Stuff You Should Know

I didn’t subscribe to podcasts, but then I started finding myself, at the end of a very long day, exhausted, mind turned to so much putty, feeling like I ought to still be writing, or lighting, or researching things pertinent to both, and by chance in this process, began listening to podcasts as a medium ground between reading a sensible book and watching stupid TV.  It began with From Our Own Correspondent – a program I love in that it gives a sense of place to all these events in the news which 60 seconds of report on BBC1 really doesn’t cover.  Then ‘Witness’ was added to indulge my fondness for primary source historical narrative (the LSE would be proud) and then I found the ‘Documentaries’ section from the BBC and my horizons were, once again, expanded.

I am not a writer who believes in excessive research.  I mean, I believe in research, absolutely, and the back of my door is covered with notes of stuff that is far too cool not to write up one day – but I don’t believe in plugging a book full of the research you’ve done, in the sense that narrative always needs to take precedent over, say, showing off.  But I absolutely believe that the path to good stories, interesting characters and exciting events is through a knowledge of the world around, and as a result the notes on the back of my door tend to be full of interesting, quirky facts more than statements saying ‘look at World War Two, that’s interesting’.  Flicking through them I see references to a medieval tradition whereby sometimes the actor playing Jesus in the annual Passion Play would genuinely be crucified as a religious act; a reference to a 9-day traffic jam in China 2010, a footnote derived from a book about Bosnia, reffering to the U.N. ‘Blue Road’ that wound through miles of hostile territory to supply the besieged enclave of Gorazde, and a scrawled note reminding me to investigate a phobia of newspapers.  I may one day write something specific about any number of these events; or more plausibly I may use them as a source for something completely different, pinching the best ideas to adapt to my own nefarious purposes.  Whatever happens, I figure it qualifies as stuff worth knowing, and it was in this vein that I stumbled a few weeks ago on what is quite possibly my new, favourite podcast – Stuff You Should Know.

It’s free – you’ll find my primary criteria when it comes to podcasts is the price – and essentially consists of two dudes, spiritually as well as generically, Chuck and Josh, talking about the topic of the moment for anywhere between twenty minutes to an hour.  And I don’t really listen for the information itself, since, rather like wikipedia, I tend not to trust a source until I’ve seen its footnotes and had it confirmed by four viable experts.  Which is not to say that I think Chuck and Josh are misleading the world – not at all – merely that knowledge is complex, difficult and hard to pin down, even in things like science where you’d really be hoping for a simple yes/no answer.  No, what I listen for, are the topics themselves.  They range from anything to everything; shrunken heads, U.S. politics, body armour, forensic pathology, the politics of Guatemala, exorcism, hostage negotiation, smoking, drugs – it’s never predictable and that’s precisely why I listen.  I’m not looking for an accurate map of the world around me, merely a sense of how far the horizon goes….