What are your green sustainability flags? Are you thinking about pivoting in your career? Have you ever heard from an incarcerated first responder? This week’s podcast picks are both powerful and insightful.
1. Green Flags
Streaming platform: All streaming platforms
Genre: Sports
Manchester United captain and Lioness Maya Le Tissier, fashion and lifestyle guru Oli Bromfield, and pro-footballer turned content creator Moses Duckrell, have teamed up with Puma to see how they can live more sustainably.
Green Flags is a podcast where the trio will compete against each other in a series of challenges set by the sportswear brand to help reduce their impact on the earth.
At the end of the five-part video podcast series, the winner who has accumulated the most points – also known as Green Flags – will take home the Green Flags trophy.
But before they get into their first challenge, Tissier, Bromfield and Duckrell confess how they sometimes fail to contribute to the health of the world, including wearing new clothes only once or twice, refusing to clean dirty trainers and just buying new ones instead, taking 40-minute showers, and forgetting to bring your own plastic bags to the supermarket.
If, like the hosts, you are concerned about the greenhouse gases you emit, or why everyone needs to do something small to make a big difference, Green Flags would be an insightful listen about how you can better care about the planet.
(By Yolanthe Fawehinmi)
2. Silly Little Girls Club
Streaming platform: All streaming platforms
Genre: Beauty and life
Silly Little Girls Club is the new podcast by celebrity hairstylist Samantha Cusick. This series dives into powerful stories and conversations with some of the most influential voices in pop culture, and in this week’s instalment, longtime friend Tanya Burr joins the club.
The influencer, actress, mother and UNHCR goodwill ambassador – who was very generous – talks about the act of balancing several spinning plates, whilst parenting and returning to YouTube.
Burr also spoke about the idea of being in the right place at the right time, how that transformed her career, the creative process she has now adopted, the pressures that automatically come with online scrutiny and the desire to have a second child.
Silly Little Girls Club is all about inspiring women and Burr understood the assignment and, above all, wants more women to guard their peace and fervently pursue their dreams.
(By Yolanthe Fawehinmi)
3. Fire Escape
Streaming platform: All streaming platforms
Genre: True crime
It’s hard to not be in awe of Amika Mota after listening to Wondery and KQED’s Snap Studios’ new groundbreaking podcast, Fire Escape.
Right from the start, the incarcerated female firefighter, former midwife, and daughter of a feminist icon, whose journey challenges the stigma surrounding women in prison, tells us everything she remembers about her first emergency call – her first car accident.
But as her story unfolds, with the help of host and journalist Anna Sussman, listeners start to hear about the challenges she faced after being sentenced to almost 10 years in one of the largest women’s prisons in the world and her identity-shifting work as an incarcerated first responder.
During her time in prison, Mota also had to learn how to be a mother to her three growing children, despite being told by the world that she is no longer entitled to that role.
Fire Escape is an immersive, chilling and heartbreaking story about a woman who continues to challenge the narrative around women in prison, and their fundamental right to live a full and worthy life.
(By Yolanthe Fawehinmi)
4. Where Everybody Knows Your Name with Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson (Sometimes)
Streaming platform: All streaming platforms
Genre: Culture and society
Celebrities interviewing their famous pals vary from insightful to sycophantic but nostalgia can be a soothing balm to even the most impenetrable in-jokes.
Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson starred together in the hit 1980s sitcom Cheers, and while younger audiences might know them better for CSI and The Good Place; and True Detective and Hunger Games respectively, their friendship forged behind that Boston bar ‘where everybody knows your name’ has endured.
Harrelson’s contributions to this two-hander are scattered in frequency and depth – hence the parenthesis in the podcast title – but Danson has done his research and provides a steady hand on the tiller for their interview, including with Kelsey Grammer and George Wendt from their Cheers days.
Danson’s two-part interview with his wife, Oscar-winning actress Mary Steenburgen, is a wonderfully tender highlight. He generously steers her to recall many of his favourite stories about her remarkable life, including how a chance meeting with Jack Nicholson resulted in her big screen debut. Pull up a stool safe in the knowledge these once-bartenders have some interesting stories to share.
(By Amy Crowther)
Spotlight on…
5. What My Best Friend Does
Streaming platform: All streaming platforms
Genre: Career
Ruth Ameku, 25, is the girl who forced her way into Flight Studio, the home of one of the UK’s leading podcasts hosted by Steven Bartlett, The Diary Of A CEO.
After months of working in various departments with his team, Ameku – a marketing specialist – speaks to host Bayo Adeoshun of What My Best Friend Does, about how you can land similar opportunities with other high-profile people.
Each week Adeoshun speaks to a guest also known as a “best friend” to inspire listeners to take immediate action and discover their dream careers.
From mistakes to avoid, how she landed her internship, to standing out from the crowd, going to university in this day and age, and why it’s important to never burn bridges in your career, Ameku shares everything she’s learnt so far with much gratitude and confidence.
If you are feeling stuck about your next career steps, What My Best Friend Does might just help you get out of a rut.
(By Yolanthe Fawehinmi)
