Artworks: No Criticism (BBC Radio 4) - “Metacriticism – a word so high-flown only dogs and English undergraduates can hear it. Yet No Criticism, a short, two-part Artworks series in which critics critique criticism, begins in a tone that is distinctly, let’s say, earthy. ‘In the moment, I thought: “It’s only dog poo,”’ recalls the German dance critic Wiebke Hüster, bizarrely stoical as she describes the time the choreographer Marco Goecke smeared a bag full of dachshund excrement in her face during a ballet interval, in response to a bad review. ‘In interviews later, [Goecke] said: “She has thrown shit at me so many times.”’ Ah, revenge – a dish best served steaming.”

Fiona Sturges in the FT

The History Podcast: The Second Map (BBC Radio 4) - “The research and storytelling here are exceptional. Puri takes us from the Knight family home to the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, where British grandees took shelter as the city fell, to the Japanese labour camp where Naylor was forced to work on the Thai-Burma railway. We learn how the war in the Pacific would be felt by Knight’s wider family; his son, Tony, remembers how his father-in-law spent much of the conflict in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp and had nightmares about it years later.”

Lucy White in the Irish Independent

The Secret Life of Songs (ind.) - “Wisely, rather than deconstruct every lyric, Jackson looks at the sociopolitical landscapes which trigger the songs, and the resulting impact.”
What Happened to Counter-Culture (BBC Radio 4) - “While Brian Eno is name-dropped in The Secret Life of Songs, as a fan of I Feel Love, he is here interviewed along with authors Iain Sinclair and Olivia Laing, music producer Joe Boyd, sculptor Emily Young, cultural historian Jon Savage and folk singer Shirley Collins.”