← The Monocle Daily
The Monocle Daily
When will everything be back to normal following the end of the US government shutdown?
00:43:56
Loading summary
Transcript91 lines
- [00:02]
A
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 you're listening to the Monocle Daily, first broadcast on 14 November 2025 on Monocle Radio. Another wild week in American politics. Another turn in the grave of George Washington. Finland teaches its kids how to spot misinformation and propaganda online. Can they teach the rest of us? And celebrations of photography's past and present amid angst about future. I'm Andrew Muller. The Monocle Daily starts now. 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, Alexa Self, Matthew Beaman and Alex Milnes will discuss today's big stories. We'll anticipate exciting news for London lovers of Thai food. And we'll have our weekly wrap up of what we've learned staged. Stay tuned. All that and more coming up right here on the Monocle Daily. This is the Monocle Daily. I'm Andrew Muller. And we will start in the United States and with the tackiest, tawdriest week in American politics since at least last month, a further tranche of the correspondence of unlamented sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was released. And despite the gamist efforts of President Donald Trump's various flying monkeys to assert otherwise, it was difficult to see how any of it dispelled suspicions about the extent and the nature of Epstein and Trump's friendship. Well, joining us now from Boston is the reporter H.J. mai. There's any number of reasons, H.J. why Donald Trump might have been displeased by the release of these emails, but has it rather taken the edge off his apparent victory over the BBC, which now seems like something that happened 10 years ago?
- [02:30]
B
Yeah, it should as. Yeah, I'm not sure that it has taken the edge off it. I think, you know, those, those emails between Epstein and this book author Michael Wolf, you know, that were released by Democrats during the week, you know, indicated clearly that they had a relationship. And in one of the emails, it seemed like that Epstein confirmed to Wolff that, you know, the president had intimate knowledge of what's going on. That doesn't mean he had knowledge of the crimes that Epstein committed, but it definitely looks like a smoking gun here. So I Think it was a tough week for the White House. And you could see, I mean, they invited, you know, one of the Republicans who are voting for the release of more documents, Lauren Boeber, to the Situation Room. You know, the thought is that they put pressure on her to vote against the Transparency act that should be voted on in the House next week. But she said there was no pressure, it was just a discussion. So we will see where this all goes. And like you said, I mean, the whole BBC story seems like no old news.
- [03:29]
A
I do want to come back to those attempts, apparently unsuccessful, to corral his regular support base behind him on the Epstein emails. But just one more thing on the BBC spat. And this of course is the fact that the BBC has now acknowledged and apologized for splicing together two parts of his speech on January 6, 2021, to make the connection between what he said and what the crowd did probably more explicit than really needed to be made. But the BBC, as I said, has apologised. It has said it doesn't see that he has a case for a lawsuit or a settlement which does rather signal that the BBC does not intend to pay him any money. Is he likely to leave it there given that he has successfully shaken down quite a few American media outlets?
- [04:22]
B
Yeah, I think that will be interesting to see. Like you mentioned, I mean he had, you know, he has filed lawsuits against several US media outlets, abc, cbs, the Wall Street Journal, you know, some of them successful, some are still in court. And yeah, I'm wondering, I mean this is obviously a forum media outlet. You know, I couldn't tell you, he has not commented publicly or on his Truth Social account on the apology that the BBC issued. So it will be interesting to see. But I mean, we know that he's not a big fan of publicly funded media. I mean we saw this over the course of the summer with the rescission package that took away money from the two publicly funded media outlets here in the U.S. national Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Corporation here. And you know, I couldn't tell you if this goes forward, but just knowing his track record, I don't see why that would be good enough for him to just have that apology and move ahead. Normally, you know, he pushes for more changes. You know, he wants to see, I guess, institutional changes, you know, those accusations that have been levied at the BBC that it has an internal bias. I think he would like to see more of that, but you know, we have to wait and see.
- [05:32]
A
As you mentioned, there were fairly transparent attempts to strong arm some of his more regular supporters behind him in the matter of Epstein and so on. These don't appear to have been successful. However, even creatures of the calibre of Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who've been among his staunchest and most voluble supporters, do not appear inclined to go along with him on this matter. Is that significant? Do you think that reveals something starting to fracture within the MAGA movement?
