Mad tales for our mad times

Life in the new normal is starting to pick up and so are the new season podcasts. With a title that’s apt for our post-pandemic world, one new series is Wind of Change. The premise of this podcast is to discover whether one of the biggest power ballads of all time was actually written by the CIA in a covert campaign by the West during the Cold War.

German soft-rock group The Scorpions released Wind of Change in 1990, and it became the anthem for revolution after the Berlin Wall came down.

Patrick Radden Keefe from The New Yorker hosts the series, which begins with a tip from a source that Keefe has long trusted. His quest brings him into contact with former spies, rock stars, and Scorpions fans from the former Soviet Union. The podcast jumps back to the Cold War era and there’s a compounding sense that maybe the CIA songwriting idea is possible.

All eight episodes are available on Spotify now.

Another curious man is documentarian Louis Theroux, who has used the lockdown period to track down some wellknown people he’s been keen to interview.

Grounded by Louis Theroux is a BBC podcast that lets Theroux do what he does best – ask tough questions, probe the highlights and lowlights of their careers, and inject himself into the interview to get the respondent to open up on all subjects.

While interviewing singer Boy George, he reveals his love of the former Culture Club singer’s music, and questions him about being mad and his position as an outsider.

When he interviews fellow documentary maker Jon Ronson, he admits that he still views Ronson as a rival and, despite his admiration for him, admits there’s some nastiness mixed in with it.

His interviews give context to the new normal and how people have coped during this insane time.