Stuff I’ve enjoyed

EP63: George Orwell - The Hated and the Dead | Podcast on Spotify - #TodayILearned that Aldous Huxley was one of George Orwell’s teachers at Eton

Documentary On One - The Nightsingers of Brighton - An annual-ish tweet / toot about this marvellous documentary about a folk-ie Christmas custom of Newfoundland. Best listened to in bed, in the dark. ‘For generations villagers have walked from house to house, entered darkened kitchens after midnight, and have sung the carol as occupants listened in the darkness.’

Persecution of Irish Speakers | The History Show - RTE Radio 1 - #TodayILearned that Irish shopkeepers were prosecuted under the Trades Description Act for having Irish-language signage, on the grounds that it wasn’t legible

Give The Beatles Back to the Irish - Episode 1: Here, Eire and Everywhere - BBC Sounds - #TodayILearned that Dave Allen (the comic, not the GTD bloke) tried to book the Beatles to play in Drogheda

Wickedest Sound - 99% Invisible - About 1950s and 60s Jamaican dance parties. This is great. I wish it was a series

Hit Parade: Give Up the Funk - Slate Culture - Apple Podcasts - #TodayILearned that Maurice White had no ‘water signs’ in his horoscope.The signs were all earth, wind or fire….hence the name of his band

Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon (Special Edition) | Audiobook on Spotify - #TodayILearned that ‘The Boxer’ was, like Homeward Bound, written in England because it mentions ‘railway station’ rather than ‘railroad station’. It’s always seemed a very American song to me (The audiobook is free with Spotify Premium, if you’ve got it)

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Hancock’s Half Hour, Series 4, The 13th of the Series - I enjoyed this one, in which ‘the Lad gets triskaidekaphobic’ and goes to Stonehenge

The Jam on the Embankment - Found this video featuring The Jam playing at the start of a CND rally on the Embankment. 42 years and one week ago. We’d seen the gear on the truck with ‘The Jam’ written on it, but they were such a big band at the time we thought they must have lent it to someone else. Imho, Paul Weller splitting up the Jam was a historical mistake in the same league as Napoleon marching on Moscow, or Liz Truss being Prime Minister, or Tottenham Hotspur

Word In Your Attic 62 (audio version) - Jo Kendall: ‘Go hard or go home!' - Particularly enjoyed this one. Jo mentions A Million Rubber Bands - one of the two clubs we went to near us (the other was Club Montepulciano, which was slightly different) - and ‘getting Pulp for £125’. That was the fee for Pulp to play at the club, I think. You could probably pay £125 for one ticket to see Pulp today

EP54: Hassan al-Turabi - The Hated and the Dead - Another episode of m’young friend Tom’s podcast. As usual, it’s nice to learn a bit….but also to realise how deeply ignorant I am about large parts of the world

Why Bond and the Beatles ruled - History Extra podcast - Probably old news to you good people, but #TodayILearned that the first James Bond film and the first Beatles single came out on the same day

Slate’s Hit Parade: At Last, My Legacy Has Come Along Edition - playlist by slate magazine | Spotify - Links to the Molanphy’s show and the Spotify playlist

Bruce Lindsay: a pre-vinyl special! Jazz, swing, comedy - and the Beatles - at 78rpm Word In Your Attic - #TodayILearned that the first recording of a human voice was by Edouard-Lon Scott de Martinville. His phonautograph scratched blacking off paper, wood, or glass. He hoped people would learn to ‘read’ the engraving…but it was never played until some scientists at Berkeley created some software to do so

BBC Two - Laura Kuenssberg: State of Chaos - Watching Laura Kuenssberg’s excellent doc on politics since 2016, State of Chaos. It feels like everyone went a bit mad

BBC Radio 4 - Great Lives, Bonnie Greer on the Women of the Morant Bay Rebellion - #TodayILearned about the the women of the Morant Bay Rebellion

What’s Funny About … - Series 2 - 4. Pamela Stephenson and John Lloyd on Not The Nine O’Clock News - BBC Sounds - Douglas Adams: Not the Nine o’Clock News is to Monty Python as the Monkees were to the Beatles. Tbh, I’d have probably said the Goodies rather than Not the Nine O’Clock News