- [06:08]
B
Honestly, I don't really think so. I think, you know, this has been an issue that, you know, people like Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene have been pushing for for years now, the release of the so called Epstein files. And, you know, I don't see that they would change their stance. I mean, they had those meeting over the course of the summer with alleged Epstein victims and, you know, I think they have a clear target, what they want to do. The bigger question is when this vote will happen next week in the House and it's likely to pass because as you mentioned, those Republicans seem unwilling to, you know, just follow Trump's orders. The bigger question is what will happen in the Senate to it. And it seems like there's a high likelihood that this bill will not pass the Senate and therefore we are, you know, you know, where we are right now. I mean, it seems like this, this is a nice effort, but at the moment, it seems once again stuck in the Senate that these files would not be released in the end because Republican senators are not really that willing to move forward with this.
- [07:14]
A
Are Republican senators that sort of immune to public pressure though? Because there does seem to be a fairly solid mass of American opinion that does want to know what actually went on here. And I don't think any of what was released this week has done much to convince people that there's nothing to it.
- [07:37]
B
I agree with that. I mean, there's definitely nothing that was released has taken any pressure off of the administration or, you know, any alleged connections and knowledge that the President had of what, you know, Epstein was really doing. But at the moment, it just seems unlikely. I have, you know, obviously go to Capitol Hill quite often. I talk to senators and I haven't seen anybody who so far seems like to be putting his political might behind releasing those files. You know, somebody like a leader, John Thune out of South Dakota, has not really talked about this. You know, he wants to see what happens in the House and maybe then senators will talk. But you're right, there's a lot of public pressure, there's political pressure, but then there's also the Question. You know, if this transparency act would pass, would the President make use of his veto power? Because one thing I don't think that this bill has is a 2/3 majority to override his veto.
- [08:36]
A
That's a way off, though. That's a bit further down the process. Trump has, as you know, been saying today that he wants an investigation into Epstein's links with the Clintons, various Democrat Sympathetic bankers, etc. Does that sound to us like a man who has control of this situation or someone who is flailing somewhat?
- [09:00]
B
I mean, it sounds a little bit flailing because he has the power. I mean, he's in charge of the doj. He can tell DOJ to just release those files. You know, if he's convinced there's nothing that would, you know, put him in a bad light, that would, you know, show that he had any legal liability, then why not, you know, put out those files and let the public read through it and then maybe make connections with any of the people you mentioned that he mentioned in his truth social post, like the Clintons, like others. So it seems weird to make a post like this, but then not follow through because he has the power. He could avoid all of this by just telling the doj, release those files.
- [09:38]
A
Well, as you suggest, there will doubtless be more on this next week and we will talk about it then. But finally, we should look at what in any other week and in any other government would have been the matter of headlines, which was the the longest shutdown of the federal government in United States history actually ending. Now that it has ended after 43 days, is it possible to say if anybody emerged triumphant from that? Obviously there were a great many losers, those being those federal employees who didn't get paid for six weeks. But is this a resounding political triumph for anybody?
- [10:16]
B
I mean, I think after last week, after Democrats really scored some victories in those off year elections in several states and races, I think the fact that some Democrats in the Senate signed onto this deal and then it was passed and the shutdown ended is certainly initially a success for Trump and for Republicans. The problem is that obviously the core of this whole shutdown was the issue of increasing health insurance costs because there are some subsidies for the Affordable Care act that will expire at the end of the year. And that issue has not been dealt with. So while everybody is now happy that this longest shutdown in history is over, if they don't come to an agreement on how to move forward on this health care issue, we might be right back where we started at the end of January.
