unfinishing

unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are unfinished, abandoned, or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an incomplete or private project you’d like to talk about, please email [email protected], contact Em on Instagram @unfinishingpod, or on Twitter  @TrueBagglerag.

In this episode, Dr Steve Kershaw talks about Plato’s Critias dialogue, a text that’s not only unfinished but actually ends mid-sentence – and no-one knows why. It also happens to be the source of the legend of Atlantis. We talk about why Plato may have abandoned it, and how its incompleteness has fed into its (mis)interpretation.

Steve wrote his Ph.D. under the supervision of Prof. Richard Buxton, arguably the leading scholar on Greek myth in the world. He’s spent the last 40 years travelling in the world of the ancient Greeks and Romans, both physically and in his head, and he's been a Classics tutor for some 30 years. He currently works out of the Oxford University Department for Continuing Education.

Useful links

Steve’s Brief History of Atlantis: Plato’s Ideal State (including Steve’s translation of Critias): A Brief History of Atlantis by Stephen

Mythologica, Steve’s children’s book on Greek mythology Mythologica by Stephen P. Kershaw |

You’re Dead to Me episode on Atlantis: You're Dead To Me - Atlantis - BBC Sounds 

Steve’s website: http://www.stevekershaw.com/index.html

unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are unfinished, abandoned, or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an unfinished or private project you’d like to talk about, please email [email protected], contact Em on Instagram @unfinishingpod or on Twitter  @TrueBagglerag.

My guest this week is Jo Moseley, who is a beach cleaner, joy encourager & midlife adventurer. Alongside her lovely day job, she is also a speaker, writer and podcast host. She’s a single mum of two sons, aged 26 and 22, and she lives on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales. In August 2019, Jo became the first woman to SUP (stand up paddleboard) coast-to-coast 162 miles along the Leeds Liverpool Canal, picking up litter, fundraising for the Wave Project and the 2 Minute Beach Clean Foundation, and raising awareness of the problems of single use plastic. Jo worked with filmmaker Frit Tam to make a film about her journey called Brave Enough - A Journey Home to Joy.

We speak about Jo’s second book on Paddleboarding, which she took the very brave and unusual decision not to publish (despite having spent months working on it!) Jo tells me why she made that decision, and the process she went through to (very kindly) explain it to all the people who had helped in its creation.

Jo also explains to me the experiences she’s had with miscarriage, and why the grief of that feels to her like it will always be unfinished, as well as telling me how she’s still in an ongoing process of exploring her own dreams and ambitions – which she wasn’t able to realise in her 30s and 40s.

In June 2022, Jo’s first book Stand Up Paddleboarding in Great Britain - Beautiful Places to Paddleboard in England, Scotland and Wales was published by award winning Vertebrate Publishing. 

Two of Jo’s films Finding Joy and ⁠Found at Sea⁠ have both won awards.

You can find out more at: www.jomoseley.com and Jo's column in Stand-Up Paddleboarding Magazine is here: ⁠https://standuppaddlemag.co.uk/paddleboarding-for-good/⁠

Follow Jo on Instagram (⁠https://www.instagram.com/jomoseley/⁠) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/Healthyhappy50).

unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are unfinished, abandoned, or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an unfinished or private project you’d like to talk about, please email [email protected], contact Em on Instagram @unfinishingpod or on Twitter  @TrueBagglerag.

My guest this week is Faye Latham, who is a writer, visual poet and rock climber based in the Lake District. In January 2020 she was awarded the Literature Wales Bursary for Writers Under 25 to support the development of her poetry, which resulted in her work being published in journals and magazines including UKClimbing.com, Lumin Journal, The CTC Rewilding Anthology, and the Cambridge Literary Review. In 2021 she was awarded a grant with the Society of Authors and her pamphlet Ruin/Nation was highly commended in the Poetry Wales Pamphlet Competition. Faye is also one of the organisers of Kendal Mountain Festival. 

Her first poetry collection is called British Mountaineers and in it she uses a style called erasure poetry. This involves taking writing composed by someone else and erasing large parts of it so that what remains creates a poem. British Mountaineers was originally a text by the mountaineer Frank Smythe, who was a well-known climber active in the 1920s and 1930s. Faye and I talk about how creating something new from Smythe’s text felt to her like a process of ‘unfinishing’ it – of showing that the tale he told was not the end of the story. 

We also talk about how Faye turned to poetry partly because she found it hard to finish novels, and about a possible erasure project for the future that has an environmental focus. At the end of the episode we get on to chatting about different forms of erasure/ unfinishing, such as the toppled statue of Edward Colston, and the Banksy artwork (now called Love is in the bin) that involved one of his paintings being shredded just after being sold. 

Links of interest:

British Mountaineers: https://www.littlepeak.co.uk/catalogue/british-mountaineers-international-orders_73/ 

Frank Smythe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Smythe 

Sarah J Sloat's book Hotel Almighty: https://www.sarahjsloat.com/publications/

unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are unfinished, abandoned, or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an unfinished or private project you’d like to talk about, please email [email protected], contact Em on Instagram @unfinishingpod or on Twitter  @TrueBagglerag.

