Be more bohemian

The Last Bohemians, the podcast that meets maverick and radical women in arts and culture, is now on Substack...

Hello and welcome to the all-new Last Bohemians podcast and newsletter, a place to celebrate subversive and radical women in arts and culture who live life on the edge and refuse to play by the rules.

I’m Kate Hutchinson, I’m a journalist and broadcaster based in London. I started The Last Bohemians in 2019, inspired by octogenarian mega-babe Molly Parkin (pictured, top left). Since then I’ve published 28 episodes meeting the likes of Marina Abramović, Julia Cameron, Zandra Rhodes and Pauline Black. I’ve found forgotten musicians and tracked down legendary witches. After the pandemic, I said f*** it and went to LA to make a series there as well.

It’s been an amazing ride so far, along with the amazing women and non-binary producers who record, edit and add beautiful sound design to the podcast. I pay everyone who works on it and have released the podcast for free, with some help here and there from sponsors and kind donors.

I get a lot of lovely messages from listeners about the podcast – how they play it to the students they teach or, my favourite story, how they’ve listened to it on Hampstead Heath at sunrise. The feedback I get most often, though, is: please do more. And so I’m aiming to do just that with this new home on Substack.

Still with me? I want to create a space for people to find more wild, inspiring stories about bohemians, past and present. But I also want to gain enough subscribers so that I can make a new series. The main podcast will continue to be free to all but I’ve introduced a tier system in the hope that keen listeners will subscribe so that The Last Bohemians can remain accessible to others.

Paid subscribers will get regular exclusive interviews, episodes and behind-the-scenes reflections. But if you’re a big fan of what I do – and thank you, you rock! – you can become a founding member for £150 a year. Each episode costs a minimum of £450 to make (and that’s just the editing cost), so your contribution will go a long way to pay for a new series.

It’s all very exciting and we’re starting 2025 with a very special episode that we made last year with the late Nikki Giovanni, who passed away in December 2024, just as we were editing the episode together. It was an honour to spend time with her and we’ll be dropping that before the end of the month.

Selected press

“This series is a delight… Run to this podcast right now” The Observer

"Unusually intimate portraits of spectacular lives… Buoyed by exquisite production, these conversations are atmospheric, contemplative and fabulously candid" Financial Times

"A beautifully intimate set of portraits made by an all-female audio team – what more could you ask for to celebrate International Women’s Day?" The Guardian

Feisty, heartfelt and bursting with wisdom" NME

"A rhapsodic, necessary retelling of trailblazer stories" Dazed