Ever since Mel Gibson as William Wallace riled up his army of blue-faced Highlanders by shouting “freedom!”, the world has been infatuated with Scotland. It’s OK – you can admit that you liked the movie (even if it was mostly filmed in Ireland).

Since then – in what’s known as the ‘Braveheart Effect’ – the film has inspired people around the world to visit Scotland. And many others have joined its ranks – Outlander, The Outlaw King, Harry Potter and even Trainspotting to some extent.

Scotland is rife with stories, so it’s no surprise that there are plenty of podcasts about Scotland too. From shows that focus on Scottish history, to gruesome or legendary tales set in the landscape, and travel tips for planning a visit. Here are some of the best Scottish podcasts – you might even find some episodes about Outlander or Braveheart in there…

Whisky Sisters Podcast

Liquid gold, water of life, single malt whisky – there are many names for the Scottish national drink. In Whisky Sisters Podcast, hosts Inka Larissa and Jennifer Rose share a dram or two and dive into the fascinating world of whisky from Scotland and beyond. In each episode they discover new drams and distilleries, speak with expert guests and uncover the mysteries of distilling. If you’re not a whisky connoisseur already, you may want to ease yourself in with this episode about whisky cocktails. Listen now >>

Stories of Scotland

Learn about Scotland’s mythical creatures and gruesome history – but make it fun! Stories of Scotland is an award-winning podcast that explores the rich tapestry of Scottish culture, nature and heritage. Hosts Annie and Jenny come together to blether about the past, try their tongues at historical accents and tell often forgotten or misrepresented stories. A great one to start is their 3-part series ‘Queer as Folktales’. Listen now >>

Atlantic: A Scottish Story

Atlantic: A Scottish Story is a captivating 8-part drama about life on the edge of the world. We follow the story of Evie and Quinn, two young islanders from St Kilda whose lives are entwined even when an ocean comes between them. The cast includes Kirsty Findlay, Kate Dickie and Richard Rankin (of Outlander fame) and original music by Scott Gilmour and Claire McKenzie. Since this is an audio drama, you better start at the beginning – ‘Episode 1: A New Arrival’. Listen now >>

Wild for Scotland

Close your eyes while you listen and you could think you’re there. Wild for Scotland is an immersive storytelling podcast for anyone who dreams of being in Scotland or is looking for travel inspiration. The first-person narratives are enriched with captivating soundscapes and contextualised by interviews with locals to learn more about life in the landscapes featured. This is, in fact, my podcast! And you might not be surprised if I tell you that ‘The Key – An Outlander Road Trip from Edinburgh’ is a listener favourite. But if you love puffins as much as I do, you’ll love this episode from my trip to the Isle of Canna. Listen now >>

What We Do In The Winter

Have you ever wondered what life is like on Scottish isles during the winter? What We Do In The Winter is a community led show that answers just that question. Produced by Alasdair and Georgia Satchel it features conversations with locals from the isles of Mull, Iona, Ulva and Gometra and gives insights into the lives of locals out of season. Why not start with this episode featuring Catriona MacLeod, a singer, cabaret artist and Mull-native. Listen now >>

Creative Me Podcast

What makes an artist tick? And how do they get their creative juices flowing? These are just some of the questions posed by Ice Headlam on the Creative Me Podcast. Every episode Ica quizzes another creative from the north east of Scotland about their practice and process with the aim to foster creativity among others and amplify BIPOC voices in Scotland’s creative industries. A great episode to start with is this conversation about the Scottish music scene with Matt Hickman aka. Brown Bear. Listen now >>

Love Scotland

Love Scotland gives listeners an insight into the conservation work by the National Trust for Scotland. Hosted by former BBC Reporting Scotland anchor Jackie Bird, each episode dives into the history of another NTS location from grand castles and museums to some of Scotland’s most beautiful glens and mountains. Along the way, Jackie interviews researchers and conservation experts who shine a light on what happens behind the scenes. If you’re an Outlander fan, you may enjoy this episode about the beauty of Glencoe with Outlander’s Sam Heughan. Listen now >>

Kathi Kamleitner is a Glasgow-based author, podcaster and travel expert. Originally from Austria, she moved to Scotland for her studies, fell in love with the country and never looked back. She shares immersive travel stories on her podcast Wild for Scotland and practical travel guides and tips on her blog Watch Me See. Kathi’s first book “Glücksorte in Glasgow” was published by Droste Verlag (Germany) in March 2022. Photo by Roxanna Barry.

