The RHODcasts

In the City of the Angels, one in three people have now been tested positive for Covid. America’s Covid epicentre - by numbers - is testing its citizens at Dodgers Stadium and vaccinating them at Disneyland. From Los Angeles, LA Times senior staff writer PATT MORRISON. 

A president bound over to the Senate for impeachment yet who said not a word about it in his latest video. What really sent President Donald Trump ballistic in the words of a senior aide quoted by Politico was the decision by Twitter to block his output permanently. ETHAN ZUCKERMAN is associate professor of public policy and information at U Mass Amherst and he has studied social media since it was in diapers (nappies to you). What does it mean to “deplatform” a president, and where do his followers go from here?

RHOD SHARP reports the American Insurrection of 2021 in the countdown to the inauguration of President Biden. Representative SETH MOULTON relates his own experience of the Congressional invasion and discusses Monday’s first steps by the House of Representatives towards the second impeachment trial for President Donald Trump.

We were walking in the woods the other week when we came across this mother and daughter decorating this random little tree. We had noticed its handsome red bow before, but it was purely by chance that we came across their stealthy celebration. BRIAN O’DONOVAN has hosted the traditional music show A Celtic Sojourn on WGBH for enough years for it to qualify for a police pension. Every Christmas since 2003 he has delighted his audience with a live Christmas version. This year it’s online and equally delightful.  As we discovered in the woods, magic happens. With my sincere thanks to you for following the road this far as it goes forever on, may I wish you and the ones you love happiness on the path ahead.

Many thanks to those who have written to express intense feelings about hearing JIM NAUGHTIE and I on a virtual park bench discussing the state of America. With a new revised edition of Jim’s memoir On the Road in the offing, we continue with some thoughts on presidents from Reagan to Trump and Jim’s regular encounters with the best of America. Including the afternoon when most of the population of a small New Hampshire town turned out to help him rescue the keys of his hire car from the boot. Or should that be rental car from the trunk? You decide.

The people have spoken, and American democracy, feeling less timid now, is almost ready to exhale. JIM NAUGHTIE started visiting the USA in 1970 when one political crisis was brewing, and his coverage of the 2020 presidential campaigns for BBC Radio 4 has depicted a people in the throes of another. Throughout it all, Jim’s dedication to reporting America’s cause aright, as Hamlet tasked Horatio, has been unstinting. As has our friendship. There’s a lot to talk about, so haul on your bellbottoms as we take a trip back to the start of the 1970s.

Take the most popular chat show on British television and take away the red sofa, and what’s left? Still arguably the funniest TV in or out of lockdown. The Graham Norton Show’s executive producer GRAHAM STUART talks about what Michael Sheen can get up to with a torch (flashlight) and his own adventures in a pair of muddy shoes fronting one of the longest running sports shows in the world.

When a young man is found lying unconscious and motionless in a field just outside Oxford (England, that is) it’s time for Rhod to sit down in his garden (back yard) with the author of this fiction. The Boy In The Field is Margot Livesey’s ninth novel and her first and last (we hope) to be released in Covid time.

We can’t let it pass. As committed citizens of the world, we cannot afford to seek comfort in ignorance in the final tumultuous weeks leading up to this election for the next leader of the United States. Join me and a group of four involved and articulate young Americans as we discuss the disease which has turned their world upside down. Let’s hope they don’t miss their shot in the age that is to come. 

There is no doubt that the world in 2016 was a different place. For a snapshot of the mood in October 2016, follow the link to my BBC report Small Town Angst.

“If there's a more engaging presence on the radio than Barnsley poet Ian McMillan and a more entertaining show than Radio 3's The Verb then I don't know it” wrote Stuart Maconie in Radio Times. So when Ian and I met - virtually - for this podcast, what wasn’t to like?