Best podcasts of the week: Kick off 2024 with a self-help show free from ‘delusional positivity’
Picks of the week
Scottee: Self HelpWidely available, weekly from New Year’s DayCabaret artist and activist Scottee has tried many mental health solutions over the years. Now he promises “an amateur’s guide to staying alive … fuelled by class, queerness and fatness”. His podcast is an antidote to what he describes as “delusional positivity”. Framing sanity as a house of cards, looking at how selfpity could help with healing, and showing how capitalism has exploited sadness, it’s thoughtful, helpful and forthright. Hannah Verdier
The Pirate of PragueWidely available, episodes weeklyIf you’re in need of a holiday binge, this Apple Original about a charming Czech conman who persuaded the wealthy to invest in an oil company has been a true-crime slowburner. In six episodes there are Aspen parties, suitcases full of cash and rich people trying to get richer, ripe for exploitation by smooth-talking Viktor Kožený. HV
Trace of DoubtAudible, all episodes availableTwenty-three years ago, author Samantha Weinberg was on her way to interview a murder suspect – of whose guilt she was certain. Now, she’s looking back into the case where a British DNA scientist was murdered in her Californian garden. It’s a twisty, slick series, in which her views are turned on their head. Alexi Duggins
MoonkartaWidely available, all episodes availableThis surreally inventive children’s podcast has an almost
Mighty Boosh-like quality to its daft character voices, whimsical comic moments and oddball references. No wonder, given that its chronicle of the adventures of a character called Splott was created by a duo whose credits include Toast of London and Motherland. AD
Who Killed JFK?Widely available, episodes weeklyOne of America’s most enduring stories as told by one of America’s greatest storytellers. Filmmaker Rob Reiner investigates the assassination of President John F Kennedy (above) 60 years after it happened. He teams up with journalist Soledad O’Brien, and they speak to CIA officials and a secret service agent, to follow the new leads that continue to be discovered. Hollie Richardson
There’s a podcast for that
This week, Hannah Verdier picks five of the best podcasts hosted by families, from welcoming chefs to inclusive drag queensStirring It Up with
Andi & Miquita OliverWho wouldn’t want to pop round mother-and-daughter duo Andi and Miquita Oliver’s house for dinner? Their warm and welcoming podcast has gone from strength to strength, with glorious guests including Kathy Burke, Lemn Sissay and Elizabeth Day sitting down for a chat around the dinner table. While Miquita mixes the drinks, Andi brings the food, with honey-baked chicken and panfried seabass among the dishes on the menu. It’s a comforting cue for easy conversations that switch from vulnerable confessions to lovable cackles in each episode.
The Therapy CrouchIf lovingly bickering is the key to a successful marriage, then Abbey Clancy and Peter Crouch are in it for the long run. As podcasting couples go, these two need no script – they’re funnier than some comedians. They also have a knack for letting enough slip about their celebrity marriage to grab a headline or two. Ralph the puppy, their latest addition, unites them in love and divides them in a crate-training debate, with Crouch being relegated into ninth place in their family’s priorities. From moustache styling to beige flags, these two never run out of things to talk about.
SistersKaitlin Prest’s The Heart is one of the finest podcasts out there and Sisters, a five-part examination of her relationship with her sibling Natalie, is intimate, warm and highly nuanced. Their sisterly bond is realistic and relatable, with mostly off-the-cuff conversations over a period of two years. Although there’s so much love between the two, Kaitlin accurately describes the feeling of being replaced by her younger sister, while Natalie recalls trying to copy her sister because she looked up to her. It’s particularly fascinating to see how easily the pair fall into their old sibling roles as adults.
