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Pick of the podcasts: American Hostage, The Wellbeing Lab with Will Young and The Big Green Money Show

© Stephen Lovekin/ShutterstockJohn Hamm.
John Hamm.

American Hostage

Amazon Music

Residents of Glasgow’s West End had a treat in February thanks to the sight of Mad Men star Jon Hamm wandering around the city’s leafy avenues.

He was here to film Prime Video’s heavenly comedy romp God Omens opposite David Tennant and Martin Sheen. Big, handsome Hamm is, to some admirers, a heavenly presence in his own right.

If you can’t wait for the new series for your next portion of Hamm, there’s a new podcast where you can at least listen to his smooth voice.

American Hostage is one of the increasingly popular fictional podcasts; Hamm stars as Fred Heckman, a beloved local radio reporter who is thrust into the middle of a life-or-death crisis.

A hostage-taker, Tony Kiritsis, demands to be interviewed on his popular radio news program.

Through Heckman’s radio show, Kiritsis becomes a media sensation and unexpected antihero during a nail-biting 63-hour standoff.

This is based on a real-life story which happened in the 1970s in Indianapolis where Kiritsis was faced with eviction, thanks to an unscrupulous mortgage broker. He rigged up a sawn-off shotgun to the broker’s head along with a wire which meant it would fire if police tried to take him out.

The dead man’s switch gave Kiritsis time to contact the media, and Hamm’s reporter. Listeners were sympathetic to Kiritsis’s plight, and he became something of an antihero, as well as a ratings hit.

“The parallels to today’s dissatisfaction on all sides with not being heard, not being understood and somehow being taken advantage of by something bigger than us, are glaring,” says Hamm.

“We apparently still haven’t learned our lessons about the consequences of dismissing people’s outrage.”


The Wellbeing Lab With Will Young

Apple, Google, Spotify, etc

Each week, join pop star Will Young and a team of knowledgeable mental health & wellbeing experts as they explore and spotlight various topics which often don’t get enough airtime.

They will discuss subjects ranging from shopping addiction, creating boundaries, body dysmorphia, cognitive behaviour therapy, trauma, obsessive compulsive disorders and beyond.


The Big Green Money Show

BBC Sounds

In this BBC Sounds podcast Dragon’s Den’s Deborah Meaden talks to some of the world’s biggest business names about the biggest problem facing the planet today – climate change.

These companies are among some of the world’s biggest carbon producers and it’s going to take their help if we want to tackle the problem. Meaden talks to those doing their bit.