Shadow World: Breakin’ the Cycle is a gripping new six part podcast series that tells the remarkable story of two violent East London gang leaders who attempt to leave behind a life of crime by making a hit movie despite having absolutely zero experience of filmmaking.
credit: Original Music
Between the Ears in miniature returns with new short works themed around Midsummer Dreaming. Airing in the run up to our dream-like night of adventurous radio, featuring treasures from the BBC Radio 3 archives from sunset until sunrise on the summer solstice.
Even the sun stands still. In a world designed constantly to produce, where we’re exposed to the daily paralysing effects of doomscrolling and healed by the small joys of the everyday, producer Axel Kacoutié invites us to reflect on how the Sun’s movements can remind us to slow down.
Featuring Georgina Walker, Emily Lucienne and Sol, Aaron Edwards, Mary Letera, Buitumelo Kotekwa, Shadé Joseph, Tiwin Aji, Makella Ama Kededzi, Paul Nataraj, Keyari Page, Eleanor Penny, Baudelaire Ceus, Tasneim Zyada, Fabien Maturin and Somatic Space-Holder, Folk Wizard and Freedom Companion, Jae Gibbs.
Produced by Axel Kacoutié
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 3
When James Baldwin died at his home in the South of France in December 1987, the world lost a towering intellect and one of America’s literary giants. He was buried in New York a few weeks later. But what remained in France, and still to this day, are thousands of personal and professional effects connected to Baldwin. Journalist Tony Phillips travels to Provence to discover why these items are stored in an Englishwoman’s home on the Côte d’Azur.
Produced by Tony Phillips and Axel Kacoutié
Sound Design by Axel Kacoutié
Original TX: 30/07/2024
The police tell us they are here to protect us. But what if their original purpose was something else altogether? Peabody Award-winning host Chenjerai Kumanyika takes listeners on a journey to uncover the hidden history of the largest police force in the world – from its roots in slavery, to rival police gangs battling across the city, to everyday people who resisted every step of the way. As our society debates where policing is going, Empire City: The Untold Origin Story of the NYPD explores where the police came from.
From Wondery, Crooked Media and PushBlack.
Awards
The Ambies 2025 – Best History Podcast
Webby Awards 2025 – Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging (Limited-Series & Specials)
Signal Awards 2025 – Best Sound Design (Gold), Best Original Score / Music (Silver), Best History Podcast (Silver)
A collection of 10 stories about the life and legacy of artist and sculptor, Barbara Hepworth
Listen to the Museum Story Player HERE
Welcome to Wandering. A four part series of immersive podcast gallery walks, brought to you by Shade Podcast and Axel Kacoutié.
Sponsored by Bloomberg Connects.
Interludes: Black Balloons is a new sound installation by Shade Podcast and Axel Kacoutié now showing at Tate Gallery. Responding to Liz Johnson Artur’s display Time don’t run here, the piece references Artur’s Black Lives Matter protest images and works from her ongoing Black Balloon Archive documenting people in Africa, and of the African and Caribbean diasporas.
Experience Liz Johnson Artur’s work with the ear and body. How does sound change how you see the works? What pulses through you when you see the images, braille and thread?
The soundscape features the voices of Liz Johnson Artur, artists Imogen Faires and Jamel Alatise from Theatre Peckham, and Research and Interpretation Artist Resident, Marie Smith. It includes extracts from Poetry as Protest, Protest as Poetry, a poem by Faires and Alatise responding to the display and performed live at Tate Modern in April 2023.
Visit the installation at Tate Modern, Natalie Bell Building, Level 2 West Room 4, Artist and Society. Black Balloons will play in the gallery at the following times: 11.00am, 12.00pm, 1.00pm, 3.00pm, 4.00pm, 5.00pm.
Interludes is an ongoing sound collaboration between Lou Mensah of Shade Podcast and the audio artist Axel Kacoutié.
Produced by Lou Mensah
Created by Axel Kacoutié
It’s not always in a romantic relationship where a heart can break.
How do we grieve in a culture that champions one love over the rest?
Axel Kacoutié attempts to language loss after reuniting with the person who inspired this documentary. Guided by the thoughts and wisdom of friends and an end-of-life practitioner, we hear what happens when we let grief speak.
Featuring the voices of Claire Galligan, Ivor Williams, JN Benjamin, Tej Adeleye, Weyland McKenzie-Witter and Zachary Cayenne-Elliott.
Special thanks to End of Life Doula UK, Tony Phillips, Natasha McAnea-Hill, Jeff Monteen and Maz Ebtehaj
Artwork: Erin Tse
Development Producer: Eleanor McDowall
Sound Design, Music and Mixing Production: Axel Kacoutié
Produced by Axel Kacoutié
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4
“Somewhere between the narrow entry of Who I am and What I seem to be, lies a vast and nameless place.”
In this transmission, Axel Kacoutié discovers a new sense of self in the cosmologies, concepts and realities of queer and indigenous folks. What are the links between gender expression and our relationship with the Earth? How does it destabilise colonial and capitalist imaginations of what we’re told a gender binary is meant to be?
Featuring the voices of:
Opaskwayak Cree Nation Professor at the University of Saskatchewan, Dr Alex Wilson
Artist Buitumelo Kotekwa
Afro-Taino Two-Spirit change-maker Cleopatra Tatabele
Scholar and Research Assistant Karyn De Freitas
Transmasculine, non-binary scholar and Founder of the Free Black University, Melz Owusu.
Artwork by Erin Tse
Development Producer: Eleanor McDowall
Assistant Producer: CA Davis
Additional Recording: Heidi Chang and Israel Ramjohn
Sound Design, Music and Mixing Production: Axel Kacoutié
Produced by Axel Kacoutié
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4
All the Names Given as it’s meant to be heard, narrated by Raymond Antrobus
Throughout, the audiobook is punctuated with [Caption Poems] partially inspired by deaf sound artist Christine Sun Kim, which attempt to fill in the silences and transitions between the poems, as well as moments inside and outside of them. Direct, open, formally sophisticated, All the Names Given breaks new ground both in form and content: the result is a timely, humane and tender book from one of the most important young poets of his generation.
©2021 Raymond Antrobus (P)2021 Macmillan Publishers International Limited
Original Music by: Axel Kacoutié
Produced by: Eleanor McDowall
Mixed by: Eloise Whitmore