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- [00:02]
Narrator/Announcer
Every day, the world presents you with hundreds of headlines. What do you believe? Who do you trust? The Financial Times cuts through complexity with clarity, accuracy and global perspective. Its journalism is guided by independence, not agendas. That's why leaders in business, policy and culture turn to one trusted source for facts, for insight, for what matters next. Source FT Read more and subscribe@ft.com.
- [00:37]
Terry Stiasney
You'Re listening to the Monocle Daily, first broadcast on 9 December 2025.
- [00:43]
Andrew Muller
It's 3am in Tokyo, 20 o' clock in Kyiv, 1800 here in London and 1300 in Washington DC. That's the time on Monocle Radio, brought to you by Chanel Watchers. Are any of the Ukraine peace plans now in circulation remotely serious? France's Prime Minister makes valiant attempt to govern France. And several careers in Irish government communications may have shuddered to an abrupt halt. I'm Andrew Muller. The Monocle Daily starts now.
- [01:23]
Hello and welcome to the Monocle Daily. Coming to you from our studios here at Midori House in London, I'm Andrew Muller. My guests Terry Stiasney and Simon Brook will discuss the day's big stories. And we'll meet Noah Oppenheim, screenwriter of the new nuclear war drama A House of Dynamite. Stay tuned. All that and more coming up right here on the Monocle Daily.
- [01:50]
This is the Monocle Daily. I'm Andrew Muller and I'm joined today by Terry Stiasney, political journalist and author of Believable the Misfits who Fought Churchill's Secret Propaganda War, and Simon Brook, journalist and communications consultant. Hello to you both. Hello, Terry. First of all, a few shopping days left until Christmas. Would you by any chance be able to recommend a book which might be an appropriate gift for that difficult middle aged male obsessed with World War II relatives?
- [02:20]
Terry Stiasney
Absolutely. Should you have any relatives who are obsessed with World War II and even ones who aren't. It's an entertaining read for people. It's all sorts of Second World War shenanigans and it's called Believable Lies and, you know, available in all good bookshops, as they say.
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Andrew Muller
It is full of shenanigans. I have now read a good chunk of it and I intend to proceed. That's how good the shenanigans are.
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Terry Stiasney
Great.
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Narrator/Announcer
Thank you.
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Terry Stiasney
Higher praise.
- [02:43]
Andrew Muller
You can have that quote for the second edition. Simon, what have you been up to of late? You have been researching, I believe, the tourist tax with which London is flirting.
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Simon Brook
That's right, absolutely. So, yes, in last month's budget here in the uk, it was announced that local mayors will have the power to impose this budget tourist tax on overnight stays. And it's interesting, yeah. I mean, I've spoken to a lot of businesses who are very much opposed to it. According to UK Hospitality, which is the trade body for pubs, hotels, restaurants here in the UK, it could cost up to £518 million in extra charges for domestic holidays. So a lot of people who might be doing a staycation will be rather alarmed to hear that. But on the other hand, so obviously a lot of the businesses, a lot of hotels are very unhappy about it, as you can imagine. Do they pass that cost on to their guests? Do they absorb it themselves? But personally, I don't like the idea. But then again, having been to so many cities where it is overwhelmed with tourists, I'm not a tourist, I'm a traveler. Of course, different. You know, I can sort of see why it does make sense that we should make some contribution to the local infrastructure.
- [03:53]
Andrew Muller
Well, we will be starting in Ukraine and the efforts, some in better faith than others, to end its war with Russia. Ukraine is to pitch its version of the peace plan currently in circulation to the United States. It is believed that this will acknowledge President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's position that he has no legal or moral right to surrender Ukrainian territory, even if he wanted to, which he doesn't. As things presently stand, neither Russian President Vladimir Putin nor US President Donald Trump seem likely to smile upon any such revision. Putin will want something for the hundreds of thousands of young Russians and billions of rubles he has plowed into Ukraine, and Trump just appears increasingly uninterested. Terry, I guess a question in two parts. One, is this going anywhere?
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Terry Stiasney
To.
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Andrew Muller
Was it ever really intended to?
