Podcasts about Biggles

I was taken aback by how long it had been since I'd last come to town. It's amazing how time creeps up on you like that. One minute you're at Grandma and Grandad's place every few months, knocking around with your siblings. The next you're going through Grandad's drawers, packing him a bag of his most precious possessions. The next, you realise it's three years since you even drove down his street. State Highway One was an absolute shocker. I was driving the old straight line, heading South from Christchurch. Rolleston, Dunsandel, Rakaia. The storm was fierce. There was surface flooding and the rivers were up which obviously made things worse, but some of the potholes were so large they could've swallowed the irrigators that usually crawl the paddocks on either side of the road. Those irrigators have brought a lot of prosperity to mid-Canterbury. But not on Grandad's street. His place was an old state house on what Dad always called the wrong side of the tracks. Given the main trunk line cuts right through the middle of town, it's a literal thing in Ashburton. Dad reckons the family moved in in about 1967. A two-bedroom place, clad in a shocking baby blue, an 85m2 state house, on a 900m2 section. They don't do property like that anymore. The Tames had arrived from UK a few years earlier – migration had cost them everything they had. By the early 1980s, on his limited income, Grandad saved up and for $21,500 he bought the house from the government as a home for life. He spent his working life slowly chipping away and paying off the mortgage. The quarter acre dream. Grandad always had an amazing garden. He made the most of all that space. There were vegetable beds and fruit trees, a huge compost heap. Flowers out the front. Harakeke. We used to play games of hide-and-seek and go-home-stay-home before retiring inside for luncheon and tomato sauce sandwiches and vegetable soup. At home, our parents didn't put salt in our food, and it was always a thrill to eat a hot lunch prepared by someone less concerned by cholesterol readings. The neighbours back then were mixed. I remember Grandad telling us once that if we hit the tennis ball over the fence it was best to just get a new one. I doubt the Police were strangers to the neighbourhood. Inside, I used to curl up in Grandad's La-Z-Boy and read Grandma's gossip magazines by the fire. On the times we stayed over, I read old Biggles stories. We'd all get covered in Labrador fur. They had a faux grandfather clock in the living room with a mechanism that filled every silence. Click, click, click. Grandad lived in that house for 55 years. He raised his sons there. He lost his wife, there. When it finally came time to leave, my cousin found his war medals, hidden away in a clothes drawer. When I came around the corner, the rain was pelting the windscreen. It took just a moment to get my bearings. The little place next door was gone. A similarly vast section, where once there was a humble cottage, it was filled now with a tidy row of modern units. But there was Grandad's. Some of the baby blue cladding was missing. The harakeke and the flowers at the front had all been ripped out. I'm sure the veggie patch is done. But the house was still there. Tired, but still there. Nothing lasts forever. I can't say with certainty when I'll be back. But I know one day I'll come around that corner, and Grandad's place will be gone too. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Steve spotted his first bats of the year out on the wing this week—a sure sign that spring's on the way. Have you seen any yet? Text the show to tell Steve about your first bat of the year and see if we can draw up a picture of where bats have been seen across the country during this spell of warmer weather. Don't forget to include your name.S6E65 In this noisy episode, we're taking you to the heart of the Restore Nature Now march in Central London, where 60,000+ passionate individuals gathered on June 22nd 2024, to demand stronger action for nature. The Bat Conservation Trust formed part of the march in the 'air' block which started adjacent to Hyde Park where Biggles the bat flew high above the crowds. Steve speaks to people as the march progresses to Downing Street and onto Parliament Square to find out what caused them to travel to London for the day.Restore Nature Now websiteBiggles the Bat's Instagram AccountBCT's page on the marchThank you to Wildcare for sponsoring series 6 of BatChat.Quote BATCHAT at the Wildcare checkout for 10% off all bat detectors and bat boxes. Steve spotted his first bats of the year out on the wing this week—a sure sign that spring's on the way. Have you seen any yet? Text the show using the link at the top to tell Steve about your first bat of the year and see if we can draw up a picture of where bats have been seen across the country during this spell of warmer weather. Don't forget to include your name.WildcareDisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Support the showPlease leave us a review or star rating if your podcast app allows it because it helps us to reach a wider audience so that we can spread the word about how great bats are. How to write a podcast review (and why you should).Got a story to share with us? Please get in touch via comms@bats.org.ukBats are magical but misunderstood. At BCT our vision is a world rich in wildlife where bats and people thrive together. Action to protect & conserve bats is having a positive impact on bat populations in the UK. We would not be able to continue our work to protect bats & their habitats without your contribution so if you can please donate. We need your support now more than ever: www.bats.org.uk/donate Thank you!

The worst pilot Richard & G have ever seen, and hopefully, will ever see. Plus G tells Richard about the 96 Biggles books...

Dynamic people will surely love this episode, in which we set off Biggles' Fractal Trap, consider the line between fun and interesting, go Welding, and dip into Russian pockets. The game is very much on.Full show notes are at https://offgrid.tlmb.net/Some General Knowledge, a mini-quiz, and some fun trivia we didn't necessarily know until just now.Before each recording, the hosts & their guest solve a cryptic crossword. In the podcast, we riff on words in the grid or clues (spoilers!), telling each other things we find funny or interesting about them. We'll also pick a favourite clue each, and explain how it works to the listener, and have a mini-quiz, also inspired by the puzzle. You don't have to solve or understand cryptic crosswords yourself to enjoy this podcast, but hopefully we might intrigue and tempt you to dip your toes in the water. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

0.00 – Ditts, ‘The worst I've seen Port in years' 3.30 – Houston needs to be taking kick ins not Farrell 5.00 – Jars says Port aren't a top 8 team 6.00 – Biggles says Finlayson needs to come in for Lord 8.00 – Ditts dig at ‘Modern football' defence 10.30 – Will Rozee be carrying this hamstring all season? 11.00 – Jars, “Swans have gears, Crows don't have gears”12.00 – Crows don't have the talent depth bottom line 12.30 – Would Jack Graham be a good fit at Crows? 13.45 – Jars, “Whoever chose to rebuild, it was a horrible decision” 15.15 – Are injuries a real excuse for the Crows? 16.00 - What is Strachan's future with the Crows? 19.00 – Josh Rachele caught out not putting body on the line again 20.15 – Thilthorpe and Tex could make big impact back half of year 21.00 – Horse Longmire ruined the Amartey Party!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

0.00 – Ditts, ‘The worst I've seen Port in years' 3.30 – Houston needs to be taking kick ins not Farrell 5.00 – Jars says Port aren't a top 8 team 6.00 – Biggles says Finlayson needs to come in for Lord 8.00 – Ditts dig at ‘Modern football' defence 10.30 – Will Rozee be carrying this hamstring all season? 11.00 – Jars, “Swans have gears, Crows don't have gears”12.00 – Crows don't have the talent depth bottom line 12.30 – Would Jack Graham be a good fit at Crows? 13.45 – Jars, “Whoever chose to rebuild, it was a horrible decision” 15.15 – Are injuries a real excuse for the Crows? 16.00 - What is Strachan's future with the Crows? 19.00 – Josh Rachele caught out not putting body on the line again 20.15 – Thilthorpe and Tex could make big impact back half of year 21.00 – Horse Longmire ruined the Amartey Party!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Port Adelaide legend Byron Pickett joins us – he designed Port's Indigenous jumper to be worn for the first time on Sunday and Australian Olympic legend Steve Bradbury joins us… he has been awarded with a bravery award for saving four young girls from drowning.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The world is full of words, but how many do we miss because they need to be heard? There is something about audio. I have books. Lots of them. Books have filled my life for a long time. From an early age, I had an insatiable appetite for reading. The earliest books I remember were about Biggles, a World War One wartime pilot. Then transitioning on to large classic doorstops such as ‘Lord of the Rings', ‘The Count of Monte Cristo' or ‘Les Misérables'. Great books. Classic Books. Books that have shaped the world. If you want to fully get swept along in the story, forget popcorn movie versions. Read them, or deep dive into the audio version for richness of language. There is something about audio. Good audio read by orators that have trained their voice to linger long on some words and rush over others can take the brain into the very scene with an imaginative magic. Oh yes, and then there is music! Can music be read? Yes, you can read music, but it was always meant to be heard and absorbed into the soul like a sound wave washing on a shore.   Read this further here Sign up for my weekly email full of help for your Mental Health, Faith and Spiritual Formation. FOLLOW ME! Email me: barry@turningthepage.co.nz Website: https://turningthepage.co.nz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turningthepage1atatime Twitter: https://twitter.com/barrypearman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barry_pearman/ Podcast https://turningthepage.co.nz/podcast-listen-mental-health/ Support Turning the Page with a Donation https://turningthepage.co.nz/give/

Goof & Goot hebben het ouwe boeken (Biggles!) en nieuwe struts (X-66!), over Calhoun en Muilenberg (Boeing!) en Aspect Ratio (F-104!). Kortom: één chaos waar u maar weer orde in moet zien te scheppen…

Chairman Mao was a librarian. Stalin was a published poet. Evelyn Waugh served as a commando - before leaving to write Brideshead Revisited. Since the advent of modern warfare, books have all too often found themselves on the frontline. In The Book At War: Libraries and Readers in an Age of Conflict (Basic Books, 2023), acclaimed historian Dr. Andrew Pettegree traces the surprising ways in which written culture - from travel guides and scientific papers to Biggles and Anne Frank - has shaped, and been shaped, by the conflicts of the modern age. From the American Civil War to the invasion of Ukraine, books, authors and readers have gone to war - and in the process become both deadly weapons and our most persuasive arguments for peace. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Chairman Mao was a librarian. Stalin was a published poet. Evelyn Waugh served as a commando - before leaving to write Brideshead Revisited. Since the advent of modern warfare, books have all too often found themselves on the frontline. In The Book At War: Libraries and Readers in an Age of Conflict (Basic Books, 2023), acclaimed historian Dr. Andrew Pettegree traces the surprising ways in which written culture - from travel guides and scientific papers to Biggles and Anne Frank - has shaped, and been shaped, by the conflicts of the modern age. From the American Civil War to the invasion of Ukraine, books, authors and readers have gone to war - and in the process become both deadly weapons and our most persuasive arguments for peace. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Chairman Mao was a librarian. Stalin was a published poet. Evelyn Waugh served as a commando - before leaving to write Brideshead Revisited. Since the advent of modern warfare, books have all too often found themselves on the frontline. In The Book At War: Libraries and Readers in an Age of Conflict (Basic Books, 2023), acclaimed historian Dr. Andrew Pettegree traces the surprising ways in which written culture - from travel guides and scientific papers to Biggles and Anne Frank - has shaped, and been shaped, by the conflicts of the modern age. From the American Civil War to the invasion of Ukraine, books, authors and readers have gone to war - and in the process become both deadly weapons and our most persuasive arguments for peace. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

Chairman Mao was a librarian. Stalin was a published poet. Evelyn Waugh served as a commando - before leaving to write Brideshead Revisited. Since the advent of modern warfare, books have all too often found themselves on the frontline. In The Book At War: Libraries and Readers in an Age of Conflict (Basic Books, 2023), acclaimed historian Dr. Andrew Pettegree traces the surprising ways in which written culture - from travel guides and scientific papers to Biggles and Anne Frank - has shaped, and been shaped, by the conflicts of the modern age. From the American Civil War to the invasion of Ukraine, books, authors and readers have gone to war - and in the process become both deadly weapons and our most persuasive arguments for peace. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Chairman Mao was a librarian. Stalin was a published poet. Evelyn Waugh served as a commando - before leaving to write Brideshead Revisited. Since the advent of modern warfare, books have all too often found themselves on the frontline. In The Book At War: Libraries and Readers in an Age of Conflict (Basic Books, 2023), acclaimed historian Dr. Andrew Pettegree traces the surprising ways in which written culture - from travel guides and scientific papers to Biggles and Anne Frank - has shaped, and been shaped, by the conflicts of the modern age. From the American Civil War to the invasion of Ukraine, books, authors and readers have gone to war - and in the process become both deadly weapons and our most persuasive arguments for peace. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

Today on the show, Steven and Shaun discuss the not-often-talked-about problem of facing ableism from other people who are blind, following a strange experience Steven had on social media recently.Also, listener Felix shares his issues around iOS 17, Gordon talks about using Aira with his audio sunglasses and Biggles asks if we should be using Open AI ChatGPT for medical advice.Get in touch with the Double Tappers and join the conversation:Email: feedback@doubletaponair.comCall: 1-877-803-4567 (Canada and USA) / 0204 571 3354 (UK)X (formerly Twitter): @BlindGuyTech / @ShaunShedMastodon: @DoubleTap

