RADIO CHOICE

JIM BROADBENT (pictured) stars in the drama ABDICATION: THE KING’S MATTER, (RADIO 4, 2.15PM) about the behind-the-scenes plottings and arguments concerning the abdication of Edward VIII.

SOUTH KOREAN women are giving up on having babies, and the country’s birth rate is plunging. The reasons have little to do with infertility, and a lot to do with economics and the unwillingness of South Korean men to help out with household chores. In ASSIGNMENT: NOT MAKING BABIES IN SOUTH KOREA (BBC WORLD SERVICE, 10PM) Simon Maybin investigates.

FOR tonight’s BBC PROMS 2018 (RADIO 3, 10.15PM) the marvellous National Youth Jazz Orchestra blows the roof off the Royal Albert Hall, and

gets us up and jiving with an all-American show that includes George Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue.

ON BOXING DAY, 1799, the smart young scientist

Humphry Davy inhaled lungfuls of ‘laughing gas’, and entered a world of heightened perceptions and vibrant pleasure. In this episode of SCIENCE STORIES (RADIO 4,

11.30PM), a week-long series of strange stories from the world of science, Naomi Alderman tells the tale of Davy’s dangerous experiment and the ‘ecstatic lunatics’ who got hooked on nitrous oxide.