From Phoebe Waller-Bridge on How To Fail With Elizabeth Day to Ed Miliband’s Reasons To Be Cheerful and Poetry Unbound, this week’s top podcasts
How To Fail With Elizabeth Day
For one hour each week, the journalist Elizabeth Day sits down with a guest to talk about when they really made a hash of things.
For one hour each week, the journalist Elizabeth Day sits down with a guest such as Nigel Slater and Phoebe Waller-Bridge (above) to talk about when they really made a hash of things
The podcast works because Day’s interviewees are stonkingly successful – Nigel Slater, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Andrew Scott have all featured – and seem genuinely relieved to have been given the chance to rake over their failures.
Start with the chat with Tom Kerridge, who recalls drinking 15 pints a night as a budding chef prone to ‘excess and extremes’.
Poetry Unbound
Pádraig Ó Tuama is a poet, theologian and conflict mediator from Ireland. On his dulcet, twice-weekly podcast, he reads a poem, and then unpacks it to find out where its power lies.
Each episode is canape-sized at just eight minutes and is a calming way to round off a stressful day.
Fortunately With Fi And Jane
Listening to this cult BBC podcast is like tucking in to a vast macaroni cheese: profoundly comforting. Fi is Fiona Glover, the host of Radio 4’s The Listening Project, and Jane is Jane Garvey of Woman’s Hour.
Listening to cult BBC podcast Fortunately With Fi And Jane is profoundly comforting. Fi is Fiona Glover (above),host of The Listening Project, and Jane is Jane Garvey of Woman’s Hour
On each 45-minute episode, they have a meandering conversation with a celebrity guest. The podcast works because Fi and Jane clearly adore each other.
It’s properly warming stuff – ideal for a car journey or a morning of chores.
Reasons To Be Cheerful
You may have last seen the ex- leader of the Labour Party, Ed Miliband, when he was making a hash of eating a bacon butty. Yet for all his flaws as a politician, he is a brilliant podcaster.
For all his flaws as a politician, Ed Miliband (above) is a brilliant podcaster. On Reasons To Be Cheerful he and his co-host Geoff Lloyd explore ideas that could make society better
Each week he and his co-host Geoff Lloyd spend an hour exploring one idea that could make society better, from improving paternity leave to tackling fast fashion.
Miliband is warm, informed and actually pretty witty. Top marks.