Scots Whay Hae!

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Scottish culture, one thoughtful conversation at a time.

The gist

Scots Whay Hae! follows writers, musicians, and cultural observers into the details behind their work. The conversations move from novels and albums to Glasgow venues, punk history, migration, memory, and the scenes that shape creative lives.

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About Scots Whay Hae!

Scots Whay Hae! is a conversational archive of Scottish cultural life, built one careful interview at a time. It is not limited to one art form. Recent episodes move between fiction, music criticism, venue history, memoir, punk research, live performance, and year-end music reflection. A new novel can lead to a discussion of immigration, chosen home, family pull, and why a city starts to feel like a character. A book about Scottish punk can become a map of missing scenes, underground magazines, art schools, record scarcity, bus journeys, and the small domestic details behind public rebellion. The show has a strong sense of place. Glasgow appears often, not as a slogan, but as streets, venues, markets, studios, communities, and memories. Barrowland is treated as both ballroom and social history. The Barrows market is heard through sellers, songs, patter, steak pies, changing crowds, and the stubborn survival of atmosphere. Music episodes are just as grounded. Elgin and the Marbles brings in British empire, colonial history, the British Museum, and the odd route from private project to released album. The Best Music of 2025 conversation listens closely to individual tracks, especially where folk, classical, jazz, and trad influences cross over. Literary guests are given similar space. Donald S. Murray talks through long gestation, older reading, imagination, history, and returning to a book until it finally finds its shape. Doug Johnstone reflects on a career measured in 20 books over 20 years, with less nostalgia than momentum. Penny Kiley's episode reaches Liverpool punk through journalism, imaginary bands, Big in Japan, The Crucial Three, Jane Casey, and the culture around Eric's. The result is warm without being soft. It lets guests build their thoughts, then follows the interesting thread. For listeners who like books, records, venues, and local history treated as connected things, Scots Whay Hae! offers patient, specific company.

Made for: For listeners who follow Scottish books, independent music, venue culture, punk history, and the social stories behind creative work. It suits people who prefer unhurried interviews with context, memory, and close attention to detail.

What sets it apart: Scots Whay Hae! stands out by treating releases as entry points into wider cultural memory. The show connects novels, albums, scenes, cities, and venues without flattening them into promotional chat.

In their own words

Scots Whay Hae! is the place to discuss modern Scottish Culture whatever and wherever that may be.

As heard by us

Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026

Books become routes into Scottish punk, music journalism, family listening and the social history surrounding venues such as the Barrowland Ballroom.

Scots Whay Hae! uses books as doors into musical lives, local scenes and the places that sustain them. Ali patiently follows the detail in each guest's account, letting Grant McPhee explain the fragile infrastructure around Scottish punk in 1976 and 1977, while other…

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Why you'd press play

A Scottish punk outfit hidden from your parents? Ali has time for stories around the gig.

Press play if you want

to hear why getting dressed for a punk gig mattered to the people who were there
to hear a musician trace her taste from family hand-me-downs to her first single

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Scottish literatureGlasgow cultural lifeScottish punk historyindependent musicvenue and market historymigration and belongingcreative processyear-end music picks

Talks about

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Best episodes of Scots Whay Hae!

Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.

Luca Serra - This Is HomeApr 17, 2026

Luca Serra discusses immigrant connection, Brazil's pull, and a sauce-covered pot with its own chapter.

Luca Serra's debut novel gives this interview a focused question: what makes a place feel like home, and what can still tug someone away from it.

Grant McPhee - Caledonia ScreamingApr 14, 2026

A thoughtful look at Scottish punk, its missing links and the lives around the scene.

Grant McPhee's Caledonia Screaming: Year Zero Volume 1 frames Scottish punk as part of a longer underground story, tracing how earlier counterculture shaped what followed, and where Scotland moved differently from scenes elsewhere.

Donald S. Murray - The Loch Of The BeesApr 7, 2026

A reflective conversation on how memory, revision, and performance shape Donald S Murray's fiction.

Donald S Murray's The Loch of the Bees comes through as a book shaped by return. Murray talks about sections first written around 20 years ago, then taken up again when they no longer felt right.

Penny Kiley - Atypical GirlMar 17, 2026

A warm, curious review of Liverpool punk, its surrounding figures and the personal story behind Kiley's memoir.

Penny Kiley's Atypical Girl opens onto Liverpool's punk scene, then steadily widens its focus. What starts as a look at being a woman in the music business, and at the Liverpool scene she moved through, becomes more intimate once an autism diagnosis gives the story another…

Alison Irvine - BarrowlandFeb 24, 2026

A warm, lived-in conversation about the Barrowland Ballroom's many lives, from Commonwealth Games research to steak pies and family memory.

