podcasts 🎙️
Podcast episodes I enjoyed in March - Pat Nevin, the Irishness of Kate Bush, Nazi sterilizations, Mike Leigh, Nicholas Parsons, Naomi Klein, ice cream, the Taj Mahal, Boy George, Oliver Cromwell, and Lenny Henry's influence on Theresa May and Caitli
Word In Your Ear - Pat Nevin - “Pat Nevin has musical memories even better than scoring a diving header against Arsenal”….a sentence that could keep Socrates, Plato, and every phone-in host on every radio station busy for years
BBC Witness History - Nazi Eugenics - horrific, tragic and weirdly banal. A tough listen. “In July 1933, Adolf Hitler passed a law requiring the sterilisation of Germans with physical and mental disabilities. Helga Gross was one of those sterilised.”
Word in your ear - Nick Duerden’s talked to 50 pop stars about life when the big time’s behind you - Eddie Tenpole-Tudor (of the Swords of a Thousand Men, and Who Killed Bambi) got down to a shortlist of two for the Richard E. Grant role in Withnail and I
Give Kate Bush back to the Irish - Kate Bush is judged to score 9.5 on the Irish-o-meter
This Cultural Life - Mike Leigh - on the night of the second or third repeating of Abigails Party, the weather was dreadful, a strike had taken out ITV, and BBC2 was showing something ‘very esoteric’. 16 million people therefore watched Mike Leigh’s show
BBC - Political Thinking with Nick Robinson - The Theresa May One - the former PM relates how hearing Lenny Henry changed her mind about the Windrush scandal. Henry was giving a speech at a memorial for Stephen Lawrence and he said that the Windrush people had to produce four pieces of documentation for every year they had been in the UK
BBC - This Cultural Life - Caitlin Moran - aged 13, Caitlin Moran somewhat optimisitically applied for the job of Managing Director of Comic Relief. Lenny Henry replied “You wouldn’t want to be MD of Comic Relief, it’s really boring, but I’m sure you will fly like a comet through British society’’”. Moran says she lost the letter but knows it off by heart
Hancocks Half Hour - The Blood Donor - perfect, in my opinion
That Reminds Me - Nicholas Parsons - originally the host of Just A Minute was going to be Jimmy Edwards, but he was unavailable when the pilot was recorded
WTF with Marc Maron - Naomi Klein - “conspiracy culture often seems like it’s anti-establishment…its a gift to the establishment”
BBC Radio 4 - Archive on 4 - Scoop - Mr Whippy ice cream was based on the American Mr Softy. Mrs Thatcher didn’t invent either
This Cultural Life - Jarvis Cocker - Jarvis Cocker says that the lady in Common People is not the wife of the Greek Finance Minister
Linda Smith’s A Brief History of Timewasting - I’ve only heard one of these but it was very funny. There was a great line from Margaret John (Doris from Gavin and Stacey) to the effect that if life was a Countdown puzzle then she’s in the bibbedy-bibby-boo bit rather than the boom-diddy-boom bit. Or words to that effect.
Cardew ‘The Cad’ Robinson? Comedy’s great lost heroes remembered by Robert Ross - The Word in your Ear podcast - lovely chat about old semi-forgotten comedians, like Roy Jay, the “Spook Spook Slither Hither” chap. The podcast / book needs to be a multi-part BBC4 series
EP99: Yoon Suk Yeol–The Hated and the Dead - South Korean presidents can only serve one term. Not having any prospect of re-election seems to be a bad thing
Dave Rimmer’s classic Culture Club book is republished. Boy George hated it “as it was all true” - Word in Your Ear - Culture Club split their songwriting royalties equally, like U2 and REM
History Extra - Great Reputations - Oliver Cromwell - Oliver Cromwell’s was voted the 10th ever Greatest Briton in a poll in 2002. I guess ‘great’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘good’?
