Shows / Absolute Units
Absolute Units
Lo-fi clip-clops and bleats to relax/study to. Welcome to the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. Based at the University of Reading, we explore the past, present and future of the English countryside. Hosted by Joe Vaughan and Dr Ollie Douglas. Chaotic Good.
Episodes
- Absolute Units
Why aren't there beavers in the Bayeux Tapestry? (with Dave Musgrove)
Send us Fan Mail The Bayeux Tapestry is the iconic story of the Norman conquest of England. But what else does it show us about land, farming and access in…
- Absolute Units
People who like saving things (with Hannah Silver and Jen Patterson)
Send us Fan Mail In 2013, we acquired a collection of over 1,800 rural films that had been carefully assembled, preserved, and frequently shared by a…
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Big sheep, little labels (Joe and Ollie)
Send us Fan Mail Sorry we missed a week! We're catching up after both being out on leave. In this episode, Joe and Ollie chat about what they've been up to…
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So you want to make a time capsule (with Rosy Scholes and Ellen Knight)
Send us Fan Mail What will farming look like in 100 years time? That's the question asked by a group of University of Reading PhD students, managed by Rosy…
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21st-century MERL (with Kate Arnold-Forster)
Send us Fan Mail How do you lead a rural history museum in 2026? What does that look like in practice? And how does our contemporary work vary to the vision of…
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How to move a museum down a hill (with Kate Arnold-Forster)
Send us Fan Mail So far we've spoken a lot about The Museum of English Rural Life's earliest years. Yet so much of what we are today results from a radical…
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Bad Bunny, Star Wars, and Stardew Valley (Joe and Ollie special)
Send us Fan Mail What have we been up to lately? What's coming up? And what's the rural significance of Bad Bunny's performance at the Superbowl? In this…
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What can we learn from the T-rex? (with Tom Oliver and Marzia Briel)
Send us Fan Mail We're back with our second episode with the University of Reading's Tom Oliver and Marzia Briel! We continue talking about their…
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Ego vs eco (with Tom Oliver and Marzia Briel)
Send us Fan Mail How does humanity fit into nature? How long have we viewed ourselves as being apart from it? And what are the problems that creates? This…
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Radical Rural Revisited (Joe and Ollie special)
Send us Fan Mail Okay. Take 2. Last month we drew to a close two major installations at The MERL: our gallery trail Radical Rural, and our exhibition Voices of…
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The art of accessible spaces (with Anahita Harding)
Send us Fan Mail How do museums engage with accessibility, both as spaces that welcome visitors and as collections of human stories? On this episode, we're…
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50 Million Pheasants Later (with Guy Shrubsole)
Send us Fan Mail Turns out delays come like London buses. First Joe got the flu. Then we accidentally re-shared the first episode with Guy rather than the new…
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Who owns England? (with Guy Shrubsole)
Send us Fan Mail It's a simple three-word question. Yet the answer is extremely complicated, expensive, and concealed behind paywalls that run into hundreds of…
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Quick schedule update
Send us Fan Mail Hi folks! We're closed tomorrow for Easter (which is when we'd usually release our next episode). Ollie and Joe are also in and out of the…
Absolute UnitsCelebrating 1 year of Absolute Units + listener questions
Send us Fan Mail Content warnings: infant mortality (indicated in the chapter list!) - skip from 14:38 to 19:33 Today we turn 1 years old! A fine age for a…
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Life on Marsh (with Adrian Lawson)
Send us Fan Mail In 2022, a report by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences analysed 14 European countries and ranked them for nature connectedness, bio…
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The Fight for Wild Camping on Dartmoor (with Ruth Webb and Lisa Schneidau)
Send us Fan Mail Old Crockern returns! We're back for a second episode with the legendary giant of Dartmoor, plus giant maker and dancer Ruth Webb (of The Lost…
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Old Crockern Awakes (with Ruth Webb and Lisa Schneidau)
Send us Fan Mail There's an ancient spirit who rules over Dartmoor, an uplands region in South West England. His face is granite grey. His eyes are dark as…
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Rural Britannia (with Ollie Douglas)
Send us Fan Mail Content warning: This episode contains references to antisemitism and prejudice. Listener discretion is advised. --- Last episode we talked…
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Making The MERL (with Ollie Douglas)
Send us Fan Mail On 1 January 1951, on the same day that the first episode of iconic radio drama The Archers aired on the radio, academics at the University of…
