Port Eliot

Jarvis is at the Port Eliot Festival with a live audience. He announces some oddities overheard from tents, then medieval troubadours Princes in the Tower entertain us. Marcus Coates is interested in where our world converges with the natural world. He plays recordings comparing birdsong to human sounds, and talks about getting people to sing bird calls. On This Day, Blériot flew the Channel, the first transatlantic two-way radio broadcast occurred, Bob Dylan went electric and it's the Inca festival of Ilyap'a. Bill Drummond dislikes rock heritage and warns Jarvis not to reform Pulp! He describes The 17, a choir which is never recorded and only exists for the moment. Here at the festival, he's busy building a bed. Jarvis recommends the Outdoor Swimming Society... Wilko Jonson is here for an Oil City Confidential screening and Q&A. He discusses his jug band, astronomy and the beautiful rings of Saturn. Sound recordist Chris Watson is fascinated by ambient sound and audio environments, and has created a soundscape for the Palm House at Kew. We hear two tracks from his Nature Disco, seals singing and Vulture Carcass. Birthdays: Rita Marley, Thurston Moore, Alain Robidoux. Valete: Hurricane Higgins and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Latitude

On This Day, the Vatican decided that the Pope could never be wrong, Hitler's Mein Kampf was published, Intel Corp was founded and Olympic gymnast Nadia Comăneci scored an unprecedented perfect 10. A record bought in Berlin makes Jarvis think about bad breakfast foods. And to cool us down after the recent hot weather, he reads an Icelandic legend called The Wizards of the Westman Islands. As Jarvis is planning to be at Latitude this weekend, he plays music by some bands playing at the festival. Plus, quirky records featuring a 'French James Brown' and a drug overdose. Birthdays: WG Grace, George Machine Gun Kelly, Nelson Mandela, Burt Kwouk, Hunter S Thompson (ranting an excerpt from Fear and Loathing), Yevgeny Yevtushenko (discussing reincarnation; Anthony Hopkins reads one of his poems), Dion, Henri Salvador, Jean Yanne, Martha Reeves, Lonnie Mack, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Bobby Susser. Valete: Bobby Fuller and Nico.

Meditation with Alan Watts

Let's celebrate: 6 Music has survived! On This Day, Martin Frobisher sighted Greenland; the town of Tijuana was founded; the Hollywood Bowl first opened; Jean-Louis Pons observed the first of many comets he discovered; A Tale of Two Cities and To Kill a Mockingbird were first published; Waterloo Station opened; and today there is a total solar eclipse visible from Easter Island. Jarvis reads a poem by Jim Morrison. We hear some of Fleet: Ice Cream Orchestra, a piece for Pixiphone and Grampian horn by Kelvin Pawsey and Chris Yates. We also ponder a tall tale about a phonebox. Spiritual guru Alan Watts gives a mesmeric lecture on the Hindu concept of Om. Cleo Laine reads The Frog's Request by Brian Patten. And Jarvis reveals where his intro/outro music comes from... Birthdays: Reg Varney, Giorgio Armani, Craig Charles, Lil Kim, Yul Brynner, Pete Murphy, Michael Rose and Andrew Bird. Valete: Laurence Olivier.

John Cooper Clarke

It's American Independence Day, so the show features audio tributes to Paul Revere, Yankee Doodle Dandy and other American icons. On This Day, Leo Szilard patented the atom bomb; Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass was published (we hear a poem from it); and so was Thoreau's book Walden. There's a Miranda July soundpiece about night-time driving and Jarvis wonders about ice cream vans. Poet John Cooper Clarke joins Jarvis. He explains how he got into poetry by writing lyrics, and cites Baloo-voicing Phil Harris as a major influence. They also consider mobile phones, poetic forms and whether a poem should rhyme. John inspires two listeners to write an ode to their dirty kitchen. Birthdays: Giuseppe Garibaldi, Thomas Barnardo, Irving Caesar, Mitch Miller, Eva Marie Saint, Louis B Mayer (the MGM lion roars), Gina Lollobrigida, Colin Welland, Stephen Foster, Ron Kovic, Bill Withers, David 'Kid' Jensen and Alan 'Blind Owl' Wilson.