Adam Stoner
85 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 1 year ago -I create multi-award-winning podcasts at Fun Kids including Mysteries of Science and The Week Junior Show.
I write for Science+Nature magazine and have freelanced for Boom Radio, RadioDNS, and more. Millions have heard, seen, or read something I’ve made.
I sent the first radio programme to deep space, as featured in the 2023 Guinness World Records book, and am developing Send a Message to Space. Tap follow to get updates in your podcast app.
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Episodes
Museum of the Self
January 31, 2023 08:00 - 7 minutes - 10 MBI have Andy Warhol: Polaroids on my shelf. Andy was obsessed with celebrity, he used to take photos of people all the time. As I was flicking through this the other day, I stumbled across a photo of Pelé, the footballer, who died at the end of last year. I don’t really know why but I thought that they lived in entirely different time periods. Maybe it was because Andy died younger than most or that Pelé simply lived into my own time period – or that I wasn’t expecting the world of an ...
2022: What happened?
December 31, 2022 00:01 - 20 minutes - 28 MBJanuary: I launch Mission Transmission – a project to send a radio programme to space. The UK KIDZ BOP Kids cover Coldplay’s My Universe – which has since been streamed 1.2 million times. Tim Peake lends his support to the project. I’m interviewed by countless journalists across the nation as they cover it and thousands of children head to the Fun Kids website to send us their hopes, dreams, and aspirations for the future. The 1975 and Greta Thunberg give us permission to use their so...
Send a Message to Space
November 30, 2022 09:00 - 1 minute - 2.56 MBI've been taking it easy in November (and will be doing the same in December) but that doesn't mean I've not been up to a lot. I've mainly been working on Send a Message to Space which uses the same technology we used to send Fun Kids' Mission Transmission programme into space in February. Get 50% off a message into space or a gift pack at sendamessagetospace.com until December 31st by using the code PODACST.
Giraffes
October 31, 2022 08:00 - 15 minutes - 21.8 MBI read the opening few words of A Billion Years: My Escape from a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology by Mike Rinder. I've been reading it this month. Mike's story is fascinating, charting his devotion to and escape from what has been variously described as a cult, a business, and a religious movement. A Billion Years also highlights the stories we tell ourselves about the way the world works. I could have made this month's recap about all manner of things – Westminster politics...
Queen Elizabeth II
September 30, 2022 07:00 - 5 minutes - 7.76 MBShe reigned for over 70 years and earlier this month was reduced to a box on a plinth. How humbling those images were. A figure larger than life and so ingrained into the public psyche, suddenly startlingly small; a Standard covered coffin adorned by her subjects. Adorned by the living. Make no mistake: This is the fate that befalls us all. It doesn't matter whether you're a Queen or a King, a saint or a sinner, a celebrity or a civilian – we all die. To carry a sense of the inevi...
Stoicism
August 31, 2022 17:24 - 9 minutes - 13.2 MBMarcus Aurelius was an Emperor – he was Emperor of Rome. His son was an asshole, destroyed most of Aurelius' work but his diary remained. Here's one of the greatest leaders of one of the greatest Empires writing not for longevity or legacy but therapy. Marcus Aurelius is one of the most famous stoics. He was also a lot of other things. But his Meditations – his diary – is a beautiful bit of literature that, even 2,000 years down the line, is still wonderfully modern. Nowadays, stoi...
Climate emergency
July 31, 2022 08:00 - 7 minutes - 9.62 MBHere's the Met Office's Chef of Science, Professor Steven Belcher: "I wasn't expecting to see this in my career, but the UK has just exceeded 40 degrees Celsius for the first time. In some ways, of course, 40 degrees is an arbitrary figure because we see the impact of heat waves at lower temperatures. But for me, it's a real reminder that the climate has changed and it will continue to change. Research conducted here at the Met Office has demonstrated that it's virtually impossible for...
Home
June 30, 2022 07:00 - 5 minutes - 6.91 MBHome isn't just a place. Home is more than the city you were born in, or the town you grew up in, or the street where your school was. It's more than the place where your bed is, or your stuff is, or your clothes are. Home is subjective. Home is a bright spring morning in 2014, walking past the daffodils on Grafton Road in Cheltenham. Home is the taste of the local Indian takeaway or the smell of childhood holidays. Home's the second after laughter in pub conversations with frie...
