One of the best innovations at the Battle of Ideas festival in recent years has been our Podcasts Live strand. Podcasts are a great place to listen to interesting and engaging discussions and debate. But bringing these podcasts to the festival gives the producers something a bit different: a live and very engaged ‘studio’ audience.
Take a look at our lineup for this year:
Arts First – myth, religion and national identity
Last Orders – the latest nanny state news
Planet Normal – News and views from beyond the bubble
Spectator’s Coffee House Shots
Take Me Home – Growing up in the Culture Wars
The Booking Club with Jack Aldane – The Catcher in the Rye, 75 years on
The Brink – Islam in Britain after October 7
The Free Speech Union – on the free speech frontline
The Life Sci Fantastic – weight-loss jabs: the end of willpower?
The spiked podcast – Live – latest in politics, free speech and the culture war
The State of It – reports from the coalface of British politics
This Isn’t Working – are women to blame for ‘woke’ workplaces?
More details of each podcast below.
If this rich banquet of ‘food for thought’ is your cup of tea (apologies for mixed metaphors!) then grab a ticket and join us on Saturday 17 & Sunday 18 October at Church House in Westminster.
PODCASTS LIVE
Saturday 17 October 10:15 — 11:45
THE LIFE SCI FANTASTIC: WEIGHT-LOSS JABS: THE END OF WILLPOWER? Hosted by Professor Eliot Forster with guest Dr Federica Amati
The Life Sci Fantastic is the podcast pulling back the curtain on the scientific breakthroughs changing our lives, hosted by Eliot Forster – scientist, entrepreneur and 30-year veteran of biotech. Each episode dives into the science of the innovations reshaping modern medicine. With leading experts as his guests, Eliot makes complex discoveries clear, relatable and inspiring – showing how today’s research is transforming tomorrow’s treatments.
If medication can quieten hunger, what does that mean for our ideas about willpower and personal responsibility? In this live recording, Eliot Forster is joined by nutrition scientist Dr Federica Amati to explore her new book, The Appetite Reset. From gut signals and modern diets to the promise and limits of weight-loss jabs, they ask what really shapes our appetite – and whether the pursuit of a slimmer body is distracting us from better health.
Saturday 17 October 12:15 — 13:30
THE SPIKED PODCAST: LATEST IN POLITICS, FREE SPEECH AND THE CULTURE WAR
Hosted by Fraser Myers and Tom Slater with guests Poppy Coburn, Francis Foster and Andrew Gold
Don’t miss this special live recording of the spiked podcast, your weekly round-up of politics and controversy from the spiked magazine team. This is a show all about making sense of a world gone mad – and sticking up for freedom and democracy in an increasingly illiberal and identitarian age.
Saturday 17 October 13:45 — 14:30
ARTS FIRST: MYTH, RELIGION AND NATIONAL IDENTITY
Hosted by Niall Crowley with guest Dolan Cummings
The ArtsFirst podcast is dedicated to defending freedom of expression in the arts and celebrating art for art’s sake and covers an eclectic range of arts-related topics. In this special live edition, host Niall Crowley is joined by Dolan Cummings, author of The Sacred Virgin and the Spurned Bride, an historical novella following two single mothers each seek a place in a world caught between the old ways and the new.
Set in Dark Age Britain – or what historians now call ‘the early medieval insular region’ – Cummings draws on myth and imaginative speculation as well as historical sources to conjure a world both like and unlike our own. This is an invitation to consider the ever-changing role of religion, the meaning of national identity, and the power of reading itself to reshape and transform our lives.
Saturday 17 October 13:45 — 14:30
THIS ISN’T WORKING: ARE WOMEN TO BLAME FOR ‘WOKE’ WORKPLACES?
Hosted by Tanya de Grunwald with guest Dr Joanna Williams
This Isn’t Working investigates what is wrong with today’s workplace culture, through interviews with HR directors and special guests such as Helen Joyce, Eric Kaufmann, Brendan O’Neill, Pamela Dow and Alex Edmans. Host Tanya de Grunwald explores how good intentions and bad ideas have created legal, commercial and reputational risk for organisations, and now threaten their future.
For this special live recording, Joanna Williams – author of How Woke Won – joins Tanya to assess whether women might be to blame for ‘woke’ workplaces. Female employees are often the most vocal champions of extreme workplace ‘inclusion’ – but how much power have they really held? Do we risk letting men off the hook for allowing bad ideas to infect organisations? And are we in danger of erasing the vital role played by all the women who have risked everything to push back on ‘woke’ at work?
Saturday 17 October 14:45 — 16:15
THE FREE SPEECH UNION: ON THE FREE SPEECH FRONTLINE
Hosted by Connie Shaw with guests Dr Ben Jones, Dr Jan Macvarish and David Rose
The Free Speech Union podcast features weekly episodes with great guests speaking about the cornerstone of our democracy which is under attack. The Free Speech Union is a non-partisan, mass-membership public interest body that stands up for the speech rights of its members and campaigns for free speech more widely.
