TRANSCRIPT

Part 1:
Receptionist: Hello, this is the latent Society. How can I help?
Man: Oh, hello. I'm just phoning you because I'm interested in becoming a member of your society, and I was
wondering if you could give me some more information.
Receptionist: Of course, what would you like to know?
Man: Well, first of all, I'd like to know where you hold the club meetings as I'm not very mobile anymore and
I'm looking for somewhere that's within walking distance of my house. Are you still down at the old Boathouse?
Receptionist: No, we moved away from there a while ago. Meetings are held at the clubhouse.
Man: Oh brilliant. That's only five minutes for me. Do you require members to have any skills or experience?
Receptionist: No, there was no experience required. We have plenty of female singers and actresses, but we
don't have many men who can play the male roles. We are looking to resolve this and are especially interested in
recruiting male actors and singers.
Man: I've never sung professionally, but I'm very keen on it and I've been told that I'm talented so I think this
would be a good fit. Do you organize coaches to transport members to practice at the theatre?
Receptionist: Unfortunately, the club does not have sufficient funds to organize transportation. Though, this is
something we are working towards. We are currently looking for members who can drive so that we can
organize car-sharing. Members who are able to shuttle people in their cars will obviously be compensated for
their petrol usage.
Man: I don't drive but I'll be happy to contribute some money in order to use the shuttle services. Receptionist:
Yeah. That is no problem. Are you aware of when the meetings take place?
Man: No, I couldn't find the meeting times on your website.
Receptionists: We hold meetings from 6 to 8 p.m. every Tuesday.
Man: Oh, that's lucky! I go to a debating Club every Wednesday. So, I'm glad that it's on a different night so I
can attend both. Do you operate year-round?
Receptionist: We used to close during December for the Christmas period but we found that a lot of members
wanted to continue their practices during this time. We operate for most of the year, but we do however close
for August because the weather gets so hot that we are unable to practice comfortably. This may change when
we have enough funds to operate the air conditioning.

Part 2:
- [David] Hello, readers. Today, I wanna talk all about me. Well, I wanna talk about three things. First, I wanna
talk all about me, then I'm gonna talk about you, and then we're gonna talk about them.
David, what are you talking about, you're probably asking? Well, in a word, POV. In three words, point of view.
Every story has a point of view. It's being told to us by someone, a narrator. But who is that narrator?
Understanding the answer to that question in the stories that you read will make you a strong reader. There are
three different flavors of point of view. First, second, and third person.
First person is when the narrator is a character in the story. They use words like I, me, and my. Here's an
example. I bolted out of bed, grabbed my backpack, and rushed out the door. Today was the day I was finally
going to learn to ride a horse. First person narrators can only tell us the parts of the story that they experienced
or already know about. If something happens that the narrator doesn't know about, we, the reader, won't know
about it either.
Second person is when you are a character in the story. This is pretty rare. A lot of the choose your own
adventure books, that were popular when I was a kid, used second person point of view, but they're not as big as
they used to be. Imagine a guided relaxation recording, when you think of second person. You are calm. Your
breathing is slow and even. You are sitting on a bench, looking at the ocean. The ocean is calm, and so are you.
This kind of point of view usually sounds like it's giving directions to you, the reader.
The most common point of view in stories is the third person. A narrator who isn't a character in the story. A
third person narrator uses words like he, she, and they, for characters in the story, instead of I, or you. It lets the
story teller get inside the heads of characters to see how they're feeling, or what they're thinking. Here's an
example. Beni opened his closet door to grab a jacket, only to be greeted by a horrifying monster. He screamed
and ran out of the room, scared out of his mind. Inside her monster costume, Rita giggled. She had tricked her
brother! See how we can follow both Rita and Beni? The narrator can see what both of the are thinking or
feeling at the same time. Now, imagine if that little snippet were told from Rita or Beni's first person's
perspectives. Rita using I, or Beni using I, instead of a third person POV, using he or she. We might see it
differently, reading that story. From Rita's perspective, it's a funny prank, from Beni's, it's super scary. He just
saw a monster.
