Just Passing Through Podcast
Step into 'Just Passing Through,' the podcast that chronicles my Yorkshireman adventures navigating the maze of Japanese life. No guarantees of laughter, but we promise a healthy dose of raised eyebrows and bemused chuckles.In each episode, we'll explore the quirky intersections of cultures, from attempting to decipher the intricacies of local customs to introducing Japan to the wonders of a proper brew. It's a podcast where culture shock meets dry Yorkshire wit – a journey through the everyday absurdities that make life interesting.So, if you're up for a laid-back, eyebrow-raising, and occasionally head-scratching experience, hit that download button. 'J...
Brian Jones ~ The Lost Stone
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Episode 269
Few figures capture both the excitement and the cost of the 1960s quite like the young musician at the heart of this story. Gifted, inventive, and endlessly drawn to new sounds, he helped lay the foundations for a band that would redefine rock and roll. Yet while the music grew louder and the crowds grew larger, his place within that world became increasingly uncertain. In just a few remarkable years, admiration turned to pressure, success to struggle, and extraordinary promise to enduring tragedy. More than half a century...
Pablo Escobar ~ The Shadow Over Colombia
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Episode 268
Few names become symbols of an entire era. Pablo Escobar is one of them.
To some, he is a generous benefactor who builds homes, football pitches and schools for Colombia's poorest communities. To others, he is the ruthless leader of a criminal empire responsible for bombings, assassinations and unimaginable suffering. Between those two extremes lies a far more complex story.
This is a journey into a Colombia shaped by violence, ambition and the global cocaine trade. It is the story of a young man...
Lemmy ~ Nothing Left to Prove
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Episode 267
Picture a smoky club somewhere in northern England. The amplifiers are stacked high, the air smells of beer and cigarettes, and on stage stands a man who looks less like a rock star and more like a force of nature. His mutton-chop sideburns frame a weathered face. A battered bass guitar hangs low across his chest. When he opens his mouth to sing, the sound is rough, loud, and unmistakable.
To millions of fans around the world, he was simply Lemmy.
For more than...
Roy Cohn ~ The Illusion of Control
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Episode 266
In the crowded, fluorescent-lit corridors of mid-20th century American power, few figures moved quite like Roy Cohn. He was not a president, nor a general, nor an elected official — and yet he seemed to orbit all three, leaning in close to the machinery of government, law, and ambition as if he had a private key to its inner doors.
To some, he was a ruthless legal strategist who understood how to win at any cost. To others, he was something closer to a warning: a ma...
Bram Stoker ~ Inventing Immortality
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Episode 265
🌙🦇 England, 1897.
The gas lamps flicker through the London fog. 💨🏮 Horse-drawn carriages clatter over wet cobblestones. 🐎🌧️ The British Empire is at its height—an age of invention, progress, and discovery. ⚙️🚂🌍
But when darkness falls, another world emerges. 🌑
In quiet parlours and candlelit rooms, people still whisper tales of ghosts 👻, curses ⚰️, and strange creatures lurking beyond the edge of civilisation. 🐺🌲
And somewhere in this world sits an Irish writer with a vivid imagination and a fascination with the unknown. ✍️🇮🇪
His name is Bram Stoker.
Few people know it yet, but he...
Ivan Aivazovsky ~ Painting the Tempest
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Episode 264
The sea is restless.
Under a vast sky streaked with silver and gold, waves roll endlessly toward the shore. Sailors scan the horizon for signs of changing weather while fishing boats rise and fall with the rhythm of the water. In the distance, dark clouds gather, hinting at the power that lies beneath the sea's tranquil surface.
Along the northern coast of the Black Sea, in a bustling port town where merchants, fishermen, and travellers crossed paths, a young boy would spend hours watching...
Wilfred Brambell ~ The Man Behind Steptoe
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Episode 263
Coal smoke hangs over terraced streets. Trams rattle past rows of brick houses. In living rooms across the country, black-and-white television sets flicker into life as families gather together at the end of the day.
A new kind of fame is beginning to emerge. Not from grand film palaces or theatre stages, but from the small glowing box sitting in the corner of the room. Television is turning ordinary performers into familiar faces—people welcomed into homes week after week, until they begin to...
