WHAT was the turning point for podcasts? Spotify reports that, during the first three months of the pandemic, streaming doubled. Podcasts were the perfect companion. Tech giants seized the opportunity to corner the market, and invested not only in the shows, but also in the infrastructure around them, making the three to five million podcasts in the pod-verse easier to find and enjoy. I have traversed the pod-verse on your behalf, and am delighted to share my recommendations.
First, Things Unseen (CTVC), not to be confused with another podcast of the same name which features Sinclair Ferguson: Ferguson offers very different listening. The episode released on 15 February, Will I Meet My Dog in Heaven?, is poignant and intriguing. Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, the theologian Dr Ruth Valerio, and others discuss animal companions. When pets die, do they enter an afterlife? The host, Mark Dowd, does a wonderful job of listening and provoking deeper thought, as his own dog takes it all in beside him. “Close your eyes, breathe them in; that love is for ever,” is a memorable phrase from a pagan witch who featured in the podcast.
Moving on from pets, we arrive at poems. You may find something special in Poetry Unbound (On Being Studios), hosted by the poet and philosopher Pádraig Ó Tuama. Season 9, episode 12, released on 17 February, featuring a powerful poem, “To Michael Menson”, by Benjamin Zephaniah, the Black British poet who died in 2023. The poem interrogates racial-justice failures in the British judicial system. The pattern of these bite-sized episodes involves listening to the poem, exploring it, and then hearing it again, enriched by Ó Tuama’s reflections.
So, from pets to poems to parliamentarians. In the podcast You’re Dead to Me (Radio 4), with Greg Jenner, a recent-ish episode, Causes of the British Civil War: Royalists vs Parliamentarians, is great. We meet King Charles I and learn about a cost-of-living crisis and subsequent riots, radical women protesters, and bishops’ provoking war. I have listened to many of these episodes: the secret sauce is in a strong pairing of comedians with historians. It works best when the comedian knows a little, and the historian has a light-hearted approach. This episode is instructive on Anglicanism and wider British society, and how the roots of the traditions and tribes that we see today are set within their larger social context.
So, where are we? Pets, poems, papyrus, and it was bound to happen: politics. Leading: The Rest is Politics, to be exact. This podcast is part of Gary Lineker’s Goalhanger network. It is co-hosted by the former Conservative minister Rory Stewart and the former Labour communications tsar Alastair Campbell, and their commentary is bold and insightful. I was stimulated by episode 378, one of their question-and-answer episodes. Their expert knowledge of geopolitics provides a strong framework through which to view the “unprecedented president”: that episode in particular dealt with the “ejection” of President Zelensky. The language can be spicy.
