Bedste Long Reads-podcasts (2023)

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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Inside the Conservative party’s radical right 30:16

3d ago30:16

30:16

May 2023 saw two significant gatherings of the Tory right: the Conservative Democratic Organisation (CDO) in Bournemouth, and the National Conservative Conference in London. The latter was organised by the US-based think tank the Edmund Burke Foundation, and drew heavily on its ideas about family, faith and the failures of globalism and liberal ind…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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‘It’s a state of terror’: inside Haiti’s descent into chaos 26:27

10d ago26:27

26:27

In May 2023, the UN reported that 600 people had been killed in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince in the previous month alone – victims of gang violence and the near total collapse of law and order. In April the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, warned that insecurity in the country had “reached levels comparable to countries in armed conflict” …

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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Why Liverpool bet big on Eurovision 17:16

17d ago17:16

17:16

Liverpool has a rich musical history, from the Beatles to Echo and the Bunnymen, and beat six other British cities to become the 2023 host of Eurovision. Can the annual jamboree of geopolitics and high camp help the city overcome recent scandals? In this entertaining long read, the New Statesman’s culture writer Kate Mossman visits the city and mee…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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Inside the mind of King Charles III 39:57

24d ago39:57

39:57

Since 1993, the king has been visiting a village in deepest Romania – once a year, alone. He owns two houses there, and is revered by the locals, for whom he has installed a sewage system and worked to protect their traditional way of life. What draws him there? In this fascinating and deeply reported long read, New Statesman commissioning editor W…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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The slow, sad death of the print newspaper 26:42

1M ago26:42

26:42

The freelance journalist Tim de Lisle is a lifelong newspaper addict, and still buys two papers a day, three at weekends. In this elegy to their demise, he tracks his own love affair with them, from a schoolboy in search of the football results, to sports reporter, music critic and media studies lecturer. Is the future of news entirely digital, or …

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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Xi, Putin and the new world order 25:53

1M ago25:53

25:53

In the postwar world, Stalin and the Soviet Union wielded greater power over Mao Zedong's new communist China. Today, following China’s rise as an economic superpower and Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, it is Beijing that has the upper hand – and on whom Russia’s future depends. When Xi Jinping arrived in Moscow for a three-day visit in March 2023, he…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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Confessions of a philosopher: Bryan Magee’s final interview 22:21

1M ago22:21

22:21

As a philosophy student in the 1980s, the New Statesman’s editor-in-chief Jason Cowley learned more from Bryan Magee than from any seminar or lecture. Magee’s 1987 BBC television series The Great Philosophers, described by one critic as “two boffins on a sofa”, examined some of life’s most recondite questions in an accessible way. Magee was also a …

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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Inside the migrant revival of British Christianity 19:51

2M ago19:51

19:51

According to the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, the face of British Christianity is changing rapidly. London is now home to the greatest concentration of African churches outside Africa – many of them in bingo halls and warehouses, schools and community centres, where they also serve as social and charitable hubs. Outside the capi…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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Why Taiwan is already under attack 22:22

2M ago22:22

22:22

In January 2023, a leaked memo from the US air force general Mike Minihan revealed that he expected to be at war with China over Taiwan by 2025. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had raised the stakes, as had Beijing’s consistent refusal to rule out military action. But is a full-scale invasion the real threat, or is the territory’s struggle for indepen…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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Are we headed for another banking crisis? 20:48

2M ago20:48

20:48

After a series of bad bets on the post-pandemic economy, California-based Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) lost 60% of its value on the evening of 8 March 2023, and $42bn in withdrawals the following day. Its collapse triggered panic across the US, and in Europe, where Switzerland’s second-largest lender Credit Suisse (already dubbed ‘Debit Suisse’) was a…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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The long shadow of the Iraq War: how one town honoured Britain’s fallen soldiers 1:02:30

2M ago1:02:30

1:02:30

It started as an accident of geography: after one RAF runway closed, the bodies of British soldiers killed in action were repatriated from Iraq and Afghanistan to RAF Lyneham and then through the Wiltshire market town of Wootton Bassett, on their way to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. From April 2007 until August 2011 the town became the sit…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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The long and stupid decline of the British university 22:23

3M ago22:23

22:23

Once the envy of the world, British universities are being hollowed out by a managerial class, argues Adrian Pabst, a New Statesman contributing writer and professor of politics at the University of Kent. Instead of intellectual excellence and civic responsibility, the emphasis is increasingly on “churning out graduates who will serve the interests…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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The strange death of moderate conservatism 25:51

3M ago25:51

25:51

Much ink has been spilled in recent years on the woes of centre-left parties across the West – some of it prematurely, as Joe Biden, Olaf Scholz, Spain’s Pedro Sánchez, Australia’s Anthony Albanese and perhaps soon Keir Starmer in Britain can attest. The bigger and quite possibly more lasting story of political decline, however, is on the centre-ri…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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The rise and fall of Nicola Sturgeon 21:28

