517. Is Trump Plotting Regime Change in Cuba? (Question Time)

Summary

---

The Rest Is Politics – Episode 517: Is Trump Plotting Regime Change in Cuba? (Question Time)

Hosted by Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart
Date: April 1, 2026

---

Overview

In this Question Time episode, Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart address a wide range of audience questions on urgent global and UK current affairs. The conversation opens with the provocative possibility of Donald Trump plotting regime change in Cuba, examining US foreign policy dynamics and their consequences, before shifting to a variety of domestic and international political issues. The episode is rich in forthright opinion, sharp analysis, personal anecdotes, and a few moments of signature mutual ribbing.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Is Trump Plotting Regime Change in Cuba?

(00:22 – 11:49)

Background and Recent Events:

• Rory opens with a listener question: Could Trump target Cuba as a distraction from foreign policy setbacks (namely Iran)?
  • Recent events include the killing of 32 Cuban security personnel in a raid linked to Maduro’s capture.
  • Trump quickly labels Cuba a "state ready to fail," exacerbates its energy crisis by blocking oil shipments, and threatens Mexico with tariffs.
  • These actions have led to severe blackouts and increased anti-Cuba rhetoric from the Trump administration.

Republican Rhetoric and Rationale:

• Lindsey Graham is quoted as saying: “Iran’s done, Cuba’s next, we’re mopping them up one by one.” (01:25)
• Marco Rubio (with strong Cuban-American constituency) is also vocally calling for more aggressive action on Cuba, drawing from personal and political ties.
• Rory notes the arguments used for intervention:
  • The specter of autocracy, political prisoners, alleged spying on US tourists, “Havana syndrome,” and claims about Russian and Chinese signal intelligence in Cuba.
  • He points out the hypocrisy, noting the US also operates global signals intelligence, and that the standard laid out would justify intervention in dozens of countries.

Dangers of Overconfidence in Intervention:

• Rory highlights similarities in logic with past interventions in Iran and Iraq:
  • Assumption that, “things can’t get worse for Cuba,” echoing previous regime-change rationales. (04:02)
  • He warns of severe possible consequences: “You could end up with half a million Cubans on boats trying to get to Florida.” (04:38)

Insular US Perspective:

• The risk calculations of Republican commentators seem centered on American servicemen, with little regard for the impact on Cuban civilians.

Quotes:

• Rory, on the risks:

  "The only risk [Carrie Filippetti] seemed to acknowledge was risk to American service personnel, not really risk to Cubans. So the only reason I'm talking about this is it reminds me a little bit of the structure of the Iran intervention... assumption that there are no real downstream consequences for the US. Certainly, no thinking about the consequences for the actual local people..." (04:38)

• Alastair on Republican “derangement syndrome”:

  "If, like most of the Republican administration, you have Iran derangement syndrome and Cuba derangement syndrome, you find it very difficult to believe that anybody could possibly support those regimes..." (05:00)

Historical Context and Lessons Not Learned:

• Alastair recalls the Bay of Pigs as an example of disastrous overreach by the US:

  "They just thought we get a few exiles... they’ll go in, the whole thing will fall over. It was a fiasco." (07:11)

• Rory recommends Norman Mailer’s Harlot’s Ghost as the “most beautiful book” on the CIA’s bungled Cuba operations. (07:27)
• Both agree that American policymakers dangerously underestimate local complexities and the risks of intervention.

2. Social Media, Tech Regulation, and Legal Accountability

(14:08 – 21:59)

• Rory and Alastair examine US court cases against Meta and YouTube for knowingly developing addictive products that harmed youth.

• Both compare Big Tech’s position to the tobacco industry:

  • “One internal document from YouTube...‘How are we measuring well-being?’ and the response, ‘we’re not.’” (17:41)
  • The platforms’ defense strategies blame parents, echoing historical tobacco company tactics.

• Rory predicts an upcoming “culture war of all culture wars” over tech, regulation, and AI.

  • Tech giants’ self-perception as world-improvers fuels their intransigence.
  • Many tech billionaires’ frustration with Democratic scolding led to more open support for Trump.

• UK’s tentative regulatory response:

  • New pilot scheme limits teen access to social media, but is criticized as “processy,” under-resourced, and symbolic rather than substantial—even labelled “nonsense” for tiny sample sizes. (20:53)

3. UK Political Landscape: Greens, “Far-Left,” and Populism

(21:59 – 27:59)

• Listener Sean challenges the characterisation of the Green Party as “far left.”
• Rory counters that “far” is contextual; both Reform (right) and Greens (left) invoke “populist” tendencies by not explaining tradeoffs or costs.

  "Populists on left and right never want to admit the pain their policies would bring." (24:06)

• Alastair doesn’t see Greens as far left but as lacking “credibility.” He references an event where youth admired Green leader Zack Polanski for his energy, even if “not credible on the economy.” (24:27)
• Rory notes that Polanski’s lack of economic literacy didn't damage him:

  “I thought revealing that he didn't really know the difference between the debt and the deficit...could have been really damaging for a politician 20, 30 years ago, but hasn't had any effect at all.” (26:55)

4. Who is More Dangerous: Putin or Netanyahu?

(28:12 – 34:00)

• Bruno asks which world leader poses a greater global threat.

• Rory: Putin remains “objectively the most dangerous” for Europe due to his nuclear arsenal, war on Ukraine, and expansionist ambitions.

• Netanyahu’s actions are driven by a sense of near-invulnerability and supported by US endorsement.

• Both leaders, like Trump, act with little regard for secondary consequences, prioritising self-preservation and political survival.

• Alastair:

  • Both deploy dangerous “strongman survival” instincts—willing to take risks or cause harm to maintain power.
  • “When they are in a political bind, they are not scared to do things that we would deem to be very dangerous…and potentially catastrophic in order to keep going.” (31:22)

• Rory elaborates that the “network” of strongmen, including Trump, Orban, and Netanyahu, operate with impunity and mutual support, undermining democracy.

5. UK and European Transatlantic Relations

(11:49 – 13:59)

• Rory worries US allies are left powerless by American unilateralism in Iran, feeling forced into actions against their interests.
• Trump openly taunts the UK and Europe for not “helping” in his Iran exploits, warning they'll be on their own.
• Alastair criticizes the UK government’s “abdication” of responsibility by insisting the king’s state visit is his decision, rather than a governmental one.

6. Restore Party, Reform Party, and UK Populist Right

(35:52 – 38:43)

• Rory and Alastair discuss the rise of Rupert Lowe’s Restore Party, its explicit support from Elon Musk, and where it sits between ‘mainstream’ Reform and the far right.
• Alastair notes Farage’s tendency to fall out with colleagues and suggests that Lowe has “genuinely extreme views.”
• They debate whether key figures like Robert Jenrick may drift between these emerging right-wing parties.

