The Bunker – News without the nonsense
News without the nonsense, every weekday morning. In episodes that fit your commute*, The Bunker cuts through the noise to make sense of what’s really going on in news, current affairs, politics, economics and culture. We bring you smart explainers, interviews, fresh perspectives and under-reported stories to as a refreshing alternative to repetitive Punch and Judy news coverage. It’s the only way to start the day. From the producers of Oh God, What Now?
Our regulars include: Gavin Esler • Ros Taylor • Alex von Tunzelmann • Andrew Harrison • Zing Tsjeng • Jacob Jarvis • Emma Kennedy • Rafael Behr • Seth Thévoz.
• Sign up to support the podcast and get episodes ad-free and early: patreon.com/bunkercast
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(* Even if it’s just from the kitchen to the front room. )
The Bunker is a Podmasters production.
1376
Back In The Jug Agane – Britian’s skools reopen
It’s the end of an era! As parents collapse weeping to their knees in a fug of gin, has home schooling changed how we teach kids? Will in-school testing stick? And will the experience shine a light on the God-awfulness of the National Curriculum? PLUS:...
55 min
1377
International Women’s Day Special: A Bunker Of ...
What does today’s International Women’s Day stand for when we’re in the middle of a new wave of feminism? What can women expect from government when its fill-in Equalities Minister thinks there ought to be a Minister for Men? Naomi Smith presents a spe...
38 min
1378
Daily: BACK IN THE USSR? Author Sergei Lebedev ...
Novelist Sergei Lebedev writes forensically detailed books which uncover how Soviet history still exerts its power on modern Russians. According to the New York Review of Books he’s “the best of Russia’s younger generation of writers.” He talks to Alex...
21 min
1379
Daily: TRUST ISSUE – Why are minorities avoidin...
Why are so many minority patients rejecting the COVID vaccines and what can healthcare do about it? Vaccine hesitancy in minority communities is threatening to turn the pandemic into a specific crisis for marginalised and non-white populations. Ayesha ...
28 min
1380
Daily: LITTLE ENGLAND vs GLOBAL BRITAIN – with ...
Just how global can Britain be if we’re becoming ever-more insular after Brexit? Naomi Smith talks to Peter Westmacott, former ambassador to Turkey, France and the USA, about the hidden prejudices that influence international relations, whether the adv...
31 min
1381
THE FAKE NEWS FIGHTBACK with guest Alan Rusbridger
Would you get get a vaccine passport if it meant you could go out to eat, drink and dance? Even if it created a two-tier Britain? Special guest Alan Rusbridger joins us to talk about his new book News And How To Use It, the crisis in journalism and how...
63 min
1382
Will Sunak bring the pain? – Start Your Week wi...
Will Wednesday’s Budget see the end of Sunshine Sunak or will the Chancellor put off the reckoning with financial Armageddon again? How will you spend the last week of home schooling? And what about that new Brazilian variant? Arthur Snell sets out the...
26 min
1383
Weekend extra: ROBERT MAXWELL’s cash from chaos
Bully, liar, tyrant, fantasist, thief on a monumental scale – just ask the Mirror pensioners – and narcissist of an even greater magnitude, Robert Maxwell was a villain for whom the term “disgraced newspaper tycoon” seems pitifully small. Yet ...
24 min
1384
Daily: Life after Mutti? GERMANY’s post-Merkel ...
After an initial COVID response that was lauded as an example to the world, Germany has experienced an unexpectedly harsh second wave. What will that mean for the twilight of the Merkel Era? Is Germany’s strange opposition coalition of libertarians, al...
23 min
1385
Daily: THE ACCIDENTAL PRESIDENT – The disasters...
Was the Trump Presidency just a publicity stunt that got out of hand? Film-maker James Fletcher’s new documentary on the 2016 campaign The Accidental President is streaming now on Amazon and Apple TV. He talks to Dorian Lynskey about ...
26 min
1386
MICHAEL HESELTINE talks to Ian Dunt: “Keep the ...
Our 250th edition! In the Thatcher governments of the 80s Michael Heseltine was the loudest voice for embattled One Nation Toryism. In later years he’s become a hero to Remainers, eventually paying for his Europhilia with expulsion from the party. Ian ...