Vi omges av text hela tiden, även när vi inte tänker på det. Så kanske är inte problemet att vi läser vi för lite utan att vi behöver ro för att läsa ordentligt, funderar Torbjörn Elensky. Lyssna på alla avsnitt i Sveriges Radio Play. ESSÄ: Detta är en text där skribenten reflekterar över ett ämne eller ett verk. Åsikter som uttrycks är skribentens egna. Först publicerad den 13 april 2021.Redan som liten var jag en närmast tvångsmässig läsare. Jag plöjde mjölkpaketens baksidor och Kalle Anka medan jag åt mackor efter skolan, med samma glupande aptit som äventyrsböcker innan jag somnade in på kvällen. Snart började jag med ryska klassiker och gick via Jules Vernes till Balzac och Flaubert. Utan minsta känsla för nivåskillnader mellan den stora litteraturens mästerverk och Tvillingdeckarna, Bill och Biggles. Den där vanan har aldrig lämnat mig, men den har förvandlats till en hälsofara.I dag invaderar texter alla delar av livet. Överallt information, underhållning, förströelse utan slut. Även under det som bara vara verkar vara bild, ljud och spel ligger texterna där. Överallt. Vi kommunicerar med korta texter, halvvägs mellan prat och skrift. Vi läser och lyssnar på texter nästan alla dygnets vakna timmar. Och det är inte bara utbrändheten som hägrar, när informationsströmmen knappt ens växlar i intensitet, utan ständigt forsar fram i så många medier, appar och kanaler. Risken är att man blir manipulerad om man motståndslöst låter sig dras med i flödet. Och vem klarar att bjuda motstånd hela tiden? Texterna skrivs med avsikter och algoritmerna tenderar att ge mig det som ligger i linje med det jag tidigare läst, även om jag aktivt försöker motverka deras insnävning av min utblick i världen.Hösten 1956 kontaktade den amerikanske presidenten Dwight D. Eisenhower författaren William Faulkner och frågade om inte han ville leda en kommitté för internationellt litterärt utbyte. Det handlade om att göra världen bättre och öka förståelsen mellan Öst och Väst genom att få fler att läsa amerikansk skönlitteratur. Faulkner var knappast någon framstående organisatör, men han tackade ja. Men nästan alla kolleger han bad att medverka svarade avvisande, en del var oförskämda, andra närmast förorättade över att de förväntades gå regeringens ärenden. Att en amerikansk författare står fri från alla myndigheter och organisationer är det bästa argument världen behöver för den amerikanska litteraturens egenvärde, ansåg de.I februari 1957 skulle Faulkner presentera sitt arbete för regeringen. Natten före presentationen satte han i sig en hel flaska Jack Daniel's. Hans enda förslag inför kommittén var: Vi borde tillverka två stämplar. På den ena ska det stå ”sant”, på den andra ”inte sant”, och med dem stämplar vi all litteratur som exporteras från USA, så råder inga oklarheter om vad som gäller.Man kan se en längtan efter liknande förenklingar i dag. Samtidigt som vi utsätts för alltfler texter, så sjunker läsförmågan. Ungdomar som lämnar gymnasiet med bra betyg i svenska klarar inte att läsa texterna på universitetets grundkurser. Intresset för skönlitteratur, som inte är genrelitteratur, är nog det lägsta sedan läskunnigheten slog igenom och romaner blev ett folknöje under 1800-talet. Varför ska man läsa fantasier när man kan läsa fakta? Varför läsa falskt när man kan läsa sant?Ja, det är inte bara den faktiska läsförmågan som tycks minska, utan förståelsen för texters många nivåer, ironi, självbespegling, och att en berättelse kan vara sann utan att vara faktabaserad, som en riktig saga alltid är sann.Tänk om de som säger att läsning är nyttigt har rätt. Man kanske faktiskt blir klokare, mera vidsynt och empatisk. Litteraturen kanske är viktig för demokratin. Biblioteken är en demokratisk rättighet, läsning utvecklar oss, och om inte annat så blir det svårt för den som inte läser under sin uppväxt att så småningom klara sig i vårt kunskapsintensiva samhälle där till och med träslöjd och idrott numera lär omfatta även teori. Men måste allt vara teori? Måste hela livet handla om text? Jag frågar detta i min egenskap av författare.För det är inte bara så kallat svaga elever som är dåliga läsare. Det gäller oss alla. En del förstår inte twitterspråket, andra inte klassiska romaner. Sociala medier gör att minsta gemensamma nämnare är det som gäller, för såväl tidningar som i privat kommunikation. Allusioner och gemensamma referenser verkar som bortflugna, utom i mindre grupper där självrefererandet gått från intertextualitet och förbindelser med världslitteraturen till intern jargong. Vad som klassas som ”svåra ord” verkar bli allt mer utvidgat, från tekniska termer till äldre uttryck. Komplikation och precision elimineras ur vårt dagliga språk. Ironi fungerar inte på nätet, det vet alla som testat. Bokstavstrogen läsning är det som gäller. Skämt fungerar bara i slutna grupper. Att ta för givet att någon känner till, vet eller förstår något är lika förolämpande som att utgå från att den inte har någon aning om det. Eftersom entydighet är omöjligt att uppnå och all läsning, utom av enklast tänkbara etiketter och skyltar, är tolkning är tillfällena för missförstånd fler än någonsin.Kanske lever vi faktiskt i post-sanningens tid, då vi inte kan enas om något för att vi inte ens kan förstå varandra? Och inte på grund av för lite information, utan för mycket brus, eller nej, dån, av textmassor som uppfyller hela världen.Historien om William Faulkner som återgavs tidigare berättas av den amerikanske litteraturforskaren Merve Emre i hennes bok Paraliterary, The making of bad readers in America. Men det är bara ett av hennes många exempel på hur litteraturen de senaste 100 åren utnyttjats för diverse syften. Hon skriver om hur den använts karaktärsdanande för unga kvinnor, för marknadsföring av USA såväl som för motstånd. Litteratur har varit en bruksvara, omgiven av så många motstridiga avsikter, sedan så länge att det framstår som ett mirakel att skönlitterär prosa ens lyckats överleva som konstform, efter all denna misshandel från både välmenande och ondsinta intressen. Svaret är förstås: på grund av läsarna. Inklusive alla de slarviga läsare som vill ha underhållning och bekräftelse. Om den vore helt beroende av närläsande experter skulle litteraturen kanske ha högre kvalitet, rent teoretiskt – men den skulle snart dö av syrebrist.Och även om jag vill säga att litteraturen har ett absolut egenvärde, höjt över alla intressen, är den också helt grundläggande för vår demokrati, vårt kulturarv, vår syn på oss själva och varandra och den utveckling av såväl kognitiva förmågor som empati, utan vilka vi inte kommer att klara oss. Det ironiska är att det är först då litteraturen befrias från nyttan som hon blir verkligt nyttig.Den tyske författaren Ernst Jünger skrev en gång att det är lika nyttigt för själen att periodvis avstå från tryckta texter som det är för kroppen att fasta. Även om fastans hälsoeffekter inte är oomtvistade är hans poäng tydlig och jag tror att han har rätt. I dagens ständiga textflöden, information och underhållning non stop, är detta att emellanåt stiga ut ur textmassorna viktigt för den mentala hälsan – men också för vår känsla och för vårt intellekt. Omgiven av konstant buller blir man en dålig lyssnare. Omgiven av konstant text blir vi alla dåliga läsare.Torbjörn Elensky, författareSändes första gången 3.11.2020

Shashi Tharoor is a member of the Indian Parliament from the Thiruvananthapuram constituency in Kerala. He previously served as the United Nations Under-Secretary General for Communications and Public Information and as the Indian Minister of State for External Affairs. He is also a prolific author, columnist, journalist and a human rights advocate. He has served on the Board of Overseers of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He is also an adviser to the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva and a Fellow of the New York Institute of the Humanities at New York University. He has also served as a trustee of the Aspen Institute, and the Advisory of the Indo-American Arts Council, the American India Foundation, the World Policy Journal, the Virtue Foundation and the human rights organization Breakthrough He is also a Patron of the Dubai Modern High School and the managing trustee of the Chandran Tharoor Foundation which he founded with his family and friends in the name of his late father, Chandran Tharoor. Tharoor has written numerous books in English. Most of his literary creations are centred on Indian themes and they are markedly “Indo-nostalgic.” Perhaps his most famous work is The Great Indian Novel, published in 1989, in which he uses the narrative and theme of the famous Indian epic Mahabharata to weave a satirical story of Indian life in a non-linear mode with the characters drawn from the Indian Independence Movement. His novel Show Business (1992) was made into the film 'Bollywood'(1994). The late Ismail Merchant had announced his wish to make a film of Tharoor's novel Riot shortly before Merchant's death in 2005. Tharoor has been a highly-regarded columnist in each of India's three best-known English-language newspapers, most recently for The Hindu newspaper (2001–2008) and in a weekly column, “Shashi on Sunday,” in the Times of India (January 2007 – December 2008). Following his resignation as Minister of State for External Affairs, he began a fortnightly column on foreign policy issues in the "Deccan Chronicle". Previously he was a columnist for the Gentleman magazine and the Indian Express newspaper, as well as a frequent contributor to Newsweek International and the International Herald Tribune. His Op-Eds and book reviews have appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, amongst other papers. Tharoor began writing at the age of 6 and his first published story appeared in the “Bharat Jyoti”, the Sunday edition of the "Free press Journal", in Mumbai at age 10. His World War II adventure novel Operation Bellows, inspired by the Biggles books, was serialized in the Junior Statesman starting a week before his 11th birthday. Each of his books has been a best-seller in India. The Great Indian Novel is currently in its 28th edition in India and his newest volume. The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone has undergone seven hardback re-printings there. Tharoor has lectured widely on India, and is often quoted for his observations, including, "India is not, as people keep calling it, an underdeveloped country, but rather, in the context of its history and cultural heritage, a highly developed one in an advanced state of decay.". He has also coined a memorable comparison of India's "thali" to the American "melting pot": "If America is a melting pot, then to me India is a thali--a selection of sumptuous dishes in different bowls. Each tastes different, and does not necessarily mix with the next, but they belong together on the same plate, and they complement each other in making the meal a satisfying repast.” In this masterclass we cover - 1. The art of sharing timeless wisdom through aphorisms 2. Frameworks on resilience, grit and navigating difficult times 3. Mental models on success, leadership and happiness

In this episode, Pastor Joshua Ortega invites H2O staff Ryan Bradley to speak on Zechariah 13. Follow along as Ryan challenges us to reject what we pursue over God and to reject what pulls us away from God. We read through one chapter each week and then come together on Sundays in house churches to discuss what we read. Once a month, we gather together for a more typical-styled service, where we record the teaching and upload it as our podcast. This summer, we're studying the book of the prophet Zechariah. If you're in the Wright State University area and want to get involved with H2O Church Wright State, please fill out a connection form at h2owrightstate.com/next-steps/life-groups, and we'd love to meet you! -- Timestamps -- (00:00) Introduction (05:53) Reading Zechariah 12-13 (08:50) Historical Context (12:07) Lessons Learned (16:22) Takeaways (30:28) Prayer (32:38) Closing with Communion -- Music -- Intro & Outro: "Fluid" by ItsWatR

1.00 – Voss knew Port matchups! 1.30 – A blip or a real issue for Port? 3.10 – Maynard calls out Port! 4.30 – Biggles says Port were already thinking about the Pies before Blues… 5.45 – Jars says Captain Jonas is no longer up to AFL standard 7.00 – Can Port have a lull and then ‘flick the switch' for finals? 7.30 – Jars actually went to the Crows game live!! 8.00 – Crows ‘frustrating loss' 8.45 – The key stat the Crows failed against the Giants 9.30 – Jars names out of form Crows players 10.30 – Nicksy needs a ‘4-week plan' 11.30 – What's happened to the tagger? 13.00 – Jars advice for Rachele's outburst 14.30 – Crows have big confidence in Michalaney 15.30 – Roo has confidence in the Crows at the MCG 16.30 – Biggles SANFL Crows who deserve a crack 17.30 – Biggles says Port would be ‘all over' Grundy if he became available.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

1.00 – Voss knew Port matchups! 1.30 – A blip or a real issue for Port? 3.10 – Maynard calls out Port! 4.30 – Biggles says Port were already thinking about the Pies before Blues… 5.45 – Jars says Captain Jonas is no longer up to AFL standard 7.00 – Can Port have a lull and then ‘flick the switch' for finals? 7.30 – Jars actually went to the Crows game live!! 8.00 – Crows ‘frustrating loss' 8.45 – The key stat the Crows failed against the Giants 9.30 – Jars names out of form Crows players 10.30 – Nicksy needs a ‘4-week plan' 11.30 – What's happened to the tagger? 13.00 – Jars advice for Rachele's outburst 14.30 – Crows have big confidence in Michalaney 15.30 – Roo has confidence in the Crows at the MCG 16.30 – Biggles SANFL Crows who deserve a crack 17.30 – Biggles says Port would be ‘all over' Grundy if he became available.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Roo, Ditts, Biggles and Dom Cassisi are all missing this week so Bernie, Jars and Sam Jacobs run through all the big news and views in South Australian footy, including Port's interesting ruckman question, Ken Hinkley's contract, All-Australians from SA and more.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Roo, Ditts, Biggles and Dom Cassisi are all missing this week so Bernie, Jars and Sam Jacobs run through all the big news and views in South Australian footy, including Port's interesting ruckman question, Ken Hinkley's contract, All-Australians from SA and more.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Roo, Ditts, Biggles and Dom Cassisi are all missing this week so Bernie, Jars and Sam Jacobs run through all the big news and views in South Australian footy, including Port's interesting ruckman question, Ken Hinkley's contract, All-Australians from SA and more.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Opener Footy Review Rusty's Motorsport Update Home and Away World Test Championship Preview Throat of Origin Tom Jonas Footy Preview What'd your partner drag you along to? Calls Jay Clark Biggles rings in spray Ferg! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Opener Footy Review Rusty's Motorsport Update Home and Away World Test Championship Preview Throat of Origin Tom Jonas Footy Preview What'd your partner drag you along to? Calls Jay Clark Biggles rings in spray Ferg! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What First World War cultural representations would you like to see adapted for the screen?  This month Angus, Chris and Jessica discuss their dream adaptations of novels, short stories and computer games for the big or small screen. Along the way, we explore what makes for a good film versus a good television series, we consider how to overcome the challenge of the Bechdel test in filming the war, and Chris introduces us to the Bertie Wooster/animé scale of realism.   References:1917, dir. by Sam Mendes (1919) AG Macdonell, England, Their England (1933) Akira, dir. by Katsuhiro Otomo (1988) All Quiet on the Western Front, dir. by Edward Berger (2022) Capt WE Johns, Biggles Goes North (1939) Capt WE Johns, Biggles Goes East (1935) Emma Hanna, The Great War on the small screen (2009) Ford Madox Ford, Parades End (1924) Frederic Manning, Her Privates We (1930) Lupin, Netflix (2021) Peter Berresford Ellis et al, Biggles!: Life of Captain WE Johns (1993) Ralph Hale Mottram, The Spanish Farm Trilogy (1930) RC Sherriff, Journey's End (1928) Sapper, Bulldog Drummond (1920) The Wind Rises, dir. by Hayao Miyazaki (2013 The Monocled Mutineer, dir. by Jim O'Brien (1986) Valiant Hearts: The Great War, Ubisoft (2014)   

Bokcirkeln IBB, Inte bara Biggles, består av fem män som bor i Visby på Gotland. Ingen av dem är infödd gotlänning, så när de ansökte om att få vara en del av romanprisjuryn tog de hjälp av den gamla Gutasagan i sin presentation..... I vanliga fall brukar de ses på torsdagar, med ärtsoppa och punsch, men nu är det måndag och det blir ost och vin...Det är en stor sak för en bokcirkel att bli vald till juryn för Sveriges Radios Romanpris. I år kommer de fyra bokcirklarna från Östergötland och Gotland. I flera månader har det nu bläddrats fram och tillbaka i de nominerade böckerna, skrivits i marginaler och på försättsblad, strukits under...Vilka är de – bokcirklarna som ska vaska fram vinnaren av romanpriset?Möt Anders Jonsson, Leif Ullrich, Peter Herthelius, Lars Danielsson och Tomas Koch som utgör bokcirkeln Inte bara Biggles i Visby.Reporter Helene Alm.

