Podcast appearances and mentions of John Major

For the last decade or so we've looked on as the United States has radically changed itself, but the UK has been changing too as it continues to struggle with economic stagnation and the fallout from Brexit.The British people, famous for their aversion to radical and emotional politics, have embarked on a course which was supposed to take them back to the comforting certainties of the past, but has instead, brought them into an uncertain new world.It began with the huge shock of Brexit, then the constant turnover of Prime Ministers including Liz Truss whose term in office was famous outlived by a head of lettuce.In 2025 British Labor won government in a massive landslide, which saw many hope things might settle down, but now Kier Starmer is hanging on by his fingernails.And for those looking to the monarchy for a sense of continuity and national unity, that's not going well either.So what on earth has happened to the land of toast and tea? Ian Dunt is a British political journalist and author of How Westminster Works and Why is Doesn't Ian is also a regular contributor to Late Night Live on Radio National.This episode of Conversations was produced by Jen Leake, the Executive Producer is Nicola Harrison.It explores British politics, Brexit, the financial crash, austerity, David Cameron, The Conservative Party, referendum, European Union, New Labor, populism, government services, the UK-US alliance, Christianity, Marxism, puberty, disillusioned, dogma, ideology, psychedelic, journalism, political discourse, British public school system, elites, power, Prime Ministers, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, immigration.To binge even more great episodes of the Conversations podcast with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski go the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. There you'll find hundreds of the best thought-provoking interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.