Heartstopper
May 31, 2022 05:00 - 8 minutes - 11.8 MBRadio professionals from around the world gather at RadioDays Europe each year, a three-day conference all about the future of the industry. The risk with any conference is that you spend your time in a culturally-devoid alien bubble of city-limits conference centres and don’t get see any of the country that hosts it. Luckily, that didn’t happen here! I spent Saturday 14th in Copenhagen with Paul and Meg from Fun Kids and Sunday in Malmö, Sweden before two busy days writing for RadioDa...
RadioDays Europe, Heartstopper, turning 27, and moving house
May 31, 2022 05:00 - 8 minutes - 11.8 MBRadio professionals from around the world gather at RadioDays Europe each year, a three-day conference all about the future of the industry. The risk with any conference is that you spend your time in a culturally-devoid alien bubble of city-limits conference centres and don’t get see any of the country that hosts it. Luckily, that didn’t happen here! I spent Saturday 14th in Copenhagen with Paul and Meg from Fun Kids and Sunday in Malmö, Sweden before two busy days writing for RadioDa...
27
May 21, 2022 07:48 - 3 minutes - 5.27 MBI’ve always had this strange fascination with time and how the clock runs our lives. When I was younger, years would feel like forever and now they don’t feel like they happen at all. You’ve had this experience too. Why does two minutes waiting for the next tube feel like an eternity but two minutes waiting in line for coffee seems totally reasonable? I used to get really anxious about time and wasting it. Professor Brian Cox once said that there’s a cruelty to a human lifespan. That...
Elon Musk
April 29, 2022 17:00 - 4 minutes - 6.79 MBMysteries of Science was nominated several times at the Publisher Podcast Awards earlier in the year. The ceremony was just a few days ago and Mysteries of Science walked away with two wins! One for Best Science & Medical Podcast and another for Best Launch. To celebrate, would you like some more episodes? The latest looks at the stuff of sailor's nightmares, an enormous creature so aggressive that it drags ships to their watery graves: the Kraken. I even wrote the piece for their mag...
Consequences of war
March 31, 2022 19:29 - 12 minutes - 17.2 MBCountless horrors have been inflicted on the citizens of one country by another this month. There are no answers here, just thoughts on the consequences of war. The rainbows of 2020's pandemic have become Ukrainian flags – I've seen them on cars, painted on rocks, atop poles, affixed to bridges, in window displays, on churches, and in the favourite tool of armchair activists: Twitter handles. To forget that there are victims on both sides of conflict is to think in binaries and furth...
Ukraine
March 31, 2022 19:29 - 12 minutes - 17.2 MBCountless horrors have been inflicted on the citizens of one country by another this month. There are no answers here, just thoughts on the consequences of war. The rainbows of 2020's pandemic have become Ukrainian flags – I've seen them on cars, painted on rocks, atop poles, affixed to bridges, in window displays, on churches, and in the favourite tool of armchair activists: Twitter handles. To forget that there are victims on both sides of conflict is to think in binaries and furth...
12 billion miles from Earth: Fun Kids Mission Transmission sends a message to the stars
February 22, 2022 10:00 - 4 minutes - 6.18 MBYesterday, I sent a message to space. By the time you hear this, the transmission will be 12 billion miles from Earth, 7 times farther away than Neptune. Photons from the broadcast will continue to move at light speed through the universe until the universe itself dies, trillions of trillions of years from now. The broadcast was sent into space from an array of transmitters all over the world and the UK's children's radio station Fun Kids simulcast the transmission, setting a world-fi...
Hundreds of voices
January 31, 2022 08:00 - 11 minutes - 15.4 MB2022 started in the best possible way. Four days into the new year, I launched Mission Transmission on the UK's children's radio station, Fun Kids; our record-breaking, history-making project to send the voices of our listeners to deep space. Mission Transmission got some nice tweets, was on the front page of Express.co.uk, on RadioToday, in the Week Junior magazine, First News, and Science+Nature too. There's an entire episode of Mysteries of Science dedicated to it – that one's calle...