Alison Irvine's book about Glasgow's Barrowland Ballroom opens into something broader: how a venue gathers lives, loyalties and stories around it.

Katy Lironi - Matilda In The Middle

A family memoir comes through hand-me-down records, home listening, and the careful work of remembering together.

Family, music, and the awkward work of remembering sit at the center of this single-episode conversation. Katie Laroni talks about Matilda in the Middle as a family memoir shaped by home listening and inherited taste, moving from her brothers' early glam records to her parents'…

SWH! Best Crime Fiction 2025 - with Callum McSorley

A warm Scottish crime-fiction discussion that connects Edinburgh mystery, debut writers, Bloody Scotland links, and books still ahead.

Scots Way Hay turns a crime-fiction roundup into a thoughtful look at what the genre can carry. The host is joined by writer Callum McSorley, and their chosen novels open a route through Scottish crime, with some books still to come also in view.

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Find your next episode

About Scots Whay Hae!

In their own words

As heard by us

Why you'd press play

Talks about

Best episodes of Scots Whay Hae!

Podcasts like Scots Whay Hae!

Episodes

Fergus Morgan - A History Of Scottish Drama In Six Plays

Doug Johnstone - 20 Books in 20 Years

Elgin & the Marbles - The Sun Never Sets

Penny Kiley - Atypical Girl

Alison Irvine - Barrowland

Linda Duncan McLaughlin - Original Sins

Lesley Davidson - Beacon Book Festival

Louise Welsh - The Cut Up

Oğuz Kaplangı - RESIST

Dawn Taylor - Manipulate Festival 2026

Peter Lamont - Radical Thinking

Peter May - Towards the Light

Best Films of 2025 - with Chris Ward & Wesley Shearer

Best Music of 2025 - with Fiona Liddell

Best Books of 2025 - with Vikki Reilly

David Hewitson - Theatre 118

Tom Brogan - Dalglish: The Fifty Matches That Made the Player

Darren McGarvey - Trauma Industrial Complex / Not Funded By Creative Scotland

Himadri Madan - The Gaze – you, me, us, and them

Peter Ross - Upon A White Horse

Marion Todd - Dead Man's Shoes

Donald Smith - Scottish International Storytelling Festival 2025

Foday Mannah - The Search For Othella Savage

Iain Forbes - After Dark

Graeme Macrae Burnet - Benbecula

Bloody Scotland - The McIlvanney Prize Finalists 2025

Edinburgh Fringe Preview Podcast 2025 - Part 4 - Scotland Unsung

Andy Bollen - Definitely Maybe: The Birth, Death and Resurrection of Oasis

Edinburgh Fringe Preview Podcast 2025 - Part 3 - The Burns Project - When Billy Met Alasdair

Edinburgh Fringe Preview Podcast 2025 (Part 2) - Anatomy of Pain - Colours Run - Seltzer Boy

Fiona Shepherd - Glasgow's Greatest Hits

Bloody Scotland - Debut Prize Shortlist 2025

Liam McIlvanney - The Good Father

Edinburgh Fringe Preview Podcast 2025 (Part 1): These Mechanisms - Stepping In...Spilling Out - FLOAT

Andrew Meehan - Best Friends

Ambrose Parry - The Death of Shame

Natalie Jayne Clark - The Malt Whisky Murders

Gordon Meade - Beyond The Ninth Wave

Emily Brooks Millar - Birddad

Michael Pedersen - Muckle Flugga

Ciaran Lyons - Tummy Monster

Callum McSorley - Paperboy

Roberto Cassani - Pictish Spaghetti

Carrie Marshall - Small Town Joy

Fraser Scott - The Gray Plays

Craig A. Smith - The River

Ann Campbell - Dunoon Film Festival

Jess Orr - Paisley Book Festival 2025

Ewan Morrison - For Emma

Karen Campbell - This Bright Life

Esa Aldegheri - There She Goes

Chris McQueer - Hermit

David F. Ross - The Weekenders

Allan Gaw - The Silent House Of Sleep

Dawn Taylor - Manipulate Festival

James Yorkston - Tommy The Bruce

Clare Stewart - APOLLO5

Peter Mohan - Cheers, Govanhill

Best Books of 2024 - with Vikki Reilly

Carina Contini - The Contini Cookbook

Alan Taylor - Edinburgh: The Autobiography

Jenna Gordon - Verve Books & Indie Publishing

Denzil Meyrick - The Christmas Stocking Murders

Pat Law - GAFFER: Impressions from a Loch Fyne Skiff

Lee Stuart Evans - Pleasantly Disturbed

Curlew - Evolution

Michael J. Malone - The Torments

Theiyā Arts - Maiden | Mother | Whore

Rhona Brown - The Collected Works of Robert Fergusson

Malachy Tallack - That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz

Graeme Macrae Burnet - A Case of Matricide