Ahead of her new book What's So Great About the Great Books? coming out in April, Naomi Kanakia and I talked about literature from Herodotus to Tony Tulathimutte. We touched on Chaucer, Anglo-Saxon poetry, Scott Alexander, Shakespeare, William James, Helen deWitt, Marx and Engels, Walter Scott, Les Miserables, Jhootha Sach, the Mahabharata, and more. Naomi also talked about some of her working habits and the history and future of the Great Books movement. Naomi, of course, writes Woman of Letters here on Substack.TranscriptHenry Oliver: Today, I am talking with Naomi Kanakia. Naomi is a novelist, a literary critic, and most importantly she writes a Substack called Woman of Letters, and she has a new book coming out, What's So Great About the Great Books? Naomi, welcome.Naomi Kanakia: Thanks for having me on.Oliver: How is the internet changing the way that literature gets discussed and criticized, and what is that going to mean for the future of the Great Books?Kanakia: How is the internet changing it? I can really speak to only how it has changed it for me. I started off as a writer of young adult novels and science fiction, and there's these very active online fan cultures for those two things.I was reading the Great Books all through that time. I started in 2010 through today. In the 2010s, it really felt like there was not a lot of online discussion of classic literature. Maybe that was just me and I wasn't finding it, but it didn't necessarily feel like there was that community.I think because there are so many strong, public-facing institutions that discuss classic literature, like the NYRB, London Review of Books, a lot of journals, and universities, too. But now on Substack, there are a number of blogs—yours, mine, a number of other ones—that are devoted to classic literature. All of those have these commenters, a community of commenters. I also follow bloggers who have relatively small followings who are reading Tolstoy, reading Middlemarch, reading even much more esoteric things.I know that for me, becoming involved in this online culture has given me much more of an awareness that there are many people who are reading the classics on their own. I think that was always true, but now it does feel like it's more of a community.Oliver: We are recording this the day after the Washington Post book section has been removed. You don't see some sort of relationship between the way these literary institutions are changing online and the way the Great Books are going to be conceived of in the future? Because the Great Books came out of a an old-fashioned, saving-the-institutions kind of radical approach to university education. We're now moving into a world where all those old things seem to be going.Kanakia: Yes. I agree. The Great Books began in the University of Chicago and Columbia University. If you look into the history of the movement, it really was about university education and the idea that you would have a common core and all undergraduates would read these books. The idea that the Great Books were for the ordinary person was really an afterthought, at least for Mortimer Adler and those original Great Books guys. Now, the Great Books in the university have had a resurgence that we can discuss, but I do think there's a lot more life and vitality in the kind of public-facing humanities than there has been.I talked to Irina Dumitrescu, who writes for TLS (The Times Literary Supplement), LRB (The London Review of Books), a lot of these places, and she also said the same thing—that a lot of these journals are going into podcasts, and they're noticing a huge interest in the humanities and in the classics even at the same time as big institutions are really scaling back on those things. Humanities majors are dropping, classics majors are getting cut, book coverage at major periodicals is going down. It does seem like there are signals that are conflicting. I don't really know totally what to make of it. I do think there is some relation between those two things.Ted Gioia on Substack is always talking about how culture is stagnant, basically, and one of the symptoms of that is that “back list” really outsells “front list” for books. Even in 2010, 50 percent of the books that were sold were front-list titles, books that had been released in the last 18 months. Now it's something like only 35 percent of books or something like that are front-list titles. These could be completely wrong, but there's been a trend.I think the decrease in interest in front-list books is really what drives the loss of these book-review pages because they mostly review front-list books. So, I think that does imply that there's a lot of interest in old books. That's what our stagnant culture means.Oliver: Why do you think your own blog is popular with the rationalists?Kanakia: I don't know for certain. There was a story I wrote that was a joke. There are all these pop nonfiction books that aim to prove something that seems counterintuitive, so I wrote a parody of one of those where I aim to prove that reading is bad for you. This book has many scientific studies that show the more you read, the worse it is because it makes you very rigid.Scott Alexander, who is the archrationalist, really liked that, and he added me to his blog roll. Because of that, I got a thousand rationalist subscribers. I have found that rationalists at least somewhat interested in the classics. I think they are definitely interested in enduring sources of value. I've observed a fair amount of interest.Oliver: How much of a lay reader are you really? Because you read scholarship and critics and you can just quote John Gilroy in the middle of a piece or something.Kanakia: Yeah. That is a good question. I have definitely gotten more interested in secondary literature. In my book, I really talk about being a lay reader and personally having a nonacademic approach to literature. I do think that, over 15 years of being a lay reader, I have developed a lot of knowledge.I've also learned the kind of secondary literature that is really important. I think having historical context adds a lot and is invaluable. Right now I'm rereading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. When I first read it in 2010, I hardly knew anything about French history. I was even talking online with someone about how most people who read Les Miserables think it's set in the French Revolution. That's basically because Americans don't really know anything about French history.Everything makes just a lot more sense the more you know about the time because it was written for people in it. For people in 1860s France, who knew everything about their own recent history, that really adds a lot to it. I still don't tend to go that much into interpretive literature, literature that tries to do readings of the stories or tell me the meaning of the stories. I feel like I haven't really gotten that much out of that.Oliver: How long have you been learning Anglo-Saxon?Kanakia: I went through a big Anglo-Saxon phase. That was in 2010. It started because I started reading The Canterbury Tales in Middle English. There is a great app online called General Prologue created by one of your countrymen, Terry Richardson [NB it is Terry Jones], who loved Middle English. In this app, he recites the Middle English of the General Prologue. I started listening to this app, and I thought, I just really love the rhythms and the sounds of Middle English. And it's quite easy to learn. So then, I got really into that.And then I thought, but what about Anglo-Saxon? I'm very bad at languages. I studied Latin for seven years in middle school and high school. I never really got very far, but I thought, Anglo-Saxon has to be the easiest foreign language you can learn, right? So, I got into it.I cannot sight read Anglo-Saxon, but I really got into Anglo-Saxon poetry. I really liked the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Most people probably would not like the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle because it's very repetitive, but that makes it great if you're a language learner because every entry is in this very repetitive structure. I just felt such a connection. I get in trouble when I say this kind of stuff, because I'm never quiet sure if it's 100 percent true. But it's certainly one of the oldest vernacular literatures in Europe. It's just so much older than most of the other medieval literature I've read. And it just was such a window into a different part of history I never knew about.Oliver: And you particularly like “The Dream of the Rood”?Kanakia: Yeah, “The Dream of the Rood” is my favorite Anglo-Saxon poem. “The Dream of the Rood” is a poem that is told from the point of view of Christ's cross. A man is having a dream. In this dream he encounters Christ's cross, and Christ's cross starts reciting to him basically the story of the crucifixion. At the end, the cross is buried. I don't know, it was just so haunting and powerful. Yeah, it was one of my favorites.Oliver: Why do you think Byron is a better poet than Alexander Pope?Kanakia: This is an argument I cannot get into. I think this is coming up because T. S. Eliot felt that Alexander Pope was a great poet because he really exemplified the spirit of the age. I don't know. I've tried to read Pope. It just doesn't do it for me. Whereas with Byron, I read Don Juan and found it entertaining. I enjoyed it. Then, his lyric poetry is just more entertaining to read. With Alexander Pope, I'm learning a lot about what kind of poetry people wrote in the 18th century, but the joy is not there.Oliver: Okay. Can we do a quick fire round where I say the name of a book and you just say what you think of it, whatever you think of it?Kanakia: Sure.Oliver: Okay. The Odyssey.Kanakia: The Odyssey. Oh, I love The Odyssey. It has a very strange structure, where it starts with Telemachus and then there's this flashback in the middle of it. It is much more readable than The Iliad; I'll say that.Oliver: Herodotus.Kanakia: Herodotus is wild. Going into Herodotus, I really thought it was about the Persian war, which it is, but it's mostly a general overview of everything that Herodotus knew, about anything. It's been a long time since I read it. I really appreciate the voice of Herodotus, how human it is, and the accumulation of facts. It was great.Oliver: I love the first half actually. The bit about the Persian war I'm less interested in, but the first half I think is fantastic. I particularly love the Egypt book.Kanakia: Oh yeah, the Egypt book is really good.Oliver: All those like giant beetles that are made of fire or whatever; I can't remember the details, but it's completely…Kanakia: The Greeks are also so fascinated by Egypt. They go down there like what is going on out there? Then, most of what we know about Egypt comes from this Hellenistic period, when the Greeks went to Egypt. Our Egyptian kings list comes from the Hellenistic period where some scholar decided to sort out what everybody was up to and put it all into order. That's why we have such an orderly story about Egypt. That's the story that the Greeks tried to tell themselves.Oliver: Marcus Aurelius.Kanakia: Marcus Aurelius. When I first read The Meditations, which I loved, obviously, I thought, “being the Roman emperor cannot be this hard.” It really was a black pill moment because I thought, “if the emperor of Rome is so unhappy, maybe human power really doesn't do it.”Knowing more about Marcus Aurelius, he did have quite a difficult life. He was at war for most of his—just stuck in the region in Germany for ages. He had various troubles, but yeah, it really was very stoic. It was, oh, I just have to do my duty. Very “heavy is the head that wears the crown” kind of stuff. I thought, “okay, I guess being Roman emperor is not so great.”Oliver: Omar Khayyam.Kanakia: Omar Khayyam. Okay, I've only read The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Edward Fitzgerald, which I loved, but I cannot formulate a strong opinion right now.Oliver: As You Like It.Kanakia: No opinions.Oliver: Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson.Kanakia: Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson. I do have an opinion about this, which is that they should make a redacted version of Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson. I normally am not a big believer in abridgements because I feel like whatever is there is there. But, Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, first of all, has a long portion before Boswell even meets Johnson. That portion drags; it's not that great. Then it has all these like letters that Johnson wrote, which also are not that great. What's really good is when Boswell just reports everything Johnson ever said, which is about half the book. You get a sense of Johnson's conversation and his personality, and that is very gripping. I've definitely thought that with a different presentation, this could still be popular. People would still read this.Oliver: The Communist Manifesto.Kanakia: The Communist Manifesto. It's very stirring. I love The Communist Manifesto. It has very haunting, powerful lines. I won't try to quote from it because I'll misquote them.Oliver: But it is remarkably well written.Kanakia: Oh yeah, it is a great work of literature.Oliver: Yeah.Kanakia: I read Capital [Das Kapital], which is not a great work of literature, and I would venture to say that it is not necessarily worth reading. It really feels like Marx's reputation is built on other political writings like The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and works like that, which really seem to have a lot more meat on the bone than Capital.Oliver: Pragmatism by William James.Kanakia: Pragmatism. I mean, I've mentioned that in my book. I love William James in general. I think William James was writing in this 19th-century environment where it seemed like some form of skepticism was the only rational solution. You couldn't have any source of value, and he really tried to cut through that with Pragmatism and was like, let's just believe the things that are good to believe. It is definitely at least useful to think, although someone else can always argue with you about what is useful to believe. But, as a personal guide for belief, I think it is still useful.Oliver: Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw.Kanakia: No strong opinions. It was a long time ago that I read Major Barbara.Oliver: Tell me what you like about James Fenimore Cooper.Kanakia: James Fenimore Cooper. Oh, this is great. I have basically a list of Great Books that I want to read, but four or five years ago, I thought, “what's in all the other books that I know the names of but that are not reputed, are not the kind of books you still read?”That was when I read Walter Scott, who I really love. And I just started reading all kinds of books that were kind of well known but have kind of fallen into literary disfavor. In almost every case, I felt like I got a lot out of these books. So, nowadays when I approach any realm of literature, I always look for those books.In 19th-century American literature, the biggest no-longer-read book is The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper, which was America's first bestseller. He was the first American novelist that had a high reputation in Europe. The Last of the Mohicans is kind of a historical romance, à la Walter Scott, but much more tightly written and much more tightly plotted.Cooper has written five novels, the Leatherstocking Tales, that are all centered around this very virtuous, rough-hewn frontiersman, Natty Bumppo. He has his best friend, Chingachgook, who is the last of the Mohicans. He's the last of his tribe. And the two of these guys are basically very sad and stoic. Chingachgook is distanced from his tribe. Chingachgook has a tribe of Native Americans that he hates—I want to say it's the Huron. He's always like, “they're the bad ones,” and he's always fighting them. Then, Natty Bumppo doesn't really love settled civilization. He's not precisely at war with it, but he does not like the settlers. They're kind of stuck in the middle. They have various adventures, and I just thought it was so haunting and powerful.I've been reading a lot of other 19th-century American literature, and virtually none of it treats Native Americans with this kind of respect. There's a lot of diversity in the Native American characters; there's really an attempt to show how their society works and the various ways that leadership and chiefship works among them. There's this very haunting moment in The Last of the Mohicans, where this aged chief, Tamenund, comes out and starts speaking. This is a chief who, in American mythology, was famous for being a friend to the white people. But, James Fenimore Cooper writing in the 1820s has Tamenund come out at 80 years old and say, “we have to fight; we have to fight the white people. That's our only option.” It was just such a powerful moment and such a powerful book.I was really, really enthused. I read all of these Leatherstocking Tales. It was also a very strange experience to read these books that are generally supposed to be very turgid and boring, and then I read them and was like, “I understand. I'm so transported.” I understand exactly why readers in the 1820s loved this.Oliver: Which Walter Scott books do you like?Kanakia: I love all the Walter Scott books I've read, but the one I liked best was Kenilworth. Have you ever read Kenilworth?Oliver: I don't know that one.Kanakia: Yeah, it's about Elizabeth I, who had a romantic relationship with one of her courtiers.Oliver: The Earl of Essex?Kanakia: Yeah. She really thought they were going to get married, but then it turned out he was secretly married. Basically, I guess the implication is that he killed his wife in order to marry Queen Elizabeth I. It's a novel all about him and that situation, and it just felt very tightly plotted. I really enjoyed it.Oliver: What did you think of Rejection?Kanakia: Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte? Initially when I read this book, I enjoyed it, but I was like, “life cannot possibly be this sad.” It's five or six stories about these people who just have nothing going on. Their lives are so miserable, they can't find anyone to sleep with, and they're just doomed to be alone forever. I was like, “life can't be this bad.” But now thinking back over it, it is one of the most memorable books I've read in the last year. It really sticks with you. I feel like my opinion of this book has gone up a lot in retrospect.Oliver: How antisemitic is the House of Mirth?Kanakia: That is a hotly debated question, which I mentioned in my book. I think there has been a good case made that Edith Wharton, the author of House of Mirth, who was from an old New York family, was herself fairly antisemitic and did not personally like Jewish people. What she portrays in this book is that this old New York society also was highly suspicious of Jewish people and was organized to keep Jewish people out.In this book there is a rich Jewish man, Simon Rosedale, and there's a poor woman, Lily Bart. Lily Bart's main thing is whether she's going to marry the poor guy, Lawrence Selden, or the rich guy, Percy Gryce. She can't choose. She doesn't want to be poor, but she also is always bored by the rich guys. Meanwhile, through the whole book, there's Simon Rosedale, who's always like, “you should marry me.” He's the rich Jewish guy. He's like, “you should marry me. I will give you lots of money. You can do whatever you want.”Everybody else kind of just sees her as a woman and as a wife; he really sees her as an ally in his social climbing. That's his main motivation. The book is relatively clear that he has a kind of respect for her that nobody else does. Then, over the course of the book, she also gains a lot more respect for him. Basically, late in the book, she decides to marry him, but she has fallen a lot in the world. He's like, “that particular deal is not available anymore,” but he does offer her another deal that—although she finds it not to her taste—is still pretty good.He basically is like, “I'll give you some money, you'll figure out how to rehabilitate your reputation, and later down the line, we can figure something out.” So, I think with a great author like Edith Wharton, there's power in these portrayals. I felt it hard to come away from it feeling like the book is like a really antisemitic book.Oliver: Now, you note that the Great Books movement started out as something quite socially aspirational. Do you think it's still like that?Kanakia: I do think so. Yeah. For me, that's 100 percent what it was because I majored in econ. I always felt kind of inadequate as a writer against people who had majored in English. Then I started off as a science fiction writer, young adult writer, and I was like, “I'm going to read all these Great Books and then I'll have read the books that everybody else has read.” In my mind, that's also what it was—that there was some upper crust or literary society that was reading all these Great Books.That's really what did it. I do think there's still an element of aspiration to it because it's a club that you can join, that anyone can join. It's very straightforward to be a Great Books reader, and so I think there's still something there. I think because the Great Books movement has such a democratic quality to it, it actually doesn't get you to the top socially, which has always been the true, always been the case. But, that's okay. As long as you end up higher than where you started, that's fine.Oliver: What makes a book great?Kanakia: I talk about it this in the book, and I go through many different authors' conceptions of what makes a book great or what constitutes a classic. I don't know that anyone has come up with a really satisfying answer. The Horatian formulation from Horace—that a book is great or an author is great if it has lasted for a hundred years—is the one that seems to be the most accurate. Like, any book that's still being read a hundred years after it was written has a greatness.I do think that T. S. Eliott's formulation—that a civilization at its height produces certain literature and that literature partakes of the greatness of the civilization and summarizes the greatness of the civilization—does seem to have some kind of truth to it.But it's hard, right? Because the greatest French novel is In Search of Lost Time, but I don't know that anyone would say that the France in the 1920s was at its height. It's not a prescriptive thing, but it does seem like the way we read many of these Great Books, like Moby Dick, it feels like you're like communing with the entire society that produced it. So, maybe there's something there.Oliver: Now, you've used a list from Clifton Fadiman.Kanakia: Yes.Oliver: Rather than from Mortimer Adler or Harold Bloom or several others. Why this list?Kanakia: Well, the best reason is that it's actually the list I've just been using for the last 15 years. I went to a science fiction convention in 2009, Readercon, and at this science fiction convention was Michael Dirda, who was a Washington Post book critic. He had recently come out with his book, Classics for Pleasure, which I also bought and liked. But he said that the list he had always used was this Clifton Fadiman book. And so when I decided to start reading the Great Books, I went and got that book. I have perused many other lists over time, but that was always the list that seemed best to me.It seemed to have like the best mix. There's considerable variation amongst these lists, but there's also a lot of overlap. So any of these lists is going to have Dickens on it, and Tolstoy, and stuff like that. So really, you're just thinking about, “aside from Dickens and Tolstoy and George Eliot and Walt Whitman and all these people, who are the other 50 authors that you're going be reading?”The Mortimer Adler list is very heavy on philosophy. It has Plotinus on it. It has all these scientific works. I don't know, it didn't speak to me as much. Whereas, this Clifton Fadiman and John Major list has all these Eastern works on it. It has The Tale of Genji, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Story of the Stone, and that just spoke to me a little bit more.Oliver: What modern books will be on a future Great Books list, whether it's from someone alive or someone since the war.Kanakia: Have you ever heard of Robert Caro?Oliver: Sure.Kanakia: Yeah. I think his Lyndon Johnson books are great books. They have changed the field of biography. They're so complete, they seem to summarize an entire era, epoch. They're highly rated, but I feel like they're underrated as literature.What else? I was actually a little bit surprised in this Clifton Fadiman-John Major book, which came out in 1999, that there are not more African Americans in their list. Like, Invisible Man definitely seemed like a huge missed work. You know, it's hard. You would definitely want a book that has undergone enough critical evaluation that people are pretty certain that it is great. A lot of things that are more recent have not undergone that evaluation yet, but Invisible Man has, as have some works by Martin Luther King.Oliver: What about The Autobiography of Malcolm X?Kanakia: I would have to reread. I feel like it hasn't been evaluated much as a literary document.Oliver: Helen DeWitt?Kanakia: It's hard to say. It's so idiosyncratic, The Last Samurai, but it is certainly one of the best novels of the last 25 years.Oliver: Yeah.Kanakia: It is hard to say, because there's nothing else quite like it. But I would love if The Last Samurai was on a list like this; that would be amazing.Oliver: If someone wants to try the Great Books, but they think that those sort of classic 19th-century novels are too difficult—because they're long and the sentences are weird or whatever—what else should they do? Where else should they start?Kanakia: Well, it depends on what they're into, or it depends on their personality type. I think like there are people who like very, very difficult literature. There are people who are very into James Joyce and Proust. I think for some people the cost-benefit is better. If they're going to be pouring over some book for a long time, they would prefer if it was overtly difficult.If they're not like that, then I would say, there are many Great Books that are more accessible. Hemingway is a good one and Grapes of Wrath is wonderful. The 19th-century American books tend to be written in a very different register than the English books. If you read Moby Dick, it feels like it's written in a completely different language than Charles Dickens, even though they're writing essentially at the same time.Oliver: Is there too much Freud on the list that you've used?Kanakia: Maybe. I know that Interpretation of Dreams is on that list, which I've tried to read and have decided life is too short. I didn't really buy it, but I have read a fair amount of Freud. My impression of Freud was always that I would read Freud and somehow it would just seem completely fanciful or far out, like wouldn't ring true. But then when I started reading Freud, it was more the opposite. I was like, oh yeah, this seems very, very true.Like this battle between like the id and the ego and the super ego, and this feeling that like the psyche is at war with itself. Human beings really desire to be singular and exceptional, but then you're constantly under assault by the reality principle, which is that you're insignificant. That all seemed completely true. But then he tries to cure this somehow, which does not seem a curable problem. And he also situates the problem in some early sexual development, which also did not necessarily ring true. But no, I wouldn't say there's too much. Freud is a lot of fun. People should read Freud.Oliver: Which of the Great Books have you really not liked?Kanakia: I do get asked this quite a bit. I would say the Great Book that I really felt like—at least in translation—was not that rewarding in an unabridged version was Don Quixote. Because at least half the length of Don Quixote is these like interpolated novellas that are really long and tedious. I felt Don Quixote was a big slog. But maybe someday I'll go back and reread it and love it. Who knows?Oliver: Now you wrote that the question of biography is totally divorced from the question of what art is and how it operates. What do you think of George Orwell's supposition that if Shakespeare came back tomorrow, and we found out he used to rape children that we should—we would not say, you know, it's fine to carry on to doing that because he might write another King Lear.Kanakia: Well, if we discovered that Shakespeare was raping children, he should go to prison for that. No. It's totally divorced in both senses. You don't get any credit in the court of law because you are the writer of King Lear. If I murdered someone and then I was hauled in front of a judge and they were like, oh, Naomi's a genius, I wouldn't get off for murder. Nor should I get off for murder.So in terms of like whether we would punish Shakespeare for his crime of raping children, I don't think King Lear should count at all, but it's never used that way. It's never should someone go to prison or not for their crimes, because they're a genius. It's always used the other way, which is should we read King Lear knowing that the author raped children, but I also feel like that is immaterial. If you read King Lear, you're not enabling someone to rape children.Oliver: There's an almost endless amount of discussion these days about the Great Books and education and the value of the humanities, and what's the future of it all. What is your short opinion on that?Kanakia: My short opinion is that the Great Books at least are going to be fine. The Great Books will continue to be read, and they would even survive the university. All these books predate the university and they will survive the university. I feel like the university has stewarded literature in its own way for a while now and has made certain choices in that stewardship. I think if that stewardship was given up to more voluntary associations that had less financial support, then I think the choices would probably be very different. But I still think the greatest works would survive.Oliver: Now this is a quote from the book: “I am glad that reactionaries love the Great Books. They've invited a Trojan horse into their own camp.” Tell us what you mean by that.Kanakia: Let's say you believed in Christian theocracy, that you thought America should be organized on explicitly Christian principles. And because you believe in Christian theocracy, you organize a school that teaches the Great Books. Many of these schools that are Christian schools that have Great Books programs will also teach Nietzsche. They definitely put some kind of spin on Nietzsche. But they will teach anti-Christ, and that is a counterpoint to Christian morality and Christian theology. There are many things that you'll read in the Great Books that are corrosive to various kinds of certainties.If someone who I think is bad starts educating themselves in the Great Books, I don't think that the Great Books are going to make them worse from my perspective. So it's good.Oliver: How did reading the Mahabharata change you?Kanakia: Oh yeah, so the Mahabharata is a Hindu epic from, let's say, the first century AD. I'm Indian and most Indians are familiar with the basic outline of the Mahabharata story because it's told in various retellings, and there's a TV serial that my parents would rent from the Indian store growing up and we would watch it tape by tape. So I'm very familiar with it. Like there's never been a time I have not known this story.But I was also familiar with the idea that there is a written version in Sanskrit that's extremely long. It is 10 times as long as the Iliad and the Odyssey combined. This Mahabharata story is not that long. I've read a version of it that's about 800 pages long. So how could something that's 10 times this long be the same? A new unabridged translation came out 10 years ago. So I started reading it, and it basically contains the entire Sanskrit Vedic worldview in it.I had never been exposed to this very coherently laid-out version of what I would call Hindu cosmology and ethics. Hindus don't really get taught those things in a very organized way. The book is basically about dharma, the principle of rightness and how this principle of rightness orders the universe and how it basically results in everybody getting their just deserts in various ways. As I was reading the book, I was like, this seems very true that there is some cosmic rebalancing here, and that everything does turn out more or less the way it should, which is not something that I can defend on a rational level.But just reading the book, it just made me feel like, yes, that is true. There is justice, the universe is organized by justice. It took me about a year to read the whole thing. I started waking up at 5:00 a.m. and reading for an hour each morning, and it just was a really magical, profound experience that brought me a lot closer to my grandmother's religious beliefs.Oliver: Is it ever possible to persuade someone with arguments that they should read literature, or is it just something that they have to have an inclination toward and then follow someone's example? Because I feel like we have so many columns and op-eds and “books are good because of X reason, and it's very important because of Y reason.” And like, who cares? No one cares. If you are persuaded, you take all that very seriously and you argue about what exactly are the precise reasons we should say. And if you're not persuaded, you don't even know this is happening.And what really persuades you is like, oh, Naomi sounds pretty compelling about the Mahabharata. That sounds cool. I'll try that. It's much more of a temperamental, feelingsy kind of thing. Is it possible to argue people into thinking about this differently? Or should we just be doing what we do and setting an example and hoping that people will follow.Kanakia: As to whether it's possible or not, I do not know. But I do think these columns are too ambitious. A thousand-word column and the imagined audience for this column is somebody who doesn't read books at all, who doesn't care about literature at all. And then in a thousand-word column, you're going to persuade them to care about literature. This is no good. It's so unnecessary.Whereas there's a much broader range of people who love to read books, but have never picked up Moby Dick or have never picked up Middlemarch, or who like maybe loved Middlemarch, but never thought maybe I should then go on and read Jane Austen and George Eliot.I think trying to shift people from “I don't read books at all; reading books is not something I do,” to being a Great Books card-carrying lover of literature is a lot. I really aim for a much lower result than that, which is to whatever extent people are interested in literature, they should pursue that interest. And as the rationalists would say, there's a lot of alpha in that; there's a lot to be gained from converting people who are somewhat interested into people who are very interested.Oliver: If there was a more widespread practice of humanism in education and the general culture, would that make America into a more liberal country in any way?Kanakia: What do you mean by humanism?Oliver: You know, the old-fashioned liberal arts approach, the revival of the literary journal culture, the sort of depolitical approach to literature, the way things used to be, as it were.Kanakia: It couldn't hurt. It couldn't hurt is my answer to that question.Oliver: Okay.Kanakia: What you're describing is basically the way I was educated. I went to Catholic school in DC at St. Anselm's Abbey School, in Northeast, DC, grade school. Highly recommend sending your little boys there. No complaints about the school. They talked about humanism all the time and all these civic virtues. I thought it was great. I don't know what people in other schools learn, but I really feel like it was a superior way of teaching.Now, you know, it was Catholic school, so a lot of people who graduated from my school are conservatives and don't really have the beliefs that I have, but that's okay.Oliver: Tell us about your reading habits.Kanakia: I read mostly ebooks. I really love ebooks because you can make the type bigger. I just read all the time. They vary. I don't wake up at 5:00 a.m. to read anymore. Sometimes if I feel like I'm not reading enough—because I write this blog, and the blog doesn't get written unless I'm reading. That's the engine, and so sometimes I set aside a day each week to read. But generally, the reading mostly takes care of itself.What I tend to get is very into a particular thing, and then I'll start reading more and more in that area. Recently, I was reading a lot of New Yorker stories. So I started reading more and more of these storywriters that have been published in the New Yorker and old anthologies of New Yorker stories. And then eventually I am done. I'm tired. It's time to move on.Oliver: But do you read several books at once? Do you make notes? Do you abandon books? How many hours a day do you read?Kanakia: Hours a day: Because my e-reader keeps these stats, I'd say 15 or 20 hours a week of reading. Nowadays because I write for the blog, I often think as I'm reading how I would frame a post about this. So I look for quotes, like what quote I would look at. I take different kinds of notes. I'll make more notes if I'm more confused by what is going on. Especially with nonfiction books, I'll try sometimes to make notes just to iron out what exactly I think is happening or what I think the argument is. But no, not much of a note taker.Oliver: What will you read next?Kanakia: What will I read next? Well, I've been thinking about getting back into Indian literature. Right now I'm reading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. But there's an Indian novel called Jhootha Sach, which is a partition novel that is originally in Hindi. And it's also a thousand pages long, and is frequently compared to Les Miserables and War and Peace. So I'm thinking about tackling that finally.Oliver: Naomi Kanakia, thank you very much.Kanakia: Thanks for having me. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk

Who gave the tip-off that resulted in Peter Mandelson's sensational arrest? And will this mess ever stop unraveling? Plus, an Australian-style social media ban for under-16s is gathering pace. Can it work and is it such a good idea to protect teens from the online world only to throw them in the deep end once they turn 18? Also: Meeting Alastair Campbell at the Lido. Marie's extraordinary experience of interviewing Gisèle Pelicot. And in the Extra Bit, the joy (or not) of making kids do terrible Saturday jobs. You won't believe what Seth had to do.  ESCAPE ROUTES • Marie recommends I'm No Angel with Mae West.  • Zöe recommends Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind [[ ]]  • Matt has been reading Life Is Rosi by Jess Robinson • Seth has been enjoying the John Major edition of Gyles Brandreth's podcast Rosebud Major  Keep independent podcasting alive and kicking by backing OGWN at www.patreon.com/ohgodwhatnow Presented by Seth Thévoz with Zöe Grünewald, Marie le Conte and Matt Green. Audio Production by Robin Leeburn. Art direction: James Parrett. Theme tune by Cornershop. Managing Editor: Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. OH GOD, WHAT NOW? is a Podmasters production. www.podmasters.co.uk  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In an exclusive interview prior to the publication of his book - 'When Something Happens' - Gerald Corbett discusses with Christian his years as Chief Executive of Railtrack, the new company at the heart of John Major's Conservative Government's controversial fragmentation and privatisation of Great Britain's main line railway industry, including the tragic fatal train crashes at the turn of the century which shocked the country and led to fundamental reforms of railway safety.

In this episode of The Van Deeb Podcast, Van sits down with John Major, a leader whose success is built on one simple principle — responsiveness. From leading his mortgage team with authenticity to empowering others through F3 (Fitness, Fellowship, and Faith), John shares what it truly means to serve others with purpose.If you're passionate about leadership, business growth, or personal accountability, this episode is packed with real-world wisdom you can put into action today.

Impressionist, pianist, poet and star of The Big Impression Alistair McGowan takes us behind the scenes of his career. Along the way he does impressions of Louis Theroux, Harry Kane, Raymond Blanc, David Hockney, Alan Bennett, Alfred Hitchcock, Frank Skinner, Richard Madeley, Alan Shearer, Jo Brand, Dara Ó Briain, Monty Don, Gareth Southgate, Ronnie Corbett, Sven-Göran Eriksson, John Bishop, David Beckham, Ian McKellen, Martin O'Neill, Alan Hansen, Philip Mould, John Major, John Smith, Paddy Ashdown, Gordon Brown, John Parrot and Mikel Arteta.

Tuesday in Mississippi and we meet country songwriter and performer John Major. Classic country sounds include his songs Gasoline, Backwoods Outlaw, Callous On A Heart, Party In The Shop and SOS

Iain Dale interviews Conservative peer Lord William Waldegrave about his 'very posh' upbringing, getting into politics and then working for Ted Heath, then with Margaret Thatcher and John Major! Full of wonderful anecdotes from his many years in Westminster - do enjoy.

Can Britain's oldest political party reinvent itself for a new age? Former Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind joins Marc Sidwell to discuss the future of the Conservative Party, the legacy of Margaret Thatcher, and the dangers of Britain's political drift. From the crisis over the European Convention on Human Rights to the challenge of illegal migration and the war in Ukraine, Rifkind offers a veteran's view of how Britain can regain both control and confidence.One of only five ministers to serve for 18 years, throughout the whole Prime Ministerships of both Margaret Thatcher and John Major, he also reflects on what made Thatcher so effective — a rare blend of conviction and pragmatism — and what her example means for Kemi Badenoch as she seeks to rebuild the party after its worst defeat in a generation.Stay informed with CapX's unmissable daily briefings from the heart of Westminster. Go to capx.co to subscribe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sir John Redwood, the former Conservative MP for Wokingham, treasury adviser to Margaret Thatcher and Welsh Secretary under John Major, has discovered a “borrowing bomb” in the Budget that no one has noticed.Rachel Reeves reminded us at the despatch box last week that her choice was “not austerity; not reckless borrowing; but cutting the debt”, going on to say that “I said I would cut debt and borrowing, and I meant it”.However, Sir John has discovered that, far from doing that, her plans will see an extra £1.3 trillion of borrowing and the total national debt rise up to £3.53 trillion.He joins Camilla Tominey and Tim Stanley to explain how this Labour government's “dreadful spending habit” will saddle the country with an eye-watering “debt mountain”.We want to hear from you! Email us at thedailyt@telegraph.co.uk or find @dailytpodcast on TikTok, Instagram and X► Sign up to our most popular newsletter, From the Editor. Look forward to receiving free-thinking comment and the day's biggest stories, every morning. telegraph.co.uk/fromtheeditorProducer: Georgia CoanSenior Producer: John CadiganVideo Producer: Will WaltersStudio Operator: Meghan SearleExecutive Producer: Charlotte SeligmanSocial Producer: Nada AggourEditor: Camilla Tominey Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Miguel Ángel González Suárez te presenta el Informativo de Primera Hora en 'El Remate', el programa matinal de La Diez Capital Radio que arranca tu día con: Las noticias más relevantes de Canarias, España y el mundo, analizadas con rigor y claridad. Miguel Ángel González Suárez te presenta el Informativo de Primera Hora en 'El Remate', el programa matinal de La Diez Capital Radio que arranca tu día con: Las noticias más relevantes de Canarias, España y el mundo, analizadas con rigor y claridad. Hoy hace un año: Montero pone "la mano en el fuego" por Cerdán y su jefe de gabinete y asegura que "jamás" se reunió con De Aldama. Hace 365 días había en Canarias: 600 pacientes dados de alta que viven en los hospitales públicos de Canarias. Hoy ya superamos los 1.000. Hoy se cumplen 1.384 días del cruel ataque e invasión de Rusia a Ucrania. 3 años y 274 días. Hoy es jueves 27 de noviembre de 2025. Día del Maestro en España. El 27 de noviembre es el Día del Maestro en España, a pesar que oficialmente ya existe el Día Mundial de los Docentes proclamado por la UNESCO y la Organización Internacional del Trabajo, a celebrar el 5 de octubre. La razón principal de esta diferencia, es que se trata de una fiesta regional que busca no solo rendirles homenaje a todos los maestros, profesores, docentes o enseñantes del país, sino también al patrón de los profesores, San José de Calasanz. Fue un sacerdote, pedagogo y el creador de la educación moderna, además del responsable de fundar la primera escuela popular cristiana y gratuita de toda Europa. Las escuelas pías fueron su idea y creación en el siglo XVII y hoy en día se encuentran repartidas por todo el mundo. 1895.- El científico y millonario sueco Alfredo Nobel instituye en su testamento cinco premios anuales que llevarán su nombre. 1912.- Se firma el Tratado franco-español sobre Marruecos que concede a España la zona norte del país. 1970.- Pablo VI sufre un atentado frustrado en Manila (Filipinas). 1975: En la Iglesia de San Jerónimo el Real (Madrid) se celebró una Misa de Espíritu Santo como inauguración del reinado de don Juan Carlos I como rey de España. 1990.- El Partido Conservador británico elige a John Major líder del partido y primer ministro del Reino Unido en sustitución de Margaret Thatcher. Tal día como hoy, un 27 de noviembre de 1998, muere Gloria Fuertes, poetisa española incluida en la ‘Generación del 50’, cuya labor literaria se popularizó en España a partir de los años 70 por sus colaboraciones en programas infantiles y juveniles de televisión. 2004.- En España, Artur Mas es elegido presidente de la formación nacionalista catalana CiU, tomando el relevo de Jordi Pujol. Santoral para hoy 27 de noviembre: San José de Calasanz; santos Máximo, Basileo, Virgilio y Valeriano. Maduro afirma que Venezuela vive una "coyuntura decisiva para su existencia" y Trump reclama hablar "para salvar vidas" La OCDE eleva al 2,9% el crecimiento de España para este año aunque ve necesarias reformas estructurales. La Audiencia Nacional da diez días al PSOE para que entregue el registro de pagos en efectivo entre 2017 y 2024. Ábalos asegura que la reunión entre Sánchez y Otegi en 2018 existió mientras Moncloa insiste: "Es falso" Sánchez vuelve a dar la cara por García Ortiz ante un crítico Feijóo: "Este Gobierno está siempre con la verdad" Dinero en efectivo, gran cantidad de documentos e incluso armas: lo que la UCO encontró en los registros de Almería. Los agricultores y ganaderos canarios aún no saben cuándo cobrarán 8,5 millones en ayudas directas de 2024. La Consejería de Agricultura adelanta 2,7 millones de euros de una ficha financiera necesaria para pagar al completo las medidas del llamado Posei adicional de 11,2 millones; el Estado solo ha transferido 21 millones para los abonos de 2024 y hacen falta 32,2. Cerca del 50 % de las viviendas de alquiler en Canarias ya se ofertan como vacacional. En el último año y medio, en las dos grandes capitales del Archipiélago se han producido aumentos de entre el 400 % y el 500 % en esta modalidad de alquiler. Puertos Canarios adjudica la nueva terminal de pasajeros en el puerto de Agaete. El proyecto, que tendrá un plazo de ejecución de ocho meses, terminará de reforzar la seguridad y mejorar la calidad del servicio a los usuarios de la infraestructura portuaria. La Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC) es en su carrera de Turismo (Hospitality and Tourism Management) ocupa el puesto 35° del mundo en un ranking de asignaturas por áreas. (“Ranking de Shanghái”). Y la ULPGC fue considerada la 1ª en España. 2004.- Bon Jovi publica su segundo álbum en vivo, 'Inside Out'.

