Some Boxing Day listening...
Get over the overindulgence by listening to a few podcasts
So much has been happening in recent weeks that it might be difficult to keep up. But sometimes, not keeping up is quite a good method of sorting what’s important from what’s urgent. Not having invested lots of energy trying to get your head around an attempted coup in South Korea which was all over in a few hours would probably have proved the right decision, for example. But here are some things that I believe will still be worth listening to.
Let’s start with a bit of the backstory of Syria, for which I spoke to the excellent historian of the Middle East,
.This was part of a few episodes covering Syria in the light of the lightning fall of the Assad regime. Perhaps the best of these was this discussion with Orwa Ajjoub, one of a very small number of genuine world experts on Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), the group that now leads the government in Syria.
I have had a few episodes where I speak to Iran expert Charlie Gammell, the most recent of which was on Iran’s position in the light of the Syrian collapse.
This sits in a wider geopolitical context of profound uncertainty and disorder. I spoke to former soldier and current MP Mike Martin about the new world order.
All against a backdrop of highly cynical and destructive politics in America, which former MI6 officer Christopher Steele has chronicled in his recent book Unredacted.
There are many more episodes that might be of interest, on Muhammad bin Salman, on Xi Jinping, on living in a post-Western world. Have a listen! It beats watching reruns of 80s movies on TV.