Comic Relief was on Friday, and once again The Red Nose Day Podcast Mashup, put together by Acast, took place to help raise funds for the charity.
The initiative sees podcasts (and their hosts) being mixed together to create one-off loopy episodes, which will be available to listen to on both of their podcast feeds.
This year there are four special episodes to listen to: Menus to be Buried With Judgement Day (aka. Films To Be Buried With and Off Menu), Drunk Women Solving the Moon Under Water (aka. The Moon Under Water and Drunk Women Solving Crime), Betwixt The Gossip Gays (aka. Betwixt The Sheets and The Gossip Gays) and Ain’t Got A Question (aka. Dane Baptiste Questions Everything and Ain’t Got A Clue.) To donate, head to the Comic Relief website.
Meanwhile, The Smart 7, a podcast that tells you all you need to know about the news in under seven minutes, is about to celebrate their 1000th episode. They have also launched a new survey asking people in the UK about the issues they care about the most, the answers of which will be explored in that episode. One lucky person who fills in the survey will win an £100 gift card.
To enter the survey, which only consists of seven questions, simply head to their website. Entries close tonight at midnight (that’s Sunday 19th March.)
NOTABLE NAMES ON PODCASTS THIS WEEK
If you have listened to a great guest on a podcast, let us know by filling in this form and it might get featured in an upcoming newsletter.
- Satirist Armando Iannucci is on Jon Snow’s Snowcast this week.
- Greta Thunberg is on Tom Daley’s Made With Love podcast this week.
- Carol Vorderman is on Full Disclosure with James O’Brien
- Author Paula Sutton is on Alice Vincent’s Why Women Grow podcast.
- Coming up on The Graham Norton Book Club will be the one and only, Alan Bennett. Graham visited his house in Primrose Hill, where they discussed his plays and his novella The Uncommon Reader. The episode will go out on March 30th. The series is also now available outside Audible’s paywall for the first time.
- The comedian Jamie Demetriou is on Where There’s A Will, There’s A Wake with Kathy Burke.
Here are our podcast picks for the week ahead
If you want your podcast featured, or you have an excellent recommendation, all you need to do is fill in this simple form. It might get featured in this newsletter!
900 Degrees – On the 11th May 1985, a fire on the stands at Valley Parade football ground in Bradford, West Yorkshire resulted in the death of 56 people.
The fire was one of the worst sporting disasters in modern history. It is estimated that the temperature of the fire reached 900 degrees celcius. An official inquiry concluded that it had been caused by a dropped cigarette. However, as the documentary maker Mobeen Azhar finds out, some relatives and locals believe that the fire had been started deliberately, and believe that the truth has been hidden from view.
“This story goes to some hellish places,” says Azhar. “There’s injustice, conspiracy theories and the fire that almost forty years later is still leaving scars.”
The Music and Meditation Podcast – A new series of the fantastic podcast by the singer Nao, which weaves together great life advice, meditation and music to bring you back down to earth if you’re feeling anxious, stressed or stuck.
There are eight new episodes, which can be listened to in any order. Topics for this series include how to be kinder to yourself in your thoughts, how to manage difficult emotions and how to start each day on the right foot.
I particularly enjoyed an episode on overcoming imposter syndrome, with wisdoms shared by the author and therapist Marisa Peer. “The worst critic in the world is not your boss, or your neighbour or your family… it’s you!,” says Peer.
Great Mysteries of Physics – In this new podcast, Miriam Frankel breaks down some of the great unsolved mysteries in the world of physics. “It is increasingly clear that there are problems that physics, at least as we know it, cannot solve,” she says. “Perhaps we need more data, or perhaps we need a whole new theory of reality.”
There are two episodes out so far. There’s one that looks at whether the universe is tuned specifically to create life, whilst the other looks at various theories surrounding time. Is the way we experience time just something caused by the human brain?
Kudos go to the team who have managed to break down some very complicated theories into a digestible format that listeners can understand.
Sofa Cinema Club – A nice idea for a podcast. In each episode recognisable names Jack P. Shepherd, Colson Smith and Ben Price decide on a film to watch. They watch the film in their own time, reunite and then over the course of an hour, they discuss whether they liked the film or not. They also rinse each other for their opinions.
Recent films include Everything Everywhere All At Once, The Grand Budapest Hotel and Goodnight Mr Tom.
Thank you as always for reading (and listening).
We’ll be back next Sunday with another podcast newsletter.