- [11:05]
A
H.J. mai in Boston, thank you for joining us. You're listening to the Daily on Monocle Radio. You're listening to the Daily on Monocle Radio with me, Andrew Muller. And I'm joined now by Monocle's foreign editor, Alexa Self. And we're going to look at Finland, the education system of which is often held up as an example to the rest of us and not without reason. By most rankings of this sector, Finland is either top or thereabouts. One specific area in which Finland has forged ahead is in recognizing that not all information on the Internet and on social media in particular, is entirely accurate and in trying to get this across to Finns at an early stage. Finland has consistently topped the Open Society Institute's Media Literacy Index and is now updating its national media education policy, promising a new framework next year. Lex, you recently attended some sort of symposium on this subject at the Finnish Ambassador's residence. What went on at that.
- [12:07]
C
That's a very grand way of putting it. There was. This was a talk about how Finland has achieved such high rates of media literacy, and it was adjudicated or MC'd by a former colleague of ours, Marcus Hippie. And there were two people representing Finland on the panel and two people representing the uk, and I suppose it was, what lessons can be drawn from Finland's success at improving media literacy, and what perhaps might the UK be able to learn from that?
- [12:46]
A
This is always the question that gets asked about Finland in so many respects, because it is a splendid and enviable society in most respects other than its weather, which I suppose they can't do very much about. But the question that I always end up wondering is, can anybody learn these lessons, or do you basically need to be Finland and full of Finns to get anything like this to actually work?
- [13:11]
C
Well, when it comes to combating dis and misinformation, it helps to be a small, pretty homogenous society who speak a language that not only does no one else really speak, but no one even can begin to understand. That helps. And the Finns are the first to acknowledge that. I think if we look at the British example, that's a reason why the UK perhaps is suffering in this regard. We have lots of august traditional media titles and we've, you know, currently embroiled, one of which is currently embroiled in much controversy over this kind of thing. But we also speak a language that is the lingua franca of the world and that, you know, the source of much politically polarizing information and conversation. Also speaks I'm talking about the United States.
- [14:12]
A
But is it nevertheless possible to assess what they are doing differently? Because this is one of those subjects on which I have in my time undergone a 180 degree skid in that I probably was of a mind especially when I did media studies at high school, that it was a total dos and basically an excuse for an afternoon off. Whereas now I increasingly think it's about the most important subject we can be teaching people. So what is it that they are teaching young Finns?
- [14:44]
C
Yeah, they actually aren't really teaching it as an individual subject and I think that's what we can learn from it. You know, it's a kind of multi platform program that's, you know, kind of imbricated within the, the national curriculum. You know, for example, maths lessons will in involve teaching about statistics, you know, and how, how easy these are to be to manipulate, you know, in, in visual art. And, and I think this is why they're updating the curriculum as you mentioned. You know, they're introducing stuff about artificial intelligence and how images can be manipulated in history. There's a lot of time and resources devoted to teaching children about propaganda and historic propaganda, you know, particularly in Finnish history, but globally and how that was used to influence people.
- [15:47]
A
So the idea is that this all just gets woven into every other subject and they've been doing this for a while now. Are they starting to see or did they talk about tangible results that they can measure or understand or draw anything from? Is there now a generation of Finnish 10 year olds who are obviously more alert to this sort of stuff than current Finnish 17 year olds?
- [16:12]
C
Well, I think the idea is that, you know, Finland has the, the longest land border, European land border with Russia and Russia is obviously attempting one facet of its hybrid warfare. What's known as hybrid warfare is disinformation and pumping that into unfriendly countries as it sees it. So Finland is more acute and also having fought a couple of wars in the past against Russia, fought and lost and won a couple wars against Russia, acutely aware of the Russian threat. So I think every day that goes by that they managed to, you know, keep that at bay is considered a success. It's funny, there was a very sardonic and you know, as you know, the Finns are often capable of very dry, exhibiting very dry senses of humor.
- [17:09]
A
Extremely dry.
- [17:11]
C
There was a very sardonic Finnish journalist there who was working for the Finnish equivalent of, of, you know, something we now have in the BBC now has a BBC verify you know, a team that checks and, you know, fact checks news and video and statements made by politicians. And she said actually that there was a test done a couple of years ago where deliberately false information was posted on Finnish social media channels and that actually quite a lot of Finns of all ages disseminated it unknowingly. So that actually the Finns shouldn't be too pleased with themselves as. As it perhaps looks like they are. Though I wouldn't say that they necessarily are. I think that the thing is that we can all, you know, whether we're Finns or from wherever, it's easy nowadays to be duped by this, but to be having the conversation, to be thinking of ways and definitely implementing ways that we can teach more vulnerable people, such as children, how to be aware of this kind of stuff is something and should be something, and then we can.
