Wholly Buyable
Advertising Creative Director Chas Bayfield takes you on a road trip through the Bible, leaving one significant item of baggage at home- religion. He tells the story from Genesis to Revelation and explains how this more than any other book has impacted western culture. Wholly Buyable is a podcast for people who might never normally pick up a Bible but who feel they should perhaps know a little more about it than they currently do. After all, the Bible is a book for everyone, not just believers. Listeners will be taken through action sequences worthy of a 21st century TV drama. They will be seduced by erotic poetry and bombarded with hallucinatory visions. Fill your boots with betrayal, brutality, beauty and, believe it or not, comedy. This isn’t your average Bible podcast; no one will be told what to believe but everyone who joins in the journey will hopefully feel that they know the world’s best-selling book a little better.
Episodes
163 episodes
Special: The Bible of the Handmaid's Tale
Gilead. Marthas. Handmaids. Eyes. They sound biblical but if they are, where and what do these references mean? Are actual slave women co-opted as surrogate baby providers in the Bible? Do they truly lie in their mistresses' laps to conceive an...
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10:56
157: A Time to Die (Ecclesiastes 1-4)
Meaningless! Meaningless! There aren't many books in the Bible or otherwise that begin as bleakly as this one.And, plot spoiler, the vibe doesn't lift much as Ecclesiastes progresses.There is no point to life it seems than for a p...
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Season 19
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Episode 157
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19:51
156: The Leech's Daughter (Proverbs 29-31)
Unexpectedly, given that the only women described in the Book of Proverbs so far have been an adulteress and a quarrelsome wife, the book's finale is a eulogy to a character referred to as "the Wife of Noble Character".This woman is a st...
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Season 18
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Episode 156
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20:20
155: Tough Love (Proverbs 27-29)
Death and Destruction are never satisfied, a fool can be crushed into powder yet still not lose his foolishness, and good friends sharpen each other with honest feedback.The Bible's proverbs are universal and speak to people outside of a...
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Season 18
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Episode 155
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22:53
154: A Little Sleep, a Little Slumber (Proverbs 24-26)
The wisdom of other ancients continues in the second part of the Thirty Sayings of the Wise. A later king of Israel, Hezekiah then adds some more of Solomon's proverbs. Fools, sluggards, neighbours, messengers and wives a...
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Season 18
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Episode 154
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23:05
153: The Guilty and the Greedy. (Proverbs 21-23)
Loose tongues cost lives, a bribe pacifies the angry and those with a fondness of wine will never be rich.Many of Solomon's wise sayings are as true today as when they were written three millennia ago.In this episode, the rhythm c...
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Season 18
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Episode 153
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23:18
152: The Sluggard (Proverbs 18-20)
The wealthy person who loses friends when they lose their money.The gossip who betrays a friend's confidence.And the person who is too lazy to lift their spoon to their mouth.The torrent of timeless, poetic and sometimes co...
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Season 18
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Episode 152
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22:59
151: The Wicked and the Wise (Proverbs 16-18)
Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones. Pride comes before a fall.Grey hair is a crown of splendour. Even the fool who keeps silent is seen as wise.The proverbs that popu...
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Season 18
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Episode 151
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22:50
150: Bone-Rotting Envy (Proverbs 14-15)
Sometimes terse, sometimes poetic, sometimes enigmatic, these often two-line sayings balance the good against the bad, the preferable against the undesirable.Some of these proverbs offer wisdom, others state the blindingly obvious. Eithe...
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Season 18
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Episode 150
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20:15
149: Death Snares (Proverbs 11-13)
A beautiful woman who shows no discretion is like a pig with a ring in its nose.Morally upstanding people care for their animals.And those who spare the rod ruin their children.The Book of Proverbs is not afraid to pull pun...
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Season 18
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Episode 149
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19:29
148: Chattering Fools (Proverbs 8-11)
The title of T E Lawrence (of Arabia)'s autobiography, 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom' is taken from a verse in the Book of Proverbs.In this episode, we also meet 'Love covers a multitude of sins' and the finger wagging evangelicals' fav...
