Absolute Units

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Content warning: This episode contains references to antisemitism and prejudice. Listener discretion is advised.

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Last episode we talked about the founding year of The Museum of English Rural Life. But what was our significance within wider museum practice? How did our founding relate to Britain's waning empire? And what does the future hold for The MERL?

In this second episode marking our 75th anniversary, Joe and Ollie delve deeper into the theory and politics of our making.

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Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Theme tune by Tai Dawson. This podcast contains audio from Epidemic Sound.

Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan
Producer: Joe Vaughan

• Shop MERL merch: https://merl-shop.co.uk/shop/absolute-unit.html
• Support the pod: https://merl.reading.ac.uk/visit-us/donate/

Send us Fan Mail

On 1 January 1951, on the same day that the first episode of iconic radio drama The Archers aired on the radio, academics at the University of Reading officially founded The Museum of English Rural Life.

What inspired these storied scholars to make a museum? What did establishing a museum involve? And why aren’t all our team dressed up in smocks?

On this episode, Joe and Ollie chat about The MERL’s earliest years.

Fair warning: there is a long intro where we ramble and catch up after not seeing each other in about 2 months. If you’d like to get right to the action, listen from 5:58. Enjoy the show!

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Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Theme tune by Tai Dawson. This podcast contains audio from Epidemic Sound.

Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan
Producer: Joe Vaughan

• Shop MERL merch: https://merl-shop.co.uk/shop/absolute-unit.html
• Support the pod: https://merl.reading.ac.uk/visit-us/donate/

Send us Fan Mail

Jane Austen’s novels are classic books of the English countryside. Yet they reveal so much more about English culture, industry and society than simply presenting prettified scenes of village life.

In this episode, we're back with Professor Paddy Bullard (University of Reading) and Isabel Hughes (The MERL) to talk about how Jane Austen’s novels explore space in rural and urban England: how it was used, developed, and destroyed. We also discuss Austen’s own experiences of living in rural and urban settings.

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• Join the Fobney Marshians' Christmas stomp: https://whatsonreading.com/venues/reading/whats-on/massive-marshian-stomp-fobney-marsh
• Read the latest blogpost by Reading's Fobney Marshians: https://ruralreading.com/2025/12/16/1906/

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Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Theme tune by Tai Dawson. This podcast contains audio from Epidemic Sound.

Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan
Producer: Joe Vaughan

• Shop MERL merch: https://merl-shop.co.uk/shop/absolute-unit.html
• Support the pod: https://merl.reading.ac.uk/visit-us/donate/

Send us Fan Mail

It is a truth universally acknowledged that every podcast about the history of the English countryside must do an episode on Jane Austen.

In the first of two conversations, Joe and Ollie are joined by Professor Paddy Bullard (University of Reading) and Isabel Hughes (MERL Associate Director) to explore Jane Austen's links to farming, as found in her personal biography and her literature.

We're back on Tuesday 16 Dec for a second episode on the Austen theme, marking the date of Austen's birthday.

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Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Theme tune by Tai Dawson. This podcast contains audio from Epidemic Sound.

Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan
Producer: Joe Vaughan

• Shop MERL merch: https://merl-shop.co.uk/shop/absolute-unit.html
• Support the pod: https://merl.reading.ac.uk/visit-us/donate/

Send us Fan Mail

How does the history of enclosure surface in England today and in Britain's former colonies? How can we de-enclose to create access for all?

In this episode, Joe and Ollie continue last time's conversation with the legendary author and activist George Monbiot, about how does the history of capitalism and colonialism interlink to England's urban and rural spaces.

Learn more about George Monbiot's work at https://www.monbiot.com/

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Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Theme tune by Tai Dawson. This podcast contains audio from Epidemic Sound.

Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan
Producer: Joe Vaughan

• Shop MERL merch: https://merl-shop.co.uk/shop/absolute-unit.html
• Support the pod: https://merl.reading.ac.uk/visit-us/donate/

Send us Fan Mail

Throughout history people have pitted life in the city against the countryside, comparing urban corruption with an innocent rural idyll.

Where does this comparison come from? What is its relevance today? And how do we resist these ideas to imagine a more equitable and sustainable future for town and country alike?

Joining Joe and Ollie today is the best-selling author, activist and journalist George Monbiot. In this first of two episodes, we discuss the significance of contrasting town and the country, challenges of farming and agriculture for our environment, and the significance of the rural to England's national identity. 

• George Monbiot's website: https://www.monbiot.com/
• The Bluesky thread we refer to: https://bsky.app/profile/georgemonbiot.bsky.social/post/3m4ulbf7hrs2g

We'll be back with the second part of this conversation in two weeks' time. See you then.

