Best of the Spectator

This week: Paul Wood writes about meeting Syria’s underground drug lords (0:30) Mary Wakefield warns us of the perils of psychoactive drug therapy (10:30) and Melissa Kite defends her friend who has been excluded from AA (17:13).

Emma Sayle is the founder and CEO of Killing Kittens, a sexually liberated social network where women come first. She grew up in a military family, and when not in boarding school, Emma would visit her parents all over the world. On the podcast, Emma talks to Katy about her 'outsider's mindset' – never truly feeling like she could fit in; becoming an entrepreneur in the sex tech industry and where the name Killing Kittens came from. Produced by Natasha Feroze.

This week:How long will the pain last?The Spectator's economics editor Kate Andrews asks this in her cover piece this week, reflecting on Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt's autumn statement. She joins the podcast with Professor David Miles, economy expert at the Office for Budget Responsibility, to discuss the new age of austerity (00:58).Also on the podcast:After Donald Trump announced that he will be running for office in 2024, Freddy Gray writes in the magazine about the never ending Trump campaign. He speaks to Joe Walsh, 2020 Republican presidential candidate, about whether Trump could win the nomination (18:42).And finally:In the arts lead in The Spectator Mathew Lyons celebrates the bleak brilliance of the Peanuts comic strip. He is joined by Christian Adams, political cartoonist at the Evening Standard and long-time fan of the strip (29:02). Hosted by William Moore. Produced by Oscar Edmondson. 

My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is Edward Mendelson, who with the publication of the Complete Poems of W H Auden in two volumes now sets the crown on more than half a century of scholarship on the poet. There’s nobody on the planet who knows more about this towering figure in twentieth-century poetry. He tells me what he finds so inexhaustibly rewarding about Auden’s work, talks about the shape of the poet’s career, the personal encounters that set him on this path… and about sex, religion and semicolons.

With climate activists around the world vandalising great works by Monet, van Gogh and Goya, Winston speaks with environmentalist, conservationist and pro-nuclear activist Michael Shellenberger. They discuss the validity of Just Stop Oil's methods and environmental imperialism at this years United Nations Climate Change Conference. They take a deep dive into Shellenberger's book 'Apocalypse Never', evaluate the environmentalist case for fracking and consider why nuclear will save us all. 

When the city of Zhengzhou, home to the world’s largest iPhone factory, locked down recently, some of its factory workers had nowhere to go. Hoping to escape Covid restrictions, many of them walked miles along motorways to their hometowns, their journey captured by video and shared on social media in China and out.This episode is all about China’s migrant working class – poorly paid and often poorly educated people from the countryside who go to cities like Zhengzhou for better lives. There are hundreds of millions of these so-called ‘internal migrants’, making their story an important part to understand if you want to understand modern China.Even now, 'on average urban residents are making at least more than 2.5 times the income as the average rural resident', Professor Cindy Fan tells me on this episode. She's an expert on Chinese migration and population patterns at UCLA. Most commonly, migrants will send their earnings back to home villages and towns, where they have left behind family members. Often, children are being looked after by grandparents while the parents are earning away from home.Cindy and I discuss the role played by these migrants – often unwelcomed in the cities but vital for urban areas to develop, grow and function. We go deep into the hukou system – household registration – that gives urban residents rights and privileges that migrant workers cannot access, making them second class citizens. But ultimately, as the Chinese are wont to do, many migrant workers make the system work for them. They don't necessarily want to swallow urban life wholesale:'Rural migrants are pretty smart... Yes they are victims… but at the same time, they are also weighing their options, they’re also strategising. They’re not just passive.'

This week: Isabel Hardman asks how Ed Miliband is the power behind Kier Starmer's Labour (00:57), Matthew Parris says we've lost interest in our dependencies (05:03), Graeme Thomson mourns the loss of the B-side (11:57), and Caroline Moore reads her Notes on... war memorials (16:51). Produced and presented by Oscar Edmondson.

This week Freddy is joined by Matt McDonald, US managing editor of The Spectator, who is covering the midterms from Georgia. What will the result of the run-off be there and could this decide who takes control of the Senate? 

On the podcast:In his cover piece for the magazine, The Spectator's deputy editor Freddy Gray says the only clear winner from the US midterms is paranoia. He is joined by The Spectator's economics editor Kate Andrews to discuss whether the American political system is broken (00:52).Also this week:Isabel Hardman writes that Ed Miliband is the power behind Kier Starmer's Labour. She is joined by former Labour advisor Lord Stewart Wood of Anfield, to consider whether Starmer is wise to lend his ear to the former Leader of the Opposition (12:48).And finally:King Charles III is known for his love of classical music, and Damian Thompson writes in this week's arts lead that he is the most musical monarch since Queen Victoria. He is joined by editor of Gramophone magazine Martin Cullingford, to examine the great royal tradition of musicality (25:32). Presented by William Moore. Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

My guest in this week's Book Club Podcast is Christopher de Hamel, author of the new The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club. He tells me about the enduring fascination of illuminated manuscripts, and the fraternity over more than a millennium of those who have loved, coveted, collected, sold, illustrated and – in one case – forged them.