18 min
1387
Weekly: Guest DAVID BLUNKETT on Johnson’s unloc...
As the Roadmap to Unlocking is unveiled, are Johnson’s plans over-cautious, reckless, unrealistic or maybe… reasonable? Special guest former Home Secretary David Blunkett joins us to explain what it’s like to make decisions in a crisis, what h...
66 min
1388
Remember “outside”? Start Your Week with Ros Ta...
Will Boris Johnson’s “schools first” plan for unlocking England placate the headbangers of the CRG? What about those desperate for a beer that’s not from a can? Can Keir Starmer out-caution the PM? And what’s going on with Johnson’s latest wheeze, a su...
21 min
1389
Daily: “If you can’t see it, you can’t be it” –...
After decades of feminist thought, why is history still a parade of men and the things they’ve done? The writers, poets and teachers behind the Twitter initiative @OnThisDayShe are putting women back into history, one day at a time – and they’re not le...
30 min
1390
Daily: The man who ran Britain
What does it mean to be indispensable? From Major through New Labour to the Coalition, the late Civil Service giant Jeremy Heywood was to a key advisor to four Prime Ministers, and Cabinet Secretary to two. Theresa May described him as “the greatest pu...
18 min
1391
Daily: Will the Gulf end up owning sport?
From the ownership of Manchester City and Paris St. Germain to motor sport in the Middle East to the Beijing Olympics, questionable regimes are laundering their reputations by association with elite sport. Does “sportswashing” work, and what can fans d...
22 min
1392
Corona Calamities and Climate Emergencies with ...
Britain’s COVID policy has failed women so badly that organisations from Amnesty to the Fawcett Society have called for the EHRC to intervene. Why can’t our blokey-bloke Cabinet understand that more than half the population is being hit harder by the v...
51 min
1393
Start Your Week: HEY, MR QUARANTINE MAN with Ia...
As enforced hotel quarantine kicks in, will closed borders mollify the increasingly restive Covid Recovery Group? And brace yourself for an entirely unnecessary War on Woke as the Government invents the Free Speech Champion – the worst superhe...
27 min
1394
Daily: PUTIN’S NEMESIS? Navalny’s Big Gamble, w...
When opposition figurehead and recovered Novichok target Alexei Navalny flew back to Russia to lead democracy protests, he took an enormous personal risk, of which instant imprisonment was only a part. Could Navalny’s mix of street demos and slick soci...
23 min
1395
Daily: Read fiction to save democracy, with wri...
The American writer George Saunders won the 2017 Booker Prize with Lincoln In The Bardo and is an award-winning author of short stories. His new book A Swim In A Pond In The Rain explains how short stories work with the aid of Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolsto...
30 min
1396
Daily: Death Trap Homes – The post-Grenfell cla...
Even after the horror of the Grenfell Fire, millions of people are still living in homes with cheap, inflammable cladding – and the effort to fix it has stalled. Steve Cole, head of corporate strategy at the housing association Clarion, and Inside Hous...
27 min
1397
Whose Flag Is It Anyway?
Can Keir Starmer re-energise Labour by connecting it to the symbols its old voters admire? And why are progressives so neurotic about patriotism? Plus, with Russia and China distributing Sputnik and Sinovac around the world, are COVID vaccines a surpri...
48 min
1398
Start Your Week: Every Port’s In A Storm – with...
What to watch out for in the next seven days: Trumpeachment II and the Republicans’ Faustian bargain with their own fantasists, worsening import-export crisis in Britain’s Brexit-battered ports, Labour exposes the Government’s crony contracts and more....
24 min
1399
Daily: LEADERS OF THE NEW SCHOOL – How leadersh...
Are the rules that make powerful people powerful changing? Can they still bank on the old myth of the superhuman CEO or political leader? Business journalist from the Telegraph, Evening Standard and beyond James Ashton has just published The Nine Types...
19 min
1400
Time to end the disastrous democratic experimen...
If democracy is so great why does it keep producing such terrible results? Nick Cohen of The Observer talks to Georgetown University political philosopher Jason Brennan, author of Against Democracy, about what it means when sweeping democratic mandates...
28 min