The Critic Podcast

Australia's military capacity to check Chinese influence is being boosted by a new Anglo-American submarine contract and the establishment of the AUKUS defence pact. But how have Australia's interests been defended until now in the south-west Pacific and what difference will AUKUS make?  

In this week's Black's History Week podcast, Professor Jeremy Black talks to The Critic's deputy editor, Graham Stewart, about the past and present of Australia's role in the western alliance.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on Spotify and iTunes to ensure you never you never miss an episode.

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Image: Royal Australian Navy submarine HMAS Rankin is seen during AUSINDEX 21, a biennial maritime exercise between the Royal Australian Navy and the Indian Navy on September 5, 2021.(Photo by POIS Yuri Ramsey/Australian Defence Force via Getty Images)

Music: Radetzky March by Human Symphony Orchestra (premiumbeat.com)

Is there anything a 21st century military strategist can usefully learn from the tactics of Hannibal or the age of pike, sword and musket? In this edition of Black's History Week, Professor Jeremy Black offers The Critic's deputy editor, Graham Stewart, a crash course in the history of war.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on Spotify and iTunes to ensure you never you never miss an episode.

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Image: A painting depicting The British Army overpowering the Colonialist position during the Battle of Bunker Hill at the beginning of the Revolutionary War on June 17, 1775 outside Boston, Massachusetts. (Illustration by Ed Vebell/Getty Images)

Music: Radetzky March by Human Symphony Orchestra (premiumbeat.com)

Concluding the Black's History Week series on the deployments of the British armed forces between Waterloo and the fall of Kabul, in this podcast Professor Jeremy Black talks The Critic's deputy editor, Graham Stewart, about the themes, breaks, and continuities that have shaped the British military over the last two hundred years.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on Spotify and iTunes to ensure you never you never miss an episode.

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Music: Radetzky March by Human Symphony Orchestra (premiumbeat.com)

In this edition of Black's History Week, the author of Military Strategy: A Global History, Professor Jeremy Black, talks to The Critic's deputy editor, Graham Stewart, about the strategic options for American defence policy in the aftermath of the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on Spotify and iTunes to ensure you never you never miss an episode.

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Image: US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III holds a press briefing about the US military drawdown in Afghanistan, at the Pentagon in Washington, DC September 1, 2021. (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

Music: Radetzky March by Human Symphony Orchestra (premiumbeat.com)

Continuing the series of Black's History Week podcasts on British military deployments, Professor Jeremy Black talks to The Critic's deputy editor, Graham Stewart, about the future role of Britain's armed forces and whether the departure from Kabul marks the end of foreign nation-building operations.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on Spotify and iTunes to ensure you never you never miss an episode.

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Image: UK military personnel board a A400M aircraft departing from Kabul on August 28, 2021 in Kabul, Afghanistan. (Photo by Jonathan Gifford/MoD Crown Copyright via Getty Images)

Music: Radetzky March by Human Symphony Orchestra (premiumbeat.com)

By his own admission, Vivek Ramaswamy is a traitor to his class. A self-made man who founded a successful bio-tech firm in his 20s, Ramaswamy’s story has the telltale signs of membership of America’s corporate elite. But in his new book, Woke, Inc, he takes aim at fellow business leaders for what he calls “the defining scam of our time”.

According to Ramaswamy, big business’s enthusiastic embrace of woke identity politics isn’t just hypocritical but undemocratic. He argues that it’s dividing his country, and undermining the values on which America has thrived in the past. Ramaswamy spoke to Oliver Wiseman, the Critic’s US Editor, about why ruthless captains of industry have gone woke, why it matters, and what should be done about it. 

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on Spotify and iTunes to ensure you never you never miss an episode.

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Music: “Modern Jazz Samba” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

A campaign is underway to elect members to the General Synod of the Church of England under a “Save the Parish” banner. The campaign leader Marcus Walker, the Rector of St Bartholomew’s, described it as “the last chance to save the system that has defined Christianity in this country for 1000 years”. Campaigners say the Church of England hierarchy already squeezes parish churches and is planning to use vital funds to open new churches in places like cafes and cinemas rather than prioritising the existing parish structure. But critics say the movement fails to recognise the dire reality of church attendance, and are afraid of embracing new radical ideas that could reverse the fortunes of the established church.

David Scullion speaks to Alison Milbank, Professor of Theology and Literature at the University of Nottingham, and the founder of the campaign Marcus Walker.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on Spotify and iTunes to ensure you never you never miss an episode.

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Music: “Modern Jazz Samba” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The dramatic events in Afghanistan in recent days mark many things. The end of America’s longest war, the end of the post-9/11 era and the return of the Taliban.

They also constitute the first and perhaps defining foreign policy crisis for US President Joe Biden.

To try to make sense of the US side of the momentous Afghanistan story, the Critic’s US Editor, Oliver Wiseman spoke to Jacob Heilbrunn, Editor of The National Interest, a foreign policy journal, and Luke Thompson, a Republican strategist and advisor.

They debate what Biden has got right, what he has got wrong, how the American people will react and where US foreign policy goes next.

Music: “Modern Jazz Samba” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

In this edition of Black's History Week, Professor Jeremy Black, author of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency, talks to The Critic's deputy editor, Graham Stewart, about the performance of British forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on Spotify and iTunes to ensure you never you never miss an episode.

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Image: A British Army soldier from the 3rd Battalion The Parachute Regiment secures the helicopter landing strip (HLS) during operation Southern Beast on August 6, 2008 in Maywand District in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan. (Photo by Marco Di Lauro/Getty Images)

Music: Radetzky March by Human Symphony Orchestra (premiumbeat.com)

With the abrupt end of the Cold War, how successfully did Britain's armed forces adapt to new challenges - from the sands of Kuwait to the disintegration of Yugoslavia - in the 1990s? The Critic's deputy editor, Graham Stewart, talks to Professor Jeremy Black, author of War in the Modern World.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on Spotify and iTunes to ensure you never you never miss an episode.

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Image: The Gulf War 1990 - 1991, Two British soldiers in NBC [Nuclear Biological and Chemical] equipment, pose with their SA80 rifles during a training exercise in Saudi Arabia before the start of operations in Kuwait, circa 1991. (Photo by Roger Ryan/ Crown Copyright. Imperial War Museums via Getty Images)

Music: Radetzky March by Human Symphony Orchestra (premiumbeat.com)