The Prospect Podcast

This week we speak to Donald Macintyre, the author and journalist who was Jerusalem correspondent for the Independent. Macintyre has written an essay for our September issue on the gradual death of the two-state solution. Twenty-five years since the Oslo Accords were signed, it is no longer achievable. Time to look at a radical alternative? 

Plus: Alex Dean on the minimum wage and Sameer Rahim on...

This week it’s Eric Lonergan, the financier, economist and philosopher of money. Listeners will remember last year’s Bitcoin boom and bust but what next for cryptocurrencies? One day your coins may be able to decide how they are spent. Would that make the world a better place? Plus: Sameer Rahim on VS Naipaul and Alex Dean on the WTO. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Freya Johnston wrote a widely-discussed essay for our July issue on British politeness. Is there something rude about enforced civility? More worrying, is it all an act to hide far more barbaric instincts that lurk beneath the surface? She discusses these questions with Sameer Rahim. Plus: in politics and culture, Alex Dean and Stephanie Boland look north of the border. The topics are Brexit and t...

This week the Prospect team is joined by esteemed writer Sarah Churchwell. Churchwell’s new book Behold, America charts the origins of Donald Trump’s America First approach, which goes back much further than you’d think. She also asks: have we lost sight of the fact that equality was part of the American dream? Before we get to that, the Prospect staff discuss what’s new in politics and culture. H...

This week Zoe Williams speaks to Tom Clark about the left-wing path to a new Europe. But what would that look like and where does Jeremy Corbyn fit in? If the Labour leader did get into Downing Street could he really do a better job than the current crop? Williams raised these questions in her essay for our August issue. Plus: Alex Dean talks select committees and Sameer Rahim on the Man Booker. H...

Eight-year-olds playing Chopin is certainly impressive, but is it good for children to develop prodigious skills so early on? Suna Erdem talks to Prospect about maestros in miniature, whether they’ll grow up hating their parents, and why we’re so fixated on the concept of the youthful genius anyway. Erdem wrote on the subject for our August issue. Also: Alex Dean discusses the future of the Brexit...

This week Ben Rhodes speaks to Steve Bloomfield. Rhodes was formerly at the centre of the Obama administration: he started as a speechwriter but quickly became one of Obama’s closest advisors on foreign policy. He was there for some of the most important geopolitical events in recent history. 

His new book is called The World As It Is: Inside the Obama White House. Bloomfield reviewed it for our...

This week Cal Flyn speaks to Stephanie Boland about Britain’s other languages. Flyn wrote about learning Scottish Gaelic in our July 2018 issue. But what is the place of Gaelic in Scotland—and are dying languages really worth saving? Flyn certainly thinks so, and argues that all of us should be taking lessons. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rock music is on the way down, music magazines aren’t what they used to be—but there are still an awful lot of sharp pens around. That’s the opinion of DJ Taylor who expands on his piece in Prospect’s July issue and talks to Sameer Rahim about the rock memoir. It’s a curious genre and we might think of it as unsophisticated, but actually it is at the centre of a new golden age of rock writing. Bef...

This week, as last, there’s one big story: Brexit and the Conservative Party. Theresa May just about managed to see off Remainer rebellion in the Commons. But is it a hollow victory? Tom Clark asks whether after 300 years, Brexit could be the row that finally sinks the Tories. 

It’s not just in Britain that the traditionally dominant centre-right is on its knees; Andrew Gamble argues in our new i...

This week saw a series of crunch votes in the commons on the EU withdrawal bill and the role of parliament in the exit process. The government escaped defeat—just—but only by making dramatic last minute concessions. It promised Tory Remainers that parliament will indeed play a significant role. Antoinette Sandbach was one of the MPs to receive personal assurances from the prime minister and she ex...

When Michael McFaul became the United States' ambassador to Russia, he didn't realise what he was letting himself in for. As the architect of Barack Obama's "Reset," he thought he'd be welcomed. But instead Vladimir Putin's cronies orchestrated a campaign of harassment and spread lurid personal allegations. McFaul talks to Sameer Rahim about his new book, From Cold War to Hot Peace, which tells of...

