Talk Media

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Talk Media

Broadcaster Stuart Cosgrove and Professor Eamonn O’Neill host Talk Media: a forensic analysis of how the media works, and who works the media. Packed full of candid commentary and informed opinion, Talk Media features a weekly guest commentator from the worlds of journalism, entertainment and politics. Hour-long episodes are published weekly on Wednesday evenings via Patreon. Join now to listen for 99p per week (+ VAT): patreon.com.talkmedia

  1. SEASON 7, EPISODE 248 TRAILER

    Led By Donkeys, Screen Scotland Expose BBC Commissioning and SNP Big Hitters To Come Home / with Ruth Wishart and David Pratt

    Recommendations: Ruth Cove and Kilcreggan Book Festival 2024 Amongst the popular authors this year are Liz Lochhead, Alex Gray, and a much lauded new kid on the block called Jen Stout, who has been recalling her adventures covering the conflict in Ukraine. Tickets, both weekend and single event are available via the button below. Breaking News ! We are pleased to announce our full list of Authors. Saturday 23rd November Liz LochheadAlex GrayAasmah MirJosie Long Sunday 24th November Ken McNabJen StoutGavin FrancisPeter Ross More details on the authors can be found here Tickets for the Individual Author Sessions are now available at the link below at £8 per session. Weekend Passes at £55 each are still on sale and offer a £9 saving on individual tickets. You will receive a ticket by email in the form of a PDF attachment which can be printed out or presented on your phone at the event. As soon as your payment is processed your name will be added to our list which will be available at the Cove Burgh Hall door.  Cove Burgh Hall, Shore Road, Cove, G84 0LY. Shetland - BBC The dark side of one of the most beautiful places on earth. Uncovering secrets and lies from the past - detective drama starring Douglas Henshall, Ashley Jensen and Alison O'Donnell. A Glasgow Girl: A memoir of growing up and finding your voice - Aasmah Mir A Glasgow Girl is the coming of age story of Aasmah Mir's childhood growing up in 1970s Glasgow. From a vivacious child to a teenage loner, Aasmah candidly shares the highs and lows of growing up between two cultures - trying to fit in at school and retreating to the safe haven of a home inhabited by her precious but distant little brother and Helen, her family's Glaswegian guardian angel. Intricately woven into this moving memoir is the story of Aasmah's mother, as we follow her own life as a young girl in 1950s Pakistan to 1960s Scotland and beyond. Both mother and daughter fight, are defeated and triumph in different battles in this sharp and moving story. A Glasgow Girl is a remarkable memoir about family, identity and finding yourself where you are. Steeple Chasing: Around Britain by Church - Peter Ross A thoroughly beguiling tour around the manifold riches of Britain's churches, Ross' immersive book ranges from unassuming parish to mighty cathedral and tells a defiantly human story of art, architecture, history and culture. David: Rebels and Renegades: Sheila Rock Street Level Photoworks are pleased to present REBELS & RENEGADES, a two part exhibition featuring the outstanding work of Sheila Rock and Jill Furmanovsky, two pioneering women photographers who captured the zeitgeist of punk and the post-punk unfolding in music and style. https://www.middleeasteye.net/ - Why Dutch support for Israel's football hooligans has roots in colonial racism Eamonn My Salinger Year - film In New York City's late nineties, a young aspiring writer lands a day-job at J.D. Salinger's literary agency. While her eccentric and old-fashioned boss tasks her to process Salinger's voluminous fan mail, she struggles to find her own voice. SALINGER- Documentary Features interviews with 150 subjects - including Salinger's friends and colleagues who have never spoken on the record - as well as film footage, photographs, and other material never before seen.

    6 min

  2. SEASON 7, EPISODE 237 TRAILER

    TM 247 US Election Special 'Trumped - from Courtroom Felon to President Elect' / with Paddy Duffy and David Pratt

    A bit of a U.S. Election Special here. As we all wonder what the next 4 years of President Trump will bring, here is this week's episode with this trio on good form. Recommendations: Eamonn The Kominsky Method - Netflix Acting coach Sandy Kominsky and best friend Norman Newlander keep each other laughing as they navigate the ups and downs of getting older. The War Room - Amazon This documentary follows President Clinton's campaign trail and focuses on his aides, James Carville and George Stephanopoulos. Paddy https://theonion.com/ - America's Finest News Source.. Ludwig - BBC iplayer David Gideon's Spies: The Inside Story of Israel's Legendary Secret Service The Mossad (Paperback) Gordon Thomas has a grasp of history… this is one of the few books to have captured the true nature of the Israeli Government and the thorough process of the Israeli power elite. Ari Ben-Menashe, Former Adviser on Intelligence to the Israeli Government Created in 1951 to ensure an embattled Israel’ s future, the Mossad has been responsible for the most audacious and thrilling feats of espionage, counterterrorism and assassination ever ventured. Gideon’ s Spies has been created from closed-door interviews with Mossad agents, informants and spymasters, and drawing from classified documentsand top-secret sources, revealing previously untold truths about the Israeli intelligence agency. Bang-up-to-date, this new paperback edition of this best-selling book includes startling new information on subjects ranging from Weapons of Mass Destruction, international terrorism, North Korea’ s bird-flu war games and ‘ ethnic bombs’ . The riveting text is supported by glossaries, appendices and shows a Mossad as it has historically been: brilliant, ruthless, flawed but ultimately fascinating.  David Pratt: What I learned from the US election result - The National

