My podcasts (January 2025)

Podcasts have become extremely popular in recent years allowing people to make podcasting their day job which is a far cry from when I first started listening to them in 2006.

I have written about podcasts a few times since then and I did a list of everything that I subscribe to in 2019. It is time for an update.

Looking back at that 2019 list there are a few podcasts that have been cancelled and which I miss greatly; these include Digital Planet, Material World and Stuart Maconie's Freak Zone. There are also several that I have fallen out of love with, hence the need for a new list.

I am not going to go through everyone of them, you can see what they are, but I will say something about some of the new ones.

The FT news briefing is my attempt to listen to financial news that focuses on the finance and leaves the political stuff to other shows. I gave up on all of the BBC finance shows for that reason and while it is far from perfect the FT news, being American based, is at least fairly neutral about UK.

Here Comes The Guillotine is funny chat with a twist of politics and I like that it is very Scottish with a strong dollop of Irish. The different perspective makes it more interesting.

Happy Heat Pump is new and has yet really to find its feet. I expect to be getting a heat pump in the not to distant future and I was hoping that this would help me with the various choices (water or air to water or air) but it, so far, added more complexity, e.g. solar panels and batteries, to what was already a difficult decision.

Trashfuture is an intelligent look at the world today through justifiable cynical eyes and is delivered with humour. I've been to see live recordings, twice.

The World This Week is another attempt to get away from the dreadfulness of BBC and covers the political news with a French perspective.

 

Cory Doctorow's podcast is cantered on his many books, fact and fiction, both of which have a heavy technical content which suits me.

Limelight is a BBC drama podcast. BBC seems not what to do with podcasts and it is unclear how they choose what to release as full podcasts, as podcasts that you can only subscribe to on BBC Sounds and which are just drama shows on BBC Sounds. I like the flexibility of podcasts (e.g. no 30 day limit for listening) and wish BBC would release more drama that way.

Moral Maze is there because sometimes we have Humanists debates on the same topics. It usually a pretty poor discussion and it drives me mad. I should stop.

The Political Fourcast is another BBC alternative, this time UK politics from Channel Four.

99% Invisible is a gem. It talks about design in a way that entertains and informs in equal measure. Unmissable.

No Gods No Mayors and Well There's Your Problem are adjacent to Trashfuture but lack its precise direction. If I walked less and so had less time to listen to podcasts then I would probably drop these.

The War on Cars does what is says on the tin. It is American where the car problem is even greater but the problems and solutions they discuss apply to us too.

Page 94 is a Private Eye fill-in between the print issues and is excellent.

It's Bloody Complicated is a political discussion from Compass, an organisation that I belonged to for a while. Not particularly original or challenging but it is good to hear something from the centre-left.

BBC Best of Today stopped before I could unsubscribe and is only here because of the special Christmas programmes where they have guest editors. If it every comes back properly then I will unsubscribe.

Trash Talk and Uncensored are comedy podcasts by well known comedians who manage to make some good political points along the way.

Michael Spicer No Room is a topical sketch show which manages to stand head and shoulders above the many other topical sketch shows. There has been one full series and a couple of once-offs. I am hoping for a lot more.

Trashfuture live (24 Nov 24)

Thanks to my sons' insistence, I have been listening to the Trashfuture podcast for a little while now and also thanks to them I went to see them live for a second time. And as with last November, the whole family was there to celebrate our eldest son's birthday.

But first we had to have a pizza and Franco Manca in The Cut did the job. It's far from the most exciting menu in the world but we have simple tastes and we went for options 1, 2 (twice) and 3. We are easy to please!

Between The Bridges is an odd venue, little more than a marquee with benches, and the being a liminal area between inside and outside meant that it was okay, and necessary, to keep your coat on. On a more positive note, they sold reasonable beer.

At the previous Trashfuture live event the main man, Riley (far left), was sick and November had to lead the show and this time she was ill and another podcast stalwart, Devon, had to fill in. In other words, the people in the poster were not those presenting the show but that is just a statement for the record, it made no material difference.

For almost ninety minutes Riley led us through the Boris Johnson magus opus Unleashed. The Trashfuture crowd are intelligent, which is rather the point of the podcast, and this was an analytical takedown of Johnson as well as a funny one. Two big points were that Johnson used the book to hit back at everyone who every slighted him and all the things that went wrong were someone else's fault even if that fault amounted to not stopping him from being stupid.

Of course there was a great deal more to the discussion than that and the observations and jokes came thick and fast, so much so that it warrants a second listen and I am hoping, as I did last year, that the live event comes out as a free episode.

Trashfuture live (28 Nov 23)

It has been ten years (!!) since I last wrote about podcasts which, given how much time I spend listening to them, is probably a mistake.

My regular walks, c20km a day on average, are spent listening to them or to BBC radio drama and I subscribe to podcast on news, science, comedy, politics, drama, technology and design. At any one time I generally have about thirty waiting to be listened to.

I got into Trashfuture both of whom are paid subscribers; I am not and I just get the weekly free episode. 

Trashfuture calls itself a "podcast about business success and making yourself smarter with the continued psychic trauma of capitalism", which it is. The format is a team discussion on current affairs that skilfully and entertainingly combines an intelligent and knowledgeable analysis of the failings of capitalism with some decent jokes; the adage a spoonful of sugar comes to mind.

Occasionally the Trashfuture do live shows and when one coincided with a son's birthday it was quickly agreed rhat the whole family would attend.

Being a family meeting meant going for a walk, Rower Bridge to Waterloo, and being a birthday meant going to Pizza Express.

Our progress towards Between The Bridges on Southbank was hampered by some event connected with Albania's independence day which is one reason that we were sat towards the back of a packed marquee. I did have time to buy a decent beer for a not frighteningly expensive £7.2.

I had been to many recordings of TV and radio shows and was interested to see how a podcast would differ. As expected from listening to the show for a while, recording it live made little difference, e.g. there were no retakes and no additional material that would disappear on the cutting room floor. What was different was that the four of them (the fifth was ill) sat in a line across the stage, so that we could see them all which is not the natural arrangement for a discussion and there were times when they spoke over each other a little.

The topic of the discussion was Nadine Doris' new book The Plot. One of the team, Alice, had drawn the short straw and had read it and she took us through both the content and the style with the other responding with analysis and humour. It was very like a normal show and so delivered on my expectations.

They talked for about an hour then the conversation reached a natural end and we all applauded enthusiastically before heading back out into the cold night.

I hope they pick this episode as a free one so that I can listen to it again.