Trisha ❤️ Witness History

On this episode of Pod, Actually, Trisha, a London-based current affairs writer talks about the podcast she listens to most: the BBC’s Witness History.

Each episode is just nine minutes long, yet it captures a moment from history through the memories of someone who lived it. For Trisha, the brevity is part of the appeal — but the deeper attraction is something else entirely.

In a media world built around hyper-curated playlists and endless choice, Witness History offers something rare: random discovery.

In just nine minutes a day, it offers a glimpse into the past — and a reminder that even turbulent moments eventually become history.

Trisha's top five podcasts:

1. Witness History

2. The Globalist

3. Taiwan This Week

4. The Rest Is Classified 

5. Empire: World History

🔗 Links

• Learn more about Trisha here: www.trishadeborchgrave.com
• Read the companion piece on Substack: https://podactually.substack.com
• Support Pod, Actually on Patreon: https://patreon.com/PodActually
• Follow Pod, Actually on Instagram: www.instagram.com/podactuallypodcast

📩 Tell us about the podcast you love: podactuallypodcast@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello, I'm Catherine and welcome to Pod Actually, a podcast about people's favorite podcasts. On today's program, I'm speaking with Trisha, a current affairs writer based in London. Let's jump in. Tricia, what is your favorite podcast?

SPEAKER_01 0:23

So I'm going to be a little bit contentious and just preface your question with what's the podcast I listen to most and what do I tune into most? Because time is of a constraint. And so I don't listen to many of them. And the one that I do tune into, and I didn't actually realize I was doing it on a daily basis, because it's on Radio 4 as well, but it is a podcast in itself, is something called Witness History.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

BBC World Service and now Witness History with me, Jane Wilkinson.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

And it drops every day. And the reason I listen to it is because it's nine minutes long. And in nine minutes, I don't know how to explain this, but it comes closest to the kind of random, non-curated listening that I grew up with as a child and teenager. You know, back in the days, once upon a time, we used to just tune into music stations or news stations. And you're not aware that you do it until that's how you've been brought up. But you get used to listening to a selection of songs or programs that you didn't choose on the radio station. You didn't pick and choose. And what I like about that is that, you know, in this day and age when we're so much in a hurry and we so much curate what we want to listen to, this is a random way of absorbing lots of different things. When it comes to songs, for example, you know, you used to be given a selection of songs by the D the Distrockey or whoever was on the radio. And some of them you liked and some of them you didn't. But those that you loved, you were so happy when they came on, rather than just having a playlist of everything you liked. And those that you didn't like, well, you just had to sort of slightly put up with it. It kind of teaches you a little bit of patience, biding your time. It's not always about you. And the same thing was with growing up with Radio 4, because Radio 4, the BBC, is 24-7 brilliant broadcasting on all kinds of programs, whether it's obviously geopolitics, current, or consumer affairs or biography, it's everything. And again, when you couldn't pick and choose, you just have to go through the whole day of it. And I and I say this because a thousand years ago I used to have a I used to work out of this open studio on a beautiful little street in a very beautiful medieval town outside Oxford. And I used to have Radio 4 on all day long. This is way back when. And what it does is it just kind of in a sedimentary way builds up your breadth and depth of the world. And this is what I like, now to go back to your question, is to BBC's Witness History. Because it's only nine minutes long, it's beautifully narrated, beautifully researched, very well condensed. And it's basically tells moments from history through the memories of people who were there to see it. And while I may not have been in the room, so to speak, on those moments, some of those moments are very much what defines my context and my culture and how over the years I've related to the world through these events. And to just say as well, I think this is really important because we all feel so much under pressure. There's so many things to listen to. There's so many great podcasts, and I think we're all overwhelmed by the plethora of news and information and media available to us. That what I love about this is, you know, when you have on your screen, you've got the podcast downloads and you see every episode. Or with me, I have my audibles where I've downloaded books that I want to listen to, and there's usually about 25 of them there. You know that little line that shows whether you've listened to something or you haven't? Well, I really get very, very demoralized when I look at the lists of things that I have downloaded, and there's just a blip of color on them because I haven't gone to the end of anything. Whereas when I listen to Witness History, it's nine minutes, and every single one of them of those downloaded podcasts I have listened to.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

So there's a pleasure in the completion, but also in the random content, which operates as an antidote to this everyday overwhelm.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

