Our story takes place the night before Christmas, outside the magical and wondrous structure that is Santa’s Workshop. It is a scene of busy preparation and anticipation, as a year’s worth of hard work finally comes to fruition! So as Santa’s little helpers run around checking every final detail, and Santa himself suits up for a night of delivering presents to children across the world; the Reindeer find themselves preparing for the trip ahead in their own special way…

How simple is it to leave behind a place that you know so well? A place that you built with your own two hands? Even if everyone else had already given up & moved on; could you still allow yourself to walk away & forget it was ever there?  Could you start again from scratch somewhere new?

Of course, you know that if you stayed you’d be alone. But at the same time, if you left; who would know this place was ever here to begin with…?

Outsiders might see the magic forest as an enchanted place; full of amazement and wonder. But for the people that have to walk these cobbles? Well, they see it all a bit differently. They know all to well that you don’t have to scratch very far to discover the criminal scum lurking behind every toadstool.

So here we find ourselves; outside a little wooden cabin, deep within the magic forest. As two law enforcement officers are about to crack the case of their lives…

The way we treat our dead tells as much about our attitude towards this life as it does about our belief in the afterlife. In ancient times, people were buried with objects befitting their rank; as if they were ordained to continue that role after death. Today, several hundred people have had their bodies frozen having placed such faith in science, in that they hope to be preserved until a cure for death is discovered. In this programme we’ll be looking at the treatment of Sheffield’s dead at the beginning of the 19th century and asking what this can tell us about the birth of our modern city.

Tuesday night is ‘Gamblers Anonymous’; taking place within a community centre in an old forgotten pit village. Paul, an ex-miner runs the group along with Glenn, a tall man with a short temper. Clive has found himself amongst them on the advice of his solicitor, and Adam? Well, Adam isn’t sure if he wants to be there at all…

However, tonight their meeting is disrupted by a new member and before the week is over, the group will find themselves having to come to terms with what they believe about their addiction and themselves…

In this episode of ‘Mind Labs’, we take a listen to the early days of sound recording. Highlighting some of the very first recordings made. Featuring pioneering work by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. It’s a fascinating journey into the beginning of a technology which these days, we take for granted. The fact that you can hear us via a computer on your desktop is because of experiments that first began in 1860…

Experiments that began with; ‘The First Days of Noise’…