Brussels Playbook Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Episode 86: Jeremy Hunt, UK Foreign Secretary Feb 19, 2019

Show notes

U.K. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt talks to POLITICO's Ryan Heath in this extra edition of our podcast.
Hunt once took heavy fire from Brussels for making a comparison that invoked the EU and the Soviet Union. But he's been much more diplomatic lately in his dealings with the EU.
In this exclusive interview in our Brussels office, he talks extensively about Brexit. “It’s massively in everyone’s interest to get back to stability,” Hunt says, adding that he hopes negotiations between London and Brussels will yield a revised deal “in the next few days.”
A quick resolution is necessary, Hunt says, “for the sake of sanity of the population of Britain and indeed of Europe.”
In addition to Brexit, Hunt discusses Huawei, Facebook, the Iran nuclear deal and more.

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Episode 85: UK Labour's John McDonnell — Is Strasbourg tearing MEP families apart? Feb 14, 2019

Show notes

This week's feature interview is a 15-minute highlight reel from John McDonnell's already famous interview with POLITICO's London Playbook editor Jack Blanchard. In addition to discussing Brexit next steps and Labour's anti-Semitism challenges, the U.K. shadow chancellor landed himself in hot water by describing Britain's wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill as a "villain" for sending in the army to tackle a miners' strike in 1910. The question now: Did McDonnell successfully tackle a taboo, or simply prove that the current Labour opposition is unelectable?

The podcast panel of Alva Finn, and POLITICO's new Paris correspondent Rym Momtaz, advise an anonymous MEP who wrote to POLITICO to say that the pressure of living and working in three cities (their home city, Brussels and Strasbourg) is tearing families apart. To continue the family theme, we also discuss Viktor Orbán's new policy in Hungary: exempting the mothers of four or more children from income tax.

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Episode 84: The Bellingcat team — Marietje Schaake MEP — U.S ambassador to EU Gordon Sondland Feb 07, 2019

Show notes

This week we bring you the revenge of the geeks! Bellingcat is the world's most surprising and one of its most successful journalism ventures. Founder Eliot Higgins and senior investigator Christiaan Triebert explain what open source investigation is, and how they used it to get to the bottom of modern mysteries, including tracking down the Skripal poisoning suspect and identifying the people and weapons that took down the MH17 flight over Ukraine.

We're joined by Dutch MEP Marietje Schaake who brought a new documentary — "Bellingcat: Truth in a post-truth world" — to Parliament this week. Listen to the end to find out how an 11 year-old's school project inspired Bellingcat's latest efforts ... in illegal wildlife trafficking.

We also bring you snippets of U.S. Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland who visited POLITICO's office this morning after Donald Trump's State of the Union speech with messages about trade relations, China and EU bureaucracy.

The podcast panel discusses a right-wing politician's conversion to Islam, the embarrassing splintering of the Yellow Jackets movement in France, and what special places in Brexit hell might look like.

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Episode 83: Facebook's Nick Clegg Jan 31, 2019

Show notes

Facebook's new global head of public affairs gives his first public interview since starting the job to Ryan Heath. Clegg addresses a growing number of Facebook controversies and outlines the company's plan to win back trust and contribute to democracy. The podcast panel debates Facebook's efforts, the latest developments in the Macedonia name dispute, and Margot Wallström's admission that she can't forgive the British government for Brexit

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Episode 82, presented by BP: Wopke Hoekstra — Sarah Kate Ellis — Brok rocked Jan 24, 2019

Show notes

POLITICO's Ryan Heath brings you two podcasts in one from the World Economic Forum — our final daily Davos Confidential show also doubles as your regular weekly EU Confidential. (Check out the other Davos Confidential shows wherever you found this podcast.)
Ryan talks to Dutch Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra about Brexit, what worries him about the EU and why people should vote in May's European Parliament election.
Ryan also speaks to Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD, an organization working to accelerate LGBTQ acceptance, including at the WEF.
Back in Brussels, POLITICO's EU editor Andrew Gray reviews the week's news with panelists Lina Aburous, Alva Finn and Carmen Paun. They discuss POLITICO's report that veteran MEP Elmark Brok netted surpluses from charges to constituents who visited him at the European Parliament; Donald Tusk raining on Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel's parade as they signed the Treaty of Aachen; Brexiteer James Dyson's decision to move his company HQ to Singapore; and the prospect of Brexiting Britain taking part in May's European Parliament election.

