Yeah, I have been back on the radio again. Paulette is still in Jamaica so I was allowed to put the whole show together myself. What I wasn’t expecting was that I’d end up learning to be an engineer on the job. I’ve had a bit of training on the desk before, but this is the first time I have actually done it live myself. There were a few very minor gaps in the flow where I had a panic as to which button to push, but mostly it was very smooth. Huge thanks are due to my colleague, Jack, who was keeping an eye on me and pointing out when I had forgotten something.
Anyway, the show began with discussion of the current furor in the UK over the election of Jeremy Corbyn to be leader of the Labour Party. As I said on the show, I’m not a Socialist, but the behavior of the mainstream media, the right wing of the Labour Party, and even the Prime Minister has been so childish that you can’t help but have sympathy and respect for Corbyn. I’m not surprised that there has been a flood of people joining Labour since he was elected. My colleagues, Judeline and Jack, offered their opinions.
Next up I talked a bit about the Ascent of Woman documentary series that is airing on BBC 2 at the moment. I’ve talked a lot about it here already, so I won’t go into that again.
After the news we were joined by Tom Parker and Jasmine Atkins-Smart of the Tobacco Tea Theatre Company. You may remember Tom from his appearance at BristolCon Fringe. The they have been up in Edinburgh performing in a play called The Accidental Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in which Tom played Doctor Watson and Jasmine played Sherlock. We chatted a bit about what it was like being at Fringe as performers, about the theatre scene in Bristol, and about Sherlock as a cultural phenomenon.
Next up we were supposed to have Cezara Nanu of Bristol Women’s Voice talking about modern slavery. Sadly she had caught a chill, probably from running the Bristol Half Marathon on Sunday (where she was raising money for refugees) so we gave the actors a little longer and then covered the slavery issue as well as we could by ourselves. Judeline and Jack had done some great research.
Finally we touched on an issue that arose out of the media panic over Mr Corbyn, the idea of women-only railway carriages. That naturally broadened out into the topic of safe spaces in general. I chipped in with the issue as to whether trans women were allowed in women’s spaces, and put poor Jack on the spot as our representative of men.
If you want to listen to the show you can find the first hour here and the second hour here.
The playlist for the show was as follows:
- Tracy Chapman – Talking ’bout a revolution
- Bob Marley – Revolution
- Elvis Costello – Watching the Detectives
- Isaac Hayes – Shaft
- Mavis Staples – Eyes on the Prize
- Nina Simone – Young, Gifted and Black
- Duke Ellington – Take the A Train
- John Coltrane – Blue Train
Very interesting show (as usual!) One thing mentioned in the discussion about women-only carriages which I disagree with is the idea that men’s harassing behaviour towards women can come under the category of “bad manners”. To me this is a too-general cover for the actual cause: rape culture. Not harassing a woman isn’t politeness: it’s not treating her as a sexual commodity for the use of men as rape culture dictates.
Fair point. I think the distinction that we were trying to make is that not all bad behavior is, or will lead to, sexual harassment. A lot of the fear of traveling on public transport comes from loutish behavior which might turn nasty. I don’t get sexual harassment in person, ever. But that doesn’t mean I feel safe.