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Jane Austen: Verdure, Culture, and Comfort (with Paddy Bullard and Isabel Hughes)
Send us Fan Mail Jane Austen’s novels are classic books of the English countryside. Yet they reveal so much more about English culture, industry and society…
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Jane Austen: How to Spot a Wrong'un (with Paddy Bullard and Isabel Hughes)
Send us Fan Mail It is a truth universally acknowledged that every podcast about the history of the English countryside must do an episode on Jane Austen. In…
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Contested Countryside (with George Monbiot), pt. 2
Send us Fan Mail How does the history of enclosure surface in England today and in Britain's former colonies? How can we de-enclose to create access for all?…
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Contested Countryside (with George Monbiot), pt. 1
Send us Fan Mail Throughout history people have pitted life in the city against the countryside, comparing urban corruption with an innocent rural idyll. Where…
Absolute UnitsDeath, Rebirth, and Scooby Doo (with Mark Norman)
Send us Fan Mail Pumpkins, carved. Candles, lit. Units, absolute. Welcome to a special Halloween bonus podcast by The Museum of English Rural Afterlife. This…
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Queer Rural Lives: Love Letters and Farm Papers (with Tim Jerrome)
Send us Fan Mail In our last episode, Tim Jerrome (now, University of Brighton; previously, The MERL) shared with Joe and Ollie how he's using The MERL…
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Queer Rural Lives: Searching the Archives (with Tim Jerrome)
Send us Fan Mail Queer histories of England have predominantly focused on the country's urban centres and cities - especially London. Yet queer and same-sex…
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Rural Riots, Raves, and Robin Hood (with Katrina Navickas)
Send us Fan Mail Throughout modern English history, people have protested against the movements to enclose and limit access to green spaces. Their reasons have…
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A Radical History of the Commons (with Katrina Navickas)
Send us Fan Mail "The law locks up the man or woman who steals the goose from off the common / But leaves the greater villain loose: who steals the common from…
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Flying Your Drone Through a Michelin-Starred Polytunnel (with Amy Bateman)
Send us Fan Mail Modern farming is full of digital technology. Nobody knows this better than Amy Bateman, a prize-winning photographer and sheep farmer who…
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Forty Farms (with Amy Bateman)
Send us Fan Mail In 2020, award-winning photographer and sheep farmer Amy Bateman set out to document the stories of forty farms in Cumbria. From Lake District…
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The Rural Art of Dog Poo Posters (with Man in the Woods)
Send us Fan Mail Man in the Woods makes art about parts of rural England that you wouldn’t normally think about – and definitely wouldn’t find in Wordsworth…
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We Were All Rural Once (with Man in the Woods)
Send us Fan Mail Seven years ago on a Friday, artist Scott (best-known on social media as Man in the Woods) set off for a walk to no particular destination…
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The Meaning of Pigs (with Dolly Jørgensen)
Send us Fan Mail Content warning: This episode contains references to animal slaughter, antisemitism, and injury to children. Listener discretion is advised…
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The Medieval Pig (with Dolly Jørgensen)
Send us Fan Mail Content warning: This episode contains references to animal slaughter and blood. Listener discretion is advised. In medieval England, all…
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Schedule Update: Big Sheep, Big Dreams
Send us Fan Mail Episode 4 marked the end of our pilot series, produced by a group of extremely talented students from the University of Reading. Now, we're at…
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The Pest is History (with Alice Mauchline)
Send us Fan Mail How has our understanding of ecology in farming changed in time? What makes a pest a pest? And is an aphid chimney as metal as it sounds? Join…
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I Just Want a Cup of Tea in Reading (with Shweta Ghosh)
Send us Fan Mail What do documentary makers and museum have in common? How do we choose which stories to tell, and how to tell them? Join Dr Shweta Ghosh…
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Wanting My Hog to Look Spectacular (with Dr Hannah Lyons)
Send us Fan Mail Why did people in the past make paintings of impossibly big animals? What does art teach us about the history of the countryside? And how do…
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Origin Story (with Adam Koszary)
Send us Fan Mail In April 2018, we shared a photo of a very large sheep on Twitter with the caption 'look at this absolute unit'. Before we knew it, this sheep…
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Trailer
Send us Fan Mail EPISODE 1 NOW LIVE It's just like all the other podcasts you love, but instead of trying to sell you mattresses and underwear we're explaining…