Best of the Spectator

Carolyn Harris is a Welsh Labour Party politician serving as the Deputy Leader of Welsh Labour since 2018, and has been the Member of Parliament for Swansea East since 2015. On the podcast she talks to Katy about her three successful campaigns, menopause, and the time she accidentally turned on the No.10 Christmas lights.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this week’s episode: What’s the mood like in Boris’s bunker?For this week’s cover story, James Forsyth writes about the defensive bunker mentality inside No. 10 and the PM’s strategy of keeping MPs sweet to hold back a no confidence vote. James joins the podcast along with Spectator Editor Fraser Nelson to discuss.  (00:50)Also this week: Have we forgotten how to take a joke?Jimmy Carr has caused an online outcry after an off-colour joke from his new show, His Dark Material was clipped and posted without context on social media. Ministers, such as Nadine Dorries and Sajid Javid, have now criticised a comedian for telling a joke. In the Spectator this week both in print and online, two of our writers came to Carr’s defence. The Spectator’s associate editor Douglas Murray joins the podcast, along with Sam Holmes, who is The Spectator’s Podcast Producer by day, and a stand up comedian by night. (11:38)And finally: Has Covid permanently changed how people take Communion?During the Covid pandemic, churches had to rethink the way they gave communion to their congregations. But will we ever go back to the old normal? Ysenda Maxtone Graham mourns the loss of the tradition of the communal cup in this week's Spectator. She joins the podcast along with Revd Dr Andrew Atherstone, a Tutor in Church History at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, who has written a study entitled, Drink This, All of You’: Individual Cups at Holy Communion. (21:42)Hosted by Lara Prendergast and William MooreProduced by Sam HolmesSubscribe to The Spectator today and get a £20 Amazon gift voucher:www.spectator.co.uk/voucherListen to Lara's food podcast Table Talk: https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcasts/table-talk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This year marks the centenary of the birth of Jack Kerouac. As Penguin publishes a lavish new edition of On The Road to mark the occasion, I'm joined by two Kerouac scholars. Holly George-Warren is working on the definitive biography of Kerouac (her previous work includes Lives of Gene Autry and Janis Joplin), and Simon Warner co-edited Kerouac on Record: A Literary Soundtrack and runs Rock and the Beat Generation. They tell me how On The Road came to be written, how it stands up now, and what made 'the Beats' beat. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 2008, President George Bush was the star guest at Beijing’s opening ceremony. Fourteen years later, under a cloud of diplomatic boycotts led by the US, the guest of honour spot was filled instead by President Putin. Under a confluence of factors over the last decade, China and Russia are closer now than they have been since the Cold War.On this episode of Chinese Whispers, Cindy Yu talks to Alexander Gabuev, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center, about how this situation came about. If the beginning of the end of the Cold War can be traced back to the Sino-Soviet split – allowing a bipolar world to be split into three when China began rapprochement with Nixon’s America – then what does today’s alliance mean at this moment in geopolitics?For Alex, there were three reasons why China and Russia have got closer. China’s hunger for oil and gas makes Russia a much-needed new trading partner (and vice versa). The two were able to fudge territorial disputes along the 3000 mile border they share (Alex points out that Russia has only been able to amass troops on the Ukrainian border because their military presence on the Sino-Russian border is the lightest it has been for a century). They share similar political cultures - strongman-ship supported by powerful and corrupt oligarchs and a nationalistic society - and similar national leaders (‘for the first time after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, we have two leaders that are age mates and soul mates’).‘The secret sauce’ that binds the collaboration together, according to Alex, is the US’s increasing confrontation with both. What we see from Washington today is a reverse Kissinger - where the two authoritarian countries are being pushed closer together by an increasingly hawkish America. Take Nord Stream 2 - any weaning off of the German market from Russian gas will simply make the Chinese market even more important for Moscow. But it’s not clear that the West has many alternatives.Getting closer to China is not necessarily a good thing for Russia, either. For one, the relationship is unbalanced. In a reversal of Cold War dynamics, the size of China’s high value economy today means that Chinese business matters more to Moscow than Russian to Beijing. ‘Ten, fifteen years down the road,’ Alex says, ‘China will have more leverage’. Could a more powerful China try to bully its weaker ally in commercial and security spheres? Possibly, but the die may already have been cast: ‘unfortunately, the sources of grievances and conflict between Russia and the US run so deep [that] the Russian leadership is so emotionally invested that there is no easy way out.’On this episode Cindy and Alex also discuss the malleability of national memory (Russian aggression during the 19th century often flies under the radar of Chinese nationalists), in what ways China’s relations with the US are still better than with Russia and exactly how China could react to any transgression on the Ukrainian border. Tune in. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Episode 2 of Marshall Matters, Winston speaks with David Baddiel on his powerful book 'Jews Don’t Count', the experience of writing the alternative National anthem 'Three Lions' and his recent stand up show 'Trolls - Not The Dolls'. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week's episode, we’ll hear from James Heale on the Zac Goldsmiths’ secret shadow cabinet. (00:49)Next, Leah McLaren on Covid in Canada. (07:20)And finally, Nicholas Farrell on the march of the Italian Wolves. (13:58)Produced and presented by Sam HolmesSubscribe to The Spectator today and get a £20 Amazon gift voucher:www.spectator.co.uk/voucher  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Freddy Gray talks to Guy Clapperton, the tech journalist and host of the Near-Futurist podcast about the recent collapse in Facebook’s share price, and the social media giant's prospects long-term. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this week’s episode: Is China stuck in a zero-Covid trap?For this week’s cover story, Cindy Yu looks at Xi Jinping’s attempt to grapple with Covid. She joins the podcast, along with Ben Cowling, Chair Professor of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, The University of Hong Kong. (01:42)Also this week: Whose in The Zac Pack? And what is their influence in No.10?James Heale, The Spectator’s diary editor has written in this week’s magazine about The Zac Pack. A group made up of Carrie Johnson, Lord Goldsmith and some highly influential figures in the Westminster corridors. James is joined by Christian Calgie, a senior reporter at Guido Fawkes to discuss the power this group have in No.10. And their role in Pen Farthing’s animal evacuation out of Afghanistan. (16:40)And finally: A glance back 70 years ago, the Queen as a Princess. This weekend marks the 70th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II’s accession to the throne. Graham Viney, author of The Last Hurrah: South Africa and the Royal Tour of 1947, writes this week's magazine about how she was prepared for that moment. He joins the podcast, along with the royal commentator and biographer, Angela Levin, author of ‘Harry: A biography of a Prince’. (28:41)Hosted by Lara Prendergast and William MooreProduced by Natasha FerozeSubscribe to The Spectator today and get a £20 Amazon gift voucher: www.spectator.co.uk/voucherListen to Lara's food podcast Table Talk: https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcasts/table-talk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sam's guest in this week's Book Club podcast is Philip Oltermann, whose new book The Stasi Poetry Circle: The Creative Writing Class that Tried to Win the Cold War, unearths one of the most unexpected corners of East German history. At the height of the Cold War, members of the GDR's notorious secret police got together regularly to workshop their poems. Was this a surveillance exercise, a training module for propagandists – or something stranger than either? And were their poems any good? Philip tells me about why poetry was such a big deal in the Eastern Bloc, how – had Petrarch but known – the sonnet was the perfect model for dialectical materialism, and where those poets are now... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Russell Norman is an award-winning restauranteur, writer and broadcaster, and the founder of the Polpo restaurant group. Last year he launched Trattoria Brutto. On the podcast, he tells Lara and Olivia about enjoying Spam fritters, blagging his way onto the Orient Express, and how he changed careers from teaching to cooking. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.