*Bureau of Lost Culture collect curious, rare, and half forgotten countercultural stories and oral testimonies.. *Join host Stephen Coates and guests for tales from The Underground + beyond. *Contribute to the Bureau at www.bureauofostculture.com
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Nov 13, 2026 · 1:08:10
He introduced William Burroughs to heroin, took Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac into the demi-world of post-war New York, and gave Kerouac the idea for the word ‘beat’. He…
Oct 26, 2026 · 55:14
As the pace of change accelerates, it seems that yesterday’s fantasies about the future may become today's reality. Ideas about whether technology might remove, replace or rewire…
Oct 8, 2026 · 55:44
Britain has always been home to people who live differently. Romani Gypsies, Irish Travellers, Showmen/women who carry the fairgrounds from town to town, families who made their…
Sep 22, 2026 · 52:18
If you're going to watch your local football team this weekend, or perhaps catch a big match on a TV screen in the pub, do you know that you may be unconsciously participating in…
Sep 10, 2026 · 57:01
For centuries, it seems Britain’s magic mushrooms remained hidden in plain sight—growing in fields, parks, and hillsides. When knowledge of them did emerge, it passed between…
Aug 21, 2026 · 51:53
Has 20th-and 21st-century physics moved away from the brute materialism of the nineteenth century toward ideas that resemble the world’s ancient mystical traditions? Might many…
Aug 2, 2026 · 1:00:47
She's 82 but is firing on all cylinders, still crazy after all these years, as Paul Simon sang, well, still crazy enough to believe the world can be changed for the better, that…
Jul 19, 2026 · 59:24
There are some images that don’t simply record history—they change it. On the morning of 11 June 1963, at a busy crossroads in Saigon, Thích Quảng Đức, a Buddhist monk, calmly…
Jul 3, 2026 · 50:50
Roc Sanford is a British writer, artist and climate activist whose life has been a countercultural journey from an alternative childhood through academia to a remarkable…
Jun 10, 2026 · 55:42
In the company of historian of drugs, MIKE JAY, we journey back to the first psychedelic age - not the 1960s, but the 1790s, when Britain was at the forefront, at the frontier,…
May 24, 2026 · 1:00:23
Ever thought the so-called ‘golden decade’ of the 1960s was only about peace and love? Think again. Beneath the surface, it was riddled with violence, paranoia, and chaos, even…
May 19, 2026 · 1:02:55
This is the second part of our conversation with Joe Rush , the initiator, mentor, and driving force behind The Mutoid Waste Company , that extraordinary countercultural…
May 6, 2026 · 53:28
The Weather Underground, The Baader-Meinhof Group, The Red Brigade, Carlos the Jackal, The Japanese Red Army. The counterculture has always had a shadow side. There have been bad…
Apr 2, 2026 · 56:22
Beyond the official story, the myth, of the Second World War — its maps and medals, courage and sacrifice — there is another hidden narrative. Written in rare memoirs, or in…
Mar 17, 2026 · 1:02:14
If you had been at the Glastonbury Festival in 1987, you may have seen a familiar silhouette emerging in the dawn light - upright monoliths arranged in a circle. Was it…
Mar 3, 2026 · 59:06
In the heart of London’s Bloomsbury, behind a scruffy turquoise door, the world lies folded into drawers. Here are maps that survived wars, regimes, and revolutions — not because…
Feb 17, 2026 · 56:36
This is the second part of a conversation with Alaura O’Dell / Mistress Mix, formerly known as Paula P-Orridge. In the first part, we traced Alaura’s journey from meeting the…
Feb 3, 2026 · 57:23
Over the last century, the word Shaman has been embraced by artists, hippies, psychonauts and spiritual rebels. In the 1960s and 70s, shamanism had become a kind of…
Jan 19, 2026 · 1:02:24
This is the second part of a conversation with the poet, musician and thinker Penny Rimbaud, co-founder, with Steve Ignorant, of the anarcho-punk band and activist art collective…