Ken Clarke is perhaps the archetypal political Big Beast. Elected to parliament 55 years ago, he held cabinet roles under Margaret Thatcher, John Major and David Cameron - tipped many times for No 10, and yet never quite hardline enough on Europe to convince his Tory peers that he should be their leader. Ahead of what looks certain to be an existential Budget for Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer, Lewis went to Lord Clarke's Nottingham home - to discuss the hard choices ahead, the future of this Government, Brexit, populism, and much else besidesThe News Agents is brought to you by HSBC UK - https://www.hsbc.co.uk/EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal -> https://nordvpn.com/thenewsagents Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee

Bernard Ponsonby:“I'm not sure in a sense who would lead them. I'm sure that… …Wes Streeting would run.I suspect that there would be some people within the PLP — because the minute somebody says they're running, there's always an alternative campaign which is not really about supporting one candidate, it's about stopping another.John Major effectively became prime minister because he wasn't Michael Heseltine.So I think there would be people who would start looking at Ed Miliband.And then, of course, there's Angela Rayner……and at that point, the markets will collectively take to their lavatory pans.”Alex Massie:“Yeah, I mean, I think, although he says he's done the job before and he doesn't want to do it again, I think Ed Miliband is the one to keep an eye on there.It seems to me that Miliband occupies a sort of comforting place on the political spectrum for a lot of the parliamentary Labour Party and indeed for the Labour Party membership.I do not see Wes Streeting being acceptable to either the parliamentary party or the membership.And there's the further complication for him that his parliamentary majority is only 500 votes — there is a really good chance he could lose at the next election.And I think that would also concentrate minds in an anti-Streeting kind of way.”Bernard Ponsonby:“I genuinely have no idea who would actually win it… I don't think the PLP has coalesced around any one individual yet.But yes — there will always be people trying to stop someone rather than elect someone.And Miliband will be looked at.”Focussing on UK, Scottish and Global politics, if you like other great political podcasts like The Rest is Politics, The News Agents, Newscast, Questions Time, Holyrood Sources, Planet Holyrood, The Stooshie, The Steamie, Scotcast, Americast etc etc then The Ponsonby and Massie Podcast could be a great show to add to your list of favourites. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As well as knowing how to win an election, the team have plenty of experience of losing them too. For this episode, recorded in front of an audience at the Times and Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival, we look at some campaigns that went really, really badly.Sally chooses Neil Kinnock's defeat in 1987, Danny chooses John Major's drubbing in 1997, and Polly chooses Jo Swinson's ill-feted run at becoming prime minister in 2019.Send your questions, comments and stories of defeat to howtowin@thetimes.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, we speak with Peter Just, author of a new book, Margaret Thatcher: Life After Downing Street. Peter explores how Thatcher reinvented herself after her departure to maintain her status as an international figure, and how she remained a parliamentary thorn in John Major's side. We also compare her parliamentary afterlife with that of other Prime Ministers, and consider the value that former leaders can bring to the institution of Parliament. ___ Please help us improve Parliament Matters by completing our Listener Survey. It will only take a few minutes.Go to: https://podcastsurvey.typeform.com/to/QxigqshS Peter Just's new book, Margaret Thatcher: Life After Downing Street, explores the political afterlife of Margaret Thatcher, once she had left No. 10. Peter explains how Thatcher reinvented herself as a global political figure, championing British business abroad, and how she exerted a continued influence on domestic politics and parliamentary life. We also compare her legacy with that of other ex-Prime Ministers, including the unusually active parliamentary role of Theresa May, and consider what value former Prime Ministers bring when they stay engaged in the work of Parliament. Peter explains how, after her personally devastating departure, Thatcher built a new role with the support of trusted aides. Though her interventions in the House of Commons were rare, her mere presence in Parliament carried weight. She became a political irritant to John Major's Government – encouraging rebels over Maastricht and criticising the Government's policy on Bosnia – yet behind the scenes she was often a diplomatic and commercial asset. ____

It was a new dawn. Or at least so Tony Blair said, as he emerged from his landslide victory in the 1997 General Election. It's what he would say, isn't it?Still, there was some truth to the claim. It was the end of eighteen years of Conservative rule. Eleven of them had been under the Iron lady, Maggie Thatcher. And whatever her achievements, she had certainly been the most divisive leader since the Second World War, as she made clear by explicitly breaking with the consensus politics that had marked the postwar scene up to her. It was also revealed in the deeply divided reactions to her death in 2013, with tributes from some (including Tony Blair) and celebration (Ding-dong, the witch is dead) from others.She'd been followed by John Major, in a government marked above all by division within his own party, as well as some blunders. Also marked, however, by one big breakthrough: the beginning of a peace process in Northern Ireland which he couldn't take through to completion, but which got some momentum behind it all the same.That's the theme the episode concludes with, because it fell to Tony Blair's government to take that process forward. Its work would lead to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. That would only be possible thanks to the unflagging support of the governments in both Dublin and London and, indeed, in Washington DC.As well as to the courage and willingness to go out on a limb of an extraordinary woman, the first female Northern Ireland Secretary and someone of outstanding firmness of will combined with willingness to negotiate to anyone she needed to win around. And who was she?Why, she was Mo Mowlam.Illustration: Mo Mowlam. Photograph: Paul McErlane/AP from 'The Guardian'Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License

We're just about ready to move on from John Major but, before we do, we need to spend a few moments on two major events of his second premiership. One was a significant breakthrough, in Ireland, even if it didn't go to completion under his administration; the second, his back-to-basics campaign, was an unqualified disaster.The first of the two problems with ‘back-to-basics' is that going backwards isn't a slogan that appeals much to voters. The second is that it feels like an appeal to morality, and there couldn't have been a worse time for that kind of appeal in the Conservative Party: it was engulfed over the coming years by a whole string of scandals, many sexual but some more simply corrupt, involving such actions as MPs taking money to ask helpful parliamentary questions.On Ireland, Major got the peace process really motoring, with support not just from the Republic of Ireland but even more significantly, from the US. If things ground somewhat to a halt in the last year or so of his premiership, that was mostly down to the Provisional IRA ending its ceasefire, in response to Major's apparent over-readiness to accommodate the Northern Ireland Unionists. That, in turn, was mostly down to his having lost his parliamentary majority and therefore having to depend on the Unionists to cling on to office.That he did, calling the 1997 general election at very close to the last possible moment. But the atmosphere of sleaze created by the scandals, the unpopularity of moves such as railway privatisation, and the perception that the Tories were increasingly split (over Europe) sank his party in voters' views. The election, on 1 May 1997, gave a landslide Commons majority, even larger than Thatcher's, to Tony Blair and Labour – or, to use his language, New Labour. He reckoned Labour had won thanks to ‘a vote for the future'. It looks like going forward to the future resonated better with voters than heading back to basics.Illustration: John Major at the 1993 Conservative party conference, detail from a photograph by Malcolm Gilson/Rex Features, from 'The Guardian'Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License

By winning the 1992 general election, John Major had his own mandate to form a government, instead of imply inheriting Margaret Thatcher's. He'd shown himself capable of leading the Conservative Party to success, as he took it to its fourth election win in a row. He'd emerged somewhat from the shadow of his Iron Lady predecessor. And then things immediately started going wrong. Black Wednesday, when a major run on the pound turned George Soros into ‘the man who broke the Bank of England' and drove Britain out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. Major's positive poll ratings collapsed overnight and never entirely recovered.Then his own party began to creak as its seams, as a growing group began to emerge and express an increasingly strident Euroscepticism. It mounted a rebellion against the government's proposal to ratify what came to be known as the Maastricht Treaty, which converted the European Economic Community into the European Union, with more ambitious aims towards integration (from some of which Major obtained British opt-outs). Though eventually the sceptics voted with their own party's government to avoid bringing it down, their behaviour had been so objectionable to Major that, in an unguarded moment with a journalist, he referred to them as ‘bastards'.Meanwhile, in the Labour Party, John Smith, the well-respected leader who'd replaced Neil Kinnock after the general election defeat, died suddenly of a heart attack. There were two frontrunners to take over from him, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. It seems clear that they came to a deal whereby Brown would stand down as a candidate for the leadership to give Blair a clear run, in return for a big role in a future Labour government.Blair took over from Smith. He'd be leading Labour against Major's Conservatives at the next general election. Our subject for next week.Illustration: promotional image for Stephen Frears' The Deal, showing David Morrissey as Gordon Brown and Michael Sheen as Tony BlairMusic: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License

With the poll tax, Thatcher took one bad decision to many. From the point of view of orthodox Thatcherite thought, it sounded like a good idea. She'd been working for years to shrink the state but, while she could herself cut public spending at national level, local government could keep racking it up if it so chose. She'd introduced rate capping to limit how far local councils could raise local taxes. The poll tax – officially the Community Charge – was the next step. In the old system, with local taxation based on house values, it was the rich that paid the most even though it was the poor that mainly benefited from local services. A flat rate tax per head – which the Community Charge was, hence the derogatory name Poll Tax – would, the theory suggested, give poor voters a direct relationship with local taxation and expenditure, making them less likely to vote for council candidates who would push for increased local spending.In fact, the tax was seen as unfair and its introduction led angry protests that on occasion led to rioting.It wasn't, though, the poll tax that directly ended Thatcher's time at the top. Instead, it was another row with one of her closest colleagues. Already Michael Heseltine, in 1986, and Nigel Lawson, in 1989, had been significant figures – so-called ‘big beasts' – leaving her government. Now, in the autumn of 1990, she fell out with Geoffrey Howe. He too resigned and in his resignation speech talked about how his loyalty was divided between Thatcher herself and the country or party. The day after his resignation, Heseltine announced he would challenge Thatcher for the Tory leadership. In the resulting election, like Heath against her, she won the first round but by too narrow a margin to prevent a second round. Like Health against her, she resigned.It wasn't Heseltine, however, who replaced her. On the contrary, much to many people's surprise, it was John Major, who'd only been elected to parliament in 1979 and only served in cabinet since 1986, who came through as the compromise candidate Tory MPs could rally behind. He became party leader and Prime Minister.And then, much to everyone's surprise again, he went on, partly helped by campaigning errors by Neil Kinnock's Labour Party, to win the election in 1992. The Tories had won four general elections in a row. But now that would return the grey man to Downing Street rather than the Iron Lady.A very different proposition…Illustration: Geoffrey Howe delivering his resignation speech to the Commons, 13 November 1990, with Nigel Lawson sitting next to him. Photo PA from the Guardian.Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License

Having looked last week at how Maggie Thatcher was running out of options for how to carve out a new role for Britain on the world stage, this week we look at how things were going at home. After all, she'd won a second landslide Commons majority in 1987, and that ought to be enough for anyone to shape politics to their wishes.Well, it turned out not be that easy. Though it didn't go far at this time, this was when the first stirrings for devolution, and eventually perhaps even independence, began to emerge in Scotland and Wales. After all, they'd been held together with England in Britain when there was a British Empire, and with that Empire gone, what held them together now?And then there was the crisis over the HIV/AIDS worldwide pandemic. It had led to a surge in homophobia, as many mistakenly labelled the condition ‘the gay disease'. Some Labour-contraolled local councils had reacted by working with organisations from the gay community and even funding some of them. This was repugnant to Thatcher, who shared a widespread view that the family was the bedrock of society, and acceptance of gay lifestyles was a major threat to it. The result was the adoption of what came to be known as ‘Section 28' banning the ‘promotion' of homosexuality by local councils or in schools. No prosecution of a local authority under Section 28, but its mere existence and the uncertainty of just what constituted ‘promotion' put a chill on work to support people suffering discrimination and to encourage safe sexual practices.Then there was Northern Ireland, and one of the weirder Thatcher initiatives. This was to try to deny terrorist or terrorist-associated organisations what she thought of as ‘the oxygen of publicity'. She banned the broadcasting of the voices of the leaders of these organisations which led to the ludicrous state of affairs where actors were used to repeat the words of those leaders, as though somehow banning the voice mattered more than banning the words.And then there was the economy. Things were beginning to turn a little nasty with unemployment and inflation both climbing worryingly. One approach favoured by some of Thatcher's collaborators, notably her Chancellor of the Exchequer, was to ‘shadow' the German currency, the Deutschemark. Since the Mark had joined the EEC's Exchange Rate Mechanism, setting exchange rates between European currencies which were only allowed to vary by 6% above or below that rate, Britain was in effect accepting the constraints of the ERM without being a member.When Lawson realised that advisers to Thatcher inside Downing Street were mocking his approach, he decided that he was being undermined in his work and resigned from the government.After Michael Heseltine in 1986, this was the second Tory big beast to leave her Cabinet. One loss of a minister might be regarded as a misfortune, two looked like carelessness. A third one would start to look very bad, as we'll discover next week.Oddly, after Lawson had gone, to be replaced by his deputy, a man who'd made a remarkably rapid rise through the ranks of the government, John Major, Thatcher allowed herself to be persuaded to take Britain into the ERM. Sadly, because sterling went in at far too high a value, this only limited options for dealing with the worsening economic position.So, as with foreign affairs, Thatcher was facing shrinking options on the domestic front too.Illustration: 9 February 1988 Protest against Section 28. Photo by Maggie HoneyMusic: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License

As the planet spirals into a fascist dystopia, we thought someone really should keep a record of this decline. So that, when the aliens are sifting through the ashes of civilization - they might be able to see where it all went wrong. This is "The World According To Some"... or as all the hepcats are calling it "T.W.A.T.S!”AD FREE EPISODES ARE AVAILABLE AT https://www.patreon.com/somedarecallitconspiracy FOR JUST $2 PER MONTH TWO EPISODES PER WEEK AVAILABLE FOR $5 (PATREONS ARE CURRENTLY 5 EPISODES OF T.W.A.T.S. AHEAD OF SPOTIFY/APPLE USERS) JOIN US AND SUPPORT THE PODCASTTopics today include:1. Trump thinks he's Napoleon2. Elon has another child, Milo is creepy Alex Jones is a sycophant3. Elon is deformed?4. David Icke and Alex Jones continue to bicker5. Media call out Trump6. John Major calls out Trump7. 200 year olds collecting social security?8. Javier Milei crypto fascist?9. German insult laws10. David vs Alex continues11. Richard D Hall is back in courtThis episode of T.W.A.T.S. looks back at the events of 16/17 of February 2025Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/some-dare-call-it-conspiracy--5932731/support.