7. Personal & Cultural Recommendations

(39:59 – 50:46)

• Rory provides personal updates on meditation retreats and his enduring love of long-distance walking, noting that meditation offers a deeper sense of introspection.

  “If I’m walking for 9, 10 hours, I maybe spend a couple hours grumbling about my pack…But, if I’m sitting cross legged…for 14 hours a day, I have more chance to contemplate my navel.” (40:40)

• Alastair laments age-related physical challenges but keeps active with swimming and boxing.

Book & Film Picks:

• Rory:

  • Hitler’s Beneficiaries by Götz Aly: Explores how ordinary Germans benefited economically from Nazi plunder.
  • The Coming Storm by Ødd Arne Westad: On the parallels between today and the world before WWI.
  • Amazon Prime’s The Chosen: A series about Jesus, unusual for situating him firmly as a Jewish leader in a Middle Eastern context.

• Alastair:

  • Essays on Madness: A Lunatic’s Guide by A.A. Fellows: A brutally honest account of living with mental illness.
  • TV: Gone (David Morrissey), Mr. Nobody vs. Putin (BBC).
  • Theatre: Broken Glass by Arthur Miller at the Young Vic.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Cuba:

  “You could end up with half a million Cubans on boats trying to get to Florida.”
  — Rory Stewart (04:38)

• On populist politics:

  “Populists on left and right never want to admit the pain their policies would bring.”
  — Rory Stewart (24:10)

• On the Green Party:

  “I don’t see them as far left. I just think they’re not very credible.”
  — Alastair Campbell (24:27)

• On Putin, Netanyahu, and Trump:

  “When they are in a political bind, they’re not scared to do things that we would deem to be very dangerous...to keep going.”
  — Alastair Campbell (31:22)

• On tech and addiction:

  “They do sound like drug pushers.”
  — Alastair Campbell (17:41)

• On walking and meditation:

  “If I’m walking for 9, 10 hours…I get about an hour…being in the zone and meditating. Whereas if I’m sitting cross-legged…for 14 hours a day, I have more chance to contemplate my navel.”
  — Rory Stewart (40:40)

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Cuba & US Foreign Policy – 00:22–11:49
• Social Media/Big Tech Regulation – 14:08–21:59
• Green Party & UK Populism – 21:59–27:59
• Putin vs Netanyahu: Dangers to World Stability – 28:12–34:00
• Restore Party and Reform Party Politics – 35:52–38:43
• Personal and Cultural Picks – 39:59–50:46

---

Tone and Style

• The episode features frank, often wry exchanges—“He [Lindsey Graham] is such a jerk, that guy…”—as Alastair and Rory combine intellectual seriousness with personal candour and wit.
• The podcast exemplifies the hosts’ commitment to “disagreeing agreeably,” bringing both critique and open-mindedness to complex topics.

---

This summary captures the key takeaways, memorable lines, and the natural flow of The Rest Is Politics’s 517th episode, providing a comprehensive guide for listeners and non-listeners alike.

Transcript

[A]

Thanks for listening to the Rest is Politics. To support the podcast, listen without the adverts and get early access to episodes and live show tickets, go to therestispolitics.com that's thererestispolitics.com.

[B]

Welcome to the Restless Politics Question time

[A]

with me, Rory Stewart and me, Alistair Campbell.

[B]

So, hundreds of questions, I think even thousands of questions this week. But I guess I was going to start with Cuba because that's got a couple of questions. So, for example, Murray asks, with no obvious win for Trump that would allow him to save face in the war with Iran, do you think there's a real possibility he might resort to a distraction strategy this time by targeting another country such as Cuba? So, Alister Cuba.

[A]

So recent events in Cuba, you had this. It does relate to the capture of Maduro because 32 Cuban security personnel were killed during that raid, which didn't make Cuba very, very happy. Trump then quickly goes on to declare that Cuba's a state ready to fail. Then the oil shipments start to dry up, threats on Mexico, he threatens more tariffs. So this really has been a deliberate attempt to strangle Cuba when it comes to its own economy and particularly its oil supplies. And this is what's led to several blackouts and increasing rising rhetoric from Trump and others in the administration that Cuba is not long for this world.

[B]

Yeah. And you've got people like Senator Lindsey Graham out there saying Iran's done, Cuba's next where mopping them up one by one.

[A]

He is such a jerk, that guy.

[B]

He's a jerk. Marco Rubio is, of course Cuban, from Cuban American family. I mean, his parents moved from Cuba, weren't originally American citizens.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so he knows a lot about Cuba. And of course, he represented the very, very deep Florida Miami base of Cuban Americans. They're only 90 miles, of course, from Cuba, some bits of the US coast and that constituency very, very strongly engaged in what they do to bring down the regime. And one of the things that I was thinking about this, we were talking about last podcast about what kind of threat Iran poses and the question what kind of threat Cuba poses? And I was listening to an interview with Trump's former deputy assistant secretary of state who dealt with Cuba, woman called Carrie Filippetti. And I was really interested in the way in which republican Americans think about Cuba. So she takes it as red that an intervention in Cuba, regime change in Cuba is basically justified, partly because she wants to pose it as a threat to Americans. So along with arguments around the evident lack of democracy, I mean, this is A country which is a genuine autocratic state with over a thousand political prisoners. I mean, that's all true, a very poor, pretty brutal state. But she wants to not just describe it as that. She wants to say this is a country where if an American goes on holiday to Cuba, despite the fact they're not really allowed to go on holiday to Cuba by the Trump administration, they could have their possessions spied on, was one of her arguments. Then she talked about Havana syndrome, which are these allegations which aren't really validated, that the Cubans had a secret weapon that affected Americans who visited. Then there have been a lot of arguments about how Cuba hosts Russian and Chinese signals intelligence which allows it to spy on the U.S. now, these are very odd arguments for intervention, really, because of course, the US has signals intelligence stations all over the world, including in Britain, spying on China and Russia. And the idea that because Selma is an autocratic non democratic state that spies on people who visit, that would apply to probably 50, 60 countries in the world, probably apply to Vietnam. And when asked what an intervention would do, and this is why I was getting worried, she said, well, things can't get worse, basically for Cuba. And this is a little bit reminiscent of what people were saying with Iran and what people were saying with Iraq. It can't really go wrong because things can't be any worse than they are. But of course they can be worse. You could end up with half a million Cubans on boats trying to get to Florida. The only kind of risk she seemed to acknowledge was risk to American service personnel, not really risk to Cubans. So the only reason I'm talking about this is it reminds me a little bit of the structure of the Iran intervention, which is massive inflation of the risk posed by a country assumption that there are no real downstream consequences for the US Certainly no thinking about the consequences for the actual local people, only in terms of consequences for US Servicemen. And I guess the sort of general idea that it's just taken for granted that you don't really need to make international legal arguments at all. You just have to say this is a bad regime, which relates to maybe something that we can all relate to, which is if, like me, you have Trump derangement syndrome, you find it quite difficult to believe that lots of people support Trump, are going to vote for him. And if, like most of the Republican administration, you have Iran derangement syndrome and Cuba derangement syndrome, you find it very difficult to believe that anybody could possibly support those regimes or that those regimes wouldn't collapse like a pack of cards as soon as you touch them.