- [18:18]
A
Move on to the grandparents. Lex Self, do stay with us. We will have more from you shortly. You are listening to the Daily on Monocle Radio. You're listening to the Daily with me, Andrew Mullister. With me is our foreign editor, Lex Self. And joining us now in the studio to talk about a couple of exhibitions of actual verifiable photography is Monocles photography director Matthew Beaman and Monocles photography editor Alex Milnes. Welcome to you both. We're going to start by talking about Paris Photo 2025, at which either or both of you have just been.
- [19:14]
D
We have both been, yes.
- [19:16]
A
Lucky for some. First of all, did it strike you that there was a particular theme attached to this year?
- [19:23]
D
No particular theme, but I haven't been for a couple of years and it was really busy, actually. A huge, huge turnout. I don't know what that's due to. Maybe the reopening of the Grand Palais. This is the second year it's been open, actually. But there was a huge turnout for the actual opening night of the main fair. And there's a satellite fair called Off Print, which is a big publishing Fair which has 200 independent photo and art book publishers that was fully packed. So another fair called Polycopies had opened which had another 150 publishers. So it was just the huge kind of publishing festival.
- [19:59]
E
It was great.
- [20:00]
D
It was really good to see so many people there and buying works and buying books.
- [20:05]
A
I mean, it is heartening, isn't it, that at this point, with all the worries, such as some of those we have just been discussing about old school media, that there is still such a. Well, an exhibition of such scale can still not only be attempted, but attended.
- [20:21]
F
It was fantastic. There was so much nice work. There was a lot of digital work and a whole area devoted to AI and a lot of talk about that. But at the same time, loads of people presenting hand printed work, workshop on film and beautifully curated shows.
- [20:37]
A
When you talk about the bits dedicated to AI, in what context and in what tone is that presented? Is it. I would have assumed that this would have been an area of the exhibition hung with crucifixes and cloves of garlic and so on. Fairly similar or are there people actually making a case for this and saying we can embrace it, we can.
- [20:59]
F
There was whole galleries making a case for it. I'll admit it doesn't really interest me and I don't like it. So I kind of. I skirted around it. I had a look, but nothing drew me in. Which also makes a point that, you know, AI art, perhaps isn't that great. The real photography is the best thing to go and see.
- [21:18]
A
Matthew, what do you think? Because we are still at the very early stages of this, obviously, and there are those people who will say that this is akin to those people who grizzled when people started making popular music with synthesizers. Like that wasn't real music. And now nobody much complains about that.
- [21:36]
F
Yeah.
- [21:36]
B
I mean, I think it will have.
- [21:37]
D
Its place, but I think when it tries to recreate a photograph, I think when you use AI to create something that you can't create with a camera, I think maybe there's something in that. But all of the work that I've seen produced by AI that's trying to replicate real life and photography, I think I haven't seen anything that is good yet.
- [21:58]
A
But does it strike you that this is something that media outlets, especially such as this one, are going to have to draw hard and fast boundaries around? Should there be maybe some sort of kite mark to actually assert that all the photographs in this magazine are actual photographs?
- [22:15]
C
Yeah.
- [22:16]
D
And I think if anyone. Whenever I've seen an AI image used in a newspaper, they very clearly say that it's A.I.
- [22:23]
E
I think that.
- [22:24]
D
I think there has to be. Yeah. There has to be a clear, you know, watermark or marker which says that it's AI Yeah.
- [22:32]
A
Before we move on to another exhibition, I just want to ask you each in turn, you first at that end of the table. Just thinking back on the Paris exhibition, if there was any one thing or one particular photographer who leapt out at you.
