Today’s radio

AUDITORY ILLUSIONS

11.30AM, RADIO 4 HHHH Escher’s famous lithograph of ever ascending and descending stairs is a clever optical illusion; the Shepard-risset glissando plays the same kind of trick on our ears. In this programme, Trevor Cox explains how the glissando makes us think that its pitch is constantly rising, and talks to musicians, composers and psychologists about other sounds that can fool the ear.

SEVEN WORLDS, ONE PLANET

11.30AM, WORLD SERVICE HHH Antarctica is a cold, windy, harsh environment, and one where the wildlife photographer John Aitchison has been spending a lot of time. John has been working on the BBC’S latest big nature series, Seven Worlds, One Planet,

Kerry Ellis (4.30pm, Radio 4) filming the perilous early days of gentoo penguin chicks as they totter down to the cold sea for the first time. John tells us about the long and painstaking process behind the making of this series.

A GOOD READ

4.30PM, RADIO 4 HHHH Fixie Farr is always trying to sort out other people’s problems.

One day, as she sits in a coffee bar, a handsome man asks her to look after his laptop, then insists on returning the favour. The singer and actress Kerry Ellis recommends Sophie Kinsella’s bestseller about the fixing of Fixie’s life in this week’s edition of the programme that has guests talking about favourite books.

INTO THE MANOSPHERE

8PM, RADIO 4 HHH

Many men struggle to cope with the complexities of 21st-century life, and some of them blame women for their problems. Here, we enter the ‘manosphere’ to hear from the German-born, Scottish-based campaigner Philipp Tanzer about his fight against the ‘feminist Establishment’. SJ