- [04:40]
Terry Stiasney
I think, is it going anywhere? Certainly, I don't think it is going in the direction that Donald Trump would like it to go. I mean, it was quite interesting, having seen, you know, Starmer, Macron and Metz discussing this quite seriously yesterday in London, the way they see it going. And I just think you've kind of got two quite incommensurable approaches as to what a future Ukraine looks like, what it belongs to and so forth. And I think, you know, Donald Trump, I'm sure, would have like to have the win to answer, like, the second part of the question. He would like to be able to say, I've solved this one. But I think it's interesting how much Europe is pushing back on that at the moment. And I think you can see that he is kind of rattled because of the way he's been describing European countries today. I mean, in an interview he was saying, you know, these countries are decaying nations and they're weak and they're. And he tends to sort of kick off like that when, when someone upset him. And I get, get the feeling that that is what's happened.
- [05:38]
Andrew Muller
But is it being untowardly cynical, Simon, to suggest that the original US 28 point plan was designed to fail by pitching a lot of conditions which they must have known that Zelenskyy would not and could not possibly accept, and that the various revisions pitched by Europe and Ukraine have, in their own way, also been designed not to meet the approval of the United States or Russia because neither Ukraine nor Europe thinks the United States or Russia are serious about this.
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Simon Brook
Yeah, I mean, one thing we do know is that. Well, two things we know. First is that, as you say, the 28 piece point, the 28 point plan was more or less dictated by Putin to Steve Witkoff, Trump's envoy and. Or witless, as he's also known. And so there was no way that that was ever going to work. And I think the other thing to bear in mind is really that Putin cannot have peace. You know, this idea he's, I think, was interesting, the discussions last week that went on for five hours, apparently, which obviously consisted of five of Vladimir Putin lecturing Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and others, because he's playing for time. Putin has to keep this war going because he's got so much invested in it. You know, if he signs any peace deal now, he's going to be in a situation where he really hasn't achieved much, as you say, for all those hundreds of thousands of Russian lives. And also he's created this war economy, huge amount of money spent on. On defense or aggression, you might say, in this case, and internal security. So he really can't have any kind of peace deal. And I think he's enjoying the fact that he's stringing President Trump along. And the thing about Trump is, you know, he's just done this interview with Politico, very bad tempered. Attacking Ukraine again is. If you look at the evidence, it does look as if actually the one on the back foot is not really Ukraine. I mean, they're in a terrible situation. But actually it's Russia, which is almost on a knife edge now in terms of whether it can continue this aggression is there.
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Andrew Muller
Terry, if we accept that the irreconcilables here, or the incommensurables, as I think you called them, are that Ukraine will not give up territory And Russia absolutely will not agree to anything unless it gets territory, which is to say Ukraine's territory. Is there some sort of creative fudge available? Because those are often the way through which pieces are forged. So it could be something like Russia gets, I guess, what you would think of de facto sovereignty over the Donbas, but not de jure sovereignty. That is, it's sort of informally understood that Russia will take it and absolutely nobody else will legally recognize the fact. You might think of this as the northern Cyprus model.
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Terry Stiasney
I mean, yes, I think ultimately, you know, if you were approaching a sort of a serious peace process, I mean, the kinds of things that we saw when people tried to have, you know, big Middle east peace talks or Northern Ireland or those kind of things where you have du camps, sit down and say, what can we properly discuss here? You would try to come up with some solution like, you know, a demilitarized zone or, you know, peacekeeping force or something like that. And it's the kinds of things that Europe has, has made noises about. But then once it comes down to it, European countries are going to, are we really going to go and commit, you know, our troops to some kind of a peacekeeping force in, in Ukraine? So there are ways that you could approach it. But I think at the moment, everyone still seems so far from actually kind of acknowledging that that's what something might look like, because, yeah, as you say, you know, Russia is never going to conc. Ukraine is never going to say, that's not our territory. So maybe some kind of a strip, some kind of zone between the two might work. But everybody wants to have a guarantee, and Ukraine in particular wants to have a guarantee that, you know, should Russia then come in and overstep the mark, that everyone else will have their back. And they don't seem to get that at the moment.
