Who are these people who feel the need to climb mountains?

Literature and science are all very well but inevitably there was also climbing involved.

“Wow, fear dries the mouth,” Macfarlane announced before abseiling down a notch on the ridge. 

My point proved, I’d say. But on he went, having then to climb back up a vertical slab of rock on the other side.

It didn’t seem like fun. “This is probably the single hardest pitch of climbing that the ridge holds,” Macfarlane told us, sounding slightly challenged. “Terrifying,” he whispered a moment later. Sometimes radio’s lack of pictures is a boon for those of us with a touch of vertigo.

That said, Macfarlane’s word pictures have a rich, tactile quality to them, all of which makes me even less willing to follow in his footsteps. But it makes for transporting radio. There’s another episode to come.

Earlier the same day on the same channel, in the latest episode of Short Cuts, poet and audio producer Ross Sutherland discussed his issues with hearing and the way his brain has somehow started mixing up sound and memory. This short, intense documentary - full of audio tricks and textures - was evocative, a little troubling and rather poetic. I could hear the echo of it throughout the rest of that day. 

Each morning this week I’ve taken a break from the radio equivalent of doomscrolling on 5 Live or Radio 4’s Today programme by accompanying Petroc Trelawny on his trip around Northern Ireland’s loughs. 

Publishing deadlines being what they are, as I write this I have yet to hear his visit to Magilligan Point, the northernmost stretch of land on the shore of Lough Foyle (on the Northern Irish side of the border) yesterday, about 17 miles or so from where I grew up. 

But the rest of the week has been a lovely deep dive into the music, history and creativity - everyone from CS Lewis to Joe Biden got a mention on Monday morning at Carlingford Lough - that has emerged from this part of the world. And a reminder of how the landscapes of childhood are a spell to conjure it up. Say the words Magilligan Point to me and it’s as evocative a name as Venice in my head.

Not that the doomscrolling was totally absent. On Wednesday Trelawny visited Lough Neagh, the largest freshwater lake in the UK, which is currently afflicted by toxic blue-green algae. “It’s very visible and you can smell it too,” Trelawny pointed out, before diverging into the epic migrations undertaken by eels between the lough and the Sargasso Sea.

Trelawny has one of those old-school BBC voices that has a comforting solidity to it. Engaged and engaging, it’s a pleasure to spend time in his company. The world doesn’t seem so bad when he’s telling you about it.

Still, if you want some doom then seek out Monday’s HARDtalk on the BBC World Service in which Israeli Yuval Noah Harari discussed AI.

“Just imagine that somebody tells us there is an invasion fleet coming from another planet, with highly intelligent beings,” he began. “They’ll be here in, let’s say, five years. They will take over. They can cure cancer, they can solve climate change, they can create new kinds of music, maybe they’ll be good for us, who knows? We will still be very concerned about losing control.

“This invasion fleet is indeed on the way but not from another planet. But from California and China in the laboratories. They are already here and they are taking control of more and more parts of the financial system, the cultural system of the world.”

Sleep well.

Listen Out For: If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller, Radio 4, tomorrow, 3pm

The BBC is celebrating a centenary of radio drama this week and this adaptation of Italo Calvino’s shapeshifting novel stars Tim Crouch and Toby Jones.