Podcast round-ups have become a bit of a lockdown tradition on the Daily Info blog (you can see our previous selections here and here) - we continue to marvel at the limitless creativity of Oxfordshire's arts and heritage organisations in keeping us intrigued and entertained while stuck at home (or indeed, keeping us company on a solitary daily exercise walk!)
QED Comedy Lab
Oxford's home for experimental comedy, QED Comedy Lab has 3 characteristically unusual and ambitious concepts to keep you laughing all year round. Six Months Later is an innovative audio 'time capsule', in which comedian hosts Matthew Chadourne and Tara Newton-Wordsworth conduct interviews with guests six months apart - so each episode is 180 days in the making. Take a journey through time as the guests - comedians from a diverse range of backgrounds, experiences and areas of expertise - discuss their plans for the future in one half, and reflect on the past in the second. Comedy Killed The Video Star is a podcast version of a popular QED show where guests dissect their favourite (or most questionable!) baffling music video. Completing the, er, trinity is Saint Misbehavin' - 'a podcast about saints, by people who are not'. Every fortnight on a Sunday, unsaintly theology graduate (and DI team member) Anna Dominey tells Matthew about the life and legend of that day's particular saint - and inevitably ambles through a range of seemingly-unrelated topics in the process. You'll probably laugh more than you learn!
Creativity Found
Hosted by Claire Waite Brown, Creativity Found is all about celebrating and learning from creative professionals who have discovered or re-discovered their artistic talents later in life.
Claire explains "As founder of Open Stage Arts, I know that lots of the adults who come to our drama and singing workshops and online events are looking for a creativity that has lain dormant during their sensible, grown-up years. I have noticed this to be a common experience among other creatives too, so, I have decided to find out more" - by interviewing painters, photographers, writers, printmakers, actors, crafters, teachers and more, about the rewards and challenges around developing their practices. Listen online or on your preferred platform - new episodes are released weekly on Mondays.
Maybe You Like It Productions
In non-covid times, Maybe You Like It Productions creates high-energy, collaborative theatre shows that have proved hits at the Edinburgh Fringe. They have transposed their stage-based skills into lockdown-friendly podcast projects. The weekly flagship Maybe You Like It podcast sees hosts Jake and Caleb joined by guests who take plays and films that have never been staged before or are unlikely to ever be staged again, and talk about how they’d stage them. Do Try This At Home is a comedy film podcast about saving mediocre films. Each week, hosts Caleb and Harrison take a cinematic disappointment and try to riff a better film. Or if you're looking to feel more like you're back in an auditorium, Maybe You Like It Presents is their podcast for one-off theatre projects such as radio plays and sketch shows.
We Need You
This year's Oxford Human Rights Festival (11th March-1st April) is fully online, with a varied programme of panel discussions, presentations, workshops and film screenings exploring the theme of 'Disruption'. We Need You is the festival's podcast series which examines the interplay between propaganda, media and social media in advancing or limiting people's freedoms. Three episodes will be released in the lead-up to the festival, published on 24th-26th Feb, and culminating in a live episode recording on 17th March. Guests will include Belinda Goldsmith, Editor-in-Chief at Thomson Reuters Foundation; Josie Naughton, CEO of refugee charity Choose Love; and Dr Richard Carver, Senior Lecturer at CENDEP (Oxford Brookes University's Centre of Development and Emergency Practice) - so listeners can expect expert insight into some of the most pressing issues of our time.
Museum Secrets
What can asparagus teach us about life? Why do some classical sculptures have removable genitalia? And how did a camel sculpture escape the Nazis? This is just a small sample of the questions posed and answered by the objects in the Ashmolean Museum's vast collections. While the Museum remains closed, you can get a taste of the curators' expertise as their insights, and the fascinating stories behind the artefacts, are brought straight to your headphones in Museum Secrets. All episodes are under 11 minutes long, so you can feel very accomplished by suddenly becoming knowledgeable about niche topics in a short space of time! Listen online or on your preferred platform.