Best Simone Hardy Podcasts (2025)

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Love and Death: 'Surge' by Jay Bernard and 'In Nearby Bushes' by Kei Miller 16:07

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1d ago16:07

16:07

Jay Bernard’s 'Surge' and Kei Miller’s 'In Nearby Bushes', both published in 2019, address acts of violence whose victims were not directly known to the writers: in Surge, the deaths of thirteen Black teenagers in the New Cross Fire of 1981; in Miller’s poem, a series of rapes and murders in Jamaica. Both can be seen as collective elegies, interlea…

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Fiction and the Fantastic: ‘The Hearing Trumpet’ by Leonora Carrington 16:31

8d ago16:31

16:31

Leonora Carrington was a prodigious artist closely associated with major surrealists of the 1930s. Though only sporadically in print until recently, her writing has helped cement her cult status, not least The Hearing Trumpet (1974). Before her family consign her to an old-age facility, nonagenarian Marian Leatherby is gifted a hearing trumpet with…

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Going Solo and International with Tyler Hubbard 15:39

12d ago15:39

15:39

In 2012, Tyler Hubbard burst onto the music scene as one-half of the Florida Georgia Line duo. After pioneering a new wave of country music, over 20 hit singles, and selling out shows as a member of “the biggest band in the world,” Tyler knows what it’s like to reach the mountain top. And now Tyler’s on a new journey back to the top but solo. Count…

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Conversations in Philosophy: 'The Ethics of Ambiguity' by Simone de Beauvoir 15:44

15d ago15:44

15:44

At the heart of human existence is a tragic ambiguity: the fact that we experience ourselves both as subject and object, internal and external, at the same time, and can never fully inhabit either state. In her 1947 book, Simone de Beauvoir addresses the ethical implications of this uncertainty and the ‘agonising evidence of freedom’ it presents, a…

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Novel Approaches: ‘The Last Chronicle of Barset’ by Anthony Trollope 17:07

23d ago17:07

17:07

Trollope enthusiasts Tom Crewe and Dinah Birch say they could have chosen any one of his 47 novels for this episode, so it’s no wonder Elizabeth Bowen called him ‘the most sheerly able of the Victorian novelists’. They settled on The Last Chronicle of Barset: a model example of Anthony Trollope’s gift for comedy, pathos, social commentary and maste…

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Love and Death: ‘Poems of 1912-13’ by Thomas Hardy 14:13

30d ago14:13

14:13

Without Emma Gifford, we might never have heard of Thomas Hardy. Hardy’s first wife was instrumental in his decision to abandon architecture for a writing career, and a direct influence – possibly collaborator – on his early novels. Their marriage, initially passionate, defied family expectations and class barriers, but by the time of Emma’s death,…

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Fiction and the Fantastic: Stories by Jorge Luis Borges 13:55

1M ago13:55

13:55

Jorge Luis Borges was a librarian with rock star status, a stimulus for magical realism who was not a magical realist, and a wholly original writer who catalogued and defined his own precursors. It’s fitting that he was fascinated by paradoxes, and his most famous stories are fantasias on themes at the heart of this series: dreams, mirrors, recursi…

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Conversations in Philosophy: 'Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions' by Jean-Paul Sartre 16:07

1M ago16:07

16:07

What is an emotion? In his Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions (1939), Sartre picks up what William James, Martin Heidegger and others had written about this question to suggest what he believed to be a new thought on human emotion and its relation to consciousness. For Sartre, the emotions are not external forces acting upon consciousness but an a…

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Novel Approaches: 'Our Mutual Friend' by Charles Dickens 18:12

2M ago18:12

18:12

'Our Mutual Friend' was Dickens’s last completed novel, published in serial form in 1864-65. The story begins with a body being dredged from the ooze and slime of the Thames, then opens out to follow a wide array of characters through the dust heaps, paper mills, public houses and dining rooms of London and its hinterland. For this episode, Tom is …

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Love and Death: Family Elegies by Wordsworth, Lowell, Riley and Carson 14:32

