Holy Smoke – Details, episodes & analysis

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Holy Smoke

The Spectator

Religion & Spirituality

Society & Culture

Frequency: 1 episode/17d. Total Eps: 193

The most important and controversial topics in world religion, thoroughly dissected by a range of high profile guests. Presented by Damian Thompson.

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Spotify

Apple

Recent rankings

Latest chart positions across Apple Podcasts and Spotify rankings.

Apple Podcasts

🇨🇦 Canada - religion
01/08/2025
#35
🇬🇧 Great Britain - religion
01/08/2025
#4
🇬🇧 Great Britain - religionAndSpirituality
01/08/2025
#78
🇩🇪 Germany - religion
01/08/2025
#43
🇺🇸 USA - religion
01/08/2025
#64
🇨🇦 Canada - religion
31/07/2025
#30
🇬🇧 Great Britain - religion
31/07/2025
#3
🇬🇧 Great Britain - religionAndSpirituality
31/07/2025
#64
🇩🇪 Germany - religion
31/07/2025
#51
🇺🇸 USA - religion
31/07/2025
#50

Spotify

🇬🇧 Great Britain - religion & spirituality
10/07/2025
#50
↘
🇬🇧 Great Britain - religion & spirituality
09/07/2025
#47
↘
🇬🇧 Great Britain - religion & spirituality
08/07/2025
#46
↗
🇬🇧 Great Britain - religion & spirituality
07/07/2025
#49
↗
🇬🇧 Great Britain - religion & spirituality
05/06/2025
#49
↘
🇬🇧 Great Britain - religion & spirituality
04/06/2025
#45
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🇬🇧 Great Britain - religion & spirituality
03/06/2025
#43
↘
🇬🇧 Great Britain - religion & spirituality
02/06/2025
#42
↗
🇬🇧 Great Britain - religion & spirituality
01/06/2025
#44
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https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcast-highlights
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https://subscription.spectator.co.uk/?prom=A558G&amp
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https://subscription.spectator.co.uk/?prom=A521B&amp
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https://www.instagram.com/ritchellyoliveira
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https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/17/world/europe/cardinal-giovanni-angelo-becciu-vatican-trial.html
3 shares

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RSS feed quality

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Score global : 43%

Publication history

Monthly episode publishing history over the past years.

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Latest published episodes

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From the archives: An atheist goes on a Christian pilgrimage. Why?

jeudi 29 août 2024 • Duration 22:39

Writer Guy Stagg threw in his job to undertake a pilgrimage to Jerusalem via Rome - choosing a hazardous medieval route across the Alps. It nearly killed him: at one stage, trying to cross a broken bridge in Switzerland, he ended up partially submerged in the water, held up only by his rucksack.

On this episode of Holy Smoke, from the archives, Guy explains why his journey was a pilgrimage, not just travels. And Damian Thompson talks to Harry Mount, editor of The Oldie, about why he’s irresistibly drawn to church buildings while remaining an unbeliever - albeit an agnostic rather than an atheist.

A Habsburg Archduke explains how not to be nasty on Twitter

vendredi 19 juillet 2024 • Duration 24:25

In this week's Holy Smoke episode Damian Thompson welcomes back Eduard Habsburg, Hungary's Ambassador to the Holy See and also, to give him his family title, Archduke Eduard of Austria. Last year he published The Habsburg Way: 7 Rules for Turbulent Times, which offered advice on how to live a good life based on the panoramic history of his dynasty.

One reason it was such a success is that Eduard has a cult following on X, formerly Twitter, made up of people who initially followed him because he's a Habsburg but stayed to absorb his spiritual wisdom and good cheer. In this episode, with Damian speaking as someone who frequently gets drawn into (or starts) catfights on that platform (his words!), he asks if Eduard has any advice for struggling social media sociopaths. And he does.

Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Raymond Arroyo on the joys of a Sinatra-style Christmas

vendredi 22 décembre 2023 • Duration 21:36

In this festive episode of Holy Smoke, we're taken back to the Christmasses of the 1950s and 60s by Raymond Arroyo, Fox News and EWTN presenter, whose enemies in the Vatican have been trying to silence him for years.

