Podcast stuff I enjoyed in April.

One day in the British empire -History Extra - the saying is that the sun never set on the British Empire. An Irish politician’s version of this was ‘the blood never dries on the British Empire’

Naomi Klein - Full Disclosure with James O’Brien - Naomi Klein’s grandfather was a cartoonist who worked on Bambi and other Disney stuff. Walt Disney had him sacked and blacklisted for being involved in a strike

Not Just the Tudors - Witches of St Osyth - Marion Gibson says that “History without empathy is only ever half a story.”

Short history of Titanic - the ship of dreams - at the time of her launch, the Titanic was the largest moving object ever built

Ashley Blaker’s Goyish Guide to Judaism - 2 - this will be available online sporadically as and when the BBC repeats it over the airwaves. It’s very funny. Ashley Blaker simultaneously celebrates and pokes fun at his flavour of Judaism

Hit Parade - Insert lyrics here - Chris Molanphy discusses the rise and fall of instrumentals. “Hocus Pocus by Focus” is indeed fun to say.

The Hated and the Dead - Barack Obama - “Obama was often the smartest person and the room, and he knew it”. I wonder if Obama struggled to work with people who were (a lot) less smart

History Extra - The shoemaker who helped slaves escape the South - this is about Thomas Smallwood, an previously enslaved guy who helped to run the Underground Railroad. He wrote satircal pieces under the name of Dickens' character Sam Weller

The Hated and the Dead - Barack Obama - “was he ready to be President? ……nobody ever is”

‘Swingtime for Hitler’ explores the Nazis use of jazz as a propaganda tool - Scott Simon has an audiobook called ‘Swingrime for Hitler’ in which he discusses the Nazis creating jazz records with propaganda and racist lyrics. One of the main guys in the band on the records went on to to be head of Polydor in Germany.

Word in your ear - Hooray! Tim Riley has a theory about everything in rock! - Tim Riley says that the Rolling Stones, and to a much lesser extent The Beatles, successfully sold African-American music back to America because, being white and English they had license to be more down and dirty, more rough and raw and more rock and roll than the orginal artists

Really enjoyed 24 Hour Party People. It would be nice to think that some of it is true….although it’s obviously a bit sad in parts.

Also enjoyed reading Paul Morley’s bit about the film in the Guardian

Currently reading: Access All Areas by Barbara Charone (music industry supremo, and #ChelseaFc director) 📚⚽🎶

She mentions this song in the book…and I’ve become slightly obsessed with it. Mick Jagger on BVs

Peter Tosh - Don’t Look Back youtu.be/3o4Fgh0KW…

It’s my annual wondering-whether-I-should-do-a-marathon day

Joe Cole just said that however good a player you are, you can’t be in two places at once

He must not have heard the song “He’s here, he’s there, he’s every-flipping-where, Joey Cole, Joey Cole…”

⚽ #ChelseaFC #cfc

The thing I like about Neto is that he’s physically strong for a silky-skilled winger ⚽ #CfcEve #ChelseaFC #cfc

I just saw a Party Political for Reform, for the local elections. You would think immigration was a local government issue

I’d stop anyone from Hampshire coming in from a start. The Cornish are obviously beyond the pail. And immigration from Somerset would be on an Australian-style points basis

This seems quite useful if you’re thinking of retiring, ever. The figures are for the UK, and assume you’re rent and mortgage free :0

From Home - PLSA - Retirement Living Standards

I’m not sure what I’ve been more confused by over the years

The day and the month being the other way around in American dates, or red and blue being the other way around in American politics

🇬🇧🇺🇸 #EasilyConfused

Does anyone, other than the New Yorker, use the spelling ‘coördinating’?

People have written that, in Dickens' books, London is a character in its own right. London interacts with other characters, and moves the story forward.

That being the case, it makes absolute sense that people would want to visit the locations associated with the books.

‘Dickensland’ is an entertaining tour of such sites…whether they are real or fake.

Finished reading: Dickensland by Lee Jackson 📚

I quite enjoyed Last One Laughing, but I think it’s more like very good Reality TV than it is like good comedy

Terrifying

BBC News - Why giant Easter bunny was created in small town - BBC New

I found this today - there’s a good list of ‘additional resources’ for Pester on the website:

Articles | Pester

Elizabeth Frink’s Walking Madonna, and the big, old church

I wasn’t keen on Persuader, but I enjoyed the latest Reacher season, which was based on it

In his letters Dickens spoke both about breaking his heart over the ending of the Old Curiousity shop, and about “committing Nell-icide”

So Kobo says the book here is a Child’s History of England but the cover says it’s a Tale of Two Cities

More interesting, I’m fairly sure that the painting is the end of Castle Street in Salisbury

It would’ve been a different story if one of the Cities had been Salisbury. I’d like to have read it.

I didn’t know you could set up site searches in Edge. I assume it’s the same in Chrome, Chromium etc.

You do it as follows.

• go to Settings

• in the search do ‘Manage Search Engines’

• fill in the form as below

The easy way to get the URL is to go to the site you want to set up a search for and do a search. Copy the URL you end up on, and replace your search term with %s

I dunno if I’d use this for lots of websites…but it’s particularly handy for work-environment wiki and trouble-ticket systems

I’m a bit nervous out this one ⚽ #LegChe

I’m obviously hoping that Real beat Arsenal 4-0 back at the Bernabeu, but I enjoyed the different descriptions of where Declan Rice put his free kicks

“My old goalkeeper coach at West Ham, Ludek Miklosko, used to call that top corner of the goal next to the stanchion ‘the spiders’ web'. When I worked on an England game with John Murray for BBC Radio 5 Live last month, he said that in Brazil they call it ‘where the owls sleep’. Every country has a different saying for it - we know it as ‘top bins’.”

Rice’s free kicks analyzed

Malcolm Tucker on the Cramps

Our influences were Bowie, Talking Heads and the Cramps, who were like a voodoo-swamp version of the Munsters

The Guardian - ‘The people of Glasgow frowned on all the spitting’: Peter Capaldi on his punk rock past

There’s a very brief window between me understanding how something works and me forgetting how it works

In the UK Liz Truss has become a byword for economic disaster

She might be quite pleased that she’ll likely be replaced as such by Donald Trump

• click on the extension button…which looks like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle, then
• Manage Extensions, then
• switch the switch for ‘Allow extensions from other stores.’, then
• do a search, then when it can’t find the extension in the Edge store…
• click on the Chrome Web Store link

You could just use Chrome instead….but for reasons I can no longer remember, I prefer Edge

<img src=“https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/139254/2025/screenshot-2025-04-03-171141.png" width=“600” height=“321” alt=“A browser tab displays the Extensions page of Microsoft Edge with no search results found for “po” and a prompt to get extensions.">