Hello lovely friends. Hope all’s as well as can be. Right now is a golden age for podcasts. (They say the same about email newsletters and, well, you be the judge.) Substantial amounts are being produced and audiences are growing too.

There’s now so many podcasts, of variable quality, that the choice has become bewildering. I’ve found myself instead falling back upon classic radio shows. There’s one in particular I’ve loved since I was old enough to commit half an hour’s attention to anything.

• 💨 Bird deaths down 70% after painting wind turbine blades: According to a study at a wind farm on the Norwegian archipelago of Smøla, changing the colour of a single blade on a turbine from white to black resulted in a 70% drop in the number of bird deaths.

• 🍴 Men find very long fork on Bristol street and Bristol Live put their chief reporter on it. It’s the type of story people need to hear. “Wow – what is this? Why did they make this? What could you do with it?”

• 💰 How to save money: Aside from basic needs, your financial priorities are up to you. Resist short-termism by keeping in mind your values and goals.

• 🎯 To-do lists are dead. Use these 3 daily hacks to stick to your priorities and get more done: Particularly now, it may take some proactive measures on your part to keep yourself on track. These three strategies are intended to become like automations in your workday in that you won’t even have to think about doing them.

• 🥱 Welcome to Your Bland New World of Consumer Capitalism: Interesting piece from Ben Schott on the direct-to-consumer aesthetic: why do disruptive startups slavishly follow an identikit formula of business model, look and feel, and tone of voice? Because it works, sort of.

• 💭 33 Things I Stole From People Smarter Than Me: if perhaps you enjoyed my list of 40 at 40 then you’ll like this list of wise extracts picked out by author Ryan Holiday.

• 🤷🏻 Why Are Men Still Explaining Things to Women? Mansplaining illuminates a much deeper problem than the bore of patronising monologues. It ‘crushes young women into silence’ by telling them ’that this is not their world’ just as it ’exercises men’s unsupported overconfidence’. So why is men’s interruption of women to explain things—often things they know less about than the women to whom they’re explaining—still so common?

What are podcasts lacking?

In the early Sixties, Cambridge Circus, the annual Footlights comedy revue, spawned a radio sketch-show that then ran for nearly a decade. Drawing inspiration from the likes of The Goon Show and ITMA, its writers and performers remain well-known, but more for what they all went on to do: Do Not Adjust Your Set, At Last the 1948 Show, The Goodies, I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue and the mighty Monty Python.

I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again is a furiously-paced, madcap romp with full buy-in from its vocal audiences. For all its crash-bang-wallop and knowing groans, the comedy is bravely written and deftly performed. You can pick out the now-infamous Cleese/Chapman writing partnership, obscure rambles penned by Eric Idle, and the sharp, crowd-pleasing wit of Garden and Brooke-Taylor.

Jo Kendall went on to be known for her dramatic performances, but here she was the first woman to be equally top-billed as a comic writer and performer. And Bill Oddie’s extraordinary maniacal prowess leaves you yearning for more music in comedy generally—trouble is, it’s rare to hear it done so well.

ISIRTA helps me understand what’s bewildering about contemporary options: the quality was sky-high. It’s ambitious, respectful of its influences and it establishes running gags without allowing itself time for introspection. It is well-written, well-performed and well-made; there aren’t many podcasts, yet, that could claim the same.