It's More Rosebud, and our guest today is a political heavyweight. He was a member of parliament and cabinet minister under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, was the UK's last governor in Hong Kong, and then Chancellor of Oxford University. It's Chris Patten, Lord Patten of Barnes. In this episode, Chris tells Gyles about his childhood, growing up in the west of London in a happy and loving Irish family with a jazz-musician father. He tells Gyles about working for Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher, about Hong Kong and about his pride at having been involved in the Irish peace process. He talks about Trump and his fears for the future.At the start of this episode, we also have a surprise: Rosebud's shortest ever interview! Plus a listener email and more chat from Gyles and Harriet.Enjoy this. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 2014, the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks stood on the AJC Global Forum stage and delivered a powerful call to action: “We have to celebrate our Judaism. We have to have less oy and more joy… We never defined ourselves as victims. We never lost our sense of humor. Our ancestors were sometimes hated by gentiles, but they defined themselves as the people loved by God.” Over a decade later, at AJC Global Forum 2025, AJC's Director of Jewish Communal Partnerships, Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman, revisits that message in a special crossover episode between People of the Pod and Books and Beyond, the podcast of the Rabbi Sacks Legacy. She speaks with Dr. Tanya White, one of the inaugural Sacks Scholars and host of Books and Beyond, and Joanna Benarroch, Global Chief Executive of the Legacy, about Rabbi Sacks's enduring wisdom and what it means for the Jewish future. Resources: The State of the Jewish World Address: Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks The Inaugural Sacks Conversation with Tony Blair Listen – AJC Podcasts: The Forgotten Exodus: Untold stories of Jews who left or were driven from Arab nations and Iran People of the Pod:  Latest Episodes:  “They Were Bridge Builders”: Remembering Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky AJC's CEO Ted Deutch: Messages That Moved Me After the D.C. Tragedy Follow People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org If you've appreciated this episode, please be sure to tell your friends, and rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Transcript of the Interview: Manya Brachear Pashman: On this week 16 years ago, the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks published Future Tense, a powerful vision of the future of Judaism, Jewish life, and the state of Israel in the 21st Century. Five years later, he delivered a progress report on that future to AJC Global Forum.  On the sidelines of this year's Global Forum, my colleague Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman spoke with two guests from the Rabbi Sacks Legacy, which was established after his death in 2020 to preserve and teach his timeless and universal wisdom. Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman:   In 2014, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks addressed our Global Forum stage to offer the state of the Jewish world. Modeled after the US President's State of the Union speech given every year before Congress and the American people, this address was intended to offer an overview of what the Jewish people were experiencing, and to look towards our future. The full video is available on AJC's website as well as the Sacks Legacy website. For today's episode, we are holding a crossover between AJC's People of the Pod podcast and Books and Beyond, the Rabbi Sacks podcast. On Books and Beyond, each episode features experts reflecting on particular works from Rabbi Sacks. Channeling that model, we'll be reflecting on Rabbi Sacks' State of the Jewish World here at AJC's 2025 Global Forum in New York. AJC has long taken inspiration from Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks and today, AJC and the Rabbi Sacks legacy have developed a close partnership. To help us understand his insights, I am joined by two esteemed guests. Dr. Tanya White is one of the inaugural Sacks Scholars and the founder and host of the podcast Books and Beyond, the Rabbi Sacks podcast. Joanna Benarroch is the Global Chief Executive of the Rabbi Sacks legacy. And prior to that, worked closely with Rabbi Sacks for over two decades in the Office of the Chief Rabbi.  Joanna, Tanya, thank you for being with us here at AJC's Global Forum.  Tanya White:   It's wonderful to be with you, Meggie. Joanna Benarroch:   Thank you so much, Meggie.  Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman:   I want to get to the State of the Jewish World. I vividly remember that address. I was with thousands of people in the room, Jews from different walks of life, Jews from around the globe, as well as a number of non-Jewish leaders and dignitaries. And what was so special is that each of them held onto every single word.  He identifies these three areas of concern: a resurgence of antisemitism in Europe, delegitimization of Israel on the global stage, and the Iranian regime's use of terror and terror proxies towards Israel.  This was 2014, so with exception of, I would say today, needing to broaden, unfortunately, antisemitism far beyond Europe, to the skyrocketing rates we're living through today, it's really remarkable the foresight and the relevance that these areas he identified hold.  What do you think allowed Rabbi Sacks to see and understand these challenges so early, before many in the mainstream did? And how is his framing of antisemitism and its associated threats different from others? And I'll let  Tanya jump in and start. Tanya White:  So firstly, I think there was something very unique about Rabbi Sacks. You know, very often, since he passed, we keep asking the question, how was it that he managed to reach such a broad and diverse audience, from non Jews and even in the Jewish world, you will find Rabbi Sacks his books in a Chabad yeshiva, even a Haredi yeshiva, perhaps, and you will find them in a very left, liberal Jewish institution. There's something about his works, his writing, that somehow fills a space that many Jews of many denominations and many people, not just Jews, are searching for. And I think this unique synthesis of his knowledge, he was clearly a religious leader, but he wasn't just uniquely a religious leader.  He was a scholar of history, of philosophy, of political thought, and the ability to, I think, be able to not just read and have the knowledge, but to integrate the knowledge with what's going on at this moment is something that takes extreme prowess and a very deep sense of moral clarity that Rabbi Sacks had. And I would say more than moral clarity, is a moral imagination. I think it was actually Tony Blair. He spoke about the fact that Rabbi Sacks had this ability, this kind of, I think he even used the term moral imagination, that he was able to see something that other people just couldn't see.  Professor Berman from University of Bar Ilan, Joshua Berman, a brilliant Bible scholar. So he was very close to Rabbi Sacks, and he wrote an article in Israeli, actually, an Israeli newspaper, and he was very bold in calling Rabbi Sacks a modern day prophet.  What is a prophet? A prophet is someone who is able to see a big picture and is able to warn us when we're veering in the wrong direction. And that's what you see in the AJC address, and it's quite incredible, because it was 11 years ago, 2014. And he could have stood up today and said exactly the same thing. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks:  But there is nonetheless a new antisemitism. Unlike the old it isn't hatred of Jews for being a religion. It isn't hatred of Jews as a race. It is hatred of Jews as a sovereign nation in their own land, but it has taken and recycled all the old myths. From the blood libel to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  Though I have to confess, as I said to the young leaders this morning, I have a very soft spot for antisemites, because they say the nicest things about Jews. I just love the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Because, according to this, Jews control the banks, Jews control the media, Jews control the world. Little though they know, we can't even control a shul board meeting. Tanya White:  So what's fascinating is, if you look at his book Future Tense, which was penned in 2009.The book itself is actually a book about antisemitism, and you'll note its title is very optimistic, Future Tense, because Rabbi Sacks truly, deeply believed, even though he understood exactly what antisemitism was, he believed that antisemitism shouldn't define us. Because if antisemitism defines who we are, we'll become the victims of external circumstances, rather than the agents of change in the future.  But he was very precise in his description of antisemitism, and the way in which he describes it has actually become a prism through which many people use today. Some people don't even quote him. We were discussing it yesterday, Joanna, he called it a mutating virus, and he speaks about the idea that antisemitism is not new, and in every generation, it comes in different forms. But what it does is like a virus. It attacks the immune system by mutating according to how the system is at the time.  So for example, today, people say, I'm not antisemitic, I'm just anti-Zionist. But what Rabbi Sacks said is that throughout history, when people sought to justify their antisemitism, they did it by recourse to the highest source of authority within that culture. So for example, in the Middle Ages, the highest recourse of authority was religion. So obviously we know the Christian pogroms and things that happen were this recourse the fact, well, the Jews are not Christians, and therefore we're justified in killing them.  In the Enlightenment period, it was science. So we have the and the Scientific Study of Race, right and Social Darwinism, which was used to predicate the Nazi ideology. Today, the highest value is, as we all know, human rights.  And so the virus of antisemitism has mutated itself in order to look like a justification of human rights. If we don't challenge that, we are going to end up on the wrong side of history. And unfortunately, his prediction we are seeing come very much to light today. Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman:  I want to turn to a different topic, and this actually transitioned well, because Tanya, you raised Prime Minister Tony Blair. Joanna, for our listeners who may have less familiarity with Rabbi Sacks, I would love for you to fill in a larger picture of Rabbi Sacks as one of the strongest global Jewish advocates of our time. He was a chief rabbi, his torah knowledge, his philosophical works make him truly a religious and intellectual leader of our generation.  At the same time, he was also counsel to the royal family, to secular thought leaders, world leaders, and in his remarks here at Global Forum, he actually raised addressing leading governing bodies at the European Union at that time, including Chancellor Merkel. These are not the halls that rabbis usually find themselves in. So I would love for you to explain to our audience, help us understand this part of Rabbi Sacks' life and what made him so effective in it.  Joanna Benarroch:  Thanks, Meggie. Over the last couple of weeks, I spent quite a bit of time with people who have been interested in learning more about Rabbi Sacks and looking at his archive, which we've just housed at the National Library in Israel. Then I spent quite a significant amount of time with one of our Sacks Scholars who's doing a project on exactly this.  How did he live that Judaism, engaged with the world that he wrote so eloquently about when he stepped down as chief rabbi. And a couple of days ago, I got an email, actually sent to the Sacks Scholar that I spent time with, from the gifted archivist who's working on cataloging Rabbi Sacks' archive. She brought our attention to a video that's on our website.  Rabbi Sacks was asked by a young woman who was a student at Harvard doing a business leadership course, and she asked Rabbi Sacks for his help with her assignment. So he answered several questions, but the question that I wanted to bring to your attention was: what difference have you sought to make in the world?  The difference that he sought to make in the world, and this is what he said, “is to make Judaism speak to people who are in the world, because it's quite easy being religious in a house of worship, in a synagogue or church, or even actually at home or in the school. But when you're out there in the marketplace, how do you retain those strong values?  And secondly, the challenge came from University. I was studying philosophy at a time when there were virtually no philosophers who were religious believers, or at least, none who were prepared to publicly confess to that. So the intellectual challenges were real. So how do you make Judaism speak to people in those worlds, the world of academic life, the world of economy?  And in the end, I realized that to do that credibly, I actually had to go into the world myself, whether it was broadcasting for the BBC or writing for The Times, and getting a little street cred in the world itself, which actually then broadened the mission. And I found myself being asked by politicians and people like that to advise them on their issues, which forced me to widen my boundaries.” So from the very beginning, I was reminded that John–he wrote a piece. I don't know if you recall, but I think it was in 2005, maybe a little bit earlier. He wrote a piece for The Times about the two teenagers killed a young boy, Jamie Bulger, and he wrote a piece in The Times. And on the back of that, John Major, the prime minister at the time, called him in and asked him for his advice.  Following that, he realized that he had something to offer, and what he would do is he would host dinners at home where he would bring key members of either the parliament or others in high positions to meet with members of the Jewish community. He would have one on one meetings with the Prime Minister of the time and others who would actually come and seek his advice and guidance.  As Tanya reflected, he was extremely well read, but these were books that he read to help him gain a better understanding into the world that we're living in. He took his time around general elections to ring and make contact with those members of parliament that had got in to office, from across the spectrum. So he wasn't party political. He spoke to everybody, and he built up. He worked really hard on those relationships.  People would call him and say so and so had a baby or a life cycle event, and he would make a point of calling and making contact with them. And you and I have discussed the personal effect that he has on people, making those building those relationships. So he didn't just do that within the Jewish community, but he really built up those relationships and broaden the horizons, making him a sought after advisor to many.  And we came across letters from the current king, from Prince Charles at the time, asking his guidance on a speech, or asking Gordon Brown, inviting him to give him serious advice on how to craft a good speech, how long he should speak for? And Gordon Brown actually gave the inaugural annual lecture, Memorial Lecture for Rabbi Sacks last in 2023 and he said, I hope my mentor will be proud of me.  And that gave us, I mean, it's emotional talking about it, but he really, really worked on himself. He realized he had something to offer, but also worked on himself in making his ideas accessible to a broad audience. So many people could write and can speak. He had the ability to do both, but he worked on himself from quite a young age on making his speeches accessible. In the early days, they were academic and not accessible. Why have a good message if you can't share it with a broad audience? Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman:  What I also am thinking about, we're speaking, of course, here at an advocacy conference. And on the one hand, part of what you're describing are the foundations of being an excellent Jewish educator, having things be deeply accessible.  But the other part that feels very relevant is being an excellent global Jewish advocate is engaging with people on all sides and understanding that we need to engage with whomever is currently in power or may who may be in power in four years. And it again, speaks to his foresight.  Joanna Benarroch:  You know, to your point about being prophetic, he was always looking 10, 15, 20 years ahead. He was never looking at tomorrow or next week. He was always, what are we doing now that can affect our future? How do I need to work to protect our Jewish community? He was focused whilst he was chief rabbi, obviously on the UK, but he was thinking about the global issues that were going to impact the Jewish community worldwide. Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman:  Yes. I want to turn to the antidote that Rabbi Sacks proposed when he spoke here at Global Forum. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks:  I will tell you the single most important thing we have to do, more important than all the others. We have to celebrate our Judaism. We have to have less oy and more joy.  Do you know why Judaism survived? I'll tell you. Because we never defined ourselves as victims. Because we never lost our sense of humor. Because never in all the centuries did we internalize the disdain of the world. Yes, our ancestors were sometimes hated by gentiles, but they defined themselves as the people loved by God. Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman:  So he highlights the need to proudly embrace the particularism of Judaism, which really in today's world, feels somewhat at odds with the very heavy reliance we have on universalism in Western society. And underpinning this, Rabbi Sacks calls on us to embrace the joy of Judaism, simchatah, Chaim, or, as he so fittingly puts it, less oy and more joy. How did both of these shape Rabbi Sacks's wider philosophy and advocacy, and what do they mean for us today? Tanya White:  Rabbi Sacks speaks about the idea of human beings having a first and second language. On a metaphorical level, a second language is our particularities. It's the people, it's the family we're born. We're born into. It's where we learn who we are. It's what we would call today in sociology, our thick identity. Okay, it's who, who I am, what I believe in, where I'm going to what my story is. But all of us as human beings also have a first language. And that first language can be, it can manifest itself in many different ways. First language can be a specific society, a specific nation, and it can also be a global my global humanity, my first language, though, has to, I have to be able to speak my first language, but to speak my first language, meaning my universal identity, what we will call today, thin identity. It won't work if I don't have a solid foundation in my thick identity, in my second language. I have nothing to offer my first language if I don't have a thick, particular identity.  And Rabbi Sacks says even more than that. As Jews, we are here to teach the world the dignity of difference. And this was one of Rabbi Sacks' greatest messages. He has a book called The Dignity of Difference, which he wrote on the heels of 9/11. And he said that Judaism comes and you have the whole story of Babel in the Bible, where the people try to create a society that is homogenous, right? The narrative begins, they were of one people and one language, you know, and what, and a oneness of things. Everyone was the same. And Rabbi Sacks says that God imposes diversity on them. And then sees, can they still be unified, even in their diversity? And they can't.  So Rabbi Sacks answers that the kind of antidote to that is Abraham. Who is Abraham? Abraham the Ivri. Ivri is m'ever, the other. Abraham cut this legacy. The story of Abraham is to teach the world the dignity of difference.  And one of the reasons we see antisemitism when it rears its head is when there is no tolerance for the other in society. There is no tolerance for the particular story. For my second language. For the way in which I am different to other people. There's no real space for diversity, even when we may use hashtags, okay, or even when we may, you know, proclaim that we are a very diverse society. When there is no space for the Jew, that's not true dignifying of difference. And so I think for Rabbi Sacks, he told someone once that one of his greatest, he believed, that one of his greatest novelties he brought into the world was the idea of Torah and chochma, which is torah and wisdom, universal wisdom. And Rabbi Sacks says that we need both.  We need to have the particularity of our identity, of our language, of our literacy, of where we came from, of our belief system. But at the same time, we also need to have universal wisdom, and we have to constantly be oscillating and be kind of trying to navigate the space between these two things. And that's exactly what Rabbi Sacks did.  And so I would say, I'll actually just finish with a beautiful story that he used to always tell. He would tell the story, and he heard this story from the late Lubavitcher, Menachem Schneerson, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, who was a very big influence on Rabbi Sacks and the leader of the Chabad movement.  So in the story, there's two people that are schlepping rocks up a mountain, two workers, and one of them just sees his bags that are full of rocks and just sees no meaning or purpose in his work. The other understands that he's carrying diamonds in his bag.  And one day they get a different bag, and in that bag there's rubies, and the person who carries the rocks sees the rubies as rocks, again, sees that as a burden. But the person who's carrying the rubies and understands their value, even though they may not be diamonds, understands the values of the stones, will see them in a different way.  The Lubavitcher Rebbe said, if we see our identity, our Judaism, as stones to carry as a burden that we have to just schlep up a mountain, then we won't see anyone else's particular religion or particular belief system or particularity as anything to be dignified or to be valued.  But if we see our religion as diamonds, we'll understand that other people's religions, though for me, they may be rubies, they're still of value. You have to understand that your religion is diamonds, and you have to know what your religion is, understand what it is. You have to embrace your particularity. You have to engage with it, value it, and then go out into the world and advocate for it. And that, to me, was exactly what Rabbi Sacks did. Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman:  So much of what you're outlining is the underpinning of being a successful engager in interfaith and inter religious work. And Rabbi Sacks, of course, was such a leader there. At  AJC, we have taken inspiration from Rabbi Sacks and have long engaged in interfaith and inter-religious work, that's exactly a linchpin of it, of preaching one's own faith in order to engage with others. Tanya White:  That's the oy and the joy. For Rabbi Sacks, it's exactly that, if I see it as the oy, which is schlepping it up the mountain, well, I'm not going to be a very good advocate, but if I see it as the joy, then my advocacy, it's like it shines through. Joanna Benarroch:  It's very interesting, because he was interviewed by Christian Amanpour on CNN in 2014 just after he stepped down, as she she quoted the phrase “less oy and more joy” back to him, referring to his description of the Jewish community. When he came into office in 1991 he was worried about rising assimilation and out-marriage. And she said: How did you turn it around?  He said, “We've done the book of Lamentations for many centuries. There's been a lot of antisemitism and a lot of negativity to Jewish identity. And if you think of yourself, exactly as you're describing, as the people who get hated by others, or you've got something too heavy to carry, you're not going to want to hand that on to your children.  If you've got a very open society, the question is, why should I be anything in particular? Being Jewish is a very particular kind of Jewish identity, but I do feel that our great religious traditions in Judaism is the classic instance of this.  We have enormous gifts to offer in the 21st century, a very strong sense of community, very supportive families, a dedicated approach to education. And we do well with our children. We're a community that believes in giving. We are great givers, charitably and in other ways.  So I think when you stay firm in an identity, it helps you locate yourself in a world that sometimes otherwise can be seen to be changing very fast and make people very anxious. I think when you're rooted in a people that comes through everything that fate and history can throw at it, and has kept surviving and kept being strong and kept going, there's a huge thing for young people to carry with them.” And then he adds, to finish this interview, he said, “I think that by being what we uniquely are, we contribute to humanity what only we can give.” What Rabbi Sacks had was a deep sense of hope. He wore a yellow tie to give people hope and to make them smile. That's why he wore a yellow tie on major occasions. You know, sunshine, bringing hope and a smile to people's faces. And he had hope in humanity and in the Jewish people.  And he was always looking to find good in people and things. And when we talk about less oy and more joy. He took pleasure in the simple things in life. Bringing music into the community as a way to uplift and bring the community together.  We just spent a lovely Shabbat together with AJC, at the AJC Shabbaton with the students. And he would have loved nothing more than being in shul, in synagogue with the community and joining in.  Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman:  Thank you Joanna, and that's beautiful. I want to end our conversation by channeling how Rabbi Sacks concluded his 2014 address. He speaks about the need for Jewish unity at that time. Let's take a listen.  Rabbi Jonathan Sacks:  We must learn to overcome our differences and our divisions as Jews and work together as a global people. Friends, consider this extraordinary historical fact: Jews in history have been attacked by some of the greatest empires the world has ever known, empires that bestrode the narrow world like a colossus. That seemed invulnerable in their time. Egypt of the pharaohs, Assyria, Babylonia, the Alexandrian Empire, the Roman Empire, the medieval empires of Christianity and Islam, all the way up to the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. Each one of those, seemingly invulnerable, has been consigned to history, while our tiny people can still stand and sing Am Yisrael Chai. Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman:  In Rabbi Sacks' A Letter in the Scroll, he talks about the seminal moment in his life when he most deeply understood Jewish peoplehood and unity. And that was 1967, the Six Day War, when the Jewish people, of course, witnessed the State of Israel on the brink of existential threat. To our AJC audience, this may ring particularly familiar because it was evoked in a piece by Mijal Bitton, herself a Sacks Scholar, a guest on our podcast, a guest Tanya on your podcast, who wrote a piece about a month after 10/7 titled "That Pain You're Feeling is Peoplehood'.  And that piece went viral in the Jewish world. And she draws this parallel between the moment that Rabbi Sacks highlights in 1967 and 10, seven, I should note, Tanya, of course, is referenced in that article that Mijal wrote. For our audiences, help us understand the centrality of peoplehood and unity to Rabbi Sacks' vision of Judaism. And as we now approach a year and a half past 10/7 and have seen the resurgence of certain communal fractures, what moral clarity can we take from Rabbi Sacks in this moment? Tanya White:  Okay, so it's interesting you talked about Mijal, because I remember straight after 7/10 we were in constant conversation–how it was impacting us, each of us in our own arenas, in different ways. And one of the things I said to her, which I found really comforting, was her constant ability to be in touch. And I think like this, you know, I like to call it after the name of a book that I read to my kid, The Invisible String. This idea that there are these invisible strings. In the book, the mother tells the child that all the people we love have invisible strings that connect us. And when we pull on the string, they feel it the other side.  1967 was the moment Rabbi Sacks felt that invisible pull on the string. They have a very similar trajectory. The seventh of October was the moment in which many, many Jews, who were perhaps disengaged, maybe a little bit ambivalent about their Jewish identity, they felt the tug of that invisible string. And then the question is, what do we do in order to maintain that connection? And I think for Rabbi Sacks, that was really the question. He speaks about 1967 being the moment in which he says, I realized at that moment every, you know, in Cambridge, and everything was about choice. And, you know, 1960s philosophy and enlightenment philosophy says, at that moment, I realized I hadn't chosen Judaism. Judaism had chosen me.  And from that moment forth, Rabbi Sacks feels as if he had been chosen. Judaism had chosen him for a reason. He was a Jew for a reason. And I think today, many, many Jews are coming back to that question. What does it mean that I felt that pull of the string on the seventh of October?  Rabbi Sacks' answer to that question of, where do we go from here? I think very simply, would be to go back to the analogy. You need to work out why Judaism is a diamond. And once you understand why Judaism is a diamond and isn't a burden to carry on my back, everything else will fall into place.  Because you will want to advocate for that particularity and what that particularity brings to the world. In his book, Future Tense, which, again, was a book about antisemitism, there was a picture of a lighthouse at the front of the book. That's how Rabbi Sacks saw the antidote for antisemitism, right? Is that we need to be the lighthouse. Because that's our role, globally, to be able to be the light that directs the rest of the world when they don't know where they're going. And we are living in a time of dizziness at the moment, on every level, morally, sociologically, psychologically, people are dizzy. And Judaism has, and I believe this is exactly what Rabbi Sacks advocated for, Judaism has a way to take us out of that maze that we found ourselves in. And so I think today, more than ever, in response to you, yes, it is peoplehood that we feel. And then the question is, how do we take that feeling of peoplehood and use it towards really building what we need to do in this world. The advocacy that Judaism needs to bring into the world. Meggie Wyschogrod Fredman:  We all have a role, a reason, a purpose. When Rabbi Sacks spoke to us a decade ago, more than a decade ago, at this point, those who were in the room felt the moral imperative to stand up to advocate and why, as Jews, we had that unique role.  I am so honored that today, now with Rabbi Sacks not here, you continue to give us that inspiration of why we are a letter in the scroll, why we must stand up and advocate. So thank you, Tanya and Joanna, for joining us at Global Forum and for this enlightening conversation. Tanya White:  Thank you so much for having us. Thank you. Joanna Benarroch:  Thank you so much.  Manya Brachear Pashman: If you missed last week's episode, please be sure to listen as two AJC colleagues pay tribute to their friends Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky who were brutally murdered outside the Capital Jewish Museum in May.   

