Quiet Riot (Alex Andreou, Naomi Smith, Kenny Campbell)

Alex chats to eminent scenario planner, futurologist, and best-selling author Richard Watson about whether there is any point predicting anything in such a volatile environment and finds that scenario planning is not a passive pursuit but about shaping the future. A wide-ranging, illuminating, and inspirational conversation. Stay tuned to the end for a goodies giveaway! ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** “I’m not trying to be right about things. I’m trying to help people be less wrong. What I’m trying to do is get people to think and my experience is that most people are putting out fires dealing with quarterly results, annual results, four- or five-year election cycles. There are very few people thinking a generation ahead.” “The thing that’s problematic at the moment for a lot of people running organisations is not so much the speed of things, the volatility, or the unexpected events, but the sheer amount of information. I can’t pay attention to everything, so to what do I pay attention? How do I pick?” “The one trend organisations should be paying more attention to than anything else is societal ageing and declining fertility. Related to that is ‘the war for talent’. You have a shrinking workforce and moving into a more protectionist era. The fight to attract and retain talent will intensify.”  “People tend to think of the future in binary terms. That something new will happen that will kill something that’s been around for a while. But the future is ‘and’ not ‘or’. Look at Ukraine, you have First World War trenches on one level, but also drones and satellites.” “I think the future has always been open and we should spend more time thinking what we want it to be, rather than only what it will be.” Richard Watson's books can be found here. Richard Watson's bookshelf can be found here. Richard Watson & Lavie Tidhar's children's book can be found here. Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod. On Bluesky click here for our Starter Pack. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex Andreou and Naomi Smith on a special episode, à trois, with Kenny Campbell discuss the skip fire that is the Trump administration right now - including Pete Hegseth's imminent departure to spend more time with a bottle of Grey Goose, Elon Musk's reversing away from the White House, so fast he should make a beeping noise, and RFK Jr's obsession with jizz. We also discuss the anti-far-right conference in Scotland and why Reform UK seem to be doing quite well north of the border. Plus 'Wokey Dokey' and 'Grin And Share It'. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** CALLS TO ACTION Free resources from US public radio NPR and how to support them. https://www.npr.org/ GRIN AND SHARE IT Read about fermented banana drinks and The Tanzanian Diet here. Our bookshop including many of the books we have featured can be found at uk.bookshop.org/shop/quietriot ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex Andreou, Naomi Smith with special guest USA Politics Guru, Dr. Brian Klaas, look at the flurry of executive orders and try to sort the wheat from the chaff. And how should Europe respond? Which fights are not worth fighting and where the red lines should be drawn. Plus 'Wokey Dokey' and 'Grin and Share It'. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** “Donald Trump simultaneously says we should execute drug dealers and pardoned the largest drug market creator in human history. And so he is creating one of the hallmarks of authoritarian rule, which is a tier of justice that says: if you’re my friend, if you’re an ally, the rules don’t apply.” “The Republican Party, when it goes on to legislation, it’s in trouble. The stuff that they’re proposing, with the exception of immigration, some of the domestic policy proposals they have are toxic.” “The economy is the one area where the political laws of gravity could apply. You cannot tell people that their grocery bill has gone down when it hasn’t. But the motivated reasoning of ‘now Trump is back, everything is good’ - that will get him through for quite a while.”  “Musk could have the world’s best information service at his fingertips. Information is the crucial part of good decision-making in life and he could have the single best private intelligence agency in the world. And instead he’s getting his news from idiot zealots on X.” “There’s going to be things that the Trump administration is able to do internationally, by throwing around American power, which is formidable. The question is whether that is a good strategy over the long run. You can get people to do things because they’re afraid of you, but there’s a view that, long term, this erodes American power.” “If [as a European gov’t] you pull your punches all the time, you’re going to end up with the worst of every world: you’re going to end up undercutting your own dignity and power on the international stage, and you’re not going to get Trump to change.” GRIN AND SHARE IT Read - and watch video - about equal marriage being legalised in Thailand. CALLS TO ACTION LINKS: Brian's article on how volunteering makes one a supercitizen. Kick your X habit, finally, by using one of three Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Packs. With one click, it will hook you up with, among many good accounts, Alex, Naomi, Kenny, and Brian. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

An absolutely jam-packed episode on the Tory leadership contest and the US Election VP debate. Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell are joined by Guardian quill-wielder Zoe Williams, US omni-expert Brian Klaas, and More In Common gros fromage Luke Tryl to dig out the genuinely interesting stuff from these debates (and there is plenty of genuinely interesting stuff). We craft two political silk purses from a couple of sow's ears. We're also knitting – see how seamlessly we stitch such disparate subjects together? On both sides of the Pond, important debates; on both sides of the Pond, vaguely competent performances but not so much excitement. But what can we glean from the US Vice-Presidential clash, if it can be described as a clash, and what are the takeaways from the Tory leadership speeches in Birmingham? Brian Klaas: “What is striking about [the VP debate] is what it tells you about the campaigns’ goals. Normally, when a campaign thinks it’s down in a race, they come out swinging… But both campaigns think they’re in a safe position, which is very odd, because one of them is wrong and we don’t know which one.” Brian Klaas: “A lot of professional political analysts misunderstand the public, because they think the public views politics in the same way they do. Which is that you win arguments by having better facts and making appeals to policy. A lot of politics is impressionistic.  Zoe Williams: “Kemi Badenoch’s pitch is: I’m going to be as unpleasant as I can possibly be and then deny I said it. That is extraordinary. There are huge swathes of the political class in which, to deny outright that you said a thing, which you did say, is disbarring. She’s singing to a different hymn book.” Zoe Williams: “Jenrick is not that clever, that’s the problem. He does wrong-foot himself constantly. A huge amount of his most controversial output is accidental.”  Luke Tryl: "Our research shows that Reform voters might actually be the hardest group for the Conservatives to win back. Only one-in-ten would even consider voting Conservative again during this parliament. Calls to Action Check out More In Common and their fantastic work to build a more inclusive world. Grin and Share It: What happened when Denver treated migrants with respect ? Good things, that's what. Subscribe to Brian Klaas' fascinating Substack, The Garden of Forking Paths. Consistently great writing on consistently captivating topics. Want some more? You can track us down on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod, or hop over to Bluesky for our starter pack action. If email is your thang, our address is quietriotpod@gmail.com. And we even have a website, www.quietriotpod.com. Amazing. We run a tight ship at Quiet Riot so, IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, WE'D BE EXTREMELY HAPPY. Click HERE for easy instructions and potential rewards. Yes, REWARDS. We'll stop with the shouty uppercase letters now, sorry for any upset :-) Oh, we are Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell, in cahoots with SandStone Global. But you knew that. x Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex talks to former UK ambassador to the US, Sir Kim Darroch, about the attempt on Trump's life, JD Vance as a Vice President pick on the ticket, and the prospects of the Democrats replacing Biden so late in the day. Naomi talks to Layla Moran about the King's Speech, what was in it, what wasn't, and what opposition can do against such a large majority. Add in your regular treats Troll with It and The Week in 60 Seconds, and you've got an hour of the finest political insight and fun. "I think there is no way now, whatever happens in the next 100 days, that Biden can win this, if he remains the candidate. It's a question of how bad the loss will be." Sir Kim Darroch "Pence was a counsel of caution to Trump, he held Trump back. Vance looks to me like a man who wants to outdo his boss and mentor. I'm not sure that doubling up on outrageous rhetoric will be good for them in the end." Sir Kim Darroch "The only conceivable deal that could be done is one where Ukraine surrenders all the terrotiry that Russia currently holds, permanently. So, what that Trump proposition would do, is deliver defeat for the West." Sir Kim Darroch "I actually got into the Lords - I don't always do it, but this timne it felt special - and they start talking about getting rid of hereditary peers, and a few of us MPs locked eyes and went: AWKWARD." Layla Moran "Both Hamas and Netanyahu are blockers to peace. Neither wants a two-state solution. How can you, on the one hand, claim to want a two-state solution, and on the other hand not hold the perpetrators of atrocities to account, via the International Court mechanism that can determine what has happened?" Layla Moran Please don't forget to subscribe to the podcast, like, review and rate us, and share Quiet Riot nuggets on social media. We will love you even more for it. You can find us on twitter @quietriotpod, email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com, or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Heck, do all three, you only live once. CALL TO ACTION Find your MEP here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex welcomes special guest, former diplomat Arthur Snell to discuss the future of NATO, Ukraine, Gaza, Syria - and whether The West, capitalised as one entity, may be coming to the end of the unity of purpose which has sustained it since the 40s. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** Arthur's Behind the Lines is here. Conclusive video evidence that Trump is definitely the same height and weight as Gavin Newsom can be found here. ______________________ “Trump picks these crazy appointments, partly to rile sensible mainstream people, but it’s partly because then they’re totally loyal to him, since they have no standing of their own, to be at these jobs.” “NATO and European security are in a fundamental crisis now. Because the whole idea was that North America took a view that European security is integral to their own. That idea is collapsing at the moment.” “Putin is in a rather advantageous position. He can carry on fighting - let’s say for another thirty days - grab a few more towns and strategic ground, then announce that he is ready to come to the negotiating table. What Trump is doing, is to say: you carry on as long as you need to and when you’re done, there’s a deal here for you.”  “I’ve noticed people in the West, generally, and here in the UK starting to blame Ukraine and suggest that really the problem is they didn’t mobilise enough troops. If we look at the casualties they’ve suffered, I think that is a cynical and, frankly, cowardly position.” “The ceasefire [in Gaza] needed two things to happen in America. It needed the tireless work of the Biden administration to negotiate, but it also needed the threat of someone like Trump willing to do crazy things.” _______________________ Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. _______________________ This is a paid advertisement by BetterHelp: Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/QUIETRIOT and get on your way to being your best self. _______________________ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Continuing our series of focussed analysis of the general election, Naomi Smith chats to the deputy leader of the Greens, Zack Polanski, about every aspect of the result. What was different in this campaign that resulted in a quadrupling of Green seats? Will the LibDems' success in primarily Tory-facing constituencies leave space for the Greens to challenge the gov't from the left? How does a hostile media shape the narrative? What next for the Green Party? PLUS: The case for Proportional Representation. ALSO: The environmental case for veganism. AND A SCOOP: Why is Stella Creasy's Walthamstow constituency in Zack's sights? Subscribe to the podcast, like us, rate us, and share the joyous news on social media. Ideas, feedback, comments, guest or topic suggestions? Find us on twitter @quietriotpod, email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com, or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Quiet Riot is produced by Kenny Campbell, in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Recorded live at the Radio Academy Festival 2024, Alex and Naomi, along with special guest, comedian and impressionist, Rory Bremner discuss #frockgate and Starmer's generally falling popularity and problem image, a second attempt against Trump's life and his lies, as well as a guide to Party Conferences. Plus regular features You Gotta Troll With It and Wokey Dokey. If you can afford to help, you can back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. If you do so now, you can be part of the supporter editorial meeting next Thursday 26 September. CALL TO ACTION The government's consultation on visa conditions is here. The full list of consultations can be found here - they are sortable by subject area. Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Click here for a second Bluesky Starter Pack. Click here for the third Bluesky Starter Pack. IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, PLEASE DO. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou, and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex Andreou and Naomi Smith chat to the CEO of 38 Degrees, Matthew McGregor, fresh from focus groups in Rishi Sunak's own constituency and talk through the last few days, including the latest in the Tory betting scandal, Farage's interview, the BBCQT Leaders' Special, and Kuenssberg's interrogation of the trans issue, in another Sunday special. Here is 38 Degree's election hub: home.38degrees.org.uk/election-hub-2024/ And here is Matthew's write up of those focus groups: home.38degrees.org.uk/2024/06/22/what-rishi-sunaks-own-constituents-think/ Subscribe to the podcast, like us, rate us, and share the joyous news on social media. Go on, pretty please. Ideas, feedback, comments, guest or topic suggestions? Find us on twitter @quietriotpod, email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com, or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Quiet Riot is produced by Kenny Campbell, in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex goes through the week's political events, and looks forward to next week, both here and across the Atlantic, with special guest Zoe Williams. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** Zoe: “I don’t want to get lectures from the right of manifesto promises, when the 2019 manifesto was insulting in its lack of detail. I mean what possible impact did ‘levelling up’ have? Does anyone even know what it meant? And yet lectures are what we’re going to get. And I don’t want to roll over to the idea that all politicians are the same - there is no conceivable comparison.”   Zoe: “Everything [about the coming Budget] is about ‘don’t expect too much; don’t think we can help’ and that just strikes me as an incredibly sad and dangerous place to start. If you’re swept in on a wind of change and hope and the first thing you say is: ‘abandon hope’.” Alex: “Imagine living there. Imagine being a woman in America right now. Imagine being a muslim woman or a trans woman. This is existential stuff.” Zoe: “I do think there’s a kind of misogynistic groupthink [in polling], which just doesn’t take the things that women take seriously, seriously.” Alex: “What makes [the Republican attack on women’s reproductive rights] doubly frightening is that it doesn’t feel random. It’s strategic. Because if you buy into notions like the Great Replacement Theory, it follows - although rarely articulated - that you need white women to stay home and have lots of babies. And that doesn’t happen with their consent.” LINKS: Vanity Fair interview with Stuart Stevens. ABC report of Musk's contact with Putin. The Bulwark on Washington Post spiking its endorsement of Harris. NPR on the LA Times pulling its endorsement of Harris. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou, and Kenny Campbell - in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Naomi and Alex, dig into the data underlying the US result, what a Trump term means for Ukraine, the discuss Kemi Badenoch's front bench choices, and the coming elections in Ireland and Germany. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** “There was something in a YouGov poll that really rang alarm bells. Young men aged 18 to 29, sixty-per-cent of them are thrilled or happy with Trump’s win. That really concerned me. What is it that these young men are seeing and why does it make them feel so happy?” "The coming fight is reason against unreason. The dividing line is not your preference of economic policy or whether you want a big or small state. It is the line that separates easy solutions that appeal to people's ugliest side and reason, science, expertise, and facts." “The West is supporting Ukraine because it is fighting. Ukraine is not fighting because the West is supporting it.” "Mark Francois has been appointed Miniature of Defensiveness- no sorry, I misread that. Minister of Defence." Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex Andreou and Naomi Smith's on their new politics podcast do a little mop-up session to talk through how the second week of the election campaign has gone, explain the polls, look at the Abbott affair in retrospect and predict what will emerge next week. Produced by Kenny Campbell, in cahoots with Sandstone Global. "We hope to reach a community of listeners who want to take action - that crosses party lines. Because we think the fight that is coming - to push back the hate of populism, to say sharp elbows and stepping on minorities is not the only future - will require bridges to be built, all the way from left to right." Subscribe to the podcast, like us, rate us, and share the joyous news on social media. Ideas, feedback, comments, guest or topic suggestions? Find us on twitter @quietriotpod, email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com, or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. LINKS Naomi's piece in the Guardian: It matters that the Tories love Nigel Farage again Best for Britain's Scandalous Spending Tracker https://www.bestforbritain.org/scandalous_spending_tracker Politico's EU election poll of polls https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/european-parliament-election/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell talk through the week's news, with a focus on the fallout from Trump's tariffs, Scottish politics in flux, and the dénouement of the South Korean attempted imposition of martial law last December. Packed and gorgeous and VERY funny. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** -“So, how do you think they came up with the list of countries and tariffs?” -“Someone asked ChatGPT to create an episode of Pointless.”  “Some of these market losses will be recovered when Trump either u-turns or when stock becomes so trashed it is seen as low risk again. But some of the damage will be permanent. Just like the pandemic, economies globally may recover to a lower equilibrium and it could take a decade just to get to where we would have been had this nut not done what he did.” ALEX ANDREOU'S PODYSSEY can be found here: APPLE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/alex-andreous-podyssey/id1798575126 SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2x7cD3HjkOyOKTF4YT5Goy?si=e7a86b762431451f AMAZON MUSIC: https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/8c996062-ef8d-42e4-9d80-5b407cb6e2e2/alex-andreou's-podyssey OVERCAST: https://overcast.fm/+ABN4Gd7AP9Q POCKET CASTS: https://pca.st/podcast/9e98d690-d812-013d-ea22-0affdfd67dbd YouTube Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=l9GIOOP7pUU&list=PLo7dIXWHNar1u1rKsXUTgYnDhJebTp-eo PODBEAN: https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/gt7a4-3460bc/Alex-Andreou%27s-Podyssey-Podcast Or you can add it to any app, using the RSS feed: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/podyssey SUBSCRIBE OR FOLLOW NOW! Our bookshop including many of the books we have featured can be found at uk.bookshop.org/shop/quietriot ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex, Naomi, and special guest James O'Brien chat about the riots in England, the people who stoked them and now claim refuse all responsibility, and the toxic influence of social media. And in the second part, we look at Harris's VP pick, Tim Walz, and the remarkable turnaround in the US election. PLUS Wokey Dokey and You Gotta Troll With It. Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. (We are working on threads and YouTube.) Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Click here to buy the Hate Has No Home Here poster. Click here to find out more about C-Span. Click here for James O'Brien's podcast. With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou, and Kenny Campbell - in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

An enriching and uplifting conversation with Professor Harvey Whitehouse, chair of social anthropology and professorial fellow of Magdalen College at the University of Oxford. We come equipped with three deeply ingrained biases: tribalism, religiosity, and conformity. How do we overcome them? By working with them, says Whitehouse in his new book: INHERITANCE. Nothing is off the table, as Alex challenged Harvey to put the recent racist riots, the MAGA movement, Brexit - even Swifties - through the prism of those biases. If we had conceived of the Professor's thesis ourselves, it could not fit better with this podcast's mission. IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, PLEASE DO. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. To buy Harvey Whitehouse's stunning book, INHERITANCE: THE EVOLUTIONARY ORIGINS OF THE MODERN WORLD click here. “The trouble is, right now, we are living in a world where technology is advancing at such a pace, we don’t have time to adapt our past lessons to fit with the kinds of problems we are facing currently. ” “A lot of those features that I call religion, which include a tendency to anthropomorphise things, to see agency in everything, to believe in supernatural forces - these things are massively exploited by electronic media in a huge variety of ways, commercially exploited to a degree a lot of us are not fully aware of.” On Swifties: “What we need and what is very rare are what we call ‘barrier-crossing leaders’- that is to say leaders who work across groups and across tribes and bring them together. And when we talk about that younger demographic who are relatively open to being persuaded, there is an opportunity for leaders to actually lead.” “There are universal rules of a moral kind that we all agree upon. All human beings, everywhere, agree that certain principles of cooperation are morally good. But if you are on the left or on the right, you emphasise different components of that repertoire.” “Actually what I’d really like to see is a coming-together of the perspectives of left and right, instead of this polarisation that is increasingly taking grip of societies around the world. What we need is for left and right to listen to each other a bit more closely.” “The salience of global citizenship needs to come to the fore, when we’re thinking of things like tackling climate change, or pandemic risk, or whatever it is that faces the world as a whole. And we need to follow through on that, and sustain it, and build the institutions that give expression to it.” Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. (We are working on threads and YouTube.) Our THIRD Starter Pack to accompany this Special can be found here. Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Click here for a second Bluesky Starter Pack. With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou, and Kenny Campbell - in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Electoral changes are a-coming in Wales, but that's not the only challenge facing politicians in Cymru. It's a country of contrasts, from the rugged scars of the Valleys and the beauty of Bannau Brycheiniog to the urban bustle of Cardiff and Swansea, and the bookish haven of Hay-on-Wye. Naomi Smith is joined by journalist Will Hayward for a timely stock-take of political life in a part of the country that we Quiet Rioters love, and a look at the contrasting fortunes and, indeed, difficulties looming for its political leaders. Find Will on X, if you still loiter in that odd place, @WillHayCardiff ... read his work on @WalesOnline ... and subscribe to his popular newsletter here. As for us, well, you can find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Our THIRD Starter Pack to accompany this Special can be found here. Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Click here for a second Bluesky Starter Pack. IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, PLEASE DO, IT MAKES SUCH A FABULOUS DIFFERENCE. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou, and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with SandStone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Attention polling geeks, politics geeks and students of the world ... what can Taylor Swift tell us about the world of politics? How about Beyoncé? And, sticking with a pop theme, how about Waterloo? Naomi Smith returns with the second part of her festive Poll The Other One special, this time with Focaldata chief research officer James Kanagasooriam who, as well as being heroically knowledgeable about all things polling, also coined the phrase Red Wall. Yes, *that* Red Wall. This episode is absolutely chocka with fascinating insights and, as a bonus, it will equip you to drop the following phrases into your political discourse: race depolarisation; zero-sum thinking; culture-nomics. If that's too geeky-sounding, there's also stuff about Waterloo Station's liberal clientele, the Democrats' religious vacuum and Keir Starmer's sandcastle. I know, the sandcastle has hooked you. ‘Across the West, no political parties seem to do what they say on the tin.’ 'Zero-sum thinking was a really interesting trend that came out of this year … if I do well, you do badly.‘ ‘It’s a very powerful tool, optimism.’ ‘The Lib Dem vote just follows a trainline out of London.’ ‘Politicians now know, irrespective of their ideology, that at the end of their four or five years they have to have grown the economy.’ Show Notes Subscribe to James's splendid Substack, The Political Whiteboard Check out Foundations: Why Britain Has Stagnated, a recent paper co-authored by Works In Progress founder Ben Southwood Want more Quiet Riot? Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Click here for your Bluesky starter pack. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com . ***If you can afford to, please sponsor us at ko-fi.com/quietriotpod ... it means a lot to us :-) *** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A FUN mini edition of Poll The Other One, in which Naomi digs into the cross tabs and break points of a frivolous aspect of a very serious piece of polling: How does your favourite takeaway correlate with your age, location, party preference, and even newspaper of choice? Which are the only constituencies where 'chicken shop' is Top 3? What is a Sun reader's fave takeaway? And why will so few of us admit to loving a kebab? A perfect 10-minute listen. We make all of our content universally available for free. But we do need your support to keep making it. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. You can find the MUNCH MAPPER HERE. Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. (We are working on threads and YouTube.) IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, PLEASE DO. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou, and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex Andreou and Naomi Smith welcome two very special guests - their best friends Nigel Smith and Nigella Lawson. Recorded with a special live audience of many of our previous guests, in this PART II we look forward to 2025, take questions from the audience, and - of course - talk all about FOOD!!! ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** “If you hurry the cooking of an onion, all is lost.” “I would win Ready, Steady, Cook. I would be very good at that.” “I don’t like gadgets that lock you out of the cooking process.” “Whenever there is a new fashionable ingredient, I tend to feel sorry about the old ones. So, I pivot to carrots.”  “Channelling Alex’s radical optimism, where are you all going to find joy in the next year? Wherever we bloody well can!" "Joy is in the small things. The way the light falls in through a curtain. Or having a vodka-martini so cold it hurts. Or the perfectly constructed sentence in a book you’re reading. I don’t know you can start worrying about where it should best come from.”  “The connections we build with people is the thing we really build our lives from. It starts with the personal. That’s how we make a better future.” “The small unexpected kindnesses give me joy, because they give me hope, that there is something underneath all the darkness, and we just have to find a way to mine it.”  CALLS TO ACTION: The charity Praxis can be found here. Food decorations from Sous Chef. Nigella's recipe for Fig and Olive Chutney. Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod. For Bluesky click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Naomi and Alex welcome former UK Ambassador to the US, Sir Kim Darroch, whose dismissal Trump demanded in 2020, to the studio to talk through what's in store from a Trump second term. We also take a look at the farming protests and try a novel approach: to reach a balanced view based on the evidence. Plus regular features Grin And Share it and Troll With It. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** Kim: “Gary Cohn, who was Trump’s economic adviser in the White House [in 2017], tells the story of how, when crazy ideas came up from some of the real ideologue Trump supporters, on tariffs and things like that, he would get tipped off by a friend in the outer office, go in and steal them and bury them in the deepest cupboard.” Kim: “If agencies receive instructions which they believe are mad or damaging to US security, they will resist. Trump had huge rows with the CIA and FBI in his first term. I think that pattern will continue, especially with Tulsi Gabbard in charge.” Kim: “[The new UK-US Ambassador] will need to be ready for the 5AM twitter-storm. He will wake up reach for his phone and post anything that has caught his eye and there is no filter. It’s pure Trump. There’s nobody sitting there at five in the morning saying, Mr President you shouldn’t do that.” Naomi: “Farmers have many reasons to feel angry and let down. Brexit has hurt them: lost EU subsidies, difficulty in hiring seasonal workers, the extra cost of importing goods or importing seed, chemicals, and other things they need, but also trade deals which put them at a competitive disadvantage.”  Alex: “We have become addicted to very cheap, low quality food. Good food costs money to produce. So, there is truth to the farmers’ core complaint which is that, on the whole, as a country, we don’t appreciate their work and the thing they produce sufficiently.”   Alex: “Farage has cost farmers more money through Brexit than any inheritance tax. Now he’s cosplaying in tweed from head to toe, marching alongside them. Tractors came to Whitehall in March, to protest the trade deals Badenoch signed. Now she’s making speeches and being applauded. How can I take them seriously? Where are their principles?” GRIN AND SHARE IT Reporting on the wider effects of Sadiq Khan's free school meals policy in the Mirror. LINKS: Tortoise Media's Peer Review. The Poke's collection of responses to the 'woke sandwiches' story. Dan Neidle's view of the inheritance tax changes for farms. Richard Murphy's view of the inheritance tax changes for farms. An archived version of the Together website (so you don't have to part with your data). Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex Andreou talks to special guest FT science editor, Michael Peel, about his book "What Everyone Knows About Britain, Except The British". Nostalgia is the disease from which our dysfunctional politics flows. How can we change course? And what could modern Britain be in the future, if it stopped longing for the past? ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** “There are probably two types of voter, those who vote emotionally and those who vote emotionally but don't admit that they do.”  “The way Brexit was campaigned for illustrated a wider problem in politics today, which was a reluctance to talk about trade-offs and downsides. It’s possible to make a coherent argument for Brexit, which is also honest. But that was never the offer. The offer was: there are no downsides, this is all going to be great, you just need to sign on the dotted line. That was why it was corrosive.” “What is really needed is a moment of political clarity, to say: our politics is based on this nostalgic idea that we can go back to the days of Western industrial and political dominance. Those days are gone. Whether you consider that state desirable or not, it was a unique moment in time that is never coming back.” “It is revealing, in discussions of the Thatcher era, how little North Sea Oil is mentioned. If Britain had done what the Norwegians and other countries did, the wealth fund would be worth hundreds of billions of pounds. ”  You can buy Michael Peel's book here https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/what-everyone-knows-about-britain-except-the-british-michael-peel/7598496?aid=15177&ean=9781800962088& Our bookshop which includes many of the books we have discussed or featured can be found at uk.bookshop.org/shop/quietriot. Kick your X habit, finally, by using one of three Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Packs. With one click, it will hook you up with, among many good accounts, Alex, Naomi, and Kenny. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex talks through every aspect of BlueSky, from its genesis to how it may look familiar but is a completely different model of social media, to what is coming in the short and medium future, with its Chief of Operations in the San Francisco head office, Rose Wang. Hidden features, hints on curating your feed, tips on etiquette ... it's all here. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. “We are experiencing on social media a lot more media than social. And what we hear from many people is: I don’t see my friends in my timeline anymore, or on my feed anymore. Even content creators, they’re posting to the algorithm now. There’s no true connection with an audience, because they don’t own that relationship - the platforms do.” “BlueSky looks like twitter – on the surface – but it’s like comparing TV in the 1950s with Netflix today. A small group of people deciding what you get to see on two feeds – much like the TV channels in the 50s. On BlueSky we’ve built the foundation for anyone to build a feed.” "We have seen a couple hundred thousand people in the UK migrate to BlueSky in the last few weeks. This Brexit has been fun to watch." "It's a new party. And at this party, you can be yourself." Our THIRD Starter Pack to accompany this Special can be found here. Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. (We are working on threads and YouTube.) Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Click here for a second Bluesky Starter Pack. With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou, and Kenny Campbell - in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex Andreou and Naomi Smith announce their new politics podcast, Quiet Riot – promising more passion, less shouting Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex Andreou, Naomi Smith with special guest Dame Emily Thornberry try to decipher the incoherent tweets of Musk, the incoherent strategy of Badenoch, and the incoherent ramblings of Trump. Plus 'Wokey Dokey' and 'Grin and Share It'. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** "The idea that they can just play political games on the bodies of these girls, whose lives would have been turned upside down by what happened, to have it all raked over again and again for petty point scoring. The stakes for the victims are very high.” “The next few years is going to be all about realignment on the right. Who's going to eat whom? In our current system there's only really space for two big political parties.” “I don't really know what's happened to the leadership of the Tory Party. They have so profoundly lost their way.” "The one thing we should take very seriously about Donald Trump is that he is completely unpredictable. It's like the whole table has been thrown over and we're picking up the pieces trying to see how to put it back together." "The way forward is essentially to work out what are his interests and how to align what's in our interest with it. On Ukraine, Trump doesn't want to be seen as a loser. He wants to win the Nobel Peace prize. We can be there saying, here is a way to do that, just sign your name and have your photo taken." GRIN AND SHARE IT You can read the story of Bear, the hero dog, on the BBC website. CALLS TO ACTION LINKS: Find out how to write to your MP here. Details of how to contribute to the Foreign Affairs Committee inquiry on Soft Power. Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Naomi and Alex welcome author, columnist, and the ARD's London correspondent, Annette Dittert, to discuss the petition demanding another election, Kemi Badenoch's - now, weekly - strategic mistake, and Musk's obsession with the UK government. After which we take a dive into Angela Merkel's book, the upcoming German elections, and what the likely result might mean for Ukraine. Plus a very Wicked Wokey Dokey and Grin and Share It. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** Annette: “I think Musk wants to bring down the EU and, more generally, the rule of law of liberal democracy, because it stands in the way of his tech-bro thinking. He’s particularly focussed on Britain at the moment, because they have Farage as their way in.” Alex: “Part of the strategic mistake of Badenoch calling for an election now is that it hands the advantage to Farage. In five years MAYBE people will have forgotten some of the stuff that went on under the Conservatives. In five months, they haven’t. If you put the choice back in front of them, they’ll try Option C. It is infuriatingly obvious.” Annette: “Angela Merkel, who just published her book in Germany, was giving numerous interviews and was asked: What happened with this coalition? And she just looked at the interviewer and said: ‘Well. Men.’” Naomi: “What do thousands of people in Ongar, Clacton, Richmond, Cambodia, Laos, Kazakhstan, Chad, Venezuela, and even nine people in the Antarctic and five in Vatican City share with the world’s richest man? That’s right - none of them understand how elections work.”  Annette: “There is a huge anxiety in Germany already [about Russia]. It feels completely different when you’re in Berlin or Warsaw to when you’re in London. It’s irrational, of course, but when I am in London, I feel a little further away.”   GRIN AND SHARE IT A video of the new Renfrew Bridge! CALLS TO ACTION LINKS: Sign the petition to hold a referendum on Proportional Representation.  Latest news from the European Network Against Racism. Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex Andreou and Naomi Smith welcome two very special guests - their best friends Nigel Smith and Nigella Lawson - to look back at a momentous year, the moments that have depressed, delighted, and surprised them, the people they have admired and the telly they have binged. As well as an incredible six months of Quiet Riot. Recorded with a special live audience of many of our previous guests! Plus the 'Wokiest Dokiest' of 2024. PART II is out on Christmas Eve and is all about FOOD!!! ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** “If you're in the outrage business, you've got to take the opportunities where they arise.” “European countries seem to be moving in the direction of having three power blocks of roughly equal share basically that can't agree on anything, a kind of universal gridlock.” “What happened to Giséle Pelicot does explain why women are quite justifiably anxious about moving around in the world. Yes, you could argue: it's an aberration, this isn't happening in every house. But nevertheless, it is clearly eminently doable for a great number of men.” “Only 10% of people under 27 put English mustard in a ham sandwich. And that does make me worry.” “I love cheese, but I really draw the line at Tiramisu Wensleydale or an Espresso Martini Wensleydale, can I say? Science has gone too far.” CALL TO ACTION: You can donate to Duchenne UK here. You can register for the cycle run here, to raise money for Duchenne UK. Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Naomi Smith chats to Conservative Home's Henry Hill about every aspect of the Tory leadership contest, who are the runners, who are the riders, who doesn't know if they're afoot or horseback, and what is at stake. A free-roaming and illuminating conversation - and a perfect illustration of our mission here at QRHQ, to build understanding. Henry on the length of the contest: “I think Conservatives may regret not having a new leader and shadow cabinet in place for [the budget]. And then, just three days after their new leader is announced, we’re going to have the US Presidential election. And that’s going to be like a news nuke.” On Jeremy Hunt staying on as Shadow Chancellor: “[Jeremy Hunt] just lost the election. I don’t think he is a credible message-carrier with the voters for criticising Rachel Reeves’ agenda.” On morale in the party: “The thing I think a lot of Tories don’t quite realise yet is how hard life in opposition is. Because a huge share of Tory MPs have entered Parliament at or since the 2010 election.” On what the task of the next leader is: “Both sides of the current conservative classic division are out of date. One of them is stuck in 1975. The other one, the sort of self-consciously modernising one, is stuck in 2005, when Cameron became leader. Neither of them seems to be oriented towards the problems of 2025.” Please take a minute to subscribe to the podcast, like, review and rate us, and share Quiet Riot pearls on social media because sharing is good, is it not? You can find us on twitter @quietriotpod, email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com, or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. It really helps! You can find Henry's Conservative Home pieces here. And his substack musings here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex talks to TIME Magazine's correspondent and QR regular Yasmeen Serhan, about Biden pardoning his son, Trump's latest picks, their impact on geopolitics - especially Gaza, and what went wrong with the election. A gorgeous free-roaming chat. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** “It’s our election, but it’s everyone’s spectacle. I get the privilege of voting in it, but we are all affected - just in different ways.” “Democrats would do well to have a bit of introspection, and say: ‘we clearly didn’t reach these swathes of people that, a couple of elections ago, we thought were our demographic destiny to carry.’ They didn’t. Maybe they should start figuring out why.” “Fundamentally, you have to earn people’s votes. You can’t just explain to them how they don’t really have a choice. That’s just going to turn people away. The more likely outcome isn’t that they concede the point. It’s that they stay at home.”  Yasmeen Serhan's substack newsletter (mainly for her mum): Foreign Correspondence. FT round-up of Trump's pick for FBI boss: Kash Patel faces rocky path to US Senate approval Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex Andreou and Naomi Smith welcome special guest David Gauke - former Conservative Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of Justice, and Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, who had the whip withdrawn over his rebellion against no-deal Brexit, and was recently appointed by Starmer to lead an independent review into prison sentences. They discuss Liz Kendall's welfare reform proposals, Kemi Badenoch's net zero u-turn, and the future of prisons and justice. Plus, of course, 'Wokey Dokey' and 'Grin And Share It'. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** ALEX ANDREOU'S PODYSSEY can be found here: APPLE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/alex-andreous-podyssey/id1798575126 SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2x7cD3HjkOyOKTF4YT5Goy?si=e7a86b762431451f AMAZON MUSIC: https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/8c996062-ef8d-42e4-9d80-5b407cb6e2e2/alex-andreou's-podyssey OVERCAST: https://overcast.fm/+ABN4Gd7AP9Q POCKET CASTS: https://pca.st/podcast/9e98d690-d812-013d-ea22-0affdfd67dbd YouTube Music: Coming Soon Or you can add it to any app, using the RSS feed: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/podyssey SUBSCRIBE OR FOLLOW NOW FURTHER READING: Resolution Foundation's publications on the proposed welfare reforms can be found here. Institute for Fiscal Studies reaction to the proposed welfare reforms can be found here. CALLS TO ACTION LINKS: Respond to the government's Pathways to Work consultation. Find out more about the Prison Reform Trust's work. GRIN AND SHARE IT Sign language terms for climate change: the story; and the videos. Our bookshop featuring many of the books we have featured can be found at uk.bookshop.org/shop/quietriot. Kick your X habit, finally, by using one of three Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Packs. With one click, it will hook you up with, among many good accounts, Alex, Naomi, and Kenny. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Goodbye Joe, he gotta go: Joe Biden has finally done what many considered inevitable, and exited the race to be the next US President. In this Quiet Riot special, our hosts Alex Andreou and Naomi Smith are joined by long-time Democratic Party donor and political analyst Mark Bergman, to prod the embers of Biden's 2024 campaign. Among the burning questions therein, we ask: Why now? What will the new Democrat offering be? Will Biden's departure help unite the Democrats or open up a new internal battlefront? And could we see an all-woman Democratic ticket go up against the Republican hombres? The 2024 presidential race is fired up to be a classic – let our cooler heads be your guide. Also, please subscribe to the podcast, like, review and rate us, and share Quiet Riot gems on social media. You can find us on twitter @quietriotpod, email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com, or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Thank you all for your support :-) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Naomi Smith chats to journalist Amanda Ferguson about a series of scandals which have rocked politics both north and south of the border. Sinn Féin were widely expected to win the next election. Is that still the case? ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** LINKS: You can link to Amanda and find her latest work here. Brief explainer of why many think it will be an early election. Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex chats to John Nicolson – now a former SNP MP – reflects on what went wrong for the SNP and how to fix it, as well as a wide range of topics, from the US presidential race to behind-the-scenes insights on the life political. And there's a little regret that he and his SNP colleagues weren't a little more awkward when they descended en masse on Westminster. With candid observations on some of those with whom he has shared the political stage – and eyebrow-raising revelations about his close call on the operating table – this is a must-listen for all fans of planet politics, not just those from north of the Border. "It's a bit like bereavement, when you lose. The worst time is the morning. You wake up and you feel unhappy and you can't quite remember why, and then you go: no, that's why. It's very sad." "The truth is, people vote for parties. And there was an electoral wave, which individual candidates, such as myself, found impossible to resist." "I was very outspoken on trans rights. I'm not in favour of Scottish independence because I want to go out there and wave the Saltire. I'm not a flag fetishist. I support it because of the kind of society we can build... Scotland, on a whole number of metrics, is now amongst the most liberal countries in Europe." "My grandma left school at 12. I went to university and ended up getting a scholarship to Harvard. It transformed my life, free university education." "We've got to have a mature discussion about how Scotland leaves the UK, if we want to. If there is no mechanism to leave, and we're told we can never have a referendum, well, it's not a voluntary union." "The Tories are a funny lot. I grew up with Clause 28 and all that ghastliness. And then, when I was elected, I looked across to the Tory benches... I mean, it was like a night out in Soho." "Obviously if that was my choice, I'd vote for Biden. But if Biden wants to do something for his nation now, I think he should stand aside. I hope vanity does not prevent him." "I have no time for people who say: they're all the same, they're all liars. They really aren't. There's good people in all the parties. And there are honest, well-intentioned people in all the parties. Engage. Don't be lazy." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Naomi and Alex review the latest Alien interquel from the London IMAX - and talk about the politics of the franchise, more generally. IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, PLEASE DO. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. “Aliens was made a few months before Wall Street. And you really can see that anxiety: Is capitalism now too rampant? Almost forty years later, that creeping fear, that suspicion, that large corporations will take over our lives, has been confirmed.” “The film has a very, very young cast… And it hits the nail on the head, when you think of how little stake young people have today. Young people coming to the franchise will identify with being screwed, with the goalposts moving, with not being able to save.” “Alien is probably the best Haunted Spaceship film. And Aliens, I would say, is the best sci-fi action horror. ”And if they’re not, then listeners should write in with their suggestions. So any interquel is going against quite an impossible bar.” Full trailer for ALIEN: ROMULUS. Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. (We are working on threads and YouTube.) Our THIRD Starter Pack to accompany this Special can be found here. Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Click here for a second Bluesky Starter Pack. IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, PLEASE DO. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou, and Kenny Campbell - in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A familiar voice returns to join Alex and Naomi – fresh from playing Angela Merkel with the Royal Shakespeare Company, actor, writer and all-round good egg Ingrid Oliver casts a knowing eye over the in-tray of Lisa Nandy, our new Secretary of Culture, Media and Sport. We talk theatre, music, libraries and even TikTok and footie, as the challenges facing Britain's arts and entertainment world join the queue for help from a new Government. And, talking of entertainers, how could we not chat about Kamala Harris, whose combination of talent and joie de vivre has catapulted her into contention as the next US President. Helping us read the Harris runes is Patrick Flynn, data journalist with Focaldata and owner of at least one cool Kamala T-shirt. What other podcast brings you this sort of devotion to detail? Plus we've got favourite features including Poll The Other One and (cue that Hillbilly Elegy soundtrack) Wokey Dokey. We literally don't have room for any more goodies :-) If you wouldn't mind, please subscribe to the podcast, like, review and rate us, and share Quiet Riot wisdom on social media because sharing is good, ok? You can find us on twitter @quietriotpod, email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com, or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. CALL TO ACTION Find a theatre near you here Need some inspiration for your next gig? Try this It's summer and there are free sports agogo... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex goes through the week's political events, both here and across the Atlantic, with special guest Zoe Williams. “The Spectator is in a really difficult position. They’re not like the Daily Mail. They cannot turn round and hold the exact opposite point of view to the one they held yesterday, without intellectual consequences. If they wash their hands of Douglas Murray now, they will have to admit they’ve been promulgating race hate for as long as they’ve been publishing him.” “Musk is testing his own strength and he’s testing the strength of twitter and he’s testing his own convening power - how many people can he get in his online army. But the reason it doesn’t ring true or make any real sense and Starmer seems nonplussed by it, is that the attacks don’t relate to the politician or the man. It’s a sort of symbolic act.” On which of the Tory leadership candidates has impressed Zoe most: “To be honest, I’m really, really revelling - like it’s a warm bath - in the experience of not giving a shit about the Conservative Party.” On the US Election: “It’s not groundswell support that matters. It’s Stans. It’s superfans. If you can see someone developing superfans, there’s something going on that you need to pay attention to.” On the Harris/Walz campaign: “For the first time in years I am just loving watching a political process. I’ve got almost no anxiety. Everyone is saying ‘watch the polls, watch the polls’, but I’m thinking ‘this is just not happening for Trump.”  Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. (We are working on threads and YouTube.) Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou, and Kenny Campbell - in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex Andreou and special guest, former diplomat and security analyst, Arthur Snell talk about the end of NATO as we know it, today's German federal election, and Apple's tussle with UK gov't over encryption. A packed episode! ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** “NATO may have died - in the sense that, if the Article 5 commitment is not longer believable, if it is not something you can bank on, we may already be at a point when we need to start looking at something else, which looks a bit like NATO but doesn’t involve the US.” “Of all the weapons Ukraine uses, 55% are produced in Ukraine, 25% come from Europe and 20% from the US. The difficulty arises because a lot of that 20% from the US is made up of high-end air defence that is hard to replace. But it’s not impossible.”  "The German election is proof of concept for what Musk's interference can achieve. European leaders need to get their s**t together and decide what they're going to do about his influence, because otherwise he's just going to pick them off one by one." "Any other records held by any other company would be accessible given the right court order. Even for confidential or privileged stuff, there are exceptions in cases of national security. So why should electronic data get a free pass where no other held records would?" LINKS: Arthur Snell's Behind The Lines episode with Mike Martin. Our bookshop including many of the books we have featured can be found at uk.bookshop.org/shop/quietriot ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Naomi and Alex talk through developments in Ukraine and Gaza, and what they might mean for our security. And they also discuss the continuing fallout from the farmland inheritance tax changes - and the Liberal Democrats' revealing position on the issue. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** Naomi: "There is a vacuum. Scholz and Macron are in peril. The Democrats are licking their wounds in the States. And there is an opportunity for a leader who believes in the rule of law and liberal democracy, to strengthen international institutions and to show boldness and courage." Alex: "The arguments against inheritance tax are all 'blue skies, and rolling hills, and stewards of the land'. I feel emotionally manipulated. And I think this shtick may wear very, very thin, very, very quickly. Eventually, you have to find a better argument than singing 'Jerusalem' over and over again." Jonathan Freedland: Benjamin Netanyahu is a wanted man – and he has only himself to blame Naomi Smith: Opportunity in misery: how Starmer can respond to Trump’s US victory Clive Lewis's Bsky thread on missing Labour narrative Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex Andreou, Naomi Smith with special guest Guardian columnist Zoe Williams assess Labour's first 200 days in power, in pretty frank, no-holds-barred conversation. And, as the Trump cabinet confirmation hearing stun Capitol Hill, the gang engage is some preemptive group therapy on how to survive the next four years of Trump. Plus 'Wokey Dokey' and 'Grin and Share It'. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** “There is a real problem with Keir’s cabinet and Keir’s government… He will not let anyone go out and build their own brand, persona, ideas - anything. He won’t let anyone go out and be the person they want to be. And so when you get a situation like Reeves at the mercy of bond markets nobody looks at her and thinks: she’s got this.” “Debt markets are a beauty pageant and you don’t want to be the ugliest contestant. What is happening now is not at all like Truss, because at that point everyone else’s bond markets were relatively calm and ours was the only one shooting up. That is a very different situation.” “What is this government’s growth theory? I don’t know. Every government has one - it might be bullshit, but they have it. This one’s seems to be a Jack-And-The-Beanstalk theory: ‘I will take my desire for growth to the market and buy a bean and then let’s see what happens.’”  GRIN AND SHARE IT You can read about the amazing advance in battery technology here. CALLS TO ACTION LINKS: Zoe's piece about quitting Facebook. The petition calling for an independent evaluation of the Cass Review. Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When illness makes life unbearable, should we be permitted – and helped – to end our time in this place on our own terms? The topic of assisted dying is back in the political spotlight thanks to a Private Member's Bill from Spen Valley MP Kim Leadbeater. It's a difficult topic for many to discuss, encompassing morality, freedom and, often, religion. In this Quiet Riot special, Naomi Smith takes a nuanced look at the issues with Andrew Copson, CEO of Humanists UK. Andrew is in favour of assisted dying but puts both sides of the argument. Some form of assisted dying is allowed in 31 countries but the law here has not been changed in six decades, although it is now under discussion in both Westminster and Holyrood. Call to action To find out more about the Humanist movement, visit https://humanists.uk/ and, for details on their campaigning on the issue of assisted dying, click here. And for an interview with Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, setting out the counterargument, click here. Assisted suicide is illegal under the terms of the Suicide Act (1961) and is punishable by up to 14 years' imprisonment. Trying to kill yourself is not a criminal act. The BBC summarises the main issues here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex Andreou talks to Rose Wang, BlueSky Chief Operations Officer in SanFrancisco - one of two women at the top of this social media startup. about the rollercoaster of the last few months, the coming election, and what is next for the platform. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** “It was happening in real time for all of us. I don’t think the team slept for 48 hours, trying to keep the service online, and I am proud to say we had no down time, despite the fact a couple of million Brazilians came on BlueSky over the course of two to three days.” “This election is going to be a moment for our different platforms to show what we care about, what our values are. BlueSky welcomes political debate, unlike Threads which down-ranks political content. We are giving users the tools and authority to make their own decisions, rather than being a partisan platform that elevates one candidate over another, which is what’s happening on X.” “This is exactly the world that we want to prevent. Overnight, X has become a platform with an opinion as to who should win the US presidential election. That’s pretty wild. It’s no longer a public square. It’s now a partisan walled garden. At BlueSky we hope to showcase the technology we need to build more of a democratic republic online.” Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Pollsters got the result and party shares broadly right - the one significant error across the board was an overestimation of the size of Labour's vote. Why? Naomi looks at the data trickling through - some of it EXCLUSIVE and yet UNPUBLISHED - to glean why. Part of the answer seems to be a misrepresentation of Muslim voters and the more-prominent-then-usual presence of "late switchers" away from Labour. A perfect 10-minute listen. IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, PLEASE DO. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. More in Common's detailed blog and data is here. Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. (We are working on threads and YouTube.) Our THIRD Starter Pack to accompany this Special can be found here. Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Click here for a second Bluesky Starter Pack. IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, PLEASE DO. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou, and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From presidential hopeful to criminal with an electronic tag, Marine Le Pen's fall from grace has been swift and – at least as far her punishment is concerned – eye-popping. Quiet Riot producer Kenny Campbell is joined by our favourite Chevalier/French expert, Olivier Morel who, as well as being a partner at Cripps lawyers, holds senior trade positions and is a champion of Anglo-French business links. How did this all start? What does it mean for France? Is it good or bad news for Le Pen's party, and the ambitious individuals within? Pop open le popcorn and enjoy a bit of political drama from the other side of La Manche. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD***  ALEX ANDREOU'S PODYSSEY can be found here: APPLE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/alex-andreous-podyssey/id1798575126 SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2x7cD3HjkOyOKTF4YT5Goy?si=e7a86b762431451f AMAZON MUSIC: https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/8c996062-ef8d-42e4-9d80-5b407cb6e2e2/alex-andreou's-podyssey OVERCAST: https://overcast.fm/+ABN4Gd7AP9Q POCKET CASTS: https://pca.st/podcast/9e98d690-d812-013d-ea22-0affdfd67dbd YouTube Music: Coming Soon Or you can add it to any app, using the RSS feed: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/podyssey SUBSCRIBE OR FOLLOW NOW! Our bookshop including many of the books we have featured can be found at uk.bookshop.org/shop/quietriot ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global.Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex, Kenny and guest TIME Magazine's Yasmeen Serhan, discuss Keir Starmer's moRose Garden speech, whether the difficulties were predicted or are additional, whether the rhetoric is expectation management or augurs Austerity 2.0. Palestinian-American, Yasmeen Serhan then leads a hugely illuminating conversation on the US Election and why so many Arab-Americans remain Uncommitted to Kamala Harris. IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, PLEASE DO. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. “It was a dull speech. Starmer promised change… but he also promised that politics would take up less space in our lives. So, I guess, what he’s endeavouring to do is bring about this change in as non-dramatic a way as possible.” “For the first time I question the balance of the top team. Now that they’re in government, I look around that top team and I think: who is the risk-taker there? I see a lot of risk-averse people. But if the situation is as dire as they describe, they need someone who will take a few risks.” “Democrats and people who are supportive of Harris/Walz need to get it out of their heads that they can threaten voters by saying ‘my opponent is insane’. That is not a good get-out-the-vote strategy. You can’t fit that on a bumper sticker.” “As a Palestinian-American, speaking to other Palestinian-Americans, this is such an emotional issue. You can’t tell them they must vote for a ticket that may just continue what we’ve been seeing. You can’t ask them to sign off on a policy that may kill their family members.” CALLS TO ACTION Yasmeen's writing can be found here. The Labour Conference list of exhibitors is here. Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. (We are working on threads and YouTube.) Our THIRD Starter Pack to accompany this Special can be found here. Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Click here for a second Bluesky Starter Pack. IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, PLEASE DO. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou, and Kenny Campbell - in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

'Tis the season of St Patrick and so Naomi Smith is joined by Irish politics specialist Professor Mary C Murphy, to see whether Ireland's political glass is half empty or half full. Questions are there many... Ireland is one of three neutral EU countries but is that sustainable in the age of Trump and Putin? How do young people on the island differ politically from their parents? Could there be a border poll and why would it be fraught with risk? And should the Taoiseach be raising a glass to his St Patrick's Day visit to the White House, or drowning his sorrows? Mary is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Irish Institute at Boston College in Massachusetts. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** (and thank you!) Our Quiet Riot bookshop supports independent book sellers and features lots of the books we feature on the show. Find Professor Murphy's thorough study on post-Brexit Northern Ireland here. If you haven't kicked your X habit, join us on Bluesky and we'll help you follow other amazing people via our three Starter Packs. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and producer Kenny Campbell, in cahoots with SandStone Global. ALEX ANDREOU'S PODYSSEY launches on the 15th of March and can be found here: APPLE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/alex-andreous-podyssey/id1798575126 SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2x7cD3HjkOyOKTF4YT5Goy?si=e7a86b762431451f AMAZON MUSIC: https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/8c996062-ef8d-42e4-9d80-5b407cb6e2e2/alex-andreou's-podyssey OVERCAST: https://overcast.fm/+ABN4Gd7AP9Q POCKET CASTS: https://pca.st/podcast/9e98d690-d812-013d-ea22-0affdfd67dbd PODBEAN: https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/gt7a4-3460bc/Alex-Andreou%27s-Podyssey-Podcast YouTube Music: Coming Soon Or you can add it to any app, using the RSS feed: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/podyssey SUBSCRIBE OR FOLLOW NOW! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How can Britain begin to undo the damage to our freedom of movement that Brexit inflicted? Well, we could start with a positive outcome from this week's Brussels meeting between PM Keir Starmer and EC President Ursula von der Leyen. Naomi Smith bangs the drum for musicians, studies the situation for students and ... well, you get the idea. Post-Brexit travel restrictions have been a pain for all and a disaster for many, including those trying to come into Britain as well as those of us trying to slip out of these punch-drunk islands. Naomi's impassioned plea to the PM is backed by some beefy statistics from her team at Best for Britain – in short, Starmer could do everyone, himself included, a huge favour by starting to dismantle some of those travel barriers that have been thrown up so carelessly in recent years. Might even be that rarest of beasts, a vote winner. Call to action Find the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants HERE and give them your backing! A special thank you to everyone who has helped Quiet Riot smash through the 500,000 downloads milestone (smilestone?) in just four short months. If you want more, find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod or use our Starter Pack on Bluesky. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, PLEASE DO. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou, and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex Andreou and Naomi Smith have a wee-hours chat, analysing the last head-to-head Starmer v Sunak debate. Because we love you and like giving you unexpected nice prezzies. Subscribe to the podcast, like us, rate us, and share the joyous news on social media. Ideas, feedback, comments, guest or topic suggestions? Find us on twitter @quietriotpod, email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com, or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Quiet Riot is produced by Kenny Campbell, in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Naomi and Alex talk through a very busy week (as much of it as they can). They reflect on the assisted dying debate and vote, discuss Louise Haigh's resignation and Heidi Alexander's promotion, Zelensky's offer (and challenge) to NATO, and the likely outcome of the general election in the Republic of Ireland. With a special and very familiar guest. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** Naomi: “Attendance was stellar - unheard of, for a Friday. And the vast majority of arguments in both directions were made in an incredibly respectful way. And it’s just made me feel that I want more of this. Why aren't more issues decided on a free vote?” Alex: “A lot of the anxiety [around assisted dying] has to do with cultural, rather than legislative failings: how we treat older people, how we treat illness, how we treat incapacity, how we treat disability, how we value or devalue life. Those things require a cultural shift.” Naomi: “Going for politicians over very minor indiscretions, is going to put people off wanting to become parliamentarians. There is a case to be made for high standards. But if you are a left-leaning, progressive person, thinking of going into politics, the standard expected of you is so much higher.”  Hugo Rifkind: My mother’s MS has shaped my view on assisted dying Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Naomi and Alex chat to special guests Labour MP for Brent East Dawn Butler and former Tory SpAp Salma Shah through the fallout of the riots and how we can carve a way forward. And we go through the Tory Leadership race candidates. Who will it be? And will anyone care? PLUS a very special Wokey Dokey about idiots blowing up their motorbikes and we give our guests a chance to showcase their favourite not-a-fans in You Gotta Troll With It. Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. (We are working on threads and YouTube.) CALLS TO ACTION Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Click here for a second Bluesky Starter Pack. Click here to buy the Hate Has No Home Here poster. Click here for the WWF's Greek Wildfires appeal. Click here for Dawn Butler's 21 Days to Go. With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou, and Kenny Campbell - in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Naomi and Alex try to reach for some sort of balanced view of the first 100 days of Labour - away from the constant media MELTDOWN IN DOWNING STREET ridiculous coverage - and set out what needs to happen in the next 100 to turn things around. In any case, is the American "100 Days" measure at all useful in a British context? If you can afford to help, you can back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. “They’ve got five years ahead of them and a big majority, but they’re still acting so gingerly. It’s as if they’re still carrying ‘The Ming Vase’. Put the f**king vase down. The vase is done now.” LINKS: Download the Discord app here. For The Reunion episode on 100 Days of Blair's first term click here. Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod or use our Starter Pack on Bluesky. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, PLEASE DO. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou, and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex and Naomi talk to a pantheon of special guests to dissect the week's news. Arthur Snell on the attack on the Magdeburg Christmas Market and a new breed of self-radicalised individual who fits no profile. Ian Dunt on the latest peers elevated to the Lords. Zoe Williams on the backlash over gov't denying compensation to WASPI women. Peter Geoghegan on the first cracks appearing in the Trump/Musk bromance and dark money. A special episode to end the year. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** Arthur: “A classic example of self-radicalisation. People in a very isolated way online can be drawn into a very personal version of a dangerous ideology. You can end up with people with very bizarre uniquely generated private views.” Arthur: “Whilst it’s a slightly bewildering case, it’s a fairly neat illustration of the way that radicalisation has become a profound danger and that you don’t have to have pale skin and ‘Aryan’ looks to be radicalised into far-right ideology.” Peter: “Labour’s failure [to proactively regulate money in politics] has put them in this position and they still don’t have a strategy. When the Musk story broke, they briefed that they might cap donations, now that they may do something by 2026, or that they may limit the amount a company can give. This is very piecemeal, very reactive and not being led from the front.” Peter: “We have seen time and again how unlimited donations, dirty money and dark money in British politics, has warped the political agenda. Musk unintentionally is illuminating this, shining a great big light onto it. And the public care about this. That’s the most compelling reason to act, rather than party political ramifications.” Zoe: “A lot of these plans, like the winter fuel payment withdrawal, are not well formulated. I’m not sure that a blanket ‘no’ to the WASPI women is the right thing to do. At the same time, this government is being treated atrociously by the commentariat. Conservative gov’ts, and the coalition before them, introduced waves of extreme hardship and barely a peep was made about it.” Zoe: “I don’t think anything [Labour] do would be enough to restore trust in democracy…  We went from austerity, which was often just performative cruelty, into the fecklessness of Brexit, and then into a pandemic that was defined by corruption. I worry that that did taint the reputation of politics so profoundly, I don’t see how you turn it around.” Ian: “We cannot have PM after PM just come in and just cram the place with their cronies… and see the numbers just expand and expand. Even for those of us who are defenders of the Lords, it makes our job impossible, because you cannot support this stuff, you cannot defend the way they are behaving.” Ian: “Starmer is the most consistently underestimated politician in my lifetime. People cannot stop looking at him and going ‘he’s so boring’, ‘he’s got no ideas’, ‘he’s bad at politics’, ‘he’s got no connection to the public’. There’s loads to criticise him on, but some of the stuff he’s doing is huge. When you look at planning, labour practices, local gov't, net zero, criminal justice - in 15 years, we will look back on this period as engine room policy change.” Ian: “Having a surging Farage - which will be the story of next year, because that is what the press wants the story to be - is poison for the national conversation and will pull us further to the right. But electorally, the basic boring answer is still the correct one: a surging Reform just divides the right.” CALLS TO ACTION LINKS: Peter's substack Democracy for Sale. It's free and you should subscribe. Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod. On Bluesky click here for our Starter Pack. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How is the new Labour government perceived in the EU? How much of a 'reset' is realistically achievable? What does the club we just left make of our slow change of heart? What does it want in return? And how much of a priority is our renegotiation in European capitals?   Alex spoke to Professor Jacob Öberg for a European perspective on our long journey to rejoining. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** “There is a feeling that Labour haven’t really decided what to do and where they want to go with [the UK-EU reset] - particularly in terms of things that the EU would request or require from the UK. Labour has been very hesitant to give any space to that. And in that situation no-one gives in and nothing happens.” “All of these things, if we talk youth mobility, vet agreement, things like these, it is a big complicated negotiation and you need everyone on board - the EU Commission the UK negotiation team, everyone needs to be fully focussed on this. If you do this with your left hand you’re not going to get much done.” “The framing of an alliance - primarily by Thatcher in her later, rather mad period - as something hostile, over there, to which one must go prepared to handbag other leaders in order to not be somehow exploited is one of the most wrong-headed and damaging political narratives of the last few decades.” LINKS: Jacob's brief piece on imporving the TCA is here. Jacob's free book can be downloaded here. Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex Andreou, Naomi Smith with special guest migration, policy one-woman army, Zoe Gardner ask what happened to the sunlit uplands, the magical cake, the oven ready pie - and all the other things we were promised in 2016. Also, a frank discussion about Britain's true immigration problem: that numbers are dropping off a cliff. Plus 'Wokey Dokey' and a Dramatic Reading of Daniel Hannan. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** “The arguments for Brexit were masking something much more sinister and deeper in the ideology of those who were advocating for it.” “The same people are now saying let’s leave the ECHR. It will never be enough. There will always be another thing, another right that we as citizens can give up, to pursue this agenda of wiping out the diversity of our country.” “PEM is the right direction but it’s not a game-changer. We have a rare opportunity for a limited conversation about what we need from the EU and we need to prioritise full beneficial alignment.”  “People who are secure about their identity don't tend to worry about foreigners. Brexit triggered an identity crisis. English nationalists had to redefine theirs, to cohere. For decades, being against the EU had acted as a proxy. The moment that was removed, their identity fell apart.” “There is a massive performative element [to Trump’s deportations]. So much of our politics is done in the media that image is everything. Those deportations were taking place under the Biden administration, but it is Trump who has released the imagery.” “There is no reasonable Right, any more. It doesn’t exist. Don’t kid yourselves. We should not be compromising. We have repeatedly thought we can compromise with these people who hate us and split the difference and we can’t.” CALLS TO ACTION LINKS: Sign the petition to provide better routes for undocumented migrants to regularise their status. Join Best for Britain's list to get the big news coming in the next couple of weeks. Subscribe to Zoe Gardner's YouTube channel. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex Andreou and Naomi Smith talk through the week's news, with a focus on the astounding implosion within Reform UK and signs of reversal of policies and freezing out of Musk by Trump. PLUS will changes on how GDP is calculated help or hinder Reeves? ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** “Parliaments with a higher number of female leaders are more likely to be more equal, achieve higher economic growth and experience lower levels of corruption.” “Have Reform peaked too soon? Timing is everything. By doing well in some polls, people have started to treat them more seriously, to question them about policy, to look at people beyond Farage. And there is nothing there.” “Trump fails to understand much beyond ‘you've got this and I want it, why won’t you take a deal?’ In his head they are all not being rational, because he fails to realise that a peace treaty is not a business deal. This isn't a challenge on The Apprentice.” “DOGE’s entire power depends on its being able to impose itself on other departments. So, when Trump tells Musk: well, you can advise, but the State Secretaries will decide, is not just a demotion. It's a humiliation.” ALEX ANDREOU'S PODYSSEY can be found here: APPLE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/alex-andreous-podyssey/id1798575126 SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2x7cD3HjkOyOKTF4YT5Goy?si=e7a86b762431451f AMAZON MUSIC: https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/8c996062-ef8d-42e4-9d80-5b407cb6e2e2/alex-andreou's-podyssey OVERCAST: https://overcast.fm/+ABN4Gd7AP9Q POCKET CASTS: https://pca.st/podcast/9e98d690-d812-013d-ea22-0affdfd67dbd YouTube Music: Coming Soon Or you can add it to any app, using the RSS feed: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/podyssey SUBSCRIBE OR FOLLOW NOW! LINKS: For International Women's Day, visit 50-50 Parliament. Nine-minute fact check on Farage about Putin is here. Wales special is here. Our bookshop including many of the books we have featured can be found at uk.bookshop.org/shop/quietriot ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Naomi and Alex disseminate Starmer's big "this is not a reset" speech. Naomi talks about the importance of a better EU deal and a new initiative for getting there, with Labour MP Andrew Lewin. Finally, Melania is flogging $90 ornaments and Donald has a new fragrance out for Christmas - which really gives new meaning to eau de toilet. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** “I wonder whether the civil service got into the habit of resisting ideas from gov’t, because of the extraordinary churn. If you’re in the housing bit, and you’ve had 18 ministers, you learn to play for time, because you think ‘meh, they’ll be a different guy with a different plan in six weeks’. Maybe what we’re seeing is that muscle memory of those last 14 years.” “I desperately want Labour to turn things around. They have to. The stakes are too high. I want to see the xenophobic, toxic, English nationalism of Farage and his cabal defeated and roundly. I don’t want Trumpism in Britain.” Lewin: “This parliament will be defined by our success, or not, in growing the economy and raising living standards. It is very clear to me that we, as a Labour gov’t, have to look at every lever we can pull, to deliver on that mission of growing the economy, including significantly improving our relationship with the EU.” Lewin: “I don’t think many people consider themselves ‘leavers’ or ‘remainers’ any more. They look at an economy that’s been flatlining for a decade and want to look at every practical step to get things growing and moving again.” CALL TO ACTION Write to your MP, to ask them to prioritise a closer relationship to the EU, using this tool. Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Naomi and Alex take you through what to expect from the Democratic National Convention starting tomorrow, discuss Farage's income, declarations of interest and MPs' second jobs, and gossip about the birth of their baby podcast, its mission, and what you can do to help it grow. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. “[Farage] has not yet tabled a single written question in the Commons on behalf of the people of Clacton. We don’t know if he’s holding regular advice surgeries. How often is he even in that constituency? And when you tot up all of the time that he himself has estimated he spends on extra-Parliamentary work, it’s nine full working days a month. So, at best he is a part-time MP.” “This notion that, by declaring something, the conflict of interest goes away is a nonsense. The system of declarations is not there to resolve conflicts but to identify them. It doesn’t matter if there’s no actual impropriety. There has to be the appearance of absolutely no impropriety.”  You can stream the DNC here. US Election aggregate polling at Five Thirty Eight. Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. (We are working on threads and YouTube.) Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Click here for a second Bluesky Starter Pack. With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou, and Kenny Campbell - in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex Andreou and special guest, London bureau chief for the ARD, the multi-award winning journalist, Annette Dittert with an analysis of Sunday's German federal election results. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** “NATO may have died - in the sense that, if the Article 5 commitment is not longer believable, if it is not something you can bank on, we may already be at a point when we need to start looking at something else, which looks a bit like NATO but doesn’t involve the US.” “Of all the weapons Ukraine uses, 55% are produced in Ukraine, 25% come from Europe and 20% from the US. The difficulty arises because a lot of that 20% from the US is made up of high-end air defence that is hard to replace. But it’s not impossible.”  "The German election is proof of concept for what Musk's interference can achieve. European leaders need to get their s**t together and decide what they're going to do about his influence, because otherwise he's just going to pick them off one by one." "Any other records held by any other company would be accessible given the right court order. Even for confidential or privileged stuff, there are exceptions in cases of national security. So why should electronic data get a free pass where no other held records would?" LINKS: Our bookshop including many of the books we have featured can be found at uk.bookshop.org/shop/quietriot ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** Kick your X habit, finally, by using one of three Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Packs. With one click, it will hook you up with, among many good accounts, Alex, Naomi, and Kenny. With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

With a looming election, a troublesome neighbour and a former Bank of England Governor as unelected PM, Canada is living through excruciatingly interesting times. We thought it was time to cuddle up to our Canuck cousins, and so Naomi Smith is joined for this special episode by Canadian journalist Graham Lanktree. Graham is Politico's UK trade specialist, and an ideal guide to the ins and outs of Canadian politics. How do Canadians feel about Mark Carney, a leader who has not been elected as an MP? Talking of unelected figures, what about their views on the Royal Family? As Trump bulldozes his way across the political landscape, will Canada try to disentangle its trade relations with the US, and cozy up to the EU? And How might Trump's second state visit to the UK affect UK-Canada diplomatic relations ? Get all this and more in our brilliant bite-sized guide to Canada! ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** Show notes: Sign up for a fee demo of politico pro HERE And don't forget to listen to the mythical and marvellous new hit podcast from the Quiet Riot stable: ALEX ANDREOU'S PODYSSEY can be found here:APPLE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/alex-andreous-podyssey/id1798575126SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2x7cD3HjkOyOKTF4YT5Goy?si=e7a86b762431451fAMAZON MUSIC: https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/8c996062-ef8d-42e4-9d80-5b407cb6e2e2/alex-andreou's-podysseyOVERCAST: https://overcast.fm/+ABN4Gd7AP9QPOCKET CASTS: https://pca.st/podcast/9e98d690-d812-013d-ea22-0affdfd67dbdYouTube Music: Coming Soon Or you can add it to any app, using the RSS feed: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/podysseySUBSCRIBE OR FOLLOW NOW!Our bookshop including many of the books we have featured can be found at uk.bookshop.org/shop/quietriot ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global.Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The new buzzword in American politics is Weird, and it seems to be having an effect. Alex Andreou and Naomi Smith are joined by transatlantic academic, author and podcaster Brian Klaas, Associate Professor of Global Politics at University College London, to talk weird politics, Kamala's crowds and a whole bunch of other fascinating stuff around the US presidential race. There's also a look at what happened when Rachel Reeves and Jeremy Hunt squared up in the Commons for their first post-election tussle, and we ask whether the changes to the Winter Fuel Allowance are going to prove chilling for the Chancellor. And don't miss our amazing new features – we've got two of the critters, one of them cultured, the other somewhat less so. Confused? You'll have to listen in... Do please subscribe to the podcast, like, review and rate us, and share Quiet Riot pearls on social media because sharing is good, is it not? You can find us on twitter @quietriotpod, email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com, or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Love you guys x CALL TO ACTION The Lincoln Project Republican Voters Against Trump How just 80,000 voters in three states made Trump president How to contact your MP Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Naomi (SHE'S BACK! YAY!) and Alex try to look behind a wall of very mixed signals from Labour on the EU. Is there a sophisticated strategy in play? Or a tug of war between the economically obvious and the politically toxic? And is it a cowardly betrayal of Remain, as the Guardian asserts – or a dastardly reversal of Brexit as the Express believes? IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, PLEASE DO. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. “There’s no such thing as ‘Rejoin’. There’s not some fast-track, ‘We made a mistake! Do-over! Do-over! There is just ‘Join’ and it takes years at the best of times. It takes time.” “There is a lot not to like about the CPTPP. But it was negotiated, the ink has dried, it’s going to happen… We are beggars, not choosers, when it comes to trade deals. And to turn our nose up at those we can do, while resetting our relationship with Europe, would be churlish and at odds with the govt’s message on growth.” Join Best for Britain here. Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. (We are working on threads and YouTube.) Our THIRD Starter Pack to accompany this Special can be found here. Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Click here for a second Bluesky Starter Pack. IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, PLEASE DO. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou, and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Naomi Smith is joined by award-winning journalist - and QR regular - Will Hayward for a timely stock-take of political life in a part of the country that we Quiet Rioters love, and a look at the Welsh budget (you will never believe how it got through), how farming complaints are different to the rest of the UK, a very inventive youth mobility scheme, and how Reform UK are using Wales - with Lee Anderson saying the quiet bit out loud. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** ALEX ANDREOU'S PODYSSEY can be found here: APPLE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/alex-andreous-podyssey/id1798575126 SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2x7cD3HjkOyOKTF4YT5Goy?si=e7a86b762431451f AMAZON MUSIC: https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/8c996062-ef8d-42e4-9d80-5b407cb6e2e2/alex-andreou's-podyssey OVERCAST: https://overcast.fm/+ABN4Gd7AP9Q POCKET CASTS: https://pca.st/podcast/9e98d690-d812-013d-ea22-0affdfd67dbd YouTube Music: Coming Soon Or you can add it to any app, using the RSS feed: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/podyssey SUBSCRIBE OR FOLLOW NOW LINKS: Find Will Hayward's substack here, his podcast here, and his YouTube channel here. Our bookshop including many of the books we have featured can be found at uk.bookshop.org/shop/quietriot ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

