Crimbo Limbo, part Two: Radio and Podcasts

I'm thinking that people might be a bit over the more sentimental aspects of Christmas by this point in crimbo limbo. So, if this is you, the most recent episode of Tim Harford's Cautionary Tales podcast may be of interest. It concerns itself with the collapse of the Christmas savings club Farepak. It's a bleak listen, but it is also a remorselessly forensic dissection of the economics of Christmas, and the consequences of the pressure to spend, spend, spend. As such, it is thought provoking as well as merely tragic.

Many, many, many podcasts and current affairs radio shows have done some kind of look back over the tumultuous, often farcical, frequently exasperating year that was 2022. As such, I'm deliberately omitting most of them as you will have your own preferences. One that I will mention is the Private Eye podcast, Page 94, and its annual Live at the National episode. Well, I say annual, but the last one was in 2019. You can hear this years episode, which is a kind of Best of Private Eye 2022 Live, here. 

Another one worth mentioning is the comparatively early 19th December episode of The New Statesman podcast, if only because it features Jonn Elledge talking about goats. If you subscribe to Jonn's newsletter, you'll appreciate the festive significance of... goats. Said newsletter is also worth bigging up if only because of this years elegant festive salute to the true spirit of Christmas via the figure of George Michael.

Jonn's tribute to George Michael also leads very nicely to the final episode of the current season of John O'Farrell and Angela Barnes' irreverent history podcast, We Are History, which deals with the history of the Christmas Number One. It's about as raucous and riveting as regular listeners have come to expect.

I've been listening to a lot of Radio 4 and Radio 4Extra over Christmas, starting with a festive episode of Soul Music on Christmas Eve that did a thoughtful deep dive on Greg Lake's 'I Believe In Father Christmas'. A song that I was aware of but wasn't particularly attached to. The beauty of Soul Music is that it can take a song that you're basically ambivalent about and bring it's origin story, influence and impact into such strong focus that you can't help but be utterly absorbed.

There was also what has been the standout of festive drama's for me this year: Neil Gaiman's The Sleeper and the Spindle, which takes the fairytale Sleeping Beauty and runs with it. The result is all absorbing, subtle, full of in jokes and fairytale subtext and subversion, and... just weird in a very charming and unexpected way. The Christmas Eve episode of You're Dead to Me, which did a deep, and unsentimental, dive into Charles Dickens' literary connections with Christmas, is also worth a listen.

Obituary shows are particularly big at this time of year and it's worth giving a salute to one of the more unusual ones: Toby Haydock's annual Absent Friends: the 7th Dimension for 4Extra. Split into two 15 minute episodes (the first was on Christmas Day), it simply and effectively pays tribute to all of those connected to the worlds of Sci Fi, Fantasy and Horror who have passed this year.

By contrast, Radio 4 repeated the BBC New Comedy Awards finalists show on the 28th December, and the sheer energy coming off the contestants during their sets makes for a really inspiring listen. 

An inspiring listen in a different way was the episode of The Untold that told the story of five year old Imogen the Chef from Leeds. 

And finally, on the 28th December, the excellent Best Pick podcast released their take on the 2021 Oscar winner CODA. Not only is this the last episode that the Best Pick gang will do on an Oscar winner for some time, it's also their last episode for some time in the more general sense. As such, it is worth savouring.

Image one by Pavel Anoshin on Unsplash

Image two by Eric Krull on Unsplash

Image three by Matt Seymour on Unsplash

Podcast recommendations this week

This week, I've decided to bite the bullet and talk about current affairs podcasts focusing either entirely on coronavirus or else focusing specific episodes on coronavirus.

Wait, don't leave!

I know a lot of people have had it up to here with the news and are finding that a lot of bulletins, broadcasts, newspapers, radio and internet journalism is not massively helpful at the moment, but my take has always been to focus on the aspects of the pandemic that I find interesting and search out coverage of those aspects.

