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Your weekly review of culture, life and society from the New Statesman, hosted by Tanjil Rashid. Featuring interviews with literary and artistic greats, reviews of the latest cultural moments, and in-depth discussion to help you understand how culture shapes society – and our place in it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  1. William Boyd on spy fiction and the British psyche

    1 DAY AGO

    William Boyd on spy fiction and the British psyche

    What makes someone a good spy? And does the fiction writer, in many senses a professional liar, share the traits of a double agent? Novelist and screenwriter William Boyd first explored the theme of espionage in his 2002 novel Any Human Heart and went on to pen a James Bond continuation novel called Solo. His latest trilogy (Gabriel's Moon, The Predicament and Cold Sunset) explores what happens when a travel writer becomes entangled in Cold War Espionage. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    36 min
  2. James Baldwin would be a leading progressive voice today

    2 MAY

    James Baldwin would be a leading progressive voice today

    For decades, James Baldwin has stood as one of the most piercing moral voices of the 20th century, But Baldwin himself has remained, in his own words, elusive. A new biography by Nicholas Boggs - Baldwin: A Love Story - sets out to change that. Drawing on newly uncovered archives and decades of research, Boggs reframes Baldwin’s life through an intimate and sometimes unsettling lens: love. Luke O'Reilly sits down with Nicholas Boggs to discuss Baldwin’s loves and contradictions, the relationship between intimacy and politics, and why Baldwin’s insistence that “love is the only reality” might matter more now than ever. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    30 min
  3. Mark Gatiss: fascism is not inevitable

    25 APR

    Mark Gatiss: fascism is not inevitable

    The Resistible rise of Arturo Ui, Bertolt Brecht's darkly comic allegory of authoritarianism is a play that straddles past and present. Written in 1941, it was conceived as a warning; a grotesque gangster-inflected retelling of the rise of Adolf Hitler. It holds out the warning that such a rise is not, in fact, inevitable – it can be resisted. In a new production, Mark Gatiss steps into the role of Arturo Ui, a character who is at once absurd, ridiculous, sinister, and terrifying. It's a part that delicately walks the tightrope between satire and menace. So how does a play rooted in 20th century politics land in Britain today? What does it mean to stage breath in an era saturated with political performance and media spectacle? And can satire still function as a warning rather than just a mirror? Tanjil Rashid speaks with Mark Gatiss in this fascinating and wide-ranging interview. Mark Gatiss is speaking at the Stratford Literary Festival on Sunday 10 May. Book tickets: https://www.stratfordliteraryfestival.co.uk/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    28 min
  4. Are we truly living in 'Orwellian times'?

    18 APR

    Are we truly living in 'Orwellian times'?

    Or has the term lost its meaning? It’s a label that’s everywhere now: used by political commentators, thrown around on social media, and increasingly a part of everyday conversation. In recent months it's been used to describe matters including Indian cricket, Sainsbury's use of facial recognition, the 'Dubai Dream'. But what did George Orwell actually warn us about, and how closely does our modern world resemble it? Nick Harris speaks to acclaimed Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck, whose latest film Orwell: 2+2=5 revisits Orwell not as a distant, dystopian novelist, but as a deeply political thinker, shaped by his own life experience: his birth in colonial India, his immersion in the working class, his wartime fight against fascism. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    21 min
  5. When it comes to the Moon, we've only scratched the surface

    11 APR

    When it comes to the Moon, we've only scratched the surface

    Last night, the Artemis II crew splashed down in the Pacific Ocean after a 10-day mission to space and a lunar flyby. The voyage, which included the first woman and a non-US citizen to take part in a lunar mission, is part of a program to place humans once again on the Moon by 2028, a return after 56 years apart. But why do we bother? Where does this fascination come from? Can the moon teach us something about ourselves? Is it a hunger for something different? Tanjil Rashid is joined by Rebecca Boyle, science writer and author of Our Moon: A Human History. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    31 min
  6. What was life like before capitalism?

    4 APR

    What was life like before capitalism?

    It's almost impossible to separate how we think about modern life from the phenomenon that is capitalism, and to think, what would life look like without it? Tanjil Rashid is joined by Sven Beckert, Professor of History at Harvard University and author of Capitalism: A Global History, to trace the long emergence of capitalism, and to ask what the world looked like before it took hold. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    32 min
  7. What do mushrooms have to do with consciousness? with Michael Pollan

    28 MAR

    What do mushrooms have to do with consciousness? with Michael Pollan

    Michael Pollan, a writer best known for his work on the effect of psychedelics, has taken a journey into the inner mind. For much of modern history, we’ve understood the mind in comparison to our most advanced machines. Once it was clockwork, then looms, now computers. Each metaphor promises clarity - the ability to be mapped and modelled - but each, in its own way, falls short. Drawing on philosophy, literature and his own experiments with altered states, in Michael Pollan takes aim at this habit of thinking. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    52 min
  8. How Elon Musk redefined power

    21 MAR

    How Elon Musk redefined power

    In 2025, Elon Musk took on an extraordinary role inside Washington, leading something called the Department of Government Efficiency - or Doge. What followed was a radical experiment: an attempt to remake the machinery of the state using the logic of Silicon Valley and the language of memes. To understand that moment, it helps to understand Musk himself. This is a figure shaped by his upbringing in apartheid South Africa and by coming of age alongside the early internet. He built his reputation by disrupting entire industries -  even extending his reach beyond Earth -  by moving fast, ignoring convention, and pushing his teams to extremes. So what happens when you apply that philosophy to the state? Tanjil Rashid is joined by Ben Tarnoff and Quinn Slobodian. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    29 min
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Your weekly review of culture, life and society from the New Statesman, hosted by Tanjil Rashid. Featuring interviews with literary and artistic greats, reviews of the latest cultural moments, and in-depth discussion to help you understand how culture shapes society – and our place in it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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