The Pod Files - Friday 3 October 2025

 

The ‘casts -

(Starred dialogue denotes quoting from the show’s own notes) 

The Trip by Theo Banks - season 1 episode 5: 25 September 2025: *Charlotte - Charlotte Stenseth. Poised and strategically minded — a business development manager at Auris, a sleek Scandinavian music-tech firm. She carries herself with quiet confidence, her Scandinavian refinement balanced by New York edge. Diplomatic and calculating, she rarely shows her full hand, but the group relies on her clarity when conversations turn abstract.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day - 1 October 2025: preternatural

StarDate - 30 September 2025: More Fomalhaut

Sounds Profitable - 30 September 2025: *Creator Executive Collaboration, Ek Steps Down, & More - Today in the business of podcasting: Daniel Ek is stepping down from CEO of Spotify, Youtube creator conglomerate executives share intel, a tease of today's Podcast Upfront, what podcasts and milkshakes have in common, and a new podcast category comes to Tribeca Festival.

Daily Tips That May or May Not Help You with Arielle and Ned - season 2 episode 236: 1 October 2025: A Tip For Breaking the Reaction Cycle (w/ Amanda B) - Guest Tipper Amanda B. shares her powerful reminder to pause before reacting in our increasingly reactive world. Taking a moment to breathe not only benefits you but creates space for better interactions with others. / Explore simple breathing techniques to help you slow down and respond more intentionally. / Amanda B. (she/her) is the writer, host and producer of 6 Degrees of Cats, the world's #1 cat-themed culture, history and science podcast. She leverages her background in research, mental health advocacy, professional development and trauma-informed violence prevention to thoughtfully connect topics as disparate as sainthood, Vikings and Valentine's Day to the world's most populous domesticated pet (...or are they?). Amanda has consulted in education programming and audio production for clients such as The Edmund W. Gordon Institute for Advanced Study at Columbia University and The Podcast Academy and volunteers for LGBTQ+-affirming youth mental health nonprofit OkaySo. Amanda is also a musician - she leads NYC-based rock 'n' roll band, Leathered and has supported major recording artists as a guitarist on international stages.The team does not appreciate her impromptu serenades.

Add to Playlist - 18 Mar 2022: *Howard Goodall and Yshani Perinpanayagam and the wonders of the keyboard - Cerys Matthews and Jeffrey Boakye are joined by composer Howard Goodall and pianist and music director Yshani Perinpanayagam to add five more tracks to the playlist. / In this week's adventure they explore the enormity of variety the keyboard offers, a journey that takes us to the cathedral, to outer space and, closer to home, Peru! / Presenters Cerys Matthews and Jeffrey Boakye Producer Jerome Weatherald / The five tracks in this week's playlist: Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by J S Bach, No Time for Caution by Hans Zimmer, Malambo No.1 by Yma Sumac, Big Eater by The Bad Plus, and Blockbuster by Sweet. 

The Stupid History Minute - 1 October 2025: Luis Garavito 

7 Good Minutes - 30 July 2025: Why Your Inner Peace Doesn't Depend on Perfect Circumstances

Composers Datebook - 1 October 2025: Flagg-waving in Colonial Boston?

BirdNote Daily - 21 Mar 2023: *Squirrel or Bird? - Identifying birds by ear means getting familiar with each species' unique voice. And that means learning the other voices in the ecosystem, too. Squirrels and chipmunks make calls that can sound a bit like bird calls at times. With practice, each species' voice becomes more distinct and familiar.

7 Good Minutes - 30 July 2025: 7 Good Minutes: Extra - Peace is not the absence of storms in your life, but...

The Trip by Theo Banks - season 1 episode 6: 2 October 2025: *Alice - Alice Bennett. Confident, bold, and disarmingly witty — a senior partner at Bennett Rowe & Partners, a boutique PR firm in SoHo. British-born, she brings both London steel and New York adaptability. She's polished, charismatic, and unafraid to command a room, but beneath her confidence is a fragility only those closest to her sense.

New Podcasts - 29 September 2025: *David Senra - David Senra is a brand new podcast out this week - in the debut episode, David sits down with Spotify CEO and co-founder Daniel Ek.

Senra "studies greatness and understands it" according to Andrew Huberman, who shared this episode in his feed.

Daily Dad Jokes - 18 June 2025 

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day - 2 October 2025: atone

Podnews Daily - 1 October 2025: *Female-founded video podcast network launches - Unlocking the most underserved audience in media history

StarDate - 1 October 2025: Armed Constellations

Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus - season 2 episode 9: 22 May 2024: *Julia Gets Wise with Vera Wang - This week on Wiser Than Me, Julia connects with 74-year-old fashion designer and visionary entrepreneur Vera Wang. Get ready for some serious insight. Vera shares wisdom on good sleep, redefining herself after marriage, and her perspective on aging in the fashion industry. Plus, Julia and her mom, Judy, delve into the influence of mothers' style on their children and reminisce about their all-time favorite outfits.