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Andrew Muller
Simon, just finally on this, we have seen in the last few days, and we will doubtless see in coming days, almost certainly various European leaders trying to ignore as best they can the various inflammatory things that President Trump has said because they are trying desperately somehow to keep the United States in the same tent. But do we suspect that, especially yesterday's gathering here in London involving Zelensky, Sakir Starmer, President Emmanuel Macron and Chancellor Friedrich Merz, that the conversation would have been about how do we actually do this if the United States just leaves us to it?
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Simon Brook
Yeah, I think this is one of the interesting developments, if you look one of the interesting consequences of the Trump administration and Trump not just stepping back from protecting Europe and being a partner but actively attacking Europe in so many ways. You know, it's this idea that Europe then has to grow up, stand up, and, you know, we have to take responsibility for ourselves. But that's the problem is that that could take a long time. There's so much political instability in Europe at the moment, you can't see how it could happen. I mean, even this question of whether we take this 180 billion euros of Russian assets that were frozen in European banks in 2022, I mean, it just seems such an obvious thing to use this money to buy weapons to support Ukraine and support sort of civil society, if you like, people who were being attacked by Russia. But even that, of course, doesn't seem to be working because Belgium doesn't like the idea. But the fact that these assets are held by an organization called Euroclair, which is based in Brussels. So ideally it would be great if Europe coalesced around some active plan to do something about it. But it's just, even for what we saw yesterday in Downing street, that does seem a long way off.
- [11:17]
Andrew Muller
Well, to France now, where its famously restive national assembly will vote today on a new Social Security budget pitched by Prime Minister as of this recording, etc, Sebastian LeCorgnou. LeCorgnou, much like the four other prime ministers who have toppled since the start of last year, wants France to trim its gargantuan Social Security bill and its budget deficit accordingly by 5%. However, he faces a parliament in which he does not have a majority and in which a majority seem reluctant to tell their fellow citizens that money does not in fact, grow on trees. The assembly already voted last month to suspend plans to raise France's pension age to 64, which would still be among the lowest in the world. Do we like Lecorgny's chances here, Terry?
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Terry Stiasney
I think he seems to be edging towards getting this through just because in the last few minutes the Greens have said that, well, well, they're more likely to abstain than to vote against. And it's come down to some quite nasty last minute negotiations with the green parties where everybody is trading accusations of blackmail and so on. But this, you know, not voting against, abstaining is, is possibly a good outcome for him. So I think, you know, he, he may squeak this through, but of course, you know, this is only part of the whole budget thing. This is just the welfare package. He has still got to get a proper budget through and he still has to get it through the, the next stages of the process as well. So even if he does make that's it's not absolutely done and dusted.
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Andrew Muller
Simon Fun though it has been to depict this as specifically and uniquely French brouhaha. There is a common theme here, which is that there is a terrible tendency, I think, for governments in all democratic countries, concerned as they mostly are by surviving the next election, which is only ever a few years away, to keep kicking this one down the road and leaving it for somebody else to deal with, hopefully many decades from now. Because it's just never going to be popular, is it saying to the voters, we cannot actually afford to keep doing this in this particular. Not today's vote, but the most recent one about the state pension, that the life expectancy of the average French person has increased by a decade in the last 50 years. The state pension was never intended to underwrite decades long holidays.
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Simon Brook
Yeah, just up to a few years ago that French train drivers, for instance, could retire on a full pension at the age of 50, I think it was, or 55. And that's because they would be exhausted with shoveling all that coal. Of course, not quite understand. But anyway, it does show how this is free money. I mean, this is what's not to like if you're a voter, if you're a politician trying to balance the books, then it's really not very good at all. I mean, if this bill is rejected, then the deficit for France will be somewhere between 17 and 30 billion euros. And as you say, Terry, could affect the overall budget and the spending plan sort of thing. I think part of the problem here is that, yeah, the idea of working harder is not appealing to a lot of people. Governments, not just in France but around the world, are very conscious of the older generation because they are the ones who tend to vote. You know, it's the younger ones who complain, but they don't necessarily go out and put their ticket in the ballot box sort of thing. So that's particularly important for them. And also just the developed world here in the uk, other countries, you know, we are borrowing too much and we are heading and I think for many countries we're going to head into a debt crisis. And I think to some extent for whoever La Corne's successor or that successor might be for whatever the situation here in the uk, to some extent, I think the politicians are actually waiting for the bond markets, the people who are generating and lending that money to make a decision, say, no, enough, we're not going to lend any more. And then it'll be a crisis and then something will have to be done.
