Strangers on a Bench
4.8/5
Critic Rating
Have you ever walked past a mysterious stranger on a park bench and wondered about their lives? Tom Rosenthal (singer-songwriter by trade) has spent the last 6 months walking the many parks of London, approaching random bench-dwellers and asking if he can sit next to them and record their conversation. Every stranger remains anonymous, neither name or place of work is ever revealed (even to Tom himself), leading to greater openness, intimacy, and surprising revelations from the participants. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Critic Reviews
Score: 5
Lauren Passell • Podcast The Newsletter • Dec 2, 2024
"Tom is able to ask unexpected questions meet these bench dwellers where they are, and in this delightful way allow us to really understand them. Queue the cheesy music: in the end, there are no strangers on this bench. In the first 20 seconds of talking to one woman he discovered she has an emotional relationship with keeping things clean. I’m obsessed with this shit because I’m nosy. I’m particularly interested in, and maybe jealous of, people alone in parks. Strangers On a Bench is a box of chocolates, you never know which stranger you are going to meet. So maybe you should be warned if inside one of the chocolates is a dead person."
Score: 4
James Marriot • The Times UK • Nov 16, 2024
"I have listened to a number of dreadful and gushy celebrity interview shows lately and Rosenthal’s podcast is a good reminder that the public are often much better to listen to than famous people: less guarded, less self-involved, more intimate, more honest. It’s nice when Rosenthal happens to catch people on significant days. Rosenthal was right not to edit out the slightly seedy details. It would have been easy to cut this interview to make its subject a more uncomplicatedly likeable character. But that’s the joy of the general public. They are so unexpectedly forthcoming."
Score: 5
Edward Wickham • Church Times • Nov 8, 2024
"...benefits from the charmed presence of the musician Tom Rosenthal, whose voice — carrying with it the faintest whisper of a childhood lisp — is gentle and yet engaging, naïve and yet knowing. Punctuated by snippets of music and lightly adorned by the ambient sounds of summer..."
Score: 5
Alexi Duggins • The Guardian • Nov 7, 2024
"This charming series of rambling chats aims to find out, with singer-songwriter Tom Rosenthal..."
