As his dismissive attitude to journalists at last week’s press conference showed, Donald Trump appears to believe that he can govern the United States without submitting to the scrutiny of the press. He may well be right. In an episode of The Documentary (Sunday 15 January, 2pm, BBC World Service) titled The President And The Press, Jon Sopel traces the history of the fourth estate’s relationship with the US government’s chief executive, from president McKinley, who first opened up formal channels at the end of the 19th century, through Franklin Roosevelt, who had the press boys in the palm of his hand, to John F Kennedy, who decided the future was all about TV. Then on to the last president, who was the most polished media performer of all, and No 45, whose gnat-like attention span appears built for social media, which didn’t exist when Bill Clinton was elected.
Beginning on the day Donald Trump takes his oath of office, America Rewritten (Weekdays, 9.45am, Radio 4) sees Robert McCrum ask US writers how it felt to wake up on the day after the election, in a country that is apparently different from the one they thought they knew. Richard Ford (whose episode airs Friday 20 January) has decided the only response is to spend more time getting to know that country and its people. Marilynne Robinson (Monday 16 January) says: “We’re about to see how deep the cultural resources of America go.” No doubt Malcolm Gladwell (Tuesday 17 January) has his own hypothesis.
Running against Washington is an eternally popular way to go for US politicians. In Trump: The Presidential Precedents (Weekdays, 1.45pm, Radio 4) Adam Smith looks at the populists of earlier eras who set out to drain the swamp. He begins with Andrew Jackson, who invited anyone who fancied a cup of grog to drop by the White House, with predictably rowdy consequences.
Brian Cox and Robin Ince return for a new run of The Infinite Monkey Cage (Monday 16 January, 4.30pm, Radio 4) with a programme recorded at the Manchester Museum Of Science And Industry, featuring guests comedian Russell Kane, physicist Helen Czerski and engineer Danielle George. This one focuses on what you can learn about physics by observing the objects and materials that surround you in everyday life. It starts with an explanation of the relationship between your walking pace and the likelihood of the tea you’re carrying from the kitchen sloshing over the rim of the cup, an explanation that I cannot do justice to here.
The most unlikely sound of the week is the grateful cooing of the three sisters in Rhiannon Tise’s dramatisation of Louisa May Alcott’s novel Little Women (Weekdays, 10.45am, Radio 4) when they wake on Christmas morn to find that mother has lovingly filled each of their stockings with their own personal copy of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress.