With tensions simmering in Keir Starmer's top team over Labour's approach to the economy, this week host Patrick Baker looks at what the PM might be able to learn about managing your ministers from past Cabinets and examines Starmer's own leadership style. David Owen, former foreign secretary under Jim Callaghan, recounts the IMF crisis in 1976 as an example of Cabinet government at its most effective. Michael Cockerell, the legendary political documentary-maker, describes how Margaret Thatcher and John Major approached their Cabinets and how, despite their contrasting styles, both were undone by their Cabinet ministers in the end. Clare Short, who resigned as Tony Blair's international development secretary over the war in Iraq, argues Blair sidelined the Cabinet as a decision-making body from the beginning of his premiership, preferring instead to rely on a small coterie of advisers or what became known as ‘sofa government'. Cleo Watson, Boris Johnson's former deputy chief of staff, takes us through the Cabinet dynamics of the Johnson era and how Chief Adviser Dominic Cummings saw Cabinet as a rubber-stamping exercise, rather than where the real decisions of government would be taken. Sonia Khan, former adviser to ex-Chancellor Sajid Javid, says ministers often had to linger by the toilet or attend social gatherings to have any chance of influencing Boris Johnson. Luke Sullivan, Keir Starmer's political director while in opposition, says the prime minister likes to let his cabinet ministers get on with their jobs and to solve problems before they reach his desk. And Patrick Maguire, political columnist at The Times and author of ‘Get In: The Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer' delves into the curious dynamics of this current Labour Cabinet and explains how Keir Starmer's leadership style might create a vacuum for others to fill. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week: Starmerism's moral vacuum ‘Governments need a mission, or they descend into reactive incoherence' writes Michael Gove in this week's cover piece. A Labour government, he argues, ‘cannot survive' without a sense of purpose. The ‘failure of this government to make social justice its mission' has led to a Spring Statement ‘that was at once hurried, incoherent and cruel – a fiscal drive-by shooting'.  Michael writes that Starmer wishes to emulate his hero – the post-war Prime Minister Clement Atlee, who founded the NHS and supported a fledgling NATO alliance. Yet, with policy driven by Treasury mandarins, the Labour project is in danger of drifting, as John Major's premiership did. Starmerism's policy vacuum is being filled so rapidly by HMT that we are embarking on an era of ‘cruel Labour'.  Michael joined the podcast to discuss further, alongside John McTernan, former private secretary to Tony Blair. (1:37) Next: have the Church's sacred spaces become community clubs? From yoga classes to drag shows, and even a helter-skelter, the Revd Dr Jamie Franklin, host of the podcast Irreverentand author of The Great Return, writes in the magazine this week about what he argues is the ‘tragic misuse of its sacred spaces' by the Church of England. This new reality may be symptomatic of a wider issue with the leadership of the Church, currently pondering its future. The journalist Quentin Letts provides his own manifesto for the next Archbishop of Canterbury in this week's diary.  So do diverse uses of space broaden the Church's appeal or does it run the risk of diluting its holiness? Quentin, whose new book NUNC! Is out now, joined the podcast alongside Jamie to discuss. (20:52) And finally: is Clandon Park a visionary restoration or a catastrophic precedent? Calvin Po addresses the ‘conundrum of conservation' in the Arts lead for the magazine this week: how much of a building can be restored before it becomes a different building entirely?  Plans have moved forward for the 18th century Palladian mansion Clandon Park, managed by the National Trust, to be preserved in a half-charred form, following its gutting by fire in 2015. The Trust says this ‘approach combines careful conservation, scholarly restoration and sensitive contemporary design'. And The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), founded by William Morris, has hailed the plans, arguing that a full restoration would amount to a ‘feeble and lifeless forgery' and the ‘Clandon of the future will offer a markedly different visitor experience to that of the past, but one that will have its own interest'. Calvin, however, worries that this sets a ‘catastrophic precedent' for restorations of the future, and The Georgian Group actively opposed the Trust's proposal, arguing that the building's merit comes in its original design ‘not in burnt bricks'.  To discuss further we were joined by The Georgian Group's director Dr Anya Lucas, and the architectural historian – and former Chair of SPAB – Gillian Darley. (35:17) Presented by William Moore and Lara Prendergast. Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Oscar Edmondson.