Send your voice to space
January 04, 2022 09:00 - 4 minutes - 6.64 MBOver the past six months, I've been working on something rather special and at 07:30 this morning, all was revealed on the national children's radio station, Fun Kids. We're sending a message to space. The project is called Mission Transmission and has been a personal labour of love for the past half-year. Earlier today, KIDZ BOP – who have recorded a version of Coldplay and BTS's song My Universe which we're dubbing the official anthem of the project – and Dr. Emily Drabek-Maunder fr...
Trigger Warning: 2021
December 31, 2021 07:00 - 11 minutes - 16.2 MBWorld leaders have an uncanny knack for making even the most exciting of things thoroughly depressing. Given their rhetoric, you'd be forgiven for thinking that humankind is in no better position at the end of this year than we were last, but that's not the case at all. Our collective human story has always been marred with setbacks and challenges but 2021 is proof that the wheels of human progress will restlessly turn. It was also a reminder that it's up to us to steer the vehicle.
2021: What happened?
December 31, 2021 07:00 - 11 minutes - 16.2 MBWorld leaders have an uncanny knack for making even the most exciting of things thoroughly depressing. Given their rhetoric, you'd be forgiven for thinking that humankind is in no better position at the end of this year than we were last, but that's not the case at all. Our collective human story has always been marred with setbacks and challenges but 2021 is proof that the wheels of human progress will restlessly turn. It was also a reminder that it's up to us to steer the vehicle.
Andy Warhol
December 01, 2021 07:00 - 11 minutes - 15.8 MBHis body blue, no blood pressure to speak of, and no pulse to find, artist Andy Warhol was declared dead on arrival at Columbus Hospital in New York City – 4:51pm on June 3rd 1968 – having just been shot by a former colleague at his workshop, The Factory. Bleeding on the gurney, a senior doctor took a fleeting look at the corpse, peeling back an eyelid and watched as its pupil contracted in the bright emergency room lights. Andy Warhol wasn't dead. A reminder that there's a written v...
Walking the Ridgeway
November 01, 2021 07:00 - 10 minutes - 14.8 MBThe story of civilisation is one told entirely on two legs. It's only because our ancestors decided to wander out of Africa 80,000 years ago that you and I are fortunate enough to be here today. From settlements to silk roads, those initial ramblers laid the foundation for everything to come. The presence of humans in Britain has only been continuous for about 12,000 years during half of which, the Ridgeway – an ancient trail running from the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Avebury to I...
Epoch
October 01, 2021 10:30 - 10 minutes - 14.2 MBWhen astronaut John Glenn commenced mission Mercury-Atlas 6 to become the first American to orbit the Earth, he had something strange strapped to his silver spacesuit: a stopwatch. Seconds after launch, Glenn starts the stopwatch in sync with tracking stations across the world and at that moment Mission Elapsed Time begins counting up from zero. And so a new timezone shared between a handful of specialists on Earth and one man in space is created: a new epoch. As a reminder, there's ...
2,572 hours ago: How I spent my summer
September 05, 2021 11:56 - 9 minutes - 13.1 MBI left this space 2,572 ago on my 26th birthday, exhausted and anxious. Living online for the past fifteen months had worn me out in a way interacting in person never did and whilst working, writing, podcasting, and publishing fulfilled a desire to be heard, it came at a cost of being seen. More people saw, read, and listened to things I had made in those fifteen months than Belgium, Barbados, Bermuda and Bahrain have people, combined. Previously taught that your value as a creative ...
Who is Adam Stoner?
May 31, 2021 09:19 - 1 minute - 1.89 MBHello, my name's Adam 👋 I've got a first class BA (Hons) degree in Radio Production and work at Fun Kids, the UK's children's radio station, where I produce podcasts Activity Quest, The Week Junior Show, Mysteries of Science and look after many more. I also freelance as a graphic and brand designer and have worked with clients including Boom Radio, RadioDNS, BBC Radio Gloucestershire, Digital Radio UK, and Clearwater Hampers. If you'd like to hire me to work on your project, get in t...
