EPISODE 34: Living on Borrowed Time

Strangers on a Bench

Tom Rosenthal

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

4.8 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 5 May 2025

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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: 'My Father Never Told Me He Loved Me' by Michael McGovern

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

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Instagram: @strangersonabench

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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?
0:45.3	Quite like Sunday
0:48.3	because there's no Guardian newspaper and I can just have an easy morning and come to the day
1:00.0	slowly and gradually.
1:02.8	So what's your, if you can take me in as much detail as you feel comfortable with, you
1:07.8	know, your ideal Sunday?
1:10.0	Well, my wife and I, I'm retired, but she still
1:13.7	works, so we don't work on Sundays. And if it's a day like this, we might go and have a nice
1:21.8	breakfast or something or just a nice coffee somewhere. She can't walk very far, so I often take off and walk around the heath.
1:31.3	I walk here almost every day.
1:33.4	And then we may go and see my daughter or my son, who live not far away, and then in the
1:41.2	evening make a nice dinner together, and in the evening often watch TV.
1:47.2	I'm sorry, sad to say.
1:48.8	And I also listen to a lot of music.
1:51.2	That's one of my main ways of just being alive, as it were.
1:57.9	Classical music.
1:59.1	Wonderful.
1:59.9	It sounds like a very pleasant day.
	...

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