How many podcasts do you listen to?

I was featured in a podcast this week. It’s always nice to be interviewed and featured somewhere, but even nicer when it’s in a podcast that I actually listen to – and I listen to quite a lot of podcasts. This one was the Live in Brazil podcast hosted by Kevin Porter.

In fact, I was thinking about just how many podcasts I do listen to regularly so I thought it might be interesting to list them all. I do clear out my podcast list when shows are no longer updated so this is pretty much a comprehensive list of the ones I regularly listen to – not just everything I found on my iPod.

Most of the content is from the BBC. That’s really because I don’t know of anywhere that does speech and informative radio as well as the BBC. A lot of this content was originally on the radio and then published as a podcast. Personally I tend to only listen to audio as podcasts now, I don’t really listen to any radio in real-time. And music radio – well for that there is Spotify…

When I write all the podcasts as a list it looks fairly long, but I guess there are people who leave the radio on all day and listen to more programmes than I do. I’m quite selective in what I listen to and I do have specific times when I will listen – walking my dog, out running on the street, in the gym, and work that doesn’t need a lot of concentration (checking emails, Facebook etc…) Obviously I can’t write something while also listening to the news on my iPod.

And one other thing, because I listen on the iPod I can play everything at double speed. That doesn’t work well for music, but for speech radio it means you can get an hour of news in 30 minutes. I have done this so often (and been mocked on the BBC Click programme for it) that when I listen to familiar presenters at normal speed they sound strange!

Do you listen to more? Is this a lot of podcasts to regularly be following?

• Best of Today; BBC Radio 4 Today programme
• The Bottom Line; BBC business interviews with Evan Davies
• Broadcasting House; BBC Sunday news magazine
• Business Daily; BBC World daily business news
• Click; BBC technology magazine
• Crossing Continents; BBC travel and society magazine
• Desert Island Discs; BBC classic – what music to take to a desert island
• Discovery; BBC science documentaries
• Documentaries; documentaries from all across the BBC
• Drama of the Week; new BBC feature – a weekly radio drama
• Feedback; forum for radio listener feedback
• Fighting Talk; BBC sports “quiz” and chat
• File on 4; In-depth BBC investigative reporting
• The Film Programme; Weekly film reviews
• Folk with Mark Radcliffe; Weekly folk music show
• Football Weekly; weekly football summary
• Forum – A World of Ideas; Weekly debate about philosophy and ideas
• From our own correspondent; news reports from foreign correspondents all over the world
• Front Row Daily; daily arts show
• Global News; daily summary of global news
• Great Lives; weekly biography of a “great” person
• The Guardian Books Podcast; books review
• The Guardian Film Show; weekly film reviews
• In Our Time; weekly analysis of history and ideas
• Listen To Lucy; Lucy Kellaway’s FT column
• The Live in Brazil Podcast; Live in Brazil with Kevin Porter
• The Long View; Exploring how the past influences the present
• Making History; BBC history magazine
• Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo’s Film Reviews; The best weekly film review show online anywhere… a must-listen
• Mastertapes; musicians discussing their back catalogue
• Media Show; weekly media review by the BBC
• Media Talk; weekly media review by The Guardian
• Men’s Hour; weekly magazine show
• Money Box; financial issues
• More or Less; maths and statistics
• Music Weekly; Guardian weekly new music review
• Newshour; daily news summary
• On the Money; weekly financial analysis featuring CEOs
• Outlook; real-life stories from the news
• Outriders; Weekly tech news – Internet focused
• The Penguin Podcast; Books from Penguin
• Peter Day’s World of Business; Very good exploration of global business issues
• Pienaar’s Politics; Excellent weekly summary of British politics
• A Point of View; Short bursts of thought and philosophy
• Politics Weekly; Guardian weekly political summary
• Radio 2 Arts Show; a weekly arts summary
• Radio 3 Essay; a short essay on the arts
• The Report; a detailed investigative news report
• Science Weekly; weekly science focus from the Guardian
• Sportsweek; a weekly BBC show summarising sport
• Tech Weekly; Guardian look at tech each week
• Test match Special; cricket – when games are being played
• Thanks for Giving a Damn; Excellent US-based musician interviews
• Thinking Allowed; weekly sociology focus
• Today in Parliament; what happened in the UK parliament
• Wake up to Money; Daily financial news first thing in the morning
• A Week of You and Yours; weekly consumer issues
• Weekly Political Review; BBC weekly politics summary
• The Why Factor; asking tough questions – why this or that?
• Witness; short bursts of interviews with witnesses to great events
• The World at One; news summary at 1300
• The World Tonight; news summary at 2200

Benjamin Sniddlegrass and the Cauldron of Penguins

Mark Kermode is the film reviewer on BBC Radio 5. His show goes out every Friday afternoon on the radio and is also available as a podcast on iTunes – it has become one of the most popular British podcasts on iTunes. Each week, Kermode runs through the new movies of the week and exchanges a considerable amount of banter with co-host Simon Mayo.

Some time back the film ‘Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief’ was released and Kermode criticised it as nothing more than an American Harry Potter – a kind of colour-by-numbers movie about kids at a boarding school where they learn about magic.

His review suggested that any filmmaker could produce a film about kids learning magic and with the support of the Harry Potter fan base, it would almost certainly be a success. He suggested the name ‘Benjamin Sniddlegrass and the Cauldron of Penguins’ during the review as a typical name that could be used.

And so an Australian filmmaker went off and made a film using that name. It has just been released and contains a number of jokes referencing the Kermode show. So regular listeners to the show will find references to Jason Isaacs, David Morrissey, Werner Herzog, and all the favourite characters that seem to pop up week after week on the film show.