- [22:46]
F
There was a few favourites, but the one that stood out for me the most was Jack Davison at Cobb Gallery. And that was. He's. He's known for his portraiture. It's a consistent theme in his work. But he's also a massive fashion photographer. And he was saying, yeah, it's. He's a recent father of two. It's been hard to make personal work. So this was a real conceited effort to go back to that and make some personal work about something he's interested in. And it was. He spent three days last year, exactly a year ago, shooting portraits around London. He street cast for three days, then shot all these people. And it's presented in amazing linear format and tiny, tiny prints all the way around the gallery wall. And they also printed in a really interesting way with a method called photopolymer gravure printing. And it merges his kind of photography with a nice tactile depth of printmaking and interesting paper. It was beautiful to see. Yeah, it was definitely a favorite.
- [23:45]
A
Okay, so there's one that's worth the trip and your pick.
- [23:48]
D
Mine was probably the Luc Delahay exhibition, which was over the road from the Grand Palais at the Jour de Paume. Terrible pronunciation, but gallery over the road. But it was just that he's a very famous photographer, very famous for making these large formats images in conflict zones or outside conflict zones. So they're like 3 meter wide prints of usually landscapes, but one of a really famous one, there's a plume of smoke in a landscape and it's an attack on a Taliban stronghold. And it's just really powerful work that works. It's kind of in its scale, but when you read the caption alongside it, it's really amazing. And it just had his whole life's work. So it had that work in there. And he did this really interesting project of images that he cut out from newspapers and cropped in really interesting ways of, I don't know, portraits of Colonel Gaddafi and all sorts of different. It's super interesting. And then he went on to start manipulating pictures for the last bit. So that's definitely worth a look. That's until next March, I think.
- [24:54]
A
Okay, so plenty of time for that one. Well, on the subject of conflict photography, and just before we leave, the photographic related section of tonight's Daily Lex, you've recently been attending the Lee Miller Exhibition at Tate Britain, which I think is the biggest or first or. But it's a landmark exhibition of the great war photographer's work.
- [25:17]
C
Yeah, I think it's the first time that all of her fashion photography and art photography has been exhibited alongside her war photography. And that in itself gives you an idea of the scope of her work and career, something that actually she tried to suppress in her lifetime. And it was only after she died that her son, Anthony Penrose, found it, all the negatives in her attic in Sussex and, you know, unearthed. It's the scope of her life and the people that she knew. You know, she was friends with all the surrealists. She was in 1920s Paris. She had a love affair with Man Ray. She was in Cocteau movies. Then she went to London in the 1930s during. At the beginning of the war. She photographed the Blitz. Then she did loads of work for British Vogue during the war to kind of keep morale up among British women. It's fascinating stuff. You know, there's features, this kind of proto yoga that they're encouraging women who are working in factory works and manual work to do in order to stay fit and limber. Then she goes, finally, after much beseeching of the US military, she's allowed to accompany the troops just after D Day. So she goes into Europe and this is where it just. Yeah, the imagery becomes. You know, when you see the first bit of the exhibition, you can recognize that these photos, you know, she did lots of nudes with Man Ray, that they were, you know, revolutionary at the time. But now we're so inundated with such imagery, it doesn't. It doesn't make you feel. It's not that impactful to a modern viewer. But then when you see her in occupied Europe and, you know, some striking images of the fighting, and then she was actually present at the liberation of Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps. And then the most iconic, I'm doing the inverted commas finger pose image of her career probably, is when she bathed in Hitler's bath in his Munich apartment, which, again, when you see it, you know, in the flesh, as it were, is such a powerful image and really kind of encapsulates how she was at the forefront of history throughout her career.
- [27:43]
A
Just finally on this, because I'm curious to see this exhibition. But how do they, in terms of the presentation, how do they go about? Or do they, in fact, even try to reconcile those disparate parts of her career, the fashion photography and the fancy surrealist art photography and the fairly hardcore war photography, because you could run up against, I guess, questions of taste as to how you put that all together in one space?
- [28:10]
C
Well, yeah, obviously the most harrowing imagery is the concentration camp photography, and that's actually in its own room, but it's done sequentially and and, you know.
- [28:24]
G
Art.