Buster Edwards ~ The Criminal Britain Loved
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Episode 262
South London. The years after the war. Streets filled with market traders, factory workers, and young men searching for opportunity in a changing Britain. Among them is Buster Edwards—charming, ambitious, and restless. At first, there is little to suggest his life will become anything out of the ordinary. But in the years ahead, a series of choices will pull him toward one of the most notorious crimes in British history, placing him at the centre of a case that will capture the imagination of a nation.
...
Albert Pierrepoint ~ The Man Called Before Sunrise
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Episode 261
In the grey light of post-war Britain, one man carried a burden few could imagine. Quiet, polite, and almost invisible in everyday life, he ran a small pub in the north of England. Customers knew him as a cheerful landlord with a quick smile and a pint ready at the bar. But beyond the clink of glasses and cigarette smoke, Albert Pierrepoint lived a second life.
He was Britain’s most famous executioner.
Over the course of his career, Pierrepoint would send more than 400 pe...
Ruth Ellis ~ From Glamour to Gallows
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Episode 260
Ruth Ellis didn’t just make history—she became it. The last woman to be executed in Britain, her name is forever tied to a single gunshot on a London street. But that moment is only the surface.
Behind it lies a life of glamour and danger: smoky nightclubs, powerful men, volatile relationships—and a past marked by instability and quiet desperation. How does someone go from chasing a better life to standing at the centre of one of Britain’s most infamous cases?
This sho...
Freddie Scappaticci ~ Stakeknife
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Episode 259
Freddie Scappaticci is a man who exists in two versions at once.
In one, he is a committed member of the Provisional IRA, operating in the shadows of a conflict that reshaped Northern Ireland. A man trusted to identify informers, to protect the organisation from within, and to act when that trust was broken.
In the other, he is something else entirely.
A British agent, known by the codename Stakeknife, positioned at the very centre of the same organisation he is supposed...
Simo Häyhä ~ The White Death
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Episode 258
In the frozen forests of northern Europe, where winter silence stretches for miles and the horizon disappears into endless white, one man became a ghost.
His name was Simo Häyhä.
To his enemies, he was something else entirely—The White Death.
During the bitter months of the Winter War, as the vastly outnumbered nation of Finland fought for survival against the might of the Soviet Union, Häyhä moved silently through snow-covered forests, dressed head to toe in white. There were no gra...
Stuart Sutcliffe ~ The Beatle Who Walked Away
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Episode 257
Before the music changes the world, there is a quieter story.
It begins in post-war Liverpool, where Stuart Sutcliffe grows up not as a musician, but as an artist—drawn to paint, to ideas, to something deeper than the noise around him.
Through his friendship with John Lennon, he is pulled into a band that will become The Beatles.
He can barely play.
But he helps shape who they are.
From Liverpool to Hamburg, his journey runs alongside th...
Kenny Everett ~ The Man Who Broke the Airwaves
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Episode 256
Before the noise… before the voices, the characters, the chaos—there was a boy searching for a place to belong.
He would grow up to become one of the most inventive, unpredictable, and boundary-breaking entertainers Britain had ever seen. A man who could slip between personas in an instant, bending reality with sound, satire, and sheer imagination. But behind the laughter was a far more complicated story—one shaped by identity, secrecy, and a relentless need to be heard.
This is the story of Kenny...
The Strait of Hormuz ~ A History
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Episode 255
In the narrow gap between two rugged coastlines, where the waters of the Persian Gulf meet the open ocean, lies a passage that the modern world cannot live without.
The Strait of Hormuz is not wide. In places, it is barely visible on a map. And yet, every day, vast ships—heavy with oil, with energy, with the weight of entire economies—move carefully through its waters.
For thousands of years, this has been a place of connection.
Ancient sailors once crossed thes...
Hans Gamper ~ The Godfather of FC Barcelona
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Episode 254
A city by the sea. A restless young man. And an idea that refuses to stay small.
