From our UK edition
50 min listen
Freddy Gray is joined by Cenk Uygur after he and Hasan Piker were banned from entering Britain. They discuss free speech, debate Cenk's position on criticising Israel, Britain’s censorious turn, and what the Henry Nowak case reveals about policing and anti-racism.
In recent months, America’s political rumor mills have been grinding out whispers about Graham Platner, the Democratic candidate for the Senate in Maine. Platner, the military veteran turned oyster catcher turned left-wing populist, has somehow survived the story about having a Nazi symbol tattooed on his chest – although he says he was unaware of its meaning and has since had it covered up. And he is still on course to beat Susan Collins, the long-serving Republican, in November. His is thought to be the most obvious – yet vital – win for the Democrats as they seek to win back the Senate. But Platner has a colorful past – to put it mildly.
Freddy Gray is joined by JL Partners pollster James Johnson to discuss America's polls: what the election results mean, why immigration has become a problem of the Republican's success, Trump's popularity with the Latinos & why Kamala Harris could still be the Democratic candidate 2028.
Freddy Gray is joined by Sarah Beth Spraggins to discuss her piece on Usha Vance, the wife of JD Vance who could be in line to be the next First Lady.
When someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you don’t stoop to their level. No, our motto is: 'When they go low, we go high.' – Michelle Obama at the Democratic National Convention in 2016 Shut up you ugly fuck. – The Democratic party’s official Twitter handle, replying to Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff for policy, on May 27, 2026. The most disturbing thing about that Democratic response to Stephen Miller is how unshocking it is. We’ve become inured to foul language, even from our political leaders and their social media channels. In our post-literate society, as words lose their power, swearing has become an idle form of punctuation. Donald Trump used to do most of his swearing in private.
From our UK edition
48 min listen
For this week’s Edition, Lara Prendergast is joined by the Spectator's deputy editor Freddy Gray, associate editor – and host of the Holy Smoke podcast – Damian Thompson and consultant psychiatrist and Daily Mail columnist Dr Max Pemberton. This week, the guests examine the Pope's encyclical about Artificial Intelligence (AI), Magnifica Humanitas, which warns of the cost to humanity that this technological revolution could bring. This marks Pope Leo's first major policy intervention, a warning which Spectator editor Michael Gove celebrates in the magazine this week. Michael says that AI will be ‘as transformative as the Industrial Revolution’ yet decisions ‘about where this technology is going and how it might be deployed are concentrated… in perilously few hands’.
42 min listen
Freddy Gray is joined by Nate Soares, president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, to discuss the risks posed to humanity by AI. Warning that sufficiently intelligent AI may stop following human instructions entirely, Soares tells Freddy what, if anything, could keep AI from spiralling out of control.
Another weekend, another failed and frankly pathetic attempt to kill the President of the United States. On February 22, a Sunday, Secret Service shot dead an armed 21-year-old male called Austin Tucker Martin, who had entered the Mar a Lago complex, although Donald Trump wasn’t there at the time. America is in a strange condition when a shoot-out at the White House will be soon forgotten On the Saturday night of April 25, the 31-year-old Cole Thomas Allen tried and failed to storm the White House Correspondent’s Dinner at the Hilton hotel in Washington DC. And we all saw what happened there. Earlier this month, in an incident the news cycle quickly moved past, Secret Service shot an armed individual at the National Mall.
It is of course hacky and hysterical to suggest America is turning into a banana republic. How else, though, can a reasonable person interpret Donald Trump’s settlement this week with the Internal Revenue Service?In January, the President and his two oldest sons sued the IRS for $10 billion over the leaking of their personal business tax filings to the press. Because Trump runs the Justice Department, the case was somewhat farcical: "I’m suing myself," Trump wryly admitted last week. "I’ll say, 'Give me X dollars,' and I don’t know what to do with the lawsuit." This week we found out. IRS lawyers felt their case was defensible on various counts: chiefly because the man who leaked the Trump family files wasn’t working for the service when he gave them to the New York Times.