3M ago21:28

21:28

The New Statesman’s Scotland editor Chris Deerin has been reporting on the SNP since 1996, when as a young political correspondent he sparred with its then leader Alex Salmond. The party was then an outlier, with only three Scottish MPs to Labour’s 49. Just over ten years later, in 2007, Salmond became first minister and appointed a shy, ambitious …

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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Can literature teach us how to grieve? 18:02

3M ago18:02

18:02

When her mother died Johanna Thomas-Corr, the literary editor of the Sunday Times, fretted that she was misremembering her somehow. “I kept reaching for my own figures of speech, only for them to writhe out of my hands,” she writes. “Writing about her was easy: she was so distinctive. But writing about my relationship with her – this was a slippery…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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The great housing con: why the coming crash will rewrite the UK economy 26:30

4M ago26:30

26:30

Every year since 2009 new records have been set for UK house prices, and every year people have asked how long the market can continue to defy gravity. But this year is different. Mortgage rates have risen steeply, while the cost of living accelerates; the past four months have seen the longest sustained drop in property prices since 2008. And it’s…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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“Nothing prepares you”: a journey through Ukraine at war 16:46

4M ago16:46

16:46

In late January 2023 the New Statesman’s Bruno Macaes travelled to the front lines in Ukraine. In the Donbas, in the east, he found scenes of total devastation – levelled villages and burned forests, the remaining residents “walking the streets like ghosts”. At the front the Russian army is sending wave after wave of troops in the hope of making th…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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Lea Ypi on mothers, the motherland and the cruelties of UK immigration 13:32

4M ago13:32

13:32

In November 2022 Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, told parliament that the south coast of England faced “an invasion” of small boats. “If Labour were in charge,” she said, “they would be allowing all the Albanian criminals to come to this country.” Since then, others have suggested that the nearly 200 unaccompanied children found to have gone …

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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A doctor’s prescription for saving the NHS 20:20

4M ago20:20

20:20

In south-west England, where Phil Whitaker practises as a GP, his colleagues have frequently resorted to driving critically ill patients to hospital – because there are no ambulances, or because the queue for emergency care is typically eight hours long. In January 2023 the Royal College of Emergency Medicine estimated that 500 patients were dying…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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The good social network: what Twitter could learn from the coffeehouse 23:04

5M ago23:04

23:04

As Twitter and Facebook stumble through Elon Musk’s takeover and Mark Zuckerberg’s insistence on the metaverse, questions abound about the future of social media. What sort of news and discussion should it host and encourage? What should be its attitude to participation, networking, user rights and free speech? What should be its business model? Wh…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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From the archive: Trotsky in Mexico; Angela Carter on the maternity ward 18:18

5M ago18:18

18:18

In a second archive edition of the audio long read, we bring you two classic magazine articles. In the first, the then editor of the New Statesman, Kingsley Martin, visits Leon Trotsky in Mexico in 1937, where the Russian communist revolutionary was the guest of the artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo (here referred to only as “Rivera’s wife”, tho…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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From the archive: when HG Wells met Josef Stalin 42:43

5M ago42:43

42:43

HG Wells’s interview with Stalin in 1934, and the debate that followed, was one of the most striking episodes in the history of the New Statesman. Wells – the novelist and socialist famous for science fiction such as The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds – used the interview to try to coax Stalin into a more conciliatory position, challenging …

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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Then Later, His Ghost: a Christmas story by Sarah Hall 34:08

5M ago34:08

34:08

It is 23 December, some time in the future, and a storm rages outside the house. Inside there are supplies and an expectant mother sleeps. Is it safe to venture out and fetch her gift? In this post-apocalyptic story the novelist and short story writer Sarah Hall (The Electric Michaelangelo, Burntcoat) imagines a mysterious landscape ravaged by weat…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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Karl Ove Knausgaard: a personal manifesto on the art of fiction 19:52

5M ago19:52

19:52

Why do we read? In this essay, the Norwegian author explores meaning and purpose in the novel, from the work of Claire Keegan to Dostoevsky and DH Lawrence. The form’s power lies in its openness, he writes, its capacity to defy the absolutes of politics, philosophy or science: “It pulls any abstract conception about life… into the human sphere, whe…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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A brief history of “woke”: how one word fuelled the culture wars 45:03

6M ago45:03

45:03

Speaking in the House of Commons on 18 October, the Home Secretary Suella Braverman denounced the opposition to her proposed Public Order Bill as “the Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati”. The next day, she posted her resignation letter on Twitter. It had been a busy 24 hours in the war on woke. On TalkTV, Piers Morgan had bemoaned the rise of t…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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World Prince: what drives Emmanuel Macron’s global ambitions? 29:42

