This podcast raises many confronting issues that have been hidden, or if known about, wilfully ignored, for far too long. Richard has sensitively, ethically and empathically shone a light on dark places. His ability to engage with former members of the GRC such that they have told their stories so openly, bravely and clearly is a gift to them and a service to the public. Richard has provided a sense of safety for people who have come through horrific times in their lives. He has done so in a way that is most supportive and even a step towards healing. It is to be hoped that the wider community will demand political action to reform taxation exemptions; and more importantly, protect the vulnerable, especially women and children. A debt of gratitude is owed to those who came forward and to Richard and his team. So very well done!

I expect better things from Apple. The basic functionality is all there, but there are some huge annoyances too. As an example, I’ve lately been binging A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs. Of course, by its very nature, you’d want to listen to something like that in order, right? From the very beginnings of rock and roll to the present? Well, good luck getting the Podcasts app to do that for you. After scrolling for ages to get down to the first episode, it did the right thing for about three episodes in a row, then tried to kick me over to one of the other podcasts I subscribe to. At other times it tries to default me to the latest episode rather than the last one I was listening to. And even though I’m signed in to the same Apple ID on both my iPhone and iPad, it doesn’t seem to want to keep track of which episode I’m on (no consistent handover between the devices). It’s maddening enough that I’m seeking out other podcast apps. You would think the company behind ‘Apple Intelligence’ would be producing basic apps that are more intelligent and useful than this. I mean, surely it can figure out that since I started at episode 1 and am now up to episode 16, hey, this guy must want to listen to them all in order! But no, I have to fight with the app to make it do what I want.

I was impressed at first because this app pre-installed on the iPhone makes it so easy to find and listen to high quality talk shows and current news. :-) But, the queuing system for management of a list of further audio to hear later, is tricky and problematic. One cannot trust this mechanism for enqueing more than one future item, because there is no way to recover such a queue, should the user, having built a list of items, for some reason cause playback of some item other than the mandated current item at the head of the playlist. In some cases a warning is issued, allowing the user to avert the disastrous loss of a potentially laboriously assembled, long and sophisticated list of items ; but if the user selects an item in the playlist further ahead, it will play directly, obliterating the items between the head and that point, without any apparent way to navigate backward in the lost play order. Furthermore, even finding the list of future items is not obvious. And it is inconsistent in whether it offers to continue playing your queue after playing some new item.

The latest update has made this app nearly unusable. It no longer can queue podcast episodes without… duplicating episodes, adding every episode to the end of the playlist (which can add hundreds of old episodes to your playlist). If you come out of the app it will forget which episode you were last listening to so you have to re queue your list. Not impacted by the new version but now annoying is the sleep timer only going up to 1 hour, now the queue is not working properly this means you can’t rely on the app stopping once your queued episodes have been played so I have woken up many a morning for it to be playing 2 year old episodes it for some reason it has decided to play (without downloading). I have often had an issue with a podcast re downloading old played episodes but the individual podcasts have often taken the blame for this… however the vast errors from the latest update makes listening to podcasts painful. I hope they will fix it soon but given it’s been a few months so far and many other reviews stating the above I am doubtful which is a great shame.