Efter nedslag i Sverige, Norge och Island styr folkmusikveteranerna Groupa nu sitt projekt "Kind of folk" söder ut på den fjärde volymen i serien har de angjort den iberiska halvön och gräver i spansk och portugisisk folkmusik. Groupa tar en paus i repetitionerna inför kommande turné och gästar dagens P1 Kultur.BATACLAN-DÅDET SKILDRAS I TVÅ NYA FILMERTerrordåden i Paris 13 november 2015 innebar ett stort trauma. Åtta år senare kommer nu två filmer som skildrar händelserna där 130 personer miste livet – och vad det nationella såret inneburit. Samtal med Felicia Frithiof, filmkritiker som tidigare arbetat för Sveriges Radio i Paris.MÖT DE SOM UTSER ÅRETS ROMANPRISTAGARENästa vecka utses årets mottagare av Sveriges radios romanpris – och vem som vinner avgörs av fyra bokcirklar. I dag hälsar vi på hos bokcirkeln IBB, Inte bara Biggles – en grupp på fem män som bor i Visby på Gotland. ESSÄ: VI HAR MYCKET ATT TACKA KONSTTJUVARNA FÖR En återkommande diskussion i vår tid handlar om återlämnande av stulna konstföremål. Men kan det också vara så att vissa konststölder räddade konsten? Den frågan ställer Thomas Steinfeld, författare och professor i kulturvetenskap i dagens OBS-essä. Programledare: Lisa WallProducent: Eskil Krogh Larsson

Sverige hade sin egen Biggles! Hör om Gustaf Lönnbergs fantastiska historia i brittiska RAF och hur de svenska piloterna i allierad tjänst stred mot Hitler med glömdes bort av hemlandet. Flera svenskar stred i det brittiska flygvapnet RAF mot Hitlertyskland. I den aktuella boken Svenska flygare mot Hitler, frivilliga i Royal Air Force 1939-45 kartlägger militärhistorikerna Lars Gyllenhaal och Lennart Westberg deras öden och äventyr. Flera av dem blev rikt dekorerade av den brittiska staten, men hemma i Sverige sågs de med misstänksamhet, och deras historia har glömts bort. För lika mycket som svenskarna älskade den fiktive Biggles, lika mycket hade man svårt att förstå sina landsmäns erfarenheter från kriget, berättar Lars Gyllenhaal.Dessutom diskuterar vi surrogatens och livsmedelssubstitutens historia i Sverige. Idag har kaffeprisets uppgång skapat krigsrubriker, men redan på 1700-talet försökte man komma runt de höga kaffepriserna med hjälp av fantasifulla surrogat, berättar historikern Hanna Hodacs som kartlägger surrogathistorien i ett nytt forskningsprojekt.Och så reder Dick Harrison ut historien om våra svenska socknar och hur de egentligen uppstod.Programledare är Tobias Svanelid.

It's time for one of those massive episodes. Well, it's a four parter anyways. 1986 was yet another massive year for horror movies. As well as containing those huge studio movies, exploitation cinema & indie horror was breaking through to little me, I could source all this thanks to the VHS rental shop. The underground was still rich at this point in time . But what do I think was the very greatest horror movie that came out during '86? Well, here we have the top 10. The worst 10. A slew of also rans. Some awesome mates. Some special guests. Several pints of beer and a 7+ hour running time split over 4 episodes. This is the 1986, A Year In Horror.It's a truly long journey this one, part 1 of 4 in fact. I am going to give you the time codes below so if you don't want spoilers then, please, avert your eyes.You can now support A Year in Horror via the Patreon.Theme Music by Max Newton& Lucy Foster.Email the podcast at ayearinhorror@gmail.comDon't bother following the podcast on Facebook. But feel free to...Follow me on Twitter.Follow me on Instagram.Follow me on Letterboxd.Below are the timecodes for all the different segments and my guest links. Feel free to let me know where you think I got it wrong or right and of course stay safe out there & I'll see you next month.0.00 - Intro14.55 - The Worst 10 Horror Movies of 198625.19 - Also Rans: Part 132.07 - Gothic (w/ Miranda Corcoran)1.03.43 - Sci-Fi Corner1.14.16 - Highlander (w/ Paul Chanter)

We're kicking off 2023 with a bonus episode featuring Tunnels of Fear by Stephen Thraves with art by Terry Oakes. This was one of two fantasy gamebooks published by Hodder and Stoughton in the early 90s (along with a whole host of licensed gamebooks featuring characters like Asterix, The Famous Five, and Biggles). It originally came with a whole bunch of cardboard and plastic peripherals and a special pair of dice. My copy lacks one peripheral and both dice. Will this affect the success of this mission into a haunted mine? Yes. Yes it will.Also this month saw the release of a brand new zine called Sites Unzine featuring an experimental RPG by HJDoom. My lovely patrons at www.patreon.com/hjdoom have already had a copy of this game but if you'd like to support independent creators then you can take a look at issue one here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/420480/SITES-UNZINE-ISSUE-1

Michael Chapman 1928-2022 It is with huge sadness that we announce the passing of Michael Chapman, who whilst serving as Executive Producer was the most important member of The Bill production team for over a decade; instrumental not only in the creation of the series, but also its enormous success in the 1990s. I'm sure I speak on behalf of all “The Bill” fans worldwide when I say that Michael's work will be enjoyed, celebrated and appreciated forever. We pass on deepest condolences to Michael's family, who would like to add the following statement: "He will be sorely missed by his Labrador dog Biggles, one of a long line of Labradors that were well known at The Bill, in particular Bosun after whom the studios in Merton were renamed, (and of course by his beloved three daughters and five grandchildren)” - Caroline, Ruth & Felicity Chapman

Today on the show, Steven and Shaun discuss the various accessibility features found inside the new version of Ventura, Apple's Mac operating system. Plus, we read more of your emails, including a fabulous podcast suggestion from listener Biggles, and thoughts on Amazon Echo security from Eleanor. Send your feedback to feedback@doubletaponair.com or call 1-877-803-4567 and leave us a voicemail. You can also find us across social media @DoubleTapOnAir.

Writing history & India (part 2): Shashi Tharoor & William Dalrymple tell We'd Like A Word hosts Paul Waters & Stevyn Colgan about how they write history, how they got started, why history is important, how history is used as a weapon in today's culture wars, & who has the right to write a country's history. Shashi tells us about his least favourite historian. And William dodges some extreme criticism of the bullet-from-a-gun variety & has a happy reunion with a lost manuscript. We also investigate the rumours that the character of Indiana Jones was based on William. Shashi Tharoor is former Under-Secretary General of the United Nations, former Indian Government minister, Member of the Indian Parliament, prolific author & historian. His many books include Riot, India: From Midnight to the Millennium, Nehru: The Invention of India, & An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India also published under the title Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India. William Dalrymple is one of the co-founders and co-directors of the Jaipur Literary Festival, a broadcaster, curator and the author of many books, including In Xanadu, City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi, White Mughals, The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty Delhi 1857, Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, Koh-i-Noor: The History of the World's Most Infamous Diamond (with Anita Anand) & The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company. Lots of other authors, people & topics get a mention too - JP Martin's Uncle books, Barabar Tuchmann's The March of Folly: Troy to Vietnam, Anita Anand, Stephen Fry, Gabriel Byrne, Samson Kambalu and the 4th Plinth, Americanisms, Captain WE Johns & Biggles, Operations Bellows, Enid Blyton, The Six Solvers, contested histories, the evolution of language, bloodthirsty St Agnes, Cornish & Irish giants, The Goodies, Sachin Tendulkar, Shah Rukh Khan, Narendra Modi, Neil Jordan's Lord Edward and Citizen Small, Victoria and Abdul, & Miki Berenyi (formerly of Lush, & who has an excellent memoir just out fingers crossed: how music saved me from success). We'd Like A Word is a podcast & radio show from authors Paul Waters & Stevyn Colgan. We talk with writers, readers, editors, agents, celebrities, talkers, poets, publishers, booksellers, audiobook creators about books - fiction & non-fiction. We go out on various radio & podcast platforms. Our website is http://www.wedlikeaword.com for information on Paul & Steve & our guests. We're also on Twitter @wedlikeaword & Facebook @wedlikeaword & our email is wedlikeaword@gmail.com Yes, we are embarrassed by the missing apostrophes. We like to hear from you - questions, thoughts, ideas, guest or book suggestions. Perhaps you'd like to come on We'd Like A Word to chat, review or read out passages from books. And if you're still stuck for something to read, may we recommend Blackwatertown, the thriller by Paul Waters or Cockerings, the new comic classic by Stevyn Colgan.

Writing history & India (part 1): Shashi Tharoor & William Dalrymple tell We'd Like A Word hosts Paul Waters & Stevyn Colgan about how they write history, how they got started, why history is important, how history is used as a weapon in today's culture wars, & who has the right to write a country's history. Shashi tells us about his least favourite historian. And William dodges some extreme criticism of the bullet-from-a-gun variety & has a happy reunion with a lost manuscript. We also investigate the rumours that the character of Indiana Jones was based on William. Shashi Tharoor is former Under-Secretary General of the United Nations, former Indian Government minister, Member of the Indian Parliament, prolific author & historian. His many books include Riot, India: From Midnight to the Millennium, Nehru: The Invention of India, & An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India also published under the title Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India. William Dalrymple is one of the co-founders and co-directors of the Jaipur Literary Festival, a broadcaster, curator and the author of many books, including In Xanadu, City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi, White Mughals, The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty Delhi 1857, Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, Koh-i-Noor: The History of the World's Most Infamous Diamond (with Anita Anand) & The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company. Lots of other authors, people & topics get a mention too - JP Martin's Uncle books, Barabar Tuchmann's The March of Folly: Troy to Vietnam, Anita Anand, Stephen Fry, Gabriel Byrne, Samson Kambalu and the 4th Plinth, Americanisms, Captain WE Johns & Biggles, Operations Bellows, Enid Blyton, The Six Solvers, contested histories, the evolution of language, bloodthirsty St Agnes, Cornish & Irish giants, The Goodies, Sachin Tendulkar, Shah Rukh Khan, Narendra Modi, Neil Jordan's Lord Edward and Citizen Small, Victoria and Abdul, & Miki Berenyi (formerly of Lush, & who has an excellent memoir just out fingers crossed: how music saved me from success). We'd Like A Word is a podcast & radio show from authors Paul Waters & Stevyn Colgan. We talk with writers, readers, editors, agents, celebrities, talkers, poets, publishers, booksellers, audiobook creators about books - fiction & non-fiction. We go out on various radio & podcast platforms. Our website is http://www.wedlikeaword.com for information on Paul & Steve & our guests. We're also on Twitter @wedlikeaword & Facebook @wedlikeaword & our email is wedlikeaword@gmail.com Yes, we are embarrassed by the missing apostrophes. We like to hear from you - questions, thoughts, ideas, guest or book suggestions. Perhaps you'd like to come on We'd Like A Word to chat, review or read out passages from books. And if you're still stuck for something to read, may we recommend Blackwatertown, the thriller by Paul Waters or Cockerings, the new comic classic by Stevyn Colgan.

