The Bunker – Your daily news Deep Dive

A pop career is for life. Art explorer, national treasure and former Pulp frontman JARVIS COCKER talks to Andrew Harrison about his return to the music fray with new band Jarv Is… and new album Beyond The Pale. On the agenda: the musical concerns of the mature gentleman, what celebrity does to the unwary mind, the legacy of ‘Common People’, and how pop is a way of asking yourself the questions you really ought to answer. 

• “Celebrity is like pornography. It takes something great, like sex, and grosses it out.”
• “The post-war dream was a classless society… and now that seems to have totally disappeared.” 

Presented and produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producer Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production.

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Can Europe really build back better after the pandemic? How does the EU’s response to COVID look when you’re one of Britain’s former MEPs? Molly Scott Cato, former Green Party MEP and the party’s current Brexit and Finance spokesperson, joins Alex Andreou to talk over plus the Russia Report, the financial conduits that make corruption possible, and what we do now that Vote Leave runs the country 

• “These people drove the Brexit boat and are now in government, and we don’t really know where their loyalties lie.”
• “In British society we hide our dirty laundry – but the laundry is still dirty.” 
• “The main problem of the Eurozone is that some countries can tell others how to spend their money.” 

Presented by Alex Andreou. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producer Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production.

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“In Moscow, inquiry closes YOU.” As the Russia Report confirms the Conservatives’ wilful blind eye to Putin’s interference in UK elections, where do we go from here? If we rage about the Russians supposedly tipping the Referendum or the General Election, are we looking at the wrong things? Plus, why the left needs to stop gloating over The Guardian’s money woes… and hands off Bill Gates. Can’t a guy just be a munificent billionaire without everyone getting on his case?

Naomi Smith subpoenas Helen Lewis, Ian Dunt and Alex Andreou to give evidence on this week’s full-length Bunker. Also – sirens! 

• “We can’t have another election with half of the country believing they’re going to be cheated” – Alex Andreou
• “Russia is trying to encourage wedge issues and the Vote Leave government is exacerbating that.” – Ian Dunt
• “The same backbenchers who are losing their shit about a Chinese wire in their phone are completely relaxed about Russia running electoral interference.” – Alex Andreou
• “Russian influence has become so embedded in the UK that the intelligence community can only shrug.” – Alex Andreou
• “The new elitism is packing the Lords with your mates.” – Ian Dunt

Produced by Andrew Harrison. Script and assistant production by Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickenson. Logo and branding by Mark Taylor. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters production

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Coronavirus has put women out of work more frequently than men, led to a spike in domestic violence, pushed women’s healthcare down the list of priorities, and set the scene for a mental health crisis for women. Yet politicians appear blind to the pandemic’s gendered consequences. Dr Clare Wenham, Assistant Professor of Global Health Policy at the LSE, talks to Helen Lewis about how the pandemic has hit women hardest, and what we will need to learn from it. 

• “We’re seeing exactly what happened with Zika and Ebola – but on a global scale.”
• “Female-dominated industries are the ones hardest hit by pandemics. What it means is, women lose their jobs.”
• “British exceptionalism means we haven’t learned from what happened during pandemics in the rest of the world.”

Presented by Helen Lewis. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producer Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production.

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The Intelligence report into Russian interference in British elections and the Referendum is finally published this week – but what will it mean? Why are Brexiters so keen to discredit it? And are Tory backbenchers finally growing a spine? Ian Dunt sets the scene for what looks like a momentous week in British politics. 

• “Eskimos supposedly have a thousand words for snow – and the Russian government has a thousand words for lie.”
• “The Russians are banking on domestic tribalism to prevent any serious response to their interference.”
• “The Tories are up to their necks in Russian donations.”
• “The Raab leak shows how inept and cynical the Government’s response to Russian interference has been.”

Presented and produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producer Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production.

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Hold the front podcast page! The infamous Russia Report could well come out next week. What will it reveal? The Guardian’s Russia correspondent LUKE HARDING, author of Shadow State: Murder, Mayhem And Russia’s Remaking Of The West and first British journalist to be expelled from Russia since the end of the Cold War, joins Dorian Lynskey to look at what Putin really wants. How did Russia influence Brexit? Why did Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump’s Russian collusion flop so badly? Whatever happened to the classy, erudite KGB of old? Oh, and the Secret Plot against Chris Grayling.

