On this week’s Spectator Out Loud : Fraser Nelson signs off for the last time (1:30); Cindy Yu explores growing hostility in China to the Japanese (7:44); Mary Wakefield examines the dark truth behind the Pelicot case in France (13:32); Anthony Sattin reviews Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestinian Lives and Cultures (19:54); and Toby Young reveals the truth behind a coincidental dinner with Fraser Nelson and new Spectator editor Michael Gove (25:40). Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons....
Oct 05, 2024•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast Israel has launched what it has described as "limited, localised and targeted ground raids" in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah’s deputy leader says they’re ready for a ground offensive. It comes as more than 1000 people have been killed in the past two weeks in Lebanon. Could they be heading for all-out war? Is it possible that Iran and the US will be sucked into the conflict too? With tensions between Israel and the US on the rise, what will the next few weeks look like – and is there a chance Isra...
Oct 04, 2024•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week: Israel’s revenge and Iran’s humiliation. As the anniversary of the October 7th attacks by Hamas approaches, the crisis in the Middle East has only widened. Israel has sent troops into southern Lebanon and there have been attempted missile strikes from the Houthi rebels in Yemen and from Iran. Is there any way the situation can de-escalate? And how could Israel respond to Iran? Former BBC foreign correspondent Paul Wood and defence and security research Dr Limor Simhony join the podcas...
Oct 03, 2024•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast My guest in this week's Book Club podcast is Malcolm Gladwell. Twenty-five years after he published The Tipping Point , Malcolm returns to the subject of his first book in Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders and the Rise of Social Engineering. He tells me about the 'magic third', why it's not just Covid that gave us superspreaders, and how what he calls an 'overstory' can have dramatic effects on human behaviour. He talks, too, about why counterintuitive discoveries are eas...
Oct 02, 2024•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast The mood at Conservative conference has been surprisingly jubilant considering the turmoil that the party finds itself in. Labour's misfortunes may have contributed to this, but there seems to be a genuine optimism around the four candidates vying for the leadership of the party. What's the latest? Have Kemi Badenoch's comments on maternity pay impacted her position with the members? Also on the podcast, this evening will see the Vance vs Walz vice presidential debate. They go head to head in an...
Oct 01, 2024•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast America has a peculiar way of deciding national elections. Instead of a cumulative national vote, the president and vice president are determined by fifty separate state elections. The top ticket in each state (except Nebraska and Maine) receives all that state’s electoral votes, no matter how slim the margin of victory. Each state’s electoral votes are equal to its number of House members plus its senators. The winner needs 270 electoral votes. What if, in this razor-thin election, both Donald ...
Oct 01, 2024•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast ** On October 19, Cindy Yu and a panel of special guests will be recording a live Chinese Whispers at London's Battle of Ideas festival, talking the latest on China’s economic slowdown and asking – what are the social and political implications? Is China in decline? Chinese Whispers listeners can get a 20 per cent discount on the ticket price with the code WHISPERS24. Click here to find out more and get your ticket. ** The release of ChatGPT in late 2022 brought home the sheer potential of artif...
Sep 30, 2024•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast Freddy Gray is joined by Oliver Bateman, historian and journalist based in Pittsburgh. They discuss how important Pennsylvania will be during the election, the mail-in ballot system, and the state of the race.
Sep 29, 2024•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Spectator Out Loud : Rachel Johnson reads her diary for the week (1:19); James Heale analyses the true value of Labour peer Lord Alli (6:58); Paul Wood questions if Israel is trying to drag America into a war with Iran (11:59); Rowan Pelling reviews Want: Sexual Fantasies, collated by Gillian Anderson (19:47); and Graeme Thomson explores the ethics of the posthumous publication of new music (28:00). Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.
Sep 28, 2024•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast Labour’s Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson returns to Women With Balls in a special live edition of the podcast, recorded at Labour Party conference. The MP for Houghton and Sunderland South since 2010, Phillipson joined Keir Starmer’s shadow cabinet in 2020, and was appointed Shadow Education Secretary the following year. She retained her brief following the general election, and was also appointed Minister for Women and Equalities. Katy talks to Bridget about her priorities for Education,...
