Two and a Mic - The Social Podcast

Wordsworth, with all the meaning and depth that is so common in all of his poems, lays out for us a blueprint for the kind of character we should look for in the provision of political leadership. He may have written this poem as an ode to Lord Nelson, but we can take from it much more. Wordsworth’s happy warrior need not only be happy as a warrior, but also as a politician, a leader, a MP or a PM...

Anna is a power to behold on a basketball court. When she first joined the team a few weeks ago, she had never really played much basketball, just a bit of streetball here and there, she had had no structured basketball training and was essentially, as she called herself, a newbie. The huge steps she took in the first few weeks were amazing. Good footwork, a presence in the zone and aware of other...

This is a book that at its heart focuses on the relationship between political systems, gender equality and female liberty in a number of different ways and situations. The book is written by Professor Kristen R. Ghodsee who specialises in Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. It is in many ways eye-opening and in others it simply lays out the truth for all to see, i...

Political persuasion is sometimes the result of chance. A single event, an opinion of someone we care for and think we respect, a man wearing a suit on TV looking all successful and powerful, can change a pathway of thought at a stroke. And with a system geared towards monopolising those strokes, can we be truly surprised at how democracy withdrew in the corner likened a frightened child hoping it...

On the sad day of remembrance of the Greek Genocide, I read an excerpt from a radio address made by Dr Lovejoy in 1923. Dr Lovejoy was an American physician and witnessed the events at Smyrna in September 1922 at first hand. Over a hundred years have passed since these horrific days, a number of genocides have taken place since then as well. Some continue to occur today. The term “neutrality” to w...

Dr Boshart is a doctor educated in what she describes as modern western medicine and in the traditional ways of the First Nations. Her dedication to her patients in unique. She takes her duty of care very seriously and the Hippocratic Oath is not simply a formality but a code by which she lives and breathes. In this episode Dr Boshart talks about some of the challenges she has faced, the structura...

Helga joins me from Milan to talk about her extensive experiences as a Talent Acquisitions Head in creating culture and structures where none exists, or merging them where they collide in a business context. So much easier to say than to do. Yet when adding gender equality into the mix and the age-old misogyny and patriarchal pushbacks often let slide as micro-aggressions, how women navigate these...

The world around us is being changed by human enterprise and direct human influence, yet our activities often ignore significant collateral damage. Much of that damage is unacceptable yet only NGOs line up every day to address the rights of those communities to try to bring comfort and assistance where they can. Not all of the work being done is as effective as the NGOs would like it to be nor doe...

Sherlock Holmes is a character we all know, much like James Bond, or Miss Marple. We all know how the detective behaves; how observant and intelligent he is and how quirkily he goes about his task. Yet Young Sherlock puts a lot of emphasis on the ‘Young’ bit as this is a character we are not so familiar with after all. Thank you to Uncle Hair for joining me and for suggesting Young Sherlock in the...

Talking with specialists in their fields of expertise about topics which touch on everyday life is one of the fundamental priorities for the channel. Alongside the need for entertainment, knowledge, open-mindedness and creating a safe space for diverse voices, being aware of why our realities are shaped in the ways they are, allows us to exert greater control on our decision-making. Knowledge and...

Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Ann Johnson on this day April 4th in 1928. Her life was trying from the very start. She had to fight for everything, and she lost a number of those fights along the way, and still she rose. She was an inspiration for so many people, for the beauty of who she was and how she envisioned life. She was an activist and an artist, a talented poet and essayist, actor and...

Why do we continue to allow watered down versions of political leadership to rule over us, even when we can see their faults? We have allowed certain ideas to hold sway in our minds when in truth they should always be questioned. We regard ourselves as not being so important to society, that we are simple folk and that we should not be entitled brats. That’s good. However when we see ourselves as...

This story about war by Mark Twain says as much between the lines as it does on them. There are messages upon messages and there are questions, probing questions, that are asked of the reader or listener. This is a story about war. It is a story about youth and how the young one day come across that horrible event and try to make something of it that only the young could. It tells us of how youth...

March 8th is International Women’s Day. March is Women’s History Month. In a patriarchal world, where rules are established by men, where institutions and practices are dictated by men, where morality and behaviour are judged by men, it is notable just how poor a state the world finds itself it. Injustice, murder, inequality, poverty, abuse, rape and criminality of every kind is seemingly endless....

A social democrat will never defend a brutal regime that kills its own people and threatens innocents. So for those who do not hear enough criticism here of the Iranian regime, please listen to other episodes that focus purely on Iran. This episode is about the hypocrisy of politicians, from countries claiming to be democratic, waging war against a brutal regime in an attempt to make the world for...

Information comes at us from every angle and we are bombarded by it. Just this morning the bombs were flying again and war has come to Iran. In recent weeks we have seen and heard the fake pleas to the people of Iran from you know who and they care so much about the people of Iran that they have decided to bomb them. There will be information coming out of Iran from the regime there talking about...

We are now watching as governments around the world, especially in democratic countries, attempt to rewrite history at a greater rate of change than at any known point in history. We are watching evidence redacted to save the elites and governing classes. We are watching them invade nations just to get the news to put something else on the front pages. We are seeing blatant lies told in the futile...

Since the times of the Shah, the religious revolution in Iran has been talking about oppression, the corruption of the west, and the hope for the Iranian people in following the leadership of the revolutionaries. Since 1979 the current government has been everything but revolutionary. The government in Iran has been regression in action. It finds excuses for its own ineffectiveness, and it kills p...

The Epstein case is all of the worst characteristics of humanity rolled into a single horrific and long-running episode. We are nowhere near understanding the full depth of it. There is no guarantee we ever will. Already nations gearing up for investigations into the fall-out of the Epstein Files are talking about “national security” and the consequences with “international relations”. Forgive me...

We have by now seen the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. We have seen the way communities have been torn apart. We have seen how 'law enforcement' in the USA has so often been a blanket term to explain away systemic racism and prejudice. The ICE has now brought all of those facts out into the open and people are waking up to what African-American communities have known for centuries – a badg...

Talking of assassinations is the necessity of sustainable politics. It is a form of politics that democratic election cycles thought they had dealt with by the emergence of the party system. Unfortunately, the party system has become a colosseum of dirty tricks and blood sport. Leaders around the world do not get assassinated on a whim. These are not coincidences. Groups of mercenaries do not sudd...

The title 7 Days of Mayhem clearly refers to the first 7 days of 2026 but it also is a tribute to a movie entitled '7 Days in May' and one I would recommend people watch, even though it is in black and white and was made so long ago. The problems we are facing today we have faced many times over and the result is always the same: Millions dead, cities burned to the ground, centres of culture and l...

Vahe is a young man with a passion for people, history and stories. His work with Sudanahye (Sudanese Armenian) pursues real stories, true stories, untold, quaint family stories that brought together tell a tale of a country, a region, tragically torn apart today by the corrupt influences of both internal and external forces. The war and genocide in Sudan are not directly topics we discuss today a...

Aldous Huxley was a philosopher, a visionary and a writer of such immensity that his reputation remains powerful and influential. A pacifist, a thoughtful and thought-provoking writer, he urged his readers to step back from the world and see it for what it was becoming. In Brave New World the lines “The more stitches, the more riches” and “Ending is better than mending” suggested an understanding...

TV Shows have become a medium for enjoying storytelling that combines the thrill of the audiovisual experience with the longevity of a book. Is it for this reason that we have become so enamoured with them? Is this why moviemakers and cinema chains are afraid for their industry? Yet TV shows, to be enjoyed at home, on the sofa and with friends or family, present us with a completely different expe...