Yes. But I'll tell you what it is. It's more, it's less about the well, it is about being overwhelmed, but it's about not curating what I listen to, but it's still fascinating, interesting. It adds to my life. And also the other thing I'll say about podcasts is I find that the medium of podcasts lends itself really well to some activities. So obviously, with all of us, we have these time constraints. Where I used to listen was always when I was running. I ran for many, many years. And it's the perfect medium that really locks in very well with that idea of being outdoors. You're kind of negotiating your way through, I don't know, the grit on the road, people, the weather, stuff around you. And the podcast, you can still focus on it, you can still listen to it. Now, I then tore my meniscus after 30 years of running, and I had to uh go on to an elliptical. And there again, it's really interesting because the elliptical, you don't move anywhere. You know, you're not sensorially negotiating other things around you. And the best thing for an elliptical is actually being able to focus on printed word. So I read books on the elliptical. I get bored, I'm not bored because the podcast is not boring, but I just feel that I'm not, I don't have enough sensorial thing going on around me. And so I tend to read books, which is great. So that's that took out the podcast for me there. So then I'm left with, well, where else? And it will be a bit of cooking, which is never more than 25 minutes, or it's on the bus. But being a writer, I sometimes don't like to alienate the external world. I love to hear the sounds around me because sometimes I've heard some of the most interesting things that I've overheard or had conversations with perfect strangers, but not more than a minute. But if you're on your podcast, you don't you you shut out the the rest of the world. So in the end, this idea of having nine minutes of something that's really well done, and it's a complete eye-opener on so many levels, and yet you remember some of these incidents is the perfect amount of time. I listen, I sit still and I listen to them because it's nine minutes.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

So you're listening to this show every day. Where are you when you're listening to it?

SPEAKER_01 7:39

That's a good question. I can be still at my desk with my laptop open or my I got an iMac as well. Because it actually becomes a break for me when I'm writing or I'm doing stuff online. It's a sort of, it's like a little, yeah, it is like a little break. Whereas a podcast can seem slightly overwhelming and something more, more of something you want to you have to do. I think the other thing is it depends what you're looking for in a podcast. And I was thinking about this the other day when I knew I was going to talk to you, is I think if I was a single woman or widowed or divorced and living on my own, I would be looking for something different in a podcast, would be almost the intimacy of conversation with somebody else. Even if it's just feeling that you're in the room with like-minded conversation, you laugh, you understand it. I don't look for that in a podcast. There's a very, very successful podcast in the UK called The Rest is Politics, and it's two blokes on opposite sides of the political spectrum, very well known, talking about what's going on in the world. And I find it insufferable, and I know it's really, really popular, so good luck. They're making a ton of money out of this now. But it's like being stuck at a bar with a couple of guys talking where you just cannot get away from the conversation, and it's all back and forth. So when I go to this podcast, it's because it is familiar to me, because more often than not, there are events that have happened over the last 40, 50 years that I remember so that it has that intimacy, but it's not the conversational style between people going back and forth, going, Well, what do you think? Well, I think this. And I'm like, I don't care. Give me something really interesting. And I was gonna say, because I mean, this is how it's it's really the serendipity of life that comes through these historical events that I think is most compelling for me, rather than the conversational style.

SPEAKER_00 9:49

Trisha, could you describe the podcast a little more for someone who hasn't heard it?

SPEAKER_01 9:54

Okay. So this is what is extraordinary about the podcast. First of all, obviously the brevity, but within that brevity, it is brilliantly put together, brilliantly narrated, very well researched. It sometimes it uses a lot of archival, sometimes archival material in terms of actual original interviews with people or radio pronouncements, announcements that were at the time. So let me give you an example because this is, I mean, this is probably I'll give you the most recent. So one was about the secret library that was built underneath a part of Western Damascus when President Bashar al-Assad was pounding and brutally killing opposition Syrians in 2015. And they built in this town, they built an underground library of 3,000 books, books that were recovered from destroyed houses and named after the owners in case they ever came back after fleeing or their families came back after they'd been killed. And it was that third space that they created in this terrible, terrible civil war going on, and obviously his brutality. And inside, underground, was this clean and uh place furnished with sofas where people would go as a place of harbor. That was just one episode, but it gave you a huge amount of detail. There's other stuff, you know, when when um there was a Spanish coup d'etat back in 1981. Um, I don't know if you know about the Agha Khan, the third Agha Khan who married Rita Hayworth at the time he died in 1957, but he in the 1890s, I think, had these amazing conversations with Florence Nightingale. I mean, these incredible sort of weird moments in history. And they had these incredible conversations about women's health and um her own uh uh interventions in hospitals on behalf of women. And she then died in 1910. But and these are archival, they're recordings of him talking about this, and it just goes on. So honestly, Catherine, these nine-minute segments, for some of us who have lived more than 20 years, it's revisiting some of our lives, that we remember these moments, and it's really what defines our context.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

It's so interesting then that it's called witness history, because you're being asked to witness it again as the listener.