For example, I've found the whole debate around food sustainability and the impact of coronavirus on global and national food chains, as well as the restaurant industry, to be fascinating. Two ongoing BBC food series - The Food Programme and The Food Chain - have covered this whole area from multiple angles in recent weeks, and the results have made for compulsive and riveting listening.

Another facet of the pandemic I've found interesting has been the public health aspect, which is well covered by the BBC's Inside Health and Health Check.

The BBC has also recently completed a series recorded by doctors inside Bradford Royal Infirmary, which is specifically a fly on the wall account of primary care at a time of Covid-19. They've also recently run a podcast formatted series, Viral Exposure, which looked at five different countries affected by Covid-19 and zoomed in on a specific flaw in that country that may have led to greater exposure.

If you find, like me, that you can no longer listen to the UK government daily briefings without mentally zoning out about a minute and a half in, you might find BBC World Service's Coronavirus Global Update to be more helpful. It provides a daily global breakdown of all the coronavirus headlines that day, and comes in at just under ten minutes. In a related note, if you want a calm, accessible fact checking take on statistics, More or Less is well worth a listen.

More or Less, The Food Programme, The Food Chain, Inside Health and Health Check are all ongoing BBC programmes that were not set up to specifically cover coronavirus but which have found themselves increasingly focusing on it.

Examples of ongoing current affairs podcasts that have recently had to re-orientate their programming increasingly towards Covid-19, and have risen to the occasion in various magnificent ways, would include Skyline: The CityMetric podcast, which is coming towards the end of its run as Jonn Elledge moves on to pastures new. Recent episodes have included an interview with a journalist locked down in Italy, and a delightful two hander in which Jonn interviews his partner and housemate Agnes Frimston, who co-presents the Chatham House podcast Undercurrents. They talk about what it's like to be locked down together in a one bedroom flat in London.

BBC youth and current affairs podcast The Next Episode also recently released a very moving episode about young people and grief.

In a classic case of saving the best for last, may I draw your attention to the most recent episode of the Private Eye podcast, Page 94, which is all about Covid-19. Page 94 has a simple but effective format: Andrew Hunter Murrey, the podcast host, provides an introduction to a story in the news that The Eye has been covering, and talks to the journalists on the paper who've been covering it. In the case of Covid, pretty much every section of the magazine has been impacted by it in some way but, as in recent issues of the magazine, the lead is given to Dr Phil Hammond, aka MD, who talks about medical journalism and the things he got wrong and got right about Covid-19. It is a very stimulating and thought provoking listen.

Image of desk with headphones by Sigmund on Unsplash

Back to work again...

Unconventional writers desk, i.e. the kitchen table

I had actually intended to have the whole four days of the Easter Bank Holiday weekend off from writing, and have a mental health weekend, but instead I elected to dive headlong into a literary voyage and start reading all of the books on the reading list of Between Two Books, The Florence + The Machine book club. 

This is odd for me because I'm normally very wary of book clubs. I think it's because of having done an English degree and, while I always really enjoyed the socio-cultural discussions around the literature we were reading for the course, didn't actually enjoy many of the texts themselves much. The most profound, as in earth shattering, connection I had with a literary text that I was studying occurred right at the end of third year when we did Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis. Which, of all the texts to latch on to, is probably the most troubling one, and probably something I should be really, really worried about. It didn't worry me though: Not in the same way that identifying with Prozac Nation years later did anyway, but I digress...

What attracted me to Between Two Books was the list of books that they had already read: Since 2012, they have read books by, amongst others, Gwendoline Riley, Emma Forrest, and Jeffrey Eugenides. As someone who has previously been obsessed with (at different times) Sick Notes (third year of degree, pre Sarah Kane) and The Virgin Suicides (at 6th Form college: I found it in the library one day and devoured it instead of going to Media Studies, then forgot about it until the film came out, read it again, and became obsessed by it all over again) and who has a particularly vivid memory of reading Namedropper aged 15 when it had just come out, liking it, and playing the 'spot who the real indie/pop star is' with it, it seemed almost unnerving to discover that someone else, especially someone whose work has become an integral part of my life, has been reading the same authors as me, albeit different works and at different times.