[A]

This episode is brought to you by Fuse Energy.

[B]

Energy policy rarely stays in Westminster for usually a rise for the Bill and from the 1st of April, 75% of renewables obligation costs will come off electricity bills and move into general taxation.

[A]

So if bills are meant to fall from April, why would anyone bother switching?

[B]

Because policy sets the floor. The saving itself is automatic. What suppliers offer beyond that isn't. And that's where real competition operates.

[A]

Fuse goes beyond the mandated saving. Customers who switch save around an additional 200 pounds on average. In the Fuse Energy app, you can see exactly what you're using and what it costs with 24. 7 support if you need it.

[B]

Listeners to the show will also receive a free trip subscription when they switch

[A]

get more than just lower rates. Switch [e-mail] politics using the code politics and save around £200 on your bills.

[B]

Visit fuseenergy.com for full details and terms and conditions.

[A]

Quick break. This surprised me.

[B]

The most useful advice I get now

[A]

doesn't come from experts.

[B]

It comes from regular people on TikTok. What works, what doesn't.

[A]

No filters.

[B]

Download TikTok and see for yourself.

[A]

We talked about Iran when we talked with Karim Sadjipur. You know, maybe the best policy was one of containment. It's hard to see or what real threat Cuba poses. The United States particularly now that they've lost that link to Venezuela and the support from Venezuela, they do still have some support from Russia. I was interested to read that one of the things that China is helping them to do is a massive expansion of solar panels to try to get them more energy self sufficient. But surely the other thing that might be, I mean they're not as military powerful as maybe they were when Castro had the whole country up, you know, backing him. But you know, the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, in the spring of 1961, I mean that was a bit of a disaster for the United States. That was another one that I don't, you know. So Dennis Brogan, who we talked about yesterday, he wrote his piece eight years before that happened. But that was another one where they just thought we get a few exiles, we put them together with some of our troops and they'll go in, the whole thing will fall over. It was a fiasco.

[B]

The most beautiful book on that is, is if we're getting onto cultural recommendation, Norman Mailer's Harlot's Ghost.

[A]

Oh yeah.

[B]

This incredibly detailed account of the CIA planning the Bay of Pigs and the way they're using Cuban exiles and the different Cuban exile groups coming in and their attempts to try to disguise an American plane to look like a Cuban plane and pretend that a Cuban pilot has come across. And then the disaster unfolds on the beach, where, of course, a bit like these attempts to use Kurds against Iran, the real victims turn out to be the Cubans who are gunned to death on the beach.

[A]

They also have these wonderful plots to try and take down Castro. So they knew that he liked diving, and a bit like Putin's people, managed to put some poison inside Navalny's underpants. They poisoned Castro's wetsuit, but unfortunately, on that day, he didn't wear that wetsuit. Somebody else didn't. They also try. They put a bomb in one of his cigars at one point. Which didn't go off.

[B]

That's right. And then there was a bomb, I think, in a shell. So that when he went scuba diving, the bomb. Andres Velasco, Andreas Velasco is a former finance minister who's now teaching in London, has written a very good substack on this. Basically making the point with Cuba that we try to make a run, which is, of course, in many ways, it's a loathsome regime. There's very little sympathy for it. And Cuba's been in real trouble since the Soviet Union pooled its support in 1990. And it's got even worse with COVID and Trump sanctions. But that doesn't mean that there are clear opposition groups or splits within the regime or any real reason to believe you can do what's now called a Delsey Rodriguez, that you can somehow replace the current president of Cuba with someone else, which will suddenly improve things. And the thing again, which is really going to cause a huge rift with the Cuban American community, is that if Trump thinks what he's going to do is bring in a new leader and just ask for more economic access for American companies without changing any of the human rights in Cuba, there will be horror because people are trusting Marco Rubio to try to improve the human rights and democracy situation.

[A]

Yeah, but Marco Rubio's soul has flown away to a very dark place. I mean, he's out today getting really angry with the media because they were saying to him that they've not been clear about their goals in Iran. So he said, that's absolutely nonsense. The President's been clear and I've been clear. We've all been clear. And he then lists them several goals. I won't go through them all now, but they're completely different to what they said at the time.

[B]

And they're also not really goals, are they? They're things like take out the navy, but they're not strategic objectives. If you ask the question. And why is it to open the Straits for Meuse? Is it to topple the regime? Is it, I mean, there's no why.

[A]

He's gone to a very, very, very dark place. But I think the other thing that, that's really interesting. Look, Cuba is not Iran. There's, there's, there's no point. Lindsey Graham might want to put them into the same breath, but it's, it's just ridiculous. But I think the other thing to say is the threats that Trump routinely makes now against other countries, the threats themselves are a violation of international law when he says, I'm going to take Cuba, I'm going to do with Cuba whatever I want. And by the way, Rory, when we were talking yesterday about Britain and the United States, and while we were recording, the palace announced that King Charles and Camilla are going on this state visit. Now, as you know and I know, these are the decisions that are made by the government, not by the royal family themselves. I'm very, very alarmed that they're going to do this. And let me just read you a post that Donald Trump put out on his ridiculous truth social shortly after this decision had been announced that Charles and Kumar are going there. All of those countries that can't get jet fuel because of the Strait of Hormuz, like the United Kingdom, which refused to get involved in the decapitation of Iran. I have a suggestion for you. Number one, buy from the US we have plenty. Number two, build up some delayed courage, go to the Strait and just take it in caps. You'll have to start learning how to fight for yourself. The USA won't be there to help you anymore, just like you weren't there for us. Iran has been essentially decimated. The hard party's done. Go get your own oil. President DJT I mean, that's literally, we keep being told that the one bit of the United Kingdom that he absolutely has real respect for is the royal family. And King Charles, King Charles announces he's going on this state visit, which is a big deal for Trump because he loves baubles. And then he puts that out as yet another wacky Keir Starmer because he didn't go along with his Iran madness.

