Seven Ages Of The Voice (Radio 6, 4.30pm) may not contain many startling scientific revelations, but it does break down the changes in the way we speak into seven handy little categories, and uses lots of nice interviews to make its points.
The programme intends simply to explain the way the human voice changes, the way we learn to use it, and the way we express ourselves quite apart from the words we use.
Where better to do this than on the radio, where we have to listen closely to the voices of the contributors because there is not anything else. In the first episode, presenter Laura Spicer uses clips from babies, toddlers, seven-year-olds and teenagers from all over the world. Sometimes these are upsetting - the sound of a lonely new-born howling; sometimes adorable, as when a toddler explains why cats do not eat mud; and sometimes really funny, as when a teenage boy grunts down the telephone at his friend.
It is also full of the quirky, curious little facts which good radio features can present so well, such as the suggestion that all babies all over the world say 'dadadada' because that is the noise they make when they push away their mother's nipple, or the teat of a bottle.
I use the Internet every day (who does not, these days) but only because I have to, and not because I think it is the all-powerful, all-liberating, all-knowing road to the future or any other such nonsense.
It is handy e-mailing people, and sometimes one can pick up a few interesting facts. But a lot of it, let us be perfectly honest, is inaccurate, unreliable, irrelevant, self-indulgent, badly written and impossible to find except by accident.
