audio
Audio that I have liked, or been moved to comment about, or both.
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 so i cant be very precise
February
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 sumg 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.
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 havedespised 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 didnt 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”
January
ABC Conversations with Anna Funder - 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 its 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 Charhe 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 isnt 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 at least one the 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 didnt 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 ive ever been in a meeting thats 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
Previous years' recommendations are at:
2007
How to win a duel | The National Archives - listened to an interesting National Archives podcast on duelling
In Conversation with The Rt Hon Sir John Major KG CH - London School of Economics and Political Science - listened to a podcast of “In Conversation with The Rt Hon Sir John Major”. Interesting