Best of the Spectator
Home to the Spectator's best podcasts on everything from politics to religion, literature to food and drink, and more. A new podcast every day from writers worth listening to.
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- Update frequency
- every day
- Average duration
- 33 minutes
- Episodes
- 2365
- Years Active
- 2016 - 2025
The Edition: Nigel wants YOU, secularism vs spirituality & how novel is experimental fiction?
How Reform plans to win
Just a year ago, Nigel Farage ended his self-imposed exile from politics and returned to lead Reform. Since then, Reform have won more MPs than the Green Party, two new mayoral…
00:51:41 |
Thu 05 Jun 2025
The Book Club: Alice Loxton
My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is the historian Alice Loxton, whose new book Eighteen: A History of Britain in 18 Young Lives is just out in paperback. In it, she tells the story of the ea…
00:37:09 |
Wed 04 Jun 2025
Table Talk: Jun Tanaka
Jun Tanaka is a Japanese-British chef with over 30 years’ experience in some of London’s most famous restaurants, including La Gavroche, Restaurant Marco Pierre White and The Square. In 2016 he opene…
00:22:25 |
Tue 03 Jun 2025
Americano: America's white guilt hangover
From the decline of meritocracy to the rise of anti-Western ideology, author Heather Mac Donald joins Freddy Gray to discuss race, merit, and victim hierarchy. Why is the West so desperate to self-ca…
00:35:43 |
Mon 02 Jun 2025
Holy Smoke: is God an Englishman?
Bijan Omrani joins Damian Thompson to talk about his new book God is an Englishman: Christianity and the Creation of England. They discuss the spiritual and cultural debt the country owes to Christia…
00:31:52 |
Sun 01 Jun 2025
Coffee House Shots: should cannabis be decriminalised?
London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan has called for possession of small amounts of cannabis to be decriminalised following a report by the London Drugs Commission. The report has made 42 recommendations, whic…
00:20:55 |
Sat 31 May 2025
Spectator Out Loud: Arabella Byrne, Sean Thomas, Mathew Lyons, Bryan Appleyard & Chas Newkey-Burden
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Arabella Byrne on the social minefield of private swimming pools (1:13); Sean Thomas says that not knowing where you are is one of the joys of travel (5:34); review…
00:28:07 |
Fri 30 May 2025
The Edition: end of the rainbow, rising illiteracy & swimming pool etiquette
End of the rainbow: Pride’s fall
What ‘started half a century ago as an afternoon’s little march for lesbians and gay men’, argues Gareth Roberts, became ‘a jamboree not only of boring homosexuality’ …
00:49:51 |
Thu 29 May 2025
Americano: what does Sam Altman want?
Freddy Gray speaks to writer and author Karen Hao, whose new book Empire of AI looks at a new, ominous age of empire with OpenAI. On the podcast they discuss the impacts of artificial intelligence on…
00:28:05 |
Wed 28 May 2025
Book Club: Robert Macfarlane
Sam Leith's guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is Robert Macfarlane. In his new book Is A River Alive? he travels from the cloud forests of Ecuador to the pollution-choked rivers of Chennai and t…
00:40:41 |
Wed 28 May 2025
Holy Smoke: the mystifying process – and problems – behind choosing the next Archbishop of Canterbury
After Pope Francis died, it took the Roman Catholic Church just 17 days to choose a successor in Pope Leo XIV. It has been well over 6 months since Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby resigned and …
00:38:54 |
Tue 27 May 2025
Coffee House Shots: why is antisemitism so pervasive? Irving v Lipstadt 25 years on
This spring marks the 25th anniversary of the landmark judgment in the infamous Irving v Lipstadt Holocaust denial case. David Irving sued American academic Deborah Lipstadt after she had described h…
00:30:28 |
Mon 26 May 2025
Spectator Out Loud: James Heale, Angus Colwell, Alice Loxton, Lloyd Evans, Richard Bratby, Christopher Howse and Catriona Olding
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: James Heale analyses the splits in Labour over direction and policy (1:27); Angus Colwell asks if the ‘lanyard class’ are the new enemy (6:21); Alice Loxton explain…
00:37:41 |
Sun 25 May 2025
Women With Balls, from the archives: Jo Coburn
Broadcaster Jo Coburn stepped down from Politics Live this week and has left the BBC after 28 years. To mark the occasion, here’s a special edition of Women With Balls – from the archives – where Jo …
00:33:48 |
Sat 24 May 2025
Coffee House Shots: David Gauke on prisons, probation & the political reaction to his review
Former Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor David Gauke joins James Heale to talk about his review into prison sentencing. The former Tory minister was appointed by the current Labour Justice Secret…
00:17:41 |
Fri 23 May 2025
The Edition: the real Brexit betrayal, bite-sized history & is being a bridesmaid brutal?
The real Brexit betrayal: Starmer vs the workers
‘This week Starmer fell… into the embrace of Ursula von der Leyen’ writes Michael Gove in our cover article this week. He writes that this week’s agree…
‘This week Starmer fell… into the embrace of Ursula von der Leyen’ writes Michael Gove in our cover article this week. He writes that this week’s agree…
00:43:58 |
Thu 22 May 2025
The Book Club: Geoff Dyer, the Proust of prog rock and Airfix
My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is Geoff Dyer, who’s talking about his memoir Homework, in which he describes growing up as an only child in suburban Cheltenham, and how the eleven-plus and…
00:38:35 |
Wed 21 May 2025
Low Life: The Spectator columns of Jeremy Clarke
To mark the second anniversary of the death of Jeremy Clarke – one of the Spectator’s most loved writers – we’ve compiled some of his Low Life columns, as read by Jeremy in 2016, for this special epi…
00:28:14 |
Wed 21 May 2025
Table Talk: Daria Lavelle, author of 'Aftertaste'
Daria Lavelle was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, and raised in New York. Her work explores themes of identity and belonging and her short stories have appeared in The Deadlands, Dread Machine, and elsewhere.…
00:32:26 |
Tue 20 May 2025
Americano: was Zbigniew Brzezinski a Cold War prophet?
Polish émigré Zbigniew Brzezinski – known as ‘Zbig’ – rose to prominence in America during the Cold War as a key intellectual architect of US foreign policy. He was National Security Advisor to Presi…
00:30:00 |
Mon 19 May 2025
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