COME DIGEST WITH ME
Live Radio Show Resonance FM 2026
A live investigation of digestive systems presented by artist Joanna Penso, who invites an eclectic mixture of guests to talk about their relationship to the body and food. Stethoscope microphones reveal the internal acoustics from mastication to enzymatic hydrolysis as they make their way through Friday night dinner.
SEASON 1
E1 with Dr Helen Anahita Wilson 16 January
DIGESTING WITH Dr Helen Anahita Wilson who is an Oram award-winning composer, sound artist, performer, and transdisciplinary artistic researcher who creates projects that connect sound, music, health, the human body, and the natural world. Her work often explores how we might better understand our bodies and the world around us - not with words, but with sound and music. This could be making music that mimics the death of a cancer cell, or transforming biodata and physiological behaviours of plants into new musical techniques that connect listeners to the natural world in a new and strangely organic way.
E2 with Filmmaker Leslie Lee 23 January
DIGESTING Friday night dinner this week with award-winning documentarian Leslie Lee. Born in New York and based in London, she is an experienced filmmaker and journalist. Her work for international broadcasters and streaming platforms includes the documentary WORKING WITH WEINSTEIN, the Emmy-winning series SUPERLEAGUE and the tasty Best of British Takeaways for BBC2.
E3 with Barney Pau 30 January
DIGESTING with Barney Pau; a London-based culinary creative working at the confluence of food, art, and writing, whose practice focuses on food futures, queering consumption, and foraging and fermenting as social resistance. His writing, food, and artwork examine the intersection between language, culture and nature through contemporary social critique.
E4 with Savannah Du Quercy 6 February
DIGESTING with Savannah du Quercy, a London-based artist whose practice moves between material assemblage and socially engaged work, foregrounding place, collective experience, and situated research.
Her ongoing social practice project, Who’s Hungry? Gatherings, brings artists and creatives together through food, collaboration, and the architecture of the dining table, creating a space for dialogue, connection, and cross-cultural exchange. Initiated to support and convene creative communities, Who’s Hungry? Gatherings is an extension of Savannah’s practice and reflects her interest in the artist’s role as host and facilitator, as well as the politics of hospitality, gathering, and co-creation.
E5 with Dr Tamzin Cuming 13 FebruaryDIGESTING WITH Dr Tamzin Cuming; a consultant colorectal surgeon working at Homerton Hospital in East London. Her training was in medicine in Cambridge and London at Guy's and At Thomas's Hospitals and she also obtained an English degree in the process. She trained as a surgeon and completed a Masters in Surgical Education at Imperial College with Professor Roger Kneebone.
E6 With Alessandro La Barbera & Alberto Romano 20 February
THIS WEEK, we are treating you to a very special episode of COME DIGEST WITH ME. Alessandro La Barbera & I will be tickling your eardrums with the sound of the internal digestive system- experimenting with the enzymatic hydrolysis of risotto breaking down in the stomach.
I’ll do a set playing with the internal landscape of my sonic muse, my partner in life @albertoromano_ph , whose extraordinarily loud belly sounds inspired me to take a microphone to his stomach many years ago… and then it will be my turn to eat, and Alessandro’s turn to play.
Alessandro La Barbera is a London-based Sicilian producer, mixing engineer and artist also working under the alias Josafat. His sound blends experimental production, hip-hop influenced sampling, and raw live instrumentation, often pushing boundaries through guitar pedals, tape loops and unconventional recording techniques. Alongside his artist work, he works as a mixing engineer, bringing the same adventurous, sonically detailed approach to the records he helps shape.
E7 with Yinka Danmole 27 February
DIGESTING with Yinka Danmole; a Creative Producer working at the intersection of art, technology, place, and design. With a career spanning roles at Abandon Normal Devices, Mediale, and the Manchester International Festival (MIF). Over the years, Yinka has built experience in fostering cross-disciplinary, collaborative projects, navigating complexity and nurturing space for critical enquiries. His portfolio includes developing innovative programmes such as Creative50 (MIF), Immersive Assembly (York Mediale) and GrowFM (Chiswick House and Gardens). With credits as a producer on major new commissions, including Observations on Being with Marshmallow Laser Feast, One Fifth of the Earth’s Surface with Hakeem Adam & Maxwell Mutanda and Was. Is. Will Be with Jasleen Kaur. He has worked with a breadth of artistic practitioners, designers, and researchers, including Harun Morrison, Nina Davies, Keiken, Peut Porter, Zakia Sewell and Affect Lab.
E8 Catherine Flood 6 March
DIGESTING with Catherine Flood - an independent curator based in France whose work focuses on the intersections of art and design, society and ecology.
She was formerly a curator at the V&A where she co-curated Disobedient Objects (2014) and Food: Bigger than the Plate (2019). Catherine has written and lectured widely on themes including the history of the poster, art and activism and the politics of food. Her current research concerns connections between growing and making in the context of local textile economies.
E9 Banu Çiçek Tülü 13 March
DIGESTING with Banu Çiçek Tülü (Adana/Turkey) finds herself between music, sound art installations and research, using music production and DJing as an artistic tool for activism. She has been invited to share her installations and exhibitions all over Europe, the US and Africa. Her work uses multi-channel video, analog synthesis, light, field recordings, sculpture, large textile installations and weaving to explore feminist and queer sonic methodologies where the female migrant body is present. She believes in the political possibility of sound and music, which she utilizes as an empowerment tool for minority groups with an emphasis on BIPOC* and LGBTQI+ communities.
E10 Elsa Richardson 20 March
DIGESTING with Elsa Richardson, a Senior Lecturer in the history of medicine at the University of Strathclyde and the author of Rumbles: A Curious History of the Gut(2024). Her research has examined histories of dietary advice, digestion, chronic gastric conditions and more recently, the cultural relationship between gut microbiome and the immune system. She is Director for the Center for the Social History of Health and Healthcare. She is currently writing a book about radicals in early 20th Century London.
Menu: Devilled Dishes - foods seasoned heavily with mustard, cayenne pepper and worcester source were thought to stimulate the appetite and the spirits. A potato salad with green beans, tomatoes, olive oil on a bed of lentils with a mustard and worcester sauce dressing.
Blueberry and lavender rolls - blueberry hinting to the blue devil, and lavender was thought to cure headaches and depression.
I’ve also made a brew which was used for general malaise - it consists of linseed, liquorice, lemon juice and blackcurrant jam topped up with hot water.