In an effort to train for the cycling I will be doing on this trip, I have been trying to do at least some cycling every day possible during August. Not massive distances (mostly because of needing the time to actually get organised and ready,) but I figure at least doing something every day that I can will get me a bit used to the sustained nature of bike touring, which is different from just doing rides at the weekend. For anyone who is interested, you can follow me on Strava, although I will probably be using a different app to record my progress once I actually go away.
Anyway, given that I have been spending so much time on a bike recently, I thought that I may as well use that time as productively as possible by multi-tasking. I decided to find podcasts to listen to while cycling in an effort to educate myself somewhat about the histories of some of the countries I will be visiting, and also the world more generally. Here my top picks of podcasts that I have been listening to, across a wide range of topics (nb. I’ve also tried a bunch of others that I wouldn’t recommend, but these ones are definitely worth a listen, especially if you are interested in the subject matter.)
In the Shadows of Utopia: The Cambodian Nightmare (Lachlan Peters)
How the Berlin Wall Worked (Stuff You Should Know)
Insight Guides: Travels on the Trans-Siberian Railway (Insight Guides)
The Russian Revolution: From Idealism to Terror (Parts 1 and 2) (CBC radio)
Lenin and the Russian revolutions (History Extra)
Blueprint for Armageddon (Episodes I – VI) (Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History)
No Man’s Land (Frank Turner)
Dancing in the Dawn 