So to recap, there are three different types of narration or points of view in a story. First person, the narrator is a
character inside the story and uses words like I or me. Second person, the narrator is speaking directly to you,
the reader, and uses the pronoun you. This is rare and it sounds like it's giving directions. And third person, the
narrator is outside the story. In telling it, they use words like he, she, and they. What's the POV of your favorite
story? Is it first person, second, or third? How would it feel different if it were told from a different point of
view? Would the narrator know different things? I can tell you one thing I know for certain, and that's that you
can learn anything. David out.

Part 3:
Interviewer: My guest today’s the archaeologist Julian Radwinter, who works at Dunstan University. Julian,
welcome.
Julian: Hi.
Interviewer: Tell us about how you first got involved in archaeology – what attracted you to it.
Julian: Well, it all started when a team of archaeologists came to dig up the field next to my parents’ farm one
summer. It was an exciting prospect for a teenager and despite strict instructions from my father not to make a
nuisance of myself, it wasn’t long before I was roped in to lend a hand – on a purely voluntary basis, of course.
There’s always a need for someone to do the fetching and carrying on such digs – and I was full of questions.
That’s the sort of boy I was, and I guess it broke up the day for those involved in the more tedious work!
Anyway, I was in my element and from then on, there was no question what subject I was going to study at
university.
Interviewer: And does the subject still hold the same fascination?
Julian: Well yes. I mean, on that dig some strangely shaped metal objects were unearthed, clearly carbon
dateable to the time of the buildings they’d already found traces of. But this object didn’t seem to fit in with
anything they’d found. And this is exactly the kind of puzzle that makes the subject so gripping – you have a
fragmented object and some contextual information but clearly pieces of information are missing and need to be
filled in by the archaeologist. You have to make assumptions – interpretations based on the evidence you’ve got
– and that often involves eliminating possibilities – ticking off the things it might be, but clearly isn’t. At the
end of the day it’s still mostly conjecture – so the debate continues.
Interviewer: Do you think archaeology gets the recognition it deserves as a profession?
Julian: Well, people think of archaeology and they think of ancient civilisations, buried treasure and all sorts of
romantic notions, often stemming from the mythology surrounding startling twentieth-century discoveries in the
eastern Mediterranean and the Nile valley. All that’s fueled by the image projected by certain feature films – that
beguile people into the idea that archaeology’s a glamorous discipline. I have no problem with any of that, but
everyday archaeology actually involves a lot of painstaking gathering of data, often in far from romantic
surroundings – you get cold, wet and dirty – and the discoveries are mostly small and cumulative rather than
dramatic, which is the point that the world at large really tends to miss. Nonetheless, it is a science, and it has a
lot to tell us and the data is actually surprisingly accessible to ordinary people in the way that a lot of science
isn’t.
Interviewer: Which brings us neatly on to your own current research post. Why have you decided to
concentrate your efforts on southeastern England?
Julian: Well, most of my colleagues are jetting off around the world – digging in remote spots in faraway
places. It calls for a lot of organisation and involves all manner of setbacks and frustrations, not to mention
tedious long-haul flights and endless inoculations. But I have none of those problems. Indeed, now that
archaeology is becoming much more oriented towards the collection and analysis of data, rather than the just
locating and digging up key sites, we come to realise just how much England has to offer. Basically, with a
relatively modest budget, we can gather far more relevant data here than in many of the places that have been
the typical focus of archaeological activity.
Interviewer: But why is that, and what is it that you’re hoping to find?
Julian: Well, for the last two thousand years, and probably long before that too, southeastern England has
undoubtedly been one of the most densely inhabited parts of the world. There was a lot of human activity here
and the evidence is to be found beneath our feet. The land’s been intensively farmed since the Iron Age and
most modern-day villages have been continuously inhabited for over a thousand years – some much longer. But
I find it tantalising to think that you’ve only got to dig a hole somewhere in a settlement, and you’ll probably
uncover data that’ll reveal how people lived and the way different things influenced their way of life – be it
political changes, climate change, disease or whatever.
