Hello, my name's David Rundsenman and this is Talking Politics.

Today's extra episode is with James Meek, and we're talking about the history, the purpose,

and the misperception of the WHO.

And we're also going to talk about the history, the purpose and the misperception of the NHS.

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£12. That's lrb.m.me slash talk. We talked to James a couple of days ago. We also recorded a conversation with him a couple of years ago

about the long and fascinating article he wrote in the London Review of books on the NHS. And we wanted in this

conversation to try and link the two, the WHO, what's going on in the current crisis, but also what

that has revealed about the role of the NHS

in British health and British politics. So we're going to get to that at the end, but we started

with the World Health Organisation. You've just written this brilliant piece in the LRB about

its history and also about the different ways in which people probably misunderstand what it can do

and what it should do. It's hard to define its purpose. That's part of the challenge. But just give

us a sense when you were researching this and writing about this. How should the World Health

Organization be understood? If someone had to sum up what its job was, what is it?

...