David Hepworth Quotes
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The age of the rock star ended with the passing of physical product, the rise of automated percussion, the domination of the committee approach to hit-making, the widespread adoption of choreography, and, above all, the advent of the mystique-destroying Internet.
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Mongolia is a country of only three million souls. One million of them live in Ulaanbaatar, where, despite the skyscrapers, half the population sleep in tents. One of the few Mongolians to become famous outside his home country is Ariunbaatar Ganbaatar, who won the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World prize.
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I think getting people's focus, getting people's attention on anything has never been harder, because the media has done everything in its power to try and dissolve people's attention, shift it round absolutely all the time.
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'They Walk Among Us' is the work of husband-and-wife team Benjamin and Rosie. In the past, they've covered the Shannon Matthews case and the career of the prisoner known as Charles Bronson.
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The great children's author and illustrator Shirley Hughes marks her 90th birthday by appearing as Michael Berkeley's guest in 'Private Passions'.
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Both traditional broadcasters and podcasters are betting heavily on the growth of voice-driven technology and so-called smart speakers, the theory being that it is as easy to ask Amazon's Alexa to play you the 'Guardian Books' podcast as it is to get it to play Capital FM.
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If you don't work near a water cooler and hanker for the company of fellow natural history enthusiasts, 'The Blue Planet II Podcast' has Emily Knight and Becky Ripley enthusing infectiously about and delving deeper into the most recent episode.
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A gap in tone is opening up between podcasts and broadcast radio. The people who produce the former know their listeners have given them permission to go deep into their subject. The people who do the latter live in fear they've already gone too far.
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If, like me, you've never watched 'Game of Thrones', the podcast 'Binge Mode: 'Game of Thrones'' ought to be unlistenable. It isn't, thanks to the energy of the two expert presenters Mallory Rubin and Jason Concepcion, who have the wit to laugh at their own deep-dive devotion and are helped out by some smart editing.
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Formed in 1967 and still performing regularly half a century later, Fairport Convention are Britain's equivalent of the Band. Unlike the latter they have maintained cordial relations.
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It's been a while since I checked in with Malcolm Gladwell's 'Revisionist History' podcast. The episode 'The King of Tears' suggests the author is raising the bar. His argument is that country music is the genre that makes us cry because, unlike rock, it's not afraid of specifics.
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Famine is a consequence of poverty.
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Half the battle with successful podcasts is in the naming; here, the big media owners have a lot to learn from the smaller operators.
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Richard Hoggart's cultural analysis 'The Uses of Literacy' was published in 1957, but its influence still hovers over anyone setting out to write seriously about people's affection for things that aren't serious, such as the products of pop culture.
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'Twenty Thousand Hertz' investigates the role of audio professionals in our daily lives, from the engineering that ensures a car door closes with that reassuring finality to the Foley artists of Hollywood who synthesise the sounds of marine life using old kitchen equipment gathered at the pound shop.
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The podcast 'A History of Jazz' began telling its story in February - 100 years after the recording of 'Livery Stable Blues' by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, the start of jazz as a legitimate branch of music.
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Radio 4 Extra is the network which offers the broadcasting version of eternal life.
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British podcasts tend to shamefacedly shuffle the ads towards the end. Americans put them up front and promote them enthusiastically. I think the Americans have it right.
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The 'Sodajerker' podcast is the work of Liverpool songwriting duo Simon Barber and Brian O'Connor.
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Podcasting is a personal medium, and I savour those moments where details of the podcasters' lives glint through.
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One of the reasons why 'Here's The Thing', Alec Baldwin's series of podcasts with 'artists, policymakers and performers', is so good is because he's a big name, so the guests have to deliver.
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'You Must Remember This', the podcast about 'the secret and or forgotten history of Hollywood's first century', has a thread dedicated to Dead Blondes, which is a clue to where it's coming from.
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'Intrigue: Murder In The Lucky Holiday Hotel' is a podcast put together by the BBC's Carrie Gracie that investigates the story behind the death of British businessman Neil Heywood in the Chinese city of Chongqing in 2011.
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'I Was There Too' talks to people who played non-starring roles in big movies. That means the likes of comedian Jimmy Pardo, who didn't make it to the finished 'Dreamgirls.' Still, he recalls that when an actor is put on hold for a movie, he gets paid for two weeks just for sitting at home waiting to be called.