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Davos Confidential 2019: Ep 3 - Amnesty's Kumi Naidoo — WHO chief Tedros Jan 23, 2019

Show notes

Kumi Naidoo, secretary-general of Amnesty International, talks to POLITICO's Ryan Heath in our latest pop-up podcast from the World Economic Forum.
Ryan also sums up his impressions of the WEF so far and talks to World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and Wellcome Trust boss Jeremy Farrar about global efforts to improve mental health.

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Davos Confidential 2019: Ep 2 - Helle Thorning-Schmidt & Tim Berners-Lee Jan 22, 2019

Show notes

Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the former Danish prime minister and current head of Save the Children International, is our main guest in today’s pop-up podcast from the World Economic Forum.
Speaking before an audience at a live taping of the podcast in Davos, Thorning-Schmidt talks to POLITICO's Ryan Heath about everything from children’s rights to Brexit to her own future.
Also today, Ryan chats to Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web, about abuse of the internet and what the tech community can do about it.
To get more from the POLITICO team at the WEF, sign up for the daily Davos Playbook, the essential mid-morning briefing: www.politico.eu/davos-playbook-registration/
And keep up with the news in Davos as it happens on POLITICO’s live blog:https://www.politico.eu/article/davos-world-economic-forum-live-blog/

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Davos Confidential 2019: Ep 1 - Setting the scene — Nico Rosberg — Resilience ratings Jan 22, 2019

Show notes

POLITICO’s Ryan Heath is back with another series of daily podcasts from the World Economic Forum.

In our first episode of the 2019 edition, Ryan asks Huffpost international director Louise Roug if all the chatter about tackling inequality will amount to anything more than Davos-speak.

Ex-Formula One driver Nico Rosberg tells us about the mobility revolution that drove him to Davos.

And Ryan asks FTI Consulting’s data guru Dan Healy if big companies across the G20 are really ready to face 21st century challenges such as climate change and cyber crime.

To get more from the POLITICO team at the WEF, sign up for the daily Davos Playbook, the essential mid-morning briefing: https://www.politico.eu/davos-playbook-registration/

And keep up with the news in Davos as it happens on POLITICO’s live blog from 8AM CET Tuesday 22nd January: https://www.politico.eu/article/davos-world-economic-forum-live-blog/

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Episode 81: Historian Felix Klos — Divided Europe in data Jan 17, 2019

Show notes

As the winds of right-wing populism sweep through the world's biggest democracies, from India to the United States, and Brazil to the European Union, and the United Kingdom continues to tear itself apart, we take a step back in this week's podcast to consider Churchill and Europe.

Our feature interview is with the young Dutch historian Felix Klos, who was born the year the European Union was created, 1992 . As the author of Churchill on Europe, and a prospective member of the European Parliament, Klos is not your average 26-year-old.

Klos speaks of Churchill as the ugly duckling of the EU's founding family, but its most crucial member. "If there's anything that we can pinpoint to Churchill's legacy it's this: it's being able to analyze the problem then coming up with a solution that works and then having the courage to tell the people that you represent something they don't like to hear."

The podcast panel debate 2019 European election data points showing how divided Europe is. You can see them on page 20 of the e-version of this week's POLITICO print edition.

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Episode 80: Netflix's David Hyman Jan 10, 2019

Show notes

Netflix plans 153 original shows in Europe in 2019, worrying local broadcasters and delighting consumers. That level of ambition also leaves the company burning through billions in cash. The week's featured guest is David Hyman, general counsel at Netflix.
The podcast panel of Lina Aburous and Alva Finn discusses the European Commission's efforts to brand 2019 as being about delivery, destiny and democracy, and we remember the highs and lows of the "father of the house" of the European Parliament, Elmar Brok, dumped this week by his party after 38 years.

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