The Standard

Journalist Sam Fishwick’s been talking to members of the Extinction Rebellion campaign group as it returns to London’s streets for a planned two week long protest. He tells us how the group once dismissed as “crusties” by Boris Johnson has made real world change, but is struggling to overcome its reputation as being loaded with white middle-class eco-warriors. He also talks about the struggles the...

Marzia Babakarkhail is a former Afghan judge who fled Afghanistan when the Taliban targeted her for assassination during their first time in power in 1996. In this edition of the Leader podcast, she tells us why she was targeted for her work helping divorced women and how she hid for five hours while nine Taliban soldiers ransacked her house looking for her. In an extraordinarily powerful intervie...

US historian Christopher Phelps, associate professor at Nottingham University, tells us Joe Biden’s “visceral, personal” opinions on Afghanistan have been shaped by his feelings as a father. His son, Beau, served in Iraq in 2009. He died in 2015 from a brain tumour, and Christopher says many of President Biden’s decisions in the Oval Office appear to have been influenced his family. We also discus...

Our political correspondent Sophia Sleigh joins the podcast after the Prime Minister was savaged by MPs from all sides of the house during a debate on Afghanistan. MPs were recalled to Parliament from their summer break, three days after Afghanistan’s capital Kabul fell to the Taliban. Mr. Johnson said the sacrifice in Afghanistan was “seared into our national consciousness” and that the UK looked...

Afghanistan and authoritarian regime expert Professor Natasha Lindstaedt joins the podcast to explain why it's important Western countries try to talk to the Taliban, even though attempts to moderate them will be "extremely difficult". She describes how isolating the country under the extremist group could lead to further abuses of its people. She also explains why Afghanistan has been "impossible...

The Evening Standard’s Defence Editor Robert Fox and Political Correspondent Sophia Sleigh join the show to breakdown what’s happening in Afghanistan and what’s next? Robert tells us how the US got “sucker punched” by a behind-the-scenes deal with the Taliban that was brokered without the Afghan government’s knowledge. Sophia says the UK was so surprised at the pace of the country’s collapse that...

This week, 21 firefighters from the United Kingdom volunteered to help Greece battle some of the worst wildfires the country has ever seen. They included experts from London, Merseyside, Wales, the West Midlands and Lancashire, who have been dispatched to Arcadia where the blazes remain fierce two weeks after they were ignited. Team leader Tony Brown joins the podcast to tell us how their humanita...

The Evening Standard’s education editor, Anna Davis, is back on the show as the GCSE results are revealed. They show another record year, with 28.9 per cent graded 7/A and above, compared with 26.2 per cent last year. In 2019, the last year exams were held, the figure was 20.8 per cent. Leading the way is London, which has better results than anywhere else in the country… but why? Also, as with A-...

The Evening Standard’s courts correspondent Tristan Kirk joins the show as the lawyer representing the Duke of York’s accuser has warned against anyone ignoring the US courts, claiming the royal’s legal team have “stonewalled” appeals for information. Virginia Giuffre is suing the Queen’s son for allegedly sexually assaulting her when she was a teenager, and has said it was “past the time for him...

Students across England, Wales and Northern Ireland are celebrating record-breaking success in this year’s A-Levels, with London doing the best in the country. Our Education Editor Anna Davis tells us why the Capital’s performed so well, and also looks at the mystery of why girls have done better than boys this year? She also discusses the dilemma facing universities with a record 435,430 people h...

A UN report into global climate change has laid bare how extreme weather events are set to increase in coming years with global temperatures set to rise by more than 1.5C. We're joined by one of the contributors to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change study, Dr Laura Wilcox of Reading University. She tells how as a scientist the findings are "scary," but insists there are still ways to tu...

The Evening Standard’s Anthony France joins us from Tokyo where he’s been reporting on a unique Olympic Games. There have been Cold War-style defections of athletes, a typhoon, an earthquake, Covid-19 restrictions and even some events on the field like Simone Biles pulling out of competitions. But Anthony tells us how his mind has changed about the Games, shifting from wondering why it was happeni...