[B]

Because obviously I'm getting some pushback around and including from you on my characterization of Americans not being properly engaged with the war in Iran. I still hold to the view that people in the US have not understood what this means for allies, what this message really means. I mean, if your economy is suffering, as the British economy now is, and there's a big problem, which, again, I don't hear enough about in the US which is they're asking Europe to pick up the bill in Ukraine, asking Europe to spend 5% GDP on defense, while at the same time they are damaging the European economies through their war in Iran. They drive up the oil price, drive up the interest rates, all our economies start suffering. But if you add to the fact that we're being asked to provide the bases, provide the overfly rights, and there's a contradiction there, the foreign policy guy I was talking to yesterday, the Republican, was saying, yeah, we've got everything we want out of Europe. I don't even understand why. We've got bases and overfly rights for every single country in Europe except for Spain. We've got everything we want. And then on the other side, they're like, you didn't give us what we wanted. And what we don't communicate properly is how humiliation works, that if you're made to feel as Britain and Europe is being made, felt completely powerless, no choices, Suck it up. We're not going to consult. We're going to damage your economies. We're going to do it without you. We're going to do illegal things and make you participate in our illegal things. And then we're going to take to truth, social and insult you. I don't know how long an alliance can survive this. That's why I don't buy into this view from your friend Mike Pompeo, that somehow we just have to suck it up.

[A]

He's not my friend. He's really not my friend. But I don't think the king queen should be going. I think they should be following the Alistair Campbell World cup strategy. Just don't go. But I know they're in a rather more difficult position than I am.

[B]

And it's also incredibly unfair that all the ministers, when interviewed and asked about it, say, it's a decision for the king. It's not a decision for the king. As you just pointed out, he's doing it at the behest of the British government.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And they've got to be careful saying this, because at some point, if they keep saying it's a decision for the king, do they really want the king to be like, okay, well, then fine, if the decision for me, I don't want to go.

[A]

And Rory, speaking as A source close to the king. Do you think that's his current thinking?

[B]

No, I'm not. Not saying anything. You're not saying it's a constitutional monarch who follows the advice of the government.

[A]

Exactly right. Let's move on to another very interesting thing that happened in the United States last week. So, Rory, your friends, social media companies, Stuart Trip plus member from Scarborough. The tech bros. Have just lost two very significant court cases in the U.S. how can we better control these monopolies?

[B]

Echoing your Mike Pompeo point, not my friends.

[A]

So this was a judgment in LA and Los Angeles where Meta and YouTube were found to design products that harmed young people. And they knew it. And in in New Mexico, a case involving child exploitation and their shares have tumbled somewhat. I think we will look back on all this. You know a lot more about this world than I do, but I think we'll look back on this as a gigantic version of the tobacco industry in an earlier age. They knew that this was really damaging, but they just plowed on and obfuscated. One of the defenses they mounted in the case of the young girl who said she became addicted to Instagram in particular, was that they were trying to very aggressive strategy to blame her parents. It was something to do with the parents and nothing the mother and nothing to do with Instagram. And of course, they're now facing dozens and hundreds more cases like this. So where do you see this going?

[B]

Well, I think it is a risk to these companies because if the platforms are liable, which they've always tried to say they're not, and people accept the argument that they designed these platforms to be addictive, which is absolutely true. I mean, the way in which they sell advertising is by getting as much attention as possible and getting you addicted to it. And they play around with a B testing to make it as addictive as possible because the more attention they get, the more they monetize it. So if they become liable, they are then open to huge legal risk across the board. And of course, since Trump came in, a lot of them got rid of that. You know, Meta, Mark Zuckerberg and others got rid of a lot of their safety people. X got rid of a lot of its safety control people because they thought they were entering a new world of free speech where they didn't need to worry about questions of truth or online safety or addiction. My goodness, this is going to be the culture war of all culture wars, because these are of course, the very, very wealthiest people in the world. They're driving the whole AI revolution and AI isn't just like tobacco. That's going to be potentially the backbone of everything that we do in our businesses and hospitals and armies. They're also people who have a very, very strong self conception of themselves as people who are improving the world. Again, unlike the tobacco barons, there's incredible vanity. You know, people like Musk believe they' to save humanity. Take us to Mars. All the people in the tech business believe that people who grumble about their industry are Luddites, that technology has transformed the world, that the world before the iPhone was an unimaginable world. And so one of the reasons they all got behind, or many of them got behind Trump, is Zuckerberg was so offended to be dragged in front of the Congress and told that he was a bad person. And a lot of these people started flirting with Trump because they couldn't bear the Democrats telling them off. So there's a huge cultural issue which embraces even people who are on the more liberal democratic side in this. They are very defensive about their industry, very proud of their wealth, very proud of their IQs, and will put up the most ferocious fight. And of course, they control the biggest media and advertising platforms on earth. So when that culture war gets going again, unlike the tobacco industry, it would be like taking on all the newspaper barons at once.

[A]

Yeah, the tobacco industry, because it was mainly newspapers then, part of their battle was actually to fill the newspapers with advertising so that we didn't sort of, you know, go after them editorial, as it were, but just to give you two or three things that emerged in the court cases. So an internal document from YouTube. In the California trial, there was this question posed, how are we measure measuring well being? And the response, we're not. There was another one. The young ones are the best ones for long term retention. Targeting teens is a good gateway to entice other family members. They do sound like drug pushers. And there's actually one email from an employee I think, who's warning them, says targeting 11 year olds feels like tobacco companies a couple of decades ago. Then I guess the other issue, maybe just to briefly to touch on, is what's happening in the uk. We've talked a lot about Australia. There are other countries that is now following in their footsteps. There is this debate going on in the uk, essentially, I guess around the question, why doesn't the government just get on and do it? The House of Lords has now voted twice basically to say that.

[B]

And Alistair could just push you on that one because normally your story about the House of Lords is that they're these terrible reactionaries that are blocking the will of the House of Commons. But in this case, I guess they're more on your side, aren't they? They're trying to push them to do more. Yeah.

[A]

I can't quite understand, but I think I got the feeling that part of it is a bit of shenanigan going on. They just, like, defeated the government, but I don't. The government, having committed to this in principle, it now feels that they're now setting up all sorts of quite complicated processes.

[B]

Isn't it characteristic, generally, I'm afraid of this government, instead of seeing the opportunity, which Malinowska saw, to take a big, bold stance, pretty primary colors bold stance, we could all get behind and make it into an incredible success. They manage to take what is now a proven vote winner and dilute it and complicate it and finesse it and make themselves seem as though they're resisting something that they're supposed to be embracing and pushing well.