Jan 6, 2026 · 59:58
The sea, its myths, and the supernatural is the theme of this special New Year edition of the Bureau when we leave behind our usual waters to set sail into the past of a very…
Dec 21, 2025 · 57:19
In early 1990s South London — a time when rave culture was mutating and London’s squats were pulsing with creativity, Aphex Twin, Global Communication, Nightmares on Wax,…
Dec 10, 2025 · 1:00:23
There are figures in counterculture whose names appear only in the margins of the story — whose influence is eclipsed, overshadowed, even dismissed, by more mythologised…
Nov 25, 2025 · 1:03:26
We are on the brink of a new nuclear age - the energy crisis, the push towards net zero and the gargantuan power requirements of AI demand it - or so we are told. But here in…
Nov 12, 2025 · 1:00:33
When the filmmaker David Lynch died earlier this year, fans created shrines filled with coffee, doughnuts, cigarettes and blue roses; a level of spontaneous mourning more common…
Oct 29, 2025 · 1:00:00
Penny Rimbaud , who has spent more than half a century living the ideals that most of us only talk about, has been described as an activist philosopher, an anarchist, a Zen…
Oct 14, 2025 · 59:05
We walk the streets every day — and through parks, across squares and pavements and along beaches, and mountains, over 'The Commons' — without much thought for who really owns…
Oct 3, 2025 · 59:59
As musician and activist BILLY BRAGG makes a welcome return as a voice of countercultural sanity, we revisit the Lost History of Skiffle as he takes us on an extraordinary…
Sep 16, 2025 · 57:29
In the old towns and villages of Britain, before the police, before the tabloids, before social media shame-storms, there were other ways to deal with those who stepped outside…
Sep 1, 2025 · 1:00:15
Iceland is one of the last remaining Western countries where a substantial proportion of the population believes in the presence of other beings - The Hidden Folk. For centuries,…
Aug 18, 2025 · 1:00:00
They called them the voices of the dead. Whispers in the static. Words in the hiss. Messages that—so believers said—slipped through the veil between worlds and onto magnetic tape…
Aug 5, 2025 · 1:01:51
Amongst its pages, there are many familiar names—Oscar Wilde, Quentisn Crisp, Sappho, James Baldwin, Freddie Mercury — but also many we might not expect: Florence Nightingale,…
Jul 22, 2025 · 1:03:31
What does it mean to be naked, in body or in spirit? Why has human nudity so often been revered, feared, sexualized, or weaponised? This episode was recorded on July 17 -…
Jul 6, 2025 · 1:01:30
This is a special edition when The Bureau meets Jason Woodbury of Aquarium Drunkard for a joint transmission. Los Angeles-based online music magazine Aquarium Drunkard is a…
Jun 23, 2025 · 1:08:14
Elmyr De Hory was the greatest art forger of all time. By the time he was exposed in 1967, it's estimated he had created over 1000 works that had been sold as by Picasso,…
Jun 9, 2025 · 1:15:04
The ancient temple of Stonehenge is one of the most famous archaeological sites in the world and one of the most visited sites in the UK. Yet, despite hundreds of years of…
May 25, 2025 · 1:00:00
Doug McKechnie is an unsung pioneer of electronic music, a visionary who traversed the fringes of sound and consciousness at a time when technology, art, and radical thought were…
May 11, 2025 · 59:59
Sunshine + Love, Beats + Drugs How did a sleepy island off the coast of Spain, metamorphose from an artistic, countercultural haven into the global epicentre of electronic dance…
Apr 27, 2025 · 1:00:07
The Bearded Lady, Zip the Pinhead, Major Tom Thumb, The Elephant Man, The Hottentot Venus - we delve into one of the more controversial corners of popular entertainment: the…
Apr 16, 2025 · 1:00:35
"I was never going to be a nice little white girl" she says. Instead, she became an underground star, had hit records with the 2-Tone band The Selector, became a style-icon, an…
Apr 1, 2025 · 49:26