Congressman Thomas Massie, one of the most vocal Republican critics of Donald Trump lost his fight for re-election in Kentucky to a Trump-backed challenger. Freddy Gray is joined by Spectator contributors Daniel McCarthy and Christopher Caldwell to discuss where Thomas Massie went wrong, how corruption centred around the campaign, whether or not Trump's success is a reflection of the upcoming midterms and the way Europe reacts to Trump more broadly.
35 min listen
After Trump visited Xi Jinping last week, Putin is now expected to meet the Chinese leader in Beijing. Freddy Gray speaks to Francis Pike about these meetings, and Francis makes the case that despite the Iran war, America – thanks to Trump – remains the global super power. Also on the podcast, they discuss Modi's attempts to curb collateral from the oil shortages and why he's a leader like no other.
Freddy Gray speaks to Jacob Heilbrunn about China, Trump & America's foreign policy.
Air Force One is in the air as I write, whizzing from Beijing back to Washington – and Donald Trump leaves China with many questions unanswered. There were warm words on both sides and plenty of friendly symbolism in the President’s big summit with Xi Jinping. But the fundamental great power tensions remain – over trade, technology, and war and peace in the Middle East and Taiwan. Washington and Beijing agree that Iran should never have a nuclear weapon – though it remains unclear the extent to which China will help reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Its closure hurts the Chinese economy, of course, but China has significant energy reserves and Xi knows that the pain spreads around the world to his advantage.
35 min listen
British favourability dropped sharply sometime around 2016 and then further declined in 2024. Trump is clearly the main driver of negative feelings, although not the only one. There was much antipathy in 2020, which may have been related to the election but seems more likely due to the chaotic scenes that followed George Floyd’s death. To discuss this, Freddy Gray is joined by Ed West, who has written about this for his Substack The Wrong Side of History.
37 min listen
One year on from when Pope Leo became head of the Catholic church and he remains a bit of an enigma. Is he a Conservative or Liberal? What did we learn from his clash with Donald Trump? Damian Thompson is joined by editor of The Pillar Ed Condon and two Spectator favourites – Freddy Gray and Mary Wakefield.
22 min listen
Freddy Gray is joined by Josef Palermo, who formerly worked for the Kennedy Center to discuss the historical building and whether its cultural and ethos has been ruined by the Trump administration.
"What to get someone who has everything, I thought," said Secretary of State Marco Rubio yesterday, as he handed Pope Leo a funny little crystal-football present. "Wow, OK," replied Leo, stiffly. It was a useful reminder that Rubio is not always a smooth operator. For all the articles suggesting he has now overtaken Vice President J.D. Vance as favorite to be the 2028 Republican nominee, for all the media gushing over the "Secretary of Everything" in the White House briefing room, Lil’ Marco can still be something of a robotic plonker on the big stage. Lil’ Marco can still be something of a robotic plonker on the big stage It was Rubio, after all, who was the first cabinet official to suggest in public that Israel had strong-armed America into attacking Iran.
26 min listen
Freddy Gray is joined by Geoffrey Cain, author of Steve Jobs in Exile, to discuss the significance of China has a global player in international conflict and what could come from Trump's visit to Beijing next week.
From our UK edition
This week: Martin Vander Weyer on British steel and his chat with Andy Haldane, Freddy Gray has been stateside & Arabella Byrne on why she's no fan of the social climbing dog – whippets.
"A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." That old saw is now hopelessly out of date. These days, an apparent malicious falsehood can become global news in a matter of seconds, especially if it contains suggestions that pants might have come off. Human beings love to share shocking gossip, and internet technology means that we can do so at terrifying speed and scale. Social media now resembles the lower-rent tabloids of old, rife with fantastical pieces about aliens or sex slaves and the occult Take, for instance, the incredible tale of the feline JPMorgan executive who "sexually harassed" a junior male staff member.