    6 min

  3. SEASON 7, EPISODE 246 TRAILER

    ‘Fiscal Fiddling’, ‘Madison Square Garden Stooshie’ and ‘The Changing Face of Scottish Journalism’ / with Alison Thewliss and Catriona Stewart

    We are very lucky to have the participation of all our guests who give up their time to chat through the week's topics. Today we are ally pleased to welcome back Alison and Catriona. Recommendations: Alison Why We're Polarized (Paperback) - Ezra Klein America's political system isn't broken. The truth is scarier: it's working exactly as designed. In Why We're Polarized, Ezra Klein reveals the structural and psychological forces behind America's deep political divisions, revealing how a system filled with rational, functional parts can combine into a dysfunctional whole. Neither a polemic nor a lament, this book offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Trump's rise to the Democratic Party's leftward shift to the politicisation of everyday culture. Klein shows how and why American politics polarised in the twentieth century, what that polarisation did to Americans' views of the world and one another, and how feedback loops between polarised political identities and polarised political institutions drive the system toward crisis. This revelatory book will change how you look at politics, and perhaps at yourself. Catriona The Londoner The Bell - link to Catriona's article on Easdale Bros. Eamonn "What's the secret to still dancing at 106?"

    6 min

  4. SEASON 7, EPISODE 245 TRAILER

    ‘Not my King!’, ‘Democracy for Sale’ and ‘Gove goes BBC’ / with Angela Haggerty and David Pratt

    Recommendations: Angela The Wild Robt - film From DreamWorks Animation comes a new adaptation of a literary sensation, Peter Brown's beloved, award-winning, #1 New York Times bestseller, The Wild Robot. The epic adventure follows the journey of a robot--ROZZUM unit 7134, "Roz" for short--that is shipwrecked on an uninhabited island and must learn to adapt to the harsh surroundings, gradually building relationships with the animals on the island and becoming the adoptive parent of an orphaned gosling. David Searching For Gerda Taro - film SEARCHING FOR GERDA TARO celebrates the life and work of Taro — a charismatic Jewish refugee from Germany, an anti-fascist, and a trailblazing photographer whose work would be forgotten for decades. In 1935, Taro (then going by her birth name, Gerta Pohorylle), met Endre Friedmann, a Jewish photographer from Hungary trying to make a name for himself in Paris. They fell in love and moved in together. The next year, they changed their names to Gerda Taro and Robert Capa. Capa taught Taro photography. Taro in turn helped sell his photos and build his reputation. Together, they went to Spain to report on the civil war from the front lines. She captured the heroism of Republican fighters and documented the world’s first deaths of civilians from aerial bombardment. SEARCHING FOR GERDA TARO shares dozens of stunning archival images by and of Taro. We come to understand her life and work through conversations with curators, authors, and descendants of those who knew her. For decades, her legacy was wrapped up with Capa’s, many of her photos seemingly lost. But with the discovery of thousands of her negatives in the mid-1990s, Taro can finally enjoy the credit she deserves as a brilliant photographer in her own right. Eamonn Absolutely Fabulous: Inside Out - Doc Celebrate one of Britain's most-loved comic creations as Jennifer Saunders, Dame Joanna Lumley, Julia Sawalha and Jane Horrocks reunite to share anecdotes and backstage secrets.

    6 min

  5. SEASON 7, EPISODE 244 TRAILER

    ‘Scotland Forever’, ‘Another Horrific Week in the Middle East’ and ‘Labour’s Back to Work Prescription’ / with Catriona Stewart and David Pratt.

