Alongside the headline shows, BBC Sounds return to Crossed Wires this year to present the Free Fringe, a series of live podcast recordings highlighting some of their varied selection of podcasts. This year, BBC Radio 4 have also joined the fun to further extend the variety of free shows on offer as part of the festival.
One of the shows presented by BBC Sounds this year was Top Comment. Top Comment investigates some of the biggest stories taking over social media and the internet more broadly. For this live recording regular host and BBC correspondent Marianna Spring was joined by author and journalist Rachel Connolly to discuss a range of topics including ‘maxxing’, the femosphere (and in turn the manosphere) and more.
Marianna Spring is a great host for the podcast. She is clearly incredibly knowledgeable, as well as curious, about the topics being discussed. She walks the perfect balance between sharing her insights whilst ensuring the spotlight remains firmly on her special guest.
Rachel Connolly took some time to settle in (most people would be nervous speaking in front of a large audience like this!) but once she had done, her passion for the topic came through strongly. She has clearly done a huge amount of research into social media and internet culture and your reviewer could have listened to her reflections for much longer.
In this live podcast recording, Spring and Connolly remain firmly the area of observation and don’t really stray into being critical of the perpetrators making social media a challenging environment to navigate, not least young people. Whilst this isn’t necessarily an issue, it does mean they don’t get quite as far as discussing practically what we might do about some of these issues which is a shame.
Once again, the Crossed Wires team have done a remarkable job at transforming the slightly derelict former John Lewis into an intimate performance space perfect for live podcast recordings. It was fascinating to spend an hour listening to Marianna Spring and Rachel Connolly ponder the online world in which we live. This was certainly one of the more academic and challenging to engage with events at Crossed Wires this year, but your reviewer is sure there is even more rich content to chew on where this came from!
Reviewed on 3rd July 2026
Crossed Wires is the world’s biggest podcast festival, returning to Sheffield for its third year. The
festival brings the biggest names in podcasting together for a weekend of live shows, never-
seen-before performances, special guests, DJ sets, Q&As and fan events.
The Reviews Hub Star Rating
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8