This week it’s football. The World Cup is fast approaching and we are preparing for what is usually one of the greatest sporting spectacles on earth. But with a cloud of corruption hanging over the event, could we fall out of love with the World Cup altogether? 

Jonathan Liew of the Independent has written an essay on this subject for our June issue. Here he talks the question through with Prospe...

Sameer Rahim talks to philosopher John Gray about what atheists get wrong about atheism. Dismissing the "God debate," which as a non-believer Gray has no interest in, instead he focuses on the variety of atheisms on offer in the modern world: from liberalism as a modern day secular religion to the atheism of silence of Spinoza. Gray, as usual, takes no prisoners. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/pri...

China is the new great global power. But while much has been said about China’s economic and military heft, what about the rise of Chinese ideas? As Beijing grows increasingly dominant we will have to decide how firmly we hold western values of academic freedom and human rights: they will increasingly be challenged. Tom Clark is joined by Isabel Hilton, who has written an essay on China for our ne...

The unipolar world of a dominant United States is falling away as other nations—most prominently China—come to the fore. Ian Bremmer, the American political scientist, speaks to Prospect Deputy Editor Steve Bloomfield about his new book Us and Them. The average citizen across the west is not a believer in "globalism," he says. Executive Editor Jay Elwes speaks to David Omand, former head of GCHQ a...

We’ve all read the local election headlines by now: disappointment for Labour, relief for the Conservatives. But what are the deeper trends at play? For this week’s edition of Headspace the Prospect team tunnels deeper into the results with help from psephology great David Butler and Jade Azim, head of Women in Political Data. We ask why Labour failed to deliver on expectations and what it all mea...

Article 50 is ticking down and the politics is getting messier. A series of government defeats in the Lords are setting the stage for a dramatic scrap in the Commons. John Kerr, the man who wrote the exit clause, sits down with Victoria Hewson of the Institute of Economic Affairs, as well as Prospect’s Tom Clark and Alex Dean. They try to make sense of the unfolding drama in Westminster. Just how...

The novelist Will Self talks to Prospect's Tom Clark and Sameer Rahim about his experiences with drugs, and how they’ve shaped his view of the world. He discusses his recent essay for Prospect which examines the new book by Michael Pollan and also offers some useful advice for those who’ve accidentally taken too much acid. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If modern economic theory led to the Financial Crisis of 2008, some of its basic ideas need to change—but how? In this podcast, Howard Reed describes how the discipline went wrong, and how it must be reformed and Linda Yueh asks how the great economists of the nineteenth century might have reacted to modern times. And if we do develop a new economic outlook, who will be in No 10 to implement it? J...

Britain’s international relationships are in a highly sensitive moment, not only with adversaries such as Russia but with more traditionally friendly states such as the United States. And with Vladimir Putin playing the poison-handed joker on the world stage, how should Britain approach these crucial diplomatic challenges? What can Britain offer and what do we want? This podcast features interview...

Jay Elwes takes a deep dive into the aftermath of the attempted assassination in Salisbury of Sergei and Yulia Skripal. Why has this happened? Can we be certain Russia is behind it? What is Putin’s game? Featuring comment from Jonathan Eyal, one of Britain’s most experienced Russia experts, Pauline Neville-Jones, the former head of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee, and Anatol Lieven of Georgeto...

This week Tom Clark, editor of Prospect, sits down with Cathy Rentzenbrink, the writer, and Joanna Bourke, the social historian, to discuss our changing relationship with death. Medical science is now able to prolong human life in a way that was unthinkable even ten years ago. But is it in our interest to extend life in that way? Who benefits from putting people into this half-alive state? And how...

This week, Prospect’s Editor Tom Clark sits down with Shami Chakrabarti, the lawyer and Labour peer whose new book, "Of Women," takes a close look at the place of women in society and reveals in uncomfortable detail the gross unfairness that they still face. But then the Labour Party is not immune from sexism in its own ranks—and unlike the Conservative Party has never had a female leader. Chakrab...

Prospect Editor Tom Clark sits down with Steven Pinker, the Harvard scientist, to discuss his new book on the Enlightenment and how that period in the development of human thought continues to shape our world. The ideals of reason and tolerance are winning out, he says, and the result is immense material progress. Things are quite simply getting better all the time—contrary to popular belief. That...