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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.

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Latest Episodes:

The Book Club: the great and comedic life of D H Lawrence May 19, 2021

Show notes

Sam Leith's guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is Frances Wilson, whose new book Burning Man: The Ascent of D H Lawrence sets out to take a fresh look at a now unfashionable figure. Frances tells him why we’re looking in the wrong places for Lawrence’s greatness, explains why the supposed prophet of sexual liberation wasn’t really interested in sex at all - and reveals that after his death Lawrence may have been eaten by his admirers.

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The Green Room: has liberalism gone too far? May 18, 2021

Show notes

In this week’s episode of The Green Room, Deputy Editor of The Spectator's world edition Dominic Green meets the author Sohrab Ahmari for a chat about his new book, The Unbroken Thread: Discovering The Wisdom Of Tradition In An Age Of Chaos.
In it, Ahmari, a writer and New York Post op-ed editor, makes a compelling case for seeking the inherited traditions and ideals that give our lives meaning, via 12 fundamental questions that challenge our modern certainties. Among them: Is God reasonable? What is freedom for? What do we owe our parents, our bodies, one another? Exploring each question through the life and ideas of great thinkers, from Saint Augustine to Howard Thurman and from Abraham Joshua Heschel to Andrea Dworkin, Ahmari invites us to examine the hidden assumptions that drive our behaviour and, in so doing, to live more humanely in a world that has lost its way.
Don’t forget to subscribe to The Green Room for a weekly dose of books, arts and everything else that makes life worth living. Presented by Dominic Green and Arsalan Mohammad.

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Chinese Whispers: the fightback against facial recognition May 17, 2021

Show notes

China has run wild with facial recognition. From using it to ration tissues in public toilets, to identifying highest paying customers in stores and criminals from a crowd, what is a budding technology in the West has furthered state surveillance and corporate snooping in China. But there is a civil fightback happening in the courts, on social media and in public opinion at large. On this episode, I speak to Jeffrey Ding, a DPhil researcher of China's development of AI at the University of Oxford, and Jeremy Daum, Senior Research Scholar in Law at Yale Law School, who also runs the blog China Law Translate. We discuss who is driving the tech growth in China; whether citizens have any recourse to turn back the tide; and how this technology is being used in Xinjiang.

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Spectator Out Loud: Leo McKinstry, Emily Hill and Daisy Dunn May 15, 2021

Show notes

On this week's episode, Leo McKinstry starts by arguing that having to sell the family home to pay for social care is not an injustice. (00:50) Then, Emily Hill reads her piece. She's not looking forward to the return of hugging. (08:00) Daisy Dunn finishes the podcast by examining the underappreciated art of asparagus. (12:30)

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Women With Balls: with Katy Searle May 14, 2021

Show notes

Katy Searle is the Executive Editor of Politics at BBC News. She is known for overseeing numerous blockbuster political moments, including the infamous kitchen interviews with Ed Miliband and David Cameron, where the Labour leader showed off his two kitchens. On the podcast, she talks to Katy Balls about leaving school at 16, working with Rod Liddle on the Today programme and what it's like to produce interviews with prime ministers.

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The Edition: the great pretender May 13, 2021

Show notes

In this week’s podcast, we talk to The Spectator's editor Fraser Nelson and associate editor Douglas Murray about the challenges facing a freshly re-elected SNP. What next for Nicola Sturgeon - full steam ahead for IndyRef2? Or have neither Scotland or Number 10 the bottle for an all-out battle for independence? [01:02]
‘When you look at the practicalities, the case for independence really does fall. Nicola Sturgeon is selling it in the abstract: “Do you feel Scottish”?’ - Fraser Nelson
Meanwhile in matters of social etiquette, the new post-pandemic era looms, complete with new modes of social interactions and conversational topics. In this week’s magazine, Rachel Johnson lays down the new laws of conversational topics - sex, art and travel is fine; kids, vaccines and masks are most definitely not. She joins us now, along with Lucy Hume, from that venerable arbiter of taste and decorum, Debrett’s, for some ideas for the upcoming social summer. [12:25]
'I sometimes got emails from people, during lockdown, saying, I’m on my way to my second house, can you confirm this is legal or not, as if I was the ultimate arbiter of the crazy compliance and Covid restrictions!' - Rachel Johnson
Finally, as the government announces its plans to introduce new asset thresholds for households seeking healthcare in old age, Leo McKinstry writes in The Spectator this week of his irritation with middle-class homeowners scandalised at the prospect of selling their homes to finance healthcare in their old age. Should this be a cost collectively borne by the taxpayer or should those with ample assets simply bear the brunt of the cost? Will Heaven, Director of Policy and Communications at the Policy Exchange think tank, joins us to argue the point. [23:00]
'I think if you were to tell most 40-year olds that you’re going to pay one penny extra on income tax over the course of your career but you’re never going to have to worry about high social care costs and parents and grandparents, they’d probably go for it' - Will Heaven.
Presented by Lara Prendergast
Produced by Arsalan Mohammad and Sam Russell

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The Book Club: Happy 80th birthday, Bob Dylan May 12, 2021

Show notes

In this week's Book Club podcast, we're celebrating the 80th birthday of Bob Dylan. Sam Leith's guests are the former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, and Clinton Heylin, the Dylanologist's Dylanologist and author most recently of The Double Life of Bob Dylan: A Restless Hungry Feeling 1941-66. Sam asks what makes Dylan special, whether what he does - even if we admire it - can be called literature, how Dante and Keats found their way into his work, whether there's anything he does badly (spoiler: yes); and if it can really be true that he writes songs with a typewriter rather than a guitar.

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Table Talk: with Jonathan Drori May 11, 2021

Show notes

Jonathan Drori CBE is a Trustee of the Eden Project and Cambridge Science Centre, an ambassador for WWF, and was for nine years a Trustee of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. In a previous life at the BBC, he was executive producer of more than 50 prime-time science documentaries and popular series, and he is now the author of Around the World in 80 Plants.
On the podcast, he talks to Lara and Olivia about the diverse diet he had as a child of Eastern European Jewish refugees, how he got into botany through eating plants and the time he accidentally ordered a raw chicken milkshake.

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The Week in 60 Minutes: Second Cold War and steely Sturgeon May 09, 2021

Show notes

On this week's episode, Cindy Yu is joined by the journalist Isabel Oakeshott, Spectator contributor Stephen Daisley, historian Niall Ferguson, and Professor Jay Bhattacharya.
We discuss why Boris can't afford childcare, why India is reluctant to lock down again, and if a second cold war is on the horizon.
To watch the show, go to www.spectator.co.uk/tv.

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Spectator Out Loud: Leading article, Fiona Mountford, Laurie Graham and Isabel Hardman May 08, 2021

Show notes

On this week's episode, Fraser Nelson starts by reading our leading article: the Prime Minister promised 'data, not dates', so should we reopen before 21 June? (01:15) Fiona Mountford is on next, saying she's had enough of corporate faux-friendliness. (07:20) Laurie Graham reads her piece afterwards, wondering what to put in her Covid time capsule. (13:00) Isabel Hardman finishes the podcast by reading her notes on Dandelions - perhaps the 'cheeriest of wild flowers'.

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