Best of the Spectator

This episode of Spectator Out Loud features Professor Robert Tombs on Canada's willingness to believe anything bad about its own history (00:55); the farmer Jamie Blackett on the harms of wild camping (12:10); and Tanya Gold on the reopening of Claridge's Restaurant.Presented and produced by Cindy Yu. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The US government is apparently hiding a programme to capture and reverse-engineer UFOs. At a congressional hearing last week, David Grusch, a former intelligence official who worked with a Pentagon team looking into UFOs, said 'non-human' objects had been recovered by the government. Are they finding aliens, or Chinese and Russian drones? What's behind the American obsession with extraterrestrials? And is the government making up sightings to justify higher defence spending?Freddy Gray is joined by Spectator contributor Sean Thomas. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this week’s cover article, The Spectator's political editor Katy Balls takes a look at the bottom-up reform that’s happening in some parts of the country, and asks whether tough policing is making a comeback. Katy joins the podcast together with Kate Green, Greater Manchester's Deputy Mayor of Crime and Policing. (00:50)Next, the war has finally gone to Moscow. Recently, a number of drone strikes have hit targets in the Russian capital. Though Ukraine hasn’t explicitly taken responsibility, in the magazine this week, Owen Matthews writes that it’s all a part of psychological warfare. Owen is the author of Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin and Russia’s War Against Ukraine and he joins the podcast. (18:20)And finally, is it ever right – or easy – to cut off your parents? If you look at TikTok, as our columnist Mary Wakefield has been doing, it seems that declaring your parents ‘toxic’ and excising them from your life is all the craze amongst some teenagers. Is this a sign that the fundamentals of family life have moved on from duty, or unconditional love, to a more transactional approach? Mary joins the podcast, together with Becca Bland, founder and CEO of Stand Alone, a charity which supports people estranged from their families. (28:00)Presented by Lara Prendergast and William Moore.Produced by Cindy Yu. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest on this week's Book Club podcast is the novelist and psychologist Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, whose gripping new book The Wolf Hunt tells the story of an Israeli-American mother who finds herself wondering whether her teenage son Adam could have been responsible for the death of a classmate. She tells me about using the thriller form as a Trojan horse, about fear and what we do with it, and whether, as an Israeli writer, you can ever escape from politics.    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nick Gillespie is an American libertarian journalist and the editor-at-large for Reason magazine. He is also the author of The Declaration of Independence. On the show, Nick talks about censorship in America in the age of information; the recent trend of book banning and why he believes the debates around demographic collapse are actually a sign of improved quality of life. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week (01.07) James Heale meets the Conservative London Mayoral Candidate, Susan Hall, who is ready and willing to take the fight to Sadiq Khan in next year’s elections, (06.51) Melanie McDonagh examines the effects on children’s publishing as sensitivity readers gain more and more influence and (12.39) Sam McPhail explains why football clubs could be in big trouble if fans start following superstar players, rather than the clubs. Produced and presented by Linden Kemkaran Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lucy Frazer is the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. Prior to this role in government, Lucy held several ministerial positions from the Department Transport to the Ministry of Justice. On the podcast, Lucy tells Katy about her background working as a barrister which paved the way for a political career; her vision for how the Conservatives could still win the next election; and how she will choose the next chairman of the BBC. Produced by Natasha Feroze.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this week’s cover story, The Spectator’s political editor Katy Balls writes about Labour’s new paymasters – Keir Starmer’s party now receives more money from private donors than it does from trade unions. What do the new donors want, and what does Starmer want from them? Katy joins Will and Lara alongside the writer and Labour supporter Paul Mason. (01:00)Next up, Webb Keane, from the University of Michigan, and Scott Shapiro, from Yale, write in the magazine this week about the dawn of the godbots – you can now chat online to an artificial intelligence that pretends it’s god. Might people soon start outsourcing their ethics to a chatbot? We're joined by Webb and The Spectator’s commissioning editor Mary Wakefield. (14:19)And finally, The Spectator’s Sam McPhail writes in this week’s magazine about how the football’s biggest stars are changing the way fans enjoy the game, and the way teams play it. To explain, Sam joins alongside Spectator contributor Damian Reilly. (25:09)Hosted by Lara Prendergast and William Moore.Produced by Max Jeffery, Joe Bedell-Brill and Linden Kemkaran. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest on this week's Book Club podcast is the investigative and tech writer James Ball, to talk about his new book The Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World. In it, James traces the rise and disturbing metastasis of what he calls 'the conspiracy theory that ate all the other conspiracy theories', and argues that what looks from the outside as an extreme set of fringe beliefs about Satanic paedophile rings running the Deep State is something we need to take very seriously indeed.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the 1800s, Qing China’s final century, European powers were expanding eastwards. The industrialised West, with its gunboats and muskets, and the soft power of Christianity, pushed around the dynasty’s last rulers.But was this period more than just a time of national suffering and humiliation for China? The British Museum's ongoing exhibit, China’s hidden century, tells the story of Qing China’s final decades. The more than 300 exhibits tell a story not only of decline, but of a complicated exchange between China and the West about culture, fashion, politics and ideas. Cindy reviewed China’s hidden century in The Spectator last month, and hosted a live Chinese Whispers recording about the exhibition in the British Museum a few weeks ago. Cindy was joined by Jeffrey Wasserstrom, a historian from University of California, Irvine, and by Isabel Hilton, the journalist and founder of China Dialogue. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.