Ben Smith has been watching the Eurovision Song Contest since 2008, blogging/podcasting about it since 2011, and a part of its digital press center since 2021. He has deep thoughts about the ways improvements in streaming media in the last decade have made the contest more of a truly global event, and can also do a tight five on Norway’s selection process. He lives in Somerville, MA and can be found more generally at goodatinter.net.
Ben Smith has hosted 263 Episodes.
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Episode 141: Sound of Beauty
January 25th, 2022 | Season 5 | 22 mins 33 secs
italy, lithuania, norway, slovenia, spain
Ben returns with his thoughts about Lithuania's Pabandom is Naujo, Norway's 2022 process, Maneskin's appearance on Saturday Night Live, and a look ahead to EMA and Benidorm.
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Episode 139: Hunker Down
January 11th, 2022 | Season 5 | 17 mins 32 secs
finland, italy, latvia, lithuania, montenegro, norway, poland, romania
This week we meet Montenegro's entrant, travel to Lithuania for Pabandom is Naujo, check out the Eurovision menus in Romania and Latvia (ooo, salad), and see how famous Maneskin's birthdays are.
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Episode 138: Unprecedented
January 4th, 2022 | Season 5 | 25 mins 3 secs
albania, italy, lithuania, montenegro, norway, spain, sweden
It's full steam ahead to Eurovision 2022, with Albania making its (correct?) choice, a wild ESC 250 countdown, and looking forward to selection season series starting Saturday.
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Episode 137: Class of 2021
December 21st, 2021 | Season 5 | 33 mins 5 secs
albania, australia, czech republic, greece, italy, lithuania, netherlands, spain
The Czech Republic has made their selection, a number of processes have released more details, and we check in with the Eurovision Class of 2021.
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Episode 136: Eurovision 101
December 7th, 2021 | Season 5 | 36 mins 40 secs
albania, bulgaria, czech republic, estonia, italy, norway, san marino, slovenia, sweden
With a lot of new folks discovering Eurovision over the past year and selection season 2022 underway, we put together a tutorial to answer the question: How does Eurovision work?
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Episode 135: Nul Points
November 23rd, 2021 | Season 5 | 44 mins 50 secs
albania, austria, czech republic, estonia, georgia, iceland, norway, spain, turkey, united kingdom
The dreaded Nul Points visited Rotterdam at Eurovision this year. We take a look at the sordid history of the dubious distinction.
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Episode 134: Belarus
November 9th, 2021 | Season 5 | 32 mins 15 secs
australia, belarus, germany, latvia, lithuania, poland, russia, ukraine
Belarus won't be competing at Eurovision in the foreseeable future, so this seems like a good time to take an historical view of the country and its identity.
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Episode 133: Metaverse
October 26th, 2021 | Season 5 | 32 mins 4 secs
armenia, azerbaijan, czech republic, iceland, ireland, italy, lithuania, malta, montenegro, netherlands, serbia, sweden, united kingdom
Does breaking the fourth wall work at Eurovision? Ben takes us through a collection of songs that try to go meta.
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Episode 132: Hot 100
October 12th, 2021 | Season 5 | 38 mins 26 secs
estonia, italy, netherlands, spain, sweden, united kingdom
Maura Johnston guides us through how the Billboard Charts work and why Måneskin and Duncan Laurence cracked the American Top 40.
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Episode 131: Viña del Mar
September 28th, 2021 | Season 5 | 38 mins 29 secs
belgium, denmark, greece, iceland, ireland, italy, luxembourg, monaco, san marino, spain, switzerland
We continue our series of music competitions with Eurovision connections by visiting Chile's Viña del Mar International Song Festival.
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Episode 130: Quale Città?
September 14th, 2021 | Season 5 | 22 mins 42 secs
belgium, estonia, italy, netherlands, sweden
As we wait for the Eurovision 2022 host city announce, we take a look at the five cities hoping to stage the event for Italy.
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Episode 129: Sanremo
August 30th, 2021 | Season 5 | 34 mins 44 secs
italy
Italian music aficionado Bradley Dalton-Oates takes us on an historical tour of the Sanremo Music Festival and its relationship with Eurovision.