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Andrew Muller
Is there any way, Terry of persuading voters to go along with fixing it short of a crisis. This is the wisdom of fixing the while the sun is shining. Because if we look at the incentives of all democratic politicians, which are mostly about being liked, popular and ideally getting re elected, is there any way to maintain those objectives while actually telling the voters the truth about stuff like this?
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Terry Stiasney
I think it's very difficult to do it without a crisis. I mean, I think sort of the average British voter is probably, and the average British politician is probably a bit more frightened of, of the bond markets. As Simon's saying, particularly, you know, do you need a French Liz Truss under whom everything goes completely pear shaped and then you go, okay, it's a disaster. But I think, you know, that might be the only thing that can do it because I think French people are quite used to having a generous welfare state. They're used to having generous pensions and a good health service. And they are perhaps, you know, Macron has tried to persuade them in the past that, you know, you're going to have to work harder for longer, which is a hard thing to sell. And it's a hard thing to sell for any economy where you haven't got a lot of growth. Because I think if people see the rewards of it, they say, okay, well, you know, I'm a bit better off, I feel a bit better off, maybe I don't mind working a bit longer because, you know, life's looking bad, but it's quite hard to sell. And we've seen that in this country as well, when people don't feel that their standard of living or their quality of life is getting any better.
- [16:38]
Andrew Muller
And how much harder does it make it, Simon? And this is, I think, a particular question as we look ahead to the next French presidential election, which is still some distance off, but will be with us eventually, that you're going to be running against people whose line is going to be to these people who still want to retire at 62. None of this is your fault. It's all going to be fine. All we have to do is send back all the foreigners.
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Simon Brook
Yeah, I mean, you might be thinking of the, you know, the far right party there possibly, but Jordan Badella and his gang, I think the problem is that obviously they're buoyant, they're doing very well in the polls. You've also got La France and Sumisi, the extreme left, totally different views. But one thing they both have in common is a lack of, I'm sorry, but any kind of, you know, economic reality, really. They're Both telling people what they want to hear. And I think the other problem that France has that a lot of countries across the west have, is.
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There'S a group of young people who just feel sort of disenfranchised economically, who don't feel that the free market capitalist system, which was so good to their parents and their grandparents, has anything to offer them. There's the sort of fictional character, the meme Nicolas in France, isn't there? Who's the guy who, middle age, well, sorry, mid-30s, I should say, apparently, who works really hard, pays his taxes, does whatever he can and yet feels that everybody's freeloading off him and he can't even afford to buy a decent home. So the problem, I think one of the problems anyway, that the centre has in France and in other countries is you've got these extremes who are offering, you know, economic, I'd say, just.
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Castles in the sky, if you like. And we've got the same situation to some extent here with the Green Party saying, oh, Britain's only borrowing, you know, our Debt is only 100 billion, let's double it, like Japan or whatever, which is really appealing to a lot of people, but it's going to cause us huge economic misery should it ever happen.
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Andrew Muller
Well, to the Republic of Ireland, the government of which has done one of those things which always goes tremendously well, that is solemnly issuing official advice to young people. In this specific instance, those responsible have put their foot in it even more firmly and deeply than usual by issuing advice pertaining to the fact that setting up a home of one's own in one's twenties has become, for many Irish, Irish folk of that age, financially impossible. The video therefore offers counsel on how to deal with moving back in with one's parents. Here is some of it.
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Narrator/Announcer
Take the time to set up some.
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Terry Stiasney
House rules, such as paying rent and doing housework. It can be easy to revert to your former roles if you move back in with family. However, agreeing to take on some household chores is beneficial for everyone involved. Not only will it lighten the workload for your family, but it will also help you feel more independent and encourage them to see and treat you as an adult.
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Andrew Muller
Hmm. Both panelists tonight are happily veterans of dealing with political and other means of communication. Terry, I will ask you first, dozens of people must have signed off on this.
