MisInfoNation

Clowns: freaky, funny or downright mystifying? This week, we tread the boards of the French capital and dive into the city’s age-old love affair with this very distinct form of theatrics. Paris has been an epicentre for performance artistry since the 1800s, but today the face of clowning and the circus look and feel very different. These days, clowning is cutthroat – demanding, grueling, and for s...

Traditions are weird, almost by definition. But where do they come from? In this week’s special Xmas episode of Passport , Neil and Andrés talk to Sergi Del Bas and historian Dani Cortijo about one of the most misunderstood regions of Spain. Catalonia. Or as the locals call it Catalunya. This is Spain, but it is very much not Spain. And here in Catalunya, there exists what is perhaps one of the st...

The mission of MisInfoNation is to help us understand whether our ideas about a place are real or just Imagined. But what about a place that was built on imagination? A place that would be the most visited country on earth… if it was a country? This week, we’re finding out with a trip to Disney. Disney’s films are burned into the memory of nearly every single person alive. It’s world is...

On this episode of Passport, we go across India by train to find a melting pot of culture sitting within the carriages. From history, literature, Bollywood and real love, you never know what’s round the corner when you hand the conductor your ticket and take your seat. Why have trains inspired poems, films and writing throughout India? What makes them the perfect protagonist and why they are a gre...

The Passport team is off for Thanksgiving this week, but we’ve got a taste of what’s to come. This season we’ve taken you to over 30 countries. We’ve met the world’s most famous extra in Belfast, investigated a stolen Van Gogh in Amsterdam, met mafia fighting chefs in Palermo, spent the night in the hotel that inspired The Shining, and set the record straight on Italy, Iran, Iceland and Russia. Bu...

Guisepe Verdi said, you can keep the universe, just give me Italy and if you’ve ever been, you know instantly what he means. Italy seems to have it all. The madness and romance of Rome. The pristine, perfectly colour coded class and style of Milan. The rugged and rich and endlessly tasty islands of Sicily and Sardinia. Cliché wise, Italy is a glaringly obvious choice for one of our MisInfoNation e...

Portugal’s Douro Valley is one of the toughest places on the planet to grow wine. Steep, terraced hills, treacherous river rapids, and blistering hot summers are a sharp contrast to the rolling hills of Spain’s Rioja or the Cypress-lined country roads of Tuscany. And yet, the Douro is actually the oldest demarcated wine region in the world. And even though a vine plague in the 1800s nearly wiped o...

The 2020 US presidential election is probably the most important in a century. Everything is at stake: from the health of the world’s most powerful nation to the very nature of truth in the modern world. It’s been a frantic race, with many despairing at the divisiveness of modern US politics. But elections don’t always have to be doom and gloom. This week on Passport we take a look at two election...

45 years later, the effect of The Shining on pop culture is undeniable. From writers, to musicians to filmmakers, comedy, and every facet of the artistic world. It’s been praised, parodied, sequeled and more. So in this, the concluding episode of our two-part Halloween stay at the Overlook Hotel, we look at just how far it has gone. The frontmen of Muder By Death and Devotchka tell us about their...

In 2006, Passport host Neil Innes found himself outside the house of Stephen King in Bangor Maine. He didn’t get to meet King that day… but it didn’t change how he felt about his work. A lifelong fan of King and Kubrick, The Shining has always held a special place in his heart. And so this Halloween, Passpor t traces the legacy of a single nightmare - one that still echoes 45 years later - al...

On this episode of Passport, we go to Oaxaca, the heart of Mexico, to find out what the Day of the Dead really is. It’s history, it’s present and it’s future. We’ll sit at the dinner table with spirits. We’ll dive into folklore, fables and rituals to see how this celebration has lasted so many life times, through so much hardship, and repression. We’ll hear the stories of the people closest to the...

Vienna is a city of Old World baroque charm, cafés, and waltzes. It consistently ranks as one of the best places to live in the world. It’s the city of Mozart, Freud, Klimt, and Strauss. Except this story is less Blue Danube, more Orange Sunshine. This week, Andrés and guest producer Aisha Prigann plunge into a 1970s acid flashback and return with a tale of mind-expansion, revolutionary polit...

On the southernmost tip of Texas, where the US and Mexican borders meet the sea, sits the tiny town of Boca Chica. Surrounded by nothing but wild open scrub land, eight miles of virgin beach and a rich array of wildlife, the twenty-something residents of Boca Chica live in peace and disconnection. Away from the noise of the modern World. It was that peace and disconnection that Maria Pointer,&nbsp...