How does FSU defend individuals from cancel culture and even the police? Can it help fend off attacks on free speech in the devolved parliaments, such as the Conversion Practices (Criminalisation) Bill in Northern Ireland and proposed anti-misogyny legislation in Scotland? What has the FSU’s in-house investigative researcher uncovered about the government’s misinformation about ‘misinformation’? How do FSU staff understand the deeper trends that have made the defence of free speech the frontline in the battle for democracy and civilisational values?
Saturday 17 October 16:45 — 18:15
THE BRINK: ISLAM IN BRITAIN AFTER OCTOBER 7
Hosted by Andrew Fox and Dr Jake Wallis Simons with guest Fiyaz Mughal
Your much-needed antidote to centrist dad podcasts. Presented by Daily Telegraph columnist and foreign correspondent Jake Wallis Simons and former parachute regiment officer and geopolitical analyst Andrew Fox, The Brink brings their wealth of real-life experience to bear upon the most important topics of the day, from Israel to immigration, Ukraine to Islamism, asylum hotels to the rise of Reform UK. With a host of stellar guests and an emphasis on common sense, Jake and Andrew explore what it will take to bring the West back from the brink. A podcast from the edge of what’s coming.
In this special live episode, Jake Wallis Simons and Andrew Fox will be joined by Fiyaz Mughal OBE, founder of Faith Matters and Tell MAMA. They will be discussing extremism, assimilation and the reality of life in British Muslim communities.
Sunday 18 October 11:00 — 12:30
PLANET NORMAL: NEWS AND VIEWS FROM BEYOND THE BUBBLE
Hosted by Liam Halligan and Allison Pearson with guests Lucy Connolly and Professor Robert Tombs
The podcast that speaks your language. News and views from beyond the bubble with Telegraph columnists Allison Pearson and Liam Halligan.
For this live recording of the podcast, Allison and Liam will be joined by special guests Lucy Connolly and Robert Tombs. Lucy will be talking about her book, A Tweet Too Far, and her experience as ‘Keir Starmer’s political prisoner’. Robert will reflect on free speech in universities and history lessons in schools – are we teaching kids to hate Britain?
Sunday 18 October 11:00 — 12:30
THE BOOKING CLUB: THE CATCHER IN THE RYE, 75 YEARS ON
Hosted by Jack Aldane with guests Tim Black, JJ Charlesworth and Georgina Mumford
The Booking Club is a podcast where leading authors and commentators discuss their latest books and breakthroughs at their favourite places to eat and drink. Guest authors on the series so far have included David Baddiel, Geoff Norcott, Michael Rosen, Rory Sutherland, Tom Holland, Helen Lewis, Will Self, Louise Perry and James Marriott.
JD Salinger’s classic coming-of-age novel has long been popular with its themes of angst and alienation, of teenage rebellion and being an outsider. Is the social nature of adolescence changing, and will this prevent the novel from enduring throughout the present century? Is it at the very least a novel firmly rooted in male anger and alienation, or do we miss its true power by looking at it this way?
Sunday 18 October 12:45 — 13:30
THE SPECTATOR: COFFEE HOUSE SHOTS
Hosted by James Heale and with guest Scarlett Maguire
Political analysis from The Spectator’s top team of writers.
Sunday 18 October 13:45 — 15:15
THE STATE OF IT: REPORTS FROM THE COALFACE OF BRITISH POLITICS Hosted by Steven Swinford with guests Patrick Maguire and Lara Spirit
Real reporting from the coalface of British politics. Join The Times and The Sunday Times’s political heavyweights Patrick Maguire, Steven Swinford and Lara Spirit as they dig deep into the latest tea room tip-offs, reveal insider conversations and bring analysis, authority and insight. No party loyalty. No spin. Not hosted by some old politicians. Taking you into the real business of politics, from those who live it daily.
Sunday 18 October 15:45 — 17:00
LAST ORDERS: THE LATEST NANNY STATE NEWS
Hosted by Tom Slater and Christopher Snowdon with guests Tony Lapidus and Gawain Towler
Don’t miss this special live recording of Last Orders, the spiked podcast all about freedom and the nanny state.
This is the show where Christopher Snowdon, from the Institute of Economic Affairs, and Tom Slater, editor of spiked, discuss the latest in modern-day puritanism – from killjoy attempts to clamp down on smoking, drinking, ‘junk food’ and assorted other vices to the never-ending campaign to cleanse speech and culture of anything the least bit offensive.
Sunday 18 October 17:15 — 18:30
TAKE ME HOME: GROWING UP IN THE CULTURE WARS
Hosted by Sebastian Moore and Hilary Salt with guests Dr Jennie Bristow and Professor Ellie Lee
At a time when politics feels so divisive, and people seem to be operating on an alternative set of facts, the left and right are no longer capable of providing answers to Britain’s problems. Hilary Salt and Sebastian Moore attempt to rebuild the political by making sense of what’s happening in Britain and exploring if there is a place once more for the politically homeless.
Along with guests Jennie Bristow and Ellie Lee, authors of Growing Up in the Culture Wars, they explore fraying generational bonds and the factors such as work, sex and politics that shape young people’s transition into adulthood. What lies behind the cultural obsession with identity that incites teenagers and emerging adults to prize fashionable badges of personal validation? Is there a viable route to restoring generational health in society?
