Labor Day is a critical mile-marker on the road to the general election, now just two months away. Pollsters are busy processing data and making predictions, but nobody really knows whether America will end up with Donald Trump or Kamala Harris in the White House. Nate Silver is one of America's most well-respected pollsters. The former poker player set up FiveThirtyEight, a polling company and now writes the Silver Bullet on Substack. Nate Silver's latest book On the Edge: the Art of Risking Ev...
Sep 06, 2024•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week: Miliband’s empty energy promises. Ed Miliband has written a public letter confirming that Labour plans to decarbonise the electricity system by 2030. The problem with this, though, is that he doesn’t have the first idea about how to do it. The grid doesn’t have the capacity to transmit the required energy, Ross Clark writes, and Miliband’s claim that wind is ‘nine times cheaper’ than fossil fuels is based upon false assumptions. What is more, disclosed plans about ‘GB Energy’ reveal t...
Sep 05, 2024•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast My guest on this week's Book Club podcast is the writer, artist and historian Amy Jeffs. Her new book Saints: A New Legendary of Heroes, Humans and Magic aims to recover and bring back to life the wild and fascinating world of medieval saints. She tells me what we lost with the Reformation (all the good swearing, among much else), what was the difference between magic and a miracle, and how what washes up on the Thames foreshore can give us the entry point to a whole vanished imaginarium....
Sep 04, 2024•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast In a CNN interview, Kamala Harris has been pressed on why her policies on immigration have become more moderate since 2019, when she ran for president. Republicans have been accusing her of flip-flopping on her border wall policy. In this episode, Matt McDonald, managing editor of The Spectator's US edition, fills in for Freddy whilst he's on holiday. Matt speaks to Todd Bensman, journalist, author, and fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies.
Sep 03, 2024•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast The South China Sea has been an area of regular clashes and heightened tensions under the leadership of Xi Jinping. It seems that, every few months, Chinese naval or coastguard ships clash or almost clash with vessels from South East Asian nations like Vietnam and the Philippines. Only last week, a Chinese ship clashed with the Filipino coast guard in the Spratly Islands, with both sides levelling angry accusations at each other. The region is full of disputed claims, making it fertile waters fo...
Sep 02, 2024•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast Writer Guy Stagg threw in his job to undertake a pilgrimage to Jerusalem via Rome - choosing a hazardous medieval route across the Alps. It nearly killed him: at one stage, trying to cross a broken bridge in Switzerland, he ended up partially submerged in the water, held up only by his rucksack. On this episode of Holy Smoke, from the archives, Guy explains why his journey was a pilgrimage, not just travels. And Damian Thompson talks to Harry Mount, editor of The Oldie, about why he’s irresistib...
Sep 01, 2024•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Spectator Out Loud : Joan Collins reads an extract from her diary (1:15); Owen Matthews argues that Russia and China’s relationship is just a marriage of convenience (3:19); reviewing The White Ladder: Triumph and Tragedy at the Dawn of Mountaineering by Daniel Light, Sara Wheeler examines the epic history of the sport (13:52); Igor Toronyi-Lalic looks at the life, cinema, and many drinks, of Marguerite Duras (21:35); and Tanya Gold provides her notes on tasting menus (26:07). Pre...
Aug 31, 2024•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast Women With Balls has taken a summer break and will be back in September with a new series. Until then, here's an episode from the archives, with Dame Karen Pierce, who will shortly complete her term as British Ambassador to the United States. Filmed in 2019, when Dame Karen was the UK’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, she talks to Katy Balls about her career ambitions when she was young, using Lewis Carroll to combat the Russians, and what day to day life is like at the UN....
Aug 30, 2024•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week: Alt reich. The Spectator ’s Lisa Haseldine asks if Germany’s far right is about to go mainstream, ahead of regional elections this weekend. Lisa joined the podcast, alongside the historian Katja Hoyer, to discuss why the AfD are polling so well in parts of Germany, and how comparable this is to other trends across Europe (1:13). Then: why are traditional hobbies being threatened in Britain? Writer Richard Bratby joins the podcast, alongside Chris Bradbury, the drone support officer at...
Aug 29, 2024•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Book Club has taken a short summer break and will return in September. Until then, and ahead of the 85th anniversary of the start of World War Two, here’s an episode from the archives with the author Ian Sansom. Recorded ahead of the 80th anniversary in 2019, Sam Leith talks to Ian about September 1, 1939 , the W.H. Auden poem that marked the beginning of the war. Ian’s book is a 'biography' of the poem; they discuss how it showcases all that is best and worst in Auden’s work, how Auden firs...