Interviewer: Finally Julian, you’re taking part in a project that looks at the role of humour in archaeology. That
sounds intriguing – tell us a bit about that.
Julian: Well traditional storytelling, the passing on of ideas and deep cultural knowledge is one of those things
that we’re tending to lose with the digital age – and it struck me that it’s there in archaeology itself. There’s
often a mismatch between the dry reports written up after successful digs and the warmth and intimacy that is
built up within a team. Basically, you’re all living and working cheek by jowl for long periods and a kind of
camaraderie develops – the telling of anecdotes around the campfire after a long day’s digging is full of humour
– but also full of the folk memory of archaeology itself. The project I’m involved in seeks to capture and
preserve some of that rich fund of humour and anecdote – so that it can be preserved for future generations
along with the archaeological evidence itself.
Interviewer: Fascinating, thank you very much…

Part 4:
It is the 1830s and you're invited to dinner at the home of one of Britain's most celebrated scientists.
You take the only chair that isn't piled high with books, rocks and fossils.
Raucous children are eager to show you their pets.
The air is a dusty cocktail of smells.
But at last dinner arrives.
Is it roast turkey, mutton, ham?
No, it's mouse on toast.
Your host is William Buckland, and he's a zoophage, someone with a passion for eating one of every animal on
Earth.
Mouse is just the starter.
Buckland was born in 1784 and became the first person ever to take geology - the study of the origin, history,
and structure of the Earth - at the University of Oxford.
He was then ordained as a priest, before becoming a Reader in mineralogy, giving popular, if unorthodox
lectures.
A student recalled him sweeping down the front row one morning, holding a hyena skull.
He picked out an undergraduate and demanded, "What rules the world?" "Haven't an idea," the student replied.
"The stomach, sir!" bellowed Buckland, "The stomach rules the world!" And Buckland lived by this rule.
Dinner at the Buckland house could consist of hedgehog, crocodile, panther, sea slug, porpoise, mole and even
earwig.
And life was no less extraordinary between meals.
William and his wife Mary taught their children natural history in a house packed to the rafters with specimens
- animal, vegetable and mineral...
living and dead.
When they weren't riding ponies through the dining room, or playing with snakes and frogs, the children took
part in their parents' scientific studies.
One particularly whacky experiment involved spreading pie pastry over the kitchen table and allowing a pet
tortoise to walk across it.
The family then compared the tracks to fossilised tortoise prints found in ancient sandstone.
The tracks were identical.
Besides eating, fossils were the Bucklands' passion.
As a religious man, William believed that the Great Flood mentioned in Genesis was not just a story, but
historical fact, and he spent a long time trying to reconcile the Bible's account with geological evidence.
However, after examining the remains of exotic creatures - including hyenas - found in a cave in North
Yorkshire, he started to question the Bible's timeline.
These animals had not - as some argued passionately - been washed there from their tropical homes by Noah's
flood, they had actually lived there!
And the passage of geological time had since turned the British Isles from a tropical to a temperate landscape.
William proved this by identifying large amounts of hyena dung on the cave floor.
And time helped explain another mystery of the era - dinosaurs.
In 1824, Buckland announced arguably his greatest breakthrough of all - fossil bones of a giant reptile he named
"Megalosaurus", found in a slate quarry in Oxfordshire.
It was the first scientific account of a dinosaur.
He showed them to French anatomist Georges Cuvier, who noted the bones' similarity with living lizards.
Buckland, Cuvier and others' work was vital in helping Victorian Britain understand dinosaurs and their place in
evolution.
William's wife Mary was a keen geologist and a collector in her own right.
She illustrated those game-changing hyena bones for the Royal Society and produced beautiful teaching aids
for William's lectures.
Like many wives of scientists in the 19th Century, she may have done much more than that, perhaps
contributing to some of William's major works.
As for William's quest to eat the world's animals... well, he failed to complete the challenge, despite his best
efforts.
After a period of illness unrelated to his diet, he died in 1856.
Eccentric as they were, the Bucklands remind us that science can happen anywhere - including at home - and
that great science can also be great fun.
As long as you're not a mouse.