Alan Moore first gained recognition in the 1980s with his work for the comic 2000 AD, and DC Comic's Swamp Thing. He went on to create Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Batman: The…
Mar 17, 2025 · 59:15
The evolutionary leap from ape to human was precipitated by primates eating psychoactive fungi, there is an ancient shamanic lineage of psychedelic plant use in the West,…
Mar 3, 2025 · 1:05:32
The giant stone heads of the fantastically remote Easter Island have gazed out mysteriously for over a 1000 years, fascinating the world since Dutch sailors came across them in…
Feb 20, 2025 · 42:18
Tangier was a magnet for artists, writers, musicians, and political exiles throughout the mid-20th century, amongst them the writers Paul Bowles and William Burroughs From 1924…
Feb 1, 2025 · 58:25
Teddy Boys (and Teddy Girls)emerged in Britain in the early 1950s, becoming the UK's first distinct youth subculture. Born in the aftermath of World War II, these working-class…
Jan 21, 2025 · 57:06
Scar-faced, ex-jailbird Frank Norman was part of the '50s and '60s Soho bohemian set and friends with Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud, Dylan Thomas and other habitues of the infamous…
Jan 7, 2025 · 1:02:18
The Waterboys' MIKE SCOTT grew up in the '60s in Edinburgh and said: “I accepted the incredible happenings of that decade — with all its rapid evolution, colour, revelations and…
Dec 24, 2024 · 54:44
She says: ‘I was reared Catholic but got over it, was born male but got over it, stopped sleeping with boys about the time I stopped being one and am much happier than I was when…
Dec 8, 2024 · 56:35
This morning I sat in my house, took a twenty pound note from my wallet, lit a match and set the note on fire. Why? How did I feel as I watched it burn? Was it a waste, an…
Dec 1, 2024 · 53:41
We are joined by oral historian and broadcaster Alan Dein. We discuss the history, culture and technology of the coin-operated machines that allowed ordinary people to make a…
Nov 27, 2024 · 54:07
What is a mystic, what is mysticism, what is the mystical? Many of us have sense that there is something mystical, or at least mysterious, underpinning things, some…
Nov 12, 2024 · 1:00:34
Genesis P-Orridge was a performance artist, neo Pagan, Industrial music innovator, the co-founder of COUM, Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV and an arch provocateur. He was…
Oct 28, 2024 · 1:03:45
In the turbulent late 1970s, six-year-old Susanna Crossman moved with her mother and siblings from a suburban terrace to a crumbling mansion deep in the English countryside. They…
Oct 15, 2024 · 1:07:19
The Joy of Sex was published in 1972 and for years, was rarely out of the bestseller lists, generating sequels, revised editions and a lot of imitators - so how could it be…
Sep 29, 2024 · 1:04:00
*Every society is a high society. Getting high has been a pursuit of civilisations throughout time. *Every day, people drink coffee in European cafes, chew betel nut in…
Sep 16, 2024 · 52:54
“Imagination thrives in darkness” We talk about The Undergound often at the Bureau - not London’s subterranean rail sytem, but the countercultural alternative society of the…
Sep 1, 2024 · 58:26
*In 1918, Billie Carleton, a West End actress, came off stage, went partying with friends, returned to her flat and was found dead the next morning - apparently of a cocaine…
Aug 17, 2024 · 1:05:22
In 1964 he was a working class hippie student crossing Haight Street, a road in San Francscso, when hit by a vision - and life as he knew it was over In 1994, he was a…
Aug 7, 2024 · 57:53
When musician ARTHUR RUSSELL died in 1992, at age 40, of complications related to HIV-AIDS, he was an obscure figure — though a legend in the 70s and 80s underground music scenes…
Jul 28, 2024 · 1:04:53
They helped inspire a whole generation of young ravers and lit the fuse for what was to blow up with Technival and Burning Man - as well as more mainstream festivals across…
Jul 10, 2024 · 59:28
*Whatever happened to the Greek Gods? if you are a teenager living half way up a 1970s tower block listening to Drill, should you even care? *On this epside we travel in time and…