[A]

And if you look at the nature of this, they're going to have a pilot. And a pilot always says, generally says, we're not quite sure about this. We're going to give it a bit of a go. So they're going to trail these limits on access to social media in the homes of 300 teenagers. Okay. For six weeks. So the test, the 300 teenagers will have their social apps disabled entirely. They'll be blocked overnight or they'll be capped. Okay. And they're then going to be put into. This just feels so processy. Could be four groups. Group one, complete ban on most popular social media apps. Group two apps capped at 60 minutes a day. Group three apps blocked between 9pm and 7am Group four, control group with no restrictions. Then they're going to measure impacts on family life, sleep, school, work, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And alongside. No, Rory, I'm not finished with the process. Just be quiet. The government's pilot will run side a public consultation asking whether the UK should follow in Australia's footsteps. Well, I think the public's pretty keen on this. And then Keir Starmer says he's very keen, very keen for the government to tackle addictive features. So what it does is it's like you're doing something that's big and bold, but through the process, you're making it feel very kind of step by step, incremental, not very exciting.

[B]

Yeah, the whole thing's complete nonsense because as somebody who did a few randomized control trials when we were doing cash transfers to the extreme poor. With GIV directly, a sample size of 300 isn't big enough anyway. I mean, no statistician is going to derive any information from 300 divided into groups of 60. I mean, it's meaningless. So I don't even understand what the hell they think they're doing there. Almost certainly somebody said they wanted evidence and then someone in the civil service said they didn't have enough money to run a proper sample size, so now they're doing a nonsense. The other problem is that it makes it feel, I'm afraid, to somebody like me, who's feeling a bit grumpy about this, as though they're under pressure from the social media companies, because we know that was the case with Mount Norskas. He said as soon as he started to do this, all the big American tech companies ratcheted up the pressure on him and tried to shut him down. I'm worried in this case that the government is very dependent on these big American tech companies for their next generation investment. You remember the whole Trump visit was about these companies bringing in billions of dollars of investment to the uk. And the reason they're not taking the Malinovskis line is that they're desperate not to offend the tech companies.

[A]

Well, do the right thing, I say. Right, Rory, you're our sort of resident slug off the Green Party person. Sean asks this question. Hi, Rory and Alastair. I wanted to pick up on the idea that the Green Party is far left. I'm 27, says Sean, and in every election so far in my life, the centre or right has won. I consider myself left wing, but I don't think my views are fringe. Invest in the economy, fairer tax, nationalised industries. Many of these ideas would have been fairly mainstream before Thatcher. Since then, the center of gravity has shifted so far right that the principles of social democracy and Keynesian economics are sometimes labeled extreme. Even if the Green Party goes a bit further, should principles like wealth redistribution, ensuring greater economic firms really be considered far left? Oh, you like this bit? Many thanks, Sean. Davis Bracketts, running to be a local Green councillor in the upcoming May election. So, in the interest of balance, could we have the view of the Labour councillor in your seat and the Tory?

[B]

It's really interesting, isn't it? Because of course, you'll see if reform listeners wrote in which they don't very much, but they're also very, very resistant to the label far right. They absolutely hate the idea they're far right. They would say their ideas are basically in line with a Lot of the population, common sense. It's interesting how the epithet far is doing a lot of work here, I guess. Look, there's a trivial point and there's a more important point. Trivial point is we're trying to describe a British politics that's gone from a two party politics into a five party politics. And we're trying to describe the fact that reform is right for Conservatives and Green is left to Labour. I think the more important point is is this question around for both Green and reform about populism, which is they're not awfully good either party about explaining the costs and sacrifices that would be involved in their solutions, that they're very good at talking about the problems and that's one of the reasons. We just interviewed Yanis Varoufakis and I was quite struck by the fact that he's somebody who's definitely on the left but much more than the Green Party is very, very clear about the fact he doesn't think wealth taxes are going to make any real significant difference. He thinks there might be an argument for doing it morally, but it's not going to sort out the public finances and that the kind of changes you would need to make to the British economy are going to be really, really painful and are going to hit people in the pocket. And that's exactly what populists on left and right never want to admit.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, I don't view the Green because the Green Party is quite a complicated alliance now because Zach Polanski has become the leader and the most high profile person within it. His politics, I'd say, are quite different to other reasonably well known Green Party figures. I don't see them as far left. I just think they're not very credible. We saw that in our interview with Zach Plansky. I think they're very credible on the economy. I thought the. We got a question, Joshua. What was the purpose of the protests against the far right when the far right are not in power? The protest against the far right I suspect, Josh, because a lot of people feel very, very worried that the far right is on the march. This refers to a very, very well attended march at the weekend in London and it was specifically a march organized to protest against the threat of the rise of the far right. Zach Polanski spoke at that event and I don't know, I just couldn't take him seriously because he was just looked like a guy having a really good time bouncing around a stage to some music. Now maybe that's just me being a grumpy old Man. But if the Green Party are to be taken seriously, I think they have to be serious. And I think that too often the policy perspectives that they put out there is not serious. And you're absolutely right, it is a form of populism. And this series I've done with Liam Byrne, we're talking mainly about the right. His book doesn't address the populism on the left, but it is a kind of mirror, you know, it is about saying, well, this is a problem and it's a terrible problem. We shouldn't have that problem, therefore we do this to deal with it. So yesterday Farage and Jenrick were out and about saying that, you know, we're going to make it easier to fly, we're going to take the price down of flying, we're going to reduce your fuel costs. Well, how and what trade offs are you doing? They never feel that they have to do that. Yeah, look, I think the Green Party, they are a real threat to labor. I was in very good school the other day, Northampton Academy, and it's a chain, one of a chain. And they had several hundred kids listening in the room. And then there's 7,000 online coming in from different schools. I could only see the ones in the room, but I did one of my votes, as you know, I love. So these are, these are all students, school kids who are going to vote for the first time in the next election. I asked them, how many of you will vote? Virtually every hand went up. And then later in the, in the tour said, you know, how many of you think Keir Starmer's doing a good job as Prime Minister? And it was very, very, very, very, very few, alarmingly few from a Labor perspective. Now, they liked Zach Polinski. I didn't do a vote on Polanski, but they kind of said, you know, can't he be a bit more like Zach and a bit more radical, a bit more this and a bit more that. Now that shows that his strategy is working okay, but I don't think it's the policies he's putting forward as a strategy for government.

[B]

I was so intrigued, I was so intrigued in our interview with him that him saying to me basically at the end, listen, I could have known those economic statistics if you'd warned me in advance. But also that it didn't really damage him at all. I thought revealing that he didn't really know the difference between the debt and the deficit and he wasn't sure about the top rated tax, I think could have been really damaging for a politician. 20, 30 years ago, but hasn't had any effect on him at all.

[A]

That's one of those things, though, that, that's why, I mean, I said at the end of that interview he needs to go away and get decent advice. Advice and get people around him and have good answers. That because in a general election, it is the sort of thing that can trip you up very, very quickly if you don't have those pretty clear answers. But maybe we are. We often say we're always a few years behind America in our political campaigning. Maybe that is the awful road that we're going down where truth doesn't really matter, sums don't have to add up. You can get away with making mistakes, but I don't see them as far left. I just see them as slightly lacking, well, severely lacking in credibility on the policy front. Should we take a break?

