Mary Wakefield is commissioning editor of The Spectator.
On the smooth marble concourse by the exit doors at Heathrow Airport I met my first cleaning robot. It was purple, made by a company called Mitie and about waist-height – the size and shape of a park bin. It ran on wheels, dragging a grubby mop behind it, and it was polite. As my
21 min listen
This week: Mary Wakefield explains why the NHS is broken; Jenny McCartney on the unproductive ‘productivity gurus’ and Robert Gore-Langton on Richard Burton’s botched Hamlet. Produced by Natasha Feroze.
I was having tea with my neighbour in her second-floor flat when a man, a stranger, appeared in the room. This is quite a regular occurrence at Alice’s. She’s deaf and she can’t really walk so any number of agency staff have access to her front-door key. They materialise wearing gloves and usually a face
15 min listen
This week: James Heale says the gloves are off as Labour campaigning takes a bitter turn (00:54), Mary Wakefield worries that she’s raising a snowflake (17:47), and Gus Carter tells us about the colourful history of the green man (31:34). Produced and presented by Oscar Edmondson.
I am actively contributing to the decline of the West and to the collapse of our civilisation. I realised this last week when I found myself standing behind a metal turnstile in the French Alps watching my smallish son, on the other side of the turnstile, step into a bubble lift going up the mountain
After years of blissful indifference, finally I’m scared of AI. I’ve been complacent, slept soundly beside my husband as he stares and mutters, sleepless with anxiety about robots. But now I’m frightened too. What happened was this. The sound of a person you love goes straight to your heart. You respond instinctively and emotionally A
It was announced last week that another gender has been added to the list: nominalgender. Most news sites reported this in the sort of proud way a zoo might announce the birth of an exciting animal, a baby Komodo dragon maybe – as if the gender had somehow hatched and was waiting to be adopted.
I have a puzzle for the Metropolitan police – a mystery that only they can solve. Why, if the Met is so short-staffed, do they hang around in groups? Why do officers clump? Why are some crimes completely ignored, but at other minor incidents the Met appear en masse? In London side streets I come across
When the mist lifts and we can see clearly the carnage caused by the trans madness, and we blink and wonder what in God’s name we did to our kids, I hope we recognise the true heroes of the saga. By this I don’t mean the Jordan Peterson types or even J.K. Rowling, so much
This week: Stuart Ritchie asks whether we should worry about declining sperm counts (0:29). Mary Wakefield wants to end the term ‘making memories’. (9:00), and Toby Young shares his disastrous Airbnb winter break (15:10). Produced and presented by Natasha Feroze.
If I could make a new year’s resolution for everyone in the English–speaking world, it would be that we all agree never to use the phrase ‘making memories’ again, or to think about life in terms of making memories, let alone post a photo with the hashtag #makingmemories. All of a sudden, all across the
I grew up in a traditional English family, surrounded by cousins, chivvied by aunts, presided over by my grandmother, who insisted on Sunday church. We weren’t religious but Anglicanism (of a 19th-century sort) was in the air. We read the Revd Charles Kingsley’s Water Babies, C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books and if I thought about Jesus it
It’s hard to explain how sad it will be if, after Christmas, Defra officials ban fishing on Holy Island, also known as Lindisfarne, in the North Sea, where the Lindisfarne gospels were written and where men and women have fished for hundreds if not thousands of years. For some reason no one can quite work
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This week: Paul Wood writes about meeting Syria’s underground drug lords (0:30) Mary Wakefield warns us of the perils of psychoactive drug therapy (10:30) and Melissa Kite defends her friend who has been excluded from AA (17:13).
For about six straight hours after taking magic mushrooms – psilocybin – I had visions of a vast, skeletal shark coming at me out of the watery gloom, mouth open, teeth inches from my face. It wasn’t a hallucination – I only saw the shark when my eyes were shut – but even with my
36 min listen
On this week’s podcast: Can Rishi Sunak steady the ship? Patrick O’Flynn argues in his cover piece for The Spectator that the asylum system is broken. He is joined by Sunder Katwala, director of the think tank British Future, to consider what potential solutions are open to the Prime Minister to solve the small boats crisis (00:52).
I know a man who plans to burn an effigy of Elon Musk on his bonfire on 5 November. Musk will be on a cardboard rocket and it will be hilarious, apparently,to watch him being engulfed by flames, because he’s ridiculous, he and his weird ideas about Mars. The idea that Musk is laughable is
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This week on Spectator Out Loud: Mary Wakefield tells us about her frustrating experience trying to give blood (00:49), James Ball says that it may be the beginning of the end for Mark Zuckerberg (07:04), and Christopher Howse reads his Notes on… signatures (16:44). Produced and presented by Oscar Edmondson.
I read about the national shortage of blood last week with a feeling of gloomy inevitability. The brains of the nation are scrambled, Westminster’s insane, of course the country’s bleeding out. But at least, I thought, I can help a bit. I’ve given blood in the past and I enjoy it. There’s the feeling of
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This week on Spectator Out Loud, Oliver Basciano warns that we should brace ourselves for a coup in Brazil (00:53). Then, is three – or more – a crowd? Mary Wakefield discuses this in her Spectator column (08:41), before Fiona Mountford tells us about the sad demise of church pews (14:55). Produced and presented by Oscar Edmondson.