26
May 21, 2021 07:48 - 3 minutes - 5.27 MBRead the full thing at adamstoner.com/twentysix My life has always been marked by distinct phases and cycles of time; a flow of death and rebirth and reinvention; a constant redefining and mis- and re-understanding of what it means to be me. The closest comparison to these cycles that I can think of comes from music marketing. For a two- to three-year period, your favourite artists inhabit a very strict sonic and visual style before hibernating for another two- to three-years and eme...
I don't need to have an opinion about everything
May 17, 2021 09:44 - 5 minutes - 7.89 MBRead the full thing at adamstoner.com/opinion It is in our power to have no opinion about a thing, and not to be disturbed in our soul; for things themselves have no natural power to form our judgments. – Marcus Aurelius (Meditations 6.52) Marcus Aurelius was a Roman emperor and philosopher whose musings on life have transcended centuries. I'm not sure who came up with this next one but I'm sure it'll live just as long... Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and sometimes the...
Paperless
May 04, 2021 08:00 - 5 minutes - 7.31 MBIt's 2018 and I've just purchased a Doxie portable scanneron the recomendation of Ryan. Although it won't happen for another two years, my family are gearing up to move house and I am systematically scanning then permanently destroying every bit of paper I have. Family albums, polaroids and film photos, flyers, brochures, tickets and clippings, certificates, contracts, payslips, receipts, insurance documents, medical records – everything but my passport and birth certificate – all sli...
Noah Kalina, Kraig Adams, Prince Philip
April 27, 2021 04:31 - 12 minutes - 17.7 MBAs hospitality and service sectors both in the UK and around the world reopen, it feels a little like the theatre curtain is lifting – not after interval (with sticky ice-cream fingers and some slight discomfort because the line for the restroom was too long to even bother) – but at the start of the show. The return to normality has been most marked by the headlines. For the first time in almost a year, we're seeing stories other than death-counts and carefully choreographed press con...
Death
April 10, 2021 06:00 - 2 minutes - 3.09 MBThere are very few events that warrant the complete seizure of attention that the death of Prince Philip had on the news agenda just yesterday. I don’t have a living memory of 9/11 or 7/7 so at the age of 25 the death of Prince Philip — and the almost disaster-movie-like interruption of the media schedule for it – is the closest thing I’ve gotten to what feels like a world-stopping moment. Even the truly world-stopping pandemic had its press conferences scheduled. We tend not to focu...
Changing my mind in public
April 04, 2021 12:25 - 4 minutes - 6.85 MBI've always reserved the right to change my mind and do so publicly. It's just easier. When quizzed on their opinions, I've seen friends make split-second decisions that, when given longer to think about, they plainly disagree with. For fear of being seen as a hypocrite, they continue down the path of their original argument and make a mountain fit to die on. One of the most painful examples of this happening in my own life occured many years ago when I was invited to publicly defend...
Vaccinations, Mysteries of Science, Vanilla Ice
March 28, 2021 07:19 - 10 minutes - 14.5 MBRead this full post at adamstoner.com/worm Spring reminds me of optimism – everything's coming back to life after a period of downtime – and around work and writing, I've been doing a lot of reflection on where we've all come from since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak last year. As I mentioned months ago, I've been learning more about astronomy this year, namely the moon and the cycles of time it goes through. I find comfort in the idea that no matter how bad your present is, you'...
Security and effectiveness of a digital census
March 18, 2021 20:00 - 10 minutes - 14.7 MBRead this full post at adamstoner.com/census March 21st is census day in England and Wales and an important milestone because the 2021 census is the first mostly-digital census ever conducted here. A digital census has its obvious benefits, namely that statistics can be gleamed immediately on the available data. What interests me is not the results of the census but the data security and privacy implications that a digital census inherently has and whether, considering we already shar...
&SONS, Allpress, HomePod Mini
February 27, 2021 08:17 - 7 minutes - 10.6 MBRead this full update at adamstoner.com/snow I've had lots of deliveries this month including a RODE NT–USB microphone (I'm recording my podcast on it), beautiful coffee from Allpress, and a leather jacket that makes it look like I'm having a quarter-life-crisis courtesy of Allsaints. I've also replenished some of my favourites including perfumes Tacit and Marrakech Intense from Aesop, and Thread's 20% off sale led me to buy a second pair of Grenson sneakers; my current pair have serve...