Did you listen to a podcast on this list? Have we missed your favourite Scottish podcast? Let us know in the comments below!

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Fiction podcasts are having a bit of a golden age! From independent podcasters creating their own stories, to the behemoths of television stepping into the game, there’s a wealth of scripted shows right now. At first look, the most popular fiction podcast lists can seem dominated by U.S. companies like QCODE and Wondery, who bring A-List celebrity names and big budgets to their Blockbuster-style show. But we also have some fantastic fiction podcasts produced in the UK and Republic of Ireland that are making waves worldwide, and setting trends that other shows are closely following.

So here are nine of the best UK and ROI fiction podcasts, that I think are definitely worth your listening time:

The Magnus Archives

Probably the biggest fiction podcast to come out of the UK, The Magnus Archives is a horror/paranormal extravaganza, centring on the mysterious Magnus Institute and the eerie, inexplicable investigations they’ve uncovered. The central character, The Archivist, takes us through these cases with his audio statements, but as the seasons progress, the story develops into a much wider narrative tale. The main show ended in 2021 after five seasons, but there’s plenty to sink your teeth into – and now is the best time to listen as audio drama stalwarts, Rusty Quill, have raised a whopping £700,000 on Kickstarter for their follow up show, The Magnus Protocol. Listen now on your podcast app >>

Holy Sh!t

In a sea of horror/sci-fi/fantasy fiction podcasts, Holy Sh!t is a breath of fresh air. A young adult, comedy-drama from Hat Trick Productions (the producers of Derry Girls) about two friends, Meg and Lydia, navigating life at separate Uni’s, where one of the freshers may, or may not, be the second coming of Christ. The story is told in an unique way through WhatsApp voice notes and is a light-hearted take on religion, but at its core deals with female friendship and, most aptly, forgiveness. Fans of TV shows like Sex Education and Euphoria will definitely enjoy this one! Listen now on your podcast app >>

The Chronicles of Wild Hollow

Here’s one if you have younger listeners in your family looking to get into fiction podcasts! Wild Hollow is a high-concept, fantasy series featuring a colourful cast of anthropomorphic animal characters ranging from outlaws to pirates and bourgeois city magnates. If you’re used to fantasy books, you’ll enjoy the fact that you can explore the interactive map of Wild Hollow on the company’s website, which features the locations from episodes. Plus there’s lots of further artwork, and info, of the cute and cuddly characters. Created by a group of Drama School graduates, and with plenty more episodes from this imaginative world to come, this is a franchise worth keeping an eye on! Listen now on your podcast app >>

Wooden Overcoats

Ask a fiction podcast fan to name a British audio drama, and they’ll without doubt mention Wooden Overcoats. It centres on a family-run funeral parlour in the tiny, fictional village of Piffling Vale, and the lengths the family will go to sabotage a rival undertaker who sets up a competing, well-resourced, business across the street. This beloved sitcom is much in the vein of TV shows like Fawlty Towers or The Vicar of Dibley. Filled with the dry humour and eccentric characters you’d expect from a traditional British sitcom, it should be on every fiction podcast fan’s download list. Listen now on your podcast app >>

Forest 404

We couldn’t complete this list without mentioning the BBC. They have been champions of audio dramas for decades, first with Radio 4 and now also with the fiction podcasts created by BBC Sounds. One of their best offerings is Forest 404, a futuristic, dystopian thriller starring Pearl Mackie (Doctor Who) playing a 24th Century sound archivist, whose job is to sift through ‘ancient’ 21st Century soundscapes. Most of the sounds she’s archiving are foreign to her – especially those depicting natural and organic life. This is a clever use of sound design to tell a unique story, something many fiction podcasts have been experimenting with ever since! Listen now on your podcast app >>

The Dial-Up

With only four episodes of ten minutes, anyone looking for a quick fiction-podcast-fix should check-out this time-travel tale. The Dial-Up tells the story of two lonely men, both from Glasgow, who encounter each other randomly on an internet voice call. But they soon realise that one of them is speaking from modern day and the other is talking from late 1999… This bitesize podcast was featured on a Buzzfeed ‘best of’ list in 2022, and was also written and produced by me! Our second season is set to be released August 2023. Listen now on your podcast app >>