Aug 28, 2024•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast Will Beckett, CEO of Hawksmoor, founded the steakhouse chain with his childhood best friend Huw Gott in 2006. It has since expanded to 13 locations, including three outside the UK, and consistently been ranked one of the best steak restaurants in the world. On the podcast, Will tells Olivia Potts and Lara Prendergast about his journey from working in a bar to breaking America, how farming is the key to a good steak, and why pasta is actually his favourite food.
Aug 27, 2024•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Professor John Mearsheimer joins Freddy Gray to discuss the wars in Ukraine and in Gaza, and the influence of both on the US election. The Israel-Gaza conflict has led to internal divisions within the democratic party, how will Kamala Harris deal with this? And as the Russia-Ukraine conflict shows no signs of ebbing, what does he see as the west’s role in the war? Produced by Natasha Feroze and Patrick Gibbons.
Aug 26, 2024•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Spectator Out Loud : William Cash reveals the dark side of Hollywood assistants (1:12); Marcus Nevitt reviews Ronald Hutton’s new book on Oliver Cromwell (7:57); Nina Power visits the Museum of Neoliberalism (13:51); Christopher Howse proves his notes on matchboxes (21:35); and, Olivia Potts finds positives in Americans’ maximalist attitudes towards salad (26:15). Presented and produced by Patrick Gibbons.
Aug 24, 2024•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Americano podcast has been in Chicago this week for the Democratic National Convention, as Kamala Harris is officially nominated to be their presidential candidate. Has the convention gone to plan? How united are the Democrats? And can their strategy sustain until November? In this compilation episode, Freddy Gray is joined by Labour MPs Lucy Rigby and Mike Tapp, Democratic operative and fundraiser Christopher Hale, editor at large of The Spectator World Ben Domenech, editor in chief of Medi...
Aug 23, 2024•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week: All hail Harris! As the Democratic National Convention approaches its climax, The Spectator’ s deputy editor Freddy Gray explores vice president Kamala Harris’s remarkable rise to the top of the democratic ticket in his cover article this week. Freddy joins the podcast from Chicago (1:30). Next: live from the DNC. Freddy and Natasha Feroze, The Spectator ’s deputy broadcast editor, have been out and about at the convention talking to delegates – and detractors – of the Democratic Part...
Aug 22, 2024•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Book Club has taken a short summer break and will return in September with new episodes. Until then, here’s an episode from the archives with the theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli. Carlo joined Sam in March 2023 to discuss his book Anaximander and the Nature of Science and explain how a radical thinker two and a half millennia ago was the first human to intuit that the earth is floating in space. He tells Sam how Anaximander’s way of thinking still informs the work of scientists everywhere...
Aug 21, 2024•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast Douglas Murray joins Freddy Gray on the Americano podcast to discuss free speech in Britain following the sentences handed down after the riots, how different free speech is in America, and how Douglas himself became a victim of online hate.
Aug 20, 2024•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Trump is tough on China, but what really motivates his hawkishness? Does he care at all about China's human rights abuses? Or is he fundamentally a foreign policy disentangler, hoping to rein back America's overseas commitments? How much does the China policy of a second Trump presidency depend on which advisors the president surrounds himself with? On this episode of Chinese Whispers, The Spectator's China podcast, assistant editor Cindy Yu talks to deputy editor Freddy Gray and Jordan McGillis...
Aug 19, 2024•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast Women with Balls has taken a summer break and will be back in September with a new series. Until then, here's an episode from the archives, with current Tory leadership hopeful Kemi Badenoch MP. Widely seen as one of the Conservative Party’s rising stars upon her election to Parliament in 2017, her star has only continued to rise. Serving under successive PMs, this episode was recorded in May 2022 when she was Minister of State for Local Government, Faith and Communities, and for Equalities. Now...
Aug 18, 2024•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Spectator Out Loud : Richard Madeley reads his diary for the week (1:01); Cindy Yu explores the growing trend for all things nostalgic in China (6:00); Lara Prendergast declares that bankers are hot again (11:26); Pen Vogler reviews Sally Coulthard’s book The Apple (17:18); and, James Delingpole argues that Joe Rogan is ‘as edgy as Banksy’ (23:24). Presented by Patrick Gibbons.
