Picks of the week
My Death Row Pen Pal
Rebekah chose a death row pen pal one Sunday afternoon, and despite her friend trying to persuade her that writing to a woman would be safer, she was drawn to Charles Thompson. He’s “a positive guy with lots to share” who is serving a life sentence for murder. In this three-part podcast, Rebekah talks about the ethics of corresponding with criminals and what she gets out of it. But it’s when she travels from Manchester to Texas to meet him that this story becomes even more fascinating.
Hannah Verdier
This excellent audio series features rallying cries from 31 women, all in bite-sized format. Among them, the food writer Ruby Tandoh, who examines what nourishment means in a society where self-care is so often commodified; the writer and actor Kelechi Okafor on the need for black women to reclaim anger as a necessary emotion; and the Booker prize winner Bernardine Evaristo, who implores listeners to remain connected with their communities as they advance and move in the world.
Hannah J Davies
Producer pick: 99% Invisible / Reply All
Chosen by David Waters (audio producer)
There have been two brilliant podcast episodes that have dropped into my feed recently, both of which are deep dives on the haunting songs that get stuck in your head no matter how hard you try to push them out.
The first is from the podcast 99% Invisible, which is all about design, architecture and how we experience the world. Whomst Among Us Let The Dogs Out is a journey into the incredible twists and turns of one song’s backstory, in this case the 00s earworm Who Let The Dogs Out by the Baha Men. The show reveals a huge amount about whether an idea can ever really belong to just one person, and how inspiration and creativity spread.
Over on Reply All, The Case of the Missing Hit takes an unknown track that was stuck in the head of one man but was seemingly unknown to everybody else. In a search to track down its origins (which goes as far as necessitating recreating it in a LA studio, with session musicians playing parts from one man’s memory), everyone who encounters its melodies immediately becomes infected by its mysterious hooks. Read more here
Guardian Pick: Science Weekly Extra
Tuesday’s episode of Today in Focus was a brilliant - if terrifying - look at what’s going on in Coronavirus-stricken Italy. And importantly, the lessons other countries might learn from conditions there.
Talking points
We all need to recycle more … so how about recycling TV shows into audio? That’s just what’s Oprah’s done with The Oprah Winfrey show, which is now available as a podcast.
Why not try: 13 Minutes to the Moon | The Dating Game Killer | Rule Of Three