- [28:25]
C
Likes to neatly package life, which is quite amorphous and usually not into, you know, easily digestible or, you know, narratively formal. And I think that's why, you know, we were talking earlier about her, the biopic of her life, which starring Kate Winslet and actually, I haven't seen it, so let me cast judgment on it. Anyway, go.
- [28:46]
A
Right.
- [28:46]
C
I think actually, you know, her life was almost unbelievable. To put it into film as well into two hours, you'd have to cut so much out or speed it up so much that it's just like, you know, oh, here's with Man Ray, Picasso, you know, D Day, you know, the Holocaust, Hitler's bath. But actually it's done in a linear way and each room is devoted to a different time period and therefore a different kind of style in her work. And it does work like that. And actually it's at the Tate Britain and it kind of unfolds in an almost surreal way because you don't. You can't see the next room coming and then you're in it and then it's, you know, it exists as its own thing. So, yeah, I would strongly recommend anyone to go and see it. It's really an incredible exhibition.
- [29:33]
A
That's Lee Miller at Tate Britain, Alexa Self, Matthew Beaman and Alex Milnes. Thanks for joining us. This is the D. This is the Daily on Monocle Radio. Now, one of Thailand's most exciting restaurateurs, Nam Parammarava, has been in London to share the depth and diversity of Thai cuisine. From the mountains of the north to the sunny shores of the south. Here to reopen London's famous Thai restaurant, Patara as platter Pan, Nam joined Monocle's Tom Webb to discuss Bangkok's culinary scene and the flavors she wants to share with the rest of the world.
- [30:13]
G
Thailand, Bangkok actually is very vibrant. Thai cuisine, Thai cultures is obviously, you can find Thai food anywhere from streets to even restaurants. And for me, Thai cuisine is all about sharing. So everything. Family sharing. Yeah.
- [30:30]
E
And you're here in London because you have a new restaurant which is called.
- [30:35]
G
Platypian, or in Thai it would be.
- [30:40]
E
Now, what does that mean?
- [30:41]
G
It means a silver barbed fish. In Thai, it's a silver barbed fish, which is actually a symbol of abundance and kind of a blessing in Thailand. And traditionally, people would make little motifs of this blatapian from palm leaves, and adults would give them to newborns as blessings. So actually, my dad came up with this name for us because it's almost like him passing down A torch to the next generation. So it's like him giving his blessing to the new baby of the Patara group.
- [31:18]
E
And that's very beautiful. And that is very accurate to what's happened because family is very important to your establishment.
- [31:26]
G
So I think especially in Thai cultures, family is very important. Like, we still eat with each other every night. We still, like, gather around the table and have dinners together.
- [31:37]
E
Now, speaking of family, what inspired the menu? Where do you source your recipes from?
- [31:44]
G
So my recipes are actually what we eat at home. My family ate at home. I wanted to bring that kind of warmth and the menus that Thai families would eat at home, the genuine kind of cooking and the techniques that we use. Actually, with Thai home cooking, there's a lot of process and a lot of labor, quite intensive labor that goes into, let's say, pounding the curries for the paste. So a lot of process goes into that. It's kind of labor of love. In fact, me wanting to bring this menus and recipes to Platypian is almost like I want you to kind of be able to taste the warmth and the love that goes in the food that we have at home.
- [32:32]
E
And you're reflecting food from home. What part of Thailand are you representing?
- [32:38]
G
So, actually we focus on the northern and the southern part of Thailand, the southern regions and the northern regions. Because my grandfather, he worked 60 years ago, he worked as an MP in the Naradhi Wat province, which is a southern region of Thailand. He gathered a lot of recipes. Well, he didn't cook himself, but like, like, you know, his favorite dishes are from the south of Thailand and also the north, because my mom is from Chiang Mai. So I grew up eating a lot of northern dishes, and I'm very familiar with the flavors. So again, coming back to what we eat at home, there's a lot of different variety of dishes from different regions of Thailand.
- [33:23]
E
Now, can you give us some highlights? What should we be ordering?