This week: Starmerism's moral vacuum ‘Governments need a mission, or they descend into reactive incoherence' writes Michael Gove in this week's cover piece. A Labour government, he argues, ‘cannot survive' without a sense of purpose. The ‘failure of this government to make social justice its mission' has led to a Spring Statement ‘that was at once hurried, incoherent and cruel – a fiscal drive-by shooting'.  Michael writes that Starmer wishes to emulate his hero – the post-war Prime Minister Clement Atlee, who founded the NHS and supported a fledgling NATO alliance. Yet, with policy driven by Treasury mandarins, the Labour project is in danger of drifting, as John Major's premiership did. Starmerism's policy vacuum is being filled so rapidly by HMT that we are embarking on an era of ‘cruel Labour'.  Michael joined the podcast to discuss further, alongside John McTernan, former private secretary to Tony Blair. (1:37) Next: have the Church's sacred spaces become community clubs?  From yoga classes to drag shows, and even a helter-skelter, the Revd Dr Jamie Franklin, host of the podcast Irreverend and author of The Great Return, writes in the magazine this week about what he argues is the ‘tragic misuse of its sacred spaces' by the Church of England. This new reality may be symptomatic of a wider issue with the leadership of the Church, currently pondering its future. The journalist Quentin Letts provides his own manifesto for the next Archbishop of Canterbury in this week's diary.  So do diverse uses of space broaden the Church's appeal or does it run the risk of diluting its holiness? Quentin, whose new book NUNC! Is out now, joined the podcast alongside Jamie to discuss. (20:52) And finally: is Clandon Park a visionary restoration or a catastrophic precedent? Calvin Po addresses the ‘conundrum of conservation' in the Arts lead for the magazine this week: how much of a building can be restored before it becomes a different building entirely?  Plans have moved forward for the 18th century Palladian mansion Clandon Park, managed by the National Trust, to be preserved in a half-charred form, following its gutting by fire in 2015. The Trust says this ‘approach combines careful conservation, scholarly restoration and sensitive contemporary design'. And The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), founded by William Morris, has hailed the plans, arguing that a full restoration would amount to a ‘feeble and lifeless forgery' and the ‘Clandon of the future will offer a markedly different visitor experience to that of the past, but one that will have its own interest'. Calvin, however, worries that this sets a ‘catastrophic precedent' for restorations of the future, and The Georgian Group actively opposed the Trust's proposal, arguing that the building's merit comes in its original design ‘not in burnt bricks'.  To discuss further we were joined by The Georgian Group's director Dr Anya Lucas, and the architectural historian – and former Chair of SPAB – Gillian Darley. (35:17) Presented by William Moore and Lara Prendergast. Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Oscar Edmondson.

An MP for 35 years, Michael Heseltine served as Environment Secretary and then Defence Secretary in Margaret Thatcher's government. Following his well-publicised resignation in 1986, he returned to government under John Major and was Deputy Prime Minister for the last two years of Major's premiership. Once seen as a potential successor to Thatcher and Major, he has sat in the Lords since stepping down as an MP in 2001, and in recent years has been an outspoken critic of Brexit. Lord Heseltine sits down with James Heale to discuss his thoughts on the current Labour government, how to fix Britain's broken economy and why devolution should go further. ‘Deeply depressed' by attacks on the civil service – Britain's ‘rolls royce' – he provides his thoughts on various political leaders: Starmer is handling Trump well, Reeves is handling the economy badly, Badenoch is being overshadowed by foreign affairs, and Boris Johnson demonstrated he has ‘no integrity'. And on Thatcher, he says new information has vindicated him over the Westland affair and demonstrated her ‘complicity'. His new book, From Acorns to Oaks: An Urgent Agenda to Rebuild Britain, is out now. Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

An MP for 35 years, Michael Heseltine served as Environment Secretary and then Defence Secretary in Margaret Thatcher's government. Following his well-publicised resignation in 1986, he returned to government under John Major and was Deputy Prime Minister for the last two years of Major's premiership. Once seen as a potential successor to Thatcher and Major, he has sat in the Lords since stepping down as an MP in 2001, and in recent years has been an outspoken critic of Brexit. Lord Heseltine sits down with James Heale to discuss his thoughts on the current Labour government, how to fix Britain's broken economy and why devolution should go further. ‘Deeply depressed' by attacks on the civil service – Britain's ‘rolls royce' – he provides his thoughts on various political leaders: Starmer is handling Trump well, Reeves is handling the economy badly, Badenoch is being overshadowed by foreign affairs, and Boris Johnson demonstrated he has ‘no integrity'. And on Thatcher, he says new information has vindicated him over the Westland affair and demonstrated her ‘complicity'. His new book, From Acorns to Oaks: An Urgent Agenda to Rebuild Britain, is out now. Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

In the course of one week, America has appeared to pivot in foreign policy, from an unprecedented vote with Russia at the United Nations to President Trump's angry exchange with Ukrainian President Zelensky in the Oval Office. On Sunday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer hosted an emergency summit and announced that the UK and France were assembling a "coalition of the willing" to enforce a peace deal for Ukraine. Sir Malcolm Rifkind was foreign secretary in John Major's government and joins the show to discuss.  Also on today's show: Finland President Alexander Stubb; Ukrainian jounralist Nataliya Gumenyuk  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

With Keir Starmer recently forced to promise his Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, would stay on until the next election, Westminster Insider Host Sascha O'Sullivan talks to former Chancellors and advisors who have worked in No 10 and No 11 Downing Street over the last 30 years to find out how to survive one of the toughest gigs in politics. She talks to former Chancellor Norman Lamont about the aftermath of the Black Wednesday financial crisis in 1992 and what lead to John Major sacking him less than a year later. Former advisor to Blair and Brown Theo Bertram tells Sascha the Chancellor-turned-PM Gordon Brown struggled to relinquish control over the Treasury to his new neighbour in No11, Alistair Darling. Sam White, who worked for Darling during his time as Chancellor, explains how an ideological wedge pulled the two apart before and after the 2008 financial crash. George Osborne, former Chancellor and now host of the Political Currency podcast, explains his unusual closeness with David Cameron through their shared belief in the merits of austerity. But he tells Sascha how their closeness may have risked a form of 'groupthink' during their time in office. Osborne also sets out why he thinks Rachel Reeves current economic plans have more in common with his economic agenda in the 2010s that people might realise. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of the Insurance Producers Podcast, host Cyrus Jaffery is joined by John Major, a mortgage lender, to break down the key strategies that separate top-performing insurance agents from the rest. They dive into The Debt of Time and why speed to lead—whether by text or email—can make or break a deal. Plus, they discuss why agents should focus on building relationships, not just transactions, and share expert tips on boosting mortgage leads while avoiding the lender's nightmare. If you want to strengthen your partnerships with mortgage lenders and unlock the power of consistency as the key to greatness, this episode is packed with insights you don't want to miss!

For the 150th episode this week former deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine comes on the show for a special interview ahead of the publication of his new memoir 'From Acorns to Oaks' about the second part of his career as an advisor to David Cameron and reflecting further on his time in Margaret Thatcher and John Major's Cabinets. The Conservative peer, who at 91 is still one of the ‘big beasts' of British politics, despite leaving parliament in 2001 and retiring to Thenford House in Northamptonshire and its 400 acre estate. The book contrasts his work to restore the woodland at his family's arboretum with his time trying to pursue urban regeneration and increasing Britain's regional growth, and he speaks to Alain Tolhurst about his long career championing devolution, what Labour need to do to get the economy moving again, and how his party rebuilds after last year's devastating defeat. To sign up for our newsletters  Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced by Nick Hilton and edited by Ewan Cameron for Podot

Iain Dale interviews Times columnist and Conservative peer Lord Finkelstein. They discuss the life of an opinion writer - what works and what doesn't, the extraordinary story of his parents living through the Holocaust - and his work in politics including prepping John Major for PMQs!NOTE: This is a re-upload to fix a technical issue for some listeners!

Iain Dale interviews Times columnist and Conservative peer Lord Finkelstein. They discuss the life of an opinion writer - what works and what doesn't, the extraordinary story of his parents living through the Holocaust - and his work in politics including prepping John Major for PMQs!

Recorded at the Alzheimer's Society ECR Retreat on the 19th June 2024. -- In this panel discussion / question and answer session, Katherine Gray, Alzheimer's Society Head of Research chairs a discussion with Professor Heather Mortiboys, Professor Nathan Davies, Dr Jeffrey Davies, Professor Andrey Abramov and John Major. Panellists provide tips and insights into the grant application process, providing their perspectives as grant reviewers and funding board members. They also provide advice on how to approach grant application writing. The panellists, who are leading researchers and volunteers on grant advisory boards, discuss the key components of a successful grant application, common mistakes, and how to demonstrate the potential impact of research. They also provide advice on resubmitting applications after initial rejection and how to effectively manage career breaks. Together they emphasise the importance of clear hypotheses, realistic expectations, proper costing, and team science. They also highlight the need for perseverance and flexibility in the application process. -- Last week Alzheimer's Society announced that the ECR Retreat will be back on the 8th-9th July 2025. Keep an eye on the Dementia Researcher website for updates, and details on how to apply. -- Full biographies on all our guests and a transcript can be found on our website: https://ww.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk Watch more recordings from the ECR Retreat on our YouTube Channel: https://bit.ly/alzsocecrretreat2024 -- Like what you hear? Please review, like, and share our podcast - and don't forget to subscribe to ensure you never miss an episode . -- This podcast is brought to you by University College London / UCLH NIHR Biomedical Research Centre in association with Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's Research UK, Alzheimer's Society and Race Against Dementia who we thank for their ongoing support. -- Follow us on social media: https://www.instagram.com/dementia_researcher/ https://www.facebook.com/Dementia.Researcher/ https://www.twitter.com/demrescommunity https://www.linkedin.com/company/dementia-researcher https://bsky.app/profile/dementiaresearcher.bsky.social -- Download our new community app: https://onelink.to/dementiaresearcher

