The Victorian Freak Show
The Bearded Lady, Zip the Pinhead, Major Tom Thumb, The Elephant Man, The Hottentot Venus - we delve into one of the more controversial corners of popular entertainment: the world of Victorian freak s...
27 Apr 20251h
Becoming Black: A 2-Tone Story
"I was never going to be a nice little white girl" she says. Instead, she became an underground star, had hit records with the 2-Tone band The Selector, became a style-icon, an actor, a TV Presenter...
16 Apr 20251h
Alan Moore on Magic
Alan Moore first gained recognition in the 1980s with his work for the comic 2000 AD, and DC Comic's Swamp Thing. He went on to create Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Batman: The Killing Joke, From Hell, an...
1 Apr 202549min
Myths of the Magic Mushroom
The evolutionary leap from ape to human was precipitated by primates eating psychoactive fungi, there is an ancient shamanic lineage of psychedelic plant use in the West, mushrooms have their own cons...
17 Mar 202559min
The Myth of Easter Island
The giant stone heads of the fantastically remote Easter Island have gazed out mysteriously for over a 1000 years, fascinating the world since Dutch sailors came across them in the 18th century. The...
3 Mar 20251h 5min
Burroughs, Bowles and The Tangier Interzone
Tangier was a magnet for artists, writers, musicians, and political exiles throughout the mid-20th century, amongst them the writers Paul Bowles and William Burroughs From 1924 to 1956 the city oper...
20 Feb 202542min
The Birth of British Youth Culture
Teddy Boys (and Teddy Girls)emerged in Britain in the early 1950s, becoming the UK's first distinct youth subculture. Born in the aftermath of World War II, these working-class teenagers rejected p...
1 Feb 202558min
Soho Night + Day
Scar-faced, ex-jailbird Frank Norman was part of the '50s and '60s Soho bohemian set and friends with Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud, Dylan Thomas and other habitues of the infamous Colony Room club. A...
21 Jan 202557min
