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If you're the person always being asked, what's happening in the news?

You could do with a podcast wingman.

Newscast is just that, a little voice in your ear,

giving you a deeper understanding of what's going on in the world.

We won't even mind if you try and take

the credit yourself. Listen to Newscast every day on BBC Sounds. Each morning as I walk into the BBC,

I pass a statue of George Orwell, with the inscription beneath it, freedom is the right to tell people

what they do not want to hear. That freedom has never been more contested.

On the one hand, each and every one of us now has the ability, unthinkable a few years back,

to say and publish what we like online and have our views share potentially with millions of others.

On the other, some fear that that freedom is in truth a licence to promote hatred,

division and fear. And the events of recent days have shone a huge light on that vexed debate,

with protests on university campuses in which some have celebrated the events of October the 7th behind a banner in one case

with the phrase glory to our martyrs. My guest on political thinking this week is Araf Ahmed,

an academic, a philosopher, before he took the job of being what some call the free speech czar.

If we don't learn to settle differences, really important political differences through speech,

which is an alternative to violence, then ultimately we will be staring into the abyss.

Ahmed's official job title is Director for Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom at the Office for Students.

In a moment, we'll hear a long conversation we recorded a few weeks ago about free speech,

about the law, and why he cares so much about it. But given what has happened in the past week,

I asked him to come back to bring us up to date

...