OLYMPICS OPENING CEREMONY REACTION. Alex and Naomi with a bumper edition of your favourite weekly feature, looking at the comically insane and the insanely comical reactions to a man with a hole in his tights, a drag race, and Papa Smurf singing. What happened to Christian temperance and forgiveness? It's all pride and wrath these days. "They think it was making fun of The Last Supper – not The Last Supper as a concept, but The Last Supper as a famous fresco, painted by gay atheist, who painted himself into the image as Jesus." -"Kamala Harris does have children. She just hasn't given birth to any." -"As has no President of the United States before her. Not a single one of them has given birth." Subscribe, follow, rate, and review us. And take two minutes to say something nice about us on social media, tagging in @quietriotpod – you can also email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com Produced by Kenny Campbell in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, Alex Andreou, Naomi Smith and special guest, investigative journalist Peter Geoghegan discuss the Conservative manifesto and why everyone is treating it like a business document, rather than a work of fiction. They also look at the fall-out from Sunak's catastrophic D-Day decision. And in Part II they splash around in the murky waters of Conservative Party funding and its links with think tanks, looking EXCLUSIVELY at Peter Geoghegan's latest investigation. Plus, a SANE round-up of the European Parliament results. Subscribe to the podcast, like, review and rate us, and share the joyous news on social media. It will only take minutes of your time, but can make a huge difference to our fledgling project. Do it now, while you're listening. Ideas, feedback, comments, guest or topic suggestions? Find us on twitter @quietriotpod, email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com, or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. CALLS TO ACTION Voting tool kit, key dates, links, polling, tactical advice - MRP MEGAPOLL DROPS MONDAY! www.getvoting.org Peter Geoghegan's substack: democracyforsale.substack.com/ Facts. Analysis. Laughs. Action. That's how we roll. Produced by Kenny Campbell, in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sunak's statement, finally calling a general election in the pouring rain, landed (badly) as we recorded our very first episode. Coincidence? Well, yes, obviously. But what an auspicious start for Alex Andreou and Naomi Smith's new politics podcast. Produced by Kenny Campbell, in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Our first guest is the brilliant More In Common's Luke Tryl. "We hope to reach a community of listeners who want to take action - that crosses party lines. Because we think the fight that is coming - to push back the hate of populism, to say sharp elbows and stepping on minorities is not the only future - will require bridges to be built, all the way from left to right." Subscribe to the podcast, like us, rate us, and share the joyous news on social media. Ideas, feedback, comments, guest or topic suggestions? Find us on twitter @quietriotpod, email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com, or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. CALLS TO ACTION LINKS Voting tool kit, key dates, links, polling, tactical advice: www.getvoting.org Government consultation on Sex, Relationship, & Health Education review: www.gov.uk/government/consultations/review-of-the-rshe-statutory-guidance Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex Andreou and Naomi Smith welcome special guest Danny Sriskandarajah, chief executive of the New Economics Foundation and author of "Power to The People", to discuss how to stop the current global backsliding on minority rights, diversity initiatives, and democratic norms. As well as practical advice on how to organise at the grassroots level. Plus, of course, 'Wokey Dokey' and 'Grin And Share It'. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** ALEX ANDREOU'S PODYSSEY can be found here: APPLE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/alex-andreous-podyssey/id1798575126 SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2x7cD3HjkOyOKTF4YT5Goy?si=e7a86b762431451f AMAZON MUSIC: https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/8c996062-ef8d-42e4-9d80-5b407cb6e2e2/alex-andreou's-podyssey OVERCAST: https://overcast.fm/+ABN4Gd7AP9Q POCKET CASTS: https://pca.st/podcast/9e98d690-d812-013d-ea22-0affdfd67dbd YouTube Music: Coming Soon Or you can add it to any app, using the RSS feed: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/podyssey SUBSCRIBE OR FOLLOW NOW Our bookshop featuring many of the books we have featured, including Danny's "Power to The People" and can be found at https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/the-quiet-riot-contributor-bookshop. CALLS TO ACTION: Sign up for updates and to help the Centre for Countering Digital Hate. Find out how to tajke part in Society of Authors actions day of protest against Meta AI pilfering authors' work. Find out about the work of the New Economics Foundation and sign up to become their supporter. GRIN AND SHARE IT: Please spread the word about pharmacy dispensing of the morning after pill. Kick your X habit, finally, by using one of three Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Packs. With one click, it will hook you up with, among many good accounts, Alex, Naomi, and Kenny. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Naomi downloads ALL THE GOSSIP from Labour Party Conference - and juicy it is too - before Alex chats to guest, former Middle East diplomat Arthur Snell, about the situation in Lebanon, Ukraine, and the first UN General Assembly for David Lammy and Keir Starmer as Foreign Secretary and PM respectively. Plus a hilarious WOKEY DOKEY and brand new feature GRIN AND SHARE IT. If you can afford to help, you can back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. Naomi: “I have never seen so much EU representation at a Labour conference. They were there in force. They see [Labour] as people they can do business with, for the first time in a long time. Officials from Brussels, member state reps, the EU delegation to the UK - they were present, happy… the level of excitement about what the EU and UK are going to do, was palpable.” Alex: “The last time we experienced a leader winning an election, then going into No 10, without having already been in situ as PM, several ministers already at departments, and experienced staff ready to shuffle around, was 2010. It’s a steep learning curve. There will be a certain amount of finding their feet. The metric that matters is: is this a government that learns from its mistakes? And that is not a judgment anyone can make yet.” Arthur: “Netanyahu needs another war. He looks at the Gaza situation and, ultimately, a ceasefire and return of the hostages might be getting closer. The Israeli public want the hostages back above anything else. If they get back to anything close to politics as normal in Israel, then attention turns to him.”  Arthur: “What Zelenskyy is trying to do, as best he can - and of course his options are quite limited - he is trying to Trump-proof western support that he is getting, build some guarantees into it and certain elements of long-term commitment.” CALLS TO ACTION Best for Britain's tree-planting donation is here. Arthur's podcast Behind The Lines is here. Ukraine Smart Medical Aid is here. UNICEF's Emergency Lebanon Fund is here. Grin And Share It good news story from Barcelona is here. Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod or use our Starter Pack on Bluesky. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, PLEASE DO. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou, and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex Andreou, in conversation with Christina Pagel and Tom Brufatto, teases out the main threads from the Covid Inquiry Module 1 Report and discusses the current wave of Covid sweeping the country and the status of Long Covid. “Our plan was how do we cope with the number of deaths. And they planned, into the 2011 strategy, for over 800,000 people to die over about five months. And nobody ever said: that seems like a lot.” ~Christina Pagel “Having delivered Brexit, they certainly felt they had something to prove. And it was often in a direction which was not conducive to responsible government." ~Tom Brufatto “There aren’t any real treatments for Long Covid yet. People have lost interest in Covid. It may be understandable, but it’s not really forgivable when you still have hundreds of thousands of people really, really sick.” ~Christina Pagel “During the General Election campaign Covid was barely mentioned. It is probably the biggest trauma this country went through during the last government and it barely came up.” ~Alex Andreou Subscribe, follow, rate, and review us. And take two minutes to say something nice about us on social media, tagging in @quietriotpod - you can also email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com With Alex Andreou and Naomi Smith. Produced by Kenny Campbell in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Calls to Action: Long Covid Charities LONG COVID KIDS LONG COVID SUPPORT LONG COVID SOS ME/CFS All-Party Parliamentary Group Covid Inquiry - Module 1 Report covid19.public-inquiry.uk/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex Andreou and Naomi Smith welcome special guest Rafael Behr to talk about the choices facing the Starmer government. Or as Raf put it "the fork on the road that everyone seems to see, but Starmer refuses to acknowledge. And - why has our right wing media landscape become so Americanised? Plus 'Wokey Dokey' and 'Grin And Share It'. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** ”I think we should be very glad that we are blessed with quite bad fascists.”  “The public expect Starmer to be more ambitious in recalibrating the UK’s relationship with the EU. If he is not prepared to do that now, when the atmospherics are what they are and the entire world order has been turned upside-down, maybe we have to accept he is just not going to do it.” “There is no way to explain why one would think TikTok is dangerous because the firm is close to the Chinese regime, but X is fine because it is fully owned by a rich guy that does Nazi salutes, to think one agenda dangerous but not the other, that doesn’t involve some basic ‘state-bad, private-good’ belief.”  “There is a profound crisis in the British Right, because the refutation of their big-picture political model has been so thorough - not just Brexit, austerity, the Truss budget, the most popular thing Sunak ever did was to pay everyone’s wages - they have nowhere to go.”  CALLS TO ACTION Go here to add your voice on what our new UK/EU relationship should look like. https://www.commonsensedeal.com/ Foxglove - the UK organisation fighting for tech equality can be found here. The international network People vs Big Tech is here. GRIN AND SHARE IT Read about antiviral lablab chewing gum. READING Read the FT piece about why the anti-woke platform seems to have backfired for Australian Conservatives. ALEX ANDREOU'S PODYSSEY can be found here: APPLE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/alex-andreous-podyssey/id1798575126 SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2x7cD3HjkOyOKTF4YT5Goy?si=e7a86b762431451f AMAZON MUSIC: https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/8c996062-ef8d-42e4-9d80-5b407cb6e2e2/alex-andreou's-podyssey OVERCAST: https://overcast.fm/+ABN4Gd7AP9Q POCKET CASTS: https://pca.st/podcast/9e98d690-d812-013d-ea22-0affdfd67dbd YouTube Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=l9GIOOP7pUU&list=PLo7dIXWHNar1u1rKsXUTgYnDhJebTp-eo PODBEAN: https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/gt7a4-3460bc/Alex-Andreou%27s-Podyssey-Podcast Or you can add it to any app, using the RSS feed: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/podyssey SUBSCRIBE OR FOLLOW NOW! Our bookshop including many of the books we have featured can be found at uk.bookshop.org/shop/quietriot ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex takes you through some impressions from the first night of Democratic National Convention, and finds it touching and inspiring. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. "Disarray was what was expected. Instead, what happened was absolute array. A party ready for a fight. And all of it enabled by the most dignified, respectful, affectionate, even, passing of the baton." You can stream the DNC here. US Election aggregate polling at Five Thirty Eight. Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. (We are working on threads and YouTube.) Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Click here for a second Bluesky Starter Pack. With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou, and Kenny Campbell - in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex Andreou and Salma Shah (filling in for Naomi) welcome guest Emmy-award-winning journalist specialising in NATO, Luke McGee, to discuss whether - and I cannot believe I am about to type this - the USA is still our ally or "Putin's Bitch". Plus - Who is out to get Rachel Reeves? We sort truth from gossip and explore why there is already dysfunction in such a young administration with such a secure majority. And of course 'Wokey Dokey' and 'Grin And Share It'. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** “Along with support for Ukraine, ‘the special relationship’ seems to be breaking apart with it. Because Russia is a much more pertinent threat to us than it is to America. And it feels like they just want it off their desks.”  “The late Christopher Meyer, former UK ambassador to the US, used to say ‘the special relationship’ never existed. I think that’s probably true. American interest in Europe has always been somewhat overstated.” “For the last 20 years, whenever the idea of a European army was floated, the main objector was NATO and countries who saw it as foundational, like the UK or the US, because they saw it as a threat to NATO centrality as a defence force. Now they turn around and say ‘why don’t you have your own European army?’ after blocking it for decades.” “Are we now in a situation where America is Russia’s bitch? I don’t think that is the case. But it’s clear there are people around Trump who have absolutely swallowed Kremlin talking points and get their information from weird accounts on X. That’s very dangerous.” “I think the talk of the reshuffle is just talk at the moment… But perhaps one of the questions Rachel Reeves should be asking herself is whether she needs a reshuffle in her own team. Does she have the right skills in her advisors?“ CALLS TO ACTION LINKS: You can find out more about the PAME Arctic Cleanup Project here. You can find out more about Ukraine Medical Aid here. You can find out more about the Ukraine Freedom Fund here. Our bookshop featuring many of the books we have featured can be found at uk.bookshop.org/shop/quietriot. Kick your X habit, finally, by using one of three Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Packs. With one click, it will hook you up with, among many good accounts, Alex, Naomi, and Kenny. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex - a former regulator by trade - talks through the issues of social media regulation and the ultimate sanction of banning Musk from having history's most destructive midlife crisis at the expense of UK democracy. Please take a minute to subscribe to the podcast, like, review and rate us, and share Quiet Riot pearls on social media because sharing is good, is it not? You can find us on twitter @quietriotpod, email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com, or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. It really helps! You can find Hope Not Hate here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex, up all night once more, looking for sanity inside the most ridiculous non-story so far. Has the British media lost its collective mind. It would seem emphatically "yes". If you want more, find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod or use our Starter Pack on Bluesky. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, PLEASE DO. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou, and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex and Naomi discuss Kemi Badenoch's prospects and Rachel Reeves' budget, before an extended therapy session about the coming US Election. With star cameos from Salma Shah and Henry Hill. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** “Kemi Badenoch has been elected with only a third of MPs and just over a third of the membership behind her. In a party addicted to factional strife, is that enough support - especially for someone who plans to pick fights?" "This was a Brexit Tax Budget. We are paying the price of Brexit, in no small part, through this budget. Brexit contributed to the stagnation of our economy and this budget is trying to rectify some of that. But because of the tightrope Labour is walking on Europe, they aren’t going to come out and say that.” "We need to make psychological space for the possibility of a Kamala Harris victory, for for the possibility of a Trump victory, and for the possibility it might be so close, we are in limbo for ages. It is easier to prepare for all three in the abstract." LINKS: Here is the Cost of Brexit summary from Best for Britain. Here is the breakdown of the process between election and inauguration. Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Naomi Smith and Kenny Campbell discuss Trump's vile comments on the Washington air disaster and his economically illiterate view of tariffs. Also, the atmosphere in Germany, with three weeks to the election, could not be more febrile. Plus 'Grin And Share It'. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** “Is there any evidence that people with, to quote Trump, ‘severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities’ can become air-traffic controllers? Or is it more likely that they just end President of the US?” “The right-leaning Tax Foundation in the US found tariffs levied by Trump during his first term, were paid by US businesses and their customers. Goldman Sachs projects there will be a 0.1% effect on inflation for every additional 1% of tariffs.” “Merz was cruising to victory, but he got greedy. He broke convention, riled up Angela Merkel, and split the CDU. And what did he achieve? He’s basically given people an argument to vote AfD.”  CALLS TO ACTION LINKS: Join Best for Britain's list to get the big news coming in the next couple of weeks. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex Andreou and Naomi Smith talk through the week's news, with a focus on the Labour govt's excellent plans for solar, "unpacking the coalition of the willing", and Lib Dem conference. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** ALEX ANDREOU'S PODYSSEY can be found here: APPLE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/alex-andreous-podyssey/id1798575126 SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2x7cD3HjkOyOKTF4YT5Goy?si=e7a86b762431451f AMAZON MUSIC: https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/8c996062-ef8d-42e4-9d80-5b407cb6e2e2/alex-andreou's-podyssey OVERCAST: https://overcast.fm/+ABN4Gd7AP9Q POCKET CASTS: https://pca.st/podcast/9e98d690-d812-013d-ea22-0affdfd67dbd YouTube Music: Coming Soon Or you can add it to any app, using the RSS feed: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/podyssey SUBSCRIBE OR FOLLOW NOW! LINKS: Old Lib Dem manifesto, as Naomi mentioned. Our bookshop including many of the books we have featured can be found at uk.bookshop.org/shop/quietriot ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex Andreou and Naomi Smith with a short debrief at the end of a historic day, on which Starmer has brought Europe (and friends) together, to make a stand for Ukraine. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** ALEX ANDREOU'S PODYSSEY can be found here: APPLE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/alex-andreous-podyssey/id1798575126 SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2x7cD3HjkOyOKTF4YT5Goy?si=e7a86b762431451f AMAZON MUSIC: https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/8c996062-ef8d-42e4-9d80-5b407cb6e2e2/alex-andreou's-podyssey OVERCAST: https://overcast.fm/+ABN4Gd7AP9Q POCKET CASTS: Coming Soon YouTube Music: Coming Soon Or you can add it to any app, using the RSS feed: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/podyssey SUBSCRIBE OR FOLLOW NOW “This sort of strength avoids conflict. And I think that Europe, through its peace-dividend and end-of-history years, maybe this is a lesson that it had began to un-learn.” “We mustn't burn bridges with the USA. Because we have so many eggs in the American basket. But what the UK and Europe has to start to do, is to start moving our eggs out of that f***ing basket - and quickly.” CALL TO ACTION: Here is how to find out more about 1 Team 1 Fight and donate to them. Our bookshop including many of the books we have featured can be found at uk.bookshop.org/shop/quietriot ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, your stars Alex Andreou and Naomi Smith are joined by a genuine Chevalier, Olivier Morel, to cast a bemused glance at politics over La Manche and, closer to home, ask the big question: is Sir Keir showing signs of happiness? As well as being a partner at law firm Cripps, Olivier chairs the UK chapter of the French Foreign Trade Advisors and is on the board of the French Chamber of Great Britain. Who better to help us make sense of a tumultuous week of democratic shenanigans on both sides of the Channel. Naomi also takes a look at the first post-election polling to give us an idea of how happy Brits are to have Labour hordes taking control of Westminster. Add in your regular treats Wokey Dokey and The Week in 60 Seconds, and you've got an hour of the finest political entertainment and insight. C'est magnifique, as they say in the chic brasseries around Quiet Riot HQ. Please don't forget to subscribe to the podcast, like, review and rate us, and share Quiet Riot nuggets on social media. We will love you even more for it. You can find us on twitter @quietriotpod, email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com, or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Heck, do all three, you only live once. CALLS TO ACTION Support Best for Britain ... or HOPE not hate ... or 38 Degrees ... or the3million ... or The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants ... or Labour Movement for Europe ... or Liberal Democrats in Europe Find out more about Erasmus+ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex Andreou, Naomi Smith, and Ian Dunt do a deep dive into every aspect of the election result and what has followed it. And while you're listening, why not subscribe to or follow the podcast, rate us, and give your social media followers a prod to listen. Ideas, feedback, comments, guest or topic suggestions? Find us on twitter @quietriotpod, email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com, or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Quiet Riot is produced by Kenny Campbell, in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Extended 40min version of Alex Andreou and Salma Shah (filling in for Naomi) talking to Emmy-award-winning journalist specialising on NATO, Luke McGee, discussion on whether the USA is still our ally and what the future of NATO is. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** “There is a logical inconsistency to America demanding that Europe commit more to the NATO project, at the moment it also says: we’re not particularly committed to it.”  “I don’t think it’s one man, behind a desk in the White House that will control the fate of NATO. We have to have some confidence in our institutions and the many thousands of people that contribute to them.” “Along with support for Ukraine, ‘the special relationship’ seems to be breaking apart with it. Because Russia is a much more pertinent threat to us than it is to America. And it feels like they just want it off their desks.”  “The late Christopher Meyer, former UK ambassador to the US, used to say ‘the special relationship’ never existed. I think that’s probably true. American interest in Europe has always been somewhat overstated.” “For the last 20 years, whenever the idea of a European army was floated, the main objector was NATO and countries who saw it as foundational, like the UK or the US, because they saw it as a threat to NATO centrality as a defence force. Now they turn around and say ‘why don’t you have your own European army?’ after blocking it for decades.” “Are we now in a situation where America is Russia’s bitch? I don’t think that is the case. But it’s clear there are people around Trump who have absolutely swallowed Kremlin talking points and get their information from weird accounts on X. That’s very dangerous.” CALLS TO ACTION LINKS: You can find out more about the PAME Arctic Cleanup Project here. You can find out more about Ukraine Medical Aid here. You can find out more about the Ukraine Freedom Fund here. Our bookshop featuring many of the books we have featured can be found at uk.bookshop.org/shop/quietriot. Kick your X habit, finally, by using one of three Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Packs. With one click, it will hook you up with, among many good accounts, Alex, Naomi, and Kenny. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, Alex Andreou and Naomi Smith are joined by special guests Henry Morris – he of Secret Tory fame and now unleashing a Shakespearean take on the Downing St rabble – and Jim Blagden, Associate Director at More In Common. There's a recap of the General Election so far – just 14 days to go people – and we ask if there's a parallel universe in which Rishi Sunak is leading his party to something other than an abject, miserable meltdown. And we gift you a tantalising taste of Henry's new book, The Tories: A Tragedy. Be amazed at Henry's tribute to Shakespeare, be amused by his acerbic take on the Truss tragedy, and be agog as Alex goes full thesp for a few overwhelming moments. Verily, 'tis a spectacle for the ages that will bring tears to your ears. Plus your favourite features, including The News In Sixty Seconds and the ever-so-slightly-abusive Troll With It. Please subscribe to the podcast, like, review and rate us, and share the love on social media – it makes such a difference. In fact do it now, while you're listening, go on! Ideas, feedback, comments, guest or topic suggestions? Find us on twitter @quietriotpod, email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com, or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Thank you friends :-) Quiet Riot is produced by Kenny Campbell, in cahoots with Sandstone Global. CALLS TO ACTION Pre-order Henry's glorious new book here The Le Monde map showing results per commune Window posters, window posters, get yer must-display window posters here: https://www.getvoting.org/window-posters-for-labour-seats/ https://www.getvoting.org/window-posters-for-liberal-democrat-seats/ https://www.getvoting.org/window-posters-for-green-seats/ https://www.getvoting.org/window-posters-for-plaid-cymru-seats/ https://www.getvoting.org/window-posters-for-snp-seats/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Naomi and Alex discuss Baroness Warsi's resignation as a Tory peer and whether that Party is now lost to islamophobia. Plus, why does right wing politics find climate action so difficult. All this, and a BOMBSHELL revelation from Naomi about her undeclared relationship with Lord Waheed Alli. (Also, you must listen to the end. Trust us.) If you can afford to help, you can back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. CALLS TO ACTION Best for Britain's tree-planting donation is here. Baroness Warsi's apology to the LGBT+ community. Baroness Warsi's full interview with James O'Brien. Alex's 2014 piece on the floods. MET Office's rain research. is here. Compernicus's heatwave research is here. Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod or use our Starter Pack on Bluesky. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, PLEASE DO. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou, and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex Andreou and Naomi Smith talk through the week's news, including the dramatic recall of Parliament on Saturday to rescue the Scunthorpe Steel Works, the over racism David Lammy gets, and Sunak's resignation dishonours. Packed and gorgeous and VERY funny. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** ALEX ANDREOU'S PODYSSEY can be found here: APPLE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/alex-andreous-podyssey/id1798575126 SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2x7cD3HjkOyOKTF4YT5Goy?si=e7a86b762431451f AMAZON MUSIC: https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/8c996062-ef8d-42e4-9d80-5b407cb6e2e2/alex-andreou's-podyssey OVERCAST: https://overcast.fm/+ABN4Gd7AP9Q POCKET CASTS: https://pca.st/podcast/9e98d690-d812-013d-ea22-0affdfd67dbd YouTube Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=l9GIOOP7pUU&list=PLo7dIXWHNar1u1rKsXUTgYnDhJebTp-eo PODBEAN: https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/gt7a4-3460bc/Alex-Andreou%27s-Podyssey-Podcast Or you can add it to any app, using the RSS feed: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/podyssey SUBSCRIBE OR FOLLOW NOW! Our bookshop including many of the books we have featured can be found at uk.bookshop.org/shop/quietriot ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex goes on a (very calm and reasoned) MEGA RANT about the mass hysteria over a Labour peer giving a make-over to the top team for the election campaign. You don't expect to have the book thrown at you, when you do everything strictly by that book. "We have a comically unserious top tier of political journalists. Most of them have spent the last fourteen years, in a scandal-rich environment, with their volume permanently on 11, where they filled all the air time and column inches they wanted with anonymous briefing, court intrigue, screengrabs of WhatsApp groups, and very little actual journalism." "Starmer’s cardinal sin is that he is not Corbyn. He is someone who has dirtied himself by winning power. Nothing will ever placate the left of the Labour party." "The right wing is using this confected outrage as a tool to reframe their own rule-breaking and venality of the last decade, through false equivalence. This is especially so for Johnson fans - both individuals and newspapers. There is a huge effort to whitewash BoJo’s failure hanging on this peg."  Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. (We are working on threads and YouTube.) We make all of our content universally available for free. But we do need your support to keep making it. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou, and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex and special guest, journalist Annette Dittert in Berlin, go behind the dramatic headlines to discuss what yesterday's victory of the far-right extreme party Alternative für Deutschland in the Federal election in the obscure region of Thuringia actually means. What are the implications for national German and European politics and especially the war in Ukraine? A deeply insightful discussion, which morphs into a broader conversation about why formerly communist states may be more susceptible to far-right messaging. IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, PLEASE DO. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. “In 1932 Hitler had his first electoral breakthrough in Thuringia. And in a way it is highly symbolic that this happens again in Thuringia. On the other side Thuringia and Saxony together do not even form 8% of the German population. So, what has happened there yesterday is in not representative of the whole of Germany, although it will radiate far and have huge implications.” “It’s misleading to describe Wagenknecht as far left. She insidiously merges far right and far left topics and tropes, only to create a whole new toxic brew-up. Far from being a bulwark against the AfD she has turned out to be a resentment machine that has paved the way for more right-wing thinking, by routinely normalising anti-democratic narratives.” “Many of the younger generation in these states, they feel left behind. AfD has managed to be massively successful on TikTok, which is used by younger Germans. And the mainstream parties did not clock that fast enough. Nowhere else in Germany have far right organisations been allowed to be so much at the centre of society.” “The underlying subtext of this election is that East Germans - and this is something you will find across the rest of Germany - are hugely dissatisfied with the current coalition gov’t, which is basically dysfunctional. If you set aside the AfD’s victory, what actually happened is that these three parties hardly got any votes.” “It’s important to emphasise, this is East Germany, it has to do with very specific factors and although hugely influential, it is not representative. But it is a dangerous ‘first’ and what matters now is how this will affect the national conversation - especially the Christian Conservatives who are in danger of learning the wrong lessons and pandering further to the right.” “We, Germans, don’t really do ‘early elections’ unless absolutely necessary. However, if the next East German election in Branderburg in three weeks time is as awful for the Social Democrats and if - and this is a possibility - they come in below the 5% threshold that is the minimum in order to be part of Parliament, within the SPD, Scholz’s future will be heavily discussed.” Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. (We are working on threads and YouTube.) Our THIRD Starter Pack to accompany this Special can be found here. Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Click here for a second Bluesky Starter Pack. IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, PLEASE DO. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou, and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Naomi and Alex look at the week's news, focussing on the market turmoil and pressure on Reeves, Trump's felony conviction, and Farage under increasing pressure from his own members for - WAIT FOR IT! - being too moderate. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** “Trump did this before his 2017 inauguration. He is manipulating markets. Causing a volatile period with negative movement. He threatens lots of stuff. He then gets sworn in and tones it down. Everything resets and he comes out and claims: Look at Wall Street. Even in my first week everything is going gangbusters.” "An enormous number of [Reform voters] are aspirationally wealthy, golf-playing, what I would call 'red corduroy trouser guy'. They do not like the working classness of a man like Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. They don't want him invading their club. And I think that's true of Farage.” “The government needs to pursue a policy of dynamic beneficial alignment with the EU. Most of us do not work for a large corporation that can box and cox around regulatory changes in our largest trading market. Lots of SMEd and sole traders just can't do it.” “There are unilateral things that gov’t could be doing right now to boost the economy and the reason it’s not is because it’s chicken. They are letting the perceived political price, of being seen to get closer to the EU, dictate policy choice. It is a discredit to them. These lost months, you ain’t getting them back.” Reform UK trying to introduce a bill - the video is here. CALL TO ACTION: Tell your MP to attend the debate on Youth Mobility. Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex chats to award-winning Cardiff-based journalist Will Hayward about Vaughan Gething's resignation and a perfect fifteen-minute explainer of the general election result. A potted summary of the Gething scandal. Who did well and who did poorly? Why is Reform building such a strong base in Wales? What next for a Senedd and a Labour party, both split right down the middle? Subscribe to the podcast, like us, rate us, and share the joyous news on social media. G'awn, do it now while you listen. Ideas, feedback, comments, guest or topic suggestions? Find us on twitter @quietriotpod, email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com, or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Quiet Riot is produced by Kenny Campbell, in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex Andreou and Naomi Smith talk through the week's news, with a focus on the gangsters who have taken over the White House. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** NAOMI: "It's not so much that the world has changed as that the world has finally realized how much the world had already changed. For those for whom the penny hadn't already dropped, it's dropped now. And my overriding feeling is just this renewed anger about the decision to leave the EU." ALEX: "Deliberation is not evidence of equivocation. Speed does not always result in constancy. Declamation does not equal leadership. Calmness is not a form of appeasement." NAOMI: "I’m very encouraged by the UK demonstrating more leadership on this issue, putting its money where its mouth is, and I hope it will inspire other European leaders to do likewise, especially those not yet even meeting the NATO threshold of spending 2% of GDP on defence. Looking at you Meloni…" ALEX: "The only thing that matters now, is for the political will to exist, to disentangle our continent from a now unreliable and dangerous partner, and for the time to be gained to do that safely. We will bite the inside of our cheek and smile and say 'yes dear', while preparing our escape." CALL TO ACTION: Here is how to find out more about 1 Team 1 Fight and donate to them. Our bookshop including many of the books we have featured can be found at uk.bookshop.org/shop/quietriot ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex Andreou and Naomi Smith talk through the week's news, with a focus on Labour's welfare cuts, Trump's tariffs, JD Vance's visit to Greenland. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** ALEX ANDREOU'S PODYSSEY can be found here: APPLE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/alex-andreous-podyssey/id1798575126 SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2x7cD3HjkOyOKTF4YT5Goy?si=e7a86b762431451f AMAZON MUSIC: https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/8c996062-ef8d-42e4-9d80-5b407cb6e2e2/alex-andreou's-podyssey OVERCAST: https://overcast.fm/+ABN4Gd7AP9Q POCKET CASTS: https://pca.st/podcast/9e98d690-d812-013d-ea22-0affdfd67dbd YouTube Music: Coming Soon Or you can add it to any app, using the RSS feed: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/podyssey SUBSCRIBE OR FOLLOW NOW! CALLS TO ACTION: You can find the Myanmar Unicef Appeal here. Here is the app that helps email your MP. Our bookshop including many of the books we have featured can be found at uk.bookshop.org/shop/quietriot ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Naomi and Alex talk about the Far Right riots up and down the UK, the extent to which they are an omen of worse things to come, or the final spasm of a faction of sore losers, the role disinformation has played, and what Starmer can do. Alex: “The far right have had a pretty bad year. The European election did not go their way in the mega-wave they thought, Modi lost his majority in India, Le Pen came third in France, Starmer won a landslide here, and now it looks as if Trump might even be in danger. It’s not a good moment for them and something about this feels like their final tantrum by the checkout.” Naomi: “The far right are always with us. They never go away. It is a fact of life. They have peaks in their activity and while this has been nowhere near as bad as it could be, you have to have constant and ever vigilance around those that seek to divide us.” Please take a minute to subscribe to the podcast, like, review and rate us, and share Quiet Riot pearls on social media because sharing is good, is it not? You can find us on twitter @quietriotpod, email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com, or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. It really helps! You can find Hope Not Hate here. You can find Kick It Out here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Naomi and Alex, go over the US result, with a special focus on what it means for the UK and Europe, and what leassons we can learn from it. With two extraordinary guests: Former diplomat and UN Deputy Secretary General, Lord Mark Malloch Brown, and former Obama campaign staffer and CEO of 38 Degrees Matthew Mc Gregor. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** Mark: “There is, frankly, a class-versus-identity issue. Some latinos, for example, feel that they are entering the middle class and want their vote to be consistent with their life in the suburbs, membership of a country club, and resent Democrats who tend to lump them together by identity and assume that they want certain services or support from the state.” Matthew: “Yes, economic issues were front and centre, but there are other issues in this election. For a lot of Americans, the impact of the roll back of reproductive rights, the fact that women are losing their lives because of it, was not a deal-breaker. And this is going to be an incredibly painful fact for people to absorb.”   Mark: “The person who lost this campaign was Joe Biden and those around him, who cynically kept him propped up long after he should have declared himself not a candidate, and prevented the primary process, in the white hot heat of which a candidate is toughened up.” Matthew: “There is a real danger from this result for the UK, that the Labour Party, and progressives more generally, will suffer a crisis of confidence. In the current environment, caution is the riskier option. The gov’t needs to drive forward, probably even more boldly than Reeves set out in the Budget.” Mark: “If Trump goes with these very high tariffs, he is not only going to throw the American economy into deep confusion, in the medium term, he is going to throw the global economy into a chaotic state. And anaemic growth is going to be even more anaemic.” Matthew: “Feelings don’t care about your facts. Keir Starmer said something that really concerned me during the election campaign: ‘I believe in actions, not words.’ If you want to be a successful PM in the year 2024, you need both.” LINKS: You can join the fight with 38 Degrees here. You can join the fight with Best for Britain here. You can join the fight with Hope not Hate here. You can find out about Open Society's work here. Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** Naomi and Alex look at yet another two horrible consequences of Brexit - the grift that keeps on taking - in the rather esoteric GPSR that seems to have caught both government and business unaware, as well as the labour shortages that may scupper gov't plans to build 1.5m homes. Plus, Laura Kuenssberg gets an award and Steven Bartlett explains his views on medicine. Have we sacrificed accuracy in the service of balance? Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Naomi and Alex, with the LSE's Professor Paul Dolan, and More in Common's Luke Tryl, make their way through the news - including the Grenfell report, changes in how schools are assessed, and the Tory leadership race. And then we talk happiness. What is it? Why do we feel less of it? And how can we get happier in a polarised world. An illuminating and uplifting conversation. HELP US KEEP MAKING THIS PODCAST: CLick here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. Paul Dolan: “It’s much easier, much of the time, to hold someone else responsible for how you think the world is than it is to do anything about it yourself. The path of least resistance is blame.” Luke Tryl: “One of the bigger drivers [of online abuse] is the desire for in-group approval that social media gives you. It’s not just that you don’t see the impact you are having on the people you’re targeting. You also get lots of validation from the in-group.” CALLS TO ACTION Grenfell United can be found here. Paul Dolan's books and other projects can be found here. Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. (We are working on threads and YouTube.) Our THIRD Starter Pack to accompany this Special can be found here. Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Click here for a second Bluesky Starter Pack. IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, PLEASE DO. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou, and Kenny Campbell - in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Announcing the return of Alex Andreou and Naomi Smith in their new podcast Quiet Riot – for those who like their politics with more passion and less shouting Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex Andreou and Naomi Smith talk through the week's news, with a focus on Trump and Musk's assault on federal government - and how it might just turn against them. A detailed report by Frontier Economics AND a megapoll by YouGov, commissioned by Best for Britain, outline stunning growth opportunities - if Starmer goes for the right UK-EU reset. The public is fully behind the idea. Plus, as Reform UK continues to gaslight the country about Brexit and ride high in the polls, there may be a giant chink in their armour. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** "Pete Hegseth sat down at the poker table with his cards facing his opponents. The damage is done. You can't walk that back. You can't ask the other poker players to unsee the cards you just showed them." “The latest Trump tariff package accumulates his grievances with the rest of the world, whether they are real or imagined. It could mean anything, or othing. It's impossible to process until we understand what he means - and nobody can do that, because Trump doesn't understand it.” “The Trump tariffs executive order is a nothing. It is an invitation to leaders from around the world to come and kiss his ass. This is the Fisher-Price version of a Presidency. They give him buttons to push and levers to pull that are attached to nothing.”  “Reform UK hasn't got any experience of actual government or much on-the-ground resources. The Conservatives can offer decades of experience and local associations, but need Reform's popularity. The sweet spot is there. That's where a deal might be done.” LINKS: Byline piece with background on Together and its links to other campaigns is here. Christina Pagel's substack on the signs of authoritarianism and how the Trump WH tracks. Our bookshop including many of the books we have featured can be found at uk.bookshop.org/shop/quietriot ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Naomi Smith gets the behind the scenes skinny on Podyssey from Alex Andreou. Where did the idea come from? What's coming up in Season 2? What is the most surprising fact so far? Lots of exclusive access, previews, and exclusive announcements. ALEX ANDREOU'S PODYSSEY can be found here: APPLE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/alex-andreous-podyssey/id1798575126 SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2x7cD3HjkOyOKTF4YT5Goy?si=e7a86b762431451f AMAZON MUSIC: https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/8c996062-ef8d-42e4-9d80-5b407cb6e2e2/alex-andreou's-podyssey OVERCAST: https://overcast.fm/+ABN4Gd7AP9Q POCKET CASTS: https://pca.st/podcast/9e98d690-d812-013d-ea22-0affdfd67dbd YouTube Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=l9GIOOP7pUU&list=PLo7dIXWHNar1u1rKsXUTgYnDhJebTp-eo PODBEAN: https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/gt7a4-3460bc/Alex-Andreou%27s-Podyssey-Podcast Or you can add it to any app, using the RSS feed: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/podyssey SUBSCRIBE OR FOLLOW NOW! Our bookshop including many of the books we have featured can be found at uk.bookshop.org/shop/quietriot With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex Andreou and Naomi Smith talk through the week's news, with a focus on the Labour govt's incoherent welfare reforms, and Musk's destruction of his own companies. PLUS Germany goes shopping! ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** “A lack of an ideological basis is leading Labour to some very poor choices. When you’re cutting international aid, you are cutting it for the most vulnerable people in the world. When you are cutting PIP, you are cutting it for the most disadvantaged people in the UK.” “I would say to Starmer, simply, this: If you’ve ended up pissing off someone like me, you are in trouble with this. It is time to change course. This is crossing a line.” ALEX ANDREOU'S PODYSSEY can be found here: APPLE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/alex-andreous-podyssey/id1798575126 SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2x7cD3HjkOyOKTF4YT5Goy?si=e7a86b762431451f AMAZON MUSIC: https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/8c996062-ef8d-42e4-9d80-5b407cb6e2e2/alex-andreou's-podyssey OVERCAST: https://overcast.fm/+ABN4Gd7AP9Q POCKET CASTS: https://pca.st/podcast/9e98d690-d812-013d-ea22-0affdfd67dbd YouTube Music: Coming Soon Or you can add it to any app, using the RSS feed: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/podyssey SUBSCRIBE OR FOLLOW NOW! LINKS: Sing the 38Degrees petition against welfare cuts. Find out about the Tesla Takedown campaign. Our bookshop including many of the books we have featured can be found at uk.bookshop.org/shop/quietriot ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, Alex Andreou is flying solo in the studio while Naomi Smith checks in from the campaign trail – from lots of campaign trails, in fact. Joining Alex are special guests Luke Tryl, Executive Director of More in Common UK, and Yasmeen Serhan, Time's politics and policy specialist for Europe and the Middle East. As the clock ticks down to the General Election in Blighty, we prowl around the polling and pick our way gingerly through the latest electoral detritus. Then we cast our gaze over the Atlantic and are left rubbing our eyes in utter disbelief. Of course, there is a selection of your favourite features – Wokey Dokey is back, and there's a huge Poll With It. As we gird our loins for the final few days of the General Election, please subscribe to the podcast, like, review and rate us, and share the love on social media – it really keeps us going, in so many ways. Ideas, feedback, comments, guest or topic suggestions? Find us on twitter @quietriotpod, email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com, or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Thank you buddies :-) Quiet Riot is produced by Kenny Campbell, in cahoots with Sandstone Global. CALLS TO ACTION Can Brits donate to US political parties? The rules are pretty clear What happens if two parties tie for second place in the General Election? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex and Naomi, along with wonderful guests Alexis Conran and Simon Radford, discuss the fallout from Trump's "They're Eating The Dogs" humiliation by Kamala Harris. Followed by a discussion of why is regualtion of the gambling industry so lax, considering the lives gambling addiction destroys. Plus the return of Arlene On Me. If you can afford to help, you can back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. Simon: “There’s probably been three occasions in the last few decades where a debate has been decisive. Some people point to the Nixon-Kennedy debate, where Nixon won on Radio but Kennedy won on TV. Reagan cleaned Carter’s clock and it went from being a tight race to a landslide for Reagan. And then Trump versus Biden, which knocked the latter out of the race entirely.” Alexis: “We’re getting up to just under 500 suicides a year, which are thought to be related to gambling. I don’t know why we can’t force the industry to be a bit more responsible. You can’t watch sport without being prompted to gamble. You go to a PG film and there will be a gambling advert before it.” Alexis: “I think we need to make gambling a health issue. Just under half a billion quid from the NHS goes to helping problem gamblers. If we take it our of DCMS - why is it there? - and make it a Wes Streeting problem, you might see more action.” CALLS TO ACTION Information on the Gambling White Paper can be found here. Anthony O'Shaughnessy's "cougary" TikTok is here. Alexis Conran's documentary on gambling addiction is here. Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod and on Bluesky. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. Our THIRD Starter Pack to accompany this Special can be found here. Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Click here for a second Bluesky Starter Pack. IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, PLEASE DO. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou, and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Join us for some group therapy! Naomi and Alex welcome back 38Degrees CEO and former Obama campaign staffer Matthew McGregor with some first impressions of Trump's low-energy inauguration speech, his high-energy overflow speech, Melania's get-away-from-me-energy hat and Musk's chemically-enhanced-energy salute. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** "So much of it was about him. So much of it was about how he's the best and how he's suffered and how he's the victim. Contrast that with 'ask not what your country can do for you'. It was an extraordinarily self-centered inauguration speech." "Once he was in the other room, he gave the speech he really wanted to. He wanted to talk about January the 6th. He wanted to open up old wounds. He will never ever let go of the injustice that he perceives happened to him back in 2020.” "We should be outraged. We should stay angry. And we should be up for resisting what Donald Trump is going to try to do to America. But there's no point in pretending that he is a novice, an idiot, someone who is deranged. He knows what he's doing." “John McCain said it's always darkest just before it goes completely black. I'm glad to be, experiencing the pain, with you both, in a group therapy setting.” CALLS TO ACTION To find out more about (and donate if in the US) to Planned Parenthood click here. To find out more about and help Bloody Good Period click here. To find out more about and help Level Up click here. Click here for your Quiet Riot Bluesky Starter Pack. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. ***SPONSOR US AT KO-FI.COM/QUIETRIOTPOD*** With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Naomi and Alex, with guest award-winning journalist Tristan Kirk from the Evening Standard, discuss the latest economic figures, budget rumours, and the parlous state of our justice system. Another thing for the new gov't to fix - and urgently. Followed by a discussion of the outrageous practice of Single Justice Procedure - where anyone can end up with a criminal conviction after a magistrate looks at a case for 45 seconds, behind closed doors, with no scrutiny or reasoning. Plus an early Christmassy Wokey Dokey and a brilliantly touching Grin And Share It. If you can afford to help, you can back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. “The court system has been effectively obliterated by years, if not decades, of being cut back and cut back, whereas health has been looked after as best it can. Justice is of equal importance to society and yet has been the first stop for cutbacks.” “You’ve got a system set up so things happen incredibly quickly. And we’ve now got an enormous bank of evidence that mistakes are being made. People are being wrongly prosecuted, people are being wrongly convicted, not enough consideration, no transparency. It’s a conveyor belt.”   “Every single case I talk about is someone in a vulnerable position, a difficult period of their life, if not the worst period of their life and then they have a criminal conviction heaped on top of them. And I think there is a lack of understanding as to just how devastating that can be.” CALLS TO ACTION For Tristan's petition on SJPs click here. For the Magistrates Association recommendations click here. For the Appeal charity click here. For the Transform Justice organisation click here. For Joshua's piece on fee-paying schools click here. For the consultation on the VAT exemption click here. For the Grin And Share It on turtles click here. For Anglesey Sea Zoo click here. For Newquay's Blue Reef Aquarium click here. UPDATE 17-Oct-2024: Tristan's latest piece is here. Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod or use our Starter Pack on Bluesky. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, PLEASE DO. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou, and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Naomi, Alex, And Kenny try to understand why everyone is losing their mind over the Chagos Archipelago deal, talk local election results and why they may be a problem for Labour, and present an alternative biography of Boris Johnson. One in which he doesn't get to gloss over the catastrophe that was his administration. If you can afford to help, you can back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. BOOKS: Sayeeda Warsi's Muslims Don't Matter. Musa Okwonga's One of Them. Alison Dupernex's Knitting for Absolute Beginners. Find us on Facebook and Twitter as @quietriotpod or use our Starter Pack on Bluesky. Email us at quietriotpod@gmail.com. Or visit our website www.quietriotpod.com. IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO CONTRIBUTE, PLEASE DO. Click here to back Quiet Riot on Ko-fi. With Naomi Smith, Alex Andreou, and Kenny Campbell – in cahoots with Sandstone Global. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices