Travel podcasts perfect for the armchair traveller
Broaden your horizons with these engaging storytellers.
Bowery Boys New York City
This production is named after the 19th-century street gang that ruled a corner of Manhattan and, prior to that, the young Irish men of the Bowery neighbourhood. The pair behind the podcast, Greg Young and Tom Meyers, are more amateur historians than working-class ruffians. They steer listeners around their adopted city, where they have lived for more than two decades. Fossick through the back catalogues of this series, which includes more than 320 shows, and you will find the Big Apple presented like an art gallery, with exhibitions staged everywhere from the back alleys of the Bronx to iconic bakeries in Brooklyn Heights to a doll factory in Bushwick, where the city’s industrial past and punk music collide. The podcast is part history lesson, part love letter to New York, with an evocative walking tour of the elevated High Line (pictured) a highlight;
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Off Track
Ann Jones, the host of this ABC podcast, says if you can’t get into the bush, you can close your eyes and listen to a bush walk remix replete with the sound of crunching leaves underfoot, the tink-tink-tinking of bell birds and cutting call of whip birds. This series has a distinctly Australian accent, with episodes such as Whip it Good, a curated soundtrack of birdsong, and Flora Fatale, about Australia’s 240 species of carnivorous plants. Although Off Track is essentially a nature and environment program, it’s also a very considered celebration of our flora and fauna, and is perfect for those wanting to unplug from news about the pandemic and meditate on sounds from the Australian bush. Visit a hanging swamp in the Blue Mountains, hear a bilby dreaming story and visit a wildlife shelter with Yackandandah’s “Angel of the Bush”;
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Deviate with Rolf Potts
If you listen to only one episode of this series recorded by American travel writer and essayist Rolf Potts, make it the one where he riffs with author Paul Theroux about his 56th book, On the Plain of Snakes, about his solo travels through Mexico, from the frontier town of Reynosa to Chiapas and back. True to the template of Deviate, this instalment meanders off-topic in the most wonderful way as Theroux, now in his 70s, talks about everything from ageism and the art of listening, to slow travel and Mexico beyond the museums, ruins and resorts. In season three, Potts also ponders the future of travel, post-pandemic, and he’s a glass-half-full kind of guy. In Using your Travel Skills to make Quarantine Life Better, he argues that those of us who have been stuck in a hostel dorm room with 12 other people and their smelly socks have the capacity to find #isolife at home with the family quite joyful;
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National Trust
Britain’s National Trust releases a new podcast episode every other week and invites listeners to trail along behind a roster of hosts as they walk through hundreds of historic properties. They’ve uncovered the romance of places as varied as Fenton House in Hampstead, North London, to the once gritty back-to-backs in Birmingham, known as the city of 1000 trades. Join affable guides such as social historian James Grasby to visit the childhood homes of the Beatles, go stargazing in the Lake District, and brave the waters with Shropshire’s Wild Swimmers and Dippers club in Carding Mill Valley. Listening to these atmospheric and moving recordings is an immersive experience and one that will transport you far from your armchair;