Audio Long Reads, from the New Statesman
By The New Statesman
The New Statesman is the UK's leading politics and culture magazine. Here you can listen to a selection of our very best reported features and essays read aloud. Get immersed in powerful storytelling and narrative journalism from some of the world's best writers. Have your mind opened by influential thinkers on the forces shaping our lives today.
Ease into the weekend with new episodes published every Saturday morning.
For more, visit www.newstatesman.com/podcasts/audio-long-reads
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Latest episode
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The great private school con
They no longer have a stranglehold on Oxbridge and would lose tax breaks under Labour. So what is elite education really selling?At the Labour Party conference in Liverpool in October, the Independent Schools Council hosted a forlorn dr… -
How Rishi Sunak became the first Silicon Valley prime minister
On 2 November 2023, Rishi Sunak closed his global AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park by interviewing the richest man on Earth, Elon Musk. The mood was deferential (the PM towards the tech billionaire). Was Sunak eyeing up a post-politics job in Sa… -
Israel, Hamas and the unravelling of the West
What might be the long term impact of the Israel-Hamas war on global alliances? In this week’s audio long read, the New Statesman’s contributing writer John Gray reflects on three weeks of bloodshed, beginning with the massacres of 7… -
Has your AI therapist got your back?
By Jenny Kleeman -
How Britain became a dangerous place to have a baby
What are the roots of today’s maternity crisis? Recent research by the Care Quality Commission has found a “concerning decline” in England, with over half of maternity wards rated substandard. Donna Ockenden’s review of Shrewsbury and Telford mate… -
A year inside GB News: "We’re going to disrupt"
For today’s Audio Long Read we’re bringing you one from our archives, which is suddenly extremely prescient. This week GB News is in the spotlight once again, this time for broadcasting misogynist comments made by Laurence Fox about… -
The philosopher and the crypto king: Sam Bankman-Fried and the effective altruism delusion
At the time of writing, the crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried is due to stand trial on 3 October 2023. He stands accused of fraud and money-laundering on an epic scale through his currency exchange FTX. Did he gamble with other people’s money i… -
How Chile (almost) democratised Big Tech
Fifty years after Salvador Allende was ousted, might his greatest legacy be his battle with the emerging tech giants?On 1 August 1973, a seemingly mundane diplomatic summit took place in Lima, Peru. But there was nothing m… -
The prime minister and the AI that solved the climate crisis
After the extreme heat of summer 2024, which saw children stretchered out of their exams, Britain’s prime minister calls a press conference in Westminster Hall. He has one eye on life after office (skiing in Aspen, a big gig in Silicon Valley), bu… -
Summer of Light: a new short story by Jonathan Coe
In the summer of 1924, a highly regarded painter falls – or is he pushed? – into the canal while celebrating his exhibition at the Venice Biennale. Two young women are heard running away into the night.In this dazzling new coming-o…
