The Bristol Cable

In the hours before this episode hit the streaming platforms, England beat Mexico in a famous 3-2 victory at the Estadio Azteca, keeping their World Cup dreams alive and setting up a meeting with Norway – fresh from knocking out Brazil – in the last eight of the competition. Yes, this week we’re all about the football, in conversation with Liam Smith, who coaches a group of players every bit as cu...

Talk Club, set up in a Bristol pub seven years ago, offers a space for men to get together and discuss their mental health. That’s something too few of us still do, as shown by the horrible statistic that in the UK, a man dies by suicide roughly every 90 minutes – the length of a football match. With this episode recorded during Men’s Health Week, and with the World Cup bringing many men together...

In December the government announced plans to invest £500m in the country’s youth services – which were gutted during austerity – and create 50 major new and revitalised youth hubs – including at Docklands in St Paul’s. Shockingly this is the first time there has been a national youth strategy in a couple of decades. Our guest today is a man who – like your host Neil – has a long history of workin...

This week we welcome back to Unpacked Paul Smith. Last time we had him on the show, in 2020, he was in the local news every week as the councillor in charge of Bristol's housing. For most of the last six years he's been out of the public spotlight, but in the last few weeks has been selected to help locals decide how to spend millions of pounds of government money in the place he grew up – Hartcli...

Welcome back after a short break to Bristol Unpacked, and the start of our new season running through until summer. For the first episode we welcome Yassin Mohamud, a Green councillor for Lawrence Hill, the ward that includes Barton Hill, which as well as sitting within the controversion East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood scheme was the scene of the disastrous Barton House tower block evacuation...

This week we welcome Lewis Wedlock to discuss his work as a ‘masculinities educator’ with young people in schools in Bristol and across the country. In our age of controversial 'hypermasculine' online influencers – perhaps most famously, Andrew Tate – this can be an eye-opening experience, to put it mildly. Of course the ‘manosphere’ of which Tate is part has broken massively into the wider consci...

What happens to families when a parent ends up in prison? That’s the question we’re getting into this week on Unpacked with Kerri Matthews, a director of Bristol's EveryFamily charity. Over more than a decade EveryFamily , which started as a SureStart children's centre, has developed specialist services working with families where a parent is in prison – something Kerri, a mum herself, has been at...

This week Unpacked gets into the difficult topic of trauma: what is it, who does it effect and how does it manifest? Our guest is someone who speaks wisely both from a personal and professional perspective, on how trauma, passing through generations, can affect not just individuals but entire communities. Heather Williams is CEO of Knowle West Park, and has spearheaded the organisation through a t...

Dr Edson Burton wears many different hats, both figuratively and literally. He’s a writer, performer, historian, poet, well-dressed man about town, and – as you’ll know if you follow his social channels – physical training enthusiast. So who better to wade into one of the thorniest issues of the day: what is our culture, and who does it belong to? In a freewheeling chat with Neil, Edson speaks abo...

When you’re known as the ‘King of Southmead’, how does it feel to be copping abuse on social media from the good people of Bristol? That’s the situation that former longtime Bristol Bears lock Joe Joyce, who grew up on the north Bristol estate, has faced this year after it was announced he will return to play rugby in the West Country – for rivals Gloucester. This week, Bristol Unpacked is taking...

Universal basic income means the state providing citizens with a bare-bones income that allows them to survive and keep a roof over their head. It’s an idea that’s been kicking around for decades. But with AI threatening people’s jobs and many arguing the benefits system is not fit for purpose, it’s seeing renewed interest and Bristol councillors passed a motion calling on the council to ask gover...

How does the Labour politician who oversees policing in Avon and Somerset feel about being cancelled by her own party after less than 18 months in office? This week we’re talking to Clare Moody, Avon & Somerset’s police and crime commissioner (PCC), who beat her Conservative predecessor Mark Shelford by 5,000 votes in 2024, albeit on a low turnout of 23%. In November, as we were finalising the...