Press Interview (Elvis Sails) - Brooklyn, New York, 22 January 1958 - Rarest Interviews - song by Elvis Presley | Spotify - ‘Interviewer: What’s your idea of your ideal girl? Elvis: Uhhh….female, sir’. Listening to some of his interviews it strikes me that given his sense of humour Elvis would have fitted in quite well in the Beatles, at least in press conferences

Escape from Colditz - History Extra podcast - #TodayILearned that, after Douglas Bader lost one of his prosthetic legs bailing out of his spitfire, the RAF parachuted replacements into Colditz. The exercise was named ‘Operation Leg’

Indianola, Mississippi 1986 boycott: What happened when Black residents boycotted white-owned businesses. - I found this story of people in Mississippi fighting for their civil rights a bit shocking for a couple of reasons- it’s so recent….1986. I’d never heard of it before.

EP49: Jacinda Ardern - The Hated and the Dead | Podcast on Spotify - Particularly interesting episode of the Hated and the Dead, on Jacinda Ardern, and why she lost popularity in NZ, if not outside it

BBC Radio 4 - Mark Steel’s in Town, Series 9, Hastings - I was pleased to discover that there’s a builder in Hastings trading under the name of ‘William the Concreter’

Ian Rankin’s tour rider? One uncooked haggis - Word In Your Attic - I think I’ve heard this before but I like it Ian Rankin says ‘I was in the second-best punk band in Fife’. As any aging punk-rock-nerd will tell you, the first best in Fife was the much more successful Skids

Archive on 4 - The Holy Blood - BBC Sounds - #TodayILearned that one of the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail had previously co-authored Doctor Who

James Hyman: MTV promotional bog roll, anyone? Word In Your Attic - #TodayILearned that sometime in the 1970s ‘a toy whistle packaged in boxes of Cap’n Crunch cereal emitted a tone at precisely 2600 hertz - the same frequency that AT&T long lines used to indicate that a trunk line was available for routing a new call’….allowing people to make free phone calls

Measurement: an unexpected history - History Extra podcast - #TodayILearned that Anders Celsius nominated the boiling point of water as zero degrees and the freezing point as 100. It was reversed later on

151. Question Time: Feargal Sharkey on water pollution, drug legalisation, and fishing - The Rest Is Politics | Podcast on Spotify - It’s great to hear Feargal Sharkey popping up all over the media….but if I’m honest I’d rather have an Undertones reunion than poo-free rivers

Show 281 - Lindsay Hoyle LIVE - The Political Party | Acast - #TodayILearned or possibly had forgotten and re-learned that speaker Lindsey Hoyle is Doug Hoyle’s sonDoug Hoyle was an MP and is now in the House of Lords as Baron Hoyle, of WarringtonI hadn’t thought of Hoyle as a nepo baby!

Seven Days That Rocked The World : BBC Radio 2 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive - Very much enjoy these BBC radio docs

Suzi Ruffell At Bletchley Park Meet Me At The Museum podcast - #TodayILearned that at it’s peak there were 9,000 people working at Bletchley ParkSuzi Ruffell At Bletchley Park Meet Me At The Museum podcast

Island Records founder Chris Blackwell looks back on his life in music : NPR - #TodayILearned that Chris Blackwell’s mum was the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s Pussy Galore

Natalie Haynes on the fantastic and fearsome women of greek myth - CBC Radio - #TodayILearned that ‘calling a spade a spade’ is a mistranslation of something like ‘calling a canoe a canoe’. And, in Aesop, it isn’t Pandora that opens the jar/box, it’s Epimetheus

Turning Point - Wasps in a Jam Jar - BBC Sounds - This is very good - it’s a radio play about the relationship between Maggie Thatcher, Geoffrey Howe and Howe’s wife, Elspeth. Highly recommended if you like House of Cards, Yes Minister etc

Ramones, ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ - Rolling Stone Australia - #TodayILearned that Joey Ramone sings Blitzkrieg Bop ‘in a faux British accent’. I can’t hear it, tbh

