Want to go somewhere good?
Your attention is precious but based on what I’ve found there, the following online spaces all seem worth a visit:
Heavyweight
A brilliantly original – and brilliantly human – podcast that shows what can be gained from a concerted attempt to make sense of the past.
> https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/heavyweight
The Empathy Museum
A series of inventive participatory projects designed to promote empathy: hear someone’s story while wearing their shoes, read a book recommended by a stranger, borrow a person to talk to…
> empathymuseum.com
The Blindboy Podcast
This bag-disguised son of Limerick riffs on anything that interests him, drawing connections between one thing and another in meandering monologues that are often full of not only great humour but also a lot of good sense.
> theblindboypodcast.ie
The Marginalian
With The Marginalian, Brooklyn-based digester of interesting things Maria Popova offers weekly servings of thoughtful, inspiring and consoling content from across the arts and beyond.
> themarginalian.org
Tim Clare
A Norwich-based writer who generously offers galvanising help to the Not Yet Writing community, free of charge. Tim’s two podcast series – 100 Day Writing Challenge and Couch to 80K Writing Boot Camp – can help you break free of doubt and put words on the page.
> timclarepoet.co.uk
Humans of New York
Street-shot photographic portraits of passing strangers in NYC; the content of the ‘straight in there’ mini-interviews is reliably compelling.
> humansofnewyork.com
The Book Hive
The Norwich bookshop where I buy most of my reading material – proud to Do Different, and full of the kind of book that unexpectedly jumps onto your reading list.
> thebookhive.co.uk
Things magazine
A digest of links to interesting content on objects and their meanings – prepare to be diverted.
> thingsmagazine.net
Eat the Seasons
We shouldn’t be eating strawberries in February, no: useful information on when to eat what – and on helping reduce the air miles of products in your weekly food shop.
> eattheseasons.co.uk
The School of Life
Intelligently delivered advice on how to do better with work, relationships and other areas that challenge us; the content of their newsletters can entirely shift your sense of something.
> theschooloflife.com
Public information films
The National Archives’ evocative portal into the (familiar but often now pretty weird-seeming) past: lots of ‘We Know Best’ kind of stuff, including 1945’s Coughs and Sneezes through to the iconic ‘Charley Says’ films of the 1970s and the Terrifying Headstone of the 1987 AIDS campaign.
> nationalarchives.gov.uk/films/
English idioms
‘Daft as a brush’, ‘Two peas in a pod’, ‘As good as gold’: an academically rigorous delve into the origins of expressions, sayings and idioms, those non-literal phrases that add so much texture to the English language.
> phrases.org.uk
The Black Narcissus
The blog of my old friend Neil Chapman, The Black Narcissus features unapologetically subjective thoughts about perfume, as well as interesting insights into Neil’s life working as an English teacher in Japan (his book, Perfume: In Search of Your Signature Scent, is also excellent).
> theblacknarcissus.com