Since both composers were speaking on air, repartee would have been fruitless. In the second case, the composer was doing a pre-concert talk about the BBC commission she'd been given. She started by saying something about how her first concern was about how she was going to invent a new musical language for this piece. The result, I have to say, was as dull as a wet Wednesday in Wishaw.
I've never experienced one of those either (so perhaps I should get out more), but it can often be problematic when a composer is invited to spout forth about his/her work; "what I was trying to do in this piece was...", and all that; I fear that it probably fails to enlighten more often that it enlightens. Michael Tippett and even Elliott Carter on occasion strike me as having been guilty of this kind of thing. I must have been conscious of this for a long time because when interviewed about my third piano sonata by BBC more years ago than I care to remember, I said "it's in one movement and plays for around 15 minutes" (and, since it plays for more like 17, I didn't even get that right) which might have sounded rude (albeit quite unintentionally) but I really didn't have anything else to say about it, preferring instead to leave all the "saying" to the pianist whose performance of it was about to be broadcast.