Kate’s an old pal of ours from Word magazine who writes scintillating columns and profiles for the New Statesman and Observer. We loved her book ‘Men Of A Certain Age: My Encounters With Rock Royalty’ – just out in paperback! – where she relives her meetings with a variety of legends, eccentrics and old lags whose music she finds particularly compelling and wonders what they all have in common. This typically funny and colourful conversation stops off at …

… the attractive fallibility of rock stars past their peak

… a lifetime’s devotion to Paul Simon

… “Olivia Dean is the Carole King of her generation”

… the ridiculous expectations we heap on musicians’ creativity

… why Arts Criticism is under threat

… when the first record you buy (aged five) is the Chicken Song

… “One-Hit Wonders have achieved infinitely more than most of us”

… Ray Davies and his “eternal sense of apartness”

… why George Michael is under-appreciated and the time he found someone living under his floorboards

… the days when Jeff Beck modelled PVC jackets for Rave

 … the genius of Pat Metheny’s Orchestrion

… and the new acts who’ll still be huge in ten years’ time.

Order copies of ‘Men Of A Certain Age’ here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Men-Certain-Age-Encounters-Royalty/dp/1788705645

Help us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

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Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has asked the US government for permission to release millions of mosquitoes in California and Florida which have been infected with a naturally occurring bacteria called Wolbachia. Their aim is to reduce the mosquito populations’ ability to spread diseases like dengue, Zika, and yellow fever virus, as part of the 'Debug' programme, which is using robots and artificial intelligence to separate infected males from females. But there are questions about whether it is appropriate to entrust a private company with a public health operation of this scale, and what could happen if the AI experiments go wrong.

• Guest: Associate Professor Gordana Rasic, Head of Mosquito Genomics at QIMR Berghofer 
• Producer: Catherine Zengerer

On Point news analyst Jack Beatty on the Trump administration’s war on the concept of climate change.

***

Studies from commuter patterns after the 2014 London Underground Strike illustrate an important point: even when we resist change, it holds the possibility of making our lives better.

Get in touch: ⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠

Visit⁠⁠⁠⁠ Gretchen's website⁠⁠⁠⁠ to learn more about Gretchen's best-selling books, products from The Happiness Project Collection, and the Happier app.

Find the transcript for this episode on the episode details page in the Apple Podcasts app. 

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The poems that nourish us, and the myths that nourish poems. What can a connection with a mythical figure give us, or a legendary flower?

Ian McMillan is joined by Zeus, Poseidon, the Green Man, the trees of Under Milk Wood, and Wordsworth's favourite flower - courtesy of The Verb's guests - the philosopher Angie Hobbs, and poets Rishi Dastidar, Bradley Taylor, and Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch.

Bradley Taylor brings Brummie legends like 'Pete the Feet' into a poem with the likes of Zeus and Icarus, in his slam-winning poem 'I don't care about the gods'. Bradley's book is called 'You Missed the Best Parts', and he writes a brand new poem during the programme.

Angie Hobbs is Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy Emerita at the University of Sheffield. and her most recent book is called 'Why Plato Matters Now'. Angie shares 'a neon line', a stellar line of poetry that can help us get through uncertain times.

Rishi Dastidar shares a new commission on the theme of 'how to get through' - and celebrates William Wordsworth's favourite flower, the lesser celandine. Rishi also reads from his new collection 'Cherry Blossom at Nightbreak' - and we discover the mythic name of the legendary entertainer Bruce Forsyth.

Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch's new book is 'Milk Wood Memoir'. It includes a legendary tree, and family recollections of that mythic Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. Samantha's poetry has been nourished by living in the Welsh fishing village of New Quay - also an influence on Dylan Thomas's play 'Under Milk Wood'

The Booker Prize-winning Scottish author, Douglas Stuart, speaks to Take Four Books about his latest novel, John Of John, and, together with presenter James Crawford, they explore its connections to three other works of fiction.

John Of John follows the character of John-Calum Macleod who, when his art school education comes to an end, catches the ferry home to the island of Harris to find that not much has changed except for him. In the windswept croft where he grew up, Cal resumes his old life, caught between the two poles of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, weaver, and pillar of their local Presbyterian church, and his Glaswegian grandmother Ella, who has kept a faltering peace with her son-in-law for decades.

For his three influences Douglas chose: The Lost Language of Cranes, by David Leavitt from 1986; Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson, from 2004; and John McGahern’s Amongst Women, from 1990.

This episode was recorded at the Hay Festival 2026.

Producer: Dominic Howell

The penultimate great political fiction in this series is not strictly a fiction: it’s Annie Ernaux’s retelling of her own life in The Years (2008), thereby recapturing the story of France in the second half of the twentieth century. How can one woman’s story stand in for all the others? What does this book tell us about the passing of political time? Why do the years 1968 and 1981 mark the end of idealism? What comes next?

Join us on Friday 19th June at the Regent Street Cinema in London for the final film in our current season: a screening of Never Let Me Go followed by a live podcast recording with geneticist and science writer Adam Rutherford. Tickets available now https://bit.ly/4x641XC

You can find out everything you need to know about this podcast – who we are, what we do, plus merch, events and full lists of all episodes including PPF+ bonus episodes on our website https://www.ppfideas.com

Next Time in Great Political Fictions: HHhH

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Next week, Harry Kane will lead the England men’s squad into their first game of the 2026 World Cup.

Kane has a wealth of experience behind him - he is England’s all-time record goalscorer and has also racked up an extraordinary tally at his current club, Germany’s Bayern Munich. Kane is at the top of his game, but his ascent has been anything but smooth.

Born in east London in 1993, Kane developed a near-obsessive love for the beautiful game. It was a passion he shared with his childhood sweetheart, Kate, who later became his wife.

At the age of eight, Kane joined Arsenal’s academy, only to be released after one season. Then, after signing for Tottenham Hotspur, he spent years out on loan to the likes of Leyton Orient, Norwich City and Millwall.

So how did Kane go from underestimated youngster to world-class striker? Mark Coles looks back at Harry’s life and career so far.

-Read this essay on Substack! 

-What is meter?

-10 Reasons to write in meter

-Kinds of meter (Accentual, Syllabic, Parellelist, Quantitative, Accentual-Syllabic)

-Kinds of feet (Iamb, Trochee, Anapest, Amphibrach, Dactyl)

-“Junk” by Richard Wilbur

-“Considering the Snail” by Thom Gunn

-KJV Psalm 23

-Sonnet 18 by Shakespeare

-“The Tyger” by William Blake

-“The Destruction of Sennacherib” by Lord Byron

-“O Where Are You Going?” by W.H. Auden

-Evangeline, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“To An Athlete Dying Young” by A.E. Housman

-Speech stress vs. Relative stress (accent)

-The importance of “framing” in scansion

-Rhythmic modulation

-Common substitutions (feminine endings, reversed feet, acephalous lines)

-“All the Fun’s In How You Say A Thing” by Timothy Steele

Support the show

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My favorite poetry podcasts for:
Sharp thoughts and cutting truths (Matthew): Sleerickets 
Lovely introspection and sensitive reflection (Alice): Poetry Says
The landscape of Ohioan poetry (Jeremy): Poetry Spotlight 

Supported in part by The Ohio Poetry Association
Art by David Anthony Klug

List of the most common metrical feet: 
Iamb: weak-STRONG (u /)
Trochee: STRONG-weak (/ u)
Anapest: weak-weak-STRONG (u u /)
Amphibrach: weak-STRONG-weak (u / u)
Dactyl: STRONG-weak-weak (/ u u)
Cretic: STRONG-weak-STRONG (/ u /)
Pyrrhic: weak-weak (u u)
Spondee: STRONG-STRONG (/ /)

300 years after the publication of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Matthew Sweet looks at satire, past and present. How can satirists reflect critically and humorously on political events in an age of social media saturation and at a time when reality can seem stranger than fiction?

He is joined by:

Andrew Hunter Murray, comedian, writer and host of Radio 4's The Naked Week. His new book is Bad Deeds.

Jan Ravens, actor and impressionist, known for her work on Spitting Image and Radio 4's Dead Ringers

Rosie Holt, actor and comedian. Rosie's shows Churchill's Urinal and Rosie Holt: The Illegal Aliens have landed! will both be at Edinburgh Festival.

Tom Peck, Parliamentary sketch writer for The Times

and

Siôn Parkinson, artist, Research Associate at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and 2026 AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker.

Producer: Eliane Glaser