From Our Own Correspondent

As far as BBC podcasts are concerned, In Our Time is not the only one I have tried over the years. Another one is From Our Own Correspondent in which BBC correspondents from all over the world give column monologues from their station. Thus we get some hands on experience from various exotic, and less exotic places.

The monologues are in themselves quite good. The correspondents know how to write and apparently also for radio. So basically this is a very good podcast, but nevertheless I discontinued listening. It is amazing how I persistently seem to discontinue all sorts of podcasts that are basically monologues. In general they turn out, over and over again, the weakest podcasts as far as capturing the attention over a series.

With FOOC, there were two other factors that added to the lapse though. For one, the issues of FOOC then, and perhaps still today, contain three columns patched together. It makes for charming variation, but more often than not, the three different places, readers and subjects have nothing in common, nothing that connects them and make them, basically three different items. It would do, I think, to chop them into three and publish them in triples, but this seems too much of a bother for the BBC.

The second reason I left, is that I am also an avid reader of the BBC web pages. There, one can find the FOOC columns in writing and has a more distinguishable access and a more direct ability to find what one likes. For example, at the time, I was very excited about a contribution by John Pilkington from Mali in the Sahara. I stored the mp3 on my computer for further reference, but was put off, on repeated listening by the other content. The text on line, served much better in that respect. And once read, it was also less pleasant to have it read out loud again.