Writing history & India (part 3): Shashi Tharoor & William Dalrymple tell We'd Like A Word hosts Paul Waters & Stevyn Colgan about how they write history, how they got started, why history is important, how history is used as a weapon in today's culture wars, & who has the right to write a country's history. Shashi tells us about his least favourite historian. And William dodges some extreme criticism of the bullet-from-a-gun variety & has a happy reunion with a lost manuscript. We also investigate the rumours that the character of Indiana Jones was based on William. Shashi Tharoor is former Under-Secretary General of the United Nations, former Indian Government minister, Member of the Indian Parliament, prolific author & historian. His many books include Riot, India: From Midnight to the Millennium, Nehru: The Invention of India, & An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India also published under the title Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India. William Dalrymple is one of the co-founders and co-directors of the Jaipur Literary Festival, a broadcaster, curator and the author of many books, including In Xanadu, City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi, White Mughals, The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty Delhi 1857, Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, Koh-i-Noor: The History of the World's Most Infamous Diamond (with Anita Anand) & The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company. Lots of other authors, people & topics get a mention too - JP Martin's Uncle books, Barabar Tuchmann's The March of Folly: Troy to Vietnam, Anita Anand, Stephen Fry, Gabriel Byrne, Samson Kambalu and the 4th Plinth, Americanisms, Captain WE Johns & Biggles, Operations Bellows, Enid Blyton, The Six Solvers, contested histories, the evolution of language, bloodthirsty St Agnes, Cornish & Irish giants, The Goodies, Sachin Tendulkar, Shah Rukh Khan, Narendra Modi, Neil Jordan's Lord Edward and Citizen Small, Victoria and Abdul, & Miki Berenyi (formerly of Lush, & who has an excellent memoir just out fingers crossed: how music saved me from success). We'd Like A Word is a podcast & radio show from authors Paul Waters & Stevyn Colgan. We talk with writers, readers, editors, agents, celebrities, talkers, poets, publishers, booksellers, audiobook creators about books - fiction & non-fiction. We go out on various radio & podcast platforms. Our website is http://www.wedlikeaword.com for information on Paul & Steve & our guests. We're also on Twitter @wedlikeaword & Facebook @wedlikeaword & our email is wedlikeaword@gmail.com Yes, we are embarrassed by the missing apostrophes. We like to hear from you - questions, thoughts, ideas, guest or book suggestions. Perhaps you'd like to come on We'd Like A Word to chat, review or read out passages from books. And if you're still stuck for something to read, may we recommend Blackwatertown, the thriller by Paul Waters or Cockerings, the new comic classic by Stevyn Colgan.

0.00  – OPENER 1.55 – Bernie and Roo on Tex re-signing 2.40 – Was another club really ever sniffing around Tex? 6.10 – When Does Travis Boak Re-Sign? 7.50– Bernie names the next coach of North Melbourne 9.20 – Ditts lauds Port's ‘Win of the Year' 9.35 –Dixon in the ruck was the answer 11.00 – Jars says Port's forward line is better without Dixon 11.45 – What's clicked for Rozee? 13.05 – Jars questions Roo about the Crows game plan 14.30 – Bernie says Matt Crouch won't be at the Crows next year 16.55 – Jars says the second Crows forward has to lift… 18.00 – Is Nicksy being tough enough on the side after a performance like that? 20.15 – Biggles gets his mail wrong again! – FUNNY 21.30 – Brodie Grundy is on the outer, would an Adelaide club take him? 24.30 – Bernie says the Crows should trade O'Brien and pickup Grundy 25.55 - Jars and Darren are on the Front Bar this Thursday! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

