50 Shades of Planning
Samuel Stafford
Show overview
50 Shades of Planning has been publishing since 2019, and across the 7 years since has built a catalogue of 186 episodes. That works out to roughly 180 hours of audio in total. Releases follow a fortnightly cadence.
Episodes typically run thirty-five to sixty minutes — most land between 52 min and 1h 4m — and the run-time is fairly consistent across the catalogue. None of the episodes are flagged explicit by the publisher. It is catalogued as a EN-language Government show.
The show is actively publishing — the most recent episode landed 1 weeks ago, with 30 episodes already out so far this year. Published by Samuel Stafford.
From the publisher
50 Shades of Planning is Sam Stafford’s attempt to explore the foibles of the English planning system and it's aim is to cover the breadth of the sector both in terms of topics of conversation and in terms of guests with different experiences and perspectives. 50 Shades episodes include 'Hitting The High Notes', which are a series of conversations with leading planning and property figures. The conversations take in the six milestone planning permissions or projects within a contributor’s career and for every project guests are invited to choose a piece of music that they were listening to at that time. Think Desert Island Discs, but for planners. 50 Shades episode also include the 'All Around the World' series, which is being led by friend of the podcast, Paul Smith. Paul put it to Sam that debates about the planning system in England tend, for the most part, to focus solely on the planning system in England. Planners here very seldom look to other countries for inspiration and ideas. Paul wanted to remedy that and so in this series he chats with planning professionals and academics from a number of countries to find out what works well there, what works less well, and what can be learnt. Sam is on Bluesky and Instagram, and his blogs can be found here (from where you can also sign up for his newsletter). The 50 Shades platforms are expressions of Sam's personal opinions, which may or may not represent the opinions of his past, present or future employers. 50 Shades of Planning is by planners and for planners and so if you would like to use the podcast or the YouTube channel for sharing anything you think that the sector needs to be talking about then do please feel free to get in touch with Sam via [email protected]. Why Fifty Shades? Well, town and country planning is very much not a black and white endeavour. There are at least fifty shades in between....