Radio: Silly season gets serious as ‘Liveline’ turns to Greek crisis

‘Write what you know,” said, eh, Eleanor Roosevelt? Einstein? Someone, anyway.

A lack of attention to detail is not only effective as the opening sentence of a radio review; it’s also the overarching philosophy for talk radio. It’s fill-in season at RTÉ, a workplace unlike any other, where the main attractions scoot off on vacation simultaneously. Perhaps they’re all holidaying together, like Russian communist-party members or the Bilderberg Group.

This means that Damien O’Reilly is filling in on Liveline (Radio 1, Monday to Friday), a programme that, unfortunately for any stand-in, remnds its listeners who’s not there with its “Talk to Joe” sting. O’Reilly doesn’t have as deft a common touch as Duffy – who does? – but, as always, the callers are the stars.

On Monday the Greek bailout somehow makes it on to the list of topics. Liveline does many things well, but European economics, where facts and actual knowledge are required, is not one of them.

A self-employed painter and decorator rings in to give his two cent’ worth, and fair play to him.

“I can’t see the EU not giving Greece a bailout . . . One point something billion . . . Look at the markets this morning: they were fluctuating. There was some kind of a deal . . . Is it Denmark or Finland or some other crowd’s finance ministers?”

Hmm, you’re kind of losing me here, pal.

“From a layman’s view, I would say at the moment if Greece would be let go out of the EU, the markets would go down, which wouldn’t do the EU any good at all, the IMF wouldn’t get paid . . . ”

Wait a minute: this guy is starting to make sense.

“Are the Americans, French and Germans prepared to let the Russians go in there?”

Hang on. How did we go from the Greek debt crisis to the third World War? Silly season just got serious.

If Liveline isn't the most appropriate setting for European fiscal analysis, you'd probably think Barack Obama sitting in a garage being interviewed by a comedian would be equally incongruous. But the coup of the WTF With Marc Maron podcast (wtfpod.com) is the biggest news in radio-that-isn't-radio this week.

Maron’s generous and freewheeling presenting style is slightly exposed by nerves during the Obama interview, but this is a chat, not a confrontation. Forget write what you know, talk about what you know, because Maron and Obama shooting the breeze in an intimate lo-fi setting is more revealing than what dozens of other presenters manage by using the opportunity to play hardball.

When it comes to knowing things, you can practically hear Pat Kenny playing with Meccano in studio any time a conversation about science or engineering arises. On Tuesday's Pat Kenny Show (Newstalk, Monday to Friday) the topic is renewable and alternative energy.

“Obviously, what happens here . . .” Kenny begins, picking up the tiny Meccano wrench, and following on with a decent explanation about how solar cells work.

While the pros and cons of vacuum tubes versus photovoltaics make for an interesting topic, it’s also a niche one. Here, the discussion on renewable energy doesn’t get bogged down in its necessity, and Kenny wisely steers it towards the economic practicalities. But as this is morning radio, you’d have to wonder how much of the listenership’s attention slips while the presenter gets stuck into conversations such as this.

I'd imagine Kenny is a fan of Bright Sparks, an eight-part science series running on RTÉ Radio 1 on Sundays at 7pm, after the up-for-the-match hysteria of The Marty Squad. The gear change from five hours (five hours!) of sport to science is clunky if welcome.

This week it is episode five, Superbodies. For an hour we get everything from Conor McGinn, a robot engineer from Trinity College Dublin, talking about the prototype robot he and his team built for Joanne O'Riordan from Cork, and her "no limbs, no limits" philosophy, to the blind rower and explorer Mark Pollock.

There’s a discussion about making cartilage out of stem cells in the fatty tissue behind your kneecap, a piece on osteoporosis, and one about how the Rwandan government is interested in the Trinity robot-building for amputees.

Bright Sparks is a packed, even cluttered radio show. It initially appears haphazard, but stick with it and the from-informative-to-cheesy voiceover clips from other science shows or videos, extracts from US news reports to tee up explanations of some new advance, and clips from other interviews – Elon Musk pops up in last week's episode – deliver value for listening.

The understated charm of its presenter, the Trinity physicist Prof Shane Bergin, lies in his soft, ungiddy, almost old-fashioned approach to presenting. In his interviews with other scientists they emerge not as distant geeks hiding in a lab but as enthusiasts eager to share their work and what it means for our lives.

For all the show’s technical content, Athena Media has made a science programme for RTÉ that is human after all.

Moment of the Week: Berkeley remembered

In times of tragedy, radio often provides a type of gathering and listening point that print, online and television simply cannot.

On Sunday With Miriam (RTÉ Radio 1) Miriam O'Callaghan hosts a reflection on Berkeley, turning to poetry, prose and music. John Banville reads Philip Larkin's Cut Grass. Dermot Bolger poignantly mentions that he is collecting his son from the airport in a few hours. Eleanor McEvoy plays True Colours and Michael Harding reads Thomas Moore's The Light of Other Days:

The smiles, the tears,

Of boyhood’s years,

The words of love then spoken;

The eyes that shone,

Now dimm’d and gone,

The cheerful hearts now broken! [CF413-407]Mick Heaney is away[/CF413-407][CF413-407][/CF413-407]