EPISODE 53: A Very Different Place

Strangers on a Bench

Tom Rosenthal

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

4.8 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 15 September 2025

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

*Content warning : this episode contains references to suicide and self-harm.

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 : 'Thunder and Lightning' by Clara Mann

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

Listen to all the 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?
0:08.0	It is right.
0:10.0	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? Okay. How are you feeling? You're okay? You're okay? You're going to be nervous about?
0:49.3	It's just talking. That makes me nervous.
0:56.9	Just been crying on the beach about that.
0:57.8	Oh God.
0:59.3	Okay, well, you're talking to the right person.
1:00.0	Okay. I don't want to overly big myself up, but I have done this all around the country,
1:04.6	talking to it pretty much everyone you could possibly imagine.
1:08.9	What I'm trying to say is I think I could be, you know, useful, useful person to talk to.
1:14.8	I'm going to say that. Quite dangerous early on because you might not agree when it comes to it.
1:20.5	But anyway, you ready for the first question? You can't get the first one wrong. It's really easy.
1:27.0	Do I have to get them right? Is that the thing?
1:29.1	No, there is. There is.
1:30.5	I don't know.
1:31.3	The good news, there is no right and no wrong.
1:34.1	Okay.
1:36.2	You ready?
1:37.7	Do you have a favourite day of the week?
	...

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