[B]

Yep. Take a quick break and then back for more.

[A]

Welcome back to the Recipolitics with me,

[B]

Alistair Campbell, and me, Rory Stewart.

[A]

Now, Bruno, Rory wants to know who do we think is more dangerous to the world right now, Putin or Netanyahu?

[B]

It's quite a question, isn't it? I mean, they're endangering the world in very different ways. So let's start with Putin, who I do think is objectively the most dangerous directly for Europe. He controls 20% of a European country. It's a war where 1.2 million casualties have happened. He's got this enormous nuclear arsenal and ballistic missiles. He's made it clear, as Tim Snyder said in our interview with him for many, many years now, that he wants to increase Russian territory right into the Baltic. And we're in a very dangerous situation because that message you read out from Trump signals the U.S. administration that for the first time, really since 1945, is signaling that it's not really that interested in protecting Europe against Russia. I mean, there's something I keep picking up on here, which is sometimes these Republican foreign policy people I've been arguing with over the last three days are saying, when I say, what are you doing in Iran? They say, well, it doesn't matter because Ukraine's fine, Europe's fine, you can handle it yourselves. And sometimes they're, of course, saying the reverse, which is Europe isn't fine. Europe needs to spend much more in defense. You're in a much more dangerous situation. The Israel point, though, is fascinating because Israel, of course, is justifying these attacks on the grounds that it's vulnerable, but it's probably doing these things because it feels almost invulnerable in the short term. Netanyahu, if you said what could go wrong for Israel and what's happening, the answer is ultimately he probably doesn't feel there is any existential threat to Israel. There's no way that the Gulf countries are going to repeat the Yom Kippur War of 74. He has a nuclear weapon. They are the strongest military power in the Middle east by a country mile. And therefore, a bit like Trump, what he's doing in Lebanon, what he's doing in Gaza, what he's doing in Syria, and of course, what he's doing in Iran, he's partly doing because there isn't much direct consequences for him. He's insulated from very much blowback. And that's really being felt by the Gulf because they feel that Israel's offering the choice of either signing up to basically join all of Israel's campaigns or have their economies shattered, marginalized and pushed aside. Anyway, over to you. What do you think?

[A]

Well, I think it's an impossible question to answer. I mean, Netanyahu at the moment seems to me to be pursuing in Lebanon the similar approach that he pursued in Gaza. We said on the main podcast that I'm not sure that he and Trump are fully aligned in terms of objectives. I think Trump probably deep down does want the Iran war to end because it is causing so much trouble for the American economy. Whereas I think Netanyahu wants the time and the political support and the political cover to keep going. I guess the other thing you have to say about both of them in very different systems in a way, is just the survival instinct. I mean, Putin has now been a dictator for so long that he probably has to survive until death. Dictators reach a point where if they lose power before death, it usually ends very, very badly for them. And I think he sees himself as being around for a long, long time. Netanyahu, who was prime minister of Israel, he was the first prime minister of Israel that Tony Blair met when he became prime minister in 1997. Now, okay, he lost power for some of that period, but he's the longest serving prime minister of Israel by a long, long way. He's been written off many, many times. And I guess the danger this is where Trump, I think, is in the same boat, is that the danger that they represent at times is that when they are in a political bind, they are not scared to do things that we would deem to be very dangerous, very risky, and potentially catastrophic in order to keep going. I mean, I don't think it's impossible that Netanyahu wins the next election. And I wouldn't have said that a year ago.

[B]

What US and Israel are doing together is they seem to be indifferent to the second, third order consequences for other people, the Gulf, Europe, Asia, for what they're doing in Iran or elsewhere. All that matters to them is what matters to them. But that would be fine in a way, if it was all about their own selfish national interest, if they weren't also dragging us all along in their slipstream and demanding that we all endorse their wars, participate in their wars, fund their wars, provide flights for their wars, and attack us ferociously when we don't join them in operations which are objectively harmful to us and beneficial to them. So how long can these relationships be sustained? Because support for Israel is no longer as bipartisan as it was in the US it's certainly less than it was in Europe. The traditional focus on Israel's right to exist is now balanced with a strong focus on Palestine's right to exist, at least insofar as European countries now recognize the state of Palestine in a way that wasn't true before. And we now have stories like Itamar Ben gvir, who's the minister of security in Netanyahu's government, wearing a noose signifying the death penalty as a lapel pin and driving through legislation which effectively would impose very rapid execution on Palestinians convicted of terrorist acts out of the west bank or Gaza, and going against a very, very strong tradition in Israeli democracy which has been very reluctant to impose the death penalty since the foundation of

[A]

the state, the celebrations of it were pretty revolting as well. Sorry to relate this back to Trump because like you, I suffer from Trump derangement syndrome. But I think it's important to understand that this idea of the strong man leader, and what we now have, is an international network of it. When you see things like, for example, Trump as president, saying to the president of Israel, for heaven's sake, Herzog, pardon the man. He's fighting a war for your country. Pardon him. Likewise the fact that they get we talked yesterday about them getting involved in our politics. You got the Hungarian election on April 12. He sees Orban as a fellow strongman, Orban, another one for whom corruption is just a sort of name of the game. And so therefore he's backing Orban. Vance is due to make a visit there. Rubio has already made a visit there. So this is an international network of the strongmen, and one of the things they want to be strong about is never being punished for the things that they do wrong. So, I mean, Putin is a fabulously wealthy man. He has presided over poisonings, murders, executions, assassinations. He has broken international law in all sorts of different ways, but never gets called out for it by Trump. And then, of course, the other thing he saw with Russia this week was the extraordinary and it seems to be real tapped phone conversation between the Foreign Minister of Hungary and Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister. I saw a great comment this morning from somebody who said that if you're an intelligence officer reading a transcript of this conversation, you're listening to a controller with an agent. So it's a network. That's the thing we have to understand. That's why the Rycroft report that we talked about was so important, because this is a network that is trying to undermine the sorts of democracies that we thought we could take for granted.

[B]

There was something I've been thinking about a bit, which I haven't heard your views on, and we've had a couple of questions on, which is Restore Britain, which is the Rupert Lowe party. So we've had a question from Stuart. Is the rise of Restore a bigger threat to reform or to the Overton Window? The Overton Window, I think, is the idea of shifting in what's acceptable, a general sense that things are moving to the right. Katie, Nigel Farage clearly doesn't fancy being questioned by you and Rory on leading. Would you ever consider putting Rupert Lowe under the spotlight? So my understanding is Rupert Lowe Restores, broken away from Reform, has much more explicit support from Elon Musk. So you can see Rupert Lowe's tweets being boosted by Musk and getting millions of views. What's your sense of what it will mean to have a sort of another party competing in the reform space?

