EPISODE 39: The Runaway

Strangers on a Bench

Tom Rosenthal

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

4.8 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 9 June 2025

⏱️ 27 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 : 'Disappear' by Lisa Hannigan

Stream it here : https://ffm.to/disappear-soab

Listen to all end songs featured on the podcast (so far) on one handy playlist :

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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	Wednesday.
0:47.3	That's a good one, right in the middle.
0:49.3	Yeah.
0:50.3	Why is it Wednesday?
0:51.3	I don't know.
0:52.3	I always have a good feeling because the blues of the Monday, it carries on a bit of the
0:56.0	Tuesday by Wednesday.
0:57.0	You're up and about and ready to enjoy the rest of the week.
1:00.0	Yeah, so you're feeling good today?
1:02.0	Yeah.
1:03.0	Fantastic.
1:04.0	Now what would you say is your kind of ideal Wednesday, what's a really nice, solid day for you? Well, wake up in the morning, you know, just do your own thing, go and collect the grandchildren
1:14.6	from school, which I love, and then usually take them for a little bit, something to eat
1:20.6	and find out what's going on in their little worlds, you know, they're 13 and 11, so.
1:24.6	Oh, lovely. And it keeps you young. Yeah.
1:28.3	What's it like to be a grandparent?
1:29.3	Oh, it's lovely the best thing in the world to be a grandmother.
	...

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