Illuminated

What does it take to choose peace when you have every reason not to?
Aziz Abu Sarah is a Palestinian who grew up under Israeli occupation in East Jerusalem. He was first shot at when he was seven years old, and in 1991, when he was ten, his older brother Tayseer died after being arrested and beaten while in Israeli military custody.
Maoz Inon is an Israeli who grew up in a community just 200 metres from the Gaza border. On 7 October 2023, his parents and many of his childhood friends died in the Hamas attacks.
Everything about their histories suggests Aziz and Maoz could never become friends. Yet, despite experiencing profound personal loss on opposite sides of one of the world’s most enduring conflicts, they have turned away from hatred and towards each other in a shared mission of peacemaking. A single text message to a stranger in a moment of empathy, sparked a friendship that would overcome seemingly insurmountable differences.
If We Can Walk Together follows their remarkable stories, from pivotal childhood experiences to moments of political awakening, and their shared decision to rise above fear and revenge.
Moving, inspiring and radically hopeful, their story offers a rare perspective on a conflict often portrayed as intractable. In bearing witness to what human connection can overcome, it invites us to imagine a future shaped not by division, but by our capacity to walk together.
This programme is part of BBC Radio 4's Common Ground season, examining the challenges of social cohesion and how to address them.
Producer: Guy Natanel
Executive Producers: Shannon Delwiche and Chris Jones
Composer: Pat Moran
Sound Mixer: John Scott
Sound Engineer: Rob Fanner
A Sound and Bones production for BBC Radio 4

Water has always been a threshold - a space between worlds where transformation unfolds.
But what if the lakes, rivers, and seas we surrender ourselves to are not merely passive bodies, but keepers of our grief, our burdens, and our memory?
Feature maker Hana Walker-Brown explores what pulls so many of us to the water at moments of rupture or change.
Tracing the unseen currents that bind us to each other and to the natural world, Hana considers water not simply as an element, but as the ultimate solvent; a place where we go to dissolve, to surrender to the wild drift of it all, to allow ourselves to be held without condition.
Part personal meditation, part collective reflection, A Body Of Water blends intimate testimony, poetic narration and cinematic sound design that echoes the rhythm of the ocean.
With contributions from world champion freediver Helena Bourdillon, author and psychologist Dr Sharon Blackie, author and boat builder Wyl Menmuir and author Robert MacFarlane.
Special thanks to Abigail Gonda, Bean Downes, Joey Hulin, Christophe Donot and Will Salt.
This piece was developed during an artist residency at Hektor in Lanzarote.
Presented, produced and sound designed by Hana Walker-Brown
Mixed by Peregrine Andrews
The executive producer is Peggy Sutton
A Reduced Listening Production for BBC Radio 4

On a hot summer’s day in 1991, a violent crime took place that shook Consett, a town in the North East of England. When threatened with the legal demolition of a property he owned, a former steelworker called Albert Dryden went on a murderous rampage, killing the council’s chief planning officer and seriously wounding a policeman and a journalist. Furthermore, the brutal crime was filmed and broadcast on national news.
But what made the crime even more perplexing was its controversial aftermath. While the majority of people condemned Dryden’s actions, a vocal minority came to see him as something of a folk hero. This wasn’t the usual morbid fascination that can sometimes gather around certain violent criminals; it was admiration. Crowds cheered outside his court hearings and “Free Albert Dryden” posters were not an uncommon sight around town – even songs were written about him.
How can a cold-blooded killer ever gain public support? Writer Joe Zadeh takes a close look at details surrounding this incident in an attempt to examine these rare yet recurring moments in history, when moral values turn upside down and everyday citizens find themselves excusing the most horrific crimes.
Written and presented by Joe Zadeh
Producer: Hunter Charlton
Mixing Engineer: Alex Portfelix
Composer: Jess Howard
Executive Producer: Ant Adeane
Photograph: Albert Dryden taken by Michael Peckett
An Ember production for BBC Radio 4.

The young British poet Saili Katebe was born in landlocked Zambia, and grew up with an imagined beach in his mind. Palm trees would grow in the golden sands. The sun would shine all day, and naturally there’d be romance.
Moving to the UK as a teenager, Saili visited a real beach for the first time. He was underwhelmed by the hazy sun and soft ice cream, and the sea at low tide was so far away he could hardly see it, let alone swim in its weedy shallows.
Over the years though, Saili has come to appreciate the quiet charms of the beaches around him as places rich in stories. In Voices from the Beach he listens to lives shaped by the beach in unexpected ways. There’s the ice cream seller, who once fled her own landlocked country. Now her Mr Whippy Van now brings joy along the south coast.
‘It’s an honour to keep the tradition alive,’ she says. ‘I couldn’t live without the sea now.’ Then there’s the fisherman ‘born on the beach’ who tried to move away but couldn’t get his bearings without the sea.
Voices from the Beach features chance encounters and casual conversations with many other people out on the beaches at Bognor Regis, Littlehampton, Dover, Lyme Regis, Brighton and Weston Super Mare.
Music Jon Nicholls
Produced by Jon Nicholls with Monica Whitlock
Photograph: Troon beach by Monica Whitlock
A Storyscape production for BBC Radio 4

When Laura's sister could no longer care for her daughter, Laura had a few hours to decide. If she said yes, she would become a parent again overnight, no training, no paid leave, no warning. If she said no, the little girl would go into care.
She said yes. Most families do.
My Sister's Daughter weaves Laura's story, told through the small, exhausting, tender details of a life rearranged, with the voice of Jo, now in her forties, looking back at her own childhood in kinship care. When Jo's mother died, a quiet constellation of adults closed around her: a stepfather, grandparents, aunts. Nobody called it kinship care, it didn’t have a name then. They just stepped in, and stayed.
Together, Laura and Jo illuminate a world that is largely invisible, not because it is rare, but because it is so deeply woven into how families survive. There are over 130,000 children in kinship care in England and Wales right now. Most are there because someone said yes in a moment of crisis, with no time to think and very little support to follow.
This is a programme about what that decision really means for the children who receive it, and for the adults who give it.
It’s also about what it leaves behind, for the people who care, and for the children who grow up inside it.
Produced and presented by Jo Meek
Executive Producer - Eloise Whitmore
A Naked production for BBC Radio 4