Table Manners with Jessie and Lennie WareOnly a pair of formidable women would serve Nigella Lawson her own pasta recipe, but mother and daughter force of nature Jessie and Lennie Ware are not known for sitting back and being quiet. While Jessie brings the pop-star creds, it’s Lennie who will ask their guests anything she fancies – and her charm means she gets away with it every time. From quizzing Miriam Margolyes about why she has so much wind to pinning down Sadiq Khan’s political ambitions, Mama Ware is unstoppable. Splitting her airtime between poking at her daughter and building rapport with guests, it’s a recipe for fun.
SiblingRivalryFriends are the family you choose – and treasured relationships don’t come much closer than the sisterly dynamic between Bob the Drag Queen and Monét X Change. Hilarious, outrageous, ultimately supportive: these two are all the drag queen tropes and more. Not being actual sisters doesn’t stop them from bickering like they are, but behind all the acerbic one-liners are two people who are always ready to talk about inequality and speak up about being Black and queer in America today. Makeup, hookups, break-ups: nothing is off limits and it’s all delivered with an almost illegal amount of sass.
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instability,” he says. “In theory, we can change each other, but how many marriages do you know that went on the rocks because: ‘Yes, I knew he was moody when I married him, but I thought I could change that.’ You can’t fight genes. Genes don’t explain everything, but they load the dice.”
Forget everything you knew about dominance theory
The idea of the family as a pack, in which there is an alpha and all other behaviour shakes down from the pack’s recognition of that, has been peculiarly tenacious in dog husbandry. The theory goes: they have to understand there is a hierarchy in which they are at the bottom and therefore shouldn’t sleep in your bed or eat at the same time.
This is true to the degree that all animals have, as Howard explains, “an innate understanding of who is best to avoid and who is best to challenge for a food reward or mating reward, but it’s no truer of dogs than it would be of a robin. The problem I have with the alpha male theory is, I think of politics and people like David Cameron.” Which is to say, quite a basic, coarse version of interaction. A dog slotting in to a human household, after millions of years evolving to minimise aggression and obtain food, will have much more sophisticated relationships.
Dogs are not obligate carnivores and usually don’t need as much protein as they get
As a result of the first misperception – that a perfect, “natural” dog diet is entirely meat – pet food has been developed to have way too much protein. A lot of mainstream brands are 40% protein, whereas dogs do best at about 18% as adults (22% as puppies). This messes with their gut microbiome (yes, they also have one of those), causes inflammation and damages their kidney function.
An ‘intelligent’ breed is actually a biddable breed
Border collies and Australian cattle dogs are renowned for their incredible skill sets and are often described in human-adjacent terms intellectually, eg “as intelligent as a three-year-old”. But when they DNA-swabbed the highly trained dogs, these breeds were simply more obedient than others. In other words, your own dog could probably herd a sheep; it’s just choosing not to. Your three-year-old, meanwhile, would be terrible at it.
Can your dog really talk? Not in the way you think
So-called “button dogs” – you can see them on Instagram – will, put in front of a mat with buttons that say words, reliably hit “walk” or “ouch” or “treat”, to the extent that it almost looks like we have broken the final frontier and can talk to one another. A largescale study that is under way at the University of California San Diego is already confident that the button presses are not random.
However, Amritha Mallikarjun, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, counsels: “When we use a human linguistic interface, we start ascribing too much to our joint understanding of these words.” There is no evidence to suggest that they know “love” means love; they just know what the sound leads to (food, probably).
Never mind the word, though: the love is real
The breakthrough study was in 2010, where dogs were fMRI-scanned while looking at an image of a person they “loved”. In humans, a similar image would light up our caudate nucleus; the same was true in dogs. In 2020, a study combined fMRI with eye-tracking and behavioural preference, and discovered that the bond between a dog and its human caregiver was remarkably like the attachment bond between human infants and their mothers. They don’t just love you, in other words; they really, reallylove you.
