2019 09:41 - 27 minutes - 25.3 MBWith composer and musician, Llywelyn Ap Myrddin we travel to Guca, officially the Dragacevo Trumpet Festival, a hundred miles south of Belgrade, to explore the sound and culture of this distinctly Balkan music. Played by Roma and Serbs alike, Guca is about the only place the two cultures tolerate one another. Produced for BBC Radio 4
Leonardo: Master Of Ceremonies
September 20, 2019 09:41 - 43 minutes - 69.7 MBFollowing on from the National Gallery's major exhibition "Leonardo: Painter at the Court of Milan" which included some of the best known paintings by the great "Renaissance Man", we reveal a lesser known, but equally astonishing aspect of his work in Milan: his splendid pageants, masques and parades which he designed and directed as Master of Ceremonies. Charles Nicholl, Leonardo's biographer, is fascinated by these transient masterpieces, which are equally important to the development of Le...
A Body Of Essays : Chibundo Onuzo : The Thyroid
September 20, 2019 09:40 - 13 minutes - 31.5 MBOne of the youngest authors ever to be published, Chibundu Onuzo takes up her pen to investigate the goldilocks nature of the thyroid in this evening's essay. In an ongoing collaboration with BBC Radio 3, Wellcome Collection's Reading Room is the setting for a series of 'The Essay' devoted to the bodily organs. 'Body of Essays' invites five writers to ruminate on a different organ of the body. This strange proposition has a mysterious allure: the organs are hidden, buried from view, and yet ...
A Body Of Essays : William Fiennes : The Bowel
September 20, 2019 09:40 - 13 minutes - 31.1 MBIn an ongoing collaboration with BBC Radio 3, Wellcome Collection's Reading Room is the setting for a series of 'The Essay' devoted to the bodily organs. 'Body of Essays' invites five writers to ruminate on a different organ of the body. This strange proposition has a mysterious allure: the organs are hidden, buried from view, and yet are at the very core of our physical functioning as well as our mental and emotional world. Suctioned together in dark flesh, the organs can be all the more puz...
Hallelujah (produced with Just Radio)
September 20, 2019 09:40 - 27 minutes - 25.4 MBComposer Jocelyn Pook celebrates the music and meaning of the word Hallelujah through history and creates a new composition inspired by the word. This exuberant exclamation of joy and gratitude has survived the passage of centuries, transcending the barriers of language, religion and culture, and has inspired composers and songwriters from the Psalms through Monteverdi, Handel, Vivaldi, Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen. Produced for BBC Radio 4
Peter Blake's Mystery Tour (produced with Just Radio)
September 20, 2019 09:39 - 28 minutes - 26.4 MBBritish painter Peter Blake takes listeners on a magical journey in an old char-à-banc bus. He is joined by characters who have peopled his imagination over the years - Elvis, Ian Dury, Frankie Howerd, Kim Novak to name a few...one in particular though is the White Knight played by John Hurt. Produced for BBC Radio 3
Brighstone 428
September 20, 2019 09:36 - 27 minutes - 62.8 MBArtist Graeme Miller captures the poetry of the landline. In this half hour, we follow the arc of a single call from dialling to hanging up, taking in the sweep across the global landscape of the 20th century. He draws out the private habits and distinctive speech as well as the collective dreams and nightmares of the landlines art and culture. Produced for BBC Radio 3
Canis Major
September 20, 2019 09:36 - 26 minutes - 60.6 MBAmidst celebrations of the Chinese New Year - the Year of the Dog - cognitive scientist Alexandra Horowitz seizes the occasion to explore how dogs are (and have been) regarded in religious iconography, texts, rituals and beliefs. In her research in dog cognition she explores the dual nature of the dog: how, while they live by and large co-operatively among humans, loving and loved, they also exist in another dimension as olfactory animals, attuned to a world of smells that we are not. Their o...