HEY for Work
February 15, 2021 17:01 - 6 minutes - 9.45 MBRead this full post at adamstoner.com/hey "I've sorted your mail into three categories for you: People who are kissing your ass, people whose asses you should be kissing, and people whose asses are huge" We could all do with a friend like Amanda and HEY, the email product from Basecamp, is it. I've been following HEY for quite some time but was reluctant to switch because they didn't offer custom domains. HEY for Work, which I was invited to last month, does. I switched in minutes. ...
Echelon, WhatsApp, WandaVision
January 28, 2021 19:18 - 7 minutes - 10.7 MBIn an effort to learn more about astronomy in 2021 – at the risk of sounding woo-woo, that's astronomy, not astrology –I'm publishing these updates to coincide with full moons. The first is happening right now, the very minute I am sending this update to you. It's known as a Wolf Moon. Other than the timing change, the rest of this newsletter is the same you've come to love; a record of what I've been up to, recommendations of what to read, watch and listen to, and suggestions of what...
Donating 2%
January 10, 2021 08:00 - 2 minutes - 2.96 MBThis essay follows one I wrote in 2019 titled 'Donating 1%'. In it, I explain why I donate 1% of my earnings to not-for-profit causes and list those causes for both transparency and in hope it might inspire you to give. In 2021, I am donating 2% of my gross earnings to climate change solutions. Like previous years, I am splitting that percentage to takle the problem in different ways but unlike previous years, they do not have to be not-for-profit. For 2021, I am committing... 1% of...
What kills Facebook?
January 07, 2021 19:39 - 3 minutes - 5.3 MBOn February 19th 2014, Facebook announced it was buying WhatsApp for $19 billion USD. On January 4th 2021, WhatsApp – now owned by Facebook – announced it was changing its privacy policies and my phone lit up with worry from friends and family. I'm known as 'the privacy guy' among contemporaries and Facebook's decision to change WhatsApp's policies seemed to be igniting concerns. The number of messages I received about the change left me with a question... What kills Facebook? This i...
2020: What happened?
December 31, 2020 12:45 - 8 minutes - 12.2 MBThese monthly updates are essentially diary entries that I share with you. Behaving as a sort-of time-capsule, these little bulletins have proved to be even more valuable this year, candidly capturing what made 2020 so unique. Read the full update at adamstoner.com/rewind The global effects of COVID-19 are undoubtedly devastating and this year has been tough for many. 2020 felt like a never-ending churn of catastrophes for much of the year but it wasn't until I slowed down that I to...
Obama, Greta, Taylor Swift
December 06, 2020 07:01 - 6 minutes - 8.59 MBIn a typical year, November is the point where people usually start tying the loose ends and humankind enters some form of hibernation. 2020's storywriters saved the climaxes for the final episode – a US power change and a COVID-19 vaccine – but, despite all that we've gone through this year, it seems like this season might end with all those storylines tied. Here's what I've been up to in November: Obsessed with trying to get the smallest and most efficent phone possible, I got my ha...
1,000 trees and 1.5 degrees
November 20, 2020 07:00 - 13 minutes - 18.6 MBThis episode is a reading of an essay I've spent almost a year writing. You can read the essay at adamstoner.com/carbon where you'll also be able to see graphs, maps, videos, a complete list of sources and more.
Ethical gifting
November 11, 2020 17:02 - 4 minutes - 5.77 MBLiza Minnelli was correct when she sang that 'money makes the world go round' and whether you like it or not, we are all people who have to operate within a framework whereby being a consumer and purchasing things is a mandatory act. Because of this, our money is one of the most powerful tools we have in expressing our point of view – perhaps even more so than the ballot box. Every act our money is involved in is tacit moral, political, and ethical support. I've written in the past abo...
Christmas and change: Ethical alternatives to big brands
November 11, 2020 17:02 - 4 minutes - 5.77 MBLiza Minnelli was correct when she sang that 'money makes the world go round' and whether you like it or not, we are all people who have to operate within a framework whereby being a consumer and purchasing things is a mandatory act. Because of this, our money is one of the most powerful tools we have in expressing our point of view – perhaps even more so than the ballot box. Every act our money is involved in is tacit moral, political, and ethical support. I've written in the past abo...
