The Badger Hole of Ignorance - Episode 1 - Mummies, Jungles and Lost Properties

Last Monday (30th) the first episode in Series Five of The Museum of Curiosity was broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It featured presenter John Lloyd CBE and new curator Humphrey Ker with guests Egyptology Professor Joann Fletcher, explorer and altruist Colonel John Blashford-Snell, and comedian and environmentalist Mark Watson.

Photo copyright: Stevyn Colgan

Here's The Badger Hole of Ignorance Episode 1 podcast in which producers Dan Schreiber and Richard Turner discuss the episode with host Ken Plume:



Secondly, here's Jo Fletcher's extraordinary documentary - in full - telling the story of how she and her colleagues revived 2000 year old techniques to mummify a modern man. Mummifying Alan: Egypt's Last Secret is the fascinating, touching and respectful story of a very brave man facing his own death and of the dedicated scientists who worked hard to make his death something special and celebratory while also increasing the sum of human knowledge.



Next up, here's the documentary The Mission: A Grand Adventure in which 'Blashers' delivers a baby grand piano to the Wei Wei tribe in the middle of the Guyanese rain forest. Glorious British eccentricity at its best (sadly, the sound quality is a bit rough but quite watchable):



And here's Mark Watson in Australia doing some fantastic stand up (NSFW!):



More next week.

The Badger Hole of Ignorance - Episode Zero

Welcome to The Badger Hole of Ignorance, the official podcast of The Museum of Curiosity! Hosted by noted American broadcaster, film producer and owner of Fred Entertainment, the ever-affable Ken Plume, Badger Hole (as I like to call it, probably) will take you behind the scenes at the Museum. You'll hear how the show gets made, who makes the show and learn a little more about the people who make up the show's steering committee i.e. the guests and what they donate. Here's Podcast Zero, a kind of prequel podcast in which producers Dan Schreiber and Richard Turner explain the history of the show and how, against all the odds, it was born in 2009.

A Bit of a Chat ... Part 2

As promised, here's Part Two, in which the conversation ranges from Neanderthal gestation times to my fascination with names, puggles and platypus, crowd-sourced publishing, Scientology, alternative names for the seven dwarves, and living with three nipples ...

Tomorrow we'll have the third and final instalment which spotlights Ken's highly individual impressions of Queen Elizabeth II, and we discuss the Cornish language, tax avoidance, nicknames as a form of power, dumbed-down science shows, the lack of eccentrics on TV, and what happens when Disney cosplayers get wet.

Enjoy!

A bit of a chat with ... Ken Plume

Ken Plume is something of a legend in the blogging community. His A Site called Fred attracts hundreds of thousands of viewers and is very influential among online media. And for me, the highlight of his site (apart from his occasional bouts of crap karaoke or crapoke) are his interviews, which delight in the name of A bit of a chat with ...

Over the past few years, he's chatted with the great and the good from TV, film, science and comedy and his list of downloadable interviews includes such talented people as Ricky Gervais, David Mitchell, John Lloyd, Rebecca Watson, Stan Lee, Graham Linehan, most of the cast and writers of Community, Simon Day, Warwick Davies, Jeri Ryan, John Mitchinson, Robert Llewellyn, John Hodgman, Dan Schreiber, Dom Joly, Rufus Hound, Greg Davies, Dave Gorman, Peter Serafinowicz, Neil Innes, Sylvester McCoy, Jane Goldman, Adam Savage, Dom DeLuise, Frank Oz, Stephen Colbert ... and many many more.

So, when Ken said that he'd like to do A bit of a chat with ... me, I felt both honoured and pretty excited. And what fun it was! So much fun, in fact, that it turned into a marathon of three hours. Yes, you heard right. Three hours. But it flew past in an instant.

You can listen to/download the whole thing here (and thanks, Ken, for picking the campest publicity photo ever taken of me) or, if you can't take too much of a good thing all at once, how about I dish it up in bite-sized (admittedly large bite-sized) portions over the next few days, hmm?

So, here's Part One in which we discuss my 'accidentally' becoming a police officer, how I got a Blue Peter badge (and made Neil Gaiman say a rude word), the fun of being set on fire ... twice, Carl Sagan's legacy and the sad loss of police gardening competitions.

Part Two tomorrow, in which the conversation ranges from Neanderthal gestation times to my fascination with names, puggles and platypus, crowd-sourced publishing, Scientology, alternative names for the seven dwarves, and living with three nipples ...

But if you really can't wait, visit A Site Called Fred now.