Rebecca Coles is a mountaineer. Her unfinished project is to climb all 82 of the 4000m alpine peaks with an all-female team.

Becky specialises in remote expeditions and has made first ascents in Nepal and South Georgia, Antarctica. She’s led expeditions on all seven continents, and she’s a Winter Mountaineering and Climbing Instructor and an International Mountain Leader. She has a PhD in Glacial Geomorphology.

We talked about the great number of different things that have to come together to achieve all 82 peaks, about trying to get to sleep the night before you attempt to summit, and about why Becky enjoys training military personnel.

Becky also tells me about how she motivated a judge with no walking experience to complete an ascent of Kilimanjaro, about what it feels like on a first ascent expedition when you don’t quite make it to the top, and why looking negatively at unfinished things is a dinner-party problem, rather than a personal one.

At the end of the episode, we spend a bit of time talking about Becky’s next expedition: she’s leading a 280km, camel-supported desert trek in Sudan.

Find out more about Rebecca Coles here: https://www.instagram.com/roam.mtns/

Rebecca’s piece in Sidetracked about her first ascent of Lasarmula: https://www.sidetracked.com/a-mountain-affair/

The UIAA:

https://theuiaa.org/

Rob Johnson, filmmaker:

https://www.instagram.com/filmuphigh/?hl=en

Franco Cookson is climber and the star of Fall Theory, a film by Alistair Lee that premiered in 2021, and which follows Franco completing the first ascent of an incredibly dangerous route called the Immortal in North Yorkshire.

We talk about my guesses of things Franco may not have finished (two climbing routes and an article it turns out he doesn’t remember writing). We then cover how having unfinished climbing projects is inevitable (since at some point failure is guaranteed), how climbing routes take on personalities as more people complete them, and about the importance of thinking through what could go wrong in preparation for doing a climb.

I happened to speak to Franco on his very first day as a fully professional climber, so we also speak about the socio-economic barriers to going professional, the possible effects of social media on the process, and why you’re probably doing it wrong if you enjoy doing promotion too much.

There are also bits about castles in Northumberland, about how the pupils Franco used to teach didn’t know he was also a climber, about Franco’s enthusiasm for climbers who aren’t from the normal climbing areas, and – right at the end – a bit about a play Franco started to write while at university in Manchester.

unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are unfinished, abandoned, or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an unfinished or private project you’d like to talk about, please email [email protected], contact Em on Instagram @unfinishingpod or on Twitter  @TrueBagglerag.

unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are unfinished, abandoned, or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an unfinished or private project you’d like to talk about, please email [email protected], contact Em on Instagram @unfinishingpod or on Twitter  @TrueBagglerag.

In this special episode, unfinishing went on the road to Kendal Mountain Festival 2022. I interviewed a lovely bunch of contributors and visitors to the festival about projects they haven’t finished. I’ve collected some of the interviews together to give you a flavour of the festival and of the extraordinary people who attend.

The first interview you’ll hear is with Steve Scott, who’s director of Kendal Mountain Festival. As well as telling me about the history and future of the festival, it turns out Steve has his own unfinished project – he has some really thoughtful ideas for a film on the theme of departure.

I speak to Jenny Tough, who’s an author and filmmaker who travels solo across mountain ranges around the world. We talk about procrastination, about the difficulties of recovering mentally after finishing an enormous expedition, and the process of combining travelling with writing.

I also talk to Charlie Smith, who’s become an expert in cold-weather expeditions, because he’s been attempting to cross Iceland for the last eight years (in the middle of winter, from North to south). The idea was originally born at Kendal many years ago, and Charlie tells me about how making the attempts have become woven into his life and self-development.

My other interviewees are:

Siobhan Daniels, author of Retirement Rebel, who has an inspiring message about encouraging women to not be afraid of aging.

Andy Dodd, from the fabulous charity Climbers Against Cancer.

Amy Hogg, a climbing instructor whose ADHD means she doesn’t always finish things immediately, but who’s able to transfer her determination to finish to those she climbs with.

Coline Payne, who was inspired by Mike Carter's One Man and His Bike to cycle all the way around the coast of the UK.

Lewis Hobson is the founder of Durham Spray Paints, and he creates beautiful and very large murals for communities and local businesses around the North East. We spoke about Lewis’s move from doing graffiti to doing murals, taking risks, and having the optimism to start new projects without worrying about where they’re going.

I had a lot of fun talking to Lewis about a whole range of unfinished projects, including a climbing YouTube channel, an outdoor community climbing wall, and a series of stories and novels that were inspired by vivid dreams. (The highlights are a Geordie sci-fi novel, a story about humans having wings, and a story about what might happen if a porn site sponsored space exploration.) Towards the end of the episode there’s also an excellent anecdote about a time Lewis went to a poetry night in disguise and then ran into a work colleague.

