Best of the Spectator

Freddy Gray is joined by an Americano favourite, Jacob Heilbrunn, to reflect on 2024 in American politics. They discuss why Trump appears to be the de facto President, whether a good Democratic candidate could have beaten Trump and what the future cabinet could bring in 2025.

Welcome to a special festive episode of The Edition podcast, where we will be taking you through the pages of The Spectator’s Christmas triple issue. Up first: our review of the year – and what a year it has been. At the start of 2024, the outcome of the US election looked very different, the UK had a different Prime Minister, and The Spectator had a different editor! Luckily, The Spectator’s regular columnists are on hand to declare what they got right – and wrong – throughout the year, and whether they’re optimistic for 2025. Rod Liddle, Matthew Parris, Mary Wakefield and Lionel Shriver take us through everything from Trump to trans (03:24). Next: ‘Good riddance 2024’ – in his own alternative review of the year, Roger Lewis declares 2024 one to forget. The actor Robert Bathurst voices a special out-loud version of the article, taking us through the year in Roger’s typically acerbic style (28:37). Then: the unsung heroes at Christmas time. While most of the country will be sitting down to Christmas dinner, hundreds of people will face an atypical day, not least of all those deployed on the Royal Navy's Continuous At Sea Deterrent mission. Journalist Ali Kefford takes us through the relentless schedule of Royal Navy submariners in the Christmas issue, and explores the strangely isolating but oddly communal experience of Christmas at sea, where the traditions of land meet the peculiarities of life under the water. To explain what it’s really like, Ali joins the podcast alongside naval officer Alex Kubara (42:56). And finally: the prescient politics of Tintin. Few characters have captured the spirit of adventure quite like Tintin, the intrepid boy reporter with a knack for stumbling into international intrigue. From the deserts of Arabia to the jungles of South America – and even to the moon – Tintin has been a global icon of curiosity and courage for nearly a century. In the Christmas magazine former foreign correspondent and ‘Tintinologist’ Michael Farr celebrates the genius of the Belgian reporter and how politics was never far from Hergé’s agenda. To take us through a history of Tintin, and to understand its appeal and influence, we're joined by Michael and another author who took inspiration from the character, Anthony Horowitz (52:18). Throughout the podcast, you will also hear from The Spectator’s agony aunt Dear Mary, and the special celebrity guests who have sought her advice in this year’s Christmas magazine, including Jacob Rees-Mogg (27:07), James MacMillan (50:51) and Sophie Winkleman (1:09:49). Hosted by William Moore and Lara Prendergast. Produced by Oscar Edmondson and Patrick Gibbons.

In this week’s Books podcast, I am joined by the writer Daniel Tammet, whose new book Nine Minds: Inner Lives on the Spectrum is a pen portrait of nine lives of people on the autism spectrum. On the podcast, he tells me how he happened upon these nine lives, whether ‘spectrum’ is a helpful term when understanding autism and Asperger’s syndrome, and how popular culture’s most famous depiction of autism – Dustin Hoffman’s Rain Man – is based on an individual who wasn’t autistic at all.

Over the weekend, the rebels from the Syrian opposition claimed Damascus and president Assad had fled to Russia. Keir Starmer has welcomed the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s barbaric regime in Syria and called for civilians to be protested after rebel forces took control of Damascus. Freddy Gray speaks to Michael Weiss, an editor at The Insider, and Owen Matthews, writer and historian. They discuss how this story could develop on the international stage, whether this is the reinvention of the Arab Spring, and what is left of Iran, now that several of its proxies have been destroyed.