What with having finally finished my punk women and fanzines chapter for MUP, and having hit something of a wall with the current stage of my punk women book, a dive into a literary hinterland, particularly over a four day weekend, felt irresistible.

And so it has proved!

I started Gwendoline Riley's Opposed Positions mid week, finished it on Friday, and almost immediately started Kirsten Reed's The Ice Age, which has been my favourite so far. I'm currently about half way through Emma Forrest's Your Voice In My Head, which I'm also enjoying, to my surprise, as I haven't really got into any of her other books, post Namedropper.

But, today, I resurfaced from my literature drenched hinterland/cave to listen to the punk ladies on Radio 4's The Reunion, inadvertently breakfasting to the tail end of The Archers omnibus in the meantime. The punk ladies taking part were: Gaye Black of The Adverts, Gina Birch of The Raincoats, Toyah Wilcox, Tessa Politt from The Slits, and Vivien Goldman. I don't think I gleaned anything new from the programme (as opposed to the one on French punk, which was a revelation), but it was interesting, and I'm glad Radio 4 did it.

Afterwards, I somewhat guiltily thought 'I should get back to sorting out those literary agent submissions for the punk women book'. I've managed to get some work done this morning, so it was worth pushing myself.

As with the punk women and fanzines chapter with MUP, especially at the re-drafting/checking stage, you end up doing a lot of niggly work that isn't massively interesting and is, frequently, quite depressing. I was telling Paul about this one Saturday on the bus home from work, namely about how I was spending my time trawling through books looking for examples of sexism in the 1960s counterculture and, specifically, in underground comix of the period. It was really easy to find examples too: Not to mention incredibly depressing.

My current depressing task is to locate examples of songs from the late 1960s/early 1970s that were big hits while being incredibly sexist. I don't think it'll be hard... I already have one in mind that I know is on a sixties Sunshine Pop compilation my mum has, and which always makes my skin crawl when I hear it. The rest of the CD is fine, just that song...

So that will be a task for today, and I can cheer myself up afterwards with the Emma Forrest book, or dance around the living room to let off steam again. Whichever...

I'm going to continue with Between Two Books I think, but only in the reading sense, not the discussion sense as I tend to find I get bossy in discussions and, besides, it requires a Facebook account, and I don't do Facebook or, indeed, Social Media. I don't think blogging counts as social media anymore...

If you want to find out more about Between To Books, you can find them on Twitter, on Facebook, and you can read an interview with Leah Moloney, one of the girls who runs it, over on The Guardian. There's also an interview with Florence Welch about Between Two Books, and literature more generally, on W Magazine's website as well.

Welcome to Our Village, Please Invade Carefully

I realise now I'm writing about it that I've somehow managed to entirely miss series 1 of Radio 4 Sci Fi tinged comedy, Welcome to Our Village, Please Invade Carefully by Eddie Robson.  Which is a real shame because, having encountered series 2 by chance, I am very much warming to it.

The central premise is that a small Buckinghamshire village has been invaded by aliens as a test site that can be monitored ahead of a pencilled in future world invasion. The aliens then set up a force field to cut the village off from the rest of the UK, and cut all outside communication. Caught up in the invasion is Katrina Lyons (Hattie Morahan), a 30 something professional from London who happened to be visiting her parents at the time.

Series 2 picks up where Series 1 seemingly left off, and episode 1 opens with the two woman resistance party that is Katrina and sullen teenager Lucy Alexander (Hannah Murray) attempting to dig a trench under the force field, while arguing about who's doing the work and trying to avoid getting caught by the evil Uljabaan (Charles Edwards).

It's not the new Undone but it has the same kind of heart as Undone did, and mixes Sci Fi and comedy with similar ease. I was trying to explain it to a friend at work today, and he immediately thought of the film District 9. But what it really reminds me of is a slightly wonky, and much funnier, version of The Archers, with flourishes of Hitchhikers Guide and with George Osborne in the body of Field Commander Uljabaan.

Episode 3 was on last night, and can be enjoyed on iplayer for another 28 days.