Podcasting difficult histories

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 598 Ratings

🗓️ 6 June 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Personal Identity is at the heart of contemporary culture. Political philosophies are built around it and family history is a hobby undertaken by hundreds of thousands. Understanding where you came from is seen as central to understanding who you are. But what if the things that are uncovered are uncomfortable, upsetting or even life-changing?

Matthew Sweet is joined at the Hay Festival by three writers who have hosted podcasts which raise these questions – Joe Dunthorne, whose memoir Children of Radium and BBC Radio 4 series Half Life explore his great-grandfather's work with chemical weapons; Kavita Puri, whose series Three Million told the story of the Bengal Famine, and of British culpability in it; and Jenny Kleeman, whose BBC Radio 4 podcast The Gift tells the stories of lives upended by DNA testing kits. How does the format of the podcast help them explore these complicated subjects?

The Gift, Three Million and The History Podcast, Half Life are all available now on BBC Sounds

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Transcript

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0:00.0	Can I just say?
0:01.5	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast.
0:04.0	It's such a wonderful listen.
0:05.6	So nice.
0:06.5	There are loads more like it on BBC sounds.
0:08.8	Different paces, different heights.
0:10.6	The roof is buckling.
0:11.9	Where you can also listen to live sports commentary.
0:14.2	It's right foot goes for goal.
0:16.7	And then enjoy even more podcasts full of analysis and reaction to the big stories.
0:21.6	The stat that is astonishing is they ended with the lowest amount of possession.
0:25.2	And she's had to live with that.
0:26.8	So if you love sport, a passion, it's almost like a religion.
0:29.7	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:31.7	Sort of expecting that every week now.
0:35.8	BBC Sounds, music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:39.6	You're listening to the Arts and Ideas podcast with me, Matthew Sweet.
0:47.3	The pods, they're taking over.
0:50.4	It's what they say in invasion of the body snatchers,
0:53.6	when characters discover that the greenhouse is full of foaming vegetable matter from which emerges something that looks human but isn't.
1:02.5	This edition of free thinking is populated by the pod people.
1:07.1	They're the makers of audio, a kind of audio, episodic, downloadable, that's very like radio, but is not radio and is everywhere.
	...

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