Podcasts of the week: sitting down, music, and life-altering events

Featuring A Somewhat Complete History of Sitting Down, Aria Code, Sticky Notes and Life Changing with Jane Garvey

Life Changing with Jane Garvey

Its ability to cater to niche or unlikely interests has always been part of podcasting’s charm, said Fiona Sturges in the FT. But an eight-part series about being seated? It sounds bizarre, but A Somewhat Complete History of Sitting Down, from Audible, is highly absorbing. It helps that we’re in the safe hands of Greg Jenner, the historian, author and host of the BBC Sounds podcast You’re Dead to Me. Here he uses the “story of who gets to sit and on what and when and why” as a means of exploring different societies and eras. The series takes us from Rome’s Colosseum to Victorian music halls, from the Palace of Westminster to Montgomery, Alabama – yielding stories of injustice, struggle and triumph. Jenner has long “perfected the art of livening up potentially dusty subjects”, and his script here is “irreverent, illuminating and sharply funny”. It’s a clever idea, cleverly done.

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