The New Society | culture from the New Statesman — подкаст

Does travel actually broaden the mind? 13.06.2026 43мин

“The traveller sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.”Andrea Wulf joins us to discuss her new book The Traveller, about George Forster - the forgotten naturalist who sailed with Captain James Cook at seventeen and came back convinced of something radical: that all human beings are equal. We ask why that idea was so scandalous in the Enlightenment, why Forster has been largely written out of history, and whether travel really does broaden the mind - or whether, as G.K. Chesterton suggested, it might do the opposite. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This house believes that Britain’s best days are behind it 06.06.2026 1ч 10мин

There is in Britain today a widespread mood of public despair, a deep premonition of imminent national decline. According to Ipsos, just over half of Britons feel worse off since Keir Starmer was elected. Going further back, 60% feel the country has gone backwards since 2022.Are Britain's best days really behind it?Pratinav Anil, Rachel Clarke, Tanjil Rashid, John Kampfner, Gary Stevenson, and Polly Toynbee debate the issue.This debate was chaired by Anoosh Chakelian and recorded at the Cambridge Literary Festival.Find out more here: cambridgeliteraryfestival.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Can architecture be democratic? 30.05.2026 38мин

What is the relationship between politics and the built environment? between the spaces inhabited by the public and the policies that govern them? From parliaments to monuments… from open squares to closed off palaces… there clearly is a connection, but how that manifests itself remains deeply contested. Tanjil Rashid is joined by Jan Werner-Muller, a German philosopher and historian, whose latest book, Street, Palace, Square: The Architecture of Democratic Spaces investigates this relationship between place, people and politics. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Katja Hoyer: How fascism takes hold of a city 23.05.2026 50мин

Political instability, democratic decline, the rise of populist movements - politicians and headlines today are quick to diagnose things as modern day Weimar. But what was Weimar actually like, and how did a city associated with culture and intellectual life become bound up with the rise of Nazism?Historian Katja Hoyer joins us to discuss her new book on Weimar, the process of fascism taking hold at a local level, her previous book Beyond the Wall, and what today’s politics, including the rise of Alternative for Germany, may and may not have in common with the past. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Munya Chawawa: Trump's presidency is based on WWE 16.05.2026 22мин

Donald Trump’s political style has often been compared to reality TV - but what if the better comparison is professional wrestling?Satirist Munya Chawawa joins Luke O’Reilly to discuss his new documentary, Wrestling With Trump, which explores the connections between WWE spectacle and modern American politics.Wrestling with Trump is available to stream now on 4. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

William Boyd on spy fiction and the British psyche 09.05.2026 36мин

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.

James Baldwin would be a leading progressive voice today 02.05.2026 30мин

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.

Mark Gatiss: What it's like to play Hitler 25.04.2026 28мин

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.

Are we truly living in 'Orwellian times'? 18.04.2026 21мин

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.

When it comes to the Moon, we've only scratched the surface 11.04.2026 30мин

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.

What was life like before capitalism? 04.04.2026 32мин

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.

What do mushrooms have to do with consciousness? with Michael Pollan 28.03.2026 52мин

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.

How Elon Musk redefined power 21.03.2026 28мин

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.

How KPop Demon Hunters became the biggest event of the year 14.03.2026 32мин

Despite KPop Demon Hunters becoming Netflix’s most-watched film in history and dominating music charts for months, it’s also the kind of cultural phenomenon many people might never have encountered.The animated musical feature has been cleaning up at awards season and this weekend it could pick up two Oscars.In this episode of the New Society, we discuss how the film became a global hit and the rise of K-pop and fandom culture. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Metrics now control our lives 07.03.2026 29мин

If you’ve ever taken a random walk around the block to push your step count to 10,000… rushed through a lesson on Duolingo to keep your streak alive… or checked a post one more time to see if the likes have ticked up - you’ll know the quiet power of the score.Philosopher C. Thi Nguyen thinks modern life is increasingly organised around scores, rankings, targets, dashboards, and that these numbers don’t just track what we value. They quietly replace it. In his new book, The Score, he asks a simple question: how did we all end up playing someone else’s game, and how do we stop? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What it’s like to be played by Claire Foy 28.02.2026 24мин

In 2014, Helen Macdonald published H is for Hawk - a book that arrived, at least on the surface, as a memoir about grief: the death of their father, and Macdonald's decision to train and live with a goshawk in the aftermath.It was nature writing, literary biography, cultural history, and a deeply personal account of what happens when someone steps sideways out of ordinary life and into something more feral. Readers found their own stories in it about parenthood, identity, politics, and the uneasy relationship between the human world and the wild.More than a decade on, that story has taken another form.You can read more from Helen Macdonald here Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Does reading make you a better person? with Dominic Sandbrook 21.02.2026 38мин

For one of the most famous historians in Britain, conquering the past is not enough.This month, alongside co-host Tabitha Syrett, Dominic Sandbrook is launching a new podcast - this time shifting his focus from history to literature.Tanjil Rashid sat down with Sandbrook to talk about this new venture, what he’s reading (he insists it’s a balanced diet) and why reading still matters, not just to us as individuals, but to the health of society itself. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wuthering Heights is a disgusting film, but is it a love story? 14.02.2026 23мин

Wuthering Heights is a story that has been told and retold, adapted and reinterpreted so many times since publication in 1847.Every generation seems to rediscover Emily Brontë’s ever-enduring novel, and every generation seems convinced it finally understands it.Now, it’s British filmmaker Emerald Fennell’s turn. And once again, we’re left asking: is this a love story, a ghost story, a story of obsession, or something stranger that refuses to settle into any single interpretation?Tanjil Rashid is joined by Lucasta Miller. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Is the climate crisis spiritual? The King thinks so 07.02.2026 27мин

A new documentary, Finding Harmony: A King’s Vision, offers a rare glimpse into the deeper ideas shaping King Charles’s view of the world. Known for decades as an environmental campaigner, the King has often spoken about the need for “harmony” between humanity, nature and the environment - but what does he really mean by that?Tanjil Rashid is joined by historian Mark Sedgwick. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Infinite Jest is a novel for 2026 31.01.2026 25мин

Thirty years ago, David Foster Wallace published Infinite Jest - a novel so sprawling, so formally strange, and so unnervingly prescient that it has never quite stopped happening. Set in a near-future North America obsessed with pleasure, entertainment, and escape, the book asked a question that feels even sharper today than it did in 1996: what happens when a culture confuses happiness with anaesthesia?Tanjil Rashid is joined by DT Max and Jonathan Derbyshire to discuss why the novel still matters, and what it can tell us about the world we’ve built since. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.