The Political Dispatch

5.0 (2)
Politics
Updated Biweekly

Welcome to the Political Dispatch, the podcast that explores the world's headlines and traces their roots through the past to make sense of the present. Fed up with doom scrolling, the endless divsion and all that noise? Join Sidd Kurapati, Lily Mott, and Tom Spare for thoughtful and engaging discussions on the issues that matter most.

4d ago

India's Gen Z Protests: The Cockroach Janta Party and the Future of Indian Democracy

In this episode of The Political Dispatch, we turn our attention to India, the world’s largest democracy, where a student-led protest movement has grown into a major political story. Rather than interviewing a guest, Tom and Lily put Sidd in the hot seat. As someone from India who closely follows the country’s politics, Sidd takes us through the events surrounding the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, the exam scandal and student protests that preceded it, and the emergence of the self-styled Cockroach Janta Party. We explore how the movement grew from a viral social media campaign into a nationwide protest, the role of India’s opposition parties and independent media, and the very different ways the government and protesters have framed what happened. We also look beyond the immediate protests to ask what this movement could mean for Indian democracy. Is the Cockroach Janta Party simply a protest movement, or could it become a genuine challenge to India’s political establishment? And what might the growing political engagement of India’s younger generation mean for the country’s future? Please leave a rating, share a comment, and subscribe! To connect with Tom, Lily or Sidd, please find them on Instagram: @sparetom, @lilymott3, and @siddkurapati. For more information about the show, please find Be the change. Media Network on Instagram: @bethechangemedianetwork. Opinions shared by the guests and hosts of this show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Be the change. Media Network.
Jul 25

Lessons in US Civil Rights

Chad Mott returns! In this sequel to Lessons in Democracy (the show's most downloaded episode), Lily, Sidd and Tom sit down with Chad, a history and government teacher at Evergreen High School in Colorado, (and Lily's Dad), to talk about the history of civil rights in the USA. July 4th marked the United State's 250th birthday. Chad tracks the key moments in US civil rights history, from the founding fathers to the Civil War, to the Red Summer of 1919, McCarthyism, the emergence of Barack Obama and the rise of MAGA (Make America Great Again). Please leave a rating, share a comment, and subscribe! To connect with Tom, Lily or Sidd, please find them on Instagram: @sparetom, @lilymott3, and @siddkurapati. For more information about the show, please find Be the Change Media Network on Instagram: @bethechangemedianetwork. Opinions shared by the guests and hosts of this show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Be the Change. Media Network.
Jul 1

How Brexit Happened Part 3: Six Prime Ministers Later

In the third and final part of their Brexit trilogy, Tom is joined by Associate Professor Dr. Monika Brusenbauch Meislová to ask ten years on from the EU referendum, where are we now? You can listen to How Brexit Happened Parts One and Two, wherever you get your podcasts from. Monika traces how Brexit changed the way British voters view the role of government in their daily lives, assesses where UK-EU diplomatic and strategic relations stand today, and explores whether there are any realistic scenarios in which Britain could ever rejoin the EU. The conversation also takes in each of the six Prime Ministers who have navigated the aftermath of the vote, from David Cameron through to Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, to Keir Starmer. Monika unpacks what each Prime Minister demanded of the EU, what they won, what they lost, and what they left behind. Please leave a rating, share a comment, and subscribe! To connect with Tom, Lily or Sidd, please find them on Instagram: @sparetom, @lilymott3, and @siddkurapati. For more information about the show, please find Be the Change. Media Network on Instagram: @bethechangemedianetwork. Opinions shared by the guests and hosts of this show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Be the Change. Media Network.
Jun 27

Andy Burnham: Britain's PM-in-Waiting

British politics used to be boring. Not any more. Over the course of a long weekend, Andy Burnham won a crucial by-election in Makerfield, forced Keir Starmer to resign as Prime Minister, and became the frontrunner to replace him. Tom and Sidd set out the key moments that brought down Keir Starmer, explore who Andy Burnham is, the policies he espouses, and the team he's expected to bring with him to Downing Street. Please leave a rating, share a comment, and subscribe! To connect with Tom, Lily or Sidd, please find them on Instagram: @sparetom, @lilymott3, and @siddkurapati. For more information about the show, please find Be the Change. Media Network on Instagram: @bethechangemedianetwork. Opinions shared by the guests and hosts of this show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Be the Change. Media Network.
Jun 22

