Every month, Executive Committee member Sadie rounds up some of the best podcasts she’s heard. Got a suggestion? Email us at sadie[at]ga-pa.org!
BBC Seriously – Reimagining the City: Reykjavik
John Grant is an accomplished musician – you might know him for his haunting song “I Wanna Go to Marz” – , as well as a linguist. He speaks German, Spanish, French and Russian, amongst others. Icelandic, however, has been a real challenge. “The combination of sounds, the phonetics of Icelandic, are beyond evil…I get giddy about synthesisers and language grammar,” John tells the Seriously podcast. In this slow and emotive episode, John guides us through the city of Reykjavik, mapping out his emotional attachment to the place and pointing out what inspires him.
Maria Popova runs the amazing blog Brain Pickings, which attracts millions of viewers every month. She talks on this recent On Being podcast about its journey from being a weekly email to seven colleagues, to its current form as a deep online well of musings on literature, philosophy, and art. “You have a faith in the power of ideas which is so … un-American,” host Krista Tippett tells the Bulgarian-born Popova.
Skylines Podcast – Gender and the City
Caroline Criado-Perez is a writer, journalist and feminist campaigner, and Lauren Elkin is the author of Flaneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London. In this episode of Skylines, they – along with other guests – talk about why urban planners need to take account of gender when designing cities, and how gendered experiences varies from city to city.