I’m going to download and watch it soon. Given that the budget was only something like A$5,000, I don’t expect to be dazzled, but to put a full-length feature movie together based only on a BBC film review is an impressive (or mad) achievement so it deserves some support.

And if I have not already said it, “Hello Jason Isaacs.”

BBC Radio 4: The Secret History of Social Networking

BBC Technology editor, Rory Cellan-Jones, is launching a new radio series on BBC radio 4 on January 26th titled ‘The Secret History of Social Networking.’ It’s a view on how far social networks have come, where they came from, and where they might head to in future.

What is particularly interesting for me is that my wedding in Ealing on December 3rd last year features right at the start of the series, as an example of just how far things have come… I used Facebook to invite guests to the wedding and communicate the agenda for the day.

Facebook was useful because almost all my family and friends are on there. It’s true, there are some Facebook refuseniks and I had to update them by text message, and some partners of friends are not always on my friend list, but on the whole I managed to update everyone using a Facebook event.

It was an amazing day and I’m fortunate enough to have arranged a repeat of the day out in São Paulo soon. The BBC radio crew filmed a large section of my wedding in London for use in website trailers for the radio programme, so I’m going to edit together footage from their video and arrange my Brazilian wedding inside an old city centre cinema. We can watch some of the London footage and repeat the ceremony in front of a cinema audience before getting an old London Routemaster bus to transport us across the city to a restaurant for a bit of a post-second-wedding-party…

I’m looking forward to hearing Rory’s programme, though we had consumed a fair amount of Champagne by the time he started recording questions so if any of it sounds slurred then please forgive me – he should have recorded the speech parts early in the morning!

I am a Socialist

Ed Miliband admitted live on BBC Radio 5 this morning that he is a socialist. Ever since, the news agenda has been exploring what he meant. Most people who follow British politics will know that Ralph Miliband, Ed’s father, was certainly a socialist. A true advocate of Marxism.

Even in the few seconds allotted to him on the radio, Ed Miliband managed to state that he doesn’t agree with his father’s vision of socialism. Ed’s father would be talking about the implementation of socialism requiring a working-class revolution, the government being controlled by the working-class and seizing all assets of production… and private property. Essentially creating an even distribution of wealth and work throughout the entire society.

It’s obvious that Ed Miliband is not advocating this form of socialism when he claims to believe in socialism. He is obviously believing in a sense of fairness in the interaction between the government and the citizen, the helping hand, the fair deal. If this is so obvious – that the modern-day left-wing interpretation of socialism by the Labour party is not quite the firebrand socialism of the past – then how come it’s taken over the media agenda today?

Wenlock and Mandeville

Callers to the BBC Five Live radio breakfast show this morning seemed dismissive of the new London 2012 Olympic mascots, Wenlock and Mandeville.

What do they want? Another cuddly teddy bear?

Take a look at the history of Olympic mascots – not much that is inspiring in that list is there? And not much purpose to the mascot, other than to have a cute cartoon character for merchandise.

Here’s three reasons why I think the London 2012 organising committee has done a fantastic job unveiling Wenlock and Mandeville to the world:

1. The focus is entirely on children. The purpose of these mascots is not just to look nice on a T-shirt, it’s to get kids interested in the Olympic games and sport in general.

2. There is an entire back-story to their creation. They are two drops of steel from the last girder that went into the construction of the Olympic stadium. Michael Morpurgo has written about their life so far and no doubt he will develop the story as we head to 2012. Click here to watch the film about their life so far.

3. They are designed with a multimedia future in mind from the start. They are designed to be customised and shared. Because they are made of steel, their skin can change colour and reflect the world around them. So kids will be able to go online and adopt the character of their choice and customise the colours, creating avatars that reflect their own interests – even changing them to be the colours of their favourite football team for example.

I think the committee has done a great job of focusing the mascots on kids, encouraging the future of sport, and thinking hard about what it is that kids will want to do with the mascots over the next two years.

Forget the teddy bears, I’m following Wenlock and Mandeville online now!

So who offers the worst business banking in the UK?

The Co-operative bank business banking service has been under fire from the Radio 4 Money Box programme, with bank customers complaining that the system is difficult to login to, data is often lost, and sometimes information is just not available.

It sounds familiar to me, though my business banking service is with Abbey – which is now Santander and is about to be rebranded entirely so the old Abbey brand will vanish.

I’ve used Abbey for business banking for six years. One of the things anyone running any kind of business will know is that you need to be able to go back and check on transactions from some time ago. Accounts are often filed a year or more after transactions take place.

The old system Abbey offered was very good. I could enter a date range and export all my banking activity to a spreadsheet, then format it for my accountant.

When Santander took over, they implemented a new business banking system. Suddenly it was not possible to enter date ranges for statements. I could no longer export easily to Excel. In fact, I could not look back at transactions beyond the last 70 on my statement. So, it was not possible to look back more than a couple of months at most.

When I needed to start getting my accounts in order for annual filing with Companies House, I asked Abbey how I could get the information for the previous year. They told me they could send me the paper statements in the post and it would take at least six weeks to get them because they need to go to a microfiche archive.

PAPER STATEMENTS?

SIX WEEKS TO GET A STATEMENT?

MICROFICHE?

How do I get that on a spreadsheet? They told me I would need to retype everything myself. Why can’t I get it immediately? Because all the data has been archived. Why on earth are you using microfiche rather than a datacentre? We use it for all our archives…

What on earth is going on with Santander? I called several times about this issue and I was told that a lot of businesses are complaining about the same thing. Of course they are. Companies need to be able to go back and look at historic transactions. Don’t deliver a personal banking solution to businesses and expect us to be happy – you idiots.

I’m in the process of sorting out my company accounts for last year right now. As soon as I’m all set, I’m in the market for a new business bank account, but it won’t be with the Co-op or Santander.