On this week's episode of Local Legends, Martin is joined by the rather amazing Dr Maureen James, who is a folklorist, historian, and author of both Cambridgeshire Folk Tales and Lincolnshire Folk Tales.Maureen has been passionate about Social History for over 40 years. Though, as we discuss in this conversation, she did not start her career in academia – she began adult life as a wife and mother, pivoting into history later on. This led her to undertake her BA at Cambridge, then an MA in Museums and Galleries in Education with the Institute of Education, University of London, and a PhD through the University of Glamorgan with the focus of her thesis being The Legends of the Lincolnshire Carrs.In addition to a fascinating lifetime of taking part in historical reenactments, storytelling in period costume, and academic lecturing, she served as a Director of The Society for Storytelling, is a member of The Folklore Society, the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, and The Society for Lincolnshire History and Archaeology, and has written articles for magazines and journals including Cambridgeshire Life, Facts and Fiction, The Cauldron, Smallholding, Time and Mind, and Folklore.In this chat, we touch on much of this, as well as the Princes in the Tower, how pockets are actually quite a complex subject, whether John Major can use a drop spindle, and all sorts of folklore from Huntingdonshire and beyond, including the legacies of several witches, the myths surrounding Oliver Cromwell, the tale of The Two Fat Geese, and much more besides!To learn more Maureen and her work, do visit her brilliant website – https://tellinghistory.co.uk – which links to her books, academic papers, stories, and all sorts of wonderful other websites, too.And we will be back tomorrow with the first part of Martin's new adaptation of Gawain and The Green Knight which will be released in 25 installments leading right up to Christmas!The Three Ravens is an English Myth and Folklore podcast hosted by award-winning writers Martin Vaux and Eleanor Conlon.Released on Mondays, each weekly episode focuses on one of England's 39 historic counties, exploring the history, folklore and traditions of the area, from ghosts and mermaids to mythical monsters, half-forgotten heroes, bloody legends, and much, much more. Then, and most importantly, the pair take turns to tell a new version of an ancient story from that county - all before discussing what that tale might mean, where it might have come from, and the truths it reveals about England's hidden past...Bonus Episodes are released on Thursdays (Magic and Medicines about folk remedies and arcane spells, Three Ravens Bestiary about cryptids and mythical creatures, Dying Arts about endangered heritage crafts, and Something Wicked about folkloric true crime from across history) plus Local Legends episodes on Saturdays - interviews with acclaimed authors, folklorists, podcasters and historians with unique perspectives on that week's county.With a range of exclusive content on Patreon, too, including audio ghost tours, the Three Ravens Newsletter, and monthly Three Ravens Film Club episodes about folk horror films from across the decades, why not join us around the campfire and listen in?Learn more at www.threeravenspodcast.com, join our Patreon at www.patreon.com/threeravenspodcast, and find links to our social media channels here: https://linktr.ee/threeravenspodcast Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It was the year of the Sky revolution in football but for Jon Holmes it was also the end of Gary Lineker's career in England as he prepared to move to Japan and ultimately into the television studio.  Leeds United won the last First Division and their manager Howard Wilkinson was the last English manager to win the championship.  It was the year that saw an unfancied Denmark team win the Euros and John Major return to Downing Street by beating Neil Kinnock.  It was a year that provided Paddy Barclay, Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes with much to discuss.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thirty years ago, following a series of high-profile political scandals, John Major set up the Committee on Standards in Public Life (CSPL) to advise him – and future prime ministers – on ethics and behaviour. So has the CSPL been a success – and what might come next for standards in public life? Over the last three decades the committee has been an influential voice on the standards expected of people in public office, including setting out the seven principles of public life that apply to politicians, public officials and frontline staff and the establishment of standards regulators including the parliamentary commissioner and the Electoral Commission. However, recent scandals like ‘partygate' and controversies over the acceptance of gifts, alongside reports from the infected blood and Grenfell inquiries, demonstrate that work on embedding transparency and ethical behaviour remains unfinished. How can the committee respond to challenges posed by increased use of AI in the public sector? What more could be done to build greater trust in politicians and public services? And what difference could the Labour government's planned Ethics and Integrity Commission make? To answer these questions, and more, we were joined by: Doug Chalmers CB DSO OBE, Chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life Pippa Crerar, Political Editor at The Guardian Daniel Greenberg CB, Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Dame Glenys Stacey, Chair of the Office for Environmental Protection The event was chaired by Tim Durrant, Programme Director at the Institute for Government.

Send us a textIn this episode we see the beginning of the end of the Coup as three people are killed by tanks running over them as the Army is moving in Moscow toward the White House, their home of the Russian Parliament. It is a day full of drama as Boris Yeltsin fights back defiantly. He eludes the Coup leaders by 40 minutes at his house and heads down to the parliament building. Then he moves to block the coup.  He calls on a strike by the nations minors, calls the coup leaders directly, and warns them that the world is watching and their would be consequences for their actions, and he talks with the leaders of the free world , John Major of the United Kingdom, and George H. W, Bush. the President of the United States, and he impresses then both. He is singularly the brave figure who stands up against the tyranny of the Committee of Eight. Boris Yeltsin emerges on this day as the most powerful public figure in Russia.  Questions or comments at , Randalrgw1@aol.com , https://twitter.com/randal_wallace , and http://www.randalwallace.com/Please Leave us a review at wherever you get your podcastsThanks for listening!!

John Major is scathing about Brexit in his interview with BBC's Amol Rajan. The Matts find themselves nodding vigorously in agreement - not just on the Referendum … but Ukraine, Rwanda, far-right entryism and Britain as a nation I'll at ease with itself. Also - is A Very Royal Scandal worth a watch? Yes … but with a few caveats. The Matts can't agree about whether this version of the Emily Maitlis / Prince Andrew drama is all it should be. Enjoy!Love this? Then you'll love The New European. Subscribe today and get a FREE, SIGNED copy of Tony Blair's new book, On Leadership when you use this link: theneweuropean.co.uk/2matts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Smart 7 is an award winning daily podcast that gives you everything you need to know in 7 minutes, at 7 am, 7 days a week…With over 16 million downloads and consistently charting, including as No. 1 News Podcast on Spotify, we're a trusted source for people every day and we've won Gold at the Signal International Podcast awardsIf you're enjoying it, please follow, share, or even post a review, it all helps... Today's episode includes the following:https://x.com/i/status/1836371483028857189 https://x.com/i/status/1836352051720200621 https://x.com/i/status/1836367686277726210 https://x.com/i/status/1836292699596435646 https://x.com/i/status/1836376135292096655 https://x.com/i/status/1836378872557748296 https://x.com/i/status/1836519757949861891 https://x.com/i/status/1836050729997361637 https://youtu.be/MIEVoulYZM0 Contact us over @TheSmart7pod or visit www.thesmart7.comVoiced by Jamie East, using AI, written by Liam Thompson, researched by Lucie Lewis and produced by Daft Doris. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the PoliticsJOE Podcast.Ed and Ava unite to talk about the tenth anniversary of the Scottish independence referendum, John Major's opinions on that other referendum, and the UK's new abortion law.Presenters: Ava Santina and Ed CampbellProducer: Laura BeveridgeSting design: Chris WhiteProduction: Seán Hickey and Sam Sharrocks Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How important is your spouse when it comes to supporting you and helping you keep your balance? Successful and balanced business owner John Major and I discuss on today's show: The importance of couple support Why managing your money with your spouse is vital to great balance How to grow a great business without losing your balance And much more!  

After six long weeks, it's the final day of campaigning in the general election!The Tories have, at the very last minute, deployed Boris Johnson at a rally in London. Is he an asset to Rishi Sunak's campaign, or a reminder of the very reason they're on the verge of electoral oblivion? Kamal is joined in this episode by the Sunday Telegraph's political editor Camilla Turner to pour over Johnson's surprise intervention and ask whether it'll make any difference.Plus, Sir Anthony Seldon - biographer of every prime minister since John Major - reveals why he believes the Tories will lose and warns them there is only one route to salvation...Email: thedailyt@telegraph.co.ukThe Daily T Newsletter: telegraph.co.uk/dailytnewsletterSubscribe to The Telegraph: telegraph.co.uk/dailytsubProducers: Lilian Fawcett and Georgia CoanSenior Producer: John CadiganPlanning Editor: Venetia RaineyVideo Producer: Luke GoodsallStudio Operator: Meghan SearleSocial Media Producer: Ji-Min LeeExecutive Producer: Louisa WellsEditor: Camilla TomineyOriginal music by Goss Studio Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the turn of the 20th century, election campaigns - though still replete with politicians behaving badly - have evolved. They have become less mass-participation events or festivals, and receded, with the majority of the population growing increasingly indifferent. Though, following Nixon and Kennedy's presidential campaigns in the 1960's, there seeped across the Atlantic a sense that elections were a “race”, which could actively alter the outcome of an election rather than merely acting as a summoning call to predetermined voters. However, the gaffs endured. For instance, Winston Churchill's famously controversial speech in 1945, during the election that he later lost to the politically adept Clement Attlee; Harold Wilson's large crowd of hecklers during his 1964 campaign, and John Major's infamous soap-box orations. Then, with the landmark election of 1983, Margaret Thatcher revolutionised campaigning strategy by capitalising on television. This trend has endured through the various campaigns of her successors, many in their way just as dysfunctional, derisory, and even comical as those of their early predecessors. Join Dominic and Tom as, with a week to go until Britain enters the polls, they discuss the evolution of campaigning from the 20th century through to the present day. They reveal in glorious technicolour who have been the most effective campaigners of British politics; who the worst, and why. With a cast of characters including Clement Attlee and Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher and Harold Wilson, Tony Blair, Boris Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn and Ed Davey; they reveal some of the funniest, and most shocking election gaffs of all time.... EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/restishistory Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! *The Rest Is History LIVE in 2024* Tom and Dominic are back onstage this summer, at Hampton Court Palace in London! Buy your tickets here: therestishistory.com Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Series: Artificial Intelligence, Leadership and the Future of Further EducationHosts:Richard Foster-Fletcher, Executive Chair, MKAI.orgJaisal Surana, Head of Advocacy, MKAI.orgGuest:Sir Anthony Seldon, Head Master, Epsom CollegeGuest Bios:Sir Anthony Seldon: Sir Anthony Francis Seldon is a prominent British educator, contemporary historian, and author known for his significant contributions to education and political history. Sir Anthony is currently the Head Master of Epsom College. He previously served as the 13th Master of Wellington College and was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham from 2015 to 2020.A prolific author, Sir Anthony has written or edited more than 45 books, including political biographies of every British Prime Minister from John Major to Boris Johnson. His works are noted for their insightful analysis and detailed research, contributing significantly to contemporary historical literature.In education, Sir Anthony is widely recognised for his innovative approaches. He introduced happiness and well-being classes at Wellington College, advocating for a holistic approach to education that encompasses emotional and social development alongside academic achievement. His leadership in promoting the International Baccalaureate and personalised learning has been influential in modernising educational practices in the UK and beyond.Beyond his educational roles, Sir Anthony co-founded the Centre for Contemporary British History and the charity Action for Happiness. He is also a governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company and serves on the boards of several other charities and educational bodies. Knighted in 2014 for services to education and modern political history, Sir Anthony continues to be a leading voice in educational reform and historical scholarship. His recent focus includes integrating AI into education to enhance personalised learning and resilience in students.Episode Overview:In this special live episode of "The Transformative Impact of AI in Education," we explore the revolutionary potential of artificial intelligence in the realm of further education. This episode brings together insights from Sir Anthony Seldon and Richard Foster-Fletcher, along with guests from the MKAI.org community. The discussion delves into how AI technologies like machine learning, personalised learning algorithms, and adaptive educational software are reshaping educational practices. We discuss the historical context of educational revolutions, the unique qualities of human intelligence, and the ethical considerations surrounding AI in education.Key Topics of Discussion:The transformative potential of AI compared to historical technological advancements.The importance of learning from history in shaping AI's role in education.Balancing human intelligence and AI in modern educational systems.The challenges and opportunities AI presents for teachers and students.The ethical implications and practical implementation of AI in education.Key 'Takeaway' Ideas:AI has the potential to revolutionise education in ways comparable to the printing press and internal combustion engine.A balanced approach that integrates AI while emphasising human qualities is essential for modernising education.Teachers play a crucial role in maintaining human elements in education, especially for younger students.AI can provide significant benefits for personalised learning, particularly for students with special educational needs.International cooperation and ethical considerations are vital in harnessing AI's potential for the betterment of education.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-boundless-podcast--4077400/support.

Every local journalist has had a member of the public pitch them a news story by turning up to the newsroom reception. Sometimes these can lead to national headlines, but often they're funny, bizarre or plain mad. Matt speaks to Alex Morrison who has collected his favourite stories in a new book, and friends of the podcast send in their most memorable experiences too.PLUS: As Conservative ministers all but give up on winning the general election, Matt asks John Major's former Political Secretary Howell James how he kept fighting for every vote in the face of a Labour landslide in 1997.Tories Fighting On (02:44)There's Someone In Reception (13:52) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

GUEST 1 OVERVIEW: Stephen Dorrell spent 36 years in Parliament, serving as Health Secretary under John Major and Chair of the House of Commons Health Committee from 2010 to 2014. After leaving Parliament, he chaired the NHS Confederation (2015-2019) and founded an advisory business on public service reform. A frequent commentator on healthcare, Stephen advocates for using digital technology to create more efficient and integrated health services. GUEST 2 OVERVIEW: Alex Zaharov-Reutt is TechAdvice.Life Editor. He's one of Australia's best-known technology journalists and consumer tech experts. Alex has appeared in his capacity as a technology expert on all of Australia's free-to-air and pay-TV networks on all the major news and current affairs programs, on commercial and public radio, and technology, lifestyle, and Reality TV shows. X: @alexonline888 GUEST 3 OVERVIEW: Dr. Kat Lindley is a Croatian-born and American-trained board-certified family physician in Texas with a direct primary care practice. She loves caring for the whole family and seeing the whole family grow. She also became interested in finding solutions to improve America's healthcare system. She is a Fellow of the American College of Osteopathic Family Physicians and is involved with many medical organizations, including GlobalHealthProject.org, GlobalCOVIDSummit.org, and the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS).

Matt Chorley and Patrick Maguire give the "Unpacked" treatment to a classic PMQs, with John Major and Tony Blair going head-to-head in January 1997, challenging each other over the leadership of their respective parties.Plus: Columnists Robert Crompton and Jane Merrick discuss a potential Labour government's nightmare in-tray, whether school bullies prosper, and why Alan Titchmarsh had his trousers censored in North Korea.(Columnists 03:55)Classic PMQs (26:50) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

British politicians love to invoke the family, from John Major's "Back to Basics" campaign, to New Labour's "hardworking families" - and now a prominent strain of the Conservative right says parents sticking together for the sake of the children is "the only possible basis for a safe and successful society". By turning family values into a political football, are they in denial about the way society has developed this century? For decades, single-person households have been the fastest-growing demographic and younger generations are re-defining romantic commitments and their purpose.Is the erosion of traditional structure around marriage and family a destructive thing for society, or does it offer the kind of freedom and individual choice denied to previous generations? Presenter: Zoe Strimpel Producer: David Reid Editor: Clare FordhamContributors: Danny Kruger, Conservative Member of Parliament for Devizes and Co-Chair of the New Conservatives: Committing to a Better Politics. Dr. Ruth Beecher, Historian of Modern Britain and the United States, Birkbeck, University of London Prof. Deborah Cohen, Richard W. Leopold Professor of History at Northwestern University. Prof. Sasha Roseneil, Vice Chancellor of the University of Sussex. Prof. Sylvie Fogelj-Bijaoui, sociologist specialising in gender, human rights, the family and the kibbutz. Daisy Lees, resident of Old Hall Chris Lees, resident of Old Hall Rob Connigale, resident of Old Hall