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Terry Stiasney
How I feel it's one of those things of politicians or some agency sort of slightly distinct from the government, but trying to use social media in a way that they don't really understand. I think I Feel quite sorry for the. Rather like the two rather earnest young people who sort of filmed this.
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Andrew Muller
Oh, they will have to leave the.
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Terry Stiasney
Country certainly, you know, move back in with their parents once they lose their job. But yeah, I feel a bit sorry for them. But you could have, if you felt you needed to convey this message, you could have done it in quite a funny way. You could have done it in a less stilted way that some sort of, you know, really serious earnest announcement, you know, rather than have you have your mum yell at you because you didn't put the frying pan back in the drawer or something. There would have been a way to do it with humor. But the problem is it just doesn't fundamentally the rest of the reasons why people have got to move back in with their parents, which is, you know, you can't get a job that pays enough and you can't afford to live somewhere else. And if you don't even acknowledge that that's. You must think this is enough of a problem. This is why we're doing this. To not even mention that at any point, you know, times are tough or something, it just, it just looks really sort of sanctimonious and silly.
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Andrew Muller
I am reminded, Simon, of a conversation I had with a friend of mine who once worked at a very high level in political communications who did tell me that he felt like of his job was saying to politicians, God no, don't do that. It's a terrible idea. This ad has been described by various opposition Irish politicians as, and I quote, cringe and embarrassing, dystopian, tone deaf and God almighty. How patronizing is that? Are those assessments wrong?
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Simon Brook
Well, the patronizing thing I think is bang on. That's certainly the thing I took away. But as you say, Terry, a lot of these people in this situation are really angry. They do not want to be patronized.
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And told what to do. I think there's always a place for a sort of. I mean as a journalist we do like a top tips, don't we? Five top tips to do this. But I think in this situation, yeah, make it funny. Get some real people rather than actors, as you say, whose career presumably and the Irish Republic is now over. Get some real people to do it. Get some people to share their experiences in a kind of organic, user generated way to talk about, you know, how they've made it work or not. Get some parents to say their sort of thing. But when I.
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Andrew Muller
The option of just simply not being, making the ad was right there, I suppose.
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Simon Brook
Yeah, exactly. Or. But the problem Is again, you look at the ad and you think, all right, thanks very much, government, why don't you just build some more homes that we can afford? And then that would be, you know, that would make things a lot easier. But let's face it, I think one of the problems as well is people moving back with their parents is not only is it, you know, you're likely to kill your parents, but also I think it just adds to a certain infantilization, doesn't it? You know, you. I know when I had to do it after university, you know, my mum was like making me, should I, should I share this? I don't know. But bringing me breakfast in bed and stuff like that and sort of things and I thought I could spend the rest my life doing this. But I realized no, you know, one of the things you do when you own your own property, you've got to pay your mortgage or rent or whatever is it does make you grow up. And that's one thing that this, this initiative doesn't seem to take into account.
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Terry Stiasney
In the setting of the neatest house you've ever seen.
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Simon Brook
Absolutely.
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Terry Stiasney
My son has just come back from university for the, for the Christmas holidays. Looks nothing like his floor covered with clothes, which would be a bit more accurate.
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Andrew Muller
Terry. I'm also reminded of a quote attributed to Jack Straw, former minister in various portfolios under labor governments in this country, who once said that at any one time there'll be 50 sets of officials working on projects which will undermine the government and destroy your political career. And the worst is not only do you not know who they are, they don't know either. Is this that I think this is.
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Terry Stiasney
It sounds like something that's, you know, some arm's length organization that has been very well meaning and thought we'll do this, and as you say, has probably gone through loads and loads of different bodies to sign off and nobody has, you know, ever been the person at the table who put their hand up and say, no, sorry, it's rubbish, my kids just moved home, it's nothing like that.
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Andrew Muller
This is genuinely a pet theory of mine. And just, just finally on this, and I'll put it to you, Simon, in your experience of dealing with organizations trying to communicate, how often is this a problem? It strikes me that what many organizations lack at their top table is exactly that person Terry describes. The person who is willing, in the face of whatever else, whatever other well intentioned consensus to put their hand up and go, this is terrible, let's not do, do it.