Sep 27, 2024•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week: who’s on top in the Conservative leadership race? That’s the question Katy Balls asks in the magazine this week as she looks ahead to the Conservative Party conference. Each Tory hopeful will be pitching for the support of MPs and the party faithful ahead of the next round of voting. Who’s got the most to lose, and could there be some sneaky tactics behind the scenes? Katy joins the podcast to discuss, alongside Conservative peer Ruth Porter, who ran Liz Truss’s leadership campaign in...
Sep 26, 2024•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is Alan Garner whose new book of essays and poems is called Powsels and Thrums: A Tapestry of a Creative Life . Alan tells me about landscape and writing, science and magic, the unbearably spooky story behind his novel Thursbitch – and why, three weeks short of 90, he has no plans to retire. This podcast is in association with Serious Readers . Use offer code 'TBC' for £100 off any HD Light and free UK delivery. Go to: www.seriousreaders.com/spectator...
Sep 25, 2024•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast Charlie Bigham founded his eponymous ready to cook meals over 25 years ago. Having left a career as a management consultant, his company has gone on to report annual sales in the tens of millions, with a focus on ‘creating delicious dishes for people who love proper food’. His first cookbook ‘Supper with Charlie Bigham’ is out now. On the podcast, Charlie tells hosts Lara Prendergast and Olivia Potts about recovering from ‘revolting’ school food, the difference between packaged meals and ready m...
Sep 24, 2024•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast A handful of Big Tech companies seem to run our lives, and there's a good argument that they can be considered monopolies within their industries. In a landmark ruling recently, a US judge found that Google acted illegally with their exercise of monopoly power within the online search industry. On this episode, Freddy is joined by Barry Lynn, journalist and an expert on America's antitrust battles, to discuss how liberal societies can combat the power of monopolistic Big Tech.
Sep 23, 2024•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast In the winter of 1951 shots from a Colt revolver rang out in St Paul’s Cathedral in an experiment designed to solve the mystery of how architecture shapes sound. In this episode of Holy Smoke, Damian Thompson talks to Dr Fiona Smyth, author of a new book on the subject, and choral musician Philip Fryer, about the perfect acoustic – an increasingly important topic for churches, since many of them rely on the income from hiring themselves out as concert and recording venues. And it raises the ques...
Sep 22, 2024•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Spectator Out Loud : as Lebanon reels from the exploding pagers, Paul Wood wonders what’s next for Israel and Hezbollah (1:24); Ross Clark examines Ireland’s low-tax project, following the news that they’re set to receive €13 billion… that they didn’t want (8:40); Reviewing Ben Macintyre’s new book, Andrew Lycett looks at the 1980 Iranian London embassy siege (15:29); Laura Gascoigne argues that Vincent Van Gogh would approve of the new exhibition of his works at the National Gall...
Sep 21, 2024•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast My guest on this week's Book Club podcast is Channel 4's international editor Lindsey Hilsum. In her new book I Brought The War With Me: Stories and Poems from the Front Line Lindsey intersperses her account of the many conflicts she has covered as a war reporter with the poems that have given her consolation and a wider sense of meaning as she travels through the dark places of the earth. She tells me what poets can do that reporters can't, how you put a human face on statistics, how new techno...
Sep 20, 2024•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week: Nigel’s next target. What’s Reform UK’s plan to take on Labour? Reform UK surpassed expectations at the general election to win 5 MPs. This includes James McMurdock, who Katy interviews for the magazine this week, who only decided to stand at the last moment. How much threat could Reform pose and why has Farage done so well? Katy joins the podcast to discuss, alongside Jovan Owusu-Nepaul, who fought Nigel Farage as the Labour candidate for Clacton (1:02). Next: who determines the mora...
Sep 19, 2024•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast We have some new inflation figures today. Inflation rose 2.2 per cent in the 12 months to August. This is pretty much in line with the Bank of England's target and should be good news for Labour, so why do they persist with this doom and gloom narrative? Elsewhere, Labour's awkward week has got more awkward with the news that Sue Gray, Keir Starmer's chief of staff, is paid more than him. Surely they could have seen this news story coming? Oscar Edmondson speaks to Kate Andrews and James Heale. ...
Sep 18, 2024•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast As if there hadn’t been enough drama in America in 2024, Donald Trump has survived another assassination attempt. The attempted killing of the 45th president at his golf course in Palm Beach, Florida yesterday afternoon was not nearly as threatening or deadly as the shooting nine weeks ago in Butler, Pennsylvania - but questions remain about how the incident could have happened. Freddy Gray is joined by Kate Andrews to discuss the second assassination attempt, the state of the race, and what's n...
