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Best of the Spectator — News & Politics
Best of the Spectator

Home to the Spectator’s best podcasts on everything from politics to religion, literature to food and drink, and more. A new podcast every day from writers worth listening to.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Latest Episodes:

Spectator Out Loud: John Keiger, Mary Wakefield and Sean Thomas Feb 26, 2022

Show notes

On this week's episode, we’ll hear from John Keiger on Emmanuel Macron’s brand of performative diplomacy. (00:53)
Next, Mary Wakefield on the few pros and many cons of the lady carriage. (10:30)
And finally, Sean Thomas on how learning to work from home opens the door to working in paradise. (16:17)
Produced and presented by Sam Holmes
Subscribe to The Spectator today and get a £20 Amazon gift voucher.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Edition: Vlad the Invader Feb 24, 2022

Show notes

In this week’s episode: What does Putin really want for Russia?
For this week’s cover story, Niall Ferguson writes about how Putin seems to be trying to recreate the Russia of the Past, while this week's diary by Timothy Garton Ash says the West has misunderstood his intentions, Niall and Timothy join the podcast along with Mary Dejevsky a columnist for the Independent. (00:48)
Also this week: Should there be women-only spaces on trains?
Jeremy Corbyn suggested it when he was Labour party leader and now Scotland seems to be flirting with the idea. Mary Wakefield says in this week’s Spectator that although she enjoys the idea of lady carriage, it doesn’t make much sense. She joins the podcast along with women's rights activist Kelly Given, one of Young Women’s Movement Scotland, 30 under 30. (15:15)
And finally: Should we all get naked?
Cosmo Landesman believes that once men reach a certain age, they quite enjoy taking their clothes off no matter where. He has written about his theory in this week’s magazine and he joins the podcast along with Andrew Welch from British Naturism. (23:31)
Hosted by Lara Prendergast and William Moore
Produced by Sam Holmes
Subscribe to The Spectator today and get a £20 Amazon gift voucher:www.spectator.co.uk/voucher
Listen to Lara's food podcast Table Talk: https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcasts/table-talk

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Book Club: The centenary of literary Modernism Feb 23, 2022

Show notes

In this week's Book Club podcast, we're going back 100 years to 1922 – the year which is usually seen as heralding the birth of literary Modernism. Sam's guests are Richard Davenport-Hines, author of A Night At The Majestic: Proust and the Great Modernist Dinner Party, and the scholar and critic Merve Emre, who has worked extensively on Joyce and Woolf. Sam asked them how much Modernism really did represent a break with the past, and how much it looked like a coherent movement at the time. Along the way we learn what Proust and Joyce found to discuss when they met, why Virginia Woolf was so rude about Ulysses, and what the mainstream story of Modernism left out...

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chinese Whispers: what happens when China's population shrinks? Feb 22, 2022

Show notes

China’s population is ageing. It’s estimated that a quarter of Chinese people will be elderly within three decades. The relaxing of its one child policy – first to two children in 2016 and then to three last year – hasn’t stimulated fertility rate, which is still stagnant at 1.7 births per woman. In November last year, nappy producers supposedly pivoted their marketing towards elderly clients over parents of babies.
Demographers and economists warn about the problems that an ageing – and eventually shrinking – population will cause, in China and elsewhere. On this episode, I speak to the demographer Wang Feng, Professor of Sociology at University of California, Irvine, about what awaits China. For Professor Wang, care of the elderly will soon become an issue, with more than 365 million over 65s expected by 2050. The Chinese welfare state is minimal (ironic given its socialist pretensions), something of a ‘postcode lottery’, I put to Professor Wang. He says that ‘China has already missed the time window for establishing an equitable national social security system’ – it has already become too expensive, too fast.
We also discuss the one child policy at length – its logic at the time, whether Communist leaders foresaw the problems it would cause for their successors and, fascinatingly, whether there was any opposition within the Chinese Communist Party to the policy (the answer is yes – and if you caught my episode on the legacy of Deng Xiaoping, you will not be surprised to learn that the resistance was led by Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang). Professor Wang points out that one of the reasons why the policy took so long to go even as China liberalised relatively in the 1990s and 2000s, under the helm of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao:

