EPISODE 17: Cold Water and The Edge

Strangers on a Bench

Tom Rosenthal

Conversation, Strangers, Park, Society & Culture, Random, Bench, Documentary

4.8 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 6 January 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

**Content Warning : This episode discusses suicide**

Tom Rosenthal approaches a stranger on a park bench and asks if he can sit down next to them and record their conversation.

This is what happened!

Produced by Tom Rosenthal

Edited by Rose De Larrabeiti

Mixed by Mike Woolley

Theme tune by Tom Rosenthal & Lucy Railton

Incidental music by Maddie Ashman

End song : 'Between Times' by dodie

Stream it here : https://ffm.to/betweentimes

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello, sorry to bother you.
0:05.0	Can I ask you a slightly odd question?
0:09.0	I'm making a podcast called Strangers on a bench
0:14.0	where essentially I talk to people I don't know on benches for 10 or 15 minutes.
0:19.0	Are you up for that? Do you want to give it a go? What's your favourite day of the week?
0:46.3	That's an interesting question.
0:49.3	Saturday.
0:51.3	So I get up very early and go swimming most mornings.
0:55.0	How early are we talking?
0:57.0	I get up at 4.30.
1:00.0	That's quite early, isn't it?
1:02.0	So on a Saturday, I don't have to do that.
1:07.0	And what I like about Saturdays is that you can have a day without obligation if you want to
1:16.1	whereas in the week there's work there are obligations that you make to yourself or i make to myself
1:22.9	as a kind of disciplined life then on on Saturday, I don't do that.
1:31.3	And that's why I like Saturday.
1:32.3	It's a really great feeling.
1:35.3	What's it like to wake up at 4.30 out of choice?
1:39.3	Well, I've been swimming outside for a long time.
1:42.3	And then in lockdown, I wanted to carry on swimming.
1:48.1	So a friend and myself decided that we would go when it was dark when nobody knew we were doing it.
1:55.7	So that's when we started illegal and swimming in lockdown.
	...

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