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Simon Brook
And as a consultant that's what I. That's what I'm supposed to do. Exactly. Because I don't work for the organization. So I'm not going to get fired. I'm just going to say, yeah, sorry, you know, ding dong reality calling. I have to tell you, this is not going to work. But I do think it's interesting as well how organizations, governments, politicians get sort of very inward looking and just assume that it works for us, makes sense to us, so it must be perfect for the outside world. And also of course increasing in politics when so many people who work in politics have never had a life outside that, you know, they've been involved in politics at college and then worked for think tank and have been a researcher to them. Well, they have a very different view of the world compared to most normal in inverted commas people.
- [24:49]
Andrew Muller
Well. And to Japan, which seems as a nation morbidly determined to improve on even its formidable record for whimsical tweeness, a thing is afoot whereby the already observed rite of seven five, three, a celebration of and for children reaching those ages, is beginning to include pets. Accordingly, bewildered dogs are being ushered into Shinto shrines dressed in wigs, jackets, robes and amulets expensively purchased for the occasion. Insufferable though this obviously is in and of itself, it is also a symptom of Japan's demographic doom cycle, which means that there are far fewer children turning 75 or 3 than once there were. Japan's population is on track to fall by a further third in the next half century or so. Terry, are you delighted by the spectacle of dogs dressed up in things being shown into places where dogs are just going, what am I doing here?
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Terry Stiasney
I did this. There were some quite cute pictures of dogs in kimonos. You know, you don't scowl at me for that, but I did think, you know, firstly they must be very, very well behaved Japanese dogs because I could not get my dog to wear and he can't get him to put any. Anything, you know, clothing for dogs, silly. At the best of times. 200 on a kimono with a gold sash.
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Andrew Muller
I don't want anybody who list this to think I'm anti dog. I'm very pro dog. Always had dogs when I was growing up. Which means I know quite a lot about dogs. And what I know about dogs is they don't care about any of this stuff. They are interested in biscuits. Yes.
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Terry Stiasney
Chicken bones.
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Simon Brook
That's basically eating things off the street.
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Terry Stiasney
Yeah, but they shouldn't.
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Andrew Muller
And occasionally picking things up and carrying them around. That and biscuits that's pretty much all they want.
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Terry Stiasney
Yeah, pretty much.
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Andrew Muller
The. So the people doing this, Simon, they are doing it clearly not for the dogs because as I think we have agreed, dogs are basically just interested in biscuits and carrying sticks around. So the people are doing this for themselves.
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Simon Brook
My question is why, as you say, I think it's. I think it's a kind of child substitute thing, isn't. They've got to. There aren't enough children. I was in Japan in October and we did notice how many dogs. I think almost every dog we saw actually was in a push, pushchair, in a pram, which was.
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Andrew Muller
So.
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Simon Brook
Isn't it weird? I just thought. I mean, so I absolutely love Japan, but so much of it is just really strange. And this is one of the weirdest things we saw because, yeah, our dog, as you say, he loves sniffing, peeing, chewing things he shouldn't. I mean, he just loves being out causing mayhem and the idea that he'll be sitting in a push chair not being. I don't know if it's a Japanese thing about being neat and tidy and things under control. I don't know. But I just think these dogs must. Must be. I mean, perhaps I'm a really bad dog owner who's never disciplined us, but like you say, I cannot imagine our dog doing it at all. But I do remember doing a piece quite a few years ago now about luxury brands introducing dog jackets. I think Burberry had a nice little jacket that a dog could. Yeah, yeah. I just. Yeah, it wasn't. But my piece wasn't actually complimentary, but obviously somebody was buying this stuff.
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Andrew Muller
I mean, to be honest, now that you've said it, I am kind of seeing the push chair thing, but only in a specific context, that there were times, Terry, as a kid where I would have been grateful for a large push. This was during the period during which we had an extremely lazy golden retriever who, if you took her for a walk, was inclined at some point during the walk just to go, actually, that's it. I'm okay now. I'm done and would just lie down. I spent quite a lot of my mid teens carrying a golden retriever around various suburbs of Sydney. You are a dog owner, Terry. I think it's time for you to both confess. Have you ever dressed up your dog as anything or even tried to, or thought about or considered it?
