Everything Scotland

Lesley Kennedy wears a silver kelpie pendant every day. A kelpie is a shape-shifting water horse that will drag you into a loch and drown you, leaving only your liver on the bank, and Lesley has thoughts about the liver specifically. Most tour guests who notice the pendant have questions. Some reassess their choice of guide. She stands by it entirely, on the grounds that the kelpie deserves better...

Scottish myths and legends were the plan. Then Scotland went to the World Cup, the Tartan Army went to America, and everything else had to wait. In this episode: Lesley Kennedy, who is not a football fan but is absolutely a Scotland fan and knows the difference, tells the story of the Tartan Army. The FIFA Fair Play Award they won for being good tourists. The philanthropy that never makes the head...

Is your surname Scottish? Possibly. Probably. But the answer is more complicated and considerably more interesting than a simple yes or no, and Lesley Kennedy, who married into a clan and has spent years on tour gently managing the expectations of people who arrived in Scotland certain their name connected them to something dramatic, is going to walk you through it. In this episode: what a clan ac...

The first time Lesley Kennedy went to Edinburgh, she was twenty-one, attending court as a witness, with no map, no smartphone, and no idea where she was going. She asked strangers for directions. Several of those strangers were also lost. Some didn't speak English. She made it. In this episode: Edinburgh's pronunciation sorted once and for all. The Glasgow vs Edinburgh question answered honestly....

Lesley Kennedy is not a sporty person. She has not voluntarily participated in sport since a game of netball in primary school and has no intention of starting now. She is, however, completely in love with the Highland Games, which tells you everything you need to know about the Highland Games. This week: a man the size of a wardrobe throws a hundred-and-seventy-five-pound pine tree, and is judged...

Lesley has just visited Islay during Fèis Ìle, the Islay Festival of Music and Malt, the annual event that turns this island of 3,200 people into the whisky capital of the world for ten days every May. In this episode: the ferry crossing that looked like a film, Port Ellen on a warm May evening, an Ardnahoe guide who made everyone laugh while teaching them things, the Paps of Jura from across the...

Scotland produces roughly 40 bottles of Scotch whisky per second. There are 130+ active distilleries. The industry exports £5.6 billion worth of product every year. And every single cask gives 2% of itself to the air annually, the Angel's Share. Today, we cover how Scotch is made, a tour of all five whisky regions and their radically different characters, how to actually taste whisky without embar...

In 1745, a 24-year-old Italian-educated prince sailed to Scotland with seven men and nearly overthrew the British Crown. This is the full story of the Jacobites, Bonnie Prince Charlie's astonishing campaign from Glenfinnan to Derby and back, the catastrophe of Culloden in sixty brutal minutes, Flora MacDonald's remarkable escape operation, and the systematic destruction of Highland culture that fo...

Welcome to Everything Scotland, the podcast hosted by Lesley Kennedy, born and raised in Scotland, a former police officer turned tour guide. In Episode 1, Lesley introduces herself, covers Scotland 101, dives into the 700-year-old letter that explains the Scottish character better than anything ever written, busts five massive myths, and teaches you your first Scots word: dreich . Pull up a chair...