How Brexit Happened Part 2: A Tale of Two Campaigns

In part two of our three-part series marking ten years since the Brexit referendum, Tom and Sidd return to their old stomping ground, Cardiff's School of Journalism, Media and Culture, to interview their former lecturer Dr Mike Berry, Director of the MA in Political Communication. Mike traces why immigration became the issue that swallowed every other debate during the campaign, and how decades of media coverage left voters with a skewed picture of the EU long before the official campaign began. He explains the thinking behind "Take Back Control," one of the most effective political slogans in modern British history, and why Remain's rational, economics-led case struggled to compete with it. The conversation also turns to where things stand a decade on, and whether the same result would happen if the vote were held again today. Please leave a rating, share a comment, and subscribe! To connect with Tom, Lily or Sidd, please find them on Instagram: @sparetom, @lilymott3, and @siddkurapati. For more information about the show, please find Be the Change. Media Network on Instagram: @bethechangemedianetwork. Opinions shared by the guests and hosts of this show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Be the Change. Media Network.
Jun 17

How Brexit Happened Part 1: The Road to Vote Leave

In the first of a three-part series marking ten years since the Brexit referendum, Tom, Lily and Sidd sit down with Dr Nicholas Startin, Associate Professor of International Relations at John Cabot University in Rome, to trace the long history of British Euroscepticism. Nick takes the story back to Charles de Gaulle's two vetoes of British membership, the UK's eventual entry in 1973, and the referendum that followed just two years later. He revisits Margaret Thatcher's 1988 Bruges speech, often cited as the starting gun for modern Euroscepticism, and asks whether that reading really holds up. From there, the conversation moves through John Major's "bastards," the Maastricht rebellion, and the slow-burn rise of Farage, UKIP and the Brexit Party. Nick also looks back on his own 2015 paper, written when almost no one else in his field was willing to predict a Leave vote, and closes by asking whether, with Gen Z overwhelmingly pro-European, Britain could ever find its way back into the EU. Please leave a rating, share a comment, and subscribe! To connect with Tom, Lily or Sidd, please find them on Instagram: @sparetom, @lilymott3, and @siddkurapati. For more information about the show, please find Be the Change. Media Network on Instagram: @bethechangemedianetwork. Opinions shared by the guests and hosts of this show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Be the Change. Media Network.
May 28

All the Presidents Men at 50

To celebrate fifty years of All the President's Men, Tom sits down with Professor Jon Lewis, University Distinguished Professor of Film Studies at Oregon State University, who has been teaching and writing about Hollywood for over forty years. Jon traces Alan Pakula's Paranoia Trilogy from Klute through The Parallax View to All the President's Men, explaining what made that era of New Hollywood so obsessed with surveillance, institutional rot and the fragility of truth. He also reflects on what it was like to live through Watergate as a young man, and what was genuinely lost when the blockbuster era arrived and Hollywood stopped asking hard questions. Then Steven Renderos, Executive Director of Media Justice, brings the conversation into the present. The journalism, he argues, is still happening, the Panama Papers, the Pegasus Project, ProPublica's reporting on Clarence Thomas. What's broken isn't the press. It's the institutional willingness to act on what journalists find. And with Jeff Bezos, a key Donald Trump ally, now owning the same Washington Post that Katharine Graham used to back Woodward and Bernstein at enormous personal risk, the contrast could not be starker. Please leave a rating, share a comment, and subscribe!
May 10

UK Election Special: Plaid Make History, the SNP Hold Steady and Reform Storm Across the Nations

Sidd and Tom analyse Parliamentary elections in Wales and Scotland, and local elections in England. Plaid Cymru (The Party of Wales) have become the largest party in Wales, followed by Reform in second place and Welsh Labour a distant third. The Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) have won a 5th straight parliamentary election but are well short of a majority. Reform have made big gains in Scotland and have also stormed across English councils winning 14 in total and gaining close to 1,500 councillors. Please leave a rating, share a comment, and subscribe! To get connected with Tom, Lily or Sidd, please find them on Instagram: @sparetom, @lilymott3, and @siddkurapati. For more information about the show, please find Be the Change. Media Network on Instagram: @bethechangemedianetwork. Opinions shared by the guests and hosts of this show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Be the Change. Media Network.

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Welcome to the Political Dispatch, the podcast that explores the world's headlines and traces their roots through the past to make sense of the present. Fed up with doom scrolling, the endless divsion and all that noise? Join Sidd Kurapati, Lily Mott, and Tom Spare for thoughtful and engaging discussions on the issues that matter most.