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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Lea Ypi on mothers, the motherland and the cruelties of UK immigration
In November 2022 Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, told parliament that the south coast of England faced “an invasion” of small boats. “If Labour were in charge,” she said, “they would be allowing all the Albanian criminals to come to this cou… -
A doctor’s prescription for saving the NHS
In south-west England, where Phil Whitaker practises as a GP, his colleagues have frequently resorted to driving critically ill patients to hospital – because there are no ambulances, or because the queue for emergency care is typically eigh… -
The good social network: what Twitter could learn from the coffeehouse
As Twitter and Facebook stumble through Elon Musk’s takeover and Mark Zuckerberg’s insistence on the metaverse, questions abound about the future of social media. What sort of news and discussion should it host and encourage? What should be i… -
From the archive: Trotsky in Mexico; Angela Carter on the maternity ward
In a second archive edition of the audio long read, we bring you two classic magazine articles. In the first, the then editor of the New Statesman, Kingsley Martin, visits Leon Trotsky in Mexico in 1937, where the Russian communist revolution… -
From the archive: when HG Wells met Josef Stalin
HG Wells’s interview with Stalin in 1934, and the debate that followed, was one of the most striking episodes in the history of the New Statesman. Wells – the novelist and socialist famous for science fiction such as -
Then Later, His Ghost: a Christmas story by Sarah Hall
It is 23 December, some time in the future, and a storm rages outside the house. Inside there are supplies and an expectant mother sleeps. Is it safe to venture out and fetch her gift? In this post-apocalyptic story the novelist… -
Karl Ove Knausgaard: a personal manifesto on the art of fiction
Why do we read? In this essay, the Norwegian author explores meaning and purpose in the novel, from the work of Claire Keegan to Dostoevsky and DH Lawrence. The form’s power lies in its openness, he writes, its capacity to defy the absolutes of po… -
A brief history of “woke”: how one word fuelled the culture wars
Speaking in the House of Commons on 18 October, the Home Secretary Suella Braverman denounced the opposition to her proposed Public Order Bill as “the Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati”. The next day, she posted her resignation … -
World Prince: what drives Emmanuel Macron’s global ambitions?
If Europe today has a dominant leader, it is Emmanuel Macron. He has big, deeply thought-through ideas about his country's role in Europe and the world, and grand ambitions for enhancing it. Following his re-election as French president … -
Are 'Substackademics' the new public intellectuals?
Roy Jenkins, while serving as president of the European Commission, used to spend his mornings writing. The heads of state who visited him were often keener to speak about his biographies of Asquith or Gladstone than about new legislation. This in…
