As regular readers will be aware, Metropolitan editor and contributor (respectively), Tobias Sturt and Jon Millington have a seasonal side project.

Every Christmas, Tobias writes a new Christmas story and then Jon reads it and they release it as a podcast of 24 short episodes, one a day for the first 24 days of December.

This year’s story is Last Christmas in Hexwood, an excessively cosy and increasingly lunatic story of talking animals, a naughty child and an unlikely plan to kidnap Santa Claus.

You can subscribe to the story on the Christmas Stories Substack, Spotify, YouTube or anywhere you get podcasts, and you can also find the whole audiobook on Spotify or Audible.

You can find all these links, or just listen there, on the Christmas Stories website.

You find out more about the inspiration for the stories in this Metropolitan piece from last year:

The podcast is usually a reading of an essay from our archives, but this being October, we thought you deserved a trick and, hopefully, a treat.

Every Halloween, our editor Tobias Sturt writes a creepy short story, so our podcast this month is a reading of this year’s: A Ghost Walk.

Our theme music is Otra vez by friend of the show S F Gallardo, who you can find on Spotify and Bandcamp

You can find more of Tobias’ Halloween stories on YouTube:

Or on his website: www.ruritania.co.uk/halloween

It’s back to school season, so this month’s podcast is Rowan Davies reading her piece about the experience of sending your children away to become adults (allegedly).

Our theme music is Otra vez by friend of the show S F Gallardo, who you can find on Spotify and Bandcamp

Related essays from September 2024 include:

We’ve been re-reading a lot of children’s books this month, so this month’s podcast is Rowan Davies reading her piece on Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes.

Our theme music is Otra vez by friend of the show S F Gallardo, who you can find on Spotify and Bandcamp

Related essays from August 2024 include:

The Metropolitan podcast features readings of pieces from our archive, but you read tomorrow’s podcasts today by subscribing.

We’ve been writing around the 55th anniversary of the Moon landings this month, so here’s another piece about 1969 and another anniversary for this month. We’re now twice as far from the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand as we are from Apollo 11. 28th July 1914: the start of the First World War.

Our theme music is Otra vez by friend of the show S F Gallardo, who you can find on Spotify and Bandcamp

Related essays from July 2024 include:

The Metropolitan podcast features readings of essays from our archive, but you can get the jump on it by subscribing and reading those essays as they’re published.

We’ve been writing a lot about music this month, so here Rowan Davies reading her piece about the strange connections the childish mind makes between music and memory (and John Craven and Cardiff).

Our theme music is Otra vez by friend of the show S F Gallardo, who you can find on Spotify and Bandcamp

Related essays from June 2024 include:

The Metropolitan podcast features readings from our archive, but you can get the jump on it by subscribing and reading them for yourself.

We’ve been writing a lot this month about visions of America in the Cold War ‘80s, so here’s Tobias Sturt reading his piece about visions of America in the TV and cinema of 1985, including Doctor Who: The Loved/Hated One

Our theme music is Otra vez by friend of the show S F Gallardo, who you can find on Spotify and Bandcamp

Related essays from May 2024 include:

The Metropolitan podcast includes readings of past pieces, but you can get future pieces by subscribing

This month’s Metropolitan has included more than the usual amounts of comedy, so this podcast is Chris Waywell reading his piece from 2022 on two artists, a real one, the painter Philip Guston, and a fictional one, Tony Hancock’s The Rebel.

Our theme music is Otra vez by friend of the show S F Gallardo, who you can find on Spotify and Bandcamp

Related essays from April 2024 include:

This podcast features readings from past issues of The Metropolitan, but you can get ahead of us by subscribing below

March 2024 in The Metropolitan has included a lot of discussion of the future, the past and notions of progress, and so this month’s podcast is Rowan Davies reading her essay from March 2022: Things can only get better.

Our theme music is Otra vez by friend of the show S F Gallardo, who you can find on Spotify and Bandcamp

Related essays from March 2024 include:

February 2024 in The Metropolitan has seen a lot of twins, copies and reflections and so this month’s podcast is Annette Richardson reading her essay from June 2022: Double White Female.

Our theme music is Otra vez by friend of the show S F Gallardo, who you can find on Spotify and Bandcamp

Related essays from February 2024 include:

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