2M ago14:32

14:32

Seamus and Mark look at four elegies written for family members, ranging from the romantic period to the 2010s, each of which avoids, deliberately or not, what Freud described as the work of mourning. William Wordsworth’s ‘Elegiac Stanzas Suggested by a View of Peele Castle’ (1807) is an oblique memorial to a brother that seems scarcely able to men…

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Fiction and the Fantastic: ‘Frankenstein’ by Mary Shelley 33:15

2M ago33:15

33:15

Born from grief, exile, intellectual ferment and the ‘yearwithout a summer’, Frankenstein is a creation myth with its own creationmyth. Mary Shelley’s novel is a foundational work of science fiction, horrorand trauma narrative, and continues to spark reinvention and reinterpretation. In their fourth conversation together, Adam Thirlwell and Marina …

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From Hockey Fights to Festival Nights with Troy Vollhoffer 38:51

2M ago38:51

38:51

After realizing his dreams of playing in the NHL might not happen, Troy Vollhoffer went from scrapping with the captain of the Boston Bruins to fighting to get his production company off the ground. After decades of putting on the largest country music festivals in the world, Troy Vollhoffer has no signs of slowing down. It’s a special episode of O…

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Conversations in Philosophy: 'The Thing' by Martin Heidegger 16:16

2M ago16:16

16:16

What does it mean for a jug to be a jug? Or for any thing to be called a ‘thing’? In his 1950 lecture ‘Das Ding’, Heidegger attempts to cajole his audience away from their everyday way of seeing the world as consisting of objects that can be represented objectively, and into the kind of thinking that ‘responds and recalls’. For Heidegger, the world…

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Novel Approaches: ‘The Mill on the Floss’ by George Eliot 17:34

3M ago17:34

17:34

The Mill on the Floss is George Eliot’s most autobiographical novel, and the first she published after her identity as a woman was revealed. A ‘dreamscape’ version of her Warwickshire childhood, the book is both a working-through and a reimagining of her life. Ruth Yeazell and Deborah Friedell join Tom to discuss the novel and its protagonist Maggi…

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Putting in the Work with Simon and Chief 45:47

3M ago45:47

45:47

It’s a tale as old as time: Simon Tikhman and Chief Zaruk say that when they met through a mutual lawyer, it was “love at first sight.” Since co-founding The Core Entertainment in 2019, Simon and Chief continue to find new and innovative ways to discover and develop artists. Simon and Chief join Country Thunder CEO Troy Vollhoffer to break down how…

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Love and Death: War Elegies by Whitman, Owen, Douglas and more 12:54

3M ago12:54

12:54

As long as there have been poets, they have been writing war elegies. In this episode, Mark and Seamus discuss responses to the American Civil War (Walt Whitman), both world wars (W.B. Yeats, Wilfred Owen, Rudyard Kipling, Keith Douglas) and the conflict in Northern Ireland (Michael Longley) to explore the way these very different poems share an an…

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Fiction and the Fantastic: Mikhail Bulgakov and James Hogg 32:58

3M ago32:58

32:58

James Hogg’s ghoulish metaphysical crime novel 'The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner' (1824) was presented as a found documented dating from the 17th century, describing in different voices the path to devilry of an antinomian Calvinist, Robert Wringhim. Mikhail Bulgakov’s 'The Master and Margarita', written between 1928 and 19…

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Never Growing Up With Jake Owen 15:12

3M ago15:12

15:12

After an injury ended any dreams of becoming a pro athlete, Jake Owen put down his golf clubs, picked up a guitar, and went on to create a brand-new era of country music. After two EPs, seven albums, and thirteen years as a household name, at 43 Jake Owen might have finally grown up, but he still isn’t slowing down. Country Thunder CEO Troy Vollhof…

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Conversations in Philosophy: 'The Will to Believe' by William James 18:14

3M ago18:14

18:14

Most of what we believe we believe on faith, even those beliefs we hold to be based on scientific fact. This assertion lies at the heart of William James’s essay ‘The Will to Believe’, originally delivered as a lecture and intended not so much as a defence of religion as an attack on anti-religion. James’s target was the ‘rugged and manly school of…

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Novel Approaches: 'Aurora Leigh' by Elizabeth Barrett Browning 18:40

