Words matter. These are the best David Hepworth Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
There’s a tendency to locate the cliche of the ‘strong woman’ exclusively in the present day, as if those many women who endured such inconveniences as the Depression and the Second World War were porcelain compared to, say, Amy Schumer.
‘Athletico Mince’ started life as a football podcast but has dropped the football, unless the latest on the state of the ‘hair island’ atop Steve McLaren’s head is your idea of football coverage.
The age of the rock star was coterminous with rock n’ roll, which, in spite of all the promises made in some memorable songs, proved to be as finite as the era of ragtime or big bands. The rock era is over. We now live in a hip-hop world.
‘You Must Remember This’, the podcast about ‘the secret and or forgotten history of Hollywood’s first century’, has a thread dedicated to Dead Blondes, which is a clue to where it’s coming from.
Podcasting is a personal medium, and I savour those moments where details of the podcasters’ lives glint through.
The age of the rock star ended with the passing of physical product, the rise of automated percussion, the domination of the committee approach to hit-making, the widespread adoption of choreography, and, above all, the advent of the mystique-destroying Internet.
‘The Weeds’ is a timely podcast from the news and opinion website Vox. It leaves the coverage of the Punch and Judy politics to others and confines itself to the details of policy.
Some of the vintage comedy on Radio 4 Extra wasn’t very funny to begin with, whereas some things just get funnier regardless of the changes in public attitudes over the years.
I don’t think most rock stars are particularly calculating. I don’t think they sit there and think, ‘I will do this; therefore, on Monday, I will sell another 200,000 records’.
Songwriters often seek the company of fellow songwriters to help finish what they’ve started, and these days, many do it at songwriting camps.
It’s been a while since I checked in with Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘Revisionist History’ podcast. The episode ‘The King of Tears’ suggests the author is raising the bar. His argument is that country music is the genre that makes us cry because, unlike rock, it’s not afraid of specifics.
Both traditional broadcasters and podcasters are betting heavily on the growth of voice-driven technology and so-called smart speakers, the theory being that it is as easy to ask Amazon’s Alexa to play you the ‘Guardian Books’ podcast as it is to get it to play Capital FM.
Half the battle with successful podcasts is in the naming; here, the big media owners have a lot to learn from the smaller operators.
The podcast by ‘The Kitchen Sisters’ celebrates the staggering variety of a society of immigrants via its food, from the Sheepherders’ Ball in Boise, Idaho, through the favoured cuisine of Emily Dickinson to the unbelievable rituals of the great rural barbecue.
The opening solo on ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ is still the most dramatic radio moment of the year.
The great children’s author and illustrator Shirley Hughes marks her 90th birthday by appearing as Michael Berkeley’s guest in ‘Private Passions’.
I once interviewed Anthony Burgess on the radio. I played pop records between the conversation.
I make no apology for the fact I like to hear people talk about work. It’s the acceptable way of talking about life and people.
‘How I Built This With Guy Raz’ asks entrepreneurs to tell the story of how they made their name and, in some cases, their fortune. Whether they’re in the business of selling burritos or dating apps, there’s inevitably something you can learn from their stories.
If, like me, you’ve never watched ‘Game of Thrones’, the podcast ‘Binge Mode: ‘Game of Thrones” ought to be unlistenable. It isn’t, thanks to the energy of the two expert presenters Mallory Rubin and Jason Concepcion, who have the wit to laugh at their own deep-dive devotion and are helped out by some smart editing.
The people who talk on the edgier ‘Song Exploder’ have often made their entire record on their desktop. It’s never been easier to compete, but it’s never been harder to win, either.
There are lots of podcasts that look at films from the audience’s point of view. There are also plenty that look at it from the combatants’ point of view. It’s invariably the case that the less likely you are to have heard of the people talking, the more interesting they’ll be.
Karina Longworth, the genius behind ‘You Must Remember This’, has quite correctly spun off her series about the Sharon Tate murders as a separate podcast called ‘You Must Remember Manson’ to mark the passing of the man who unleashed hell because he couldn’t get a recording contract.
British podcasts tend to shamefacedly shuffle the ads towards the end. Americans put them up front and promote them enthusiastically. I think the Americans have it right.
Radio 4 Extra is the network which offers the broadcasting version of eternal life.
I think getting people’s focus, getting people’s attention on anything has never been harder, because the media has done everything in its power to try and dissolve people’s attention, shift it round absolutely all the time.
In ‘The High Low’, in some respects an audio version of ‘Grazia,’ Pandora Sykes and Dolly Alderton wonder whether they missed something in their survey of the Harvey Weinstein story. Maybe they did, they decide.
‘Unjustly Maligned’ is a neat idea for a podcast. Antony Johnston invites a believer to make the case for a cultural artefact that consensus tends to deride.
‘Constitutional’ is an unashamedly educational podcast from the ‘Washington Post.’ Sub-titled ‘a podcast about the story of America,’ it’s presented by Lillian Cunningham, who engages scholars to explain the fascinating story of how a nation is designed from scratch.
Christmas is a time for slipping into familiar patterns.
‘The Anthill’ is the podcast wing of The Conversation, the site that presents news and views derived from the academic and research community.
Jim MacLaine was the hero of Ray Connolly’s 1973 movie ‘That’ll Be the Day’, about a young man turning his back on a university education at the turn of the ’60s in order to try his hand in a rock n’ roll band.
Talking about smart thinking, The British-made ‘Brain Training Podcast’ is a brief daily workout for the mind that could easily get addictive.
‘Adrift With Geoff Lloyd and Annabel Port’ features Absolute Radio escapee Geoff and erstwhile colleague Annabel doing something similar. All are appealing individuals with plenty to say, tentatively getting used to their new freedom to talk about anything.
Podcast listening, much like radio listening, is largely a question of habit. And the most powerful habits are the ones that fit into our daily routine.
According to the producers of gripping podcast ‘Death, Sex & Money’, these are the three things we think about a lot but need to talk about more.
Famine is a consequence of poverty.
‘Podcasting House’ is pivotal to the BBC’s plan to scatter the seed of its various non-broadcast audio products beyond the narrow silos of the people who happen to listen to the programmes from which they arise.
All political careers end in failure, but few did it so quickly as David Cameron’s. He came to power promising not to ‘bang on about Europe’ and ended up having the continent’s name chiselled into the lid of his political coffin.
‘The Canon’ is a film podcast that also has much in common with books podcast ‘Backlisted.’ Both suggest you can get a lot of pleasure out of things that aren’t new.
It is the melancholy fate of all young legends to becoming better known for the things they did to exploit fame than the things that made them famous in the first place.
The ‘PBS NewsHour’ podcast is the audio version of the nightly TV broadcast.
An interesting way into the celebrity interview podcast is via their dogs. Celebs may not be keen to let us into their homes, because they don’t like us to see how wealthy they are. However, tell them you want to go for a walk on Hampstead Heath with them and their mutt, and they’re only too happy.
‘Bombshell’ is a remarkable podcast. In the course of it, three people who know what they are talking about cover ‘military strategy, White House mayhem, and the best cocktails’.
‘Spectator Books’ is presented by the genial Sam Leith. Leith has a little catch in his delivery that quickly becomes addictive. It’s things like this that give podcasts their charm.