[A]

I think it does pose a problem for Nigel Farage on various levels. The first is, as you say, there's a part of him, I think, that didn't mind having Tommy Robinson write out there as a kind of violent exponent of the sort of politics that Far Farage believes in, because it could make Farage look a bit more reasonable. Rupert Lowe, it seems to me, is parking himself somewhere between the two. Rupert Lowe, I think, has genuinely what you and I would define as extreme views. We talk about far right, far left. I think he has pretty extreme views. I remember when he was chairman of Southampton Football Club, and because Clive Woodward worked there for a while and I knew him quite well. So Rupert Lowe asked me, when Southampton were playing Burnley, he asked me to have lunch with him before the game, and I went and had lunch with him, and I think I recorded in my diary, I don't think I've ever met anybody quite as right wing as this guy. He's very, very, very right wing on the economy, on all sorts of things. And clearly the other reason why it's a problem for Farage is he does seem to have this historic inability to hold teams together, which I think ultimately in politics does matter. You've got to be able to hold a team together. And Farage is very much likes to be the main guy, doesn't really like to be the threatened or challenged. And Rupert Lowe, he fell out, clearly, very, very, very, very quickly. Just the second question, though, Rory, because I think he's right. I mean, I've been trying to get Nigel Farage to come on the podcast, even though some of our listeners didn't want to hear him, because I think he is an interesting consequential figure. You can't get away from that. And I get the feeling he doesn't want to come on. He keeps sort of fobbing me off and saying, well, maybe. And now he stopped even replying. But what would you feel if we got Rupert Lowe on? What would you think about that?

[B]

Yeah, let's get him on. Why not? Why not? Why not try to get a sense of this guy? I think if we have the confidence to interview Zach Polanski, have the interview. Confidence to interview Rupert Lowe, I think we should go for it. Listen, just final one on that. Do you think there's a chance, if, given Farage's problem of holding parties together, that he's going to lose Robert Jenrick, that Jenrick will drift over to Lowe or drift back to the Conservatives or head off in some other direction?

[A]

I mean, God knows he's clearly using Generic a lot. Generic was with him at this press conference they did at Heathrow Airport. He had a big piece in one of the papers at the sun at the weekend. I mean, I find it hard to take Generic seriously because he just striked me as being a rank opportunist. So. But could he really go even further to the right? I don't know. I don't know. And by the way, when we said last time that Farage doesn't want to come on, they said, well, what about all these other characters like Zia Youssef and Richard Tice and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? I think Farage is the one that, you know, is probably we would want to interview. So, Nigel, if you or your friends are listening. The offer is still there, but Rory, I'm surprised Rory wants to interview Rupert as well. So Rupert, if you and your friends are listening, that's, that's absolutely fine. Now, Rory, great question here from Ben. Despite being perhaps the most famous living advocate of walking through his mind books. I think what you mean is, despite through his books being the most famous living. Because you don't walk through books, Ben. But anyway, going on, Rory talks less and less about his benefits and seems increasingly to turn to meditation retreats to find consolation. What do these offer him that walking no longer can? Has Rory given up on walking?

[B]

That's a lovely question, lovely question. And I've applied for another one of my 11 day meditation retreats, so I'm going to vanish on you at some point.

[A]

You're also vanishing this week.

[B]

I, I am, I am. I am off on holiday.

[A]

Charles, should I tell you who I've lined up in your stead?

[B]

Yeah, go on. Who is it? Who's who? You got.

[A]

Well, I've decided to bury the hatchet over his continual boasting that only I called out Trump as the winner of the election. We're gonna have Mr. Dominic Sambrook from the Rest Is History.

[B]

Oh my goodness. Oh, well, I'm in trouble. I think I may not be back on again. It's Johnny Good broadcast of that chapter. Maybe the, the end of. I may have to be nice to Tom Holland and try to brush up on my history.

[A]

You'll be better, don't worry. But it's one week only, so. But what about the walking? But you still walk a fair bit, don't you?

[B]

I love walking and I, you know, I, I, if I had the chance, I'd be going on three, four week walks all the time. But it's true that if you're really looking for really deep introspection meditation, if I'm walking for nine, 10 hours, I maybe spend a couple of hours grumbling about my pack or thinking or am I getting a blister? And I get about an hour of sort of being in the zone and meditating. Whereas if I'm sitting cross legged in a dark room for 14 hours a day, I have more chance to kind of contemplate my navel, as they say.

[A]

I can't do either because I used to run a lot. I used to run hundreds of miles every week, but my knees really started to hurt. If I. Sophie Raworth. Our next question is gonna be about cultural recommendations. Sophie RAWorth of the BBC has written a book about running and she's got a section in it about how it's good for your knees to run. Well, it might be, but it bloody hurts my knees. Right.

[B]

I mean, my friend, who's not a friend of yours, but a friend of mine, Matthew Parris, who was Conservative MP and an amazing marathon runner, he could run a marathon in sort of 2 hours, 20 minutes, I think, but his knees really got destroyed. My mother, 90, is a great believer in the fact that the reason she's able to walk so well as she's never done the exercise in her life.

[A]

My friend David Mills, who says that the only time he. The only exercise he gets is walking up the stairs to visit his friends in hospital, who've had lots of injuries from running and skiing and things like that. But. But, yeah. So are you gonna. What about another book, though? Would you do another book of walking across somewhere?

[B]

I have sometimes wondered whether you remember I. I walked across as well as walking across Afghanistan. I walked across Iran, for example, and Pakistan. And I wondered whether I could redo my walk across Iran or Afghanistan 25 years later and see what had changed and compare the diaries. But then sometimes I think, oh, fuck it, I've already done it. Isn't it a bit lame to redo something you've already done?

[A]

You've got kids now. You can't just bugger off for weeks and walk across Afghanistan.

[B]

Gotta wait till they're teenagers. They don't want to see me. That's the key. There's going to be a moment where they'll be like, f off, dad, we're going to go and do something else.

[A]

I do still like walking, but I find that I just. I think it gets his aging. I just. My legs get stiff very, very quickly. It depresses me.

[B]

Well, you got.

[A]

You.

[B]

You got your swimming, you got your mad swim.

[A]

I got my swimming, I've got my boxing. I keep fit and what have you. But, yeah, I used to. I used to. Whenever I see people out running and really enjoy it, I get very, very jealous because I just can't do. And. And being overtaken a lot when you're out running, that's so depressing. Because I'm a bit competitive, Rory. A little bit.

[B]

Just. Just a tiny bit. No, look here, so you can be a little. Our lovely Question Time. Judy, do you have any book recommendations or cultural recommendations, please, for the Easter weekend?