A short history of the Taj Mahal - the poet Rabindranath Tagore described the Taj as ‘a teardrop on the cheek of time’
I love pop music and I love Chelsea (Pat was a great Chelsea player in the ’80s)
The sentence below will keep me awake at nights
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
Podcast episodes that I enjoyed this month - Mrs Orwell, Golda Meir, The Sun, The Light Brigade, Val MacDermid, Tupperware, Highwaymen, Raffles, Smokey, The Famine, Anti-Vaxxers, The Arctic, and Fukushima
Note that I have put stuff in quotes sometimes…but these will only be approximations of what people have said. I’ve heard most of this stuff while running or walking the dog or trying to get to sleep so I can’t be very precise
ABC Conversations - The invisible Mrs Orwell - “I lost my habit of punctual correspondence during the first few weeks of marriage because we quarrelled so continuously & really bitterly that I thought I’d save time & just write one letter to everyone when the murder or separation had been accomplished.” Eileen O’Shaughnessy, six months after marrying George Orwell
The Hated and the Dead - Golda Meir - Golda Meir fled Russian pogroms as a child, but went on to become Prime Minister of Israel
BBC - When it hits the fan - Inside the Sun’s historic apology to Prince Harry - “'reputation'' is partly about what others think of you, but as importantly it’s about what you think of yourself”. David Yelland talks about his time as editor of The Sun
CBS You Are There - The Charge of the Light Brigade - i was surprised that the Charge of the Light Brigade was a big enough event in the USA for CBS to make a show about it
Word in Your Ear - Will Hodgkinson - after discussing the cover of a Roxy Music record, “we’ve had quite a cohort of people of your age whose first memory of pop music was that they found it rather frightening”
BBC Bookclub - Val MacDermid - Val Mcdermid says something like “we all know, in our heart of hearts, that this isn’t the way in which crimes are solved”
BBC Witness History - Brownie Wise: The creator of Tupperware parties - the sales director of Tupperware was called Brownie Wise, which seems quite appropriate
A short history of….. Highwaymen - Dick Turpin was originally a butcher, who fenced poached venison. He was eventually arrested after shooting a rooster.
The Most Conservative Country Songs of All Time (“Try That In a Small Town” is just the latest) By Rolling Stone - the songs are largely a mixture of cynical, sad and stupid imho, with the one exception of ‘Okie from Muskogee’. Includes a nice story about Nixon asking Johnny Cash to cover ‘Okie’, and something called ‘Welfare Cadillac’…and Cash doing ‘What is truth?’ instead
BBC Book Club - Simon Armitage on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - I found a footnote in an old periodical once that said the small bit of land where my great-grandmother had a house was once the home of Gawain’s descendants….honest!
BBC Great Lives - Stamford Raffles - I didn’t know Raffles founded London Zoo
BBC Book Club- Ben McIntyre on Agent ZigZag - on Eddie Chapman, a safe-cracker who got recruited by German intelligence during World War Two and won an Iron Cross, but then started working for MI5
Smokey Robinson : Bullseye with Jesse Thorn - there’s a nice story in this about Tracks of My Tears. The ending was changed after what sounds like a it was a weekly team meeting at Motown. I dont think i’ve ever been in a meeting that’s been quite that productive
BBC Book Club - Art Spiegleman on Maus - Spiegelman was originally planning a book about race in the USA, featuring Ku Klux Kats
A Short History of the Fukushima Disaster - I’m not sure about whether nuclear power is a good thing, but the bravery of the Fukushima workers was incredible
Joel Stein - Story of the Week - The Implosion of a Leading Anti-COVID Vaccine Group - Joel Stein gets interviewed about a story he’s written for the FT about a populist anti-lockdown outfit
EP93: The Arctic Five - The Hated and the Dead The Arctic Five are the five countries with coastlines on the Arctic Ocean. They are: Canada, Russia, Norway; through Alaska, The United States; and Denmark, through Greenland,
A Short History of…the Irish Potato Famine - there was a lot of this, too much of this, to be honest, that i didn’t know
There’s more, much more at
Podcast episodes that I've enjoyed recently - Armando, Cillian, Barbie, 'the Stalin of the Steppes', Troy, Princess Di, John Wilkes Booth, UFO's, etc
Strong Message Here - Political words of 2024
Barbie and the plasticity of pop - Switched on Pop
UFO sightings: an otherworldly history - History Extra
Cillian Murphy - WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
The Hated and the Dead - Khorloogiin Choibalsan
The Rest is History - Stephen Fry and Troy
Hancock’s Half Hour - Fred’s Pie Stall
A right royal night out - Witness History
You Are There (TV Series) - The Capture of John Wilkes Booth (April 26, 1865) (1953)
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast Episode 1449 - The United States of Conspiracy w/ Robert Guffey
Lenny Kaye nails some moments “when the universe shifted”. Word In Your Ear … Word In Your Ear.
