Radio highlights

Radio highlights 9point = The Story of Pop: Rap it Up — The BBC's mega series on pop music has reached the hip hop era. This episode looks at the African American music's verbal emphasis which extends back to the griots or traditional storytellers of West Africa, to the work songs of the slaves, to the sermons of the preacher, to the chants of the road-gangs and the Jamaican toasters. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaata and others emerged from New York's ghettos and hip hop was born. ABC Radio National, Friday, November 3, 8.05pm. Sex, Drugs, Blood and Death: Sex and Drugs — It is more than 10 years since the first Australian died of AIDS. Today more than 4000 Australians have died and more than 20,000 are living with the virus. The first of a special five-part series examining how Australia is coping with this deadly malady will look at the relationship that has been forged between the gay community and the medical profession. It examines the reaction to the diagnosis of the disease, the search for treatments and demands for easier access to new drug therapies. The program questions the usefulness of drugs such as AZT which some activists see more as a killer than a cure. ABC Radio National, Sunday, November 5, 2pm (repeated Thursday, November 9, 2pm). Cargo: Part 1 — A radio play by David Britton. On August 21, 1968, tanks from the Warsaw Pact invaded Czechoslovakia. Within 24 hours the boisterous democracy that had flowered in Prague that spring was crushed. It came amidst a year of hope throughout the world. In Australia, Europe and the US, 1968 was a year of youth rebellion with the Vietnam War the target of protest. Cargo is set in this turbulent period, as folk singer Phil Dodd is drawn into the Prague movement for "socialism with a human face". ABC Radio National, Sunday, November 5, 3.05pm. Radio-Eye: Living Off the Earnings — "Pimps" are men who "live off the earnings" of prostitutes. But are they all exploitative, violent misogynists? Some are just ordinary blokes, with girlfriends and wives who are sex workers. This program talks intimately with three men about their relationship with women who work in the sex industry. ABC Radio National, Sunday, November 5, 8.30pm. Out by Christmas — A radio play written in 1966 by Robert Stuart Tyler. Set in Vietnam in 1966. ABC Radio National, Wednesday, November 8, 9.30pm.