Radio review: The Essay and Midlife Relaunch

The Essay (Radio 3) this week features architect Sunand Prasad mulling over big questions about the built environment in clever daily nuggets. Last night's explored the resistance to modern architecture in home-building. "Many of us aspire to Regency mansions; few to interlocking spaces and plain materials," he suggested. But when we get old homes, with their period features, we tend to fill them with modern design and new technology. This conundrum clearly tickled Prasad. Much blame, he accepted, lay with the way ground-breaking architecture translated into a disappointing reality. "Inspiring visions of modern masters were recycled en masse in combinations of materials that leaked, stained, rotted and generally failed," he said. Challenging realities were a theme in Midlife Relaunch (Radio 4), which followed three couples in their 50s who had ditched the nine-to-five for a new life. Denise and Paul, who moved to Cyprus, had the toughest time – with jobs elusive and money fast running out. "We were very naive," Denise said. The others fared better, but the dream life comes at a price. "I am physically very tired," said dairy farmer Fiona. "We won't be able to retire, really," a B&B owner conceded. But none of them regretted the adventure. "And to think we might not have done it," one said, reeling at the idea.