THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 524, 8 July 1949, Page 26

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

Dick Barton and the Death-ray ICK BARTON, the BBC’s famous radio detective, who is said never to swear, never to break the law, and to defend himself only with a swift uppercut to the jaw (and what good detective shouldn’t?) will be heard from 2YD as from next week. Barton’s adventures have been produced by an Australian organisation, and it is this version that listeners will hear, the initial episode being at 7.20 pim. on Monday, July 11. The first adventure involves two famous British scientists who have invented a death-ray, each of them holding half of the formula, and both pledged to defend their half with their lives. Unfortunately for England (but fortunately for the famous Barton, who is thus presented with a case to solve) one of the scientists is a villain -he wants to sell the formula to a foreign power. The loyal scientist is kidnapped, tortured, and _ eventually made to give up his secret. The deathray is constructed, and taken up in an aeroplane by the foreign emissaries, who intend to terrify the whole of Britain with it. But of course they have reckoned without Barton, who arrives to save democracy in the nick of time. There She Blows! babes Our captain stood upon the deck, A spy-glass in hig hand, A viewing of those gallant whales That blew at every strand. Oh, your tubs in your boats, my boys, And by your braces stand, And we'll have one of those fine whales, Hand boys, over hand! "W/V BALING’S something you catch like measles or chickenpox. You pay off every season, and you say, ‘Well, that’s the last time’; but there you are next October, signing on the dotted Tine." That is how Tom Needle, an old whaling man, sums up the life that draws him to the wastes of the Antarctic every year. A BBC programme, Hunting the Blue Whale, shows what -Tom’s life is like, with its dangers and toil in unpeopled places, but the setting is far more modern than that in which Herman Melville’s harpooners and sailors sang their whaling verses. Hunting the Blue Whale as it is carried out to-day, with harpoon guns and all, is a scientific business. The programme, written and produced by Alan Burgess in the BBC Light Programme, will be heard from 3YA on Monday, July 11, at 9.50 p.m. ‘Adult Education in Canada [N Canada, which is a big country, they generally do things in a big way. Adult education, for instance, covers as broad a field as you could imagine, and one department of it may be offering courses in drama, art, literature, music, and painting, and at the same time be conducting classes in navigation for fishermen, co-operatives for farmers, and cookery, dressmaking, and weaving for wives. Youth training ~ schemes along the lines of the Swedish folk schools are also held, the students

staying in camp hostels for several weeks, learning about such things as animal husbandry, rural sociology, psychology, marriage and family life, and so on, with recreational and cultural activities in the week-ends. Adult Education in Canada is discussed in a recorded talk by Professor G. M. Shrum, a visitor to New Zealand during the recent Pacific Science Congress, It will be heard from 2YA at 7.13 p.m. on Tuesday, July 12.

Can You Think? OR a series of talks dealing principally with the types of fallacy most commonly met in everyday life the title Can You Think? seems peculiarly apt. The speaker will be Peter Freyberg, a tutor in the Philosophy Department of Auckland University College, who defines a fallacy. as "an incorrect method of argument; a spurious argument disguised as a valid one." To begin with

there seems to bé something spurious about the’ assumption that there are people who cannot think at all. Such people, if they existed, would hardly be likely to benefit from studying even elementary logic. But listeners who can think. at least

a little, should find Can You Think? interesting, and if they should happen to be stimulated into discovering rather more fallacies in the argument than the speaker intends-he will give numerous examples-then the talks will have achieved their object of encouraging "critical habits of mind so that you don’t believe’ a thing just bécause it sounds right." The first of three talks on Can You Think? will be heard from 1YA at 9.30 p.m. on Wednesday, July 13. 2,

Welsh Rarebit F ordinary everyday onions can bring tears to the eyes, is it any wonder that a bunch of prize onions (and in Wales too, look you!) should be responsible for starting a quarrel that leads to the estrangement of two close friends? That’s what happens in the BBC play Prize Onions, a comedy set in a Welsh village and written by E. Eynon Evans. Before the friends are brought together again, the drama literally follows a trail of onions right through the cloud of suspicions and rivalries which, it must be confessed, is likely to be present at any local horticultural show. To complete the Welsh atmosphere the play was produced by Dafydd Gruffydd in the Cardiff studios of the BBC, but Prize Onions could be set in any village or country town anywhere in the world. It will be heard from 2XN at 9.31 p.m. on Wednesday, July 13. The Light That Didn't Fail ~: ALF RACKSTRAW," said old Joe Cartwright, "you’d say he had no nerves, an’ so would I, but they found him upon the light platform, quite mad, muttering 4ver and over again, ‘Seven «ne Hash .: 4's four i aigeh: 30's two:

. -« flash.’ And in his clenched fist a piece of discoloured seaweed which could only have come from the very bed of the ocean upon which lay the unfathomed wreck of the S.S. Delhi." Queer happenings on the night of November 24 (anniversary of the wreck of the Delhi) are recounted with suitable suspense and dramatic punch in Light Sinister, a thriller by Maxwell Dunn. Moanings of the sea, the eerie shriek .of the seamew, ghost voices and the bleating of a fog-horn are staples in what we feel will be a successful effort to put the wind up listeners, Light Sinister will be heard from 2YA on Wednesday, July 13, at 7.59. Mountain Song Symphony OR Vincent d’Indy music was ¢ re-' ligion. He attacked realism in art, ‘and maintained that "the creative flame finds its true nourishment only in Love and in a fervent enthusiasm for beauty, truth, and the pure ideal." He wag a brilliant teacher and one of the founders of the Schola Cantorum, where he taught until his death in 1931. As a composer he was the spiritual successor of Cesar Franck, and another important influence was that of Wagner,’ with whose music he became acquainted as early as 1869. Yet at a time when the German exerted a tremendous influence on French art and literature, d’Indy was strong enough merely to assimilate certain conceptions and procedures whilé preserving his own creative individuality, so that we find him producing in 1886, at the height of the Wagnerian influx, such a completely personal work as the Symphonie sur un chant montagnard francais for orchestra and piano. Although the Symphony is a masterly example of cyclic form, it is primarily a tone-poem to Nature of the utmost freshness and charm, and remains _ his most popular composition. It will be heard from 4YZ at 2.15 p.m. on Friday, ' July 15.