Bristol Temple Quarter is the biggest redevelopment the city has seen in at least a generation, and will transform a vast area around Temple Meads station, St Philips Marsh and the Dings beyond recognition. Much of this has been untouched for decades, and while it’s mostly current or former industrial land, it also sits next-door to some of the city’s poorest communities around Lawrence Hill and B...

Before starting this series, we held a roundtable discussion with experts in the field of youth justice. We spoke about serious violence among young people, the root causes of it, and how it's represented in the media. Media outlets have lots to learn when it comes to rebuilding trust with the communities they serve, including young people. As does the criminal justice system, and the institutions...

The murder of James Bulger in 1993 by two 10-year-old boys was an horrific act of violence that essentially led to a huge change in the country’s youth justice system: the abolition of the legal term doli incapax (meaning incapable of evil). It meant that children as young as 10 were now deemed capable of committing crime – before then it was 14. Since this shift, England and Wales to this day has...

After a spate of serious youth violence last year, a wide-ranging review was launched by the Keeping Bristol Safe Partnership – a group of organisations including the city council and police. Researchers gathered information local services held about 10 young people who were involved in three different incidents – including those connected to the murders of three teenage boys, Max Dixon, Mason Ris...

In early 2024, three teenage boys were fatally stabbed on Bristol’s streets within 18 days. It was a grim start to the new year – one that thrust the issue of serious youth violence in the city further into the spotlight. What followed was a very public response from Bristol’s institutions – the police, the city council – promising they are doing all they can to stop further violence. We followed...

We've Got Your Boy is a new investigative podcast series on school exclusions, child imprisonment, and the roots of serious youth violence. Starting here, on the outskirts of Bristol, Vinney Green secure children's home. The age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales – it’s one of the lowest in the world. It’s before a child has even left primary school. But the pipeline to prison can sta...

Taxing and redistributing wealth to reduce inequality is an idea popular on the left, and is being pushed by some politicians including Green Party leader Zack Polanski. But it’s loathed by others who believe people should be able to hang on to what they have, whether that’s earned or inherited. This week we’re joined by Frances Howe, co-founder of local collective Bristol Redistro, which rather t...

Bristol North West MP Darren Jones is a man whose political rise has been rapid. From growing up in a Lawrence Weston council flat to representing his home turf as an MP, and since September assuming a new role as Keir Starmer’s chief secretary, Jones’ story is rooted in Bristol. In this week’s episode he talks to Neil about that journey and how his early experiences shaped his politics. But Jones...

Our guest today is no stranger to the show. Back in 2020, Neil spoke with Helen Godwin when she was a Bristol City Councillor. A lot has changed since then. Not only has the Bristol mayoral role been abolished, but a new Labour government is in power, and Helen Godwin now holds one of the West Country's most important political positions: the Mayor of the West of England Combined Authority ( WECA...

Neil scored a conversation with Bristol's homegrown boxing legend, Lee Haskins . You might know him as a former world champion, but today, ten years on from that victory, the two catch up to talk shop about Lee's ongoing legacy. He now runs his own family gym, Round One Boxing , where he trains and teaches alongside a roster of other professional fighters. They talk family life; some of Lee's kids...

So, this is a bit of a break from the usual, but we figured the lessons we can learn from radicals 200 years ago are every bit as relevant as those from today. Isaac is back out exploring, and this time he's in a Hotwells building that was once ground zero for radical science and politics in England: The Pneumatic Institute. This place was a hotbed in the late 1700s, right around the time of The F...

Warning: Contains discussions about grooming gangs in the second half This week it’s another episode of Bristol Unpacked. Islam is back in the firing line of the culture wars, with a new legal definition being drafted by Labour, and the grooming gang scandal very much overlapping with far-right narratives about the religion. We wanted to hone in on this national issue, as it's one having a ripple...

[TRIGGER WARNING: Communism] This episode comes from our last live show where we had international super comrade, professor Jodi Dean , blessing us with a discussion focussed on Communism in the modern age. As an outwardly left wing academic residing in the U.S.A, Jodi is often at the sharp end of the discourse, and she eloquently describes the importance of building a solidarity movement in tough...