The James McMahon Music Podcast

This episode originally aired on May 30th, 2022. *** Oh hello! James McMahon here. It's been a time! I’m currently working on season 2 of Shame , a podcast about... shame, but I thought I’d share one episode of it early, mainly because the person I’m speaking to today - the journalist Christie Smythe - is writing a book, Smirk , about her relationship with the notorious ‘pharma bro’ Martin Sh...

This episode originally aired on January 26th, 2022. Watch this episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaUIeKjfOW4&t=1773s *** And so to the Season 1 finale of Shame ! When I started this podcast, I did it for three reasons. One, because I have my own experience with shame, and, at various points in my life, I’ve been gripped by it. This podcast was me working that out, episode to episo...

This episode originally aired on January 17th, 2022. *** Well, it’s been a time, has it not. Yeah, it’s been ages since a new episode of Shame … a podcast about shame. But now it’s 2022 and now it’s time for a rush of episodes to wrap up Season One of this episodic exploration of the emotion… shame. We kick this run off with a conversation with the journalist Katherine Brodsky , who not only has h...

This episode originally aired on November 10th, 2021. *** I’ve had people gossip about me. And I’m no saint, I’ve probably gossiped about other people too. Sometimes when I’m bored I’ll Google ‘ professional wrestling gossip ’ – I can’t believe I’m telling you that – so I’m as bound to the rewards of tittletattle and scuttlebutt as much as anyone. We all gossip. But what’s the appeal? And what’s i...

This episode originally aired on November 2nd, 2021. *** Fourteen years ago – yesterday in fact, on November 1st, 2007 – British exchange student Meredith Kercher was murdered in Perugia, Italy . She was just 21 years old. The truth about what happened that night isn’t hard to source , despite the hash of misinformation, prejudice and sloppy policework that began being assembled the very moment po...

This episode originally aired on October 25th, 2021. *** On episode eight of Shame , I'm talking to the American author and journalist Kat Rosenfield about exactly why people shame – and what we can do about it. Kat’s got first hand experience of this – I invite you to listen to her interview on Episode 85 of Blocked & Reported , one of my very favourite podcasts – where she breaks down a...

This episode originally aired on October 5th, 2021. *** On episode seven of Shame , I’m speaking to my fellow journalist Rachel Cunliffe , who serves as the Deputy Online Editor of the enduringly fascinating New Statesman . Rachel wrote an article a few weeks back under the headline, ‘ Why New Age puritans are the enemies of progress ’. Hmmm. I’m into that. This was the standfirst; ‘From sex to Co...

This episode originally aired on September 30th, 2021. *** I guess it was only a matter of time before this podcast got to the subject of religion - and I’m sure it’ll revisit the subject further down the line - but I thought it might be nice to have a conversation with my fellow music journalist Jeremy Allen . Jeremy was a teenage evangelical preacher – all fire and brimstone and all that righteo...

This episode originally aired on August 17th, 2021.  *** On episode four of Shame, host James McMahon has a conversation with the British broadcaster Gail Porter. He's been watching Gail on the television since he was a teenager. He may even have had a poster of her on his wall during those formative years! And this conversation duly hangs around an incident that took place during the final m...

This episode originally aired on September 3rd, 2021. *** On episode five of Shame , I’m talking to noted US TV producers Rob Rosen and Desma Simon , the creators of a podcast I’ve been gripped by these last few months. It’s called Cancelled and I think it, and the podcast you’re here to listen to, share a great deal in common. The reality of being cancelled is shame at the deep end. In my mind, i...

This episode originally aired on August 13th, 2021. *** If you have any interest in the true crime genre, you will know the name Maura Murray . She's the internet's favourite missing person, and you probably think you have an idea of who she is - certainly who she was. These are the facts; Maura was an American woman who disappeared on the evening of February 9th, 2004, after a car crash...

Something different to usual on this feed. I thought I’d let you know that I’m going to be posting series one of one of my other podcasts, Shame , within The James McMahon Music Podcast hub. There’s eleven episodes in said series, and they take in interviews with author and broadcaster Jon Ronson , podcaster and exoneree Amanda Knox , journalist Rachel Cunliffe of The New Statesman and author Kat...