At the end of the 19th century, football is still finding its place in the world—played on rough fields, organised by passion more than structure. In Switzerland, one man is already shaping that future. But it is not there that his legacy will be written.
It will begin somewhere warmer. Louder. Unpredictable.
Barcelona.
He arrives as an outsider, intending to pass through. In...
Cyrus the Great ~ The Shepherd Who Took Babylon
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Episode 253
Across the dry plains of ancient Persia, a new kind of ruler is rising.
Cyrus, the son of a small regional king, begins life far from the glittering centers of power. Yet even in youth there are whispers about him—stories of courage, intelligence, and an unusual sense of justice. In a world ruled by brutal conquest, he imagines something different: an empire built not only by the sword, but by tolerance.
Tribes gather around him. Armies begin to follow him. One by one, th...
H.G.Wells ~ Before the Machines Awoke
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Episode 252
Before the rockets of science fiction streaked across cinema screens… before alien invasions filled television… before time travel became a familiar idea in books and films… there was one man quietly imagining it all.
H. G. Wells was not born into wealth or comfort. In fact, his early life was marked by illness, financial struggle, and a constant sense that the world was changing faster than anyone quite understood. But from those uncertain beginnings came a mind that would reshape how we think about the future.
In the...
Billy the Kid ~ Lawless Days, Short Years
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Episode 251
Out on the edge of a young and restless nation, where dust clung to boots and gun smoke drifted across wide New Mexico skies, a boy with a narrow face and watchful eyes began to write his name into legend.
He was not born an outlaw.
He was born Henry McCarty — a sickly child in a hard, uncertain world. Before the wanted posters, before the headlines, before the nickname that would echo through saloons and sheriff’s offices alike, there was simply a boy tryi...
Minamoto no Yoritomo ~ The Man Who Built Kamakura
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Episode 250
The air is thick with the scent of pine and salt, drifting in from the nearby coast, as a boy of ten stands at the edge of a world he barely understands. The capital of Kyoto, full of gilded halls and whispered intrigues, has turned against him. Banished, stripped of comfort, and forced to wander the wild landscapes of the east, he carries only the memory of family and the fragile hope of survival.
In the quiet hills of Izu, life slows, and the boy begins...
Samuel Whittemore ~ The Wrong Man to Cross
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Episode 249
War is usually the domain of the young — quick feet, steady aim, and lungs strong enough for shouting charges. But in the spring of 1775, on a quiet road outside Boston, history pauses for someone else.
He is nearly eighty. A farmer. A grandfather. A man who has already lived the life most people hope to reach in peace.
Yet when soldiers enter his town, he does not flee.
His name is Samuel Whittemore — and in the space of a few violent minutes, he will perform an a...
Rik Mayall ~ No Inside Voice Available
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Episode 248
Before the noise and chaos, there was simply a boy called Richard.
Born in 1958 in Harlow, Essex, he grew up in a house full of drama — his parents were teachers of it. Voices, characters and imagination were normal life, and he learned early that attention wasn’t something you waited for. You grabbed it.
At school he pushed limits, chasing laughter that felt slightly dangerous. Not neat jokes, but reactions — big ones. When he reached the University of Manchester in the late 1970s, Britain’s comedy...
Hōne Wiremu Heke Pōkai ~ A Māori Response to Colonial Promises
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Episode 247
Before treaties were signed and borders were fixed on maps, power in Aotearoa was measured in mana — authority earned, defended, and sometimes taken by force. Few figures embodied that struggle more clearly than Hōne Heke.
Born into a high-ranking Ngāpuhi family in the early nineteenth century, Hōne Heke came of age during a time of enormous change. Muskets were reshaping warfare, missionaries were reshaping belief, and the British Empire was beginning to reshape the future of Māori land and leadership. Heke was intell...
Mané Garrincha ~ Roots Deeper than Fame
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Episode 246
Before the trophies, before the songs, before the stadiums learned his name, there is a man standing by a river.
No crowd. No noise. Just water moving slowly through Pau Grande, dragonflies cutting the air, and a fishing line held loose in his hands. He isn’t thinking about tactics or titles. He isn’t thinking about history. He’s thinking about nothing at all — and that’s exactly the point.