- [33:27]
G
Yeah, my personal favorite, actually, I. This is not. This is not within any parts of, like, southern or northern regions, but this is just to satisfy my own, like, cravings is the crispy chicken skin. I think you. I'm not sure. I think you had it as well. I did part of the. Yeah. So for me, it's kind of a nostalgic snack because I. Back at school, when I was in Thailand, I would have it every day after school with sticky rice, but now I would have it with a cocktail.
- [34:00]
E
Yeah, the way it's presented and the way you've described it, you. You don't Think it's going to be packed with so much flavor and to be so delicious. But it really, really is. It's the perfect snack. And you can enjoy it with a squeeze of lime as well.
- [34:14]
G
Yes. So you can change up the flavors after. So you know that kind of that aroma of kaffir lime with the like chicken fat, you know, all like super crispy. And then you squeeze it with lime after. It's amazing. I want to have it right now.
- [34:32]
E
I can tell your mouth is already salivating. So then we move on to some of the main dishes. Now you have a distinct way of presenting and cooking some of your main foods. You even use the clay pot technique.
- [34:48]
G
Yes. So the clay pot is actually my ultimate comfort food. The jumbo crab clay pot with crispy lard. And then we, you know, the aroma of it, the. We kind of torch the banana leaf as well. So it really adds to the dimension of that. And then we have it with the Thai seafood sauce, which is a sauce that you know, every time knows about. And they would only have this green chili sauce with seafood. So that is something that we again bringing from home to over here.
- [35:21]
E
The clay pot is interesting because what does it tell us about how Thai food is? It's very distinct Thai food, but it is influenced by other countries.
- [35:30]
G
Yes. So especially the clay pot is of course influenced by the Chinese cuisine going into that. Yeah. Thai cuisine is very much influenced by many other cuisines as well from our neighboring countries. And yeah, from Chinese influences to even hill tribes community in the northern parts, the Malay and Muslims in the south and Laos from Isan. So we have Isan food as well. And yeah, so ingredients traveled overseas and things like that. So at Plata Pian, we do have a combination of many different dishes that are influenced by our neighboring countries and other cuisines.
- [36:12]
E
Now most of us have had Thai food. We've tried to replicate the real deal. How do you really bring that authentic Thai flavor? What is it? Because I've been to Bangkok and I've been to your restaurant and I can't tell the two apart. It's the first time I can successfully say that what is the secret for getting those flavors?
- [36:30]
F
So.
- [36:31]
E
Right.
- [36:31]
G
So I think for me, for us at Platypien, I just. We just brought what we really eat at home, you know, like the genuine home cooked flavors, which is again, quite intensive. The process of it making everything from scratch. I think we just do the exact same thing that we do at home, but we're serving it in the restaurant and you know, the flavors of the wine. Everything just combines and comes together and I think that's what it is for me.
- [37:06]
A
That was Nam Parama Rava of Platypean in conversation with Tom Webb. Finally, on Today's Daily, our weekly analysis of what the last seven days have taught us. We learned this week of a new depth of human depravity. We learned that at one particular British hostelry, the Barking Dog in the Lancashire settlement of Urmston, there had been cheating in the pub quiz. We learned that one particular team had been rumbled whispering the questions into their smartwatches and presumably having the answers whispered back to them. So we learned that there is some accurate information on the Internet. But we have never learned and or understood why anybody would engage in such shenanigans for the benefit of overseas listeners who may never have participated in a British pub quiz. They are principally means by which middle aged men named Malcolm and Keith may get out of the house every so often and extract some use from their knowledge of English Civil War battles and Test cricket. Batting averages and the prizes on offer rarely amount to more than a round of drinks or a percentage of the entrance fees, which rarely pays for a round of grants drinks. We learned, however, that the meagreness of the stakes proved insufficient to deter at least one cabal of unprincipled rapscallions who were rather spoiling everyone's fun and consequently driving away custom by winning every week. Boo. Speak for England, Fernando. We learned, however, and much to our incomprehension, that while the pub has banned the ne' er do wells concerned from the quiz, they have been informed that they are still welcome as patrons, whereas in a truly civilised country they would simply be flogged with a knotted rope, as all reasonable people can agree. But sticking with the subject of unscrupulous chances, awarding themselves prizes to which they are very debatably entitled, we learned that the Trumps may have cause to move some of those weird fake gold trophies off the sagging Oval Office mantelpiece. We learned that Lieutenant Colonel Melania Nous of the gru, sorry, First Lady Melania Trump of the United States, was to be ennobled with a definitely very real and genuinely meaningful award from a rigorously impartial arbiter of virtue, that is Fox News tonight. Our Patriot is of the Year is someone who perfectly exemplifies that kind of. Of quiet courage that makes this country so great. She didn't ask for or expect this.
