Politics on the Couch

Host Rafael Behr talks to author, policy expert and podcaster Sam Freedman about his new book Failed State: Why Nothing Works and How We Fix It

Sam Freedman is a senior fellow at the Institute for Government and an Ark Schools adviser.

He writes about policy and politics for numerous outlets, including the Financial Times, Sunday Times, Guardian and New Statesman.

With his father, he runs ‘Comment is Freed’, Britain’s most popular politics Substack.

He has spent his career working in different policy-focused roles around Westminster, including as an adviser to the then opposition leader, David Cameron, and as a senior policy adviser at the Department for Education for three years, working with (friends of the podcast) Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings.

Feedspot has chosen Politics on the Couch as one of the Top 25 UK Psychology and Political Science Podcasts on the web.

https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_psychology_podcasts

https://blog.feedspot.com/political_science_podcasts

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In a week of protests, counter-protests and riots in the UK, 5000 miles away in Bangladesh student-led uprising led to 300 people being killed, the toppling of a corrupt PM and violent regime, and a Nobel Peace Prize winner being installed as head a new interim government. 

In this edition, we're talking about the violent and momentous events in Bangladesh with award-winning British-born investigative journalist David Bergman, who has been following and reporting on the country for almost 30 years. 

He's written widely about Bangladesh for The Daily Telegraph, Al Jazeera, the New York Times, and The Times. 

Between 2004 and 2017, he lived in Bangladesh, writing for several Bangladeshi newspapers, including New Age, The Daily Star and bdnews24.com.

He was forced to leave in 2017 due to his critical writing about government corruption and human rights violations.

Since then, he’s lived in London and helped found Netra News, a media platform based in Sweden that published investigative news and analysis on Bangladesh

He’s also won a Royal Television Society award for a documentary he worked on about the atrocities that took place during Bangladesh’s 1971 War of Independence. 

In the episode, David explains what happened there, what sparked it off, what’s next for the country, what we know about the next potential leader and the fascinating links between a new Labour Minister and the now deposed Bangladeshi PM and her party.

Links mentioned in the podcast

https://x.com/TheDavidBergman

https://x.com/muktadirnewage

https://x.com/nomhossain

https://x.com/taqbirhuda

https://www.facebook.com/shafiqul.alam.71216

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In this summer bonus episode, Raf and (producer) Phil discuss the changing mood around British politics since Labour's election victory, the restoration of seriousness after years of triviality, why some people can't adapt, why others want to believe that Keir Starmer can deliver the change he has promised and whether they are right.

Links to stuff mentioned in the podcast

More in Common report

Tony Judt's essay

Reform came 2nd in 89 of the seats that Labour won.

Lowest voter turnout for a General Election since universal suffrage began

This is a Raf Behr and Larchmont Productions podcast.

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In this edition host Rafael Behr talks to Nichola Raihani, Professor of Evolution and Behaviour in the School of Psychology at the University of Auckland.

She's also the author of, 'The Social Instinct: How Cooperation Shaped the World'

Professor Raihani has unique insight into a problem that has appeared in various forms on this podcast over the years.

It's a question of collective action, solidarity, and cooperation. What motivates people to form units of political organisation or cooperation?

Tribes, parties, whole nations—what holds them together and what drives them apart? Why do some societies tend to be democratic and some go despotic? Is it an accident of history? Climate? Culture? Religion? Evolution. This is the fabric of politics, the very stuff societies are made of at the most fundamental level, and Professor Rehani shines an evolutionary light on it all.

This podcast is produced by Philip Berman of Larchmont Productions

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In the wake of October 7th and Trump's bid to become US President again, Rafael Behr sits down with fellow Guardian columnist and friend - Jonathan Freedland - to discuss the current state of geopolitics, liberal politics, Israel and Jewish identity.

Events featuring Rafael Behr

Shoreham, West Sussex, Wed 24 April

An evening with Guardian columnist Rafael Behr and television producer Rob Burley in conversation with Ayesha Hazarika MBE, political commentator and broadcaster, and former special adviser to Gordon Brown, Harriet Harman and Ed Miliband.

More details

Central London, Thursday 25th April

What Everyone Knows About Britain* Except The British: Michael Peel in conversation with Rafael Behr

More details

J Freeland links

Award-winning edition of Unholy podcast

The latest edition of the Guardian's weekly US politics podcast

Jonathan Freeland and Israeli author Amos Oz

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman

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Rafael Behr talks to Tom Gray from Gomez about his bid to become a Brighton MP.

Tom's had a hugely successful career in music with Gomez rocketing to fame in 1998, beating Pulp and Massive Attack, among others, to the Mercury Prize.

More recently he launched the Broken Record campaign, calling for a fairer deal for musicians from streaming services, among other industry reforms.

And now, having banged on the doors to demand political change from the outside, Tom wants to get on the inside.

He's on the shortlist to be selected as Labour's prospective parliamentary candidate for the Brighton Pavilion constituency

That's the only seat in the country with a green MP right now, Caroline Lucas, although she's standing down at the next election.

Raf asks Tom what makes someone want to swap what looks like the perfect job, recording and performing music for eager fans, for the grim, and potentially thankless life of a politician where I think it's safe to say the audiences are less than adoring.

https://twitter.com/MrTomGray

https://twitter.com/TG4Pavilion

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In a departure from our normal format Rafael Behr (host) and Philip Berman (the show's producer) agreed to press record when they met yesterday (Thursday 28 September) to discuss a new series idea for Politics on the Couch.

