Posts Tagged ‘radio’

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything is a brilliant book by Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. I won’t dwell too much on the book here, but following its success, Dubner began to produce a radio show called Freakonomics Radio that looked at the hidden side of other things.

I subscribed to the podcast using the Podcast feature of my iOS device. It’s the first time I have used it and so far it is okay. You just add the podcast and it queues up new episodes, and you can also go back through the archives and queue up old episodes. However, it does not seem to download the episodes, or has some performance issues. There is normally a few seconds delay between me clicking play and it starting.

Freakonomics Radio on the over hand, is very good.

The first episode I listened to was on “why are there so many mattress stores in America?”. Other episodes have taken on a diverse range of topics including science, food, self-improvement, economics (obviously) and interviews.

You can find the show at Freakonomics.com.

From time to time, I want to quickly find my favourite That Mitchell & Webb Sound sketch, but there doesn’t seem to be an index of them. So, I’ve done one, for series one at least.

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

Episode 4

Episode 5

Episode 6

Peep Show is a brilliant show. That Mitchell & Webb look is a great sketch show too. But in my opinion, the best work they have ever done, isn’t any of the material they are famous for.

For me, the best work they have ever done is actually their Radio 4 series – That Mitchell & Webb Sound. It must have been popular (for Radio 4 at least) as it ran for four series, and each one of them was brilliant.

Highly recommended.

Last week I was lucky enough to have tickets to a recording of the Radio 4 comedy programme I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue taking place at Leeds Town Hall.

It was well attended, mostly by your classic demographic of Radio 4 listeners, making me feel very young indeed. What really struck me though was the access to the range of good comedians you got – all at once. The panel consisted of long time ISIHAC guests Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden and Barry Cryer along with Phil Jupitus and Jack Dee – not a bad line-up for the relatively cheap ticket price!

Of course the two highlights of the evening were seeing the lovely Samantha in person whose descriptions really don’t do her justice, and finally learning how Mornington Crescent actually works – it’s all so obvious when you see it!

As you probably know, atheists are currently celebrating Stephen Hawking announcing there is officially no god.

I was on BBC Radio Leeds talking about it earlier. It went pretty badly, to be honest, I could have spoken a lot better and we ended up discussing what evidence I would require to believe in god rather than talking about Hawking’s new book. Never the less it’s always an experience and it’s great to get a mixture of view points on the show which BBC Leeds are always really good at.

You can listen again for seven days on the BBC website, it’s about 38 minutes in.

Less than 24 hours after I was in the BBC Radio Leeds studio talking about UFOs I was asked to make a return the airwaves this time to talk about psychics.

I was actually surprised as I didn’t feel my previous interview went that well though this one went much better, I think because I was actually invited on to properly rubbish the claims rather than just add a one line counter voice to the Exopolitics conference.

The item was surrounding the recent news that Joe Power – the man who sees dead people – has had his show pulled from the Edinburgh Fringe because it’s rubbish. Watch him totally miss on Derren Brown Investigates in this clip.

It’s been a long day, already.

I started at 6am this morning because I was being interviewed live on BBC Radio Leeds at 7:15 regarding the Humanist Community of Leeds event taking place later that day.

As usual Richard Staples made me feel most welcome in the studio – I say as usual as it was only a few weeks ago I was talking about the Catholic Care adoption agency as some of you may have heard. If you want to, you can listen again to today’s show for the next week (it’s an hour and fifteen in).

Then the rest of the morning and indeed a large part of the afternoon was filled up with the event itself which went very – we had quite a few “first-timers” come down. Indeed given we were expecting quite a low turn out with it being Easter Sunday we were quite surprised so many people turned up!

As if that wasn’t enough I’ve then spent the afternoon coding, catching up on my blogging and later I’m going out to be interviewed for a documentary on volunteer work in Leeds. Not exactly the leisurely Sunday I could have done with but an exciting one none the less!