Russian Bells
September 20, 2019 09:36 - 27 minutes - 63.4 MBFrom Mussorgsky to Rimsky-Korsakov, Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, the unmistakable sound of bells rings through the greatest pieces of Russian music. Composer Llywelyn ap Myrddin takes us on a musical journey to discover the 'voice of the Russian sky' amid the throng at the Rostov-the-Great Bell Festival. Produced for BBC Radio 4
The Feast Of Language : William Carlos Williams(produced with Just Radio)
September 20, 2019 09:35 - 13 minutes - 12.4 MBUndertaker and poet Thomas Lynch considers the similarities between his own double life and that of American modernist poet and doctor William Carlos Williams. Produced for BBC Radio 3
The Feast Of Language : Carol Ann Duffy(produced with Just Radio)
September 20, 2019 09:35 - 13 minutes - 12.6 MBMichigan-based undertaker and poet Thomas Lynch explores the work of Carol Ann Duffy, delighting in her immense humanity and her wry take on the church. Produced for BBC Radio 3
The Feast Of Language : Michael Donaghy (produced with Just Radio)
September 20, 2019 09:35 - 13 minutes - 12.3 MBThomas Lynch, a Michigan-based undertaker and poet, remembers time spent with fellow Irish writer Michael Donaghy. Produced for BBC Radio 3
This Is Not Magritte (produced with Just Radio)
September 20, 2019 09:35 - 27 minutes - 25.3 MBTo coincide with a major exhibition of Surrealist artist, Rene Magritte's work at Tate Liverpool, Richard Strange broadcasts from Magritte's former apartment and the recently opened Magritte Museum in Brussels to piece together the exceptional vision and by contrast, determinedly ordinary life of this outwardly conventional man who constructed intriguing and bizarre images, imploring us to "put the real world on trial". Monty Python's Terry Jones holds forth about Magritte's genius for juxta...
Baaba Maal And The Senegalese Kingdom Of Music (produced with Just Radio)
September 20, 2019 09:33 - 27 minutes - 63 MBEach year the Senegalese king of music, Baaba Maal, invites musicians across the region to play at the Blues du Fleuve festival, Festival of the River, which takes place somewhere along the Senegal River on the northern edge of the country. Produced for BBC Radio 4
AL Kennedy's Art And Madness (produced with Just Radio)
September 20, 2019 09:33 - 43 minutes - 69.9 MBIn this highly authored inquiry AL Kennedy questions the clichéd link between madness and creativity, claiming that being true to oneself and exploring ones identity is integral to the making or performing of one's art - however perilous this can seem. Losing one's mind is a negative, terrifying experience, freeing it can be nerve-wracking too, but also exhilarating, beautiful and eloquent - for everyone. Produced for BBC Radio 3
Jellyfish (produced with Just Radio)
September 20, 2019 09:28 - 28 minutes - 25.9 MBStories from a collection by Janice Galloway, read by the author.
Malcolm McLaren's Life And Times In LA (produced with Just Radio)
September 20, 2019 09:27 - 57 minutes - 52.6 MB*Sony Gold Winner* Malcolm McLaren creates an innovative, music driven narrative on the sprawling city of Los Angeles. Post the Punk era in London, Sex Pistols legend, Malcolm McLaren visited Los Angeles on a promotional tour that should have lasted a few days, but he was “utterly and hopelessly seduced” by the city and ended up staying for four years. In this radio-movie he tells a very personal and funny story, flecked with his own contemporary observations of the city. Produced for BBC ...
Big Drum on Little Carriacou
September 13, 2019 10:10 - 27 minutes - 63.4 MBZakia Sewell returns to the home of her grandparents, Carriacou, a small island off the coast of Grenada, to discover the Big Drum tradition - a dance ritual with its origins in West Africa and passed on through generations since the slavery era. Produced for BBC Radio 4
Let Her Speak
September 13, 2019 10:10 - 43 minutes - 99.7 MBWith Hillary Clinton in the last throes of the American presidential campaign and literally thousands of speeches, Emily Maitlis considers how women have been and are making themselves heard in public; commandeering the ancient art of rhetoric, for millennia the business of men. Produced for BBC Radio 3
Caoilfhionn Gallagher QC In Conversation With Dr Laura Janes (Legal DIrector Howard League)
June 24, 2019 15:52 - 1 hour - 178 MBCaoilfhionn Gallagher QC in conversation With Dr Laura Janes (Legal DIrector Howard League) discussing the experience of women in the legal profession.