    Episode 244 of Talk Media discusses the media coverage following the sudden death of Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond, who in 2014, took our country within touching distance of Independence. Eamonn, joined by Catriona Stewart and David Pratt, have a frank discussion on the media coverage , a look at the horrors taking place in the Middle East and the frankly strange news of Labour pushing weight loss drugs in an attempt to cut back the welfare bill. Recommendations: Eamonn The War Room- doc - Amazon Prime This documentary follows President Clinton's campaign trail and focuses on his aides, James Carville and George Stephanopoulos. Catriona Break Up - : How Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon Went to War - Book Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon's political partnership changed the face of Scotland, bringing the country to within 200,000 votes of independence and holding sway at Holyrood for more than a decade. So how and why has their thirty-year alliance irretrievably broken down? Break-Up tells the inside story of how the once unbreakable unity of the Scottish National Party was ripped apart amid shocking claims of sexual assault. With unrivalled access to both camps and the women who made the allegations, and with rigorously fair-minded reporting, journalists David Clegg and Kieran Andrews go behind the headlines to uncover the truth about this extraordinary episode, in a piece of political history that reads like a thriller. Now fully updated, this is a jaw-dropping tale of inappropriate behaviour in the highest reaches of power, of lies, distrust and alleged conspiracy, with profound implications not only for Salmond and Sturgeon themselves but for Scotland's governing party and the wider independence campaign. David Wild Thing - book Paul Gauguin is chiefly known as the giant of post-Impressionist painting whose bold colours and compositions rocked the Western art world. It is less well known that he was a stockbroker in Paris and that after the 1882 financial crash he struggled to sustain his artistry, and worked as a tarpaulin salesman in Copenhagen, a canal digger in Panama City, and a journalist exposing the injustices of French colonial rule in Tahiti. In Wild Thing, the award-winning biographer Sue Prideaux re-examines the adventurous and complicated life of the artist. She illuminates the people, places and ideas that shaped his vision: his privileged upbringing in Peru and rebellious youth in France; the galvanising energy of the Paris art scene; meeting Mette, the woman who he would marry; formative encounters with Vincent van Gogh and August Strindberg; and the ceaseless draw of French Polynesia. Prideaux conjures Gauguin's visual exuberance, his creative epiphanies, his fierce words and his flaws with acuity and sensitivity. Drawing from a wealth of new material and access to the artist's family, this myth-busting work invites us to see Gauguin anew.

    6 min

  6. SEASON 7, EPISODE 243 TRAILER

    ‘Starmer appoints an Envoy for the Nations and Regions’, ‘Balance on the 7th Oct Anniversary’ and ‘Laura Lets Slip’ / with Angela Haggerty and David Pratt

    This week we are in sync with our listeners with all 3 topics matching questions submitted. Thanks to all! We have our fingers crossed that we can have Stuart back with us next week. Recommendations: Angela Hounded: Women, Harms and the Gender Wars - Jenny Lindsay The last decade has seen countless cases of women being fired, disciplined, protested or no-platformed for their views on sex and gender. Whether high-profile celebrities or previously unknown feminists, such women’s vocal non-belief in ‘gender identity’ as a universal human condition bears a high social cost. These ‘houndings’ are often presented starkly, clinically, in headlines or fleeting social media moments, stripped of the true cost of holding such beliefs. But what is the reality behind the headlines and noise? What are the true consequences of holding – and living with - such seemingly now-heretical thoughts? Hounded charts the often hidden and unspoken harms women face for prioritising and defending sex-based language and rights. Outlining the often-bewildering array of tactics used by opponents against such women, as well as the resilience required to refuse to be silenced, Lindsay presents a compelling argument for recognition of the individual and social harms that are being enacted under the auspices of ‘gender identity activism.’  This debut non-fiction book by award-winning poet and essayist Jenny Lindsay, whose own ‘hounding’ offers a unique perspective, is a solid, sane, witty but also compassionate account about the very human cost of this extraordinary cultural and political schism. David Lena Zavaroni: The Forgotten Child Star - BBC iplayer Lena Zavaroni was a child superstar, barnstorming the charts, sharing the stage with Sinatra, and performing for the US president, all before her 11th birthday. But her light was dimmed too soon by a battle with anorexia.  Told from the perspective of her 84-year-old father, Victor, this poignant story reflects on parental regret as he seeks peace with his daughter's untimely fate.  Inside Barlinnie - BBC iplayer This series explores the lives of current prisoners and staff as well as delving into a dark history of hangings, riots and escapes that have shaped the prison for over a century. Eamonn ‘It’s all I think about’: Stanley Tucci on love, grief and pasta - Guardian Screen favourite, cocktail maker, cancer survivor, sex symbol… Stanley Tucci is a man of many parts. The ‘Tooch’ discusses fame, his new book – and the perils of cooking for children

    6 min

  7. SEASON 7, EPISODE 242 TRAILER

    ‘BBC Scotland Announce New Director’, ‘Netanyahu Answers to Nobody’ and ‘In Liz We Trust’ / with Simon Pia and David Pratt.