Whistle Through The Shamrocks

From the creative mind of Irish starlet Nicola Coughlan (Bridgerton, Derry Girls) this is a tongue-in-cheek, scripted retrospective of Irish history covering everything from the Potato Famine to The Easter Rising. Told through the voices of the O’Flanerhyn family, listen as they struggle to deal with their unscrupulous British landlord, who comes over to lay claim to ‘his’ land! The highlight of this show is the repeated meta interruptions from Nicola and her co-writer, Camilla Whitehill. It’s great to hear them ‘argue’ with the actors about the cliché-ridden and borderline offensive Irish stereotypes in the script. Listen now on your podcast app >>

HAUNTED: The Audio Drama

Since launching their first season in 2022, this is one of the fastest growing indie horror podcasts to come out of the UK and has topped Spotify charts worldwide. A satisfying mix of X-Files and Doctor Who, HAUNTED tells the story of a retired paranormal investigator, and the enthusiastic podcast host who propels him out of retirement into a series of adventures, battling monsters of mythical origin. Now on their second season, and just off the back of recording their first ever live episode in their home county of Essex, HAUNTED is only going to keep getting bigger and better! Listen now on your podcast app >>

Eliza: A Robot Story

For those of you hooked on stories dealing with AI or ChatGPT, Eliza is the fiction podcast for you. Its central character is a robot played by Tanya Reynolds (Sex Education) who starts experiencing emotions and feelings. She falls in love with a human, and works together with him to make her even more sentient, but very soon her new relationship turns abusive and controlling. More than just a sci-fi, robot tale, Eliza was made in partnership with The Pankhurst Trust/Manchester Women’s Aid, and deals with a number of topics including domestic abuse, and women’s rights. Listen now on your podcast app >>

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Philip is a Northern Irish writer, living in London, who writes for screen, theatre and audio. He is the creator of the fiction podcast, The Dial-Up, and is currently a personal assistant to a BAFTA Award winning film producer. Follow him @pip_writes and @DialUpPod.

The post 9 of the best fiction podcasts from the UK and Ireland appeared first on POD BIBLE.

The series uses family possessions – objeks and tings – to explore the ways Caribbean culture has flavoured British life. From the Dutch pots (affectionately known as “Dutchies” among Caribbean people) used at family gatherings, to the “grip” suitcases of the Windrush generation travelling from the Caribbean to the UK.

As the trailer says, this podcast will hold significance for people with Caribbean heritage, but “you’re sure to be charmed” by the stories, no matter your background. We caught up with Catherine and Lynda-Louise to find out a bit more…

What was your introduction to podcasting as a listener?

Lynda-Louise Burrell: I kept hearing about Table Manners with Jessie Ware and her mum. Not just because she works with her mum like myself but also as we are working on a Caribbean food project. Their podcast has nothing to do with Caribbean history, heritage or culture but it is joyful, as all life should be.

Catherine Ross: I have only listened to one made by Black people in Britain more concerned about music and how it reflected and impacted on Caribbean life. I just knew that I wanted ours to be a laugh a minute with lapses into patois and being able to tell our stories and truths unfettered. I wanted our podcast to be like having a chat in a room with your mates.

Which podcasts do you take inspiration from?

LLB: To be honest, I’ve taken just as much inspiration from podcasts I don’t like as from podcasts I do. There are many that I enjoy but these don’t tend to be ones covering the type of stories we wanted to share. And then the types of podcasts you tend to hear from my sector – small, not for profit organisations – are often ones where people do everything themselves and as a result, the sound quality often suffers. So we did have to wait to find the right production company to work with us that were as passionate as we are and wanted to work with us to curate a show we could all be proud of, and spoke to different types of Caribbeans.

We wanted to share their stories and views. We wanted people of differing ages, as usually with anything black, you tend to get the same types of stories from the same types of protagonists keeping us all in this metaphorical box – that all black people are the same. We wanted to capture multiple Caribbean stories of differing people to show that we are not a monolithic people.

CR: I love the podcasts of Black American women such as Michelle Obama, Meghan Markle and Oprah. When I listen to them, I come away inspired, confident and ready to step back into the affray of life.

Why did you decide that audio was right for sharing these stories?

