The Manchester Podcast Festival has announced the line-up for its second year, bringing together some of the UK’s most popular podcasts. The festival will begin with Help! I Sexted My Boss at The Dancehouse Theatre on 1st November 2019, and will see live dates across a host of venues in the city throughout the month, concluding on 27th November 2019. Tickets are on sale now at www.manchesterpodcastfestival.com.

The first-ever Manchester Podcast Festival saw over 2500 people attend, and this year’s programme will host returning favourites such as The Guilty Feminist and RHLSTP with Richard Herring (pictured), as well as huge-hit podcasters joining the festival such as Science-(ish), Dan Snow’s History Hit, Top Flight Time Machine, A Gay and a NonGay, BBC Radio 1’s Phil Taggart’s Slacker Podcast, Steve Martin and Tessa Coates’ Nobody Panic and many more.

The line-up encapsulates science curiosity, history, comedy, LGBTQ+, feminism, politics, music, sport and everything in between, across various venues of the city for the month of November. A host of special guests will be announced over the coming weeks, and the Manchester Podcast Festival promises even more laughs, confessions and ideas.

Manchester Podcast Festival Listings 

01/11/19         Help! I Sexted My Boss            Dancehouse Theatre               8pm

02/11/19         Dan Snow’s History Hit            Exchange Auditorium             5pm

02/11/19         Richard Herring: RHLSTP          Exchange Auditorium             7.30pm                           

05/11/19         The Guilty Feminist                  Exchange Auditorium             7.30pm

12/11/19         Science-(ish)                              Goriilla                                 8pm

12/11/19         Top Flight Time Machine        The Dancehouse                       8pm

13/11/19         Set Piece Menu                         Anthony Burgess                     8pm

14/11/19         Phil Taggart’s Slacker               Union Theatre                         8pm                         

16/11/19         A Gay and A NonGay              Anthony Burgess                       8pm

16/11/19         Nobody Panic                          Anthony Burgess                     5pm

23/11/19         Do The Right Thing                 The Dancehouse                     7.30pm

27/11/19         Mandatory Redistribution Party  Peer Hat                               8.30pm

PODCAST SHOW INFORMATION:

Help I Sexted My Boss

Life is full of personal calamities. Thankfully, William Hanson and Jordan North (BBC Radio 1) are here to help you navigate the daily struggles of modern life. Well, most of the time... William and Jordan’s lives couldn’t be more different. One's more Buckingham Palace, the other’s more Crystal Palace. But that doesn't stop them sharing very different advice on today’s everyday problems. Whatever the conundrum, they're here to help!

Dan Snow’s History Hit

Dan Snow’s History Hit is the UK’s most successful history podcast, with almost a million listens every month. Dan travels the length and breadth of the country to keep up with the cutting edge of history, talking to experts, historians, and the people who were actually there. It’s both Dan’s mission and passion to give you the history behind the news, and the context you need to understand the modern world.

RHLSTP with Richard Herring

Richard Herring’s interview podcast, known to the cool kids as RHLSTP (as any regular listener will know), is usually recorded in London’s glittering West End at the Leicester Square Theatre, Previous guests include Stephen Fry, Dawn French, Sarah Millican, Steve Coogan and Bob Mortimer.

You can listen to all the 200+ previous episodes on Acast and iTunes. But it’s much more fun to see it live and hear all the bits that are too libellous and controversial to podcast. Winner of Bronze Sony Award for Best Comedy at Sony Radio Academy Awards and four-time winner of the Chortle Internet Award.

The Guilty Feminist

Join award-winning comedian Deborah Frances-White and her special guests as they discuss topics ‘all 21st century feminists agree on’ while confessing their insecurities, hypocrisies and fears that underlie their lofty principles.

Science-(ish)

Flâneur and irrepressible commentator, Rick Edwards, and Editor-at-Large of the New Scientist, Dr. Michael Brooks, delve into the science behind popular culture. Join the Silver Winners (British Podcast Awards) at the Manchester Podcast Festival for a live deep dive into the spurious science behind film and TV.

Top Flight Time Machine

Andy Dawson and Sam Delaney’s highly-acclaimed podcast is finally reimagined as a theatrical experience. This is no ordinary live recording of a podcast episode – Sam and Andy will be carrying out extreme physical movement, while the audience will experience similar emotional movement.

Set Piece Menu

Set Piece Menu is the podcast where four friends - a broadcaster, a commentator, a writer and an injury-prone former full-back - talk football over food. The football can be anything: the reality of injury, the nature of joy, the problem with post-truth. The food is generally bought last-minute from the Didsbury Marks and Spencers. Between them, they have amassed seven England caps and, more impressively, almost 15 episodes.

Phil Taggart’s Slacker Podcast with John McClure

Delve deep into the career of a different musical guest each week, including Johnny Marr, Manic Street Preachers, Dizzee Rascal, Hozier, Mura Masa, Christine + The Queens, Wolf Alice, The Specials, Fatboy Slim, Bastille, Novelist & more. Each show kicks-off with the artist playing their first ever demo, laying bare the raw sounds that encouraged them to take up a career in music. From here the conversation freewheels down a spaghetti junction of quirky anecdotes, hot takes and uncovers the journey each artist has taken to where they are today.

A Gay and A NonGay

Born in 2017, A Gay and A NonGay has continued to grow into the UK’s leading LGBTQ+ podcast that it is today. Released weekly, James and Dan dive into conversations around day to day life, differences in perceptions, homophobia, coming out, mental health and lighter topics like dating. Expect audience interaction, a hilarious parody of ‘QueerEye’ as Dan lends his hetero gaze to the Gay community in ‘NonGay-Eye’ and a laugh-out-loud look at issues affecting Gay and NonGay people in an absurdly simple but hilarious premise; what divides us makes us laugh harder.

Nobody Panic

Comedians Stevie Martin and Tessa Coates co-host their smash-hit podcast Nobody Panic.

The 'witty, clever, and oh-so-relatable' (The Evening Standard) podcast asks life's biggest (and smallest) questions to help you become a functioning adult without screaming all the time. Whether it's learning How To Prioritise, How To Be Confident or How To Cope With Whatsapp Groups, no topic is too great or too trivial, because we’re all in this together, guys. So nobody panic.

Do The Right Thing

Award-winning comedy panel show hosted by Danielle Ward, with team captains Margaret Cabourn-Smith and Michael Legge and amazing special guests. In it, two teams work out the right thing to do in strange scenarios and scary situations which range from the everyday to the weird and extreme.

Mandatory Redistribution Party

Join northern comedians Sean Morley and Jack Evans for radical left-wing lore, interviews and repartee as they delve into the calamity of late capitalism, the ideology of our sunken world and the historical precedents that placed our fractured civilisation on a conveyor belt towards the dustbin of shit*. Expect interviews (preview guests include Paul Mason and Josie Long), experimental soundscapes and performance set pieces about peasant revolts from the 18th century.