EPISODE 78: We Forget How To Play
Strangers on a Bench
Tom Rosenthal
4.8 • 3.5K Ratings
🗓️ 9 March 2026
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ 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 : 'As You Turn Another Page' by Morgan Harper-Jones
Stream it here : https://ffm.to/asyouturnanotherpage
Listen to all the end songs featured on the podcast (so far) on one handy playlist :
https://ffm.to/soabendsongs
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, sorry to bother you. Can I ask you a slightly odd question? |
| 0:09.0 | I'm making a podcast called Strangers on a Bench, 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? Do you have a favourite day of the week? |
| 0:49.3 | Favorite day of the week? |
| 0:51.3 | Saturday. |
| 0:52.3 | Straight in there with a Saturday. Yeah. |
| 0:55.0 | Can you say why? |
| 0:57.0 | Why? |
| 0:58.0 | Most of my children at home, we usually have a Saturday night together. |
| 1:03.0 | I do a bit of shopping in the morning. |
| 1:05.0 | I work five days a week, so Saturday I sit and have a drink and we play music and we do games. How wonderful. Yeah, that's sort of my Saturday. I sit and have a drink and we play music and we do games. |
| 1:12.2 | Oh, wonderful. Yeah, that's sort of my Saturday. |
| 1:14.7 | When you say most of your children are at home? Well, I have three. |
| 1:18.6 | Middow and has a girlfriend, so we may fluctuate as to whether we are in the house. |
| 1:24.8 | That's quite fun. What's it like when your children have girlfriends, isn't he? |
| 1:29.2 | It's okay. |
| 1:30.2 | It's a strange dynamic in my house because I've got an older son who has a learning difficulty, |
| 1:35.0 | so he's not comfortable strangers in the house. |
| 1:38.0 | So to get the girlfriend doesn't come over at all times |
| 1:40.4 | because that doesn't make my oldest son comfortable. |
| 1:44.1 | Okay. So it's a bit of juggling and a bit of accommodating. And then you've got a third one somewhere as well? Yes, there's a younger one, yeah. So yeah, there's a 20-something and two teenagers. Oh, wow, that's a lot, isn't it? Yeah. Oh, boys. Amazing. Yes. What has it been like having a child with learning difficulties? It's been tough. He had autism. |
| 2:02.6 | Yeah. |
... |
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