From our UK edition
20 min listen
A piece of digital art by the illustrator Beeple has sold for $69 million. Is it worth the cash, or just a picture on a screen? Freddy Gray talks to Nima Sagharchi, director of Middle Eastern, Islamic and South Asian art at Bonhams auctioneers.
From our UK edition
22 min listen
In the wake of the Atlanta shootings, Freddy Gray talks to Andy Ngo, journalist and author of Unmasked: Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy about Ngo's experiences of racism as an Asian-American and what's behind the rise in violence against the group.
From our UK edition
31 min listen
With historian Michael Auslin, the Payson J. Treat Distinguished Research Fellow in Contemporary Asia at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
OK, I’ll stick my neck out — Meghan Markle is never, ever going to be president of the United States of America. If I’m wrong, kill me. I mean it. No grudges — set me on fire, chop off my head, take me out with a drone missile marked #Loveislove. I wouldn’t want to live. We hear this week, through amusingly dubious sources, that Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex is ‘considering running’ for the White House ‘if Joe Biden rules out a second term’. The British tabloids are talking about ‘mounting speculation’ which is what they say when they know they are publishing gibberish for clicks.
It’s perhaps no coincidence that America seems to have gone crazy right about the time that cannabis became legal. In our latest April edition, we cover Big Dope, or the alarming power of the cannabis industry. Madeleine Kearns looks at the disturbing health consequences of widespread marijuana consumption as well as the enormous profit-motives that cloud any serious discussion about the downsides. Why worry when the poor can get high and the rich can get richer? We may soon find out. Mary Eberstadt also asks if, given all the other crises plaguing American society, more drugs are what we need. That’s all strong stuff. And we have plenty more for you to put in your mental pipe and smoke. — Our lead editorial explains how the border crisis could define Biden’s presidency.
From our UK edition
19 min listen
Freddy Gray talks to historian Patrick Allitt, the Cahoon Family Professor of American History at Emory University, about how much the Harry and Meghan interview has really cut through to the American public.
From our UK edition
36 min listen
Is it fair to blame Meghan for the Royal Family's problems? (00:55) Why is China censoring a book of Dante's poetry? (12:40) Would you go to moon? (24:50)With The Spectator's US editor Freddy Gray; The Spectator's restaurant critic Tanya Gold; author Ian Thomson; Kerry Brown, professor of Chinese Studies at King's College London; The Spectator's commissioning editor Mary Wakefield; and Spectator columnist Matthew Parris.Presented by Cindy Yu.Produced by Max Jeffery, Natasha Feroze and Matthew Sawyer.
From our UK edition
Remember the Heads Together campaign? It was back in 2017. Prince William, his wife Kate and his brother Prince Harry, who’d recently begun dating a conspicuously woke actress called Meghan Markle, launched a charitable endeavour to raise awareness about mental health. The princes gave interviews in which they ‘opened up’ about their struggles. Such public emoting made fuddy-duddy monarchists nervous, yet a new generation of royal PR operatives and suck-ups saw the future. The royals were appealing to a younger audience, cleverly rebranding the monarchy for a new age in which it is OK to not be OK. Move over, stiff-lipped oldies, the Windsors were moving on. Then Harry married Meghan, the brothers fell out, and everyone went crazy.
From our UK edition
12 min listen
Freddy Gray talks to National Review and Fox columnist John Fund about the Democrat HR 1 bill on voting practices. Will it pass, and could it be an existential threat to American democracy?
From our UK edition
16 min listen
In the first public appearance since Biden's inauguration, Donald Trump has spoken to CPAC, the annual conservative conference. Freddy Gray reviews his speech with Kate Andrews.
From our UK edition
14 min listen
Freddy Gray, Amber Athey and Matt McDonald discuss 2021's Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida, ahead of Donald Trump's appearance tomorrow.
