Radio
Do men and women need different podcasts?
Do men and women need different podcasts? The notion goes against the unisex, every-sex, what-is-sex-anyway culture we have come to…
How we became addicted to vaping
For those of us with a poor grasp of time, who can still recall when a night at the pub…
Rushdie on how the best magical realism transcends fantasy
Ask the man in the street to quote a line from one of Salman Rushdie’s novels, and he might struggle.…
Under the Taliban, Afghan light entertainment accrued unusual weight
For a television talent show, Afghan Star had unusually high stakes. When it first hit Afghanistan’s screens in 2005, four…
The jaw-dropping story of the British Museum thefts
It’s August 2023 when news breaks that artefacts have gone missing, presumed stolen, from the British Museum. I’m about an…
A gripping podcast about America’s obsession with guns
The love affair between so many Americans and their guns – long a source of international fascination – appears to…
How to live off the land for a year
Could you live off the land for a year without buying a single thing to eat? This was the challenge…
I’m ashamed that I used to think ABBA wasn’t cool
One of the joys of listening to archive BBC interviews with pop stars is the chance to hear long-discarded hipster…
How did the internet become so horrific?
Plus: the joy of hearing lawyers argue
Joni Mitchell, in her own words
There’s always been something at once girlish and steely about Joni Mitchell, the stellar Canadian whom Rolling Stone called ‘one…
I’m not convinced Thomas Heatherwick is the best person to be discussing boring buildings
Architects are often snobby about – and no doubt jealous of – the designer Thomas Heatherwick, who isn’t an actual…
A Radio 3 doc that contains some of the best insults I’ve ever heard
A recent Sunday Feature on Radio 3 contained some of the best insults I have ever heard. Contributors to the…
What happened to the supermodels of the 1990s?
‘What advice would you give to your younger self?’ has become a popular question in interviews in recent years. It’s…
Enjoyable and informative but where’s the drama? Political Currency reviewed
The first episode of George Osborne and Ed Balls’s new podcast, Political Currency, opened with an old clip of the…
You’ll have a lump in your throat: BBC Radio 4’s Four Sides of Seamus Heaney reviewed
It’s now been ten years since Seamus Heaney died, and after a great poet’s death it’s natural, I suppose, that…
The rise of vampirism in Silicon Valley
The Immortals, which begins on Radio 4 this week, is not for the faint-hearted. While it professes to be about…
Beautiful and illuminating: Radio 4’s the Venice Conundrum reviewed
The playwright Carlo Gozzi marvelled at ‘The spectacle of women turned into men, men turned into women, and both men…