This episode originally aired on August 2nd, 2001. *** Hello and welcome to episode one of Shame , a podcast about the wretched emotion that is… shame. I'm your host, James McMahon . I'm a journalist from London, via Yorkshire. This is a podcast about shame, yes, but it’s also a podcast about healing and learnings and psychology and grit. We’re kicking this series off with an interview w...

This episode originally aired on August 7th, 2021. *** This week, James McMahon is in conversation with Rob Manuel , who created and curates Twitter's dumping ground for shame, @Fesshole . Rob knows a lot about the internet. A fair bit about people too. The internet and the way we use it will be a recurring theme in this podcast series - and where better to begin that story within a story tha...

This episode originally aired on August 19th, 2021. *** On this bonus episode of Shame , James McMahon speaks to investigative journalist Naama Kates about the tragic events that took place in Plymouth, England, last week [12/08/21]. And  about how understanding shame can perhaps help us better understand the Incel subculture that's so misrepresented within our culture - and help us avoid fur...

Yeah, it's been a while hasn't it. Have you signed up to the Spoook Substack yet though? You haven't? Oh, go do that now . Wonderful things are happening. So here's the deal. I listened to Danny being interviewed by my friend Katy on her excellent podcast,  Sound Effects . She’s interviewed me for it before, too. You should check that out , really. But her interview with Danny...

Seven million record sales, twelve UK top 40 singles, two number one albums; the music of Deacon Blue - and that group’s singer Ricky Ross - defined much of my childhood. And so it’s a total thrill to speak to the Dundee born songwriter on this episode. Ricky has a new solo album, Short Stories, Vol. 2 , out now on Cooking Vinyl, a tour coming late September, and his first memoir, Walking Back Hom...

If you're a fan of pop rock, you've come to the right place; on this episode I’m speaking to The Faim - specifically singer Josh Raven - and the two of us discuss the Australian band’s recently released second album, the ferociously catchy Talk Talk . Let me tell you something about interviewing bands. Sometimes it’s easy . You speak to a musician and the truth pours out of their mouths....

Been a long time coming this episode. I’ve meant to speak to Kathryn Williams – whose music I’ve loved since I was a bruised hearted teenager in the North East of England, a region that neither of us were born in, but came to call home – for ages now. Life happened. But with Kath's excellent new, 14th studio album, Night Drives out and about, I thought I needed to make it happen... and fast!...

If you found yourself cutting a rug on a rock club dancefloor in the late '90s – and, ahem, I’m just speaking hypothetically, obviously – then it’s highly likely that you were doing that, at least sometimes, to Orange County rockers Lit , specifically their 1999 mega smash ' My Own Worst Enemy '. Even now, I am obsessed with that song, and I’m not alone – last year the band even rel...

Crash Test Dummies 1993 release, God Shuffled His Feet   – their second album – was one of my favourite albums when I was a teenager, it’s arrival into the world syncing perfectly with my blossoming love of music and it’s collection of ambitious, and dare I say, wonderous, alternative rock, enduring for many years beyond that. The Winnipeg group are now back as an active concern, and touring the g...

If you haven’t yet checked it out, I urge you to listen to Metric ’s new album – their 8th – at the first available opportunity. It’s called Formentera . It came out last week, just before I did this interview, and from its first song onwards – the sprawling, and dare I say magnificent, multipart symphony that is ' Doomscroller ' - it’s one of the best collections of progressive indie po...

Okay, here’s what you need to know about this episode. 1) I think it’s one of the best episodes of The James McMahon Music Podcast to date. 2) Savage Garden were a band I loved to bits as a young teenager, so it was a total thrill to have this conversation. 3) Darren’s new single, ‘ Poison Blood ’ is not only my favourite single released so far this year, but one of the best songs about mental ill...

Formed in 2001, and hung around the New Jersey group’s only constant, vocalist James ‘Buddy’ Nielsen , Senses Fail are one of the most interesting bands in post-hardcore today. Now eight albums in, their newest, Hell Is in Your Head , which is released on July 15th, is an excellent collection of songs that deal with the singer's existential fear of death – which is a subject that I have some...

Ever since the band released their self-titled debut back in 2009, Real Estate – led by my guest on this episode, Martin Courtney – have been one of my favourite bands. Real Estate released their last record - the excellent The Main Thing - back in 2020, weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic engulfed the western world. And yet out the subsequent madness/sadness came the New Jersey born songwriter’s s...