Podcast episodes that I enjoyed in February - Micky Flanagan, moshing, Independence Day UK, the best single of all time, Dylan, Comic Relief, Jay-Z, Ken Dodd, Chaplin, Mengele, New Order, Flat Earth, Hattie Jacques etc
BBC - Micky Flanagan: What Chance Change? - episode 1, the 1970s - Micky Flanagan talking about class. He talks to a sociologist (I think) who says something like ‘school is an interruption to working class culture’
Decoder Ring - What’s Really Going On Inside a Mosh Pit? The etiquette, science, and enduring appeal of a concertgoing ritual - the word ‘mosh’ possibly derives from someone mishearing Bad Brains saying ‘mash it down’
BBC - Independence Day UK - this is something of a curiosity. A 1996 “audio drama ‘midquel’ of the film Independence Day”. It’s fun to listen to both for the story, and to hear the radio personalities and sounds of the time
Word in your Ear - Alexis Petridis - esteemed music critic Alexis Petridis says that Steppin' Out by Joe Jackson is the best single of all time. I can’t see it myself.
Word in Your Ear discussing ‘Pledging My Time - Conversations with Bob Dylan Band Members’ with author Ray Padgett - Bob Dylan is asked why he signs autographs left-handed. Answers “if I signed right-handed they’d analyze my handwriting and find out all about me”
BBC - Whats so funny about….Comic Relief - the highest rate of donation during Comic Relief isn’t when the comedians are on, it’s when there’s a musical interlude. I guess people can more easily listen to music and donate at the same time. The highest ever rate of donation was while Adele sung Somebody Like You
‘Fresh Air’ celebrates 50 years of hip-hop: Jay-Z - I like to hear successful people crediting their school teachers, both because its good that teachers get a bit of credit, and because it implicitly recognizes the luck involved in the person’s success. The happenstance of the right person having the right teacher at the right time. Here Jay-Z recognizes the impact that his English teacher, Miss Lowden, had on his life.
Sodajerker on Songwriting - Keven Rowland - the main guy from Dexys Midnight Runners talking about songs. He says he writes down the point he’s trying to get across at the bottom of the page before he writes the words for a song.
Revisionist History Guns Part 1: The Sudden Celebrity of Sir John Knight - part of the reason that Americans have guns is because, in 1686, a guy called Sir John Knight took his gun to a church in Bristol, although he seems to have left it at the door. On the podcast they say it’s a Common Law thing.
BBC Mastertapes - Paul McCartney - McCartney says part of the attraction of relocating to Kintyre was that it made it impossible for him to get to business meetings arising from the breakup of the Beatles
How Tickled Am I? - Ken Dodd - BBC - I regret not going to see Ken Dodd. At the time of typing this show isn’t available…but hopefully it will reappear at some stage
Dan Snow’s History Hit - Charlie Chaplin - Chaplin had his first real success as a ‘drunk act’. He sat in a box in the theatre and interrupted and interacted with the performers. His biographer, Paul Duncan, compares it to the old guys, Waldorf and Statler, in the Muppets
On the trail of a Nazi war criminal - History Extra podcast - Josef Mengele was, for a time, listed under his real name in the phone book in the Argentine town in which he lived
BBC book club - Philip Pullman - Northern Lights - I’d either forgotten, or I never knew, that the title of Philip Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy comes from John Milton’s Paradise Lost. “Unless the Almighty Maker them ordain/ His dark materials to create more worlds,”
Will Hodgkinson on 70s Singalong Pop - Word in your Ear - Middle of the Road, who had hits with Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep and Soley Soley, were for a time Sophia Loren’s backing band. The story goes that she started listening to their music after going to complain about the noise
Midnight Meets - Stephen Morris - “[Blue Monday] was great for DJ’s because it was so long they could put it on, then go to the toilet. So it worked on many levels”
Little Atoms 847 - Anna Funder’s Wifedom - interesting and persuasive suggestion that Animal Farm was, to a greater or lesser extent, a joint work by Orwell and Eileen O’Shaughnessy
Did our ancestors really think the world was flat? History Extra with James Hannam - Aristotle proved the earth was shaped like a ball, not like a disc, or any other flat thing
BBC Great Lives - Sophie Scott on Hattie Jacques - Hattie Jacques was nicknamed ‘Hattie’ either because she liked hats, or because in blackface she was supposed to resemble Hattie McDowell
Full Disclosure - Polly Toynbee - Ms Toynbee says something like “Ever since Ancient Greece people have been in love with the idea of democracy, but they have despised the people that do it”
Word in your ear - Robbie Robertson, Billy Connolly, Bridge Over Troubled Water and the “fake history” of Punk - Michael Parkinson’s last interview with Muhammad Ali didn’t go well. Parkinson’s dad was a big fan of Ali, and agreed it was a poor interview. Parkinson asks his father what he thinks he should have done differently….“you should’ve thumped him”
There’s more, much, more at