The week in audio: The Opinions; Grenfell: Building a Disaster; Scripts; A Year in the Life of the Swinging Sixties – review

Joan Bakewell, pictured in 1965, listens to newly rediscovered Light Programme series The Public Ear in A Year in the Life of the Swinging Sixties on Radio 4. Photograph: Mirrorpix/Getty Images

The Opinions (New York Times)
Grenfell: Building a Disaster (Radio 4) | BBC Sounds
Scripts (Radio Atlantic)
A Year in the Life of the Swinging Sixties (Radio 4) | BBC Sounds

Anyone needing an injection of intelligence at the end of the school summer holidays, like me, will welcome the New York Times’s savvy new podcast, The Opinions. Previously a subscriber-only service, now let loose into the world, its premise is simple: one voice, one idea, four times a week, in chunks of under 10 minutes. Imagine Thought for the Day a little longer, a lot more North American and without the higher powers, although the female voiceover beginning each show is comfortingly authoritative (“You’ve heard the news,” she says, Zen-ly. “Here’s what to make of it”).