4M ago18:40

18:40

‘I want to write a poem of a new class — a Don Juan, without the mockery and impurity,’ Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote to a friend in 1844, ‘and admitting of as much philosophical dreaming and digression (which is in fact a characteristic of the age) as I like to use.’ The poem she had in mind turned out to be her verse novel, Aurora Leigh, publi…

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The Road Back to Country With Blake Shelton 25:13

4M ago25:13

25:13

After taking a four year break on his Oklahoma ranch, Blake Shelton is back on the road and riding the high of his new album, For Recreational Use Only. After 29 number one hits, and a detour into Hollywood, Blake’s scorching hot single “Texas” proves he’s still got it. Country Thunder CEO Troy Vollhoffer recalls meeting Blake Shelton during a craz…

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Love and Death: 'In Memoriam' by Tennyson 13:13

4M ago13:13

13:13

Tennyson described 'In Memoriam' as ‘rather the cry of the whole human race than mine’, and the poem achieved widespread acclaim as soon as it was published in 1850, cited by Queen Victoria as her habitual reading after the death of Prince Albert. Its subject is the death in 1833 of Tennyson’s friend Arthur Hallam at the age of 22, and in its 131 s…

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Fiction and the Fantastic: Tales by Jan Potocki and Isak Dinesen 15:50

4M ago15:50

15:50

‘With Potocki,’ Italo Calvino wrote, ‘we can understand that the fantastic is the exploration of the obscure zone where the most unrestrained passions of desire and the terrors of guilt mix together.’ The gothic is a central seam of the fantastic, and in this episode Marina and Adam turn to two writers in that mode who lived over a hundred years ap…

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That’s Hardy Looking for Arrowheads 25:57

4M ago25:57

25:57

Even with 16 number one hits to his name, Hardy still feels like his career is just getting started. After his breakout album, The Mockingbird & the Crow, Hardy continues to light up the stage and the charts with his unique mix of metal and Mississippi country. Country Thunder CEO Troy Vollhofer is joined by his good friend and amateur arrowhead ar…

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Conversations in Philosophy: 'Schopenhauer as Educator' by Friedrich Nietzsche 30:26

4M ago30:26

30:26

For Nietzsche, Schopenhauer’s genius lay not in his ideas but in his heroic indifference, a thinker whose value to the world is as a liberator rather than a teacher, who shows us what philosophy is really for: to forget what we already know. ‘Schopenhauer as Educator’ was written in 1874, when Nietzsche was 30, and was published in a collection wit…

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Novel Approaches: ‘North and South’ by Elizabeth Gaskell 25:49

4M ago25:49

25:49

In North and South (1855), Margaret Hale is uprooted from her sleepy New Forest town and must adapt to life in the industrial north. Through her relationships with mill workers and a slow-burn romance with the self-made capitalist John Thornton, she is forced to reassess her assumptions about justice and propriety. At the heart of the novel are a s…

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Grandparents, Grit, and Going Big: Justin Moore’s Rise 27:51

5M ago27:51

27:51

Justin Moore lasted just two weeks of college before dropping out. He left his tiny, 300-person hometown in Arkansas in search of a career in Music City. After a few years of hard work, he finally made it big by leaning on his modest roots, releasing the mega hit single, “Small Town USA.” Country Thunder CEO Troy Vollhofer is thrilled to be joined …

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Love and Death: Self-Elegies by Plath, Larkin, Hardy and more 14:50

5M ago14:50

14:50

Philip Larkin was terrified of death from an early age; Thomas Hardy contemplated what the neighbours would say after he had gone; and Sylvia Plath imagined her own death in vivid and controversial ways. The genre of self-elegy, in which poets have reflected on their own passing, is a small but eloquent one in the history of English poetry. In this…

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Fiction and the Fantastic: Stories by Franz Kafka 16:51

5M ago16:51

16:51

In the stories of Franz Kafka we find the fantastical wearing the most ordinary, realist dress. Though haunted by abjection and failure, Kafka has come to embody the power and potential of literary imagination in the 20th century as it confronts the nightmares of modernity. In this episode, Marina Warner is joined by Adam Thirlwell to discuss the w…

