Podcasts of the week: painting, catfish, and the Land of Nod

The late American artist

The late American artist Bob Ross became something of a cult
figure during the pandemic, owing to the revival on BBC4 of his
wonderfully therapeutic The Joy of Painting TV show,
originally aired between 1983 and 1994. “Unsurprisingly, the Bob
Ross phenomenon has started to spill over into audio,” said Daisy
Dunn in The Spectator^[1].

There are a few podcasts around assembling clips from his
series, but more interesting are two that owe something to his
style. In Learn to Paint^[2] the artist Kelly
Anne Powers provides Ross-like tutorials, “with her gentle tone an
encouragement to be kind to ourselves as artists”.

PleinAir^[3] with Eric Rhoads is
a bit more highbrow, and is, as its name suggests, focused on
painting outdoors. I’d also recommend Everything but the Flame^[4], hosted by magician Nate
Staniforth. Its focus is magic, rather than art, but it explores
the imaginative drive and creative spirit – and I found it rather
inspiring.

Sweet Bobby^[5], a new six-part podcast
from Tortoise Media, is a “gripping tale of complex online
catfishery”, said Miranda Sawyer in The Observer.^[6] It’s the story of Kirat
Assi, a “sweet-natured” British Sikh woman who fell victim to a
long-running online deception by a man using a stolen identity – a
“catfish”.

In the words of the presenter and reporter Alexi Mostrous, what
followed was a “screwed-up, crazy kind of love story filled with
death, lies and witness-protection programmes”. At times, I felt so
frustrated by Assi’s failure to cut ties with the faker, I found
myself “shouting at the air”. But Sweet Bobby is “a show I
will definitely follow until the end. Fake Bobby has pulled me in
too.”

The recent boom in “sleep podcasts” has provided plenty of
options for people looking for help nodding off, said Elle Hunt in
The Guardian^[7]. The Headspace
mindfulness app has produced Sleepcasts^[8]
– “audio journeys” lasting about 45 minutes that begin with a
meditation or breathing exercise, before trying to send you to
sleep with “an audio tour through a soothing scene”.

Drew Ackerman started his long-established podcast Sleep With Me^[9] with the intention
of boring people to sleep. In his naturally slow speaking voice, he
tells a “circular and confused story that you will never hear the
end of”. Those who find speech intrusive could try BBC Radio 3’s
Slow
Radio^[10] series: it features
soothing field recordings from the natural world.

Lastly, for those with restless children, there is Goodnight, World!^[11], a partnership
between Headspace and Sesame Street. I recommended it to a
friend. He reported back that his three-year-old son was asleep by
the time the 20-minute episode finished.