Mané Garrincha never set out to be a legend. He didn’t chase greatness, di...
Robert Maxwell ~ Power Paper and Secrets
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Episode 245
Robert Maxwell was a man who seemed too large for the age he lived in. To some, he was a brilliant immigrant success story — a war hero who arrived in Britain with nothing and built a vast publishing empire. To others, he was a bully, a fantasist, and a man constantly one step ahead of collapse. He filled rooms with his voice, his ambition, and his need to be noticed. Power fascinated him. Respect obsessed him. And money — other people’s money — kept him afloat longer than anyone expected...
Hugo Chavez ~ Born Under a Wide Sky
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Episode 244
Before the speeches and the salutes, there is a boy under the wide Venezuelan sky.
The llanos stretch endlessly—flat, dusty, alive with insects and heat. Life moves slowly here, and poverty is ordinary. Hugo Chávez is born into this landscape in 1954, raised by his grandmother, shaped by discipline, faith, and stories told at night. Tales of Simón Bolívar linger in the air, mixing with baseball dreams and the quiet feeling that something in the country is deeply unbalanced.
Venezuela is rich...
George Mallory ~ The Mountain Kept the Proof
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Episode 243
George Mallory did not begin as a legend.
He began quietly, far from the world’s highest places.
Born into a modest English family, his early life was shaped by books, discipline, and long walks through the countryside. He was not driven by fame, but by curiosity — a pull toward effort, height, and the unknown. Climbing came slowly, learned on cold British rock faces where patience mattered more than courage.
Long before Everest entered his life, Mallory had already learned what it m...
Earl Weiss ~ The Fearless Chicago Bootlegger
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Episode 242
Before Earl Weiss became a name spoken in whispers, he was simply a boy growing up in a city that was learning how to be hard. Chicago, at the turn of the twentieth century, was loud, crowded, and restless — a place where opportunity and danger often arrived hand in hand.
This is not a story that begins with violence, but with beginnings: with family, neighbourhoods, and the small, ordinary moments that slowly push a life in one direction rather than another. Earl Weiss did not emerge fu...
Maxi Jazz ~ Authority Without Anger
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Episode 241
Some voices don’t shout.
They arrive calmly, deliberately, and somehow carry more weight because of it.
Maxi Jazz is one of those voices.
Before the anthems, before the festival crowds and laser-lit nights, there is a boy growing up in post-war London — a city of concrete estates, pirate radio, borrowed records, and restless movement. A city where identity is fluid, where culture overlaps and collides, and where music becomes both escape and compass. Long before he ever steps onto a stage, Maxi is al...
Charles Dickens ~ Conflict, Consequence, and Christmas
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Episode 240
He is a man who never forgets what it feels like to be small, overlooked, and afraid of the future. Even at the height of his success, when crowds gather and his name is spoken with admiration, memory walks beside him. It reminds him how quickly comfort can vanish, how thin the line is between respectability and ruin, and how easily a child can be swallowed by a careless world.
From that memory comes his urgency. He writes not to decorate life, but to confront it — to...
Fumimaro Konoe ~ Power Handed Down, Not Earned
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Episode 239
Born into one of Japan’s most prestigious aristocratic families, Fumimaro Konoe seemed destined for power from the moment he arrived in the world. Raised in the refined traditions of the imperial court, he grew into an intellectual with a deep interest in philosophy, diplomacy, and Japan’s place in a rapidly shifting global landscape. Yet beneath the elegance and privilege lay a man constantly pulled between idealism and political reality.
Konoe would eventually become prime minister at one of the most dangerous turning points in Japa...
EI-Cid ~ السيد ~ al-Sayyid ~ Between the Cross and the Crescent
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Episode 238
Before the legend, before the ballads and the bronze statues, there was a man known simply as السيد — al-Sayyid.
A title whispered with respect across the plains of medieval Spain.
Not a king. Not a saint.
But a warrior whose life would shift the balance of power in a land divided by faith and ambition.
In the dust of the 11th century, al-Sayyid — Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar — lived in a world where alliances changed with the wind and loyalty was often measured in...
