The best, you say?

I write a newsletter every week about international trends in radio. It’s called Radioland. And here’s this week - with new information about how we’ll be able to listen to the BBC later this month.

https://james.cridland.net/blog/2025/bbc-radio-overseas-a-new-plan/

There must be a knack to getting those pod coffee machines not to taste like shit, but I’ve still not discovered it.

BBC’s international strategy continues to confuse. In the US, they plan to put BBC News behind a paywall. A magnificent approach to hastening irrelevance.

This report says live radio will continue to be free. But that’s not the true position.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/jun/26/bbc-usa-paid-subscription-news?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Interesting to have written this back in 2020 (though updated it since) and still seeing people reading this little post and using the affiliate link it contains. Wasn’t really the reason I wrote it, but it’s always nice to see.

https://james.cridland.net/blog/2020/up-bank---a-long-term-review-of-an-aussie-neo-bank/

A dumb question: Podnews has over 500 citations on Wikipedia (yay!) but has no Wikipedia page. That might be nice. Are there any Podnews supporters who might be able to help there?

An INDIGNANT email from a PR person, after I linked to a live story on a client’s website. “This story isn’t live! It’s going to be published on Friday! Take it down!”

Have calmly told them that a) the client published it; b) I can’t take 32,000 emails back; c) I’m in bed and not getting out.

Amazing. The man who wrote the BBC News theme has put lots of mixes onto your favourite streaming platform. Search for “BBC News: Official Themes” in Spotify, Apple, YT Music etc.

https://davidlowemusic.com/product/bbc-news-official-themes/

Wow. News out of the blue.

https://podnews.net/press-release/greg-glenday-cao-acast

A great new radio station in Canada, and a week of big numbers in Australia. Radioland, my radio newsletter, this week.

https://james.cridland.net/blog/2025/infinite-dial-australia-2025/

When there is news, there’s always https://livenow.news

I may have had a little too much fun with the Podnews Daily podcast today. Sorry, #Australia. (Especial sorry to Joe Hildebrand for 3:15. Though not really).

https://truefans.fm/podnews-daily/6853f308e8d5bc26ec51b75b

Apple Podcasts appears not to be ingesting transcripts over the last 24 hours. Podnews Daily is just one of those shows which is affected. Hmm.

Is anyone else seeing the BBC app not show images on its front page? It’s been doing this for the last month or so. Kill it and reload it, and all the images work. (I’m on the iOS beta, but this is unrelated - it was happening for a few weeks before that, on both iOS and iPadOS). https://cdn.nostrcheck.me/4222261dc46a703491632e236c90d70d65c3cd6820329c63e9bc44b127e87872/491e7370464f1faf42fc4899e30b75bdf3586ff41653e9ce2b3cec68b7d2ade8.webp

Ah, fun. Remembering 2006, where I managed to sneak in (third from bottom) “make everyone a nice cup of tea” into the job requirements of my team. Best bit of bamboozling HR that I achieved. https://cdn.nostrcheck.me/4222261dc46a703491632e236c90d70d65c3cd6820329c63e9bc44b127e87872/fbe806a36c48bb0b7247ae5a897d23cfc4497d60e014edacff6307adaf278324.webp

Over the weekend, I learnt that websites ought to have an accessibility statement. I wasn’t aware of that, though particularly the EU is requiring it. Anyway, now linked from every page is this.

https://podnews.net/accessibility

Do people really listen to the #radio during emergencies? New data from Spain appears to show us. Plus, some impressive bits of voicetracking, and promo codes don’t work.

https://james.cridland.net/blog/2025/spanish-radio-figures/

Thanks for the feedback, and for the sats. Please continue with your feedback - send one of these every day!

How does a small number of relays offer either of those things? Posts are centralised through the relays; and can be censored or even deleted by the relay operators.

ActivityPub is wholly decentralised, and is just as resistant to censorship.

So is a blog that uses RSS.

Why is Nostr better?

What does Nostr offer that ActivityPub does not?

That's a very bad drawing that makes my point. It shows Nostr clients posting to separate relays, none of which talk to each other. In order to read a post, you have to connect to a relay that carries that post. But unlike ActivityPub's instance-based infrastructure, it isn't immediately obvious how to find out what relays this post is on, or where I post on Nostr.

Every time I come here it's clear that Nostriches are wilfully ignoring how poor this system is, and how the entire power of the platform is hanging off a few big, censorable, relays.