As it is UK LGBTQ+ History Month, let’s look at podcasts that look back at the history of this important community.
Black and Gay, Back in the Day looks at the experiences of Black LGBTQIA+ Britons between the 1970s and 2000s. The masterstroke of this important ten part series is that it tries to put conversations between different generations of the community front and centre, so you can see how the struggles and experiences have changed or remained the same. A recent bonus episode, released at the end of last year, features many of the contributors reuniting to look back at the impact making the series had on them.
Homo Sapiens has a two part special episode looking back at key moments of queer British history, featuring expert Eric Cervini. Memories from the Dancefloor, which explores the history of famous venues, has released new episodes on The Black Cap pub and The Nightingale Club in Birmingham. And in a meta twist, Queer Spaces: Behind the Scene has an interview with the CEO of the first LGBTQ+ museum.
Finally, the community has been devastated by the murder of the trans teenage girl Brianna Ghey this week. For those who were unable to make a vigil, the Field Recordings podcast featured a recording of the one minute silence that took place outside the Department of Education this week.
Meanwhile the British Podcast Awards’ Podcast of the Year, Dear Daughter is returning for a second season at the end of February, once again featuring personal and touching correspondence between mothers and daughters. The concept was an original idea by the podcast’s host, Namulanta Kombo, based on letters to her own daughter.
NOTABLE NAMES ON PODCASTS THIS WEEK
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- Robert Rinder appears on Richard Wiseman’s On Your Mind asking questions about how to get a good night’s sleep
- Love Production’s boss Richard McKerrow was on The Media Podcast with Matt Deegan this week, where he admitted the latest series of Bake Off was “not our strongest.”
- Professor Sophie Scott, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, is on the new Jon Snow Snowcast podcast this week.
- The podcast Eat Sleep Work Repeat features an interview with Amy Gallo, the author of “HBR Guide to Dealing with Conflict”
- Hannah Lowther, a TikToker whose performance of musical theatre songs that went viral during the pandemic, is on Talk Twenties to talk about her work on the West End.
- A special episode of Cuddle Club with Lou Sanders returned this week with a Valentine’s Special, recorded in Soho Theatre and starring John Robins.
- After The Tone, where Scottee plays recordings sent in from listeners, has also returned for a new series. Friends pop up throughout the series, with one of the upcoming guests being Mummy Joe Lycett. The first episode is with the performance artist Harry Clayton Wright.
Here are our podcast picks for the week ahead
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Statistically Speaking – For anyone who loves data, this relatively new monthly podcast by the Office for National Statistics crunches the numbers and provides a bit of insight into how they do what they do, as well as what their studies say about the UK.
There’s episodes exploring the nation’s health, crime, economy and labour, as well as an episode looking at the importance of the once a decade census. And as you would expect from the ONS, each episode is very much in-depth. You wouldn’t have it any other way.
Why Women Grow – A podcast that explores why women garden, hosted by Alice Vincent. Now don’t get confused. This isn’t a podcast about gardening per se. It’s more about the people who garden; from designers to chefs, to novelists and environmentalists. This series interviews and amplifies them all.
“When you go into somebody’s garden you might get a sense of who they are or what their taste is, but when you talk to them about their garden you understand what role it plays in their life,” says Vincent. “And that will always surprise me, and that’s why I am addicted to asking people why they garden and what they do in their garden.”
Jermain Defoe: Outside The Box – A new series looking at the career of the former English professional football player Jermain Defoe.
Now contemplating a move to become a football manager – this series, six months in the making, sees him revisiting key places and key people from his past to help him shape his professional career. What becomes evident from listening to this series is how cutthroat the professional coaching industry is. Several episodes are now available.
A Prison’s Guide To – You know those career podcasts that have been doing the rounds lately? The ones where the guest is usually a CEO or billionaire talking about how they have made it and how you can do the same?
This new podcast series, hosted by the actor Ben Bailey-Smith, takes the format and spins it on its head. Each episode features life lessons and skills learnt from the perspective of prison staff, who have to deal with conflict resolution to forgiveness and giving someone a second chance. Psychologists and prisoners are interviewed too.
And whilst this podcast is created by HM Prisons, so you don’t necessarily get an insight into the issues facing the criminal justice and probation service, you do get a sense of the daily life in prisons, something that we don’t hear that much about.
Thanks so much for reading (and listening).
We’ll be back next Sunday with another podcast newsletter.
