On My Wavelength

Ahead of the opening talk of The Reith Lectures on Wednesday, historian David Reynolds looks at the background to this year’s theme in FDR’s Four Freedoms (Saturday, Radio 4, 8pm). In 1941, president Franklin D Roosevelt outlined the four key freedoms that should underpin every democratic society: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from fear and freedom from want. By way of contrast, Soul Music (Radio 4, 10.30am), tells how the folksy anthem Chervona Kalyna, with its rousing refrain of “Hey, hey. Rise up!” has inspired generations of Ukrainians to resist Russian oppression.

A decidedly different Sunday Feature (Radio 3, 6.45pm) accompanies former Conservative minister and podcast host Rory Stewart as he walks from an ancient Quaker meeting house in Cumbria to a medieval tower on Newcastle’s city walls. His quest? Clues in the life of Basil Bunting to help understand his neglected masterpiece of mid-century modernist poetry, Briggflatts. Later, in another intriguing journey, Slow Radio: A Moving Home (Radio 3, 11.30pm) takes us on a gentle waterborne trip across London on the Regent’s Canal.

Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist Maria Ressa’s How to Stand Up to a Dictator makes an unmissable Book of the Week (Mon-Fri, Radio 4FM, 9.45am).

It is a memoir of a life devoted to truth-telling, an account of her battle to expose the reality behind the Philippines’ former president Rodrigo Duterte’s so-called war on drugs, and a brilliant dissection of the “virus of lies” generated on social media platforms.

Months of government chaos have seen environmental policies raised, dropped and sidelined. In Costing the Earth (Tuesday, Radio 4, 3.30pm), Tom Heap investigates Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and environment minister Thérèse Coffey’s stance on green issues, what we can expect from them in the coming year, and whether it is supporters of the green-growth agenda or climate change sceptics who have the upper hand in today’s Conservative Party.

The Reith Lectures

(Wednesday, Radio 4, 9am &

World Service, 10.06am) has been bringing us cutting-edge ideas across the arts, sciences, politics and religion since 1948. This year they’re doing it a little differently, inviting four thinkers to deliver one lecture each, inspired by Franklin D Roosevelt’s “four freedoms” (see Saturday). The opening talk by the internationally acclaimed Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie focuses on freedom of speech.

There are only 18 women working full-time on trawlers in Britain, making commercial fishing one of the industries with the biggest gender imbalance in the UK. In the thoughtful Casting a Wider Net (Thursday, Radio 4, 8.30pm), Emily Kempson explores why that is, and heads for Brixham, Devon to meet young women who are nonetheless determined to make a career in fishing.

Archers fans wondering where Russ disappeared to, following his recent showdown with Lily, might be surprised to find him (or, rather, the actor who plays him, Andonis Anthony) in very different guise in Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Firewall (Friday, Radio 4, 2.15pm). He plays “legendary” black-ops agent Sam Fisher, in an adaptation of the bestselling series of violent computer games. It’s all preposterously square-jawed and shoot-’em-up silly, a welcome change ( just this once) from the worthier-than-thou stuff of so much Radio 4 drama.