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Every Night’s the Super Bowl with Jordan Davis 14:20

5M ago14:20

14:20

Having a hit-song writing uncle and a singer/songwriter older brother, Jordan Davis is living proof that some families have music in their DNA. With hits like “Singles You Up” and “Buy Dirt” and a new album out this summer, Jordan has country music running through his veins. This week, Country Thunder CEO Troy Vollhoffer sits down with Jordan Davis…

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Conversations in Philosophy: 'My Station and Its Duties' by F.H. Bradley 15:29

5M ago15:29

15:29

T.S. Eliot claimed that he learned his prose style from reading F.H. Bradley, and the poet wrote his PhD on the English philosopher at Harvard. Bradley’s life was remarkably unremarkable, as he spent his entire career as a fellow of Merton College, Oxford, where his only obligation was not to get married. Yet in over fifty years of slow, meticulous…

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Novel Approaches: 'Vanity Fair' by William Makepeace Thackeray 33:37

5M ago33:37

33:37

Thackeray's comic masterpiece, Vanity Fair, is a Victorian novel looking back to Regency England as an object both of satire and nostalgia. Thackeray’s disdain for the Regency is present throughout the book, not least in the proliferation of hapless characters called George, yet he also draws heavily on his childhood experiences to unfold a complex…

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From Football to Flying Beers with Gavin Adcock 32:19

6M ago32:19

32:19

Growing up on his family’s cattle farm in rural Georgia, Gavin Adcock dreamt of becoming a professional bull rider. But the universe had other plans. After suffering a knee injury playing football in college, Gavin turned his attention to playing guitar and songwriting, and the rest, as they say, is history. In this episode of On the Bus, Country T…

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Love and Death: Elegies for Poets by Berryman, Lowell and Bishop 12:56

6M ago12:56

12:56

The confessional poets of the mid-20th century considered themselves a ‘doomed’ generation, with a cohesive identity and destiny. Their intertwining personal lives were laid bare in their work, and Robert Lowell, John Berryman and Elizabeth Bishop returned repeatedly to the elegy to commemorate old friends and settle old scores.In this episode, Mar…

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Fiction and the Fantastic: ‘Alice in Wonderland’ by Lewis Carroll 16:26

6M ago16:26

16:26

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass are strange books, a testament to their author’s defiant unconventionality. Through them, Lewis Carroll transformed popular culture, our everyday idioms and our ideas of childhood and the fantastic, and they remain enormously popular. Anna Della Subin joins Marina Warner to explore the …

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Better Together with Tigirlily Gold 39:33

6M ago39:33

39:33

Many new artists these days get their big breaks on TikTok. But unlike many of those viral sensations, sister duo Tigirlily Gold had already proven their chops in the bar and club scene in Nashville before being discovered. In this episode of On the Bus, Country Thunder CEO Troy Vollhoffer talks with Kendra Olson and Krista Slaubaugh of Tigirlily G…

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Rugby Wrap S6 Ep 6 Western Force prop Tom Robertson 52:02

6M ago52:02

52:02

Force prop Tom Robertson talks about THAT try, his time at Oxford and the differences he's seen at the Club since his return to Perth. Mitch sounds like he's on dial up, but at least he was there Tess...By Mitch Hardy, Heath Tessmann and Mick Colliss

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Conversations in Philosophy: 'Autobiography' by John Stuart Mill 14:58

6M ago14:58

14:58

Mill’s 'Autobiography' was considered too shocking to publish while he was alive. Behind his musings on many of the philosophical and political preoccupations of his time lie the confessions of a deeply repressed man who knows that he’s deeply repressed, coming to terms with the uncompromising educational experiment his father subjected him to as a…

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Novel Approaches: ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emily Brontë 27:23

6M ago27:23

27:23

When Wuthering Heights was published in December 1847, many readers didn’t know what to make of it: one reviewer called it ‘a compound of vulgar depravity and unnatural horrors’. In this episode of ‘Novel Approaches’, Patricia Lockwood and David Trotter join Thomas Jones to explore Emily Brontë’s ‘completely amoral’ novel. As well as questions of H…

