Human Interest Story

The BBC Global News Podcast does its best to make the awful world a little more tolerable

Illustrations by Carmen Johns

The BBC Global News Podcast, which I listen to every morning and sometimes in the afternoon, is the most functional news show imaginable. It begins with a faintly Scottish accented woman saying, “Hello, this is the Global News Podcast, from the BBC World Service, with reports and analysis from across the world,” and it pretty much does what it says it will. It is a simple and sturdy vehicle for the delivery of global news: recent fallout from whatever tragic proxy war has people most concerned that week, Brexit, something Trump has said while standing right next to a helicopter, the fracturing of the European Union, the rise of the far right, the catastrophic effects of climate change, poor people’s struggle to get anyone in power to care even slightly about their lives, disease, earthquakes, wars. The news. It is of course incredibly depressing, but that is not the fault of the BBC Global News Podcast: it’s depressing because the news is depressing. The presenters are simply telling it like it is, in as neutral a manner as is probably feasible, trying hard to abide by the BBC’s editorial guidelines and their famous insistence on impartiality.

The presenters are simply telling it like it is, in as neutral a manner as is probably feasible

From the woman with the Scottish accent (Valerie Sanderson) to the various immensely capable correspondents, you can hear them striving to remain at all times authoritative, independent, trustworthy. Their voices are modulated and calm; they give little away. Functional and anonymous. Just a practical vehicle for the conveyance of important items. Nothing to get excited about, nothing to over-identify with. But this is the thing. The closer they get to achieving utter blandness, the harder their number one fan (me) tries to distinguish a personality or opinion, and the more invested I become. I recommend this podcast to my friends. Just check it out, I tell them. Listen to the jaunty way Valerie Sanderson says “BBC” at the beginning. Listen to how presenter Emilio San Pedro says his own name. Enjoy.