Jun 26, 2024 · 1:08:14
How Queer Culture Shaped Pop Culture "The 1972 version of David Bowie didn’t spring from nowhere. Although he refused to affiliate himself explicitly with gay liberation, he had…
Jun 9, 2024 · 59:27
'Health care is a right, not a privilege' *Whilst many of his fellow physicians became business entrepeneurs rather than healers, Dr. Dave opened the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic…
May 28, 2024 · 1:04:53
*"Punk taught us the future had only just begun” he says *For him that future was to include the bands Killing Joke, The Orb, Brilliant and The KLF; starting various record…
May 14, 2024 · 59:48
*Julie Taylor was a police officer who gave her name to 'OPERATION JULIE', the biggest drug bust in UK history and one which resulted in the conviction of over a hundred…
Apr 28, 2024 · 1:03:24
*A time when musicians were viewed as revolutionaries and revolutionaries might be considered pop culture icons *Crate digger / rock critc / reissue producer and archivist…
Apr 16, 2024 · 1:07:18
*Who do the green roads and wide open spaces of Albion belong to? *This episode is a story is about a collision of two cultures - the counterculture of the twin tribes of urban…
Mar 31, 2024 · 57:29
What was it like to live in a commune? What was it like to grow up in a commune? NANCY THOMPSON came to the Bureau to tell us. She was born in The Shrubb Family Commune - one…
Mar 17, 2024 · 58:20
Being the further adventures of English musician broadcaster and LGTBQ activist TOM ROBINSON, as he gets deeply involved in the gay counterculture of London in the '70s whilst on…
Mar 5, 2024 · 1:00:13
TOM ROBINSON is an English songwriter who rose to fame in the 70s as an LGBT and anti-racist campaigner. He has released over 20 albums and is an award-winning much-loved…
Feb 17, 2024 · 1:00:00
YOUTH, producer of a huge range of artists (including Kate Bush, Crowded House, The Orb, KLF, The Verve, Guns ’n’ Roses and Primal Scream) and Jesse Goodman of the Allen Ginsberg…
Feb 5, 2024 · 59:01
Britain’s own Tin Pan Alley, Denmark Street was once alive with the sound of hammered pianos, and sung melodies and choruses. Its songwriters knocked out tunes on the fly and…
Jan 20, 2024 · 1:06:03
Warning: this episode contains discussions of sexual and other adult themes. Julie Peakman is a historian of eighteenth-century culture who specialises in the study sexuality and…
Jan 8, 2024 · 1:08:27
*In this, the second of a two parter, we hear more of the crazy countercultural life and times of The Incredible String Band - from the inside looking out - with Rose Simpson…
Dec 25, 2023 · 52:28
They were artists, myth makers, story tellers, tribe leaders, psychedelic troubadours; they pioneered "world music” with albums like The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter; they…
Dec 11, 2023 · 1:06:28
He was friends with Burroughs and Ginsberg, wrote their biographies along with those of The Beatles, Paul McCartney, Frank Zappa, Charles Bukowski, Jack Kereouc and penned books…
Nov 27, 2023 · 55:57
*Niels Bohr discovered the structure of the atom in a dream, Coleridge wrote Kubla Khan after a dream, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was inspired by a dream, Hergé ’s 'Tintin in…
Nov 11, 2023 · 1:00:00
•Cult icon, enigma, recluse, crazy diamond, he was the founding member of one of the world’s most famous and succesful rock groups, but the life of Syd Barrett is full of…
Oct 31, 2023 · 59:59
*Psychedelics have made a comeback but they remain deeply mysterious. *They may be now seen as potential 'breakthrough therapy' for mental illness but we still have only a vague…
Oct 16, 2023 · 59:58
*He is perhaps the biggest name in Russian rock music, famous as the leader of the band Aquarium throughout his homeland and 'Outer Russia’ (as the huge and growing number of…
Oct 2, 2023 · 58:16
•He’s played with Jimi Hendrix, Sonny Boy Williamson, Paul McCartney, Rod Stewart, Jimmy Page, Billy Cobham, Spencer Davies, Long John Baldry, Rod Stewart, John McLaughlin, Tom…
Sep 18, 2023 · 59:00
