Ten-thirty on a Saturday morning may seem like a strange time to broadcast a two-part conversation with a giant of the modern cinema about one of the aspects for which his work is best known, but that's what Radio 4 did with Tarantino's Jukebox. All over the country, shoppers must have been sitting in supermarket car parks, refusing to leave until the first instalment ended. Or maybe it was just me.

It was presented by the American composer and film music historian Robert Ziegler, who had, unfortunately, decided to get a little tricksy on the programme's ass and present it as though he were talking to Quentin Tarantino in a roadhouse with an overly attentive waitress (possibly dressed as Marilyn Monroe) and a cyber-jukebox on which Ziegler supposedly played songs for Tarantino to talk about.

Tarantino is very, very anal about his music, as we know. He has a jukebox. It's called Amy. In a picture book that accompanied his most recent film, the not terribly successful Death Proof, there is a list of all the songs on Amy. He uses the songs in his record collection in his movies, and they are on vinyl. He just loves those authentic-sounding crackles and pops. “If I use a song in a movie, I want it to be from my LP,” he said, possibly introducing an entire and much younger generation to the very phrase “LP”. And why? “Because that's the song I put a scene to, when I was imagining how the sequence would look as I paced back and forth in my room.” The “in my room” bit jarred slightly; it was as though he still lived with his parents. There again, what is it about Tarantino that would leave us unsurprised if he does?

If anyone ever matched his public perception it's Tarantino, the obsessive's obsessive. But, to judge from his enthusiastic participation in Ziegler's programme, he's an OK sort of guy - far easier to like than, say, the other hugely successful American he brings to mind, Bill Gates. Both are overwhelmingly enthusiastic, but of the two Tarantino seems to have the sort of fun that the rest of us can relate to.

After all, if we had the money, wouldn't we also have a room for our record collection that's designed to look like a used record store? “I have them in bins against the wall, broken down into categories,” Tarantino said. “I have eight or nine artists who are in categories by themselves. Then the others I break down into decades, and then the various sub-genres within those decades. In the Fifties there's a doo-wop section, in the Sixties there's surf music, psychedelic, British Invasion. Then a soul section, folk, old-school country, none of that new Nashville stuff. Comedy records, children's records and then I guess straight male and female vocalists. But one of my biggest sections is soundtracks, which is alphabetical and broken down into genres - there's a blaxploitation section, a spy movie section, spaghetti western section, biker movies ... God, that man must have fun sorting them out on rainy days.

The 40th anniversary of man's first footstep on the Moon is next Tuesday, but Archive Hour (Saturday, Radio 4) got in a bit early with Edwin Eugene “Buzz” Aldrin's memories of being the second first-footer. Just as well - have you heard Neil Armstrong talk? A computer program with a pulse. He could read poetry and make it sound like a technical manual - in fact, he did.

We heard from the Apollo 11 wives - Nasa liked their astronauts to be married, it made them more grounded, ironically. Sadly they weren't identified, so we heard a succession of preternaturally calm now-elderly anonymous women complaining about not being able to afford to dress glamorously, the way the media wanted them to, on a military wife's pay. And of how, when they ran out of different ways to respond to the incessant question: “How do you feel?” they fell back on a little mantra: “Proud, thrilled and happy. It wouldn't have been too good to say: ‘I want him back right now.'”

But the major part of the hour was taken up with the final 40 minutes before the lunar module Eagle landed on the Moon. That was the one part they hadn't been able to practise, and the only way of learning what would happen in a landing was to land.

That was easier said than done. The lunar module detached three seconds late, and was thus three miles out of position when Armstrong took over the controls. In a moment that was pure Jules Verne, or perhaps Tintin, Aldrin spoke of Armstrong looking out of the window and checking what he could see against a lunar map - and the landmarks not being in the right place. Then the computer started sending alarm messages, and nobody knew why. They started to run out of fuel. They forged on. With a minute of fuel left, Armstrong was still looking for somewhere not littered with “car-sized boulders” to land. Thirty seconds later, mission control in Houston decided not to tell the astronauts they were nearly out of fuel because it might upset them. They made it with 15 seconds to spare.

Across the decades and the miles, the thrill was still there for us listening now, as we watched and listened back then. But with the added knowledge of just what they had done, in a spaceship held together with string and chewing gum by today's standards, flying by the seat of their pants and with the Right Stuff oozing from every pore.

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