‘They were people who grew up, like myself, at the end of the Cultural Revolution. Their knowledge of population was all learned from the time when China implemented the one child policy, when there was so much propaganda about how population would be the root of all problems for China. I think that generation of leaders were deeply intoxicated by these teachings’

In a way, there’s poetic justice for a government who thought that, in Professor Wang’s words, ‘you can just plan [births] and constrain them as you would grow trees or wheat’. Today’s China, regardless of the loosening of the one child policy (to two in 2016; and three last year, which I wrote about at the time), is just not having babies. For the Professor, there’s a fundamental truth: ‘The ageing society is not something that China, or any other country, can reverse’. The crux lies in how to adapt society to be better prepared – fixing the welfare state, the healthcare system, and maturing the financial system so the ageing population can invest for retirement.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Marshall Matters: Tracy-Ann Oberman Feb 21, 2022

Show notes

This week on Marshall Matters Winston is joined by British actress Tracy-Ann Oberman, star of Afterlife, Toast of London, Ridley Road and Eastenders, to name but a few. Tracy-Ann discussed the problem of anti-Semitism with relation to Equity - the trade union for actors - as well as in the entertainment industry more broadly and beyond.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Is Joe Biden all that bad? Feb 19, 2022

Show notes

Freddy Gray talks to Dr Julie Norman, lecturer and co-director of the Centre on US politics at University College London, about the case for the defence of the Biden presidency so far.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Spectator Out Loud: Katy Balls, Julie Bindel and Douglas Murray Feb 19, 2022

Show notes

On this week's episode, we’ll hear from Katy Balls on Labour’s strategy – would Starmer actually prefer Boris Johnson to stay in place? (00:51)
Next, Julie Bindel on the rise of lesbian divorce (06:12)
And finally, Douglas Murray on the hellish new trend of having to bring your ‘whole self’ to work. (14:00)
Produced and presented by Sam Holmes
Subscribe to The Spectator today and get a £20 Amazon gift voucher.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Edition: Theatre of war Feb 17, 2022

Show notes

In this week’s episode: What is the next act in Putin’s theatre of war?
For this week’s cover story, James Forsyth writes about Putin’s dangerous dramatics on the Russian-Ukrainian border and where they might lead. James joins the podcast along with Paul Wood, who writes in this week’s magazine that Putin’s bluff may be backfiring. (00:49)
Also this week: How important is gallows humour?
The BBC’s new comedy-drama, This Is Going To Hurt, based on the best-selling book of the same title by trainee doctor turned comedian Adam Kay depicts some truly gut-wrenching scenes with a touch of gallows humour. This week in The Spectator, Andrew Watts writes a defence of making dark jokes in serious situations as not only a stress relief exercise, but a genuine necessity for getting through the day. He joins the podcast along with Ed Patrick, a comedian and NHS anaesthetist whose new book Catch Your Breath about working in the NHS during the pandemic is out now. (16:05)
And finally: why have we stopped whistling?
Whistling can be seen as a bit annoying at best and rude at worst. But in this week’s Spectator, Steve Morris laments the loss of everyday whistling. He considers it a way of bringing music into one’s life for those who don’t own a piano. He joins the podcast along with whistling world champion David Morris, who has released six albums of his whistling. (25:50)
Hosted by Lara Prendergast and William Moore
Produced by Sam Holmes
Subscribe to The Spectator today and get a £20 Amazon gift voucher:www.spectator.co.uk/voucher
Listen to Lara's food podcast Table Talk: https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcasts/table-talk

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Book Club: Anna Keay Feb 16, 2022

Show notes

Sam's guest in this week's Book Club podcast is the historian Anna Keay. In her new book The Restless Republic: Britain Without A Crown she describes the short but traumatic period between the execution of Charles I and the restoration of the monarchy. She tells Sam about the religious turmoil, the explosion of the newspaper industry, the sympathetic side of Oliver Cromwell... and parallels with our own age of constitutional upheaval and viral propaganda.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Table Talk: With Rory Stewart Feb 15, 2022

Show notes

Former Tory MP, Rory Stewart, has played many roles through out his life. An academic, a diplomat, and a soldier. Rory is currently a senior fellow at Yale University's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs.
On the podcast, he talks about eating sandwiches on a homemade raft as a boy in Malaysia, his university days spent talking to girls in Pizza Express and his revelation that he doesn't really like pudding.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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