Populism, conspiracies and... Doctor Who
Radical with Amol Rajan
BBC
4.5 • 919 Ratings
🗓️ 5 June 2025
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The creator of The Thick of It and Veep discusses the rise of populism and the evolution of political language.
And Nick compares Amol to Billie Piper in Dr Who as they announce some news about The Today Podcast regenerating into not one, but two podcasts.
Radical with Amol Rajan will be available on this feed, so make sure you hit subscribe on BBC Sounds to make sure you don’t miss an episode.
Political Thinking with Nick Robinson is available here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p04z203l
The Today Podcast is hosted by Amol Rajan and Nick Robinson who are both presenters of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. Amol was the BBC?s media editor for six years and is the former editor of the Independent, he’s also the current presenter of University Challenge. Nick has presented the Today programme since 2015, he was the BBC?s political editor for ten years before that and also previously worked as ITV’s political editor.
This episode was made by Lewis Vickers with Izzy Rowley and David Pittam. Digital production was by Izzy Rowley. The technical producer was Mike Regaard. The editor is Louisa Lewis. The executive producer is Owenna Griffiths.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Well, well, well, Nick, my friend, my hero, my colleague, my compadre, stop that. Can you believe, Nick? It's me, I have to say stop that. You have to say something. You have to say something. I laugh already. I was self-censoring, which you don't get enough of on podcasts. Do you know, this is episode 124 with the Today Podcasts. We started in October 20203, more than a year and a half ago. And do you remember what we started off with? My birthday, actually. Oh, was it? Yes. It was a birthday present. That was what this was. Yeah. Awesome. Yes. No, there was something rather more serious that we started with, which was reflecting on whether Rishi Sunak can win it for the Tories. |
| 0:41.9 | That shows you, it doesn't sound like it's a long time ago, but boy, it is a long time ago. |
| 0:46.7 | In political terms, it's eras ago. |
| 0:48.8 | And the reason we're banging on about all this is because we have some news, don't we? |
| 0:53.3 | This is, it's actually the beginning of something, but it, don't we? This is... |
| 0:54.6 | It's actually the beginning of something, but it's also the end. |
| 0:57.5 | This is the last episode of the Today Podcast ever, certainly in this iteration, and our listeners are the first to find out. |
| 1:05.0 | They are. |
| 1:05.6 | Fear not. |
| 1:06.7 | Like Doctor Who, though. |
| 1:08.3 | This is not death. |
| 1:09.7 | It is a moment of regeneration. |
| 1:12.6 | You are the kind of Billy Piper of this particular story. |
| 1:16.3 | Excellent. |
| 1:16.9 | Yeah. |
| 1:17.4 | Because emerging, to mix my metaphors terribly, |
| 1:21.4 | from the chrysalis of the Today podcast, |
| 1:24.2 | there's not just one new podcast, |
| 1:26.7 | but, well, sort of two. |
| 1:28.2 | One's already there. |
| 1:29.6 | I'm going to do more of political thinking, my long-form conversations with people who influence and shape our thinking about the world. |
| 1:37.4 | And you are... |
... |
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