Edouard Manet: The Direct Gaze
June 03, 2019 08:20 - 43 minutes - 70.1 MBActor Fiona Shaw unlocks the gaze of the most famous naked women painted by French Impressionist Edouard Manet. With contributions from novelist Julian Barnes and artist Michael Craig Martin. Produced for BBC Radio 3
Gabriela Montero: Improvisation Masterclass (Part 1)
June 03, 2019 08:08 - 22 minutes - 52.6 MBGabriela Montero, the exhilarating Venezuelan pianist, is playing in Miami. She is renowned for her live improvisations, a form of classical music that’s rarely heard in concert halls today. Produced for The BBC World Service
Gabriela Montero Improvisation Masterclass : Part 1
June 03, 2019 08:08 - 22 minutes - 52.6 MBGabriela Montero, the exhilarating Venezuelan pianist, is playing in Miami. She is renowned for her live improvisations, a form of classical music that’s rarely heard in concert halls today. Her spontaneous compositions on stage are inspired by musical motifs, sung or hummed to her by a member of the audience, often drawn from the classical repertoire, but also from the local folk traditions of any given audience. She is increasingly recognised for her talent and the direct communication she...
Gabriela Montero: Improvisation Masterclass (Part 2)
June 03, 2019 08:08 - 26 minutes - 60.6 MBGabriela Montero, the exhilarating Venezuelan pianist, is playing in Miami. She is renowned for her live improvisations, a form of classical music that’s rarely heard in concert halls today. Produced for The BBC World Service
Gabriela Montero Improvisation Masterclass : Part 2
June 03, 2019 08:08 - 26 minutes - 60.6 MBGabriela Montero, the exhilarating Venezuelan pianist, is playing in Miami. She is renowned for her live improvisations, a form of classical music that’s rarely heard in concert halls today. Her spontaneous compositions on stage are inspired by musical motifs, sung or hummed to her by a member of the audience, often drawn from the classical repertoire, but also from the local folk traditions of any given audience. She is increasingly recognised for her talent and the direct communication she...
Pursuit Of Beauty: Alison Turnbull, Butterflies In Colombia
June 03, 2019 07:59 - 28 minutes - 64.5 MBProduced for BBC Radio 4
A Body Of Essays : Naomi Alderman : The Intestines
May 22, 2019 12:01 - 13 minutes - 31.1 MBAs part of a series of reflections about organs of the human body, novelist and journalist Naomi Alderman discusses the incredible labyrinth that is the intestines.
Contagious Cities: HIV And AIDS In Nairobi, Polly of Kinasha Street by Okwiri Oduor
May 22, 2019 00:00 - 18 minutes - 41.3 MBYoung Kenyan author Okwiri Oduor, reflects on HIV AIDS in Nairobi. Produced for BBC Radio 3
HIV And AIDS In Nairobi, Polly of Kinasha Street by Okwiri Oduor
May 22, 2019 00:00 - 18 minutes - 41.3 MBYoung Kenyan author Okwiri Oduor, reflects on HIV AIDS in Nairobi.
Contagious Cities: Zika In Maceio by Debora Diniz
May 21, 2019 17:15 - 17 minutes - 41 MBAnthropologist and professor of law Debora Diniz on Zika in Maceio in north east Brazil, as part of the Contagious Cities series. Produced for BBC Radio 3
Zika In Maceio by Debora Diniz
May 21, 2019 17:15 - 17 minutes - 41 MBAnthropologist and professor of law Debora Diniz on Zika in Maceio in north east Brazil, as part of the Contagious Cities series.
Yevgeny Murzin: Master of the Synthesiser (Part 2)
March 31, 2018 00:00 - 26 minutes - 60.6 MBDue to the political climate in Soviet Russia of the day, Yevgeny Murzin was forced to build his synthesizer in secret with little access to electronic parts. Over next two decades (pre and post war), the ANS as it was known, was a self-financed, largely secret labour of love; Murzin had to work on it in his spare time over two decades with help from a like-minded, tight-knit circle of composers and technicians. Produced for The BBC World Service
Yevgeny Murzin: Master of the Synthesiser (Part 1)
March 31, 2018 00:00 - 22 minutes - 52.6 MBDue to the political climate in Soviet Russia of the day, Yevgeny Murzin was forced to build his synthesizer in secret with little access to electronic parts. Over next two decades (pre and post war), the ANS as it was known, was a self-financed, largely secret labour of love; Murzin had to work on it in his spare time over two decades with help from a like-minded, tight-knit circle of composers and technicians. Produced for The BBC World Service
Siobhan Davies and Guy Claxton - Conversations In Time
December 14, 2017 12:27 - 54 minutes - 49.9 MBSiobhan Davies is a dancer and choreographer. Guy Claxton is a cognitive scientist. Inspired by Conversations Before The End Of Time by Suzi Gablik. Conversations In Time was recorded and Distributed as part of European Capital of Culture Aarhus 2017.