SPEAKER_01 12:32

It's so true. And I think that's where the intimacy of that podcast lies. The fact that you might not have been in the room, but because you were alive and it's part of your own background and your own history, you are witnessing it as well. And you do find yourself nodding, going, yes, yes, yes. And then it throws you a curveball and you go, Wow, I didn't know there was that aspect to it. And also, I have to tell you, in today's world where right now we're witnessing probably some of the scariest times in terms of the geopolitical context of where we live, I actually find it slightly comforting that these moments that were really quite significant in terms of countries' relationships, domestic uh instability, all these kinds of things, the fact that we're we're listening to them again and we've survived and we're okay gives me some degree of comfort and hope.

SPEAKER_00 13:35

Do you remember how you discovered the program?

SPEAKER_01 13:39

So that's what I love about the randomness of life. I didn't genuinely seek it out. And I do believe this. I think when you don't seek something out, it seeks you out. And that's what happened with this. I tend to listen to the news a lot because I write about current affairs, and so you know, at lunchtime I'll probably take a break and listen to the news. And this on on BBC Radio 4 follows after the news. And I I just came upon it, or it came upon me. And then I realized it was a podcast, and so I have a podcast app where I can find everything. And I love the fact that I have my whole list of downloads there and I've listened to most of them, if not all of them.

SPEAKER_00 14:26

If someone hadn't listened to podcasts before and was asking you for a recommendation, would you suggest witness history?

SPEAKER_01 14:34

I would definitely suggest witness history, but I I also think I would try and figure out what they would like out of a podcast. Because I have a lot of girlfriends who some of them have more time, some of them have less time. But yes, I think generally speaking, it's just a great little nugget, as I said, a little gem of information. Yes, of course I would I would recommend it.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

If witness history stopped tomorrow, how quickly would you notice?

SPEAKER_01 15:04

Oh, that's a good question. I probably wouldn't notice for a while. I'm amazed how little I miss things. And I don't mean that in a kind of rude way. I I just, you know, it's a little bit like, you know, you watch four hours of an incredible tennis match, you know, an incredible final, you know, at Wimbledon, where you just cannot believe these players have never played. They've played out of their skin. Unbelievable. You've screamed at the screen, you've, you've, you've, you know, just been overawed by this incredible match. And honestly, the next day I can barely remember who was playing. I mean, somebody would ask me who who were the players. I'd I honestly go, I I I can't remember. So would I miss it? I've got so much other stuff going on that I'm not sure. I'm not sure if I would or not. I'd probably go to the podcast at some point, go, God, I haven't, you know, I haven't listened to that for a while. Yeah. But it's you know, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

Final question. Do you think liking this podcast says something about who you are? And if so, what is that?

SPEAKER_01 16:17

Oh, I think it says everything about me. I mean, I'm probably very one-dimensional that a nine-minute podcast could say everything about me. But I just love right now the injection of information that's well researched, that is it does not promote or lead you to think about conspiracy theories. If anything, it makes you a great believer in the cock-ups of history, not the conspiracies. And I know it's based on truth and fact, and we then have the hindsight of being able to look back and maybe see the consequences or not. You know, sometimes these moments are little individual parcels of something that happened, and sometimes they do have a bigger repercussion. But I'm I'm comforted that I can dip into something that I know is a truth, and that doesn't make me more paranoid, more fearful, less trusting of people and institutions. And also, as I said, it really does define, it's it's led to me being defined. It's interesting because my daughters who are grown and have their own lives occasionally say to me, How did you know that, Mum? And I'll say, Because I grew up randomly listening to things, not curating my knowledge, not curating my understanding. And it means that I've the breadth and depth of what I know, I've picked up from all kinds of places and angles. And I think based on random listening and reading books, I have to say, and obviously being educated and lived experience, you end up knowing quite a lot. And what I like about this podcast is that it confirms my background and the context that defines me and shapes me. And it it is who I am today. I enjoyed it, Catherine. It was great to meet you and thank you.

SPEAKER_00 18:30

And that's the show. Podactually is produced and hosted by me, Catherine Harris. If you like the program, please tell a friend. And you can also support us over at Patreon at Pod Actually or on Substaff. Thanks for listening. See you soon!