Find out more about Durham Spray Paints here: www.durhamspraypaints.com, on Facebook here, and on Instagram here.

Lewis's Epic TV episode is here, and the buildering map is here.

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unfinishing is presented by Em Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an unfinished or private project you’d like to talk about, please email [email protected], contact Em on Twitter @TrueBagglerag, or find Em on Instagram @thebagglerag.

Lewis Hobson is the founder of Durham Spray Paints, and he creates beautiful and very large murals for communities and local businesses around the North East. We spoke about Lewis’s move from doing graffiti to doing murals, taking risks, and having the optimism to start new projects without worrying about where they’re going.

I had a lot of fun talking to Lewis about a whole range of unfinished projects, including a climbing YouTube channel, an outdoor community climbing wall, and a series of stories and novels that were inspired by vivid dreams. (The highlights are a Geordie sci-fi novel, a story about humans having wings, and a story about what might happen if a porn site sponsored space exploration.) Towards the end of the episode there’s also an excellent anecdote about a time Lewis went to a poetry night in disguise and then ran into a work colleague.

Find out more about Durham Spray Paints here: www.durhamspraypaints.com, on Facebook here, https://www.facebook.com/DurhamSprayPaints/?ref=page_internal, and on Instagram here https://www.instagram.com/durhamspraypaints/?hl=en. 

Lewis's Epic TV episode is here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EIQ7RakpsHw and the buildering map is here.

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unfinishing is presented by Em Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an unfinished or private project you’d like to talk about, please email [email protected], contact Em on Twitter @TrueBagglerag, or find Em on Instagram @thebagglerag.

unfinishing celebrates projects that never got finished, that have yet to be finished, or that never made it out into the world. I ask my guests to search their memories to rediscover and enjoy secret and incomplete schemes.

My guest in this episode is Anna Fleming, who is a climber and a writer. In January 2022 she published Time on Rock – A Climber’s Route into the Mountains, which in July was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize for nature writing.

In Anna’s words Time on Rock is a nature writing book about rock climbing. In it, she traces how she learnt to climb, and she shows how being a climber can give you a privileged and distinctive physical understanding of different landscapes.

Time on Rock does a wonderful job of illustrating how climbing is an ever-changing, ever-developing way of life: in other words something that very much can’t be finished.

In our conversation we talk about how climbing can be affected by other aspects of life, such as different relationships with climbing partners, where you live, and death and injury among members of the climbing community. We also talk about climbing as ‘embodied chess’, parenting, and how climbing demands a perfect balance between introversion and extraversion. (And, right at the end, Anna has some tips about vomiting seabirds).

More information about Helen Mort’s A Line Above the Sky can be found here: A Line Above the Sky (penguin.co.uk)

More information about Faye Latham’s British Mountaineers is available here: https://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/literature/between_the_lines_of_british_mountaineers_-_climbing_erasure_poetry-14319 You can find out about Faye’s event at Kendal Mountain Festival here: Faye Latham - British Mountaineers (kendalmountainfestival.com)

And if you’re intrigued by Joe Simpson and Touching the Void, follow this link: Touching the Void (2003) - IMDb

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unfinishing is presented by Em Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an unfinished or private project you’d like to talk about, please email [email protected], or contact Em on Twitter @TrueBagglerag.

NEXT EPISODE OUT SUNDAY 14 AUGUST - WITH ANNA FLEMING

Anna Fleming is a climber and a writer. In January 2022 she published Time on Rock – A Climber’s Route into the Mountains, which in July was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize for nature writing.

In Anna’s words Time on Rock is a nature writing book about rock climbing. In it, she traces how she learnt to climb, and she shows how being a climber can give you a privileged and distinctive physical understanding of different landscapes.

Time on Rock does a wonderful job of illustrating how climbing is an ever-changing, ever-developing way of life: in other words something that very much can’t be finished.

In our conversation we talk about how climbing can be affected by other aspects of life, such as different relationships with climbing partners, where you live, and death and injury among members of the climbing community. We also talk about climbing as ‘embodied chess’, parenting, and how climbing demands a perfect balance between introversion and extraversion. (And, right at the end, Anna has some tips about vomiting seabirds).

More information about Helen Mort’s A Line Above the Sky can be found here: A Line Above the Sky (penguin.co.uk)

More information about Faye Latham’s British Mountaineers is available here: https://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/literature/between_the_lines_of_british_mountaineers_-_climbing_erasure_poetry-14319 You can find out about Faye’s event at Kendal Mountain Festival here: Faye Latham - British Mountaineers (kendalmountainfestival.com)

And if you’re intrigued by Joe Simpson and Touching the Void, follow this link: Touching the Void (2003) - IMDb

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unfinishing is presented by Em Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an unfinished or private project you’d like to talk about, please email [email protected], or contact Em on Twitter @TrueBagglerag.