The Evening Standard’s Jonathan Prynn tells us about the latest changes to England’s traffic light travel list system. He tells us which countries have been put onto the green list and has the ‘amber plus’ column been scrapped now that its only member, France, has been taken off it.  We also talk about the plight of around 6,000 British holidaymakers in Mexico. That country has just been...

The Evening Standard’s political correspondent Sophia Sleigh is on the show to break down reports that 16-17-year-olds are to be offered the Covid-19 vaccination. We discuss why the move’s being made now and how difficult it might be to persuade busy young people, or sceptical parents, to actually take the shot. Under existing guidance, young people aged 16 to 17 with underlying health conditions...

Our political editor Nicholas Cecil joins the show to tell us about the government minister who says it’s the “duty” of older workers to get back to the office so they can guide their younger colleagues. Skills minister Gillian Keegan is also urging firms to use the summer to “ramp up” getting staff back into the office. She stressed that many young employees had missed out on key development expe...

Evening Standard reporter Rachael Burford tells us what happened at Heathrow when the first passengers arrived following the UK lifting quarantine restrictions for the vaccinated. She tells us about the scenes of joy as families kept apart by the pandemic, some for nearly two years, were finally reunited. At Terminal 5, dozens of families were waiting to see their relatives, who live in the U...

In this special edition of the Leader podcast we’re in Malawi to look at how a 24-year-old music student has become a hero in the country’s fight against Covid-19.  Maggie Mkandawire had to return to her home village from the capital Lilongwe when coronavirus restrictions fell in March 2020. Finding herself at a loose end, she started making affordable facemasks from a traditional cotton...

Leading travel journalist Simon Calder joins the podcast to try to explain what the government’s doing with international travel, as the UK opens up its borders but other countries keep theirs all but closed to Brits. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab’s hinted more destinations will be added to our so-called “green-list” and pressure’s being applied to the US to open up a corridor with the UK. But Si...

England’s opening up its borders to double-jabbed US and EU travellers, now will other countries let our tourists in? We speak to travel expert Paul Charles who suggests Washington’s unlikely to budge soon on its current restrictions against UK passengers as the Delta variant surges Stateside. But he suggests places like Italy and others in the EU might finally start to look more favourably on Bri...

The Evening Standard’s political editor Nicholas Cecil takes a look at the stats as one of the country’s leading epidemiologists says the pandemic will be “largely over by October”. Professor Neil Ferguson, who was one of the scientists behind the UK’s first lockdown in March 2020, was talking to BBC Radio 4 as figures show another tumble in cases – in London it’s down 57% in six days. But the Pri...

As a huge clean-up begins following a night of flooding in parts of London, people are wondering how one of the world’s leading cities can be hit so badly by rainfall. Evening Standard reporter Rachael Burford’s been looking at that for the newspaper and tells the podcast there are “numerous” reasons behind it. London Fire Brigade had taken more than 1,000 calls by the early hours of Monday mornin...

We know it can order groceries when your fridge is empty, turn on the lights in your house, even drive a car but could AI ever be smart enough to become an author? Computing pioneer Ada Lovelace thought it wouldn’t happen because machines can only work with programming inputted by humans, but writer Jeanette Winterson disagrees. Her new book 12 Bytes is an exploration of AI and the journey humans...

Our Political Editor Nicholas Cecil reveals how shoppers are being urged not to panic buy as staff at supermarkets are forced to self-isolate after being alerted by the NHS app. The “pinging” crisis is growing with Boris Johnson being urged to hold a meeting of Whitehall’s Cobra emergency committee to consider deploying the Army if necessary as a “last resort” to ensure supermarket shelves ar...

As the Evening Standard reveals a 7-year-old was caught taking a knife into his primary school to “stab another boy at afterschool club,” our investigations editor David Cohen tells us how we here. In a special report, he’s identified five reasons why knife crime has become such a problem in London, and what measures can be taken to reverse it. This year, 22 young people have met violent deaths in...

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has made history with the successful launch of his New Shepard rocket in West Texas. Among those onboard with him was the flight pioneer Wally Funk, who at 82 has become the oldest person to ever venture into space. On the Leader podcast her biographer Sue Nelson tells us how it’s been a lifelong ambition for the woman who was once told she’d never be an astronaut because...