ERIC BURDON: ROCK ’N’ ROLL – ANIMAL

BBC Four, 9.30pm

There is more to Eric Burdon than singing one of the 1960s’ most enduring hits, House of the Rising Sun, although its influence was indelible, inspiring Bob Dylan to go electric. However, Burdon’s band, The Animals, never topped its success. The Newcastle-born soul shouter overcame a troubled upbringing to join rock royalty, becoming one of Jimi Hendrix’s closest friends, earning a namecheck on I Am the Walrus and dabbling in multi-racial funk rock with War.

This is a revealing documentary, featuring Burdon himself in fine form, about a man whose gifts were undermined by self-sabotage and bad luck. GT

ways but also brought with them their own set of cultural anxieties, claustrophobias and social tensions.

Jolyon Jenkins’s documentary series examining unusual theories, Out of the Ordinary (Monday, Radio 4, 11.00am), returns and starts by looking at how humans might actually have lost a key technology, or rather an instinctive power. Many animals appear to be able to navigate by sensing the Earth’s magnetic field, so why can’t we? Might it be something we could learn to do, or something we once

Bodies (Wednesday, World Service, 1.30pm) from Professor Vybarr CreganReid explores how our bodies, which had adapted to a physically demanding and mostly outdoor lifestyle, have been unprepared for the changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution. This week’s episode is all about sleep, and how, although we’re sleeping more safely and comfortably than ever, noise and light pollution have fundamentally changed our sleep habits.

In The Likely Dads (Thursday, Radio 4, 11.00pm), the presenter Tim Vincent, formerly of Blue Peter, hosts a “frank and funny” exchange with a group of fathers talking about what it’s like to be a dad today. This is just a pilot, but the idea is really promising, as paternallyinclined comedians bond over sleep deprivation, playgroup politics and pregnancy.

And most of us would agree that freedom of thought is a universal human right, but how might it be under threat in an ever more digital era? In Forum Internum (Friday, Radio 4, 11.00am), Helena Kennedy QC discusses what lawyers call the forum internum (our own private, mental space), and how to keep it safe from the prying eyes of social media technology, covert surveillance and manipulation through data-mining, advances in artificial intelligence and

Read The Week in Radio by Charlotte Runcie every Wednesday in

The Daily Telegraph

FM 97.6-99.8MHz

FM 88-90.2MHz

FM 90.2-92.4MHz

The Likely Dads: Tim Vincent Thursday, Radio 4, 11.00pm