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Season 18
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Episode 148
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22:20
147: The Honeytrap (Proverbs 4-8)
"Come, let us drink deeply of love till morning. Let us enjoy ourselves with love!"Such is the siren call of the adulterous older woman, intent on seducing a foolish yet lustful young man while her husband is away on business.This...
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Season 18
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Episode 147
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22:47
146: The Adulterous Woman (Proverbs 1-4)
A new season begins.This is the Book of Proverbs, a monster collection of aphorisms and other gems of knowledge culled by Israel's King Solomon and other wise ancients.Much of the book is aimed at the king's children, but the wisd...
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Season 18
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Episode 146
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20:54
145: The Hail Hurler (Psalms 145-150)
Finally!We reach the end of the Book of Psalms.The book ends on a high as writers sing unrestrained songs of praise to God.As the Psalms reach their upbeat finale, expect Milton, Mendelssohn and missing verses. And joy, lot...
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Season 17
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Episode 145
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22:45
144. Clear and Present Danger (Psalms 139-144)
The idea that God knows each person on earth intimately has proven one of the more attractive facets of Christianity, and the concept makes its first biblical landfall in the Book of Psalms.The final short songs of the Psalms are some of...
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Season 17
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Episode 144
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21:00
143. Rivers of Babylon (Psalms 132-138)
Originally sung by reggae band The Melodians, and made internationally famous by Boney M, the lyrics about exiles weeping by Babylon's rivers were written thousands of years earlier by a scribe who remembered the desolation felt by his captive ...
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Season 17
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Episode 143
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24:12
142: An Escaped Bird (Psalms 121-131)
Short but very sweet.The songs sung by ancient pilgrims as they travelled from the far corners of the Jewish world to the Jerusalem temple are immortalised in this section of the Book of Psalms.These are the 'Songs of Ascent' - de...
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Season 17
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Episode 142
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21:24
141: Rivers of Blood (Psalms 119-120)
Psalm 119 concludes.The entire poem is a eulogy to God's laws and the psalmist admires, studies, remembers, contemplates, learns and hopes to understand these rules. There is a repetitive, meditative quality to the poem which...
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Season 17
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Episode 141
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22:08
140: The Swarm (Psalms 118-119)
A shout of joy that becomes a political hot potato in New Testament times, and the longest chapter in the Bible. If it’s God‘s laws, rules, ways, decrees, precepts, statutes and commands you’re interested, in this is your happy plac...
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Season 17
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Episode 140
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22:40
139: The Sea that Fled in Fear (Psalms 112-117)
We're all familiar with the phrase "Hallelujah".A heartfelt shout of joy uttered by religious and non religious alike.It first makes landfall in a series of Psalms known, unsurprisingly, as the Halel.We run into these songs...
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Season 17
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Episode 139
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20:26
138: Terrorstorm (Psalms 107-111)
Book Five, the final part of the Book of Psalms begins.This is where we meet the most quoted Psalm in the Bible, and one of its most beloved.Psalm 110 sees Israel's great king David referring enigmatically to an even greater kin...
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Season 17
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Episode 138
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21:29
137: The Kings who Killed their Children. (Psalms 104-106)
Much as the Psalms were songs of praise to God, some were written as a kind of oral history; a retelling of Israel's story set to music. The music and the repeated telling of these stories embedded in Israel's people a sense of where they had c...
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Season 17
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Episode 137
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24:55
136: The Joybringer. (Psalms 98-103)
The Bible (and the Wholly Buyable podcast) reaches its halfway point with songs of such ebullience they have inspired some of the world's greatest musicians.Enjoy the joy.Written and produced by Chas BayfieldMusic by Michael...
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20:31
135: The Widow Slayers (Psalms 90-97)
The Book of Psalms is so long that it is split into five separate books.This is where Book Four begins.Some believe that these are some of the oldest psalms and that they were written by the Old Testament ancient, Moses.
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Season 17
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Episode 135
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22:42
134: Dead Man Walking (Psalms 85-89)
The Psalms is not a book you can rush.These poems pack an even greater punch when you stop to inspect them more closely.If you're not religious and just want a better handle on what is in between the leatherette cover of a Bible, you've...
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Season 17
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Episode 134
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23:12