• “You have to ask, why have Johnson and Cummings burnt so much political capital on suppressing this report?”
• “Donald Trump is seen in Moscow as the greatest success in Russian espionage history.”
• “The message of Salisbury was, You may forget about us but we will never forget about you.” 
• “Robert Mueller was like a boy scout going into Trump’s gambling den.”
• “Russian interference in Brexit definitely happened – whether you believe it was determinant or not.”

Presented by Dorian Lynskey. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producer Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production.

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Why do former democrats and intellectuals so often make the squalid journey from liberalism to hardline nationalism? Historian ANNE APPLEBAUM’s new book Twilight Of Democracy: The Failure Of Politics And The Parting Of Friends describes why once-liberal people make deals with devils of demagoguery. She talks to Nina Schick about the revenge of the second-raters, the lure of performative rage, how toxic nostalgia feeds authoritarianism and worse… and what we can do about it. 

• “If you despair that your society is coming to an end, you will embrace desperate measures.”
• “When Trump tweets ‘LAW AND ORDER’ what he’s saying is, I can shut these people up.”
• “Brexit was a coup carried out by one part of the elite against another part of the elite.”
• “The defeat of Donald Trump is absolutely the most important thing that needs to happen for the world to move forward.”

Presented by Nina Schick. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producer Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production.

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As America faces the dire prospect of a Trump second term, the hardest-hitting, most brutal and effective anti-Trump ads come from the rebel Republicans of Super PAC the Lincoln Project. Former George W Bush and John McCain strategist Steve Schmidt of The Lincoln Project joins us to explain the scale of the stakes, the depths of Trump’s betrayal, and what British listeners can do to unseat America’s worst president. Plus, fun with cancel culture! Ayesha Hazarika and Alex Andreou join Andrew Harrison for this week’s full-length Bunker roundtable. 

• “In a choice between a sociopath and a socialist, in America the sociopath is going to win seven days a week.”
• “We have gone full Banana Republic in the US in the past four years.”
• “Democracies can’t flourish when the truth and a lie are indistinguishable.”
• “It took 240 years to discover the design flaw in the American system.”
• “Grievance is the high-octane fuel of Trumpism. No grievance, no Trumpism.”

Produced by Andrew Harrison. Script and assistant production by Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickenson. Logo and artwork by Mark Taylor. Audio production by Robin Leeburn. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters production

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Not everyone with COVID ends up in hospital. Sufferers are beginning to report a disturbing post-viral syndrome of deep, extended fatigue, weakness, “brain fog”, anxiety and weird physical sensations that they’re calling “Long COVID”. Paul Garner of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine tells Naomi Smith about his own strange and debilitating ten-week experience with Long COVID – and explains why employers and medical professionals need to take it seriously. 

• “I felt very fatigued, with brain fogs, my heart was racing… it felt like my life was draining out of me.”
• “I used to do an hour of intense yoga regularly. Now I do 15 minutes and I’m floored for two days.” 
• “This disease messes with your head. I’ve woken up in a very low mood, in tears… then later in the day I’ll be fine.”
• “This is very similar to ME and long-term fatigue… And patients are not being believed by employers and health professionals.” 

Presented by Naomi Smith. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producer Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production

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How will transport in cities change after the COVID wave subsides? Will financial worries make high-frequency public transport a thing of the past, just when we need it most? And will we even WANT to live in cities any more? Jonn Elledge of urban nerdery site CityMetric talks to Ros Taylor about the future of trains, buses and bikes… and why we might have missed the COVID opportunity to rethink transport. 

• “Uber isn’t even good for Uber drivers. The company clearly wants to phase them out.” 
• “The Government is going to have to subsidise London’s transport again. If it doesn’t the city will grind to a halt.”
• “If London life no longer exists as it once did, what’s the point of spending a fortune to live there?” 
• “I do worry that anything we were going to do about traffic, the moment has now passed.” 

Presented by Ros Taylor. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producer Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production

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