Tsutomu Yamaguchi ~ Burned by Humanity’s Wrath Twice
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Episode 237
He steps off the train in Hiroshima with a folder of shipyard plans under his arm, thinking only of getting home. It’s the summer of 1945, and Tsutomu Yamaguchi is just an ordinary engineer — a quiet man who sketches oil tankers and counts down the days until his child is born. He has no idea that, within hours, the world around him will twist into something unrecognisable.
And he certainly can’t imagine that he will face the same nightmare again.
Yamaguchi isn’t a soldie...
Mani ~ Echoes from the Madchester Scene
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Episode 236
Born Gary Mounfield in 1962 in Manchester, Mani became the iconic bassist of The Stone Roses, a band that helped define the Madchester sound of the late ’80s and early ’90s. Known for his melodic basslines and effortless cool, Mani’s style was as much a backbone of the band’s sound as it was a quiet statement of personality—playful, inventive, and undeniably British. Beyond the music, Mani embodied the rebellious yet charming spirit of the era, moving seamlessly between studio, stage, and later projects, leaving an indelible mark on in...
Richard Pryor ~ When Comedy Found Its Courage
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Episode 235
Richard Pryor’s story begins far from the bright stages and film sets that would later define him. Born into a world marked by hardship, he grew up in a neighborhood where survival demanded quick wit, sharp instincts, and a talent for seeing humor in places others overlooked. His early life was shaped by poverty, complicated family ties, and the often-harsh realities of mid-century America. Yet it was precisely these experiences that forged his unmistakable voice.
Pryor rose at a time when comedy was polite, predictable, an...
Brian Epstein ~ The 5th Beatle
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Episode 234
They called him the Fifth Beatle — the man who discovered four lads from Liverpool and helped turn them into the biggest band the world has ever known. But behind the sharp suits, the polished charm, and the quiet confidence, was a young man battling to prove himself in a world that didn’t quite understand him.
Before the screaming fans and the flashing lights, Brian Epstein was a shopkeeper’s son with a restless ambition — and a secret life lived in shadows. His story is one of visio...
John Cadbury ~ The Birmingham Alchemist
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Episode 233
Birmingham, 1824. The air hums with the rhythm of the Industrial Revolution—iron, smoke, and ambition shaping a restless city. But amid the roar of machinery, one man dares to listen to a quieter calling. His name is John Cadbury, and his mission is not forged in metal or fire, but in compassion.
From a small shop on Bull Street, he sells tea, coffee, and a curious new delicacy—drinking chocolate. To many, it is merely a luxury. To Cadbury, it is a moral alternative, a wa...
James Brown ~ Funk on Fire
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Episode 232
Before there was funk, before soul had a name, there was James Brown — the man who turned rhythm into revolution. From sweat-soaked stages in the Deep South to worldwide fame, Brown didn’t just perform music; he invented a whole new way to move sound. In this episode, we’ll take a quick journey through the rise of the Godfather of Soul — how his grit, gospel roots, and unstoppable groove reshaped music, style, and swagger forever.
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Eddie St.James ~ Fever Burn
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Eddie St. James ~ Fever Burn
Sometimes the world has a funny way of circling back.
A few weeks after episode 182 — our story of Samuel Sharpe, the man who freed Jamaica — I noticed something strange: a sudden spike in downloads all across the island.
That’s when I heard from Eddie St. James — a Jamaican-born soul singer with French roots, a voice aged in smoky bars, and a heart that still beats to the rhythm of the road.
He told me the Sharpe episode hit home, reminded...
The Brighton Bombing Part 2 ~ The Aftermath
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Episode 231
Brighton, October 1984 — The Aftermath
The blast has faded, but its echo still hangs in the air.
Smoke drifts through the wreckage of the Grand Hotel — splintered glass, twisted steel, and the heavy silence of disbelief.
Yet by morning, the Conservative Party conference resumes. Voices return to the same hall now shadowed by loss, determination standing where fear had settled overnight.
Outside, the manhunt begins. Streets are searched, names whispered, evidence pieced together. Patrick Magee — the unseen hand — becomes the most wanted man in B...
