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 221 Episodes.
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Episode 87: AfriMusic, AI, and the Free European Song Contests
June 3rd, 2020 | Season 3 | 47 mins 32 secs
australia, cyprus, germany, italy, latvia, netherlands, sweden, turkey
The 2020 Eurovision Song Contest did not happen. We discuss three Eurovision-adjacent song contests that did happen in the first half of 2020.
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Episode 86: Shine a Light
May 19th, 2020 | Season 3 | 1 hr 1 min
belarus, belgium, france, georgia, ireland, latvia, sweden, ukraine
The 2020 Eurovision Season comes to an end with Europe: Shine a Light. @dudepoints joins us to reminisce and set the record straight on the Riga Beaver.
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Episode 85: Eurovision Again
May 5th, 2020 | Season 3 | 52 mins 58 secs
australia, bulgaria, finland, germany, iceland, malta, russia, sweden, united kingdom
Eurovision Again impresario Rob Holley speaks with us about the Eurovision Twitter time machine extravaganza.
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Episode 84: What is Poptimism?
April 21st, 2020 | Season 3 | 58 mins 58 secs
finland, ireland, netherlands, norway, spain, sweden, united kingdom
Music critic Ned Raggett joins us to discuss rockism, poptimism, and why Eurovision songs are worthy of critique.
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Episode 83: Fanopticon
April 7th, 2020 | Season 3 | 45 mins 35 secs
australia, bulgaria, france, iceland, lithuania, norway, san marino, spain, united kingdom
Despite Eurovision's cancellation this year, the fandom is still fully engaged in the Contest. Eurovision Obsession's André Durham joins us to chat about how we're coping.
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Episode 82: The (Other) Ones That Got Away 2020 Edition
March 24th, 2020 | Season 3 | 38 mins 24 secs
albania, finland, latvia, lithuania, sweden, ukraine
We look back at the songs that missed out on being in the weird limbo space created after the cancellation of the 2020 Eurovision Song Contest.
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Special Edition: Well…
March 18th, 2020 | Season 3 | 10 mins 19 secs
netherlands
No news is good news. This news is bad news. Eurovision 2020 has been canceled. Now what?
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Episode 81: WHY ARE WE YELLING?
March 17th, 2020 | Season 3 | 50 mins 33 secs
austria, azerbaijan, bulgaria, cyprus, ireland, malta, north macedonia, russia, san marino
We finish up our initial evaluations of the 2020 Eurovision Song Contest entries with the last nine songs to drop in March.
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Episode 80: This is Fine
March 10th, 2020 | Season 3 | 40 mins 12 secs
denmark, finland, georgia, israel, netherlands, portugal, sweden, switzerland
We made it through the end of Eurovision Selection Season! Well, the competitions in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Portugal, at least.
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Episode 79: Songageddon 2020
March 3rd, 2020 | Season 3 | 1 hr 1 min
azerbaijan, belarus, croatia, estonia, germany, greece, iceland, moldova, romania, russia, serbia, united kingdom
Somehow we managed to be verbal after mainlining hours upon hours of Eurovision content this past weekend. It's Songageddon 2020!
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Episode 78: Remedial Dance Party
February 25th, 2020 | Season 3 | 38 mins 18 secs
belarus, croatia, estonia, germany, iceland, moldova, poland, portugal, romania, serbia, slovenia, sweden, ukraine, united kingdom
We're in the eye of the Eurovision Selection Season storm thanks to a light TV schedule this weekend. Time to practice the "I'm a Little Tempest in a Teapot" dance!
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Episode 77: Anarchy in the NRK
February 18th, 2020 | Season 3 | 53 mins 16 secs
armenia, belgium, france, iceland, lithuania, norway, poland, portugal, romania, slovenia, sweden, ukraine
The Eurovision 2020 songlist has hit double digits after this past weekend as we encounter internal selections and national final results.