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Terry Stiasney
I once tried to put a bandana on him and he was having absolutely none of it. Someone's dog. There is somebody who walked their dog in the park. Near us who puts little booties on their dog every day. And I'm absolutely sure that the reason is he doesn't want the dog trailing any mud into his apartment. And, you know, I just kind of think, don't have a dog if you.
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Andrew Muller
Don'T want mud in your apartment or mess or things.
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Simon Brook
You've got white carpets or whatever.
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Terry Stiasney
Yes, change the carpets or don't have a dog.
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Andrew Muller
Simon, have you ever dressed up a pet in anything?
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Simon Brook
We did, I think last year or the year before last year. We put a Father Christmas hat on our dog then, but he looked so miserable and we were so exploited. And even normally he was a really cute dog. He's no longer with us. He was a really cute dog, but the hat just actually had the opposite effect. He just looked like, really, Must I do this? We're like, all right, okay, don't worry. Let's not bother. So, yeah, I certainly learned my lesson then.
- [29:21]
Andrew Muller
Simon Brooke and Terry Stiasney, thank you both for joining us. Finally on today's show, director Catherine Bigelow has returned to the big screen with A House of Dynamite, a political thriller starring Idris Elba. It depicts the 18th minute race to respond when an unattributed nuclear missile is launched towards the United States. The film's screenwriter, Noah Oppenheim, is no stranger to political narratives. He wrote the screenplay of Jackie, an examination of the first Lady, Jackie Kennedy, in the aftermath of her husband's assassination, and is also the former president of NBC News. He joined Monocle's Lily Austin in the studio at Midori House to discuss his latest project. Lilly began by asking Oppenheim how the collaboration with Catherine Bigelow came about.
- [30:05]
Noah Oppenheim
The collaboration started with a phone call that I got from an agent who said that Kathryn Bigelow wanted to talk to me about an idea that she had for a movie, which, as you might imagine, is a pretty great phone call to get if you're a screenwriter. So we got on the phone and Catherine shared with me her lifelong preoccupation with the nuclear threat. She had grown up in an era when they still did drills where school kids had to hide under their desks in case of a nuclear attack. And she'd made a movie about a Soviet nuclear sub, K19, the Widowmaker. And she'd sort of long been fascinated with the topic and wanted to explore doing a film that would bring the threat into a contemporary context. What might it look like if a missile was ever shot at the United States of America? How would the government respond? And so I immediately sparked the idea. I shared her interest in the topic. I had run a news organization in the United States where we had covered this. I had been in charge when North Korea was revealed to be a nuclear power. And so I kind of shared her fascination with it. And we got to work building the story almost journalistically. We got on the phone with sources that I had from my time in journalism, people that she had come to know from making movies like Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, who worked in the national security world. And we just started asking them, what do these processes look like? What happens at the White House? What happens in the Pentagon, what happens in our military headquarters, like Strategic Command, in the event of a nuclear incident? And that's how we started building the movie.
- [31:40]
Narrator/Announcer
Yeah, I was thinking when I was watching the film that I don't think there's been a kind of major film about nuclear war since the end of the Cold War. Really? Did you have any of those films in mind from that time?
- [31:54]
Noah Oppenheim
Absolutely. So I'm a, weirdly, a huge fan of the nuclear movie genre, going back to, of course, the classics like Strangelove and Fantasy Fail Safe. But I also was obsessed as a kid with War Games with Matthew Broderick. Probably have seen that movie 50 times. One of the reasons why we wanted to make the movie was precisely that, which is that it sort of faded from popular culture. It's really faded from the public's consciousness, broadly speaking. The question of who would be in charge of the nuclear arsenal used to be a major issue in US Presidential campaigns. And it's not really talked about anymore. And people don't really make movies about it. I mean, there are movies, there have been movies where a nuclear bomb going off has been kind of a MacGuffin or a threat looming in the background of another story. But certainly movies that focus specifically and realistically on this, there hadn't been really one, like you say, since the end of the Cold War. And we wanted to try to reignite a conversation about it.
