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Fi Glover presents an omnibus edition of Radio 4's series capturing the nation in conversation: in today's programme, we meet Ciaron and Brendan, Irish brothers whose fraternal bond was tested to the limit when Brendan fell ill; from Radio Berkshire, the story of Jim and John who touchingly remember the biscuity pleasures of working at the Huntley and Palmers factory in Reading which closed in the 1970s, while from Stoke on Trent, the agonising tale of Stevie, the brother to Chris and son to Norman, who vanished while on holiday in Crete. And there's a chance too to hear just how the magic of these Listening Project encounters actually works from one of the team gathering the interviews across Britain.

The Listening Project is a new initiative for Radio 4 that aims to offer a sort of snapshot of contemporary Britain in which people across the UK volunteer to have a conversation with someone close to them about a subject they've never discussed intimately before. The conversations are being gathered across the UK by teams of producers from local and national radio stations who facilitate each encounter. Every conversation - they're not 大象传媒 interviews, and that's an important difference - lasts up to an hour, and is then edited to extract the key moment of connection between the participants. Many of the long conversations are being archived by the British Library which they will use to build up a collection of voices capturing a unique portrait of the UK in the second decade of the millennium. You can upload your own conversations or just learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject

Producer Simon Elmes

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