10 Recent Podcasts To Listen To This Month
Alan Cumming’s Shelves
In actor Alan Cumming's house you'll find shelves full of curiosities, rarities and oddities that he has collected throughout his varied and colourful career. In each episode of his new podcast, Alan reaches for one of these items to tell the story behind it, ruminating on the memories it brings up. However, he also does this with a range of guests, including Cyndi Lauper and a pair of white leather gloves; Geri Halliwell with lots of Spice Girls merch; and Sir Ian McKellen and his hemp dog collar. There’s also Monica Lewinsky on her Creative Coalition award, Fay Ripley with a red-carpet photo, and Jane Horrocks and a polaroid from Second Best. Not all guests are famous, though. Alan's life has taken many a twist and turn, and so there are guests you won’t know yet – but with stories that are just as brilliant.
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A Life Less Ordinary With Sophie Elwes
This recent hit podcast is presented by Sophie Elwes, who knows a thing or two about overcoming difficulties, after sustaining a spinal cord injury in 2011. In each episode, Sophie interviews an extraordinary guest who has faced and overcome enormous challenges and adversity and is achieving incredible things despite what they've had to deal with. She'll be finding out their story, about their greatest struggles and triumphs, and asking them what advice they would share with other people dealing with challenges of their own. Across the series, she speaks to former drug dealers, Paralympians, actors, charity founders and mental illness campaigners to create this truly varied collection of inspiring stories.
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Amol Rajan Interviews
In this brand-new series – so new that there’s currently only one episode – BBC media editor Amol Rajan interviews the pioneers and leaders shaping our rapidly changing world. In the first episode he talks to Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai. During the course of their hour-long interview, they tackle a range of topical issues, from the company’s hotly debated privacy practice and tax policies to its pioneering development in AI and quantum computing. We also learn about Pichai’s stratospheric rise from a modest middle-class upbringing in south-east India to his appointment as the $1.6t tech giant’s CEO, aged 47, with an annual pay packet ranging from $7m to $281m – alongside his love of cricket.
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Bernie: Who Killed The Prince of Soho?
Presented by journalist Mark Edmonds, this three-part podcast is a thrilling true crime series. Bernie Katz was an institution in Soho’s club scene for over 30 years. Friends with the rich and famous, he was the manager of the exclusive Groucho Club and a guy who could get anything done. In August 2017, Bernie was found dead in his north London flat under mysterious circumstances. Amid the thousands of tributes that were paid, it wasn’t clear that in his final months Bernie’s life had unravelled. All the money from his private art collection was gone and he was being pursued by Albanian gangsters. Who was the real Bernie Katz? And what led to his untimely death? Find out here.
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Comfort Eating
Hosted by award-winning restaurant critic and radio host Grace Dent, Comfort Eating invites famous guests to lift the lid on comfort foods that have seen them through their lives – the good bits and the bad. As Grace says, it turns out you can tell a lot about a person from the snack they choose to indulge in behind closed doors. In episode one, screenwriter Russell T Davies tells Grace about his childhood in Swansea, the delights of Woolworth’s pork and egg pies, and how his husband’s death informed his latest TV series, It’s a Sin. More recent episodes feature Gogglebox’s Scarlett Moffatt, actor Rafe Spall and comedian Nish Kumar.
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How To Be An Artist
This new eight-part podcast series comes from hotel group Soho House and is hosted by Kate Bryan, the brand’s global head of collections. Talking to some of the most influential and global contemporary artists, whose work features throughout their properties around the world, she asks them what it takes to be an artist in the modern world and what it means to them. In one instalment, Kate speaks to LA-based Genevieve Gaignard who uses photographic self-portraiture, sculpture and installation to explore race, femininity, class and their various intersections.
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Life Changing With Jane Garvey
In this recent podcast, the ex-Woman’s Hour presenter talks to people who have lived through extraordinary events that have set their lives on an entirely different course. Focusing exclusively on the human experience, it examines how people deal with obstacles that turn their lives upside down and some of the remarkable discoveries they make along the way. Hear about the young trainee doctor who was left paralysed when a man fell from three storeys above and landed directly on top of her; meet a lifelong coal worker from Wales who found out in an unremarkable hotel along the A1 that he was actually a Malaysian prince; Tony O’Reilly shares how he stole £1.75m from work to feed his gambling habit; and Harriet Ware-Austin shares how – when she was eight – she watched as the plane carrying her two older sisters crashed on take-off. Extraordinary stuff.
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Prison Break
Having documented more than four years as a 'prison wife' in a blog and previous podcast series Prison Bag, Josie Bevan now confronts the failings of the prison system. In episode one, Josie meets her husband Rob at the prison gates, after he's served four-and-a-half years of a nine-year sentence for fraud. She takes stock of where the experience of his incarceration has left her and the family, and the dramatic ways it has impacted her understanding of how the criminal justice system in the UK works – or doesn't work. Elsewhere, she talks with former prison governor Peter Dawson, who is now director of the Prison Reform Trust, about how honest public discourse is about prison; and she meets Dave Merritt, whose son Jack was working with former prisoners when he was killed in the terror attack at Fishmongers' Hall in 2019.
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Raw
This Eurosport original podcast goes under the skin and straight to the heart of the obstacles professional sportspeople have overcome to reach the top of their game. Across the world, there are extraordinary people who have fought against extreme hardship and prejudice to be able to compete, with this new eight-part series telling the story of their incredible achievements. Our favourite of the series focuses on Alison Van Uytvanck and Greet Minnen, who teamed up in the women’s doubles at Wimbledon in 2019. Here, Alison and Greet share their thoughts on overcoming the fears of what other people think, embracing differences, and their journey for acceptance in the sporting world.
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The Missing
Hosted by journalist Pandora Sykes, The Missing looks into the cases of the long-term missing and asks you, the listener, to help. Created in association with charities Locate International and Missing People, every week the team explores a different case, hear original interviews with family and friends, and ask the questions that need to be answered. Where did they go? What happened to them? And does anyone listening have any information? The second series concluded last month, and featured 20 gripping episodes, including one about Katrice Lee, who disappeared from a supermarket in Germany on her second birthday. Almost 40 years later, what happened to her remains a mystery. Even so, her family have never given up hope and are still campaigning for answers – they believe Katrice could have been abducted and brought up by a different family. Can this episode unlock some answers?
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