RADIO CHOICE

IF YOU have learnt the piano or have piano-playing children, you might well know the book series PianoWorld. It’s full of cartoons and games that make learning to play the piano fun, and is written by the pianist, composer, playwright and conductor Joanna MacGregor. BEHIND THE SCENES (RADIO 4, 9AM, 9.30PM) follows Joanna (pictured) in a year of her busy, varied musical life.

BRITISH SOCIALISM: THE GRAND TOUR (RADIO 4, 1.45PM) tells the story of the Rochdale Society Of Equitable Pioneers, a group of weavers and skilled workers who in 1844 scraped up enough money to provide basic provisions for a non-profit grocery shop — and saved many a family from destitution.

DURING the kind of extreme fasting that Jesus endured in the wilderness,

the body starts to consume itself to create food for the brain. For the first of this year’s LENT TALKS (RADIO 4, 8.45PM), the science writer Sharman Apt Russell, author of Hunger: An Unnatural History, explains what happens to brain and body during a self-imposed fast.

MATT PARKER, Steve Mould and Helen Arney, the trio of boffins who perform under the name the Festival Of The Spoken Nerd, start a new series of DOMESTIC SCIENCE (RADIO 4, 11PM), taking us through some of the scientific phenomena behind everyday life.