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Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Theme tune by Tai Dawson. This podcast contains audio from Epidemic Sound.

Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan
Producer: Joe Vaughan

• Shop MERL merch: https://merl-shop.co.uk/shop/absolute-unit.html
• Support the pod: https://merl.reading.ac.uk/visit-us/donate/

Send us Fan Mail

Pumpkins, carved. Candles, lit. Units, absolute. Welcome to a special Halloween bonus podcast by The Museum of English Rural Afterlife.

This time, ghosts Ollie and Joe welcome fiend-of-the-show Mark Norman (author, host of the Folklore Podcast, and founding curator of the Folklore Library and Archive) for a candle-lit walk through the history of Halloween. 

Join us as we cycle through the origins of Halloween, the challenges of collecting folklore (and intangible cultural heritage), the crossovers between the conventionally spooky and the rural, and what Scooby Doo can teach us about all these, and more.

Listen now —  if you dare! And should you brave our audio feast to its final course, please remember to leave us a glowing review praising how scary and charming we are.

Also, politely ask your neighbour to remove that garlic from their front porch. It’s, um, causing quite the stench, and our visitors are starting to complain.

• Listen to the Folklore Podcast: https://www.thefolklorepodcast.com/

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Special thanks to Kevin MacLeod for the recording of J. S. Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

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Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Theme tune by Tai Dawson. This podcast contains audio from Epidemic Sound.

Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan
Producer: Joe Vaughan

• Shop MERL merch: https://merl-shop.co.uk/shop/absolute-unit.html
• Support the pod: https://merl.reading.ac.uk/visit-us/donate/

Send us Fan Mail

In our last episode, Tim Jerrome (now, University of Brighton; previously, The MERL) shared with Joe and Ollie how he's using The MERL archives to research queer lives and same-sex relationships in England's rural past.

Today, Tim shares examples of the stories and relationships that he's been able to trace so far. We talk about the challenges of piecing together people's lives from fragmentary and coded evidence, the difficulties of applying categories to relationships that far predate modern terminology, and the issues of encountering problematic queer relationships and representing them for modern audiences.

Please note this episode contains references to homophobia and problematic relationships. Listener discretion is advised.

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Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Theme tune by Tai Dawson. This podcast contains audio from Epidemic Sound.

Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan
Producer: Joe Vaughan

• Shop MERL merch: https://merl-shop.co.uk/shop/absolute-unit.html
• Support the pod: https://merl.reading.ac.uk/visit-us/donate/

Send us Fan Mail

Queer histories of England have predominantly focused on the country's urban centres and cities - especially London. Yet queer and same-sex relationships have always existed throughout English life. Rural England is no exception.

In the first of two podcasts, Joe and Ollie welcome onto Absolute Units former MERL colleague Tim Jerrome (University of Brighton), whose PhD explores the history of same-sex relationships in rural England.

Learn about the challenges of finding queer histories in farm archives, the issues of archivist objectivity, and how museums can develop their practices to better surface and represent stories and relationships that were hidden in the past.

Relevant links:

• Horseman's Word: https://merl.reading.ac.uk/blog/2021/03/horsemans-word-secret-society-horse-wizards/
• The Tractor Whisperers: https://merl.reading.ac.uk/blog/2021/04/tractor-whisperers/
• Queer Constellations: https://merl.reading.ac.uk/explore/online-exhibitions/queer-constellations-histories-rural-gay-men/
• Queer Constellations (video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxCUMyOGc9w

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Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Theme tune by Tai Dawson. This podcast contains audio from Epidemic Sound.

Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan
Producer: Joe Vaughan

• Shop MERL merch: https://merl-shop.co.uk/shop/absolute-unit.html
• Support the pod: https://merl.reading.ac.uk/visit-us/donate/

Send us Fan Mail

Throughout modern English history, people have protested against the movements to enclose and limit access to green spaces.

Their reasons have varied dramatically – from deadly agricultural protests like the Swing Riots, to 90s raves, and druids campaigning for access to Stonehenge. Yet each moment of resistance gives us new insight into the complex and contested relationships we have with the world around us.

In this episode, we continue our conversation with Katrina Navickas (Professor of History at the University of Hertfordshire) to explore the modern history of contesting the commons, ahead of the release of Katrina’s upcoming book, Contested Commons.

• Pre-order Contested Commons by Katrina Navickas: https://reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/contested-commons

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Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Theme tune by Tai Dawson. This podcast contains audio from Epidemic Sound.

Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan
Producer: Joe Vaughan

• Shop MERL merch: https://merl-shop.co.uk/shop/absolute-unit.html
• Support the pod: https://merl.reading.ac.uk/visit-us/donate/