*Under the counter-culture.. *They were handmade illegal obscene books, a little like early punk zines, typewritten mimeographed manuscripts with two or three pornographic…
Sep 3, 2023 · 52:39
Philosophy as Counterculture? *For thousands of years, humans have been trying to expand this mysterious thing called consciousness, not only by drugs, dancing, art and spiritual…
Aug 20, 2023 · 1:00:09
*Their number encompasses the darkest bogeymen of countercultural nightmares- including Charles Manson, Jim Jones, David Koresh and the Reverend Moon -as well as saintly figures…
Aug 6, 2023 · 59:59
*Roger Huddle is a born and bred Londoner, a working class music-mad mod who grew up in the 50s, got radicalised in the 60s and became a co-founder of one the most successful…
Jul 23, 2023 · 57:46
The pill, Profumo, pornography. Love, liberation and libido. Larkin, Lady Chatterley, Lolita, *No era in recent history has been both more celebrated and more vilified than the…
Jul 9, 2023 · 57:54
*As the 60s turned into the 70s, and as some of the technicolour idealistic visions of the first summer of love started to fade, many of the denizens of those decades began to…
Jun 25, 2023 · 1:00:00
*'This is the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius' claimed the first song in the hippie musical Hair in 1967. And perhaps it was. *As thousands gathered at Stonehenge to welcome the…
Jun 11, 2023 · 50:24
*In a remote village in the Ahl Srif tribal area of Northern Morocco, dwell a collective of Sufi musicians. They play a form of trance music which is used for healing. Timothy…
May 27, 2023 · 59:37
*They were psychedelic outlaws holing up in hill country hideouts to escape police harassment, dealing drugs to survive and blasting out a mix of LSD evangelism, mystical…
May 14, 2023 · 1:02:10
*If they were a cult, they were a very British cult. *In the 1920s if you had seen strangely attired groups of people walking in formation along southern England's pagan pathways…
Apr 30, 2023 · 1:00:25
"You do it to yourself" sang Radiohead Well that was certainly true of some of the subjects of this episode. Historian of the mind MIKE JAY returns to the Bureau to tell of the…
Apr 16, 2023 · 57:35
*Do you believe it's possible to know the future? *Deep in the heart of the countercultural 60s, when the boundaries of consciousness were being explored and pushed forward, when…
Apr 1, 2023 · 1:01:31
He was a member of some of the most influential post punk bands: Magazine, The Birthday Party and The Bad Seeds. He's collaborated with a whole range of artists including Nick…
Mar 19, 2023 · 59:27
*From heroin to Hollywood, Here is the second part of our conversation with the writer, countercultural activist, Zen priest and erstwhile movie star PETER COYOTE at his farm in…
Mar 6, 2023 · 59:27
*Angels in London *You've probably seen him in a film - he’s performed in more than 130 as an actor for some of the world’s greatest directors including Roman Polanski, Pedro…
Feb 18, 2023 · 1:03:30
*In 1965 the psychiatrist R.D.LAING formed a commune in an East London community centre called Kingsley Hall where the psychotic and the schizophrenic could live on equal terms…
Feb 7, 2023 · 1:00:15
*In the swinging 1960s, after nearly a century of colonisation, Cambodia was ready to rock. Young musicians from the countryside flocked to the vibrant cosmopolitan capital city…
Jan 22, 2023 · 1:05:00
Feeding the Woodstock thousands, acid, the Summer of Love, the Haight Ashbury, Timothy Leary, anti-Vietnam war protests, the problems of free love and living in communes, the…
Jan 8, 2023 · 52:14
*Dylan, The Velvet Underground, Janis Joplin, The Beatles, Otis Redding, Nico, Peter Fonda, Denis Hopper, Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Allen Ginsberg and many, many more - Lisa Law's…
Dec 18, 2022 · 1:05:00
*Starting in 1966, LLOYD JOHNSON not only sold clothes to a multitude of street smart, cool kids, but contributed to the very look of rock ’n' roll fashion. In the decades since,…
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