On this week’s episode, Sarah wonders if it’s worth putting into your pension pot anymore as new government policies promise to make your golden years anything but. While Peter would like to ask why does nobody likes appeasement until it suits them? Not that Sarah can help with that, she’s one of life’s great appeasers. Elsewhere, all things considered, Peter would rather be a rich Edwardian, Sarah misses Swansea and one of our presenters gives a spirited rendition of the rallying cry of fans of...
Aug 20, 2025•41 min•Season 1Ep. 26
Peter would like to know why Britain slept walk in to the First World War and what our country might look like if we’d never stumbled into that national tragedy. Elsewhere, Sarah and Peter pore over our bag of electronic mail and ruminate on everything from the benefits of counselling (Sarah is for it, Peter less so), how to write a novel – not that either have – the power of Billy Wilder’s The Apartment and how Peter never actually ran with a motorcycle gang and why he’ll never wear a leather j...
Aug 13, 2025•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 25
In light of the recent documentary, Lucy Letby: Beyond Reasonable Doubt? Peter reiterates his call for a retrial of the convicted nurse. Elsewhere, Sarah asks if students are so worried about AI spoiling their chances of building a career, then why are they all using ChatGPT to write their exam papers? Also, Peter’s written a thriller, well, the first chapter at least. We can reveal very little of the plotline apart from the fact that someone dies by fax machine just after exiting a toilet. This...
Aug 06, 2025•55 min•Season 1Ep. 24
Peter is up in arms – who knew? – over Sarah’s use of centimetres over inches even though she was raised on the continent and it’s all she knows. A measure of distance which, he insists, are simply made up. For her part, Sarah tells us that if you’re going to employ a nanny, make sure it’s not an English one. Elsewhere, Sarah, admits she enjoys going to church, if only because it’s the one place where no one can hear her sing and the discovery that Peter can be found online portrayed as a housem...
Jul 30, 2025•39 min•Season 1Ep. 23
Peter is inflamed! Why, he wants to know, searching around him in vain for an ashtray, does smoking seem to be on the rise once more in the UK? Is it vaping? Is it fashionable once more, heaven forfend? He sincerely hopes not. For her part, Sarah doesn’t smoke, well, only after three glasses of wine. Elsewhere, Sarah asks is rioting on the rise once again? And asks are we now too far gone as a country where we can’t expect anything but civil unrest? Though it’s not all doom and gloom, we have po...
Jul 23, 2025•33 min•Season 1Ep. 22
Peter has a five-year plan for the five pairs of identical shoes he owns, buy in bulk, rotate diligently, but another set in five years times. Sarah, for her part, can’t walk past a shoe shop with a sale sign in the window, it’s like catnip to her. Elsewhere, Peter has had enough of cities changing their names – and not just because it keeps making his maps out of date – and Sarah muses on a song some people consider a national treasure which she could happily never hear again. And don’t get Pet...
Jul 16, 2025•41 min•Season 1Ep. 21
The love of cinema, Peter’s sonorous baritone, Sarah’s hatred of hot weather, the case for changing the way we adopt in the UK and does Peter ever go to watch Millwall and throw lager about? He does not. And those are just the topics and questions posed by listeners. Peter and Sarah also ask why we now embrace organisations that were once proscribed as terrorists? And in light of Coldplay being the most boring band on earth (scientific fact), why can’t we make decent rock stars anymore. On our r...
Jul 09, 2025•41 min•Season 1Ep. 20
From Lord of the Rings lesser liked characters to the ‘deep state’ of government according to Dominic Cummings, and drinking beer beneath the Northern Lights, Peter and Sarah take on listener questions before wrestling with the thorny subjects of the pain and pleasure of train travel – it depends very much on where you board and depart your train and helps if that’s not in the UK. While Sarah’s been hiding indoors as the continental sunshine has bene visited on the UK, and she would very much li...
Jul 02, 2025•33 min•Season 1Ep. 19
Sarah and Peter wrangle everything from the latest abortion legislation to how to purge the world of nuclear weapons (Sarah suggests we move them to the Moon – pity the poor astronauts who next land there), Star Trek and what the Federation really alluded to. Did Hollywood treat Napoleon fairly or meddle with history for its own ends? And, more happily, we cast Peter as Badger in Toad of Toad Hall with remarkable results. Stay tuned for that. On our reading and watch list this week: · Take A Gir...