Mollie's Diner, Gaia, Geocaching
November 01, 2020 07:00 - 13 minutes - 18.8 MBOn October 18th, along with 14,000 other people in a sold-out exhibition that lasted just two weeks, I saw Gaia, a seven meter wide re-creation of the Earth by UK artist Luke Jerram at Gloucester Cathedral. The piece explores the 'Overview Effect' that many astronaughts report after seeing Earth from a distance; isolated, alone, and floating in nothing but darkness. Gaia is accompanied by a soundtrack which features Sir David Attenborough and succeeds in making you feel incredibly smal...
Keeping an audio journal
October 19, 2020 17:50 - 5 minutes - 7.36 MBThis post was originally published on adamstoner.com. You can read it at adamstoner.com/recordings If audio isn't your thing, I've also written a post on how to keep a written diary too which you can read at /journal. I've kept an audio journal for over five years. When I began I was studying Radio Production at the University of Gloucestershire. I've worked for a couple of radio stations since then including the UK's children's radio station Fun Kids where I currently produce podcas...
Moved
October 04, 2020 08:00 - 8 minutes - 12 MBSubscribe at adamstoner.com to see the written version of this newsletter and get it in your inbox on the first Sunday of each month... If you read or heard my last update, you will have learned that I moved house on September 3rd. That all feels quite a long time ago now but I am both delighted and relieved to tell you that it went seamlessly. Moving house was objectively the biggest thing I did this past month but I've done so much more since then. In the past seven days alone I've....
Moving
September 06, 2020 07:00 - 11 minutes - 15.6 MBSubscribers (it's free, and you get this in your inbox!) can read this bulletin and see the things I mention at adamstoner.com/026/ On Thursday, I moved from my childhood home of lots-of-years to a new address in a different county. I don’t know whether the move went seamlessly or not because I’m writing this newsletter before it happened and I’m doing that because the address I’m moving to is so far in the middle-of-nowhere that I won’t have a stable internet connection for well over...
Goodbye, Twitter
September 01, 2020 12:33 - 1 minute - 2.06 MB6 September 2009 was my first day on Twitter. 6 September 2020 will be my last. At 12:33 BST on 6 September 2020, exactly 11 years after its creation, all past tweets on @admstnr will be automatically deleted. The bio will be changed to the following: I no longer use Twitter and haven't since 6 September 2020. Visit adamstoner.com to find out what's happening or email [email protected] to get in touch. After I've updated that, I will change my password, and I'll log out. I will not read ...
Sir Tim Smit, Chris Moyles, Jim Carrey
August 02, 2020 07:00 - 14 minutes - 20.2 MBRead this post and see the things I mention at adamstoner.com/025. Producing Activity Quest has been my main focus this month, sending Fun Kids presenters to newly re-opened locations across the UK in an effort to make a programme that encourages families to also get out-and-about safely this summer. I've been recording my own experiences for the podcast. You can hear me in the first episode, where I visited GoApe in the Forest of Dean... I had the pleasure of speaking to Sir Tim Smi...
Recently: 024
July 08, 2020 17:33 - 7 minutes - 10.9 MBHello, my name is Adam Ayrton Stoner and this is Recently, a monthly email round-up letting you know what I've been doing, reading, watching, listening to and enjoying recently. Members can read this post (and see the things I mention) at adamstoner.com/024 This month, I've been working on a tool that lets you donate your Twitter account to causes you believe in. After signing in, you select the @handles of a few not-for-profits and how many times you want to retweet every 24 hours. ...
Times Radio and Design Anarchy
July 08, 2020 17:33 - 7 minutes - 10.9 MBHello, my name is Adam Ayrton Stoner and this is Recently, a monthly email round-up letting you know what I've been doing, reading, watching, listening to and enjoying recently. Members can read this post (and see the things I mention) at adamstoner.com/024 This month, I've been working on a tool that lets you donate your Twitter account to causes you believe in. After signing in, you select the @handles of a few not-for-profits and how many times you want to retweet every 24 hours. ...