Podcast episodes I liked last month - Cecil the lion, Disney, Shakespeare, E.E. Nesbit, Rasputin, the Fast Show, the Rector of Stiffkey, Hadrian's Wall, 15-minute cities, David Seaman, Lincoln and the Spice Girls

These are the podcast episodes that I particularly enjoyed last month.

Episodes I’ve enjoyed previously are on the podcast pages for this year, for 2025, for 2024, 2023, and for 2022

Cecil the lion - Witness History - the bloke who shot Cecil paid $50,000 for a hunters license. As they say in the podcast, this would have bought a lot of nature reserve land

Where There’s a Will: Finding Shakespeare Episode 8: Faith And Wonder - Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement ends when three stars are visible in the night sky. Also “Exit, pursued by a bear” comes from A Winters Tale.

The Rest is History - Walt Disney: The Great American Storyteller - Marge Champion was the ‘model’ for Disney’s Snow White. She married one of the lead animators, Art Babbett

Great Lives - Katherine Rundell on E.E. Nesbitt E.E. Nesbitt, who wrote the Railway Children and Five Children and It, was a founding member of the Fabian Society

Short History of….. Rasputin - the main source for the description of Rasputin’s assassination is similar to a death in Dostoevsky’s the Landlady

How The Fast Show and Cold Feet defined ’90s Telly with John Thomson - John Thompson describes the music in his parody music show as “fire in a pet shop jazz”. Nice.

The Lion, the Priest and the Parlourmaids: A 1930s Sex Scandal - The Rest Is History - Siegmund Freud visited Blackpool more than once, but I imagine the dates wouldn’t work for him to have seen the ex-Rector of Stiffkey in his barrel

Short History of….female spies in World War Two - the life expectancy of SOE radio operators after deployment was six weeks

Dan Snow’s History Hit - Folk Christmas: Yule, Solstice and Ancient English Traditions - in, I think, the early 20th century, ‘holly trains’ used to run to transport freshly cut Holly from the New Forest to London

Short History….of Hadrian’s Wall - during the Roman invasion of Britain, the Emperor Claudius turned up on an elephant

Origin Story: 15-Minute Cities – How Urban Design Entered the Culture War - the phrase ‘15 minute city’ was coined by a chap called Carlos Moreno in 2015. It seems to me like the daftest of culture wars.

Museum of Pop Culture with Josh Widdicombe: The Spice Girls (Part 4) - Geri wrote that

Ashley Blaker’s Hyperfixations - Professional Wrestling - Big Daddy had been previously known as ‘the Battling Guardsman’. The name ‘Big Daddy’ came from Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

How To Win The World Cup: David Seaman on the importance of squad harmony - in one match the police came into the Arsenal dressing room at half time after an altercation between Ian Wright, Seaman and a policeman

The Rest is History - The Assassination Of Abraham Lincoln - just after the Civil War, Lincoln read this speech from Macbeth to his travelling companions “Duncan is in his grave; After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well; Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison, Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing; Can touch him further. . .”

Cautionary Tales – Captain Coward and the Blame Game - one of the causes of the Costa Concordia tragedy was a tradition that ships sail closer to the coast when passing a senior crew members home. The maitre d' on the Concordia came from Isola del Giglio in Tuscany, where the ship hit rocks

BBC - You’re Dead to Me, Emma of Normandy - Emma of Normandy was twice queen of England. First as wife of Æthelred the Unready, then as wife of Canute. The ‘unready’ in ‘Æthelred the Unready’ is a pun on his first name, but ‘ræd’ means ‘advice’, so unready means something like ill-advised. His first wife was called Ælfgifu, which means gift of the elves. When Æthelred married Emma he renamed her Ælfgifu too

Hannibal: Roman Bloodbath at Cannae (Part 4) - this episode is pretty grim, but I was interested to learn that the podcast has about the same number of premium subscribers as the capacity of Villa Park. Villa Park holds 43,205. Multiplied by 7.99 subscription per month, The Rest is History would be earning £345207.95 per month, plus advertising. The guys must be comparatively well-paid historians. Good for them.

The Rest is Entertainment - Tim Davie on BAFTA, Mistakes and the BBC’s Future - Tim Davie says that the BBC has 300 employees who can’t return to their home countries, because they would be arrested

Short History Of…, C.S. Lewis - the Lewis family’s wardrobe is now in the Wade Center at Wheaton College in Illinois

McCartney: A Life in Lyrics - Let It Be - McCartney says that his mother, Mary, came to him in a dream and told him to ‘Let it be’

You’re dead tomorrow me - Old Norse Literature - the goddess Freyr had a chariot pulled by cats

The Book Club: 6. The Secret History: Dark Academia, Greek Myth, and Murder - I’d forgotten that the twins in The Secret History were called Charles and Camilla