- [32:54]
Narrator/Announcer
And when you spoke about making those phone calls, doing the research for it, what were the kind of questions you were asking, and were there any surprises with the things that they said?
- [33:04]
Noah Oppenheim
Yeah, there were a lot of surprises. All of them terrifying. We looked at it from a procedural standpoint. So we would get on the phone with somebody who had worked in the White House situation room or who had worked at the Pentagon, and we would just walk through the steps of if the United States detects an incoming missile, walk us through what happens in these various rooms and A couple things, things stood out very quickly. One was how short a period of time this would unfold in. If a missile is launched from the Pacific theater at the United States, it would take less than 30 minutes to impact. If it was launched by a submarine off our coast, it could be 10 to 12 minutes. Obviously, the flight path from Russia to the UK is even shorter a period of time. So you're talking about people having to make a decision with global consequences under an incredible, incredible time pressure. And that was one thing that stood out. And the other thing was in the United States, we have essentially a nuclear monarchy, meaning the President of the United States has the sole authority to make this decision. He doesn't have to take a vote, he doesn't have to build any kind of consensus. It's just entirely in his or her hands. And we asked a gentleman who had served at a very senior level in the Department of Defense and said, how often then does the President rehearse practice for a scenario like this? And the response was immediately said, oh, they never do. And that was, of course, terrifying. To think that the person upon whose shoulders this all rests probably has given it very little thought. The professionals, the people who work in strategic command, they rehearse it over and over and over again, but ultimately all they can do is advise and pass information along. But the one person who has to make the decision is going to have a clock ticking down and probably zero practice or very much familiarity with the issues at hand.
- [34:52]
Narrator/Announcer
And I feel like you slightly alluded to it, but how did working on this film make you feel about the prospects of a nuclear attack and like the US Government, how they would handle it?
- [35:01]
Noah Oppenheim
I think it should be terrifying to everybody that we live in a world that's always on the brink of a catastrophe like this. I mean, every nuclear expert that I spoke to considers it nothing short of miraculous that we're all still here. These are people who study this all the time. Time and the number of near misses that we've had since the dawn of the nuclear age is pretty terrifying when you start to dig into it. There have been occasions where the decision of one person kept us from Armageddon. Some of those instances are more well known. There was a Soviet officer named Stanislav Petrov who, in the 80s, if he hadn't decided not to pass along a threat up the chain, he saw on his board incoming missiles headed towards the Soviet Union and decided he didn't think it could possibly be real and so just chose not to do his job. And that prevented catastrophe because it was, in fact, a malfunction. But if he had made a different choice, we might not all be sitting here. So it's very scary. And it's the conversation that we wanted to spark because we do collectively, as citizens of the United States, of the uk, of other democracies around the world, have an ability to influence how this all works.
- [36:13]
Narrator/Announcer
And to take it to you as a screenwriter, you've previously written the screenplay for Jackie. So looking at Jackie Kennedy, the aftermath of JFK's assassination. So there's some kind of crossover in the subject. Both kind of political, but obviously that film was much more kind of an intimate portrayal, psychological portrayal. And this is a bit kind of broader.
- [36:35]
Noah Oppenheim
Yep.
- [36:36]
Narrator/Announcer
For your kind of future projects, are you interested in staying in this kind of political realm, or is there something else you want to explore?
- [36:42]
Noah Oppenheim
The reason I became a journalist to begin with, which is where I've spent the other part of my career, is just because I'm curious. And so I would say the thread that I would connect Jackie in this movie with is just I'm fascinated by what goes on behind closed doors and kind of pulling back the curtain on either public figures or institutions or processes that are a little bit opaque. And that's sort of the thing that I think connects the project that I tend to be drawn to.
- [37:09]
Andrew Muller
That was the screenwriter Noah Oppenheim, speaking with Monocle's Lily Austin. You can watch A House of Dynamite on Netflix now. And that is all for this edition of the Monocle Daily. Thanks to our panelists today, Terry Stiasney and Simon Brook. The show was produced by Monica Lillis and researched by Joanna Moser. Our sound engineer was Christy o'. Grady. I'm Andrew Muller here in London. The Daily is back at the same time tomorrow. Thanks for listening.
- [37:34]
Terry Stiasney
SA.