Looking after 20,000 records in a cowshed with Danny Kelly - Word In Your Attic - Just heard Danny Kelly refer to Jamaican music as a ‘phosphorescent volcano of creativity’. Slightly understating the case, I feel

BBC Radio 5 Live - Midnight Meets With Colin Murray, Gloria Gaynor - In this podcast episode Gloria Gaynor describes her first school performance, in which she was initially crippled by stage fright and nerves.She says that ‘at first I was afraid, I was petrified’

BBC World Service - Witness History, Banksy’s first street art mural - I’m disappointed to learn that Banksy doesn’t have a west country accent

Benjamin Franklin with Ken Burns - Dan Snow’s History Hit | Acast - A podcast episode that’s all about the Benjamin. Ken Burns says the two most important sentences in the English Language are “I love you”, and “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”

Sir Alex Ferguson: Made in Govan - Seriously… - Very interesting interview of Alex Ferguson about his early days. I think he says that he always asked young players what their fathers and grandfathers did for a living, because he preferred them to be working class. So….Alex Ferguson would have picked me before either Gian Luca Vialli, or, arguably Frank Lampard. It’s a great comfort

Hit Parade: Killing Me Softly Edition - Chris Molanphy - #TodayILearned that Killing Me Softly was about Don McLean, the American Pie chap

Fintan O’Toole | We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland’ on YouTube - Listened to this as a podcast…interesting stuffAnd ‘We don’t know ourselves’ is a genius title

BBC Radio 4 - Ed Reardon’s Week - I had to do the making-a-complaint thing this week, and, although it kind of worked, I felt the ghost of Ed Reardon hovering at my elbow and I’m not sure it was worth it

EP24: Jacob Zuma - The Hated and the Dead | Podcast on Spotify - #TodayILearned that the first negotiations between the ANC and the apartheid Nationalist government took place at Mells Park House, near Frome in Somerset

The secret lab hidden inside a famous monument - BBC Future - #TodayILearned that London’s Monument, as well as being a commemoration of the Great Fire (with some anti-Catholic crap added on later) was also a giant telescope, partly intended to prove the Earth goes around the Sun

James O’Brien Admits His Shame Over Sexism In Interview With Caroline Criado-Perez - LBC - I listened to this yesterday - it only scratches the surface of Caroline Criado-Perez’s book…..but if you’re a data person it’s worth a listen. I found the biographical bits at the start interesting, but the stuff about the book is later on

Boris Johnson Swears He’s Telling the Truth - The News Agents | Podcast on Spotify - Tbh, I thought a daily news podcast was a daft idea, and I thought Maitlis and Sopel were daft to leave the Beeb to do it….but I now barely miss an episode

[The Political Party Podcast Series - Neil Kinnock ](https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/show-266-neil-kinnock-live/id595312938?i=1000553551151"" target=) - “It’s interesting that you say that it’s racist and class-bound because the term ‘Welsh windbag’ wasn’t invented by the Times, or the Sun….it was invented by the Socialist Workers Party'

John Simpson - Full Disclosure with James O’Brien - #TodayILearned that John Simpson is Chelsea

Barbara Charone, ‘70s-music-writer-turned-pop-PR. Motto: “you’ve got to be tenacious!” - Dave Hepworth and Mark Ellen interviewing Barbara Charone, very cool (Bobby Gillespie suggested she write her book….which is definitely rather cool) music critic, PR person, and board member at Chelsea

Fascism in Britain - History Extra podcast | Podcast on Spotify - #TodayILearned that the British Union of Fascists' black shirts were based on fencing tunics. Seems slightly ridiculous.

EP20: Sheikh Hasina - The Hated and the Dead | Podcast on Spotify - #TodayILearned a little bit about the politics of Bangladesh

You Are There - 83 episodes of the Old Time Radio show : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive - I’m enjoying listening to occasional episodes of ‘You Are There’, a radio show from the 1940s, which takes ‘an entire network newsroom on a figurative time warp each week reporting the great events of the past.’

