The Edition: Border lands, 200 years of British railways & who are the GOATs?

Best of the Spectator

The Spectator

News Commentary, News, Daily News, Society & Culture

4.4 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 14 August 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

First: how Merkel killed the European dream

‘Ten years ago,’ Lisa Haseldine says, ‘Angela Merkel told the German press what she was going to do about the swell of Syrian refugees heading to Europe’: ‘Wir schaffen das’ – we can handle it. With these words, ‘she ushered in a new era of uncontrolled mass migration’. ‘In retrospect,’ explains one senior British diplomat, ‘it was pretty much the most disastrous government policy of this century anywhere in Europe.’ The surge of immigrants helped swing Brexit, ‘emboldened’ people-traffickers and ‘destabilised politics’ across Europe.

Ten years on, a third of the EU’s member states within the Schengen area have now imposed border controls. Can freedom of movement survive in its current form? Lisa joined the podcast alongside Oliver Moody, Berlin correspondent for The Times.

Next: the cultural impact of the railways

It’s been 200 years since the world’s first public train travelled from Shildon to Stockton – across County Durham. Richard Bratby argues that this marked the start of a new era for Britain and the world: ‘no invention between the printing press and the internet has had as profound a cultural impact as the railways’.

How can we explain the romantic appeal of the railways? Richard joined the podcast to discuss, alongside Christian Wolmar, author of over twenty books about the railways including The Liberation Line.

And finally: who is the Greatest Of All Time?

What do Lionel Messi, Roger Federer and Tom Brady have in common? Their acolytes would argue that they are the GOAT of their sport – the Greatest Of All Time. Why are fans so obsessed with the GOAT label? Are pundits guilty of recency bias? And does it really matter anyway? Journalist Patrick Kidd joined the podcast to discuss, alongside the Spectator’s Sam McPhail.

Plus: Madeline Grant asks why not show J.D. Vance the real Britain?

Hosted by William Moore and Gus Carter.

Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the edition podcast from The Spectator, where each week we shared a little
0:12.6	light on the thought process behind putting the world's oldest weekly magazine to bed. I'm William Moore,
0:18.2	The Spectator's Features Editor. And I'm Gus Carter, the Spectator's
0:21.0	Deputy Features Editor. On this week's podcast, did Angela Merkel kill the European dream,
0:26.4	the cultural impact of railways, and why is sport obsessed with goats? First up, ten years ago, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that she would welcome all migrants to Europe in response to the Syrian civil war and rewrote the EU's rules to do so.
0:53.5	But a decade on, with millions still arriving to Europe,
0:56.7	and nine EU countries introducing temporary border controls, can freedom of movement survive?
1:03.1	Lisa Hazardine writes about this in her cover article for the magazine this week,
1:07.4	and she joined the podcast to discuss her piece further, along with Oliver Moody,
1:11.8	Berlin correspondent for The Times. I started by asking Lisa to take us back to 2015 and Merkel's
1:17.8	decision that summer. So the summer of 2015, you have the Syrian civil war going on in the Middle
1:24.6	East and a lot of associated unrest as well from the rise of ISIS,
1:29.0	which was kind of at the peak of its dominance at the time. And really what all this sort of unrest did
1:34.1	was prompt a lot of people to want to flee the region and seek asylum elsewhere, most
1:40.4	importantly of all in Europe at the time. So you had this big sort of swell of migration
1:44.9	moving towards Europe and essentially particularly towards the beginning of the summer of 2015
1:49.5	that was really beginning to escalate. And so we come to August 2015 when essentially what
1:58.2	Angela Merkel did was lift some of the rules on how many asylum seekers
2:04.0	Germany was willing to take, particularly from Syria, but there were, of course, other nationalities,
2:08.0	sort of Eritreans, Afghans, Iraqis, people from Iran as well. So it was really a large
2:14.2	number of people, but mostly at the time it was Syrians.
2:20.7	But as you say, it's not just welcoming, of course, them to Germany.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 12 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Spectator, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Spectator and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.