Super Skyscrapers, Lamborghini police cars, streets where it rains 24/7 in the middle of desert… Welcome to Dubai, the UAE’s most populous city and one of the richest and most absurdly ostentatious places in the world. Those stories of diamond encrusted Hummers? They’re all true. It’s the epitome of luxury. And nowhere is this more true than in the city’s islands. Well, artificial islands to be ex...

Peru has everything. Dense jungles, imposing mountains, and a long coastline. A rich history that combines breathtaking Incan archeological sites with the original seats of colonial power on the southern continent. But people also treasure Peru for something else: UFOs. To those in the know, Peru is the Mecca for unidentified flying objects. Peru’s capital, Lima, even has its very own X Files-styl...

On this episode of Passport , we go to the fog of London, and walk the fine line between the glamorous lifestyle of James Bond and the realities of spies sitting on the complicated grey streets of England’s capital. We see this fictional world through the eyes of writers and films, from Bond to Villanelle, a stylish femme fetal character from the new series, “Killing Eve.” We dive into what could...

Amsterdam is a city of canals and coffeeshops: of charm and sin. Nowhere is this better encapsulated than in its art scene. The Dutch capital is a hub of both contemporary and classic art - from incredible graffiti to world leading institutions like the Van Gogh museum. Van Gogh still holds a lot of sway in the city - he’s the Netherlands’ most famous artistic son, after all. But his work is also...

The Bay Area around San Francisco is home to beautiful beaches, gorgeous wineries and the people who are creating the future. Because if you head south from San Fran, you’ll find Silicon Valley, the center of global technology. The place today is filled with artificial intelligence, billionaire tech-bros and people trying to become immortal. Silicon Valley might be the wealthiest town in Amer...

This week on MisInfoNation we talk to Ekaterina Markelova about a mystery wrapped inside a riddle inside an enigma - Mother Russia! A smart, funny, double PhD with a rather disarming smile, Ekaterina, takes on some of the craziest questions about her home country! Western views of Russian culture are dominated by drinking, the cold and election hacking right now… But that can’t really be all...

The Passport team is off this week, making more shows. But we’ve got a special bonus episode: a fantastic show called The Alarmist. Have you ever wondered who’s to blame for history's greatest tragedies? The Plague. The sinking of The Titanic. The break-up of the Beatles. If you answered yes, then Writer/Comedian Rebecca Delgado-Smith is here for you. Each week she and a special guest (or guests),...

| USING ART TO GET TO THE OTHER SIDE | In part two of our journey to Jerusalem, we cross the Green Line and talk to some remarkable people. An artist whose family roots in the city go back over 1000 years, but who still doesn’t qualify for a passport. An Amenian Jerusalemite, one of the city’s smallest minorities, whose work has crossed boundaries. And two Israeli entrepreneurs who found a novel w...

| How to have fun in Jerusalem | Sha’anan Streett might be Israel’s biggest hip-hop star and he also might own the most important bar in Jerusalem. In a tiny courtyard in the Mahane Yehuda market sits the Casino Du Paris, a little oasis in the bustle of one of the world's craziest markets. What you might not realise, sitting there with a cold one, is that this bar started a movement. In an era fil...

This week on MisInfoNation we talk to Sohail Jannessari about what could be the most misunderstood country on the planet. Iran. A political scientist with a cutting sense of humour, Sohail takes on some of the most divisive questions about Iran and Iranians. Today we turn the view of Iran that’s been shaped by Western media upside-down. From the food, to the etiquette, the oppression of women...

Welcome to Taiwan, nicknamed Formosa - or beautiful island. For hundreds of years influences from all over the world have created a fascinatingly rich culture and an equally rich cuisine. The food of Taiwan, and its capital Taipei, is some of the most delicious on planet earth. Recently, a food craze that took root in Taipei has spread across the globe: the plant based diet. Vegan food h...

| A Freeform Engagement In the City of Lights and Love | "I’m going to Paris with my boyfriend and I want to ask him to marry me, how should I do it?" Asked by a listener named Monica to find the perfect plan for a proposal in Paris, Neil and Andrés face off in a race to produce an answer. Jazz and wine, architecture and getting lost, chocolate, cabaret and croissants. Neil and Andres scour t...