EP19: (The Rather Less Horrible Arnold Schwarzenegger - The Hated and the Dead - My young chum Tom has an excellent political / historical podcast about contraversial political leaders. Despite, he says, never having seen him act, in this one he discusses Arnie

Chapter 163 : Michael Crick - Iain Dale’s Book Club - Interesting interview with Michael Crick about his book on Nigel Farage. Interesting point that some politicians are good at speeches but useless at talking one to one with ordinary people (Hesletine, Johnson), but Farage is good at both. And also good on telly, and at producing clips for social media. And at radio phone-ins. It’s a shame he has such daft ideas

BBC Radio 4 - Mark Steel’s in Town, Series 4, Whitehaven - #TodayILearned that people in Whitehaven call people in Workington ‘jam eaters’….and people in Workington call people in Whitehaven ‘jam eaters’.

EP18: Saunders Lewis - The Hated and the Dead | Podcast on Spotify - Interesting discussion about Saunders Lewis, who founded Plaid Cymru.He was, unlike today’s Plaid, more right than left-leaning

Sturgeon resigns - The News Agents | Podcast on Spotify - I’m quite surprised to hear Diane Abbott say that Jeremy Corbyn is, at heart, a Brexitter. I wouldn’t be very much surprised to learn that he was….but I’m surprised she said so

Feargal Sharkey Full Disclosure With James O’Brien podcast - #TodayILearned that some of the Undertones wore black armbands on Top of the Pops for the hunger strikers.

Bob Stanley, a Jet Harris hand-print and the curious tale of Mr Pilditch - #TodayILearned that ‘Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night’, the article by Nik Cohn on which Saturday Night Fever was based, is mainly made up…. but largely inspired by ‘mods on the Goldhawk Road’ rather than discos in New York

Brexit home truths at Davos - The News Agents | Podcast on Spotify - In which William Hague says being a party leader is like running a business and having a shareholders' meeting every day… in which half of them want to get rid of you, and if you sack any of the directors they don’t leave the building for another five years, if then

How the Beatles were in tune with 60s Britain - History Extra podcast | Podcast on Spotify - There is a nice moment in this very interesting podcast episode. Dominic Sandbrook explains what happened when Paul McCartney went to the fateful fete where the Quarrymen were playing…and the interviewer, whose name I didn’t catch, says that her dad was one of the Quarrymen

BBC Sounds - Clubland by Peter Brown - Available Episodes - #TodayILearned that Marti Caine beat both Lenny Henry and Victoria Wood to win New Faces in 1970-something

1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak - Leading | Podcast on Spotify - #TodayILearned that MPs who have served in the Armed Forces can be referred to as ‘the Honourable and Gallant Member’.The practice has declined ver the years. When it was widespread it only applied to commissioned officers.

BBC Radio 4 - Political Thinking with Nick Robinson, The Wes Streeting One - I knew that Wes Streeting’s grandad had gone to prison for robbing a bank, but #TodayILearned that his granny shared a prison cell with Christine Keeler, of the Profumo Affair

The Big Man Can’t Shoot - Revisionist History - Malcolm Gladwell would have enjoyed London Lions Vs Halpoel Tel Aviv last night - one of their players was granny-throwing their free throws as per this podcast below. I’ve tried to convince Kid Two he should do the same…..but funnily enough he’s not taking any notice

Prince Harry: Royality Check - Newscast | Podcast on Spotify - Listening to Peter Mandelson on Newscast. He calls Rishi Sunak ‘the tail-end Charlie of current British politics’.I think that’s a cricketing metaphor….but, in any case, it’s a cracking line

Craig Brown - our greatest living satirist – has a theory about Keith Richards - #TodayILearned that Lieutenant Pigeon, who had a hit with ‘Mouldy Old Dough’ were so-called because the name is an anagram of ‘Genuine Potential’

The Nights on Broadway Edition - Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia | Podcast on Spotify - Really enjoyed this podcast episode about the Bee Gees. After the initial 50’s rock and rollers, and Motown my pop Holy Trinity would be The Beatles, Abba, and the beegees. I think.

Natural Histories - Chameleon - BBC Sounds - #TodayILearned that in the past people believed that chameleons live on fresh air. Shakespeare has Hamlet say “of the chameleon’s dish: I eat the air”