[A]

Alastair, if you're looking for a good telly thing, Gone, starring David Morrissey. David Morrissey, I think, is a really brilliant actor, and it's a Story about the wife of a head teacher who goes missing and then it's just, it sort of just tells you, you know, you eventually find out what lies behind that story. But David Morrissey, he's such a brilliant actor and it's so sort of intense. Another thing to watch, Mr. I finally got around to watching Mr. Nobody versus Putin. Absolutely brilliant about this is about this teacher in, in a small town in Russia who post the war finds that they're having to teach propaganda the whole time and he can't stand it and eventually gets out the country. And it's a BBC film but it's really well done. And then a book, the book I read this week is one of those single sitting days. You know, I said last week, publishers stop sending me bloody books. I'm getting too many books. But this one, this is the first book that arrived unsolicited post by plea and it's absolutely brilliant. It's called Essays on Madness, A Lunatic's Guide. And it's written under a pseudonym, A.A. fellows. And I wonder whether A.A. is because one of the many, many mental health issues that this lady has to deal with through her life. She has anxiety, depression, alcohol, drug abuse, ptsd. She's got a whole lot beautifully written and she has at the end a little bit like my book on, on mental health. She tries to give you ideas as to how to deal with it. A lot of them quite similar to mine in relation to music and sleep and all sorts of other stuff. But it's a really nice book and I love the COVID as well. Says essay on Madness is a brutally honest exploration of AA Fellows fucked up mind and her endless attempts to unfuck it.

[B]

That's very good.

[A]

So that's good. There's my cultural though. Oh one thing not to Oswald story. Don't fall for hype. I finally thought every story about this Marty supreme film we ought to watch Marty supreme about a table tennis guy with Timothy Chalamet. I didn't, I didn't buy at all.

[B]

Oh okay. I went to see Project Hail Mary which I thought was really fun. I mean it's not hugely serious but really fun. And, and there's a wonderful book by Andy Weir which lies behind it. It's. Have you followed the plot of that? That's somebody's going off to space to try to save the world from amoeba that are eating the sun.

[A]

You see, we're very different in our chase. Once you talk about space exploration, does this make me very limited? I'm just, I'm not going there. I don't go there.

[B]

Well, I'll tell you what you would like, then. Here's another one for you that I think you'd like. Hitler's Beneficiaries by Gertz Alley, a brilliant German historian. And what he's done is he's written a book pointing out just how much economic benefit came to ordinary Germans. He begins with his own grandparents and talking about embarrassing conversations about where their furniture came from, and it turns out to be looted from some house in the Netherlands, probably belonged to a Jewish family.

[A]

That's more my scene.

[B]

Exactly. I think you'd like it because it's about how regimes of all sorts create bargains with their public and the way that people care about, obviously care about cost of living and economics and how careful the Nazis were to make sure that all the costs fell on the countries they were occupying, but that ordinary Germans continued to, you know, get their rations, get their food, get their shoes.

[A]

Just on the Nazi theme, Fiona and I went to see Broken Glass at the Young Vic, and that's the old Arthur Miller play, which was all right, it was, but that's. That's essentially about a woman living in. An American woman, a Jewish living in America, who just cannot get over what's happening to the Jews in Germany and can't understand why other Jews aren't feeling as. As passionate. And then she has this kind of bodily reaction to it. That was okay. That was okay. So, yeah, I would recommend that on the. The Madness book, A Lunatic's Guide to Mental Illness. The. Here's an interesting one for you. She's. She's written under a pseudonym because. And she says in the introduction, she's got three children and she doesn't want attention for herself and she doesn't want to be a public figure, which is interesting on two levels. One, because it probably makes it harder for her to promote the book because we all have to get out there and promoting her book, which is maybe one of the reasons subconsciously why I'm now doing it for her. But also it's sort of because one of my big Things campaign, your mental health is, you know, the more open we all are, the better it will be. So she's incredibly open in that she tells this every last detail of her life and her mind and her story, but with that resistance to actually wanting to be out there in public, which I completely respect, but it's just an interesting way of doing it.

[B]

Last couple ones from me, Odd Arnie Vestat, who's a colleague here at Yale, who even beats Alastair on the multilingual. I mean, it's unbelievable the number of. He's Norwegian, but he's got incredible Chinese, Russian and umpteen other languages. Has produced a book called the Coming Storm, which is drawing parallels between the situation before the First World War and the situation today. And it's talking about how a third World War might emerge and in particular America, China, competition, and a real attempt to be constructive. It's not just a kind of doom and gloom book talking about why we're doomed, but what the lessons might be on how we make war less likely, rather more likely. So maybe even a possibility for an interview or a miniseries. And then finally, because we've asked about Easter, I'm gonna go really left field here with something that will really make your toes curl.

[A]

The Bible.

[B]

I mean, it is basically that. So Amazon has produced a. A program called the Chosen, and it's about Jesus. And I've been watching it. But the interesting thing about it, I mean, you might question its kind of literary ability, but it's very, very much situated in the Jewish context. It's very much Jesus the Jew. And of course it's really good at bringing out the actor playing Simon. Peter. Playing Peter, for example, as a Yemeni Jew, looks very, very Arab. And it's both interestingly sympathetic towards Jewish heritage and Jewish culture, but really locates the fact that so often we're presented for 2000 years with Jesus as a kind of white guy with sort of chestnut colored hair and a very white Virgin Mary. And here is Jesus very much situated in not just the Jewish context, but almost an Arab Jewish context. It makes you think about Islam in a different way, Judaism in a different way.

[A]

I can hear the Judeo Christian movement of Maga and Reform getting very upset about this.

[B]

Anyway, Arnie Vestat, incredible. I think not only would you love him because you'd have so much in common with him speaking umpteen languages.

[A]

I don't speak umpteen, I speak three. I mean, for a European, that's below average.

[B]

It's true, actually. It's true. If you were Dutch, maybe you wouldn't be. So that's true. Yeah, that's true.

[A]

Very good. Well, listen, that's enough cultural recommendations, that's enough bladder for one week.

[B]

Yep, Very good.

[A]

I won't, I won't see you next week. I'll be with Mr. Sam Brook.

[B]

Look forward to seeing you when I'm back. And I'm going to tell you all about the Galapagos.

[A]

Excellent. See you then.

[B]

See you then. Bye. Bye.

[A]

Bye. Bye. Hi, it's Steph McGovern here from the Rest is Money. Now, obviously, there are big economic consequences

[B]

to all the geopolitical turmoil.

[A]

Listen to us to find out how

[B]

investors are reacting and whether we're heading to a financial Armageddon.

[A]

I'm talking to Karen Ward, a chief

[B]

market strategist at J.P. morgan Asset Management.

[A]

Listen to the Rest is Money to get her take.