PODCASTS — LISTEN AT YOUR LEISURE

Ear Hustle

www.earhustlesq.com After the long obsession with true crime stories on podcast — Serial still being the daddy of the genre — but with a host of new relations, not to mention the many TV shows set ‘inside’, this seems a logical next step, but still manages to be a pretty extraordinary experience. ‘Ear hustle’ is prison slang for eavesdropping, and this does just that — bringing us snatches of life behind bars. Made by inmates Earlonne Woods, who is serving 31 years-to-life and Antwan Williams, serving 15 years, in company with Nigel Poor, an artist who works with prisoners, this mocks the TV depictions of doing time as both too facile, and too dramatic. “You got all these TV shows, like Prison Break, Orange Is the New

Black. They bullshit though! Prison ain’t really like that. We just living life, like everybody else,” Woods and Williams insist. They also discuss cellmates, and the many ways in which the relationship can go wrong. This is sometimes unbearable, but fascinating, and dignified, even funny too.

The Reith Lectures

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00729d9/episodes/downloads In a world where people are increasingly simply making stuff up and spouting it with varying degrees of conviction, it is remarkably soothing to sink into actual knowledge and expertise from time to time. Enter The Reith Lectures, the BBC’s flagship series, where ‘significant thinkers’ deliver a talk on a subject close to them. Most recently, it was Hilary Mantel, with five lectures around the idea of art and literature being able to bring the dead back to life. Other Reith Lectures include Stephen Hawking on black holes, Aung San Suu Kyi on dissent and what drives people to it, Niall Ferguson on the rule of law and its enemies, and Grayson Perry on art and being an artist. Not to be missed.