Good news about the past, present and future of the Word podcast

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For years now I've been hearing from people who say "where can I get all the long versions of the old Word podcasts?" Now, thanks to Chris Rand, you can. They're archived here.

Pick the bones out of that lot. And no, I'm afraid I don't know what was the number of the one where Andrew told the story of Van Morrison and the harmonica. You'll just have to take your dog for a very long walk.

Mark Ellen, Alex Gold and I keep the spirit of the old podcast going in our Word In Your Ear events, the recordings of which you can subscribe to for nothing at all here. These happen at the Islington, which is a great pub with a brilliant small concert room at the back which is ideal for putting on and recording these shows. Since we've been here we've hosted Danny Baker, Johnnie Walker, Ben Watt, Mark Billingham, Clare Grogan and many more.

We usually do these as audio/visual shows with the conversation steered by pictures on a screen and to help get the idea over we put some of them on You Tube. Our most recent one with the lovely Clare Grogan is here.

You can still get a ticket for our next one which is next Tuesday and features music writers Mick Wall and Peter Doggett.

Is wearing headphones making us more stupid?

Yesterday I learned that ad genius John Hegarty gets cross when he sees young creatives arriving at work wearing headphones.

This got me thinking. People often talk about what headphones put into our ears but rarely about what they keep out.

We use them as a way to travel around in our own pod, to keep the real world and the other people, of whom hell is said to be comprised, at bay.

This has to be making us less aware of the sounds around us, the music of speech and the riches of overheard conversation.

I'm assuming Hegarty feels that people with eyes and ears open are more likely to be stimulated and therefore more likely to come up with good ideas.

If I get an idea - even a mediocre one - it's always when out walking. I'm going to monitor myself and see if it's more likely to happen without headphones.

I've just been to collect a parcel from the post office and immediately realised I'm far more likely to talk to myself without headphones. This is a good thing.

Really Saying Something

Too many podcasts are either re-purposed radio or newspapers read aloud. Elvis Costello's the First Ten Years, is the best podcast I've heard since Danny Kelly stopped fronting his weekly football show for the Times. It's been done as a promotional series to accompany the reissue of his early albums. Elvis talks, possibly in response to an unheard interviewer, about what happened at each stage. There are short extracts from the music but it's mostly speech. Elvis is lucid, articulate and able to put over how it felt to enter the music business at a time of great change and slowly become a professional. He's at his best talking about the things it would never occur to an interviewer to ask. Things like music. His account of how the differing backgrounds of the members of the Attractions and his producer Nick Lowe came together to create early records like "Watching The Detectives" is the kind of thing that editors tend to red pencil for being too slow. The keyboard player Steve Naive was a 19 year old classical music student who was constantly wanting to play variations. Nick Lowe and Elvis, who were students of classic pop, had to keep steering him back to his first thought. You should hear it. Costs nothing.