0.00 - Opener 1.55 – Bernie and Roo on Tex re-signing 2.40 – Was another club really ever sniffing around Tex? 6.10 – When Does Travis Boak Re-Sign? 7.35 – Jars goes off at North Melbourne over Noble sacking 10.30 – Bernie names the next coach of North Melbourne 13.30 – Ditts lauds Port's ‘Win of the Year' 13.40 –Dixon in the ruck was the answer 15.10 – Jars says Port's forward line is better without Dixon 15.55 – What's clicked for Rozee? 17.20 – Jars questions Roo about the Crows game plan 18.40 – Bernie says Matt Crouch won't be at the Crows next year 21.00 – Jars says the second forward has to lift… 22.40 – Is Nicksy being tough enough on the side after a performance like that? 24.15 – Biggles gets his mail wrong again! – FUNNY 25.40 – Brodie Grundy is on the outer, would an Adelaide club take him? 29.50 – Bernie says the Crows should trade O'Brien and pickup Grundy 31.40 – Jars creepy interview with Crows Patty Parnell 34.40 – Jars and Darren are on the Front Bar this Thursday!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week's episode looks at “All You Need is Love”, the Our World TV special, and the career of the Beatles from April 1966 through August 1967. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a thirteen-minute bonus episode available, on "Rain" by the Beatles. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ NB for the first few hours this was up, there was a slight editing glitch. If you downloaded the old version and don't want to redownload the whole thing, just look in the transcript for "Other than fixing John's two flubbed" for the text of the two missing paragraphs. Errata I say "Come Together" was a B-side, but the single was actually a double A-side. Also, I say the Lennon interview by Maureen Cleave appeared in Detroit magazine. That's what my source (Steve Turner's book) says, but someone on Twitter says that rather than Detroit magazine it was the Detroit Free Press. Also at one point I say "the videos for 'Paperback Writer' and 'Penny Lane'". I meant to say "Rain" rather than "Penny Lane" there. Resources No Mixcloud this week due to the number of songs by the Beatles. I have read literally dozens of books on the Beatles, and used bits of information from many of them. All my Beatles episodes refer to: The Complete Beatles Chronicle by Mark Lewisohn, All The Songs: The Stories Behind Every Beatles Release by Jean-Michel Guesdon, And The Band Begins To Play: The Definitive Guide To The Songs of The Beatles by Steve Lambley, The Beatles By Ear by Kevin Moore, Revolution in the Head by Ian MacDonald, and The Beatles Anthology. For this episode, I also referred to Last Interview by David Sheff, a longform interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono from shortly before Lennon's death; Many Years From Now by Barry Miles, an authorised biography of Paul McCartney; and Here, There, and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles by Geoff Emerick and Howard Massey. Particularly useful this time was Steve Turner's book Beatles '66. I also used Turner's The Beatles: The Stories Behind the Songs 1967-1970. Johnny Rogan's Starmakers and Svengalis had some information on Epstein I hadn't seen anywhere else. Some information about the "Bigger than Jesus" scandal comes from Ward, B. (2012). “The ‘C' is for Christ”: Arthur Unger, Datebook Magazine and the Beatles. Popular Music and Society, 35(4), 541-560. https://doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2011.608978 Information on Robert Stigwood comes from Mr Showbiz by Stephen Dando-Collins. And the quote at the end from Simon Napier-Bell is from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me, which is more entertaining than it is accurate, but is very entertaining. Sadly the only way to get the single mix of "All You Need is Love" is on this ludicrously-expensive out-of-print box set, but the stereo mix is easily available on Magical Mystery Tour. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A quick note before I start the episode -- this episode deals, in part, with the deaths of three gay men -- one by murder, one by suicide, and one by an accidental overdose, all linked at least in part to societal homophobia. I will try to deal with this as tactfully as I can, but anyone who's upset by those things might want to read the transcript instead of listening to the episode. This is also a very, very, *very* long episode -- this is likely to be the longest episode I *ever* do of this podcast, so settle in. We're going to be here a while. I obviously don't know how long it's going to be while I'm still recording, but based on the word count of my script, probably in the region of three hours. You have been warned. In 1967 the actor Patrick McGoohan was tired. He had been working on the hit series Danger Man for many years -- Danger Man had originally run from 1960 through 1962, then had taken a break, and had come back, retooled, with longer episodes in 1964. That longer series was a big hit, both in the UK and in the US, where it was retitled Secret Agent and had a new theme tune written by PF Sloan and Steve Barri and recorded by Johnny Rivers: [Excerpt: Johnny Rivers, "Secret Agent Man"] But McGoohan was tired of playing John Drake, the agent, and announced he was going to quit the series. Instead, with the help of George Markstein, Danger Man's script editor, he created a totally new series, in which McGoohan would star, and which McGoohan would also write and direct key episodes of. This new series, The Prisoner, featured a spy who is only ever given the name Number Six, and who many fans -- though not McGoohan himself -- took to be the same character as John Drake. Number Six resigns from his job as a secret agent, and is kidnapped and taken to a place known only as The Village -- the series was filmed in Portmeirion, an unusual-looking town in Gwynnedd, in North Wales -- which is full of other ex-agents. There he is interrogated to try to find out why he has quit his job. It's never made clear whether the interrogators are his old employers or their enemies, and there's a certain suggestion that maybe there is no real distinction between the two sides, that they're both running the Village together. He spends the entire series trying to escape, but refuses to explain himself -- and there's some debate among viewers as to whether it's implied or not that part of the reason he doesn't explain himself is that he knows his interrogators wouldn't understand why he quit: [Excerpt: The Prisoner intro, from episode Once Upon a Time, ] Certainly that explanation would fit in with McGoohan's own personality. According to McGoohan, the final episode of The Prisoner was, at the time, the most watched TV show ever broadcast in the UK, as people tuned in to find out the identity of Number One, the person behind the Village, and to see if Number Six would break free. I don't think that's actually the case, but it's what McGoohan always claimed, and it was certainly a very popular series. I won't spoil the ending for those of you who haven't watched it -- it's a remarkable series -- but ultimately the series seems to decide that such questions don't matter and that even asking them is missing the point. It's a work that's open to multiple interpretations, and is left deliberately ambiguous, but one of the messages many people have taken away from it is that not only are we trapped by a society that oppresses us, we're also trapped by our own identities. You can run from the trap that society has placed you in, from other people's interpretations of your life, your work, and your motives, but you ultimately can't run from yourself, and any time you try to break out of a prison, you'll find yourself trapped in another prison of your own making. The most horrifying implication of the episode is that possibly even death itself won't be a release, and you will spend all eternity trying to escape from an identity you're trapped in. Viewers became so outraged, according to McGoohan, that he had to go into hiding for an extended period, and while his later claims that he never worked in Britain again are an exaggeration, it is true that for the remainder of his life he concentrated on doing work in the US instead, where he hadn't created such anger. That final episode of The Prisoner was also the only one to use a piece of contemporary pop music, in two crucial scenes: [Excerpt: The Prisoner, "Fall Out", "All You Need is Love"] Back in October 2020, we started what I thought would be a year-long look at the period from late 1962 through early 1967, but which has turned out for reasons beyond my control to take more like twenty months, with a song which was one of the last of the big pre-Beatles pop hits, though we looked at it after their first single, "Telstar" by the Tornadoes: [Excerpt: The Tornadoes, "Telstar"] There were many reasons for choosing that as one of the bookends for this fifty-episode chunk of the podcast -- you'll see many connections between that episode and this one if you listen to them back-to-back -- but among them was that it's a song inspired by the launch of the first ever communications satellite, and a sign of how the world was going to become smaller as the sixties went on. Of course, to start with communications satellites didn't do much in that regard -- they were expensive to use, and had limited bandwidth, and were only available during limited time windows, but symbolically they meant that for the first time ever, people could see and hear events thousands of miles away as they were happening. It's not a coincidence that Britain and France signed the agreement to develop Concorde, the first supersonic airliner, a month after the first Beatles single and four months after the Telstar satellite was launched. The world was becoming ever more interconnected -- people were travelling faster and further, getting news from other countries quicker, and there was more cultural conversation – and misunderstanding – between countries thousands of miles apart. The Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan, the man who also coined the phrase “the medium is the message”, thought that this ever-faster connection would fundamentally change basic modes of thought in the Western world. McLuhan thought that technology made possible whole new modes of thought, and that just as the printing press had, in his view, caused Western liberalism and individualism, so these new electronic media would cause the rise of a new collective mode of thought. In 1962, the year of Concorde, Telstar, and “Love Me Do”, McLuhan wrote a book called The Gutenberg Galaxy, in which he said: “Instead of tending towards a vast Alexandrian library the world has become a computer, an electronic brain, exactly as an infantile piece of science fiction. And as our senses have gone outside us, Big Brother goes inside. So, unless aware of this dynamic, we shall at once move into a phase of panic terrors, exactly befitting a small world of tribal drums, total interdependence, and superimposed co-existence.… Terror is the normal state of any oral society, for in it everything affects everything all the time.…” He coined the term “the Global Village” to describe this new collectivism. The story we've seen over the last fifty episodes is one of a sort of cultural ping-pong between the USA and the UK, with innovations in American music inspiring British musicians, who in turn inspired American ones, whether that being the Beatles covering the Isley Brothers or the Rolling Stones doing a Bobby Womack song, or Paul Simon and Bob Dylan coming over to the UK and learning folk songs and guitar techniques from Martin Carthy. And increasingly we're going to see those influences spread to other countries, and influences coming *from* other countries. We've already seen one Jamaican artist, and the influence of Indian music has become very apparent. While the focus of this series is going to remain principally in the British Isles and North America, rock music was and is a worldwide phenomenon, and that's going to become increasingly a part of the story. And so in this episode we're going to look at a live performance -- well, mostly live -- that was seen by hundreds of millions of people all over the world as it happened, thanks to the magic of satellites: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "All You Need is Love"] When we left the Beatles, they had just finished recording "Tomorrow Never Knows", the most experimental track they had recorded up to that date, and if not the most experimental thing they *ever* recorded certainly in the top handful. But "Tomorrow Never Knows" was only the first track they recorded in the sessions for what would become arguably their greatest album, and certainly the one that currently has the most respect from critics. It's interesting to note that that album could have been very, very, different. When we think of Revolver now, we think of the innovative production of George Martin, and of Geoff Emerick and Ken Townshend's inventive ideas for pushing the sound of the equipment in Abbey Road studios, but until very late in the day the album was going to be recorded in the Stax studios in Memphis, with Steve Cropper producing -- whether George Martin would have been involved or not is something we don't even know. In 1965, the Rolling Stones had, as we've seen, started making records in the US, recording in LA and at the Chess studios in Chicago, and the Yardbirds had also been doing the same thing. Mick Jagger had become a convert to the idea of using American studios and working with American musicians, and he had constantly been telling Paul McCartney that the Beatles should do the same. Indeed, they'd put some feelers out in 1965 about the possibility of the group making an album with Holland, Dozier, and Holland in Detroit. Quite how this would have worked is hard to figure out -- Holland, Dozier, and Holland's skills were as songwriters, and in their work with a particular set of musicians -- so it's unsurprising that came to nothing. But recording at Stax was a different matter.  While Steve Cropper was a great songwriter in his own right, he was also adept at getting great sounds on covers of other people's material -- like on Otis Blue, the album he produced for Otis Redding in late 1965, which doesn't include a single Cropper original: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Satisfaction"] And the Beatles were very influenced by the records Stax were putting out, often namechecking Wilson Pickett in particular, and during the Rubber Soul sessions they had recorded a "Green Onions" soundalike track, imaginatively titled "12-Bar Original": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "12-Bar Original"] The idea of the group recording at Stax got far enough that they were actually booked in for two weeks starting the ninth of April, and there was even an offer from Elvis to let them stay at Graceland while they recorded, but then a couple of weeks earlier, the news leaked to the press, and Brian Epstein cancelled the booking. According to Cropper, Epstein talked about recording at the Atlantic studios in New York with him instead, but nothing went any further. It's hard to imagine what a Stax-based Beatles album would have been like, but even though it might have been a great album, it certainly wouldn't have been the Revolver we've come to know. Revolver is an unusual album in many ways, and one of the ways it's most distinct from the earlier Beatles albums is the dominance of keyboards. Both Lennon and McCartney had often written at the piano as well as the guitar -- McCartney more so than Lennon, but both had done so regularly -- but up to this point it had been normal for them to arrange the songs for guitars rather than keyboards, no matter how they'd started out. There had been the odd track where one of them, usually Lennon, would play a simple keyboard part, songs like "I'm Down" or "We Can Work it Out", but even those had been guitar records first and foremost. But on Revolver, that changed dramatically. There seems to have been a complex web of cause and effect here. Paul was becoming increasingly interested in moving his basslines away from simple walking basslines and root notes and the other staples of rock and roll basslines up to this point. As the sixties progressed, rock basslines were becoming ever more complex, and Tyler Mahan Coe has made a good case that this is largely down to innovations in production pioneered by Owen Bradley, and McCartney was certainly aware of Bradley's work -- he was a fan of Brenda Lee, who Bradley produced, for example. But the two influences that McCartney has mentioned most often in this regard are the busy, jazz-influenced, basslines that James Jamerson was playing at Motown: [Excerpt: The Four Tops, "It's the Same Old Song"] And the basslines that Brian Wilson was writing for various Wrecking Crew bassists to play for the Beach Boys: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)"] Just to be clear, McCartney didn't hear that particular track until partway through the recording of Revolver, when Bruce Johnston visited the UK and brought with him an advance copy of Pet Sounds, but Pet Sounds influenced the later part of Revolver's recording, and Wilson had already started his experiments in that direction with the group's 1965 work. It's much easier to write a song with this kind of bassline, one that's integral to the composition, on the piano than it is to write it on a guitar, as you can work out the bassline with your left hand while working out the chords and melody with your right, so the habit that McCartney had already developed of writing on the piano made this easier. But also, starting with the recording of "Paperback Writer", McCartney switched his style of working in the studio. Where up to this point it had been normal for him to play bass as part of the recording of the basic track, playing with the other Beatles, he now started to take advantage of multitracking to overdub his bass later, so he could spend extra time getting the bassline exactly right. McCartney lived closer to Abbey Road than the other three Beatles, and so could more easily get there early or stay late and tweak his parts. But if McCartney wasn't playing bass while the guitars and drums were being recorded, that meant he could play something else, and so increasingly he would play piano during the recording of the basic track. And that in turn would mean that there wouldn't always *be* a need for guitars on the track, because the harmonic support they would provide would be provided by the piano instead. This, as much as anything else, is the reason that Revolver sounds so radically different to any other Beatles album. Up to this point, with *very* rare exceptions like "Yesterday", every Beatles record, more or less, featured all four of the Beatles playing instruments. Now John and George weren't playing on "Good Day Sunshine" or "For No One", John wasn't playing on "Here, There, and Everywhere", "Eleanor Rigby" features no guitars or drums at all, and George's "Love You To" only features himself, plus a little tambourine from Ringo (Paul recorded a part for that one, but it doesn't seem to appear on the finished track). Of the three songwriting Beatles, the only one who at this point was consistently requiring the instrumental contributions of all the other band members was John, and even he did without Paul on "She Said, She Said", which by all accounts features either John or George on bass, after Paul had a rare bout of unprofessionalism and left the studio. Revolver is still an album made by a group -- and most of those tracks that don't feature John or George instrumentally still feature them vocally -- it's still a collaborative work in all the best ways. But it's no longer an album made by four people playing together in the same room at the same time. After starting work on "Tomorrow Never Knows", the next track they started work on was Paul's "Got to Get You Into My Life", but as it would turn out they would work on that song throughout most of the sessions for the album -- in a sign of how the group would increasingly work from this point on, Paul's song was subject to multiple re-recordings and tweakings in the studio, as he tinkered to try to make it perfect. The first recording to be completed for the album, though, was almost as much of a departure in its own way as "Tomorrow Never Knows" had been. George's song "Love You To" shows just how inspired he was by the music of Ravi Shankar, and how devoted he was to Indian music. While a few months earlier he had just about managed to pick out a simple melody on the sitar for "Norwegian Wood", by this point he was comfortable enough with Indian classical music that I've seen many, many sources claim that an outside session player is playing sitar on the track, though Anil Bhagwat, the tabla player on the track, always insisted that it was entirely Harrison's playing: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Love You To"] There is a *lot* of debate as to whether it's George playing on the track, and I feel a little uncomfortable making a definitive statement in either direction. On the one hand I find it hard to believe that Harrison got that good that quickly on an unfamiliar instrument, when we know he wasn't a naturally facile musician. All the stories we have about his work in the studio suggest that he had to work very hard on his guitar solos, and that he would frequently fluff them. As a technical guitarist, Harrison was only mediocre -- his value lay in his inventiveness, not in technical ability -- and he had been playing guitar for over a decade, but sitar only a few months. There's also some session documentation suggesting that an unknown sitar player was hired. On the other hand there's the testimony of Anil Bhagwat that Harrison played the part himself, and he has been very firm on the subject, saying "If you go on the Internet there are a lot of questions asked about "Love You To". They say 'It's not George playing the sitar'. I can tell you here and now -- 100 percent it was George on sitar throughout. There were no other musicians involved. It was just me and him." And several people who are more knowledgeable than myself about the instrument have suggested that the sitar part on the track is played the way that a rock guitarist would play rather than the way someone with more knowledge of Indian classical music would play -- there's a blues feeling to some of the bends that apparently no genuine Indian classical musician would naturally do. I would suggest that the best explanation is that there's a professional sitar player trying to replicate a part that Harrison had previously demonstrated, while Harrison was in turn trying his best to replicate the sound of Ravi Shankar's work. Certainly the instrumental section sounds far more fluent, and far more stylistically correct, than one would expect: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Love You To"] Where previous attempts at what got called "raga-rock" had taken a couple of surface features of Indian music -- some form of a drone, perhaps a modal scale -- and had generally used a guitar made to sound a little bit like a sitar, or had a sitar playing normal rock riffs, Harrison's song seems to be a genuine attempt to hybridise Indian ragas and rock music, combining the instrumentation, modes, and rhythmic complexity of someone like Ravi Shankar with lyrics that are seemingly inspired by Bob Dylan and a fairly conventional pop song structure (and a tiny bit of fuzz guitar). It's a record that could only be made by someone who properly understood both the Indian music he's emulating and the conventions of the Western pop song, and understood how those conventions could work together. Indeed, one thing I've rarely seen pointed out is how cleverly the album is sequenced, so that "Love You To" is followed by possibly the most conventional song on Revolver, "Here, There, and Everywhere", which was recorded towards the end of the sessions. Both songs share a distinctive feature not shared by the rest of the album, so the two songs can sound more of a pair than they otherwise would, retrospectively making "Love You To" seem more conventional than it is and "Here, There, and Everywhere" more unconventional -- both have as an introduction a separate piece of music that states some of the melodic themes of the rest of the song but isn't repeated later. In the case of "Love You To" it's the free-tempo bit at the beginning, characteristic of a lot of Indian music: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Love You To"] While in the case of "Here, There, and Everywhere" it's the part that mimics an older style of songwriting, a separate intro of the type that would have been called a verse when written by the Gershwins or Cole Porter, but of course in the intervening decades "verse" had come to mean something else, so we now no longer have a specific term for this kind of intro -- but as you can hear, it's doing very much the same thing as that "Love You To" intro: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Here, There, and Everywhere"] In the same day as the group completed "Love You To", overdubbing George's vocal and Ringo's tambourine, they also started work on a song that would show off a lot of the new techniques they had been working on in very different ways. Paul's "Paperback Writer" could indeed be seen as part of a loose trilogy with "Love You To" and "Tomorrow Never Knows", one song by each of the group's three songwriters exploring the idea of a song that's almost all on one chord. Both "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "Love You To" are based on a drone with occasional hints towards moving to one other chord. In the case of "Paperback Writer", the entire song stays on a single chord until the title -- it's on a G7 throughout until the first use of the word "writer", when it quickly goes to a C for two bars. I'm afraid I'm going to have to sing to show you how little the chords actually change, because the riff disguises this lack of movement somewhat, but the melody is also far more horizontal than most of McCartney's, so this shouldn't sound too painful, I hope: [demonstrates] This is essentially the exact same thing that both "Love You To" and "Tomorrow Never Knows" do, and all three have very similarly structured rising and falling modal melodies. There's also a bit of "Paperback Writer" that seems to tie directly into "Love You To", but also points to a possible very non-Indian inspiration for part of "Love You To". The Beach Boys' single "Sloop John B" was released in the UK a couple of days after the sessions for "Paperback Writer" and "Love You To", but it had been released in the US a month before, and the Beatles all got copies of every record in the American top thirty shipped to them. McCartney and Harrison have specifically pointed to it as an influence on "Paperback Writer". "Sloop John B" has a section where all the instruments drop out and we're left with just the group's vocal harmonies: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Sloop John B"] And that seems to have been the inspiration behind the similar moment at a similar point in "Paperback Writer", which is used in place of a middle eight and also used for the song's intro: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Paperback Writer"] Which is very close to what Harrison does at the end of each verse of "Love You To", where the instruments drop out for him to sing a long melismatic syllable before coming back in: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Love You To"] Essentially, other than "Got to Get You Into My Life", which is an outlier and should not be counted, the first three songs attempted during the Revolver sessions are variations on a common theme, and it's a sign that no matter how different the results might  sound, the Beatles really were very much a group at this point, and were sharing ideas among themselves and developing those ideas in similar ways. "Paperback Writer" disguises what it's doing somewhat by having such a strong riff. Lennon referred to "Paperback Writer" as "son of 'Day Tripper'", and in terms of the Beatles' singles it's actually their third iteration of this riff idea, which they originally got from Bobby Parker's "Watch Your Step": [Excerpt: Bobby Parker, "Watch Your Step"] Which became the inspiration for "I Feel Fine": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I Feel Fine"] Which they varied for "Day Tripper": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Day Tripper"] And which then in turn got varied for "Paperback Writer": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Paperback Writer"] As well as compositional ideas, there are sonic ideas shared between "Paperback Writer", "Tomorrow Never Knows", and "Love You To", and which would be shared by the rest of the tracks the Beatles recorded in the first half of 1966. Since Geoff Emerick had become the group's principal engineer, they'd started paying more attention to how to get a fuller sound, and so Emerick had miced the tabla on "Love You To" much more closely than anyone would normally mic an instrument from classical music, creating a deep, thudding sound, and similarly he had changed the way they recorded the drums on "Tomorrow Never Knows", again giving a much fuller sound. But the group also wanted the kind of big bass sounds they'd loved on records coming out of America -- sounds that no British studio was getting, largely because it was believed that if you cut too loud a bass sound into a record it would make the needle jump out of the groove. The new engineering team of Geoff Emerick and Ken Scott, though, thought that it was likely you could keep the needle in the groove if you had a smoother frequency response. You could do that if you used a microphone with a larger diaphragm to record the bass, but how could you do that? Inspiration finally struck -- loudspeakers are actually the same thing as microphones wired the other way round, so if you wired up a loudspeaker as if it were a microphone you could get a *really big* speaker, place it in front of the bass amp, and get a much stronger bass sound. The experiment wasn't a total success -- the sound they got had to be processed quite extensively to get rid of room noise, and then compressed in order to further prevent the needle-jumping issue, and so it's a muddier, less defined, tone than they would have liked, but one thing that can't be denied is that "Paperback Writer"'s bass sound is much, much, louder than on any previous Beatles record: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Paperback Writer"] Almost every track the group recorded during the Revolver sessions involved all sorts of studio innovations, though rarely anything as truly revolutionary as the artificial double-tracking they'd used on "Tomorrow Never Knows", and which also appeared on "Paperback Writer" -- indeed, as "Paperback Writer" was released several months before Revolver, it became the first record released to use the technique. I could easily devote a good ten minutes to every track on Revolver, and to "Paperback Writer"s B-side, "Rain", but this is already shaping up to be an extraordinarily long episode and there's a lot of material to get through, so I'll break my usual pattern of devoting a Patreon bonus episode to something relatively obscure, and this week's bonus will be on "Rain" itself. "Paperback Writer", though, deserved the attention here even though it was not one of the group's more successful singles -- it did go to number one, but it didn't hit number one in the UK charts straight away, being kept off the top by "Strangers in the Night" by Frank Sinatra for the first week: [Excerpt: Frank Sinatra, "Strangers in the Night"] Coincidentally, "Strangers in the Night" was co-written by Bert Kaempfert, the German musician who had produced the group's very first recording sessions with Tony Sheridan back in 1961. On the group's German tour in 1966 they met up with Kaempfert again, and John greeted him by singing the first couple of lines of the Sinatra record. The single was the lowest-selling Beatles single in the UK since "Love Me Do". In the US it only made number one for two non-consecutive weeks, with "Strangers in the Night" knocking it off for a week in between. Now, by literally any other band's standards, that's still a massive hit, and it was the Beatles' tenth UK number one in a row (or ninth, depending on which chart you use for "Please Please Me"), but it's a sign that the group were moving out of the first phase of total unequivocal dominance of the charts. It was a turning point in a lot of other ways as well. Up to this point, while the group had been experimenting with different lyrical subjects on album tracks, every single had lyrics about romantic relationships -- with the possible exception of "Help!", which was about Lennon's emotional state but written in such a way that it could be heard as a plea to a lover. But in the case of "Paperback Writer", McCartney was