LLB: I used to work in fashion and I am a natural creative. So working in museums now I try to keep things fresh and current to capture the public’s imagination as most exhibitions are rather dull, staid, and let’s face it, boring. In this day and age with social media, fast paced lives, and only seconds to draw people in before they move onto the next thing, I try to ensure our work as a museum draws people in and captures and holds their attention. We take exhibitions around the UK to different museums, art galleries and art spaces so have to keep our work fresh to engage with different types of people wherever they are. This way we get such a variety of different types of people engaging with our work from young people to those in their late 90s; from Caribbeans to white British, to Americans, and Eastern Europeans, all peoples from different communities.

Podcasts were becoming so popular that I thought – if this is how people are now spending their time, they can binge or dip in and out, listen at their convenience while working-out, driving or walking to work etc. so why not let them get their fix of Caribbean culture this way also! A quick convo filled with fun, laughter and a teachable moment, whether through the guest you can reminisce, reflect and connect or reconnect with your culture or explore a different one, it’s all good. I want through this podcast to connect with more people of Caribbean descent, help them reconnect to their culture while sharing our culture with others.

This will help us connect with more people, new people and different people and as a Creative Director that’s what I want through this creative conversation and am sharing my cultural heritage across the global one convo at a time.

CR: People on the move can access this mode of info sharing. I can listen by dipping in and out, and don’t have to listen to it all in one go! I can listen anywhere, which is just as well, as at times the content is so good I laugh out loud and sound like a mad woman or I take exception to what is being said and have a raging row with a machine!

Heritage and family is a massive part of the show, and you work together a lot. But did you discover anything new about each other from making the show?

LLB: I don’t think I discovered anything new about mum but the show just highlighted things such as:

-A retired English teacher will always be an English teacher! She goes through the scripts with a fine-tooth grammar comb. Yes, this is a loosely scripted convo believe it or not but mum will correct everyone’s English before reading it through

-All the world’s a stage… well certainly mum thinks so! She always reads things out in a presenter’s voice. She even does this with emails, again English teacher mode!

-She knows a lot about a lot

-She is extremely funny!

CR: I realise my daughter is quite clever and can take on anyone!! In fact, I sometimes worry for those who cross her. I suppose that’s the confidence of this generation. As a member of the Windrush Generation I hold things back. She knows so much about so many things she’s just right for a show like this, her life experiences of working in some difficult industries, and 13 years of working abroad has equipped her with not just views but strategies for dealing with most things. When people quote her, or refer to her in publications, I want to shout out to the world, “that’s my girl, that’s my baby, look at her go!”

What have you enjoyed most in making this podcast?

LLB: I have really enjoyed the process of making a podcast. It’s more than just speaking down the mic. However, talking is tough, with things to cope with like alliteration, not sounding like a kid’s TV presenter, or a news broadcaster. When a mic is pointed at you, or maybe just mum, your voice does strange things. It’s really bizarre. Just to let everyone out there know, I sound much better LIVE and direct.

But on a serious note, doing my day job as the Creative Director of The National Caribbean Heritage Museum, Museumand, one of my biggest pleasures is talking to people across the UK on a daily basis. Getting to know them, helping them share their stories to enrich Caribbeans and non-Caribbeans everywhere. So on the podcast, getting to meet more people, sharing info that we can instantly then share through the airwaves is a real honour and privilege and doing it this way through a podcast, more people get to hear this info much quicker than through our exhibitions. It does the same service in a different way.

CR: Meeting so many wonderful people who are generous in sharing their stories and experiences. I love hearing from others and feeling reassured that I am not the only one who has gone through certain experiences. It’s great having gaps filled in my cultural knowledge too.

What do you think listeners will enjoy most?

LLB: I think we have a really good, interesting group of guests with interesting stories to share and through our wonderful hosting skills, and mother-daughter dynamic, our fun Caribbean personality seeps through. Hearing Caribbean stories and quips straight from people of Caribbean descent, and of those you usually hear from non-Caribbeans speaking of Caribbeans.

CR: We as a family love sayings, and Caribbeans as a whole tradition, live on sayings, so we end each episode with one and make the end of a show a fun teachable moment. We also in places lapse into Patios. A language we need to keep alive but I think the listeners will enjoy as our sentences can flow beautifully from Standard English to Caribbean patios. The camaraderie, and fun of learning and laughing as we make discoveries about our culture and ourselves. The podcast will help people make sense of their life experiences, history and heritage.

Where can the Pod Bible readers find out more about you?

Website: museumand.org

Instagram: @museumand

Twitter: @Museumand_

Facebook: @Museumand

Listen to Objeks & Tings on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other popular podcast apps >>

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