LIGHTS OUT PODCAST SERIES

How are Europeans going to survive without their “perfidious neighbours across the North Sea”, he wonders.

Aren’t we all? Well, yes, but De Vries is cross because he thinks that the EU will miss the UK, rather than the other way around. Stefan de Vries, a Paris-based journalist with a Dutch passport, is annoyed about Brexit. Stories include bad Italian wifi, an Oslo library forest, Swedish immigrant housing and German memories. If you feel that you’d like to know more about what’s happening on the continent that isn’t Brexit-related, this is for you. Katy, a news reporter in Paris, and Dominic, an opera singer based in Amsterdam, are upbeat, funny company, and this is a warm and engaging podcast. ITunesProudly announcing itself as a Brexit-and-Trump-free zone, this half-serious, half-silly podcast provides a bouyant take on European life. We are a fascinating, complicated, brave lot, us humans. First, it concerned Rothblatt’s desire to “push back at the limits of the human body” and second, it was about our desire for loved ones to live on after death.

Presenter Phoebe Judge held our hands through this bizarre tale and helped us see that it was about more than it first appeared. This, like Big Tex, was a complicated story made easy to understand through excellent editing and storytelling. Its first episode was a cracker: we met one of the US’s highest paid female CEOs, Martine Rothblatt, her wife Bina Aspen Rothblatt… and Bina48, an AI robot based on Bina.

Beautiful stuff.Īnd finally, Radiotopia stalwart This Is Love returned for a second series. She had thought for years that the tunnel was just kids’ talk: this exceptional programme revealed that it wasn’t.

LIGHTS OUT PODCAST SERIES

She learned, among other things, that there were a series of tunnels under Dallas, one of which led directly into the city’s fairground park, home of Big Tex, a gigantic cowboy figure. It wasn’t just that Barton learned about race. She learned from them, she said: “They revealed the dimensions of my own ignorance.” Our host was a white woman, Julia Barton, one of those who suddenly got new classmates. Black children were bussed into predominantly white schools they brought their difference with them. There were several strands to the tale, but all started with the enforced desegregation of schools in Dallas in the late 80s. Made by indie producer Falling Tree, this is a very different way of telling a tale: a headphone-friendly soundscape, relevant voices blending with local atmospherics. Broadcast late last Monday night on Radio 4, it was the first episode in the documentary series Lights Out. We should listen.Īnother story that stayed with me this week was Big Tex. It has had long-lasting consequences, but she has been determined in her recovery and she wanted to tell us about it. Instead of feeling helpless because something was done to her against her will, she has taken ownership of the rape. She has, she said, worked hard to turn everything around the rape “into something of mine”. This was by no means a depressing interview, however: Adam was too clear for that. “She kept coming for two or three hours…” And that was only the first day of testimony. As ever, it’s the details that stay: the forensic expert going through her wastepaper basket (she was raped in her bedroom) her panic when she realised her phone needed to be taken away as evidence how hard the defence barrister tried to catch her out. Mann just helped Adam tell her story, and she did, clearly and bravely. All that’s needed is sympathy and a desire to understand, but so often those come tied to sensationalism, the sense of a “scoop”. This is rare when it comes to real-life rape testimony: rare enough for me to notice. She spoke straight, and Mann listened hard, reacted honestly but sensitively, and asked the right questions. Adam was raped almost a decade ago, and on What Nobody Tells You About Rape, she told Mann about what happened afterwards, how she reacted, the court case and its aftermath. Over the course of its 80-plus episodes, The Modern Mann has established a great rapport with its listeners, and Martha Adam, this week’s main interviewee, contacted the show because she wanted to tell her story. The first was on The Modern Mann, a nicely produced, empathetic and jolly magazine show presented by Answer Me This!’s Olly Mann.

Lights out podcast