No names, but this:
On my two hour pre-work walk along the canal tow-path to feed moorhens/ducks/swans/all-the-birds-in-the-hedges I listened to four whole podcasts.
One was about carbon capture and storage and it was okay I guess, but really didn’t drill down (see what I did there) into the history of it all, or talk about the hype and the numbers and the coming crash. Sunlit uplands only.
One was about psychoanalysis and I mean, just wow. These ideas were being presented as if they were a Big Deal, and they basically amounted to nothing more than a repackaged and simplified take on the Buddhist First Second Noble Truth. I was embarrassed for the guy (who has accreditations and successes as long as your arm.) [Update 29 March 2024 Realised I had got that wrong. It’s the second].
One was about climate adaptation, with a guest who knows their stuff, but was asked questions of striking hollowness by someone who is alleged to know better but I suspect does not. And it all seemed to be therapy for him, so he’d feel less depressed. Ahistorical, apolitical feel-good mush. What a waste of an opportunity, and a cringe indictment of what passes for intellectual debate/discussion in this country, in this civilisaiton.
The last, the final straw, was a climate comms thing riddled with unexamined liberal information-deficit assumptions that I would give a C or D grade if I were reading it as an honour’s thesis (and a fail as a Masters). Of COURSE podcasts can’t be held to the same standard, but if you have three ostensibly smart and important hosts, then you might expect them to…
aah, ya basta. If anyone’s got any podcast recommendations for future bird-feeding yomps, let me know.
PS And yes, I should be doing podcasts for New Books Network, I know.
marchudson.net 
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