6M ago29:42

29:42

If Europe today has a dominant leader, it is Emmanuel Macron. He has big, deeply thought-through ideas about his country's role in Europe and the world, and grand ambitions for enhancing it. Following his re-election as French president in April, he is now secure in office until 2027. And having lost his legislative majority at elections in June, h…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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Are 'Substackademics' the new public intellectuals? 17:37

6M ago17:37

17:37

Roy Jenkins, while serving as president of the European Commission, used to spend his mornings writing. The heads of state who visited him were often keener to speak about his biographies of Asquith or Gladstone than about new legislation. This integration of politics, scholarship and the media was once a feature of British intellectual life, from …

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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Era of the rogue superpower: what Trump’s bid means for the US, Russia and China 17:48

6M ago17:48

17:48

On 15 November, despite a poor showing in the US midterm elections for the candidates he had backed, Donald Trump surprised no one in announcing his second run for the presidency. What does his official return to the political stage mean for the Republican Party – and for America, Russia and China? In this essay, the New Statesman’s China and globa…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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Margaret Atwood: why I don’t write utopias 15:30

7M ago15:30

15:30

In 2001 Margaret Atwood began writing the novel Oryx and Crake. She started from the idea of species extinction, including human extinction. How long have we got? And would we bring about our own demise? The premise of Oryx and Crake was that, since we have the capability to bioengineer a virus capable of wiping out humanity, someone might be tempt…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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The ADHD decade: what’s behind the surge in adult diagnoses? 27:44

7M ago27:44

27:44

On both sides of the Atlantic, the number of people being diagnosed with ADHD is rising. Psychiatry UK, which provides both private and NHS-funded assessments, reports that it is receiving around 150 ADHD referrals a day; in 2022 the organisation expanded its prescribing team from ten to 60. Why are more people being told they have ADHD? Partly, th…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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Britain after a nuclear attack: the BBC film that shocked a generation 26:37

7M ago26:37

26:37

Four years ago, the New Statesman published a long read by Jude Rogers marking the reissue of two landmark British films released at the height of the Cold War: Threads in 1984, and When the Wind Blows in 1986. Both films explore the devastating effects of nuclear attacks on ordinary people, and hoped to educate the public, as well as politicians, …

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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Rebecca Solnit on hope, despair and climate action 19:58

7M ago19:58

19:58

Rebecca Solnit has been writing about hope for nearly 20 years, starting with her 2003 essay "Hope in the Dark", which became a bestselling book of the same name. What began as a response to the cynicism that followed the invasion of Iraq ("we didn’t stop the war, we have no power, we can’t win") has evolved into a sustained argument for the value …

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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Grayson Perry on the rise and fall of Default Man 26:44

8M ago26:44

26:44

In 2014, the Turner Prize-winning artist Grayson Perry guest-edited the New Statesman on the theme of the “Great White Male”. Perry, who is known for his subversive ceramics and tapestries as well as his cross-dressing alter-ego Claire, wanted to explore issues of gender, masculinity, Britishness, class and the grip that white male power still exer…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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Grow-your-own steak: seeking a cure for the planet’s meat addiction 26:07

8M ago26:07

26:07

Even the most ardent carnivore might struggle to argue that meat is a force for good. The global livestock industry produces more greenhouse gases than the exhaust from every form of transport on the planet combined. And while doctors try to curb antibiotic prescription, 80 per cent of antibiotics used in the US are administered to healthy animals …

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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What drives Liz Truss? The people and ideas behind the PM’s economics 28:24

8M ago28:24

28:24

On 23 September 2022, the UK’s new prime minister and her chancellor delivered their explosive “mini-Budget”, cutting taxes for the richest in society and increasing government borrowing. Global markets were alarmed – but should the reality of Trussonomics have taken anyone by surprise? In this reported long read, the New Statesman’s writer at larg…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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The making and meaning of Giorgia Meloni 24:54

8M ago24:54

24:54

Giorgia Meloni started out as the awkward outsider, a woman from humble Roman roots in an Italy whose politics have long been dominated by alpha men from the north – Silvio Berlusconi, Matteo Renzi, Beppe Grillo, Matteo Salvini. Now the post-fascist party she fronts - Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy, or FdI) – is widely expected to take the la…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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Would there have been climate change under socialism? 21:46

8M ago21:46

21:46

The idea that, without capitalism, the planet might not be facing so great a climate crisis is well established, appearing in works like Naomi Klein’s bestselling This Changes Everything (2014) and from the growing ranks of “eco-socialist” activists. But in this essay, the science writer (and committed socialist) Leigh Phillips argues that an entir…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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Queen Elizabeth II and the end of empire 17:06