inspired by his Aunt Mill asking him "Why do you write songs about love all the time? Can you ever write about a horse or the summit conference or something interesting?" His response was to think "All right, Aunt Mill, I'll show you", and to come up with a lyric that was very much in the style of the social satires that bands like the Kinks were releasing at the time. People often miss the humour in the lyric for "Paperback Writer", but there's a huge amount of comedy in lyrics about someone writing to a publisher saying they'd written a book based on someone else's book, and one can only imagine the feeling of weary recognition in slush-pile readers throughout the world as they heard the enthusiastic "It's a thousand pages, give or take a few, I'll be writing more in a week or two. I can make it longer..." From this point on, the group wouldn't release a single that was unambiguously about a romantic relationship until "The Ballad of John and Yoko",  the last single released while the band were still together. "Paperback Writer" also saw the Beatles for the first time making a promotional film -- what we would now call a rock video -- rather than make personal appearances on TV shows. The film was directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who the group would work with again in 1969, and shows Paul with a chipped front tooth -- he'd been in an accident while riding mopeds with his friend Tara Browne a few months earlier, and hadn't yet got round to having the tooth capped. When he did, the change in his teeth was one of the many bits of evidence used by conspiracy theorists to prove that the real Paul McCartney was dead and replaced by a lookalike. It also marks a change in who the most prominent Beatle on the group's A-sides was. Up to this point, Paul had had one solo lead on an A-side -- "Can't Buy Me Love" -- and everything else had been either a song with multiple vocalists like "Day Tripper" or "Love Me Do", or a song with a clear John lead like "Ticket to Ride" or "I Feel Fine". In the rest of their career, counting "Paperback Writer", the group would release nine new singles that hadn't already been included on an album. Of those nine singles, one was a double A-side with one John song and one Paul song, two had John songs on the A-side, and the other six were Paul. Where up to this point John had been "lead Beatle", for the rest of the sixties, Paul would be the group's driving force. Oddly, Paul got rather defensive about the record when asked about it in interviews after it failed to go straight to the top, saying "It's not our best single by any means, but we're very satisfied with it". But especially in its original mono mix it actually packs a powerful punch: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Paperback Writer"] When the "Paperback Writer" single was released, an unusual image was used in the advertising -- a photo of the Beatles dressed in butchers' smocks, covered in blood, with chunks of meat and the dismembered body parts of baby dolls lying around on them. The image was meant as part of a triptych parodying religious art -- the photo on the left was to be an image showing the four Beatles connected to a woman by an umbilical cord made of sausages, the middle panel was meant to be this image, but with halos added over the Beatles' heads, and the panel on the right was George hammering a nail into John's head, symbolising both crucifixion and that the group were real, physical, people, not just images to be worshipped -- these weren't imaginary nails, and they weren't imaginary people. The photographer Robert Whittaker later said: “I did a photograph of the Beatles covered in raw meat, dolls and false teeth. Putting meat, dolls and false teeth with The Beatles is essentially part of the same thing, the breakdown of what is regarded as normal. The actual conception for what I still call “Somnambulant Adventure” was Moses coming down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments. He comes across people worshipping a golden calf. All over the world I'd watched people worshiping like idols, like gods, four Beatles. To me they were just stock standard normal people. But this emotion that fans poured on them made me wonder where Christianity was heading.” The image wasn't that controversial in the UK, when it was used to advertise "Paperback Writer", but in the US it was initially used for the cover of an album, Yesterday... And Today, which was made up of a few tracks that had been left off the US versions of the Rubber Soul and Help! albums, plus both sides of the "We Can Work It Out"/"Day Tripper" single, and three rough mixes of songs that had been recorded for Revolver -- "Doctor Robert", "And Your Bird Can Sing", and "I'm Only Sleeping", which was the song that sounded most different from the mixes that were finally released: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I'm Only Sleeping (Yesterday... and Today mix)"] Those three songs were all Lennon songs, which had the unfortunate effect that when the US version of Revolver was brought out later in the year, only two of the songs on the album were by Lennon, with six by McCartney and three by Harrison. Some have suggested that this was the motivation for the use of the butcher image on the cover of Yesterday... And Today -- saying it was the Beatles' protest against Capitol "butchering" their albums -- but in truth it was just that Capitol's art director chose the cover because he liked the image. Alan Livingston, the president of Capitol was not so sure, and called Brian Epstein to ask if the group would be OK with them using a different image. Epstein checked with John Lennon, but Lennon liked the image and so Epstein told Livingston the group insisted on them using that cover. Even though for the album cover the bloodstains on the butchers' smocks were airbrushed out, after Capitol had pressed up a million copies of the mono version of the album and two hundred thousand copies of the stereo version, and they'd sent out sixty thousand promo copies, they discovered that no record shops would stock the album with that cover. It cost Capitol more than two hundred thousand dollars to recall the album and replace the cover with a new one -- though while many of the covers were destroyed, others had the new cover, with a more acceptable photo of the group, pasted over them, and people have later carefully steamed off the sticker to reveal the original. This would not be the last time in 1966 that something that was intended as a statement on religion and the way people viewed the Beatles would cause the group trouble in America. In the middle of the recording sessions for Revolver, the group also made what turned out to be their last ever UK live performance in front of a paying audience. The group had played the NME Poll-Winners' Party every year since 1963, and they were always shows that featured all the biggest acts in the country at the time -- the 1966 show featured, as well as the Beatles and a bunch of smaller acts, the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Yardbirds, Roy Orbison, Cliff Richard and the Shadows, the Seekers, the Small Faces, the Walker Brothers, and Dusty Springfield. Unfortunately, while these events were always filmed for TV broadcast, the Beatles' performance on the first of May wasn't filmed. There are various stories about what happened, but the crux appears to be a disagreement between Andrew Oldham and Brian Epstein, sparked by John Lennon. When the Beatles got to the show, they were upset to discover that they had to wait around before going on stage -- normally, the awards would all be presented at the end, after all the performances, but the Rolling Stones had asked that the Beatles not follow them directly, so after the Stones finished their set, there would be a break for the awards to be given out, and then the Beatles would play their set, in front of an audience that had been bored by twenty-five minutes of awards ceremony, rather than one that had been excited by all the bands that came before them. John Lennon was annoyed, and insisted that the Beatles were going to go on straight after the Rolling Stones -- he seems to have taken this as some sort of power play by the Stones and to have got his hackles up about it. He told Epstein to deal with the people from the NME. But the NME people said that they had a contract with Andrew Oldham, and they weren't going to break it. Oldham refused to change the terms of the contract. Lennon said that he wasn't going to go on stage if they didn't directly follow the Stones. Maurice Kinn, the publisher of the NME, told Epstein that he wasn't going to break the contract with Oldham, and that if the Beatles didn't appear on stage, he would get Jimmy Savile, who was compering the show, to go out on stage and tell the ten thousand fans in the audience that the Beatles were backstage refusing to appear. He would then sue NEMS for breach of contract *and* NEMS would be liable for any damage caused by the rioting that was sure to happen. Lennon screamed a lot of abuse at Kinn, and told him the group would never play one of their events again, but the group did go on stage -- but because they hadn't yet signed the agreement to allow their performance to be filmed, they refused to allow it to be recorded. Apparently Andrew Oldham took all this as a sign that Epstein was starting to lose control of the group. Also during May 1966 there were visits from musicians from other countries, continuing the cultural exchange that was increasingly influencing the Beatles' art. Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys came over to promote the group's new LP, Pet Sounds, which had been largely the work of Brian Wilson, who had retired from touring to concentrate on working in the studio. Johnston played the record for John and Paul, who listened to it twice, all the way through, in silence, in Johnston's hotel room: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "God Only Knows"] According to Johnston, after they'd listened through the album twice, they went over to a piano and started whispering to each other, picking out chords. Certainly the influence of Pet Sounds is very noticeable on songs like "Here, There, and Everywhere", written and recorded a few weeks after this meeting: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Here, There, and Everywhere"] That track, and the last track recorded for the album, "She Said She Said" were unusual in one very important respect -- they were recorded while the Beatles were no longer under contract to EMI Records. Their contract expired on the fifth of June, 1966, and they finished Revolver without it having been renewed -- it would be several months before their new contract was signed, and it's rather lucky for music lovers that Brian Epstein was the kind of manager who considered personal relationships and basic honour and decency more important than the legal niceties, unlike any other managers of the era, otherwise we would not have Revolver in the form we know it today. After the meeting with Johnston, but before the recording of those last couple of Revolver tracks, the Beatles also met up again with Bob Dylan, who was on a UK tour with a new, loud, band he was working with called The Hawks. While the Beatles and Dylan all admired each other, there was by this point a lot of wariness on both sides, especially between Lennon and Dylan, both of them very similar personality types and neither wanting to let their guard down around the other or appear unhip. There's a famous half-hour-long film sequence of Lennon and Dylan sharing a taxi, which is a fascinating, excruciating, example of two insecure but arrogant men both trying desperately to impress the other but also equally desperate not to let the other know that they want to impress them: [Excerpt: Dylan and Lennon taxi ride] The day that was filmed, Lennon and Harrison also went to see Dylan play at the Royal Albert Hall. This tour had been controversial, because Dylan's band were loud and raucous, and Dylan's fans in the UK still thought of him as a folk musician. At one gig, earlier on the tour, an audience member had famously yelled out "Judas!" -- (just on the tiny chance that any of my listeners don't know that, Judas was the disciple who betrayed Jesus to the authorities, leading to his crucifixion) -- and that show was for many years bootlegged as the "Royal Albert Hall" show, though in fact it was recorded at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester. One of the *actual* Royal Albert Hall shows was released a few years ago -- the one the night before Lennon and Harrison saw Dylan: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone", Royal Albert Hall 1966] The show Lennon and Harrison saw would be Dylan's last for many years. Shortly after returning to the US, Dylan was in a motorbike accident, the details of which are still mysterious, and which some fans claim was faked altogether. The accident caused him to cancel all the concert dates he had booked, and devote himself to working in the studio for several years just like Brian Wilson. And from even further afield than America, Ravi Shankar came over to Britain, to work with his friend the violinist Yehudi Menuhin, on a duet album, West Meets East, that was an example in the classical world of the same kind of international cross-fertilisation that was happening in the pop world: [Excerpt: Yehudi Menuhin and Ravi Shankar, "Prabhati (based on Raga Gunkali)"] While he was in the UK, Shankar also performed at the Royal Festival Hall, and George Harrison went to the show. He'd seen Shankar live the year before, but this time he met up with him afterwards, and later said "He was the first person that impressed me in a way that was beyond just being a famous celebrity. Ravi was my link to the Vedic world. Ravi plugged me into the whole of reality. Elvis impressed me when I was a kid, and impressed me when I met him, but you couldn't later on go round to him and say 'Elvis, what's happening with the universe?'" After completing recording and mixing the as-yet-unnamed album, which had been by far the longest recording process of their career, and which still nearly sixty years later regularly tops polls of the best album of all time, the Beatles took a well-earned break. For a whole two days, at which point they flew off to Germany to do a three-day tour, on their way to Japan, where they were booked to play five shows at the Budokan. Unfortunately for the group, while they had no idea of this when they were booked to do the shows, many in Japan saw the Budokan as sacred ground, and they were the first ever Western group to play there. This led to numerous death threats and loud protests from far-right activists offended at the Beatles defiling their religious and nationalistic sensibilities. As a result, the police were on high alert -- so high that there were three thousand police in the audience for the shows, in a venue which only held ten thousand audience members. That's according to Mark Lewisohn's Complete Beatles Chronicle, though I have to say that the rather blurry footage of the audience in the video of those shows doesn't seem to show anything like those numbers. But frankly I'll take Lewisohn's word over that footage, as he's not someone to put out incorrect information. The threats to the group also meant that they had to be kept in their hotel rooms at all times except when actually performing, though they did make attempts to get out. At the press conference for the Tokyo shows, the group were also asked publicly for the first time their views on the war in Vietnam, and John replied "Well, we think about it every day, and we don't agree with it and we think that it's wrong. That's how much interest we take. That's all we can do about it... and say that we don't like it". I say they were asked publicly for the first time, because George had been asked about it for a series of interviews Maureen Cleave had done with the group a couple of months earlier, as we'll see in a bit, but nobody was paying attention to those interviews. Brian Epstein was upset that the question had gone to John. He had hoped that the inevitable Vietnam question would go to Paul, who he thought might be a bit more tactful. The last thing he needed was John Lennon saying something that would upset the Americans before their tour there a few weeks later. Luckily, people in America seemed to have better things to do than pay attention to John Lennon's opinions. The support acts for the Japanese shows included  several of the biggest names in Japanese rock music -- or "group sounds" as the genre was called there, Japanese people having realised that trying to say the phrase "rock and roll" would open them up to ridicule given that it had both "r" and "l" sounds in the phrase. The man who had coined the term "group sounds", Jackey Yoshikawa, was there with his group the Blue Comets, as was Isao Bito, who did a rather good cover version of Cliff Richard's "Dynamite": [Excerpt: Isao Bito, "Dynamite"] Bito, the Blue Comets, and the other two support acts, Yuya Uchida and the Blue Jeans, all got together to perform a specially written song, "Welcome Beatles": [Excerpt: "Welcome Beatles" ] But while the Japanese audience were enthusiastic, they were much less vocal about their enthusiasm than the audiences the Beatles were used to playing for. The group were used, of course, to playing in front of hordes of screaming teenagers who could not hear a single note, but because of the fear that a far-right terrorist would assassinate one of the group members, the police had imposed very, very, strict rules on the audience. Nobody in the audience was allowed to get out of their seat for any reason, and the police would clamp down very firmly on anyone who was too demonstrative. Because of that, the group could actually hear themselves, and they sounded sloppy as hell, especially on the newer material. Not that there was much of that. The only song they did from the Revolver sessions was "Paperback Writer", the new single, and while they did do a couple of tracks from Rubber Soul, those were under-rehearsed. As John said at the start of this tour, "I can't play any of Rubber Soul, it's so unrehearsed. The only time I played any of the numbers on it was when I recorded it. I forget about songs. They're only valid for a certain time." That's certainly borne out by the sound of their performances of Rubber Soul material at the Budokan: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "If I Needed Someone (live at the Budokan)"] It was while they were in Japan as well that they finally came up with the title for their new album. They'd been thinking of all sorts of ideas, like Abracadabra and Magic Circle, and tossing names around with increasing desperation for several days -- at one point they seem to have just started riffing on other groups' albums, and seem to have apparently seriously thought about naming the record in parodic tribute to their favourite artists -- suggestions included The Beatles On Safari, after the Beach Boys' Surfin' Safari (and possibly with a nod to their recent Pet Sounds album cover with animals, too), The Freewheelin' Beatles, after Dylan's second album, and my favourite, Ringo's suggestion After Geography, for the Rolling Stones' Aftermath. But eventually Paul came up with Revolver -- like Rubber Soul, a pun, in this case because the record itself revolves when on a turntable. Then it was off to the Philippines, and if the group thought Japan had been stressful, they had no idea what was coming. The trouble started in the Philippines from the moment they stepped off the plane, when they were bundled into a car without Neil Aspinall or Brian Epstein, and without their luggage, which was sent to customs. This was a problem in itself -- the group had got used to essentially being treated like diplomats, and to having their baggage let through customs without being searched, and so they'd started freely carrying various illicit substances with them. This would obviously be a problem -- but as it turned out, this was just to get a "customs charge" paid by Brian Epstein. But during their initial press conference the group were worried, given the hostility they'd faced from officialdom, that they were going to be arrested during the conference itself. They were asked what they would tell the Rolling Stones, who were going to be visiting the Philippines shortly after, and Lennon just said "We'll warn them". They also asked "is there a war on in the Philippines? Why is everybody armed?" At this time, the Philippines had a new leader, Ferdinand Marcos -- who is not to be confused with his son, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, also known as Bongbong Marcos, who just became President-Elect there last month. Marcos Sr was a dictatorial kleptocrat, one of the worst leaders of the latter half of the twentieth century, but that wasn't evident yet. He'd been elected only a few months earlier, and had presented himself as a Kennedy-like figure -- a young man who was also a war hero. He'd recently switched parties from the Liberal party to the right-wing Nacionalista Party, but wasn't yet being thought of as the monstrous dictator he later became. The person organising the Philippines shows had been ordered to get the Beatles to visit Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos at 11AM on the day of the show, but for some reason had instead put on their itinerary just the *suggestion* that the group should meet the Marcoses, and had put the time down as 3PM, and the Beatles chose to ignore that suggestion -- they'd refused to do that kind of government-official meet-and-greet ever since an incident in 1964 at the British Embassy in Washington where someone had cut off a bit of Ringo's hair. A military escort turned up at the group's hotel in the morning, to take them for their meeting. The group were all still in their rooms, and Brian Epstein was still eating breakfast and refused to disturb them, saying "Go back and tell the generals we're not coming." The group gave their performances as scheduled, but meanwhile there was outrage at the way the Beatles had refused to meet the Marcos family, who had brought hundreds of children -- friends of their own children, and relatives of top officials -- to a party to meet the group. Brian Epstein went on TV and tried to smooth things over, but the broadcast was interrupted by static and his message didn't get through to anyone. The next day, the group's security was taken away, as were the cars to take them to the airport. When they got to the airport, the escalators were turned off and the group were beaten up at the arrangement of the airport manager, who said in 1984 "I beat up the Beatles. I really thumped them. First I socked Epstein and he went down... then I socked Lennon and Ringo in the face. I was kicking them. They were pleading like frightened chickens. That's what happens when you insult the First Lady." Even on the plane there were further problems -- Brian Epstein and the group's road manager Mal Evans were both made to get off the plane to sort out supposed financial discrepancies, which led to them worrying that they were going to be arrested or worse -- Evans told the group to tell his wife he loved her as he left the plane. But eventually, they were able to leave, and after a brief layover in India -- which Ringo later said was the first time he felt he'd been somewhere truly foreign, as opposed to places like Germany or the USA which felt basically like home -- they got back to England: [Excerpt: "Ordinary passenger!"] When asked what they were going to do next, George replied “We're going to have a couple of weeks to recuperate before we go and get beaten up by the Americans,” The story of the "we're bigger than Jesus" controversy is one of the most widely misreported events in the lives of the Beatles, which is saying a great deal. One book that I've encountered, and one book only, Steve Turner's Beatles '66, tells the story of what actually happened, and even that book seems to miss some emphases. I've pieced what follows together from Turner's book and from an academic journal article I found which has some more detail. As far as I can tell, every single other book on the Beatles released up to this point bases their account of the story on an inaccurate press statement put out by Brian Epstein, not on the truth. Here's the story as it's generally told. John Lennon gave an interview to his friend, Maureen Cleave of the Evening Standard, during which he made some comments about how it was depressing that Christianity was losing relevance in the eyes of the public, and that the Beatles are more popular than Jesus, speaking casually because he was talking to a friend. That story was run in the Evening Standard more-or-less unnoticed, but then an American teen magazine picked up on the line about the Beatles being bigger than Jesus, reprinted chunks of the interview out of context and without the Beatles' knowledge or permission, as a way to stir up controversy, and there was an outcry, with people burning Beatles records and death threats from the Ku Klux Klan. That's... not exactly what happened. The first thing that you need to understand to know what happened is that Datebook wasn't a typical teen magazine. It *looked* just like a typical teen magazine, certainly, and much of its content was the kind of thing that you would get in Tiger Beat or any of the other magazines aimed at teenage girls -- the September 1966 issue was full of articles like "Life with the Walker Brothers... by their Road Manager", and interviews with the Dave Clark Five -- but it also had a long history of publishing material that was intended to make its readers think about social issues of the time, particularly Civil Rights. Arthur Unger, the magazine's editor and publisher, was a gay man in an interracial relationship, and while the subject of homosexuality was too taboo in the late fifties and sixties for him to have his magazine cover that, he did regularly include articles decrying segregation and calling for the girls reading the magazine to do their part on a personal level to stamp out racism. Datebook had regularly contained articles like one from 1963 talking about how segregation wasn't just a problem in the South, saying "If we are so ‘integrated' why must men in my own city of Philadelphia, the city of Brotherly Love, picket city hall because they are discriminated against when it comes to getting a job? And how come I am still unable to take my dark- complexioned friends to the same roller skating rink or swimming pool that I attend?” One of the writers for the magazine later said “We were much more than an entertainment magazine . . . . We tried to get kids involved in social issues . . . . It was a well-received magazine, recommended by libraries and schools, but during the Civil Rights period we did get pulled off a lot of stands in the South because of our views on integration” Art Unger, the editor and publisher, wasn't the only one pushing this liberal, integrationist, agenda. The managing editor at the time, Danny Fields, was another gay man who wanted to push the magazine even further than Unger, and who would later go on to manage the Stooges and the Ramones, being credited by some as being the single most important figure in punk rock's development, and being immortalised by the Ramones in their song "Danny Says": [Excerpt: The Ramones, "Danny Says"] So this was not a normal teen magazine, and that's certainly shown by the cover of the September 1966 issue, which as well as talking about the interviews with John Lennon and Paul McCartney inside, also advertised articles on Timothy Leary advising people to turn on, tune in, and drop out; an editorial about how interracial dating must be the next step after desegregation of schools, and a piece on "the ten adults you dig/hate the most" -- apparently the adult most teens dug in 1966 was Jackie Kennedy, the most hated was Barry Goldwater, and President Johnson, Billy Graham, and Martin Luther King appeared in the top ten on both lists. Now, in the early part of the year Maureen Cleave had done a whole series of articles on the Beatles -- double-page spreads on each band member, plus Brian Epstein, visiting them in their own homes (apart from Paul, who she met at a restaurant) and discussing their daily lives, their thoughts, and portraying them as rounded individuals. These articles are actually fascinating, because of something that everyone who met the Beatles in this period pointed out. When interviewed separately, all of them came across as thoughtful individuals, with their own opinions about all sorts of subjects, and their own tastes and senses of humour. But when two or more of them were together -- especially when John and Paul were interviewed together, but even in social situations, they would immediately revert to flip in-jokes and riffing on each other's statements, never revealing anything about themselves as individuals, but just going into Beatle mode -- simultaneously preserving the band's image, closing off outsiders, *and* making sure they didn't do or say anything that would get them mocked by the others. Cleave, as someone who actually took them all seriously, managed to get some very revealing information about all of them. In the article on Ringo, which is the most superficial -- one gets the impression that Cleave found him rather difficult to talk to when compared to the other, more verbally facile, band members -- she talked about how he had a lot of Wild West and military memorabilia, how he was a devoted family man and also devoted to his friends -- he had moved to the suburbs to be close to John and George, who already lived there. The most revealing quote about Ringo's personality was him saying "Of course that's the great thing about being married -- you have a house to sit in and company all the time. And you can still go to clubs, a bonus for being married. I love being a family man." While she looked at the other Beatles' tastes in literature in detail, she'd noted that the only books Ringo owned that weren't just for show were a few science fiction paperbacks, but that as he said "I'm not thick, it's just that I'm not educated. People can use words and I won't know what they mean. I say 'me' instead of 'my'." Ringo also didn't have a drum kit at home, saying he only played when he was on stage or in the studio, and that you couldn't practice on your own, you needed to play with other people. In the article on George, she talked about how he was learning the sitar,  and how he was thinking that it might be a good idea to go to India to study the sitar with Ravi Shankar for six months. She also talks about how during the interview, he played the guitar pretty much constantly, playing everything from songs from "Hello Dolly" to pieces by Bach to "the Trumpet Voluntary", by which she presumably means Clarke's "Prince of Denmark's March": [Excerpt: Jeremiah Clarke, "Prince of Denmark's March"] George was also the most outspoken on the subjects of politics, religion, and society, linking the ongoing war in Vietnam with the UK's reverence for the Second World War, saying "I think about it every day and it's wrong. Anything to do with war is wrong. They're all wrapped up in their Nelsons and their Churchills and their Montys -- always talking about war heroes. Look at All Our Yesterdays [a show on ITV that showed twenty-five-year-old newsreels] -- how we killed a few more Huns here and there. Makes me sick. They're the sort who are leaning on their walking sticks and telling us a few years in the army would do us good." He also had very strong words to say about religion, saying "I think religion falls flat on its face. All this 'love thy neighbour' but none of them are doing it. How can anybody get into the position of being Pope and accept all the glory and the money and the Mercedes-Benz and that? I could never be Pope until I'd sold my rich gates and my posh hat. I couldn't sit there with all that money on me and believe I was religious. Why can't we bring all this out in the open? Why is there all this stuff about blasphemy? If Christianity's as good as they say it is, it should stand up to a bit of discussion." Harrison also comes across as a very private person, saying "People keep saying, ‘We made you what you are,' well, I made Mr. Hovis what he is and I don't go round crawling over his gates and smashing up the wall round his house." (Hovis is a British company that makes bread and wholegrain flour). But more than anything else he comes across as an instinctive anti-authoritarian, being angry at bullying teachers, Popes, and Prime Ministers. McCartney's profile has him as the most self-consciously arty -- he talks about the plays of Alfred Jarry and the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luciano Berio: [Excerpt: Luciano Berio, "Momenti (for magnetic tape)"] Though he was very worried that he might be sounding a little too pretentious, saying “I don't want to sound like Jonathan Miller going on" --