And this podcast is the end result, instead of a meta-cast talking about what we could talk about this Autumn, it's more of a casual ramble around Phil's break from Twitter, his despair about the state of political discourse and Raf's one-stop solution for all.

Topics covered (in no order of importance):

Twitter

Laurence Fox

GB News

Sunak's postion on net zero

The mood in Westminster

State capture

Democratic back-sliding

The preface to the paperback version of Rafael's new book.

https://rafaelbehr.com

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Raf Behr talks to journalist, author and broadcaster David Aaronovitch about his recent visit to the National Conservatives conference, and what it taught him about state of the Tory party.

They discuss:

Was there really a re-alignment in British politics post-Brexit?

What do the Nat Cons have to offer us Brits apart from hardline anti-immigration vibes?

Why do some parts of the commentariat spend so much time talking about 'culture wars' when there are so many other issues to cover?

If, as expected, the next government is Labour and inherits an economic mess, will it be possible for them to make all the necessary hard decisions about taxation and spending, and stay in power?

David Aaronvitch's substack - https://davidaaronovitch.substack.com

Politics on the Couch has been chosen by Feedspot as both one of the Top 25 UK Psychology Podcasts and Political Science Podcasts on the web.

https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_psychology_podcasts

https://blog.feedspot.com/political_science_podcasts

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rafael Behr talks to Rob Hutton, parliamentary sketch writer at the Critic, about the uneasy relationship between Westminster lobby journalists and MPs.

Often political journalists cultivate close relationships with politicians to find out what's really happening in the corridors of power.

But does a journalist's 'insider status' cloud their judgement when working out how to write about political stories or policy ssues, or whether to cover them at all?

Does it inevitably become a trade-off between, a steady stream of 'exclusives', and a fair and objective approach to reporting?

If so, what does this mean for democracy?

Rob Hutton is an author and freelance journalist. He spent 16 years covering the British government for Bloomberg, taking in five prime ministers, as many elections, and the odd referendum. Before that, he worked for the Mirror and the Financial Times. He now has a regular spot as sketchwriter for The Critic. His career has been a mix of seriousness and satire. While he was a reporter for Bloomberg, unquestionably The Global News Organisation Least Likely To Tell A Joke, he wrote Romps, Tots & Boffins, a satirical book about the words only journalists use. He followed that up with Would They Lie to You?, about the way politicians got around reality without actually uttering untruths (it was a more innocent age). According to Rob, his most recent book, Agent Jack, doesn’t have quite so many laughs, although he says there’s an incident with a jar of marmalade and a blueprint for a Vickers tank. 'Oh, and there’s a naked German in a wardrobe.' 

Here's a link to his Podcast - A Pod Too Far

Rafael Behr's first book was released in May, 2023

**'Politics, A Survivor’s Guide,'** is all about the infuriating toxicity of politics, how it got that way and how to resist the slide into cynicism and pessimism that are so corrosive of democracy. It’s about the challenge of staying engaged without getting enraged; the need to empathise with people whose views we cannot share and how that is different to appeasement of politics we believe to be dangerous.

Available from Waterstones:

https://www.waterstones.com/book/politics-a-survivors-guide/rafael-behr/9781838955045

Or, for those who are interested in signed copies, from City Books in Hove:

https://www.city-books.co.uk

Politics on the Couch has been chosen by Feedspot as both one of the Top 25 UK Psychology Podcasts and Political Science Podcasts on the web.

https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_psychology_podcasts

https://blog.feedspot.com/political_science_podcasts

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this edition Rafael Behr talks to Professor Ben Ansell about his new book Why Politics Fails: The Five Traps of the Modern World & How to Escape Them

Ben Ansell is Professor of Comparative Democratic Institutions at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. He was made Fellow of the British Academy in 2018, among the youngest fellows at that time. His work has been widely covered in the media, including in the World Bank's World Development Report, The New York Times, The Economist, The Times and on BBC Radio 4's 'Start the Week'. He was the Principal Investigator of the multi-million-pound ERC project 'The Politics of Wealth Inequality', is co-editor of the most-cited journal in comparative politics, and has written three award-winning academic books. Why Politics Fail is his latest book and his first for a wider audience.

Link to buy Ben's new book

https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/284663/ben-ansell

Link to Ben's substack

https://benansell.substack.com

Rafael Behr's first book was released Thursday 4 May, 2023

**'Politics, A Survivor’s Guide,'** is all about the infuriating toxicity of politics, how it got that way and how to resist the slide into cynicism and pessimism that are so corrosive of democracy. It’s about the challenge of staying engaged without getting enraged; the need to empathise with people whose views we cannot share and how that is different to appeasement of politics we believe to be dangerous.

Available from Waterstones:

https://www.waterstones.com/book/politics-a-survivors-guide/rafael-behr/9781838955045

Or, for those who are interested in signed copies, from City Books in Hove:

https://www.city-books.co.uk

Politics on the Couch has been chosen by Feedspot as both one of the Top 25 UK Psychology Podcasts, and Top 25 Political Science Podcasts on the web.

https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_psychology_podcasts

https://blog.feedspot.com/political_science_podcasts

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.