Meeting your musical heroes isn’t something that happens everyday, and rarely are they as engaging or open-hearted as our incredible guests on this week’s episode of the Pod.

Blaine sits down with one of his favourite guitarists, Ed O’Brien from the Oxford band Radiohead, to discuss feeling re-politicised for the first time since both attending the ‘Stop the War’ March in 2003, the social significance of Acid House, and ‘finding your tribe’ at Glastonbury. It’s a heart-warming conversation with many twists and turns.

This week’s opening thought features the ‘Bard of Barking’ Billy Bragg ruminating on the power of music to change the world, recorded especially for TWFF. It is a true privilege to have the ‘punk poet laureate of protest’ on the show.

Ed’s beautiful and hypnotic debut solo album ‘Earth’ is out now, as is Billy’s critically acclaimed new book ‘The three dimensions of freedom’, a pocket-sized exploration of personal liberty and the responsibilities of citizenship. Links below!

At the end of this episode you will hear ‘Campfire Song’ from Mystery Jets’ critically-acclaimed new album ‘A Billion Heartbeats’. You can buy and stream the album here.

This episode of ‘Things Worth Fighting For’ was brought to you by Acast and produced by our man Matthew Twaites. Thanks to Kate Jones at UROK for production assistance and coordination. 

RELATED LINKS:

Watch Billy Bragg Live at The Dominion Theatre in 1988 (Youtube)

Buy Billy Bragg Records Books and T Shirts

Follow Billy Bragg on Instagram

Buy/ Listen to Ed O’Brien’s magnificent album, Earth 

Watch Ed play ‘Shangri-La’ live on Jimmy Kimmel live (Youtube)

Check out the Fender EOB Sustainer Stratocaster® (Youtube)

Watch Radiohead at the Tibetan Freedom Concert in Washington DC, 1998 (Youtube)

Watch The Clash live in Victoria Park for Rock against Racism, 1978 (Youtube)

Watch the award-winning documentary ‘We are Many’ about the Iraq War protest (Amazon Prime)

Read ’33 Revolutions per minute: A History of Protest Songs’ by Dorian Lynksey (Abe Books)

Read/ Listen to ‘Drunk Folk Stories’ by Beans on toast

Attitude is Everything: Live Music is for Everyone

Attitude is Everything: Good night out Campaign

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