- [39:58]
B
Award or any award.
- [40:01]
A
She doesn't ask for recognition. People in her line of work generally don't. It's why they wear those trench coats and sunglasses and observe hotel lobbies through eye holes cut out of the newspaper. But we learned that Lt. Col. Knous's sorry, Mrs. Trump's husband was also shortly to receive at least a morsel of the acclaim he is clear overdue. For we learned that he was the bookmaker's favourite to receive another absolutely authentic and profoundly significant honour, which is absolutely not risible. Desperate horseshit confected out of thin air. In an obvious and indeed oleaginous attempt to retain his favour, world football's governing body, FIFA, is to create an annual peace prize, which will be awarded for the first time next month in Washington, dc. Now, the organization's president, Gianni Infantino, said the FIFA Peace Prize will recognise exceptional actions for peace. He refused to reveal who would receive the honour at the World cup draw on December 5th. And we, for one whimsical news monologue, look greatly forward to the President's simulations of humble surprise when he is presented with what will doubtless be an understated and tasteful trophy, which will in no way resemble Saddam Hussein's toilet brush. But we learn nevertheless that sinister forces remained intent on conniving against this prince among men by cruelly releasing in this yet another of his many hours of triumph a tranche of irrelevant old emails clearly attempting to imply that there could possibly be anything, even inappropriate, never mind remotely scandalous, in a friendship between the President of the United States and a convicted sex trafficker who was shopping him to the Russians.
- [41:41]
B
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee minutes ago literally releasing emails that they say were written by Jeffrey Epstein that explicitly, specifically mentioned Donald Trump by name and in context that we really haven't heard before.
- [42:02]
A
But we learned that there was an entirely innocent explanation for all of this.
- [42:06]
G
These emails prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that that President Trump did.
- [42:11]
A
Nothing wrong and that the President was holding urgent meetings with Republican Congress folk just so they could all enjoy a moment of amiable agreement upon how altogether innocent he is. Why are White House officials then meeting.
- [42:24]
C
With Representative Boebert in an effort to.
- [42:26]
A
Try and get her to not sign.
- [42:28]
B
This petition calling for the release of the files?
- [42:30]
G
Doesn't it show transparency that members of the Trump administration are willing to brief members of Congress Congress whenever they please?
- [42:38]
A
A reminder that in such a context, the word brief is often a euphemism for dangle them by their ankles from an upstairs window until they come around to the boss's way of thinking. However, and at least as of this broadcast, it does appear the case that we might have learned either that hitherto loyal headbangers of the caliber of Congresswomen Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert have more solid moral cause than might have been previously suspected, or that they perceive first mover advantage to being among the earlier rats off the sinking ship. But on further review of the documents, we have surely learned that they are making a misjudgment as grave as it is foolish. As one email sent by Jeffrey Epstein on March 24, 2018 says of the President and we he feels alone and is nuts. I told everyone from day one, evil.
- [43:26]
C
Beyond belief man, and most thought I was speaking metaphorically.
- [43:31]
A
It's obvious he could crack lies after lies after lies. And does that really sound at all, even a bit like Donald John Trump? Well, does it? And that is all for this edition of the Monocle Daily. Thanks to our panelists today, Alexa Self, Alex Milnes and Matthew Beaman. Today's show was produced by Tom Webb and researched by Joanna Moser. Our sound engineer was Steph Changu. I'm Andrew Muller here in London. The Daily returns at the same time on Monday. Thanks for listening and have a great weekend. Sam.