Jun 25, 2025•39 min•Season 1Ep. 18
Flared trousers, the fate of Northern Ireland, free speech, swimming with Gordon Brown and childish children’s books. All human life, as they say, is here. Sarah wants to know why we’re afraid of difficult conversations and saying what we really think, is it that we’re always being shouted down by those who don’t agree with us? What ever happened to civilised debate? Not that our debates are ever civilised. While Peter reminisces about his time in Iran some decades ago and how it’s not the count...
Jun 18, 2025•43 min•Season 1Ep. 17
As Sarah’s book sends shockwaves through former political grandees and the corridors of power, Sarah and Peter sit down to ponder listener questions (and some of Peter’s thoughts too) related to ‘How Not To Be A Political Wife’, a book that has been described as ‘fascinating, embarrassing and fundamentally tragic’, ‘witty, wry and incredibly touching’ and an ‘unflinching account of life at the heart of politics.’ Expect questions and answers on falling in and out of love with Michael Gove, is th...
Jun 11, 2025•36 min•Season 1Ep. 16
To paraphrase Randy Newman, you’ve got a friend in me, but for just how long? Especially when you’re Sarah Vine and you’re supposed best friend’s husband is on the side of staying in the European Union while your then husband is all for pushing Brexit through. As Sarah discovered, loyalties are soon divided and what ultimately makes a true friend anyway? While Peter Hitchens looks askance at the continent and wonders, as Poland lurches to the right with its latest elections results, if the Europ...
Jun 04, 2025•34 min•Season 1Ep. 15
As rampage killings are on the rise both here and abroad, we ask if the long-term effects of drugs are impacting on our societal norms and encouraging a violent recklessness not seen before? As charges for cannabis possession are fast becoming a thing of the past and modern culture embraces increasingly strong strands of weed, is there a case to be made for really doubling down on those who break drug laws or as cannabis legalisation creeps across the globe, we ask, is it already too late? On ou...
May 28, 2025•37 min•Season 1Ep. 14
Books, plays and films have been written about it, its onset feared in some quarters, pilloried in others, and it will, eventually, affect almost all women. Though that’s not why Sarah Vine wants to talk about the menopause, but why, in some circumstances, it can be a huge liberation for women; finally freed from being slave to one’s hormones, and that’s just the beginning. So, why, do so many women fear the onset of the menopause? Plus, Peter Hitchens, is told several times a week (online, neve...
May 21, 2025•34 min•Season 1Ep. 13
To Peter Hitchens, the idea of capital punishment (at least at home here in the UK) could make for a country that is less vengeful and, he goes so far as to suggest, even more gentle. Having experienced two executions while working in the US, he knows the power of that final switch and the deterrent it might bring. But is he right, would the shadow cast by capital punishment be enough quell violent crime and those who commit it? Plus, on a much lighter though no less graphic note, we look at hol...
May 14, 2025•34 min•Season 1Ep. 12
Sarah’s two children are currently at university, which is rather handy as a regular listener has asked that Peter and Sarah chime in on the current state of the education system here in the UK. And how times have changed, Peter spent his university years trying to kickstart social unrest, while Sarah pursued a job at The Body Shop. And as the Union Jacks flutter in the hazy afterglow of VE Day, Peter rand Sarah reflects respectively on their father and grandfather’s service, one at sea in Scapa...
May 07, 2025•40 min•Season 1Ep. 11
Sarah’s brother was at home in Madrid this week when Spain underwent a blackout, alone in the dark with the only the thing in his house still working, his old radio. This week too saw the start of the great switch-off of analogue phones; and just look at the chaos caused by a cyber-attack at Marks and Spencer in the last few days. So, Sarah’s question is this, as we fall under the thrall of ever updating technology, are we going unwittingly back to the dark ages? Meanwhile, Peter is as reluctant...
Apr 30, 2025•26 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Not unlike the Rolling Stones, Peter Hitchens is ready to toss his TV through the nearest window. He’s in accord with the late, great Groucho Marx who was once moved to remark: "I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book." Once forced to rent a TV to watch the news before being quickly lured towards shows like Minder, Peter is now wary of the television, to the point he blames it for a lot of the world’s woes. Tune in for that...
