After 56 years of hurt, it finally came home. The utterly sensational England win in the Women’s Euro Finals last weekend has (rightly) been a major talking point in the podcasting world.

“When the Chloe Kelly toe poke went in, I was with some of my best friends, people who I have worked with for the last five or six years, and we were just crying and screaming and jumping on each other and holding each other,” said Ceylon Andi Hickman on Women’s Football Weekly. “It will be something I will never ever forget but also weirdly it’s difficult to recall right now, because it was so intense at the time.”

The Athletic Women’s Football Podcast, hosted by Kate Borsay, had an interview with legends Chloe Kelly and Beth Mead this week. Meanwhile, The Week Junior Show, a podcast based on the magazine for children, also did a special recap on the Lionesses’ win. As you would expect the episode was full of facts, such as that the game was the most watched women’s game ever. 

The hope is that the Women’s Super League will triple the number of people watching games by 2024. In the words of Gabby Logan at the end of the BBC broadcast of the historic match: “The Lionesses have brought football home. Now it’s down to the rest of us to make sure it stays here. You think it’s all over? It’s only just begun.” 

NOTABLE NAMES ON PODCASTS THIS WEEK

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  • A new series of Puffin’s award-winning Mission Imagination is back this week. Presented by Babatunde Aléshé, the podcast celebrates Puffin authors. The first episode features an interview with the actor and author Tamzin Merchant.
  • The artists Alison Saar, Maddy Lesser and Betye Saar (who are all three generations of the same family) are on The Last Bohemians this week.
  • The BRIT Award winning artist James Bay is on The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett this week, talking about imposter syndrome and dealing with negative thoughts in your own head.
  • Neil Warnock, the former Sheffield, QPR, Crystal Palace and Leeds boss, are the first guests on Kammy & Ben’s Proper Football Podcast.

Here are our podcast picks for the week ahead

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The National Trust PodcastThe National Trust podcast has always been a good listen for how it weaves together interesting stories about places all around the country. Now the conservation charity has launched a new series highlighting interesting places and stories from within Wales. It is hosted by Lois Jones, who has worked within community heritage in the country for more than a decade. 

The first podcast talks about the efforts to protect the Welsh language, starting with how the bilingual signs you always see across the country are much more recent than you might think. In fact they date back to 30 years. There were also times within Welsh history that the language was at risk altogether. “If the Welsh language continued the trajectory of the 1500s, we could live in a world where the Welsh language would not have survived in its current form past 1588,” she says.

As well as being available in English, each episode is also available in Welsh. 

Kabul Falling – It has now been a year since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan and the people around the world watched on television the heartbreaking images of Afghans desperately trying to escape from Kabul’s airport. It makes you wonder. What was it like for people who were there, and what has life been like ever since the world’s media started to move on? 

This comprehensive and wide-ranging series by Project Brazen, a journalism project based both in London and Singapore, puts the stories of Afghans front and centre. There are no panellists or foreign policy experts, only powerful and personal accounts from those connected to it on the ground.

RA ExchangeResident Advisor is a great publication that explores the best that our dance music clubs has to offer. They also have a thoughtful series entitled Reflections, which looks at issues and talking points within dance music clubs.

In their latest episode, Martha Pazienti-Caidan looks at the reported rise in drug and needle spiking within clubs, particularly within Berlin. Writer Anu Shukla and managing editor Chloe Lula then both discuss the complexities of the issue, such as that venues may not choose to engage with concerns from club visitors because of fears they would be shut down by the authorities. They also remind us that there can be hysteria associated with media coverage of this story, whilst also not discounting the accounts of the victims who have come forward.

BorisWith the political news agenda being so dominated by the Conservative leadership battle between Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, it is easy to forget that (for now) Boris Johnson is still in Number 10. This new BBC Sounds series, presented by Newscast and AntiSocial host Adam Fleming, looks back at the key moments and events that shaped the Conservative politician’s life. 

If you are not a fan of Boris (and judging by his recent polling numbers not many people are) I would recommend it as a listen, just as it helps you provide a bit more context about the events leading up to the ones about him you already know. 

For Boris, not only was he fired from a job from The Times for making up a quote, he was subsequently hired by another newspaper in their Brussels office where he became known for stories about the EU that were largely untrue. In the third episode, you’ll hear a surreal story, by the writer and journalist Sonia Purnell and an old colleague of Boris, about how Boris at work used to yell at a Yucca Plant every afternoon before rushing out a column.

“You could hear [these rants] on the street outside,” said Purnell. 

If you are still looking for something to listen to, I would recommend listening to this week’s The Media Show on BBC Radio 4 this week. The episode explores the explosive rise of true crime (including in the podcast world) and the ethical questions the popularity of the genre has caused: from listeners jumping to conclusions of who could be reasonable to 

Thank you so much for reading and we’ll be back soon with another edition next Sunday.

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Categories: Weekly Picks