Woman’s Hour Takeover Week – Angelina Jolie Pitt (R4) | iPlayer
Love Me (CBC Radio) | cbc.ca
On Friday morning, after Thursday’s soul-sapping news combination of murder, politics and football, I did some station hopping. James O’Brien, on LBC, was as beautifully articulate as ever (I think reasoned ranting is his major strength, and remains untapped by his Newsnight appearances). O’Brien’s questioning, concerned opening monologue for his show, where he wondered whether media coverage could push someone into extreme political action, brought together many of the thoughts I’d been having on the subject. Over on talkSport, Colin Murray and Keith Gillespie were discussing Northern Ireland’s 2-0 victory with appropriately hungover enthusiasm. And on Woman’s Hour, “actor, film director and United Nations special envoy responsible for refugees” Angelina Jolie Pitt was being interviewed by Jenni Murray, as part of this week’s Woman’s Hour takeover.
Jolie Pitt proved herself to be articulate and informed. She told us the truth. Currently, 60 million people are displaced. The average time spent in a refugee camp is 17 years. Funding shortfalls to support them are commonplace. “We haven’t had one single UN appeal fully funded. Syria is 19% funded,” she said. Health is a luxury: there is no soap in some refugee camps, as the funding is so low; and in some cases it would cost $250,000 to get the right soap in there. Children die of asthma. Cancer is a death sentence. There is no way that doctors can treat individuals, they have to treat the masses. And the doctors’ work is severely compromised by the bombing of hospitals.
Jolie Pitt has a lovely speaking voice, and she knows how to use it. She invited listeners to imagine leaving their lives – “it’s over, in a moment” – and take their children to live in a squalid, hopeless refugee camp. For 17 years. She was amazing, but I couldn’t listen any longer. You may well be tougher than me, in which case I recommend her programme.
Searching for something to take me away from tough news, I remembered that a fellow podcast-lover had told me about Love Me, which comes from the Montreal producers of WireTap and is hosted by Lu Olkowski, who makes exceptionally interesting audio. Only two episodes in, and I love this show. It manages to be both touching and experimental, a tricky combination. Although it bills itself as “a show about the messiness of human connection”, which sounds twee, it is far from this: the production is unexpected; the whole show is unexpected, to be honest.
The first episode concerned a couple whose romance depended entirely on Google Translate. He spoke French, she English. This spun out into various areas: there was a nice piece on words that don’t have an equivalent English translation (very Allusionist I thought), and, more unexpectedly, a kind of prose poem that imagined a marital argument mediated by a translation app. Episode two was about a friendship that depends on the two people never meeting. Somehow, this morphed into a nutso imaginary dating show. Each podcast is comfortably under 30 minutes, and takes you to places you never usually go, such as away from the news. Just what’s needed in such a sad week.
