The New Statesman.

Hello, I'm Anous Shekelian and you're listening to Daily Politics from The New

Statesman. We're bringing you something slightly different today. This week, we launched

another, that's right, another podcast. The Exchange is a New Statesman's long-form

interview show featuring some big names you know and some big names you'll be glad to learn of. And I'm joined now by a very familiar voice who you will also hear on The Exchange. Hi, Oli. Hi, Anish. You've been busy, haven't you? Yeah. A little bit going on. A little bit going on. But loving it. So what can our listeners expect from this new show?

Well, it's a long-form interview format.

So, as you said, people you've heard of, people you haven't yet.

But nevertheless, people with ideas, views, or even just ways of thinking that are relevant to you.

And hopefully, in some instances, have actually changed the world, I think.

You know, some of the names we've got coming up, like I-Way-Way is the next episode, for example.

Oh, wow.

You know, these are world leaders in their fields in some instances.

And it's a privilege in that instance.

Michael Proger interviewing I.

Way way way is so cool, obviously, to just listen to people like that.

And for me, one of the beautiful things about the digital medium and what it allows you to do is

there's a reason politicians behave in the way that they do when they're on the broadcast round.

It's because they know they can play for time over 10 minutes, right?

They can be circular, they can repeat themselves, they can misdirect. But if you're sat down here in this studio with one of us for 90 minutes, very quickly you're going to look very silly if that's your approach to the conversation now. I don't think we're not really looking to speak to politicians that much on this. But I think the long form, it allows you to understand how someone thinks, not just what they think.

It allows you to get a sense of their curiosity, their personality, their ego.

Hopefully, you know, their charisma. Yeah. And who is your interviewee to launch the series?

So it's a guy called Rutger Bregman. He's a Dutch historian by trade, but has sort of had several

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