The Rest Is History - Podcast Episode 392. JFK: The Road to the White House (Part 1)
BBC Soul Music - I Say a Little Prayer for You
Paul Sinha’s perfect pub quiz - Bradford
Word In Your Ear -David Gedge – and a postcard from Peel
Word in Your Ear - Simon Napier-Bell - Marc Bolan, the Who, chains, feathers and German police
Dashiell Hammett - The Maltese Falcon — Backlisted with crime novelist Mark Billingham
There are many, many more at: Podcast episodes I’ve enjoyed
Podcasts and radio shows I’ve enjoyed recently
The Political Party Show 203 - Margaret Beckett
Radio 4 - Soul Music - Ghost Town
Living through the Troubles History Extra podcast ·
The Last Bus Home Hancock’s Half HourSeries 6 Episode 3 of 14
Political Party - Philip Hammond
Episode 153 : Lloyd Bradley on Black London + Tina Turner + Steve Barrow audio - Rock’s Back Pages
Dancing in the Dark - Bruce Springsteen -Soul Music - BBC
Desert Island Discs - Peter Hennessy
Nick Heyward reboots ‘the fragrance of rock’ - Word in Your Ear
Caesar is assassinated - You are there -
There’s a list going back years here: mattypenny.micro.blog/podcast-e…
I’m listening to Rolling Stone’s The 50 Worst Decisions in Music History. It’s good fun
Coincidentally I was scrolling through Wikipedia’s list of Chelsea managers, as you do, and it struck me that binning Anceolotti and recruiting AVB might be one of the Worst Decisions in Football History
Recommended podcast: Origin Story
I’ve only discovered this podcast recently, but it seems very good
The blurb says
“[Lynsky and Dunt] “focus their attention on exploring a single over-used (and over-abused) word or phrase. Through a combination of historical, etymological and contextual analysis, they unmask the true meaning of our most popular misinterpreted expressions—giving listeners keen insight into the murky nature of political and societal communication.”
…but it’s an awful lot more entertaining, and usually less heavy than that
Origin Story - www.podmasters.co.uk/origin-st…
Origin Story - open.spotify.com/show/5Aog…
🎙️ Podcast episode in which A.J. Jacobs tries, and largely fails,to live day without plastic
This podcast episode includes my favourite tale of quintessential British upper middle classness
A young Hugh Laurie asks whether his father can actually row before a boating expedition. It had not been mentioned before, not was it mentioned at the time, that his father had won a gold medal in the coxless pair event at the 1948 Olympics
“Drummers are like hockey goalies. No-one knows how to talk to them apart from other drummers”
#TodayILearned how much of a drummer Karen Carpenter was
Word In Your Ear Is Karen Carpenter pop music’s saddest story?
I listened to this yesterday. It’s fascinating, ridiculous and disturbing, often at the same time 🎙️
The Rise Of QAnon - Fresh Air
#TodayILearned the phrase ‘gish gallop’. It’s means to create a deluge of rubbish in argument, to overwhelm your opponent
Mehdi Hasan | Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking
#OnThisDay in 1930, which was Good Friday, the BBC News Announcer announced, in the evening bulletin, that ‘There is no news’ and then played some music instead
This is lovely
Frank Cottrell-Boyce talking about how the Queen jumped out of a helicopter for the 2012 Opening Ceremony 🎙️
When the Queen ‘jumped out of a helicopter - Witness History
#TodayILearned that Chris Spedding, who produced the Cramps, and possibly the Sex Pistols, and had a hit with MotorBikin' was also one of the Wombles
Underground, Overground - Mike Batt on Word in your Ear - youtu.be/5JUqyAp7H…
Chris Spedding - Wikipedia - en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chri…
Remember You’re A Womble by The Wombles - songwhip.com/thewomble…
Interesting point in this, at least for politics nerds like myself
Famously, JFK performed better in the Presidential debates than Nixon, according to TV viewers, but less well according to radio listeners
Danny Finkelstein says that a recent study suggests that this is entirely explained by radio listeners being more rural, more conservative and more likely to vote for Nixon in the first place
It’s clearly not the main point of my friend Tom’s podcast, but #TodayILearned that ‘Kosovo’ is derived from ‘Kosovo Polje’ which means ‘the field of blackbirds’….which I quite like
The Hated and the Dead podcast: Kosovo Serbs - podtail.com/en/podcas…
#TodayILearned that the first Beatle’s concert in the United States was at Boneyard Bocce Ball Club in Benton, Illinois.
The first Beatles concert in the US was somewhere else
Good podcast: The Hated and the Dead
The blurb says: “Kissinger said that ninety percent of politicians give the other ten percent a bad name. Each week, a guest and I discuss the life and legacy of one politician from recent times. Some are well-known, others obscure; all have left an indelible mark on our world, and often for the worse. Join me, Tom Leeman, in a journey through the corruptible and the controversial.”
I’d say: My young friend Tom interviews academics, politicians and journalists about figures from political history. It’s similar in tone to the BBC’s In Our TIme…but for me it’s more interesting
Link: The Hated and the Dead - Listen on Spotify - Linktree