9M ago17:06

17:06

In 1947, on her 21st birthday, Elizabeth Windsor promised that when she ascended the royal throne she would serve “our great imperial family”. By the time of her coronation six years later, the Crown’s ties with empire were already significantly weaker. Yet for the duration of her 70-year reign, Queen Elizabeth II would remain a human link to old i…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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What is left of Princess Diana? 21:42

9M ago21:42

21:42

The shock of her death on 31 August 1997 sparked mass public mourning, a crisis within the royal family, and a test of the prime minister Tony Blair’s leadership. A quarter of a century later, how is “the People’s Princess” remembered? Reporter Tanya Gold goes in search of the woman behind the myths, the movies and the conspiracy theories – visitin…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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Archive: I was Joni Mitchell’s “Carey” 38:18

9M ago38:18

38:18

For 50 years, the “mean old daddy” immortalised in one of Mitchell’s best-loved songs was an enigma. For the first time, he tells his side of the story to the New Statesman’s lead interviewer, Kate Mossman. Kate and Cary Raditz met in Paris in late 2021 to talk about a love affair that began on the island of Crete in the spring of 1970, continued i…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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The battle for the soul of English cricket 27:26

9M ago27:26

27:26

On 16 November 2021, testified to parliament about his experiences of racism while playing for Yorkshire County Cricket Club. The off-spinner and former England youth captain said that, between 2008 and 2018, he had been repeatedly subjected to racial slurs, excluded and portrayed as a troublemaker. The fallout was catastrophic, at Yorkshire and ac…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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How the British university degree lost its value 35:13

10M ago35:13

35:13

Three years ago the New Statesman published a cover story showing how successive British governments have emaciated standards in UK university degrees, creating a generation of graduates with devalued qualifications, while costing the taxpayer billions. Since then, the “great university con” has continued unabated. Grade inflation has only increase…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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Thomas Mann, German identity and the romantic allure of Russia 24:16

10M ago24:16

24:16

Why, six months into Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, is Germany still struggling to come to terms with the new European reality? For explanations, some point to the country’s reliance on Russian gas; others to the legacy of the Second World War or the Cold War. Yet, as Jeremy Cliffe argues in this essay from the New Statesman’s 2022 Summer Special…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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Euro 22: how women’s football became the more beautiful game 27:02

10M ago27:02

27:02

On Boxing Day 1920, 53,000 people watched the Dick, Kerr Ladies beat St Helens Ladies 4-0 at Goodison Park – the largest-ever crowd recorded for a women’s football match in England. The game had blossomed during the First World War, as lunch-break kickabouts at munitions factories evolved into 150 women’s clubs across the country. But months after …

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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Boris Johnson: the death of the clown 33:38

10M ago33:38

33:38

On 7 July 2022 Boris Johnson announced he would resign as Prime Minister. Despite surviving a series of scandals, Covid-19 and a parliamentary no-confidence vote, Westminster’s “greased piglet” was finally undone by the alleged sexual improprieties of his chief whip, Christopher Pincher, and the mass resignation of his cabinet. For many, the myster…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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How to grow old in America 23:25

11M ago23:25

23:25

Soon after finishing his most recent book, The Last Days of Roger Federer, the author Geoff Dyer decided to follow in his hero’s footsteps and have surgery. “Strictly speaking, I was following in the footsteps of Novak Djokovic and Stefanos Tsitsipas,” he writes, “in that I would be having surgery on my elbow (left) rather than a knee, but that’s j…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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The lonely decade: how the 1990s shaped us 28:52

11M ago28:52

28:52

On the eve of the millennium, JG Ballard noted how “everything is clean and shiny but oddly threatening”. The dawn of the 1990s had heralded a period of economic prosperity, of globalisation, relative peace and hi-tech connectivity – but did we end the decade more divided than ever? In this deeply researched and wide-ranging essay, first published …

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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How to build a language: inside the Oxford English Dictionary 32:51

11M ago32:51

32:51

The New Statesman’s Pippa Bailey has long had a professional as well as a personal interest in the OED: she and the team of sub-editors she leads rely on the world’s most comprehensive dictionary to answer questions of meaning and spelling. So it was a labour of love when she visited its Oxford HQ to meet the lexicographers whose decisions – about …

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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The psychiatrists who don’t believe in mental illness 28:26

11M ago28:26

28:26

In the wake of the pandemic, mental health referrals for adults and children have doubled. Has Covid sparked a parallel wave of mental illness? Or is grief and sadness a natural response to those months of isolation, uncertainty and daily death tolls? In this richly reported long read, New Statesman associate editor and feature writer Sophie McBain…

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Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman

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How does a music writer grieve? With playlists of course 34:21

12M ago34:21

34:21

Music writer Pete Paphides has turned to songwriters and musicians, from Abba to the Undertones, to make sense of all the big moments in his life. So when he got the call he was dreading, to say that his father was dying, it was music that saw him through shock, denial and loss. In this moving audio essay, read by the author, Paphides explores both…

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