Joe Biden is a Chinese asset. His family’s business dealings with Beijing have compromised his leadership of America and the free world. Look at his recent statement in which he suggested that ‘cultural differences’ might explain why the Chinese thought it was OK to brutally oppress Uighurs. An unnamed source within the intelligence community has revealed that Biden could not unequivocally condemn China’s human rights abuses because Xi Jinping has ‘has something’ on him. The 46th President therefore cannot be trusted to stand up to Xi on the world stage. ‘The Russians deploy kompromat as leverage over foreign assets,’ says my source. ‘Chinese agencies use something called “black materials” to extort western authority figures into doing what they want.
What is driving the extraordinary crypto boom we are living through? Deep down, we all know the answer: it’s the power of bluffing. Bitcoin has been a crucible of nuclear-powered gibberish since its inception. Online people have been waffling on about blockchain and ledger systems for well over a decade now — the more people pretend to know what they are saying, the higher the prices go. In recent months, with so much time on our hands, the bluffing has gone manic and crypto-currencies have gone bananas. Is it the greatest pyramid scheme ever? The reformation of western capitalism? Who knows? More importantly, who cares? Just keep blagging until the fun stops, then make out that you knew it had to end.
From our UK edition
25 min listen
Freddy Gray talks to Republican political consultant Luke Thompson about the demise of the Lincoln Project, the political action committee set up to oppose Donald Trump's re-election.
From our UK edition
There is no point denying it — The Trump Show, the craziest comedy the God of TV has ever produced, has been fizzling out. Yes, the ‘Storming of the Capitol’ episode was a dramatic denouement. The absurd sight of ridiculously dressed QAnoners stumbling into an accidental attempt at a government coup was shockingly hilarious. But the violent scenes left people depressed. The divine scriptwriters appeared to have lost the plot, gone off the deep end, ‘jumped the shark’, as they say. The networks tried to move forward by putting The Biden Show, a geriatric version of The West Wing, on prime time. But audiences so far aren’t sure how seriously they should take the storyline.
From our UK edition
13 min listen
The House of Representatives has removed Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene from two committees for promoting incendiary conspiracy theories about paedophile rings and Jewish-controlled space lasers. Does she represent the future of the GOP, and are both parties losing their grip on reality? Freddy Gray speaks to Dominic Green, the Spectator's deputy US editor.
From our UK edition
27 min listen
Freddy Gray talks to Joe Weisenthal, co-host of the Odd Lots podcast and presenter of What'd You Miss on Bloomberg TV, about the GameStop short squeeze. Where did wallstreetbets start, have they revolutionised the stock market, and do they know what they're doing?
From our UK edition
21 min listen
Has Joe Biden done as much in his first days as he said he would? Freddy Gray talks to Jacob Heilbrunn about the Trump policies that Biden is keeping, and the ones that he's already swept away.
From our UK edition
35 min listen
Can Joe Biden unite America? (01:05) Why is the UK's vaccine rollout its most important economic policy? (12:10) And how can re-enactments bring history to life? (22:15)With The Spectator's economics correspondent Kate Andrews; US editor Freddy Gray; political editor James Forsyth; Capital Economics chairman Roger Bootle; re-enactor Chris Brown and historical consultant Justin Pollard.Presented by Lara Prendergast.Produced by Max Jeffery, Alexa Rendell, Sam Russell and Matt Taylor.
From our UK edition
‘Folks, I can tell you, I’ve known eight presidents, three of them intimately.’ So said then vice-president Joe Biden in 2012. A month earlier, he had assured a crowd in New York that President Barack Obama could, in Teddy Roosevelt’s famous words, ‘speak softly but carry a big stick’ when it came to international relations. ‘I promise you,’ he said. ‘The president has a big stick.’ The crowd started laughing at the double-entendre. Joe wasn’t joking. ‘I promise you,’ he repeated, gravely. That is just Joe being Joe. The 46th president is someone who quite often has no idea what he is saying. Curiously, everybody seems relieved about that.