The Week in Audio: Jermain Defoe: Outside the Box; FOGO: Fear of Going Outside; They Did That

Jermain Defoe: Outside the Box (BBC 5 Live) | BBC Sounds
FOGO: Fear of Going Outside | Spotify
They Did That (Somethin’ Else and Sony Music Entertainment) | Sony Music

Thanks to the World Cup (remember that?) and various other cup competitions, it seems – even for fans – as though football is never off the airwaves at the moment. I’m quite soothed by this blanket coverage, as the chunter and flow of sports commentary formed the weekend soundtrack of my youth. The other day I locked myself out of our flat, and while sitting on the stairs waiting for my son to return, I could hear the Spurs v Manchester City match playing out in the kitchen. I knew when Harry Kane had scored from the tune of the commentators’ music. It’s audio magic.

But I do see how it can be boring. Football is a national addiction, like alcohol and gossip. It’s everywhere. When you quit, it must be difficult to know how to survive. How to negotiate life without it. And this is the subject of a new 12-part 5 Live podcast, Jermain Defoe: Outside the Box.

Defoe is a successful striker who made his first professional appearance aged 17. He was 39 when he retired last year. His stats are impressive – 20 goals for England, 304 goals for seven different clubs – but they don’t count for much once you stop playing. What are you qualified for? Management would seem the obvious answer, but isn’t an easy option, especially, historically, for black players. Defoe knows this, of course.

The first episode opens with him having taken a few months off; now he wants to get back to something constructive, and Spurs, one of his old clubs, have offered him a way into coaching – the first step to management. Before that, though, the podcast takes him on a trip down memory lane. Well: Ordnance Street in Canning Town, east London, where he grew up. Defoe stands outside his nan’s house, at number 63, where he spent most of his time, and gives a vivid description of his young life. He visits his old secondary school, St Bonaventure’s, and we hear the kids’ excitement. It’s an endearing, relatable start to a series that promises more high-profile encounters – in episode two he talks to Harry Redknapp and David Pleat (Redknapp has some great stories) – as well as the grit of his new reality. Lennie James narrates, and the show is well produced, but none of it would work without Defoe’s engaging personality.

Another great audio companion is the Vietnamese-American Ivy Le, whose excellent podcast FOGO: Fear of Going Outside has returned for its second series. In the first, indoorsy Le did small, outdoorsy things such as going on a walk in a forest, buying a sleeping bag (hilarious) and camping. Now, she’s thinking bigger. She has decided to go hunting. But she’s based in Austin, Texas, where the hunting season is short and, to be frank, she’s recording at the wrong time of year. Her only option is to hunt wild boar – “feral hog” – which are rife. And by rife, I mean there are 6 million of them in the US.

We accompany Le as she gradually finds out how best to hunt these hogs and where she can do so. It’s a trickier process than you might imagine. She can buy a gun in 15 minutes flat, but it’ll set her back several thousand dollars. She can meet people who love shooting, but they’re not hunters. Texas passed a law allowing people to shoot hogs from hot air balloons, and she fancies that; unfortunately, despite the law, nobody seems to do this (they prefer to splatter them with machine guns from helicopters – not a joke).

By the end of episode two, Le hasn’t got much further, though we’ve established that she’ll be hunting using a bow. But she also unpacks a lot more than just arrows. Though she will always go for the funny, Le uses her show to highlight why, as a rule, people of colour aren’t outdoorsy. For example, we hear that in the south of the US, hunting was a traditional right given to enslaved people and when emancipation happened, freedmen went to live in the woods. This made many white people unhappy, so hunting licences were specifically invented to stop black people doing it. That’s the history that explains why hunting is a white guys’ sport. Le’s funny has context.

More history from They Did That, featuring another warm and engaging presenter, Takara Small, an American tech journalist. Her podcast, which highlights the achievements of people forgotten by history, is pitched young – it would play well with teenagers – but its subject matter is riveting for all ages. Last series ended with a great episode about Elizabeth Jennings, an African American teacher who protested about segregation on public transport a century before Rosa Parks. And this new series has opened with a couple of astonishing stories. First, that of James Hemings, a slave owned by Thomas Jefferson, who went with him to Paris to learn French cuisine. Hemings brought mac and cheese, creme brulee and french fries back to the US and used them to negotiate his freedom. Second, we hear about Joseph Bologne, a French Creole man who was the best fencer and violinist in Paris. Plus, he tutored Marie Antoinette.

These tales really are astonishing, with more twists and turns than you could imagine. You could see either – or both, given they were in Paris at the same time – being made into a film. History isn’t being rewritten, but the spotlight is being shifted. Away from those we already know about to those who should never have been ignored.