An interview with Salman Rushdie
The Politics Show
The New Statesman
4.2 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 10 January 2026
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We’re launching our new culture and society podcast here at the New Statesman: The New Society.
Tanjil Rashid, the New Statesman's culture editor, discusses his interview with Salman Rushdie, Rushdie's latest work as a reflection of his life, and also what listeners can expect to hear on future episodes of this new podcast.
You can find the full interview via the links below.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The New Statesman. |
| 0:06.5 | Hello, I'm Olly Dougmore, and you're listening to Daily Politics from The New |
| 0:10.1 | Statesman. We're bringing you something slightly different today. We're delighted to be |
| 0:14.8 | launching our new Culture and Society podcast here at The New Statesman, The New Society. |
| 0:19.6 | I'm joined now by Tangil Rashid, who will be hosting |
| 0:22.0 | many of the episodes found on that feed and also edits that same section in the magazine. Hello, |
| 0:26.4 | Tanjal. Tanjal, we're going to delve into your interview with the formidable Salman |
| 0:32.0 | Rushdie shortly. But before we do that, I just want to talk about the new society. |
| 0:42.1 | What is the history of it, editorially, and what listeners can expect to hear on the podcast? |
| 0:48.6 | The New Society was a weekly magazine that was folded into the new section in 1988. It was an extraordinary magazine that covered all aspects of culture and society. |
| 0:55.4 | It had many, many distinguished contributors like the art critic John Berger, |
| 0:59.4 | the radical psychoanalyst, R.D. Lang, the historian Eric Hobsborm, |
| 1:04.0 | and the novelist Salman Rushdie, and we'll be talking more about that. |
| 1:09.8 | But it was a quite revolutionary outlet that sort of saw all of culture and all of society as |
| 1:18.5 | its as its domain, you know, to subject to sort of critical analysis and to draw out, you know, the |
| 1:26.7 | intellectual and the philosophical context in which we sort of live analysis and to draw out, you know, the intellectual and the philosophical context |
| 1:29.1 | in which we sort of live our daily lives. You know, culture is not just art. It's also, you know, |
| 1:34.8 | how we live, how we move, how we eat. It's everything. And when Tom McTague became editor of the new statesman, he decided to revive the new society by renaming the critic section within the magazine as the new society. And I have been the editor since then. |
| 1:58.7 | Wonderful. Tell me a little bit about what's going to be coming up on the podcast feed. |
| 2:03.0 | What ideas have we got who are you looking forward to speaking to? |
| 2:05.8 | Well, we will be discussing the sort of major questions of our time. We'll be looking at cultural trends, social phenomena. |
| 2:15.5 | We'll be interviewing great minds, great thinkers, including the |
... |
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