They've failed, thankfully – and now silencing him is even harder. Raymond, who trained in musical theatre, has produced an album entitled Christmas Merry and Bright in which he sings well-loved Christmas songs and carols in spectacular big-band arrangements inspired by one of his musical heroes, Frank Sinatra. And in one track, 'Feliz Navidad', he's joined by its composer – his friend the legendary José Feliciano. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. One thing's for sure: you'll never hear 'White Christmas' the same way after you've heard Raymond tell the story of how it came to be written...

Why it's a sin to sneer at 1970s Christmas specials

lundi 23 décembre 2019 • Duration 23:15

With Dr Tim Stanley, journalist and historian.

Presented by Damian Thompson.

Does the Church know how to deal with mental illness?

vendredi 15 novembre 2019 • Duration 37:22

We're all sick of celebrities making a meal of their mental health problems – but that doesn't mean that we aren't facing a potential crisis. The unique strains of living in the technology-driven 21st century are taking their toll on people who, in an earlier era, would have been psychologically robust. Many of us are affected by anxiety, depression, addiction and eating disorders; all sorts of compulsive behaviour are flourishing as never before.

And the mainstream churches have got nothing useful to say about it. Many bishops seem content to blame it on Brexit.

Damian Thompson talks to Professor Stephen Bullivant, Britain's foremost expert on patterns of religious belief. Both talk frankly – 'bravely', as they say of celebrities – about their struggles with mental illness.

Eduardo Hiiboro Kussala: a different sort of bishop

vendredi 1 novembre 2019 • Duration 16:13

On today's Holy Smoke Damian Thompson meets a one-of-a-kind bishop: one whose most important dialogue is with armed warlords and their teenage mercenaries. South Sudan's Bishop Eduardo Hiiboro Kussala runs a hospital that is desperately short of doctors and medicine amid a humanitarian crisis in which over 200,000 people have died. On the podcast, he talks about his work, and the apparent corruption of various NGOs who have set up shop in this terribly troubled part of Africa.

Why the Vatican is more corrupt than ever

vendredi 11 octobre 2019 • Duration 25:05

Last week, Vatican police raided the Church's own money-laundering watchdog. Meanwhile, in a simultaneous raid on the Vatican Secretariat of State, prosecutors seized documents, computers, telephones and passports.

It seems to be a dirty business. According to the Italian press, police want to know more about a multi-million-pound real estate transaction in Mayfair. Significantly, all the seized documents reportedly relate to the years when Cardinal Angelo Becciu, a close papal ally, was running the Secretariat of State’s offices.

In this episode of Holy Smoke, Damian joined by Vatican-watcher Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith. We discuss what he calls Rome's culture of 'obsessive secrecy', the unwillingness of the mainstream media to investigate Vatican scandals, and ask what John Henry Newman, who will be canonised this weekend, would have made of the cringe-making Amazon Synod...

The strange religion of cryptocurrency

jeudi 3 octobre 2019 • Duration 31:05

In this week's episode of Holy Smoke Damian is joined by Jamie Bartlett, one of the world’s leading experts on the dark web, radical politics and technology, whose gripping podcast series The Missing Cryptoqueen is currently being broadcast by the BBC. It tells the story of a shady Bulgarian tech entrepreneur, Dr Ruja Ignatova, who vanished just as her dodgy cryptocurrency OneCoin was raking in billions of euros from investors – or true believers – all over the world.

Despite her disappearance, it still has footholds in African villages, the Chinese business community, Scottish housing estates and Britain’s Muslims – it claims to be Sharia-compliant. Not only does Dr Ruja's operation resemble a religious cult, it also gives us a glimpse of how technology and belief are combining in ever stranger patterns, often inspired by the utopians of Silicon Valley.

Presented by Damian Thompson.

The Kremlin's persecution of Jews

vendredi 20 septembre 2019 • Duration 24:28

Damian talks to Jewish pianist Ariel Lanyi about the cruel cat-and-mouse game that the Soviet Union played with Jewish classical musicians at a time when it was sneakily trying to extinguish both their religion and their ethnic identity.

Presented by Damian Thompson.

Why liberals turn a blind eye to the global persecution of Christians

lundi 2 septembre 2019 • Duration 30:58

The new episode of Holy Smoke is about the persecution of Christians. That's a familiar concept, even if we don't read much about it in the media. Damian is joined on the podcast by a fearless campaigner on behalf of the suffering Church, Fr Benedict Kiely, founder of the charity Nasrean.Org. Tune in to what he has to say about the Vatican's cynical deal with China – and Britain's wretched Department for International Development.

Presented by Damian Thompson.