When Beethoven's final symphonic offering ode-ed joyously in the Austrian capital in May 1824, few would've thought they were listening to the simultaneous apotheosis of a revolutionary composer and the extensive canon of Western music itself. Most would've been thinking about the cost of the interval ice creams and that weird bit at the end of the gig when some deaf old fella with a face like a freshly slapped derriere had a crack at 'conducting'...

"Probably the best film in the world...?" Many of us of a certain vintage will remember Orson Welles for the memorable marriage of his distinctive monotone with one of the world's best known adverts for Danish lager, but in 1941 he was a young man with no experience of filmmaking rewriting the filmmaker's playbook. Citizen Kane's mark could be seen in everything that followed, even if it didn't know its Rosebud from its elbow...

Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy's "War and Peace" is the go-to titanic breeze block read for anyone sheltering from an atomic apocalypse, ploughing through a life sentence, or queueing for a Ryanair flight to Bydgoszcz. Tolstoy largely rewrote the entire novel and planned an equally weighty sequel which just goes to show what you can achieve when you don't own a telly or belong to a tennis club...

Sgt. Pepper reinvented The Beatles, reinvented the album, and reinvented the recording studio as the magician's infinite sound sandbox. It turned on and tuned into the vibe of the burgeoning counterculture, elevated the humble moustache, and ushered in a kaleidoscope-eyed era of colour, cosmic wizardry, and nausea-inducing curtain and carpet patterns. It also inspired one of the most ill-advised cinematic releases of all time...

Welcome to the Grazing GOATs podcast, a format dedicated to all the creative outpourings that float to the top of the critical pot whenever ardent culture vultures tinker with their lists and league tables of genre-defining greatest hits. Before we peruse the à la carte GOAT menu, here's an amuse-bouche of the whats, whys and where-is-this-goings. Welcome, and enjoy!