In Episode 3 of Season 3 Mike welcomes top notch Englishman and dear friend Ian Haynes onto the Podcast for an international discussion of philosophy, soccer/football, music, refreshments and of course, friendship.Follow the podcast on Twitter: @friendsofmikedEmail the podcast at talkingfriendship@gmail.comKey moments from the pod: 0:30: Mike welcomes listeners to S3E3 featuring Mike's good friend Ian Haynes.1:30: Mike corrects a major omission from S3E1's discussion of Park Ave in Allen Park, MI and S1E4 guest John Baker.  Mike tries to mend a broken friendship fence with John.3:15: Mike gives the listeners an update on what's going on with him, including getting outside more AND getting hooked on the amazing new HBO show “We Own This City” from the creators of the Wire.5:15: Mike introduces this episode's guest Ian Haynes and discusses one of Ian and Mike's mutually favorite musicians in English rocker Billy Bragg.10:45: Mike welcomes Ian into the actual podcast studio where gives some background on Ian Haynes, the Man, his family, his origins in England and his precocious dog Biggles.15:45: Ian talks about his best friend over the years (Nigel) and what's kept their friendship going and how he's Ian's anchor for his “northerness”.17:10: The guys talk about the last time they saw each other as well as their initial connection via the famed Ann Arbor Mug Club (and it's one by-law).23:30: Ian gives his philosophy on beer and the local beer scene (spoiler alert: he has strong opinions).25:50: The guys talk about a recent field trip down to one of their favorite Detroit-based activities: Detroit City FC soccer and fowling in Hamtramck.27:15: Mike and Ian then transition into discussing one of their true shared passions: soccer/football.29:55: Ian goes over how he became a supporter of his favorite soccer club: Oldham Athletic.35:20: Mike gives the listeners the backstory behind how he became a Tottenham fan.40:00: The guys then proceed to count down each of their top 5 favorite soccer players in their lives and why.40:40: Colin Bell44:40: Jurgen Klinsman47:50: Eric Cantona52:50: Alexi Lalas56:40: George Best1:00:15: Landon Donovan1:04:30: Denis Irwin1:08:30: Son Heung-min1:10:30: Andy Ritchie1:15:30: Harry Kane1:18:45: Ian then gives his key to a good friendship.  What an answer it is!1:20:30: Mike takes Ian through the (not so) Rapid Fire segment, including talking about Ian's favorite beers, favorite spots to eat in the Ann Arbor/Saline area, and where he wants to travel next with his wife Jane.

