40 Years of Schoolin' Podcast By Ben Cornish cover art

40 Years of Schoolin'

40 Years of Schoolin'

By: Ben Cornish
Listen for free

40 Years of Schoolin’ is a journey through forty songs — one for each year, 1950 to 1989 — retold with stories, stray facts, and sidelong glances at the world that made them. Each episode reshuffles the decades: country beside jazz, doo-wop beside Ugandan funk, all threaded by time, sound, and a dry sense of ideas.

Hosted by Ben Cornish, 40 Years of Schoolin’ mixes storytelling, music history, and a touch of the surreal. It’s less a countdown than a count along — from cracked 78s to neon-lit synths, all finding their place on one long spinning reel.

© 2026 40 Years of Schoolin' Music
Episodes
  • 40 Years of Schoolin - Episode 4

    40 Years of Schoolin - Episode 4
    Feb 7 2026

    Send us a text

    Forty tracks. Forty years. One song per year.

    Episode 4 of 40 Years of Schoolin’ moves from 1950 to 1989 along less obvious routes — Cajun laments, Western swing, early avant-jazz, hi-fi futurism, teenage garage noise, folk pushed to breaking point, dub mutations, post-punk machinery and late-’80s DIY misbehaviour.

    These are not canonical histories or greatest-hits shortcuts. Some of these records were widely heard; many barely travelled beyond their region, label, or moment. Taken together, they trace how music kept mutating anyway — through accident, obsession, cheap tape, stubborn belief and the occasional wrong turn that turned out to be right.

    One year at a time.
    Show more Show less
    2 hrs and 55 mins
  • 40 Years of Schoolin - Episode 3

    40 Years of Schoolin - Episode 3
    Dec 20 2025

    Send us a text

    Forty tracks. Forty years. One song per year, reshuffled again.

    Episode 3 moves from 1950 to 1989 by way of honky-tonk confessionals, jump-blues swagger, tape-loop miracles, devotional electronics, dub as architecture, and pop that accidentally invents the future. Some records were global hits, others barely escaped the room they were recorded in — but all of them say something about where music was, and where it was heading.
    Show more Show less
    3 hrs and 13 mins
No reviews yet