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From Backroom Bars to Broadway with Dustin Lynch 36:27

6M ago36:27

36:27

Not many artists actually hail from Tennessee, but the scenic valleys and rolling hills of The Volunteer State are part of Dustin Lynch’s DNA. In this episode of On the Bus, Country Thunder CEO Troy Vollhoffer sits down with Dustin to discuss his journey from playing fraternity parties and weddings across the southeast to being the first country ar…

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Rugby Wrap S6 Ep 5 James 'Chucky' Stannard 57:03

7M ago57:03

57:03

James 'Chucky' Stannard joins us to talk about his new role at the Force and where the team is at. Great to have him back in the West.By Mitch Hardy, Heath Tessmann and Mick Colliss

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Love and Death: ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ by Thomas Gray 16:06

7M ago16:06

16:06

Situated on the cusp of the Romantic era, Thomas Gray’s work is a mixture of impersonal Augustan abstraction and intense subjectivity. ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ is one of the most famous poems in the English language, and continues to exert its influence on contemporary poetry. Mark and Seamus explore three of Gray’s elegiac poems and…

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Fiction and the Fantastic: ‘Invisible Cities’ by Italo Calvino 16:20

7M ago16:20

16:20

Italo Calvino’s novella Invisible Cities is a hypnagogic reimagining of Marco Polo’s time in the court of Kublai Khan. Polo describes 55 impossible places – cities made of plumbing, free-floating, overwhelmed by rubbish, buried underground – that reveal something true about every city. Marina and Anna Della read Invisible Cities alongside the Trave…

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If Sh*t is Good, It’s Good with Koe Wetzel 13:27

7M ago13:27

13:27

Growing up in Texas, Koe Wetzel dreamt of a career in the NFL. But after a college football injury, he realized he could get more women and free beer by putting his music hobby front and center instead. On this episode of On the Bus, Country Thunder CEO Troy Vollhoffer talks with Koe Wetzel about the plethora of music genres that influenced his sty…

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Conversations in Philosophy: 'Circles' and other essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson 15:55

7M ago15:55

15:55

Circular reasoning is normally condemned by philosophers, but in his 1841 essay ‘Circles’, Emerson proposes that not getting anywhere is precisely what we need to do to find out where we already are. In this episode, Jonathan and James consider Emerson’s use of the circle to demonstrate an idealistic philosophy rooted in the natural world, in which…

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Backstage Pass with Legendary Music Agents Rod Essig, Curt Motley, and Nick Meinema 44:32

7M ago44:32

44:32

How do music artists make most of their money? From the smallest act playing dive bars, to the band that sells out stadiums and festivals, musicians earn the bulk of their living on events and tours. And behind every artist is an agent that books those gigs and helps them achieve meaningful financial success in their careers. For this special episo…

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Rugby Wrap S6 Ep 4 Express. Simon Cron, Nick White, Dylan Pietsch 22:06

7M ago22:06

22:06

The express edition, with press conferences featuring Western Force coach Simon Cron and players Nick White and Dylan Pietsch.

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Welcome Back to On the Bus with Troy Vollhoffer 2:59

7M ago2:59

2:59

Have you ever wondered about what it’s like touring as a musician on the festival circuit? Or maybe about who discovered them, and just how the heck they helped them make it big? From Country Thunder Music Festivals, we invite you, the fans, to ride shotgun on the tour bus with us to find out all this and a whole lot more. Join host Troy Vollhoffer…

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Novel Approaches: 'Crotchet Castle' by Thomas Love Peacock 36:57

7M ago36:57

36:57

Thomas Love Peacock didn’t want to write novels, at least not in the form they had taken in the first half of the 19th century. In Crotchet Castle he rejects the expectation that novelists should reveal the interiority of their characters, instead favouring the testing of opinions and ideas. His ‘novel of talk’, published in 1831, appears largely l…

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Rugby Wrap S6 Ep 3 Simon Cron 44:24

7M ago44:24

44:24

Simon Cron discusses the Force win, why he didn't take Ben Donaldson off, and what they need to do to get the W in Canberra.By Mitch Hardy, Heath Tessmann and Mick Colliss