Sep 17, 2024•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast As a child, the New York Times journalist Edward Wong had no idea that his father had been in the People’s Liberation Army. But as he grew up, a second generation immigrant in the United States, Edward was hungry to find out more about his father and mother’s pasts in the People’s Republic of China. That hunger took him to study China at university and eventually to become the New York Times ’s Beijing bureau chief. Edward’s new book, At the Edge of Empire , is a marvellously constructed work th...
Sep 16, 2024•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Spectator Out Loud : Fraser Nelson reflects on a historic week for The Spectator (1:15); David Whitehouse examines the toughest problem in mathematics (6:33); Imogen Yates reports on the booming health tech industry (13:54); Sean McGlynn reviews Dan Jones’s book Henry V: the astonishing rise of England’s greatest warrior king (20:24); and Ruari Clark provides his notes on rollies (26:18). Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.
Sep 14, 2024•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast From working on the 1997 general election campaign, to serving in the shadow cabinets of three leaders, politician Lucy Powell has been a prominent figure in the Labour Party for many years. First elected to parliament in 2012, she was appointed Leader of the House of Commons and Lord President of the Council following Labour's general election win in July. As Women With Balls returns from a summer break, Katy Balls talks to Lucy about why she transferred out of Oxford University, what her motiv...
Sep 13, 2024•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week: The US election is back on a knife-edge. Republicans hoped this week’s debate would expose Kamala Harris’s weaknesses. ‘They forgot that, when it comes to one-on-one intellectual sparring matches with candidates who aren’t senile, Donald Trump is very bad indeed,’ writes Freddy Gray. ‘A skilled politician would have been able to unpick Harris’s act, but Trump could not.’ Harris is enigmatic to the point of absurdity, but Trump failed to pin her down and may well have squandered his na...
Sep 12, 2024•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this week's Book Club podcast my guest is the satirist Craig Brown, talking about his brilliant new book A Voyage Round The Queen. Craig tells me what made him think there was something new to say about Elizabeth II, how he found himself in possession of the only scoop of his career and about his mortifying encounter with Her Maj.
Sep 11, 2024•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Spectator's chairman Andrew Neil and journalist Piers Morgan join Freddy Gray, host of the Americano show, to analyse the presidential race so far. Piers reveals what Donald Trump told him after he was shot, and they both give their predictions on whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump will win their first debate.
Sep 10, 2024•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Musician Simon Raymonde is perhaps best known as part of the Scottish band the Cocteau Twins , but he has found further success as the co-founder of Bella Union Records. Bella Union produce music by Father John Misty, the Fleet Foxes, and Beach House, amongst others. His memoir In One Ear: Cocteau Twins, Ivor Raymonde and Me is released on the 12 September 2024. On this episode of Table Talk, Simon tells Olivia Potts and Lara Prendergast about the influence of Jewish food as he was growing up, l...
Sep 10, 2024•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Freddy Gray is joined by Bridget Phetasy, comedian and Spectator World columnist. They discuss whether everyone is suffering a bit of election, and Trump fatigue - including Trump himself. They also cover Putin trolling America, and Bridget gives her predictions for the upcoming presidential debate.
Sep 09, 2024•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this week’s copy of The Spectator , Dan Hitchens argues that a lesser reported aspect of Labour’s decision to impose VAT on private schools is who it could hit hardest: faith schools. Hundreds of independent religious schools charge modest, means-tested fees. Could a hike in costs make these schools unviable? And, with uncertainty about how ideological a decision this is, does the government even care? Dan joins Damian on the podcast to discuss. Raisel Freedman from the Partnerships for Jewis...
Sep 08, 2024•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this week’s Spectator Out Loud : Ian Thomson reflects on his childhood home following the death of his sister (1:20); Andrew Watts argues that the public see MPs as accountable for everything though they’re responsible for little (7:40); Sam Leith reveals the surprising problem of poetical copyright (13:47); Helen Barrett reviews Will Noble’s book Croydonopolis and explores the reputation of a place with unfulfilled potential (19:48); and, Catriona Olding ponders moving on from loss to love (...
Sep 07, 2024•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