They do not, however, feel guilty
Everyone thinks their dog has a guilt face and that this corresponds to their bad behaviour, but it’s much more likely that they are just reading your angry cue and recognise themselves as its hapless cause. In order to feel remorse, they would have to be capable of an original betrayal. “People who study monkeys and apes are always looking for signs of deception,” Howard says – and they find it. “There’s no strong evidence that dogs can do that. Their depth of contemplative intelligence is not the same as apes.”
Dogs can be traumatised
I spend a lot of time watching bros on TikTok who find abused dogs tied up underneath trailers, then restore them to their natural state of joy. It’s a magical process; all it takes is a flea treatment and a whole heap of love and everything is forgotten.
This is not, unfortunately, the case. “There was a 10-year experiment done in the 60s,” Howard says, “where they reared up generations of dogs and treated them in different ways – some in solitary confinement, some banned from contact with humans. Those dogs who were mistreated, even the ones who had a bad incident with another dog, were clearly traumatised. They were the most unpredictable; they were the least likely to wag their tails. The result of that study was so convincing that in the US dogs stopped being used as research animals.”
If your dog is trying to tell you something, don’t ignore it
“We know this as a fact,” says Robert Alleyne, a dog behaviourist. “There are dogs who can detect epilepsy; there are cancer bio-detection dogs.” This became newly fascinating during Covid, when French researchers found a sensitivity rating of 97% in dogs, which was higher than any of the 15 antigen tests available at that time. Alleyne goes on to note, anecdotally, that his dog could smell depression. “Whenever I felt down, I could see that he would recognise it. He would keep his head on my knee for an hour, saying: ‘I understand.’”
Dogs are one-trial learners with very long memories
“A lot of choices they make are the result of something that happened in the past,” Alleyne says, “and it only needs to have happened once.” Sometimes this is useful. For instance, my dog once found a whole sausage roll in a Greggs bag and will now chase after the branding in any circumstance. Newsflash – very often there is a bit of pastry in there. But it also means that one act of aggression from another dog can lead to a lifelong fear response, so intervene early. “This is one of the reasons why we get it so wrong with dogs,” Alleyne says. “Although they are simplistic creatures, sometimes we think they’re too simple.”
Dogs recognise siblings, but not necessarily as siblings
“Dogs have a part of the brain that’s very good at pack recognition,” Howard says. This can span long periods of absence – years, even. But the sharedparent thing? Nope, we have no way of knowing.
Dogs communicate anxiety well – we just need to get better at noticing
“All of us could get better at reading dogs,” Howard says. “We’re really good at reading one another, but dogs are like us – they’ve evolved to be really expressive. Even how a tail wags is a great way to understand how the dog is feeling.
There is a lot of anxiety in dogs and a lot of behaviour we should take more seriously than we do. Dogs whining if they’re left on their own – that’s probably not OK.”
Dogs can tell the time (sort of)
It’s a puzzle of separation anxiety that a dog that can be left for 40 minutes will go bananas at 41 minutes. This is related to the concentration of the owner’s smell in the air, which will dissipate at a stable rate. Also, says Vanessa Woods, the co-author of Survival of the Friendliest: “Like people, dogs have a body clock in which their body creates digestive enzymes in a regular way,” so they will be able to plot the passage of time through how hungry they are. But no, they don’t know it’s midnight.
Dogs can empathise
This is the simplest test imaginable: yawn at your dog and it will start yawning. “Contagious yawning is related to empathy scores in adults,” Woods says. “In one study, more than 70% of dogs yawned when they saw someone yawning.”
Dogs can laugh
The neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp, researching laughter in nonhuman mammals, found that the laugh-like sound that dogs make when they are panting, played to other dogs, reduces stress and increases tail-wagging, play bows and general prosocial behaviour.
Dogs should never eat raisins
There are a number of foods you are told never to give your dog, mainly chocolate, and they seem to wrap their jaws around them periodically, to no ill effect. Don’t make this yourone-trial learning. It feels seasonal to point out that raisins and grapes can cause liver failure or, at the very least, an incredibly expensive out-of-hours vet visit.