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THE PICK OF THE BEST AUDIO ON DEMAND
PICK OF THE WEEK
BIOGRAPHY
This is the story of Michael X. Born in 1933 in Port of Spain, Trinidad, as Michael de Frietas, latterly known as Michael Abdul Malik and then as Michael X, he was an extraordinary man — a radical political thinker, early exponent of Black Power in the UK and a friend of John Lennon, Yoko Ono and Muhammad Ali. But he was also a hustler, a gangster and was hanged for murder in Trinidad. Documentary-maker Hamza Salmi asks why we know so little about one of Britain’s most important black activists.
LOOSE SCRUM
Ben Youngs and Dan Cole fail to chase down the details in their rugby chat
SPORT
Rugby stars Ben Youngs and Dan Cole don’t make enough of the England team’s omelette chef.
He’s mentioned in their joint account of England training camps but there’s no presenter to halt the chat and get what we all want, which are details. Similarly, when they talk about turning up for their first camp worried that they won’t be expected, there’s nobody there to put the question we’re all thinking. Surely they send you a letter? If professional athletes have a blind spot, it’s that they don’t understand that the public don’t want tales of excess; we simply want every last detail of their lives and the more mundane those details, the better we like it.
MUSIC
Akin to the long-established Song Exploder, this podcast has the aim of “taking us behind the scenes of the world’s most iconic songs”. Which it does in brief, clunky, oddly disengaged episodes that come across like Coles Notes. “I stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror”, a line from Taylor Swift’s Anti-Hero, is apparently “a metaphor reflecting Swift’s tendency to face external challenges head-on while avoiding introspection”. More one for the parents of fans than the fans themselves.
SPORT
Already a double Olympic champion at Tokyo, affable 23-year-old swimmer Tom Dean is now intent on becoming the most bemedalled British athlete at a single Olympics by winning five medals at Paris this year. With such a record-breaking mission before him, Tom needs all the help he can get, whether it’s the experience of Super Saturday’s heptathlon queen Jessica Ennis-Hill or marginal gains from less obvious sources like celebrity chefs. Bonus episodes will catch-up on Tom’s progress.
DISCUSSION
A new monthly podcast showcases some of the brilliant minds who were part of Gates Cambridge, a scholarship programme first funded in 2000 by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Cambridge University’s Catherine Galloway chairs the discussion in which international postgraduates tackle the thorniest problems. In the first episode on recovery
