Just Passing Through Podcast
Step into 'Just Passing Through,' the podcast that chronicles my Yorkshireman adventures navigating the maze of Japanese life. No guarantees of laughter, but we promise a healthy dose of raised eyebrows and bemused chuckles.
In each episode, we'll explore the quirky intersections of cultures, from attempting to decipher the intricacies of local customs to introducing Japan to the wonders of a proper brew. It's a podcast where culture shock meets dry Yorkshire wit – a journey through the everyday absurdities that make life interesting.
So, if you're up for a laid-back, eyebrow-raising, and occasionally head-scratching experience, hit that download button. 'Just Passing Through' – where each episode is a detour into the unpredictable and a reminder that life's little oddities are the spice of the journey."
Enjoy,Darren.
Episodes
271 episodes
Brian Jones ~ The Lost Stone
Episode 269Few figures capture both the excitement and the cost of the 1960s quite like the young musician at the heart of this story. Gifted, inventive, and endlessly drawn to new sounds, he helped lay the foundations for a band ...
Pablo Escobar ~ The Shadow Over Colombia
Episode 268Few names become symbols of an entire era. Pablo Escobar is one of them.To some, he is a generous benefactor who builds homes, football pitches and schools for Colombia's poorest communities. To others, he is the...
Lemmy ~ Nothing Left to Prove
Episode 267Picture a smoky club somewhere in northern England. The amplifiers are stacked high, the air smells of beer and cigarettes, and on stage stands a man who looks less like a rock star and more like a force of nature. His ...
Roy Cohn ~ The Illusion of Control
Episode 266In the crowded, fluorescent-lit corridors of mid-20th century American power, few figures moved quite like Roy Cohn. He was not a president, nor a general, nor an elected official — and yet he seemed to orbit all three,...
Bram Stoker ~ Inventing Immortality
Episode 265🌙🦇 England, 1897.The gas lamps flicker through the London fog. 💨🏮 Horse-drawn carriages clatter over wet cobblestones. 🐎🌧️ The British Empire is at its height—an age of invention, progress, and discovery. ⚙️🚂🌍
Ivan Aivazovsky ~ Painting the Tempest
Episode 264The sea is restless.Under a vast sky streaked with silver and gold, waves roll endlessly toward the shore. Sailors scan the horizon for signs of changing weather while fishing boats rise and fall with the rhythm...
Wilfred Brambell ~ The Man Behind Steptoe
Episode 263Coal smoke hangs over terraced streets. Trams rattle past rows of brick houses. In living rooms across the country, black-and-white television sets flicker into life as families gather together at the end of ...
Buster Edwards ~ The Criminal Britain Loved
Episode 262South London. The years after the war. Streets filled with market traders, factory workers, and young men searching for opportunity in a changing Britain. Among them is Buster Edwards—charming, ambitious, and restless....
Albert Pierrepoint ~ The Man Called Before Sunrise
Episode 261In the grey light of post-war Britain, one man carried a burden few could imagine. Quiet, polite, and almost invisible in everyday life, he ran a small pub in the north of England. Customers knew him as a cheerful land...
Ruth Ellis ~ From Glamour to Gallows
Episode 260Ruth Ellis didn’t just make history—she became it. The last woman to be executed in Britain, her name is forever tied to a single gunshot on a London street. But that moment is only the surface.Behind it lies a ...
Freddie Scappaticci ~ Stakeknife
Episode 259Freddie Scappaticci is a man who exists in two versions at once.In one, he is a committed member of the Provisional IRA, operating in the shadows of a conflict that reshaped Northern Ireland. A man trusted to id...
Simo Häyhä ~ The White Death
Episode 258In the frozen forests of northern Europe, where winter silence stretches for miles and the horizon disappears into endless white, one man became a ghost.His name was Simo Häyhä.To his enemies, he was some...
Stuart Sutcliffe ~ The Beatle Who Walked Away
Episode 257Before the music changes the world, there is a quieter story.It begins in post-war Liverpool, where Stuart Sutcliffe grows up not as a musician, but as an artist—drawn to paint, to ideas, to something deeper than...
Kenny Everett ~ The Man Who Broke the Airwaves
Episode 256Before the noise… before the voices, the characters, the chaos—there was a boy searching for a place to belong.He would grow up to become one of the most inventive, unpredictable, and boundary-breaking entertaine...
The Strait of Hormuz ~ A History
Episode 255In the narrow gap between two rugged coastlines, where the waters of the Persian Gulf meet the open ocean, lies a passage that the modern world cannot live without.The Strait of Hormuz is not wide. In places, it ...
Hans Gamper ~ The Godfather of FC Barcelona
Episode 254A city by the sea. A restless young man. And an idea that refuses to stay small.At the end of the 19th century, football is still finding its place in the world—played on rough fields, organised by passion more ...
Cyrus the Great ~ The Shepherd Who Took Babylon
Episode 253Across the dry plains of ancient Persia, a new kind of ruler is rising.Cyrus, the son of a small regional king, begins life far from the glittering centers of power. Yet even in youth there are whispers about hi...
H.G.Wells ~ Before the Machines Awoke
Episode 252Before the rockets of science fiction streaked across cinema screens… before alien invasions filled television… before time travel became a familiar idea in books and films… there was one man quietly imagining it all.
Billy the Kid ~ Lawless Days, Short Years
Episode 251Out on the edge of a young and restless nation, where dust clung to boots and gun smoke drifted across wide New Mexico skies, a boy with a narrow face and watchful eyes began to write his name into legend.He was...
Minamoto no Yoritomo ~ The Man Who Built Kamakura
Episode 250The air is thick with the scent of pine and salt, drifting in from the nearby coast, as a boy of ten stands at the edge of a world he barely understands. The capital of Kyoto, full of gilded halls and whispered intrigue...
Samuel Whittemore ~ The Wrong Man to Cross
Episode 249War is usually the domain of the young — quick feet, steady aim, and lungs strong enough for shouting charges. But in the spring of 1775, on a quiet road outside Boston, history pauses for someone else.He is nearly ...
Rik Mayall ~ No Inside Voice Available
Episode 248Before the noise and chaos, there was simply a boy called Richard.Born in 1958 in Harlow, Essex, he grew up in a house full of drama — his parents were teachers of it. Voices, characters and imagination were norm...
Hōne Wiremu Heke Pōkai ~ A Māori Response to Colonial Promises
Episode 247Before treaties were signed and borders were fixed on maps, power in Aotearoa was measured in mana — authority earned, defended, and sometimes taken by force. Few figures embodied that struggle more clearly than Hōne He...