Podcasts... from food and poetry to political failures
These long weeks of confinement have proved a boom time for podcasting, said Amelia Heathman in the London Evening Standard. According to Acast, the largest global podcasting company, audiences are now listening throughout the day instead of mostly just during their commutes. And it reports that demand for many of its podcasts has surged. Its hits include food writer Jay Rayner’s revamped In for Lunch show, in which he chats to a celebrity over a now digital meal. Record numbers are also using the BBC Sounds app (3.5 million in the first weeks of lockdown), with Fearne Cotton’s new Sounds of
the 90s proving a favourite. At Spotify, which has introduced a new Daily Wellness playlist, its top plays worldwide include the new podcast from the Irish musician and mental health campaigner Niall Breslin, called
Wake Up/Wind Down.
One of my lockdown discoveries has been Frank Skinner’s
Poetry Podcast, said Miranda Sawyer in The Observer. “Yes, you did read that right.” Although the comic is best known for his passion for football and distinctly bawdy humour, Skinner is a poetry enthusiast. Each week he takes one or two poems and discusses them “with insight and delight”. Most recently, Donna Stonecipher’s 2015 poem Model City had Skinner in “raptures”
– and his “joy is catching”.
Floodlines, the first podcast from The Atlantic magazine, has been a recent highlight for me, said Fiona Sturges in the FT. This eight-part series, about the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans in 2005, was completed just as the Covid-19 lockdown began. Listening now, its reflections on racial inequalities, “misinformation and leadership failures feel alarmingly pertinent”.
It’s becoming clear that many parents are going to be homeschooling their children for some time to come, said Martha Alexander in The Independent. There are podcasts that can help with that, expanding children’s imaginations and making learning more fun. Brains on! is great for curious scientists aged from six or seven up. It tackles “big topics head-on through conversation and discussion, and a healthy dose of humour and silliness”. I especially recommend the episodes on the “secret world of dust” and on memory. But Why (from NPR) is a wonderful US podcast that fields questions and answers them with the help of experts. Why do we laugh? What’s the biggest number? “No topic is off limits and no query too highfalutin or basic.” Best of all is Greg Jenner’s “funny and fact-filled” history podcast You’re Dead
to Me (BBC Sounds). It’s cheeky, irreverent – and the “perfect example of how children can learn without even realising it”.