    We are still missing our big pal Cosgrove so we're really grateful to Simon and David for getting the TM jersey on and getting stuck in to the day's subjects. Recommendations: Eamonn In Vogue - the 90's Disney+ The '90s was the decade when high fashion walked off the runway and into mainstream culture. Featuring an A-list cast from the worlds of fashion, film and music, alongside Vogue’s Anna Wintour and Edward Enninful, this landmark series reveals the inside story of the 90’s most celebrated fashion and pop culture moments. David Algiers, Third World Capital:Freedom Fighters, Revolutionaries, Black Panthers - book The life of an unexpected revolutionary with the Black Panthers in Algiers Mokhtefi (née Klein), a Jewish American from Long Island, has had an exhilarating life. In the 1960s, she served as a press adviser to the National Liberation Front in postwar Algiers, before going to work with Eldridge Cleaver, who was wanted in the US for his role in a deadly shoot-out with Oakland police. Half a century later, as an eighty-nine-year-old painter living on the Upper West Side, Mokhtefi still seasons her prose with the argot of revolution. Simon The Hundred Years' War on Palestine The twentieth century for Palestine and the Palestinians has been a century of denial: denial of statehood, denial of nationhood and denial of history. The Hundred Years War on Palestine is Rashid Khalidi's powerful response. Drawing on his family archives, he reclaims the fundamental right of any people: to narrate their history on their own terms. Beginning in the final days of the Ottoman Empire, Khalidi reveals nascent Palestinian nationalism and the broad recognition by the early Zionists of the colonial nature of their project. These ideas and their echoes defend Nakba - the Palestinian term for the establishment of the state of Israel - the cession of the West Bank and Gaza to Jordan and Egypt, the Six Day War and the occupation. Moving through these critical moments, Khalidi interweaves the voices of journalists, poets and resistance leaders with his own accounts as a child of a UN official and a resident of Beirut during the 1982 seige. The result is a profoundly moving account of a hundred-year-long war of occupation, dispossession and colonialisation. https://www.channel4.com/news/

    6 min

  8. SEASON 7, EPISODE 241 TRAILER

    ‘The Labour Conference’, ‘Indy Ref Anniversary Media’ and ‘Money in Detention’ / with Angela Haggerty and Catriona Stewart

    Hopefully we will have Stuart back with us next week, but in the meantime we are delighted to have two of Scotland’s best commentators on the show - welcome back Angela Haggerty and hot from the Labour Party Conference - Catriona Stewart . Recommendations: Eamonn The Seige - Book - Ben Macintyre On April 30, 1980, six heavily armed gunmen burst into the Iranian embassy on Princes Gate, overlooking Hyde Park in London. There they took 26 hostages, including embassy staff, visitors, and three British citizens. A tense six-day siege ensued as millions gathered around screens across the country to witness the longest news flash in British television history, in which police negotiators and psychiatrists sought a bloodless end to the standoff, while the SAS – hitherto an organisation shrouded in secrecy – laid plans for a daring rescue mission: Operation Nimrod. Drawing on unpublished source material, exclusive interviews with the SAS, and testimony from witnesses including hostages, negotiators, intelligence officers and the on-site psychiatrist, bestselling historian Ben Macintyre takes readers on a gripping journey from the years and weeks of build-up on both sides, to the minute-by-minute account of the siege and rescue. Recreating the dramatic conversations between negotiators and hostages, the cutting-edge intelligence work happening behind-the-scenes, and the media frenzy around this moment of international significance, The Siege is the remarkable story of what really happened on those fateful six days, and the first full account of a moment that forever changed the way the nation thought about the SAS – and itself. Angela Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story: This riveting true-crime drama probes the lives of the Menendez brothers, convicted of the brutal 1989 murders of their parents in Beverly Hills. Catriona Tell Me Everything - book - Elizabeth Strout Tell Me Everything is a hopeful, healing novel about new friendships, old loves, and the very human desire to leave a mark on the world. It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer, Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her ex-husband, William. Together, Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. Together, they spend afternoons in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known – “unrecorded lives,” Olive calls them – reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning. Brimming with empathy and pathos, Tell Me Everything is Elizabeth Strout operating at the height of her powers, illuminating the ways in which our relationships keep us afloat. As Lucy says, “Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love."

    6 min
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About

Broadcaster Stuart Cosgrove and Professor Eamonn O’Neill host Talk Media: a forensic analysis of how the media works, and who works the media. Packed full of candid commentary and informed opinion, Talk Media features a weekly guest commentator from the worlds of journalism, entertainment and politics. Hour-long episodes are published weekly on Wednesday evenings via Patreon. Join now to listen for 99p per week (+ VAT): patreon.com.talkmedia

Information

  • Creator
    The Big Light
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2024
  • Episodes
    253
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © The Big Light
  • Show Website
    Talk Media

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