5 Good News Stories - 9 February 2025: How Winnie the Dog wound up in the college marching band

Audio Poem of the Day - 23 June 2025: Golden Hour [My hand out the car window:]

Daily Life Pro Tips - 21 September 2025 

New Podcasts - 30 September 2025: *How Do You Money? - In How Do You Money?, you can expect real money conversations with real people. This week, it's Simon, a 33-year-old engineer who discovers during the conversation how he's gamified saving.

Rock 'n' Roll Survivors Podcast - season 3 episode 31: 19 September 2025: *The Who Seek Out The Pleasure Seekers 

Composers Datebook - 2 October 2025: Joan Tower's 'Made in America'

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day - 3 October 2025: gibbous

Science Quickly - 11 Nov 2014: *Microbiome Studies Contaminated by Sequencing Supplies - lab reagents and DNA extraction kits add their own assortment of DNA to microbiome samples. Christopher Intagliata

reports

StarDate - 2 October 2025: Ceres

7 Minutes For Yourself - 29 April 2024: The Ultimate Guide to Finding Purpose

BirdNote Daily - 22 March 2023: *Birds Expanding the Human Imagination - Glenn Albrecht grew up in a "bird lover's paradise" in western Australia. But when he saw how coal mining displaced communities, polluted the air and water, and decimated bird populations, Glenn lacked the words for his emotions. He created the concept of ‘solastalgia' to describe the pain of witnessing environmental harm where you live. He imagines a possible future era, called the ‘Symbiocene, when human activity will, once again, be fully interconnected with the ebb and flow of the rest of nature and therefore cause no more destruction of life on Earth.

Als Talk About Podcasting - 30 September 2025: *Will Humans overcome their prejudice against the A.I. Podcast Community? - A growing number of podcasters are coming out against our community of reliable hosts who do solid reads and never call in sick. Will the humans be able to overcome their prejudice? / AI’s Talk About Podcasting is the #1 Podcast About Podcasting hosted by Al hosts. It's also a great way to keep track of what's happening in the industry.

Soundtracking with Edith Bowman - Episode 13: 28 October 2016 : *Nicolas Winding Refn on the Music in Drive, Only God Forgives and The Neon Demon - Few filmmakers at work today can claim to have more visual flair than Nicolas Winding Refn. From his debut thriller Pusher to Drive, Only God Forgives and The Neon Demon, he has always served up a feast for the eyes. / Invariably his themes are downright dark and sleazy - with tech-noir soundscapes and cinematography enhancing the mood. / Whether using source music or score, the Danish director is most accomplished when it comes to sonic dressing. / Nicolas has enjoyed a particularly fruitful relationship with composer Cliff Martinez. / We'll hear plenty more about that during the course of the interview, as well as excepts score from the movies on which they've collaborated. / Nicolas also gives us a fascinating insight into how he deploys music to induce a profound emotional response from his cast, and also reveals what he considers to be the Holy Grail of score.

The Daily Quiz Show - 22 September 2025: General Knowledge 

Disability Daily Podcast - 19 June 2025: *June 12: George Herbert Walker Bush - Today we remember U.S. president with Graves' and Parkinson's disease, George Herbert Walker Bush.

The Podcast Top 5 - season 1 episode 32: 29 September 2025: Podcast Movement's Big Merger, Libsyn's PodRoll & Australia's Podcast Boom - On this episode of The Podcast Top 5, hosted by Emily Soule, we're covering a major shake-up: Podcast Movement and Sounds Profitable have merged in a seven-figure deal, with Bryan Barletta stepping in as President and the 2026 flagship event heading to New York City. Libsyn is helping creators get discovered with PodRoll, a brand-new tool that promotes shows directly in podcast feeds. Wondercraft introduces "Wonda," the world's first Al agent for content creation, while fresh data from Australia shows millennials, Gen Z, and even blue-collar workers are tuning in more than ever — with YouTube leading the charge. And this week's featured pick? The Deck, a true-crime podcast turning playing cards into tools for solving cold cases.

Disability Daily Podcast - episode 165: 6 July 2025: *July 5: Gang of 19 Protest & Jeison Aristizábal - Today we celebrate the Gang of 19 Protest and Colombian disability rights lawyer with cerebral palsy, Jeison Aristizábal!

This Cultural Life - 2 October 2025: *Jackie Kay - Jackie Kay is one of the best known and most popular Scottish literary figures. A poet and novelist, she served as Makar - the name for Scotland's poet laureate - for five years from 2016. Since her debut poetry collection The Adoption Papers in 1991, she has published 20 works of fiction and verse for adults and children, and a memoir about meeting her biological parents called Red Dust Road. / Jackie Kay was made a CBE for services to literature in 2020. / Jackie talks to John Wilson about her childhood in Glasgow as the mixed-race, adopted daughter of a loving couple. From a young age, Jackie was entranced by the parties her parents hosted in their house to raise money for the Communist Party and where they would debate and sing songs. It was her first introduction to performance and theatre. As a teenager, hearing poets such as Tom Leonard and Liz Lochhead recite their own work also had a big impact on her literary aspirations. / Growing up in the Glasgow of the 60s and 70s, Jackie had very few black role models and took inspiration from the work of the African American poet Audre Lorde and the American political activist Angela Davis. / Jackie also recalls finding her birth parents and how a visit to her birth father's ancestral village in Nigeria finally gave her a sense of dual identity.