Apr 23, 2025•32 min•Season 1Ep. 9
Sarah Vine wants to bin it off. Though given the decline in public services nationwide, that’s getting harder and harder to do. As the Birmingham bin strike rolls on, the council declares itself bankrupt and rats invade the city’s streets, we ask what the hell is going on with our public services and is this just part of a wider societal malaise? Also, could someone please take this rubbish away? They were once the so-called lungs of the earth, but as a centuries-old oak tree with “more ecologic...
Apr 16, 2025•30 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Peter Hitchens hates to be blunt about these things, well, not really, but he’d really like to know why the police are so useless. And not in one specific instance or area, but generally. No coppers on the beat, rarely answering emergency calls and heaven forfend they actually bang someone up. What happened to policing in the UK? While Sarah has spent her week at a wellness centre (don’t call it a fat farm), and while she has returned glowing like a rare gem, she did manage to put some weight on...
Apr 09, 2025•40 min•Season 1Ep. 7
Peter Hitchens puts forward his defence of ‘Whataboutery and asks why does the west delight in attacking its current enemies like Putin for things it allows its friends like Tayip Erdogan to do with impunity? What is it with all this posturing hypocrisy? While Sarah makes the case for the ancient art of astrology and wonders if we’re looking at star signs for answers as conventional faith is failing us daily. Or, as she puts it, what makes your sky fairy more important than my sky fairy? She may...
Apr 02, 2025•39 min•Season 2Ep. 6
All human life is here. Dogma, closed minds, modern slavery, net zero and why Peter will never enter the House of Lords - though he will take tea there – and why you’ll never find letters after his name. Sarah asks why Labour are pushing for a new deal with China at the risk of human rights violation and why did Margaret Thatcher think you could drive the 5 plus miles from Downing Street to Dulwich – turns out, outriders on motorbikes help. And both wonder when did the honours system become such...
Mar 26, 2025•36 min•Season 1Ep. 5
To paraphrase Edwin Starr; work, what is it good for, absolutely nothing… At least according to Gen Z. Reports suggest that a whole generation might be ready to give up work, which, coincidentally, is how Peter felt every day as a younger man when he was mucking out pigs on the farm, while Sarah’s eighteen-hour days in Hobbs only finally relented when she found herself talking to a drunken sub editor in a pub who was baffled by his new mac at work, just as Sarah had learnt how to use one… Elsewh...
Mar 19, 2025•35 min•Season 1Ep. 4
Lockdown saw Peter Hitchens riding through Hyde Park in a Polish gas mask hissing the word ‘virus’ at strangers. Sarah Vine spent hers in Waitrose checking produce until an outraged fellow shopper saw her return over ripe veg to the shelves and accuse her of spreading ‘covid tomatoes!’. Whatever they are. Both struggled with lockdown – especially as Sarah was sharing a home with Michael Gove, who was very much behind his Party’s policy to close things down – but, five years later, what did they ...
Mar 12, 2025•35 min•Season 1Ep. 3
Peter Hitchens is so anti-drugs, and so engaged with his moral compass he won't even consider taking the fictional recreationals, while Sarah Vine has been on antidepressants for over a decade and swears by her 'fat jab’. This, while Peter dreams of a Dutch like utopia where cars are rarely seen and children are safe to walk to school. Shall the twain ever meet? Occasionally. Join them for a conversation that begins by asking is society, sleepwalking into a delirium of self-medication and can en...
Mar 05, 2025•36 min•Season 1Ep. 2
When viewed from above the North Pole, the Earth rotates from left to right and now some of its inhabitants appear to be headed the same way. From Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy through Geert Wilders’ far-right Freedom Party in the Netherlands to Germany’s AfD party and the ever-encroaching Chega (Enough) party in Portugal, the boots on the ground appear to be facing one way, so are we looking at a new world order that’s suddenly leaning towards the right? Plus, is war finally over for Ukrai...
Feb 26, 2025•33 min•Season 1Ep. 1
What's the Big Idea? Finally, Sarah Vine (once memorably described as being ‘like and loathed in equal measure, divisive, but never indecisive’) and Peter Hitchens (a man whose writing a critic was called to compare to a Guardsman’s boot: ‘as highly polished and potentially lethal’) meet once a week to look at the world and mutter, alas… Acclaimed columnist and journalist Sarah Vine and best-selling author and broadcaster Peter Hitchens discuss and dissect social, economic, and pop cultural flot...
Feb 18, 2025•1 min