Lillian Lijn and Alistair Hudson - Conversations In Time
November 25, 2017 15:00 - 57 minutes - 52.5 MBAlistair Hudson was educated at Goldsmiths' College (1988 – 1991). He is currently Director of the Middlesborough Insitute for Modern Art at Teeside University and has recently been appointed Director of the Whitworth Art Gallery at Manchester University. For the last decade prior to this he was Deputy Director of Grizedale Arts in the Lake District, gaining critical acclaim for a radical approach to working with artists and communities, based on the idea that art should be useful and not jus...
Annie Freud and Elaine Beckett - Conversations In Time
August 24, 2017 09:02 - 44 minutes - 102 MBAnnie Freud is a poet, artist and teacher. Her first full poetry collection (Picador 2007), The Best Man That Ever Was received the Dimplex Award for New Writing (Poetry). The Mirabelles, her second collection (Picador 2011) was a Poetry Book Society Choice and was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. Her most recent collection The Remains includes her own illustrations. Francesca Melandri was born in Rome in 1964. After many years screenwriting her literary debut was in 2010 with Eva Sleeps,...
AL Kennedy and Francesca Melandri - Conversations In Time
August 24, 2017 09:02 - 47 minutes - 108 MBAL Kennedy is a Scottish writer of novels, short stories and non-fiction. She teaches academic courses and performs stand-up comedy. She is known for her characteristically dark tone, a blending of realism and fantasy and for her serious approach to her work. She contributes columns and reviews to European newspapers. Elaine Beckett's poetry pamphlet 'Faber New Poets 13' was published in 2016 by Faber&Faber. She originally studied music composition, and later trained at the National Film and...
Cornelia Grassi and Adam Phillips - Conversations In Time
June 27, 2017 15:13 - 48 minutes - 110 MBCornelia Grassi owns and is director of greengrassi art gallery in London. Half American, half Italian, she sees her mission as introducing art that wouldn't normally be seen in Britain and enabling her artists "to make the work that they want to make". She doesn't impose commercial boundaries, nor tie her artists to a contract: "If they feel it is beneficial to them and they want to work with me, that's fine. I don't want them to be restricted." Adam Phillips is a writer and psychoanalyst. ...
Dorothy Cross and Xavier Bray - Conversations In Time
June 23, 2017 16:02 - 39 minutes - 90.8 MBDorothy Cross is an artist from Cork, Ireland. Her work incorporates sculpture, film and photography and examines the relationship between living beings and the natural world. In recent years, her practice has focused on nature and the ocean, working with maligned animals such as jellyfish and shark, and exploring rarely accessible areas like sea caves or shell grottos. She lives in Connemara, a rural area on Ireland’s wild west coast. Xavier Bray is a curator and director of the Wallace Col...
Mette Sandbye and Kirsten Justesen - Conversations In Time
June 23, 2017 15:56 - 39 minutes - 90.6 MBMette Sandbye is Professor of Photography Studies and Head of the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies at the University of Copenhagen. She is art critic at the weekly newspaper Weekendavisen and has published several books, most recently - Digital Snaps: The New Face of Photography (2014), edited with Jonas Larsen. Kirsten Justesen is a visual artist based in Copenhagen. She graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1975 with a degree in classical sculpture, yet always pus...
Cecil Balmond and Tom Nielsen - Conversations In Time
June 02, 2017 07:13 - 46 minutes - 42.6 MBCecil Balmond is a designer, engineer and artist who has created high-profile public art pieces individually and collaboratively with artists such as Anish Kapoor. He works in the crossover between art and science and is the author of a number of books on science and structure including Informal (2002) and Element (2005). He lives between London and his native Sri Lanka. Tom Nielsen is an architect and professor at the Aarhus School of Architecture where he teaches Urban Design, Landscape an...