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The excellent Talking Politics podcast hosted by Cambridge teachers Helen Thompson and David Runciman – constantly informative, if at times a touch “wonkish” – launched its last episode earlier this month, stated James Marriott in The Times. Its death has left a “gaping hole in the listening lives of politics geeks” like me. “But! Just in time, a follower hasactually shownup.”
The Rest is Politics (from the manufacturers of the fantastic The Rest is History) is hosted by Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart. They make a “formidable” and suddenly amusing pairing – Campbell “chippy and funny” and Stewart integrating imperturbable smoothness with “moral earnestness”. The set have terrific enjoyable needling one another over their political distinctions, and both are “sufficiently far enough out in the political wilderness to be able to speak their minds”.
As with numerous brand-new podcasts, it feels alittle unfocused: a current episode covers Bill Clinton’s intelligence, jail reform, Ukraine, the issue with personal schools and the Iraq War. Give each episode a sharper style, and this is a “classic” in the making.
Another exceptional history podcast, stated Elle Hunt in The Guardian, is Travels Through Time, which expenses itself as a mix of “serious history and lively parlour videogame”. In each episode, a leading historian or other public figure is asked: if they might travel back through time, which year would they goto? They then guide the listener through their picked year, selecting out “three informing scenes” that brighten the age in concern.
The strength of the podcast is the “narrow piece of the past it provides”, whether that’s the Athens of 450 BC, London in ADVERTISEMENT 62, India in 1837 or the Moon in1969 Also advised are Dan Snow’s History Hit (“broader in scope, with less storytelling”), and the UnitedStates podcast Revolutions (detailed accounts of historic uprisings).
With “compelling, searing testament” from regular Ukrainians, File on 4 – Ukraine: War Stories (BBC Sounds) is one of the finest of the podcasts covering the Ukraine war, stated Patricia Nicol in The Sunday Times. I’d likewise highly suggest 2 from earlier, better times that deal insights into the culture of Ukraine and its diaspora.
In episode 212 of the Olive podcast, Olia Hercules, the Ukrainian-born author of the “transporting” culinary books Mamushka and Summer Kitchens, talks “evocatively about the food culture that has shaped her”. And in 2015’s A Short History of Ukrainians in Britain, now offered on BBC Sounds, Oliver Bullough takesatrip to Ukrainian-British neighborhoods throughout the UK, and satisfies individuals camedown from detainees of war and previous waves of refugees. Filled with music and the sounds of dance, it’s “a beautiful listen”.
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