0.00 - Opener 1.05 - How will Gill's tenure be remembered? 4.20 - Biggles Gil Gag 4.55 - Who's your tip to replace Gil? 6.05 - What does the new CEO need to come in and change? 6.50 - ‘The Big thing that's fallen away for Port this year' 8.15 - Bernie says Port are done 8.30 - Are the lack of crowds a concern? 9.10 - Biggles says Port will be 0 - 8!! 9.45 - Rocky on Ken's Future at the Club? 13.20 - Rocky rules pout a COVID top up return! - FUNNY 13.35 - Jars lashes Crows foot skills 14.25 - Rocks says the Crows don't know their own identity 15.50 - Biggles says Crows rebuild is on the verge of coming to fruition 16.50 - Jars bullish on Crows new look forward line 17.45 - What did you think of the Tex booing? 20.00 - Biggles says Thilthorpe comes back this week 20.35 - Is ROB getting tired as a single ruck? 21.20 - Bern's streaker story 23.30 - MRO inconsistencies See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

0.00 - Opener 1.05 - How will Gill's tenure be remembered? 4.20 - Biggles Gil Gag 4.55 - Who's your tip to replace Gil? 6.05 - What does the new CEO need to come in and change? 6.50 - ‘The Big thing that's fallen away for Port this year' 8.15 - Bernie says Port are done 8.30 - Are the lack of crowds a concern? 9.10 - Biggles says Port will be 0 - 8!! 9.45 - Rocky on Ken's Future at the Club? 13.20 - Rocky rules pout a COVID top up return! - FUNNY 13.35 - Jars lashes Crows foot skills 14.25 - Rocks says the Crows don't know their own identity 15.50 - Biggles says Crows rebuild is on the verge of coming to fruition 16.50 - Jars bullish on Crows new look forward line 17.45 - What did you think of the Tex booing? 20.00 - Biggles says Thilthorpe comes back this week 20.35 - Is ROB getting tired as a single ruck? 21.20 - Bern's streaker story 23.30 - MRO inconsistencies See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

OPENER. - What a weekend of footy! Port v Crows Showdown on Friday night, Torp over the Torrens re-cap & Australian women win Cricket World Cup! PORT ADELAIDE IN THE SPOTLIGHT - Has Adelaide ever fully embraced Ken Hinkley? $1000 DOLLAR MINUTE - Brian from Old Noarlunga is next up to take on the quiz! BLEW NOT HAPPY WITH PRODUCER BENNY - Did Benny ditch Blew on Friday night to go to the corporate box? HALFTIME. TAYLOR MADE MASTERS GIVEAWAY - Can you guess Jarman's golf handicap? Person closest gets in the draw for a set of Taylor Mades Stealth Irons drawn on Friday VOICEMAIL -Ken Hinkley, Biggles and many more have left messages after the weekend. BERN'S FACTS. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Retro adventure heroes are an interesting and unique sort of hero. The trope was revived and crystallised by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg with Indiana Jones, but it had existed long before then and continues to persist now in many forms. They're not without their problems But I like these characters. I love their outfits, their competency, intelligence, self sufficiency, and their penchant for exploration and discovery. What is a retro adventure hero? Typically they're an adventurer, a member and representative of a powerful Western country, they like exploring, they're self sufficient, they can survive by themselves in the wild, they can fight, understand many languages, have arcane knowledge of and respect for native peoples and different exotic cultures, they tend to be very worldly and highly educated. This trope was inspired by real life examples, typically explorers from the 19th century, foremost among them was Sir Richard Francis Burton. He was highly educated, a soldier, an explorer, a swordsman and a shameless self promoter. With the explorations of Burton we have the romantic idea of a representative of the British Empire and Western civilisation delving into the hidden worlds of the Arab east and darkest Africa. A partial influence for Indiana Jones was the story of GE Kinkaid and his 1909 find of the remains of a fabulous city accessed through a cave in the Grand Canyon… all sponsored by the Smithsonian institute. Of course nothing about the story was true and GE Kinkaid never existed, but it was quite inspiring nonetheless. My own character, Ace Kinkaid, from my comic Pinky TA was based on GE Kinkaid. Instead of going in the Indiana Jones direction of a “true hero” I decided to take a different tack- since the story was clearly made up and quite stupid (obviously designed to fool people), I made Ace Kinkaid someone who wanted to look like a hero but was in reality a con-man, only out for himself. The most important fictional retro adventure hero is H. Rider Haggard's “Allan Quatermain” (I wrongly say he was Edgar Rice Burroughs' character in the Quackcast). He's another huge influence for Indiana Jones. There are many other popular fictional retro adventure heroes though: Brenden Frasier's character in The Mummy, Romancing the Stone, Lara Croft, El Borak, Steve Canyon, Biggles, Bulldog Drummond, John Carter, Dirk Pitt in Sahara, Flashman (though more of an antihero) and many more, even The Rock's character from the recent Jungle Cruise. Why “retro” though and how can contemporary characters like Lara Croft and Dirk Pit be retro? Well there are a few reasons; number one is that they follow the clothing conventions of a lot of brown, leather, and straps; number two is that they have all the right competencies with fighting ability, self sufficiency, a penchant for adventure and exploration, visiting ruins etc, a good education…; number three is that they come from a retro world view of imperialism, so they can be a representative of the “enlightened modern world” going off to “discover” and explore exotic places - which of course aren't exotic or in need of discovery from the point of view of the locals. This trope can still work just as well in a modern setting because we still continue to think like this, but it works best in the 1920s/30s for a couple of reasons: The aesthetic then is perfect, but this was also the end of the old imperial era. It marked the end of the time when we could still imagine representatives from “western civilisation” exploring unknown places, technology was at the highest point for characters of this trope (aeroplanes, machine guns, trains, steamships…), and many of the original adventure heroes were created in this period because we were romantisising the idea of adventure and empire while it was ending. After the second world war scoured the entire globe and the last gasp of the dream of empire was shattered, the far reaches of the earth no longer seemed exotic anymore or to hold the same mystery. Retro adventure heroes had their hey-day in the transition from colonialism to post colonialism. We like them now for the romanticism of the image of what they were and the spirit of adventure and exploration, that's what we emulate rather than the distasteful idea of a colonialist imperial cultural ambassador, tourist, and thief. Do you have a fave retro Adventure hero? If so, who? Do you even like the trope? This week Gunwallace gave us a musical theme to Caveston - Authoritative violin pronounces and directs. A four stringed general deciding the course of action, laying out the battleplan. Electric guitar listens well and leads the squad on a furious audio assault! Storming forth and prevailing in a mighty show of shock and awe. Topics and shownotes Links Featured comic: Caveston - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/mar/22/featured-comic-caveston/ Featured music: Caveston - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Caveston/ - by Caveston, rated T. Special thanks to: Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/ Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/ Kawaiidaigakusei - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/kawaiidaigakusei/ VIDEO exclusive! Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks! - https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts! Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Fantasy creatures are cool and we're here to talk about our faves. One of mine is elves. I love them… Being quite elfy myself. Fantasy is pretty fun to play around with, you have the freedom to create anything but even so there are a few recognised and agreed on fantasy creatures that people stick with. Tolkien is responsible for creating iconic versions of creatures like Dwarves and elves among many others but it was really the American students going to university in the 1960s and 70s that solidified things. These were RPG gamers. RPG games had always been popular with that crowd. In previous generations with the SciFi writers in the 30s and 40s it was naval based war games that they'd play on the floor with ship models. But in the 1960s fantasy was all the rage. These RPG enthusiasts came up with detailed game systems like Dungeons and Dragons which created bibles of fantasy creatures of all kinds. This served to collate, define and refine fantasy creatures for pop-culture as a whole for the decades to come. This is why despite all the freedom, fantasy creatures across different stories and mediums don't changes very much. So what are YOUR fave fantasy creatures? Here are some of ours, see if you can guess who's is who's: Naked, mysterious, secretive, powerful, necromancer witches; big veiny, musclebound, brutish, ragged trolls; Noble, brave, muscular, archer centaurs. I also have to mention Tantz's fantasy book series The art of Veiling! This week Gunwallace has given us the theme to Little q - An intriguing safari through the dark, misty, damp, green humid jungle of human emotion. Ringing bells of synth vibraphone tones shine like spots of sunlight through the dappled shadows of expectation and obligation. Warm and comforting. Next week's Quackcast: Retro Adventure heroes. You know the sort, dressed in khaki, loose shirts and leather, going to exotic places, quick with a gun or a whip, exploring, fighting, doing what's right and adventuring. So we'll be chatting about the likes of Indiana Jones, Brenden Frasier's character in The Mummy, Romancing the Stone, Ace Kinkaid in Pinky TA, Lara croft, El Borak, Alan Quartermaine, Steve Canyon, Biggles, Bulldog Drummond, John Carter and maybe more! Topics and shownotes Links Featured comic: Welcome to my House - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2022/mar/01/featured-comic-welcome-to-my-house/ Featured music: Little q - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/little_q/ - by PaddyWolfe, rated E. Special thanks to: Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/ Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean PitFace - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/PIT_FACE/ VIDEO exclusive! Become a subscriber on the $5 level and up to see our weekly Patreon video and get our advertising perks! - https://www.patreon.com/DrunkDuck Even at $1 you get your name with a link on the front page and a mention in the weekend newsposts! Join us on Discord - https://discordapp.com/invite/7NpJ8GS

Tom and Christopher fight each other through time and space to discuss this 1980s adventure film! Promo: British Invaders Podcast (http://britishinvaders.com/) Please click, follow, rate and review! https://linktr.ee/TSPandOE_Podcasts All original content of the Time Shifters Podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.(The music used is composed and performed by Mark Mosher (https://markmoshermusic.com) CC BY-NC 3.0)

Episode 040 tells the story of a modern day biplane adventure that continues where Richard Bach and Spence Nelson left off 50 years ago! If you're not familiar with the book. Nothing by chance is one of the all time great aviation books. Written by the great author Richard Bach, who also authored Jonathan Livingston Seagull, perhaps you've heard of it? First published in 1969 It follows the author on a biplane adventure throughout the midwest United States Making a living, day to day. Town to town, In a time gone by, that we'll never see again. Or will we?

Join RJ as he reviews the action, Sci-fi time travelling adventure movie Biggles from 1986. Do you want to be a Hero…. The post Bitesize Cinema Podcast: Episode 128: Biggles 1986. first appeared on Legion.

Viktor Devonne sits with 2 members of Cosplay Burlesque and regular participants of White Elephant Burlesque shoutouts: Anja Keister, Esmerelda May, Holly Ween, Stormageddon, Nasty Canasta, Matt Knife, Metropolis Burlesque, and Hazel Tart Our topics range wildly, including podcast cats, Neville Longbottom, fandom household, moving house to house, Alan Tudyk, subjective fandom, Batman, burlesquers who hide their ages, Power Rangers, Disney Adventures, nerdy literature, Shazam!, X-Men and Batman as Animated Series, ditto'ing Jigglypuff, floating thru cliques, Halloween, Butters as Mr. Biggles, Worbla thermoplastic, walking around to be seen, proto-steampunk semi-victorian pseudo-Renaissance faires, Hot Topic goth sensibility, LiveJournal, Rocky Horror cosplay, judgment on creativity, Gene Belcher, Comedy Bang Bang, "classic aside from the burp noises," Pokemon, who's gonna get what, cosplay and nerdlesque, getting into mainstream burlesque, boy clothes, body types, cosplay for every body, morality fairytales, Poison Ivy, femininity, Fix It Felix Jr., stage fright, friends with the friendless, musical theatre: Phantom of the Opera, Rent, Ragtime, American Idiot, title of show, titanic, nerd fandom would-you-rather incl. Firefly, Star Wars, Star Trek, Supernatural, Dr Who, and more recorded Feb 3, 2018 intro and outro music: This Way to the Egress -- "On a 45" ... interlude music: "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Out of Tune Life, The Trees are Moving, Kids and Cell Phones, Breaking Animal News, Jimmy Fallon & Tim Tebow, Brant's Reunion, Trusting God, If Jesus Rose, The Blue Check Mark, Naturally Generous, Feeling God;   Quotes: “At the beginning of the day I want to be ‘spiritually tuned' or else it's just a bunch of noise.” “It's my job to protect my kids from a culture that wants to corrupt them.” “Mr. Biggles has a terrible attitude.”