Aug 17, 2024•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast Freddy Gray sits down with journalist and Spectator author Ed West who writes the Substack Wrong Side of History and Richard Hanania who writes the Richard Hanania Newsletter to discuss Elon Musk's interview with Donald Trump on Twitter (X), how much influence Twitter has both in the UK and America, and whether the right-wing men are 'weird'.
Aug 16, 2024•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week: Power play. The Spectator’s Svitlana Morenets writes the cover article in this week’s magazine exploring Zelensky’s plan for his Russian conquests. What’s his aim? And how could Putin respond? Svitlana joins the podcast alongside historian and author Mark Galeotti (02:10). Next: Will and Gus discuss their favourite pieces from the magazine, including Richard Madeley’s diary and Lara Prendergast’s argument that bankers are hot again. Then: how concerned should we be about falling ferti...
Aug 15, 2024•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sam's guest in this week's Book Club podcast is Adam Higginbotham, whose new book Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space describes the 1986 space shuttle disaster that took the lives of seven astronauts and, arguably, inflicted America's greatest psychic scar since the assassination of JFK. He tells Sam about the extraordinary men and women who lost their lives that day, the astounding engineering involved in the spacecraft that America had started to take for gran...
Aug 14, 2024•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast Romy Gill is a British-Indian chef, food-writer and broadcaster who was awarded an MBE in 2016 for her services to hospitality. She is the author of three cookbooks including her newest, Romy Gill's India , which will be published on 12th September. On the podcast, she tells Liv and Lara about the joys of long train journeys across India, the state of Indian cuisine in the UK and how you can make magic with just cumin and turmeric. Photo credit: Sam Harris...
Aug 13, 2024•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week: Gus Carter reports from Rotherham (01:10), Paul Wood asks whether anything can stop full-scale conflict in the Middle East (05:55), Jonathan Aitken takes us inside Nixon's resignation melodrama (16:55), Laura Gascoigne reviews Revealing Nature: The Art of Cedric Morris and Lett-Haines (26:08), and Flora Watkins reads her notes on ragwort (31:24). Produced and presented by Oscar Edmondson.
Aug 10, 2024•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week: The Spectator ’s Gus Carter was in Rotherham and Birmingham in the days after the riots. Locals tell Gus that ‘violent disorder isn’t acceptable but people from down south don’t know what it’s like up here’. A retired policeman in Birmingham adds that ‘it’s just yobs looking for an excuse – and yobbos come in all sorts of colours’. You can hear Gus’ report on the podcast. (02:25) Next: Gus and Lara take us through some of their favourite pieces in the magazine, including Flora Watkins...
Aug 08, 2024•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast My guest in this week's Book Club podcast is Nathan Thrall, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning book A Day In The Life of Abed Salama – which uses the story of a terrible bus crash in the West Bank to describe in ground-up detail the day-to-day lives of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. Speaking to me from Jerusalem, Nathan tells me why he believes it's right to call Israel an 'apartheid state', how the bureaucracy of the Occupied Territories made the fatal crash 'an accident that w...
Aug 07, 2024•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Chinese middle class can now be very discerning about the food that they eat, and who can blame them? In the last twenty years, there seems to have been a steady stream of food safety and hygiene scandals – most infamously melamine-laced milk powder in 2008, which poisoned tens of thousands of babies. Since then, we’ve heard about pesticides being put into steamed buns to improve their texture, used cooking oil being retrieved from gutters to be reused, and lamb meat that might contain rat o...
Aug 05, 2024•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast In the short time since Joe Biden has stepped aside for Kamala Harris's candidacy, the Democratic party has totally switched on the gears for 'Kamalamania'. On this episode, Freddy Gray talks to Kate Andrews about the disingenuousness of the hype, how social media drives it (and in particular, TikTok), and whether the enthusiasm for Kamala really has or will cut through to voters. Produced by Natasha Feroze and Cindy Yu.
Aug 04, 2024•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Spectator Out Loud : James Heale interviews Woody Johnson, the former American Ambassador to the UK, about a possible second Trump term (1:19); Lara Prendergast reflects on the issue of smartphones for children and what lessons we could learn from Keir Starmer’s approach to privacy (6:35); reviewing Patrick Bishop’s book ‘Paris ’44: The Shame and the Glory’, Patrick Marnham argues the liberation of Paris was hard won (12:37); Laura Gascoigne examines Ukraine’s avant garde movement...
Aug 03, 2024•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
