Stuff Matters!

I've only gone and made a blooming podcast

How did the light emitting diode change the world? And, come to mention it, might it perversely actually prompt us to puff more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere? What do bananas tell you about the nature of capitalism? In what way is an AirPod, or any other earbud you can stick into your ear, a sort of weapon? And what on earth do car seats have to do with the world’s coming demographic time bomb?

These are, I realise, a decidedly random list of questions, questions I imagine few of you will have spent much time pondering, but bear with me. Because (and yes I’m afraid this is a sales pitch but then this is the internet so, you gets what you pays for) over the past few months I’ve set off on a bit of a mission to try to answer some of them.

The result of this slightly surreal journey is a new podcast I’ve made for Sky News called “Stuff Matters”. I say “I’ve made” but of course this is far from the truth, since this is, by my standards at least, a mammoth enterprise involving a brilliant team who have tried to turn some of my slightly offbeat ideas into something actually entertaining.

The pitch behind it is each week we take an object - for the most case an everyday product you probably have inside your home - and ask a few seemingly obvious questions that turn out to have not-at-all-obvious answers. Where did it come from? How was it made? And, most intriguingly of all, what can it teach us about the world.

I’ve long had a feeling - something you’ll have picked up on if you’ve read Material World or watched much of my output for Sky News - that there are marvellous, magical, sometimes-disturbing stories just beneath the surface of the everyday items we mostly take for granted. Ponder concrete and you understand the bizarre underbelly of sand production. Consider copper and you look at the world of power afresh.

Well, to some extent that’s the idea behind Stuff Matters. Every episode is a journey deep into the rabbit holes you sometimes find yourselves swept into (well, I do at least) when considering the objects around you. So we’ve spoken to Nobel-prize winning scientists, businesses making missiles, the world’s greatest experts in how to ripen fruit, and a few other folks as well. If there is a subtitle to this effort (possibly also my entire career), it is that supposedly boring stuff is often actually tremendously interesting.

I would *love* you to subscribe or listen to Stuff Matters. Aside from anything else, I happen to think it’s rather good. And if you don’t believe me, take it from someone who actually reviews podcasts for a living, the brilliant James Marriott, who just gave it a five-star review in *The Times*.

Let me know what you think of it. There are a few unexpected easter eggs (as I think they’re sometimes called) buried away in there. Oh and if you have any clever ideas